Of course, this should be all over the main stream media, but don’t hold your breath; they are in the back pocket of the Muslims. After all, we all know how Gaza is such a hell-hole; a hell-hole caused by Israel. Granted, it is probably not a very pleasant place to live, but that is not because of the Israelis; it is because of the Muslims. Hamas in particular. I have written about this many times.
But, you won’t see this kind of stuff on the dhimmi main stream media. It really is rather disgusting. But, I also blame Israel for not having effective public relations, and not having an ability to get the truth out. Here is a small nation, about the size of New Jersey, surrounded by nations and people sworn to its destruction; and they really do mean to destroy it. As incompetent and criminal as the United States government is for not sealing it’s border, I do think our government would do something if Mexico was lobbing thousands of missiles into Arizona and Texas. And, yet, this is just the situation that Israel has found itself in from Gaza and the West Bank. But, if they do anything to stop this intolerable and inexcusable situation, somehow they are the “bad guys”. Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Muslim organizations regularly put their weapons caches and launchers in the heart of civilian populations, even in, on, or near hospitals and schools. But, when civilians are killed when Israel makes the attacks on those facilities necessary for it’s self defense, who gets blamed? Israel. Outrageous.
This is a film that should be seen by everyone on the Gaza Flotilla incident. While I think Israel should have waited until the Flotilla ships were out of International waters, apparently this action broke no international laws since they announced that there was a naval blockade of Gaza and the ships clearly stated their intention to break the blockade. And, the Muslims were clearly hoping for violence, as the video clearly shows. But, when they got what they wanted, they do what all Muslims tend to do; claim victim status. And, the main stream media just continues to eat this stuff up.
Thanks to http://jihadwatch.org for bringing this to my attention.
It has been pretty obvious to myself, and many other people, that the American experiment is about to come to an end. No empire has ever existed forever, and history has repeatedly shown us that when a nation gets hopelessly in debt, especially to it’s rivals, it will, eventually, collapse. With admitted deficits in the trillions of dollars, and real future deficits and financial losses in the hundreds of trillions of dollars, it is clear that something will have to snap.
Whether it happens this year or next, or maybe in 10 or 15 years, eventually the United States will have to default on it’s obligations. Or, at the very least, it will have to scale back the size of government (by well over 50%, which would be a very good thing) and slash the entitlements it hands out that it cannot afford. We have seen this happen, to a slight degree, in Greece. It has also happened in Iceland. Spain will be following soon, along with other European countries where socialism is even more entrenched in the culture than it has become in the United States.
We have been creeping towards socialism ever since Roosevelt instituted the “New Deal”. Things like social security, although well meaning, soon became a government sponsored retirement plan. But, it was never meant to be that and it was not funded to be a government sponsored retirement plan. (It was meant to be a safety net for those unfortunate few who could not save adequately for their retirement or receive corporate pensions.) After a short time, however, it was nothing but a Ponzi scheme, and the responsibility for this atrocity was just kicked down the road by every administration. After all, nobody in the United States, especially politicians, think more than 4 years ahead.
Then, of course, we got companies involved in health care. This was because of the insane wage and price controls imposed by Nixon. Of course, nobody is going to stand by for any government control on their wages. If your employer will not pay you more, you would simply quit and get a new job at a higher pay; unless you were incompetent or lazy. So, to keep from loosing good employees, companies offered “free” health care, because that was not considered “a raise”. Of course, with companies now paying for health care, nobody really cared what it cost. And, since it was “free”, employees went to their doctors at the slightest sign of a hangnail. Thus, we ended up with soaring health care costs. Then, to make things worse, the government got into offering “free” health care, called Medicare and Medicaid. This was even better; now you didn’t even need a job. In fact, in most cases, you were better off without a job, since the government would then pay even more of your bills. And, of course, we instituted welfare. This brought us the boom of the illegal aliens. We were told that we needed illegal Mexicans because they would do that jobs that Americans would not perform. Well, DUH! If you pay someone money to stay home, lay on the couch, eat bon-bons and watch Oprah, what do you think they will do? (Of course, anyone with any self respect would not do this, but we have a whole class of people in the United States that were raised to have no self respect. In fact, many quickly learned how to game the system, so that they could not only work for money “under the table”, but they could also get free money from the government. And, if they remain, or become, unmarried and breed like rabbits, they get even more free money. What a country!
And then, you had complete government insanity; insisting that banks give people mortgage loans that they could not possibly afford to pay off. People like Barney Frank and Barack Obama were especially proud of those programs. After all, it does not matter that they cannot afford to pay the loans back; it is just important that every American owns a home. I guess home ownership had somehow become a right.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.
Just as predicted above, it all started to unravel, and we had the little recession that started in 2008. I say little, because it will be nothing compared to what is coming once all of the chickens come home to roost. In this video, from Russia Today, author and blogger Dmitry Orlov describes what he is sure will happen in the United States, based on what he has seen happening, as well as what he witnessed happen in the Soviet Union when it collapsed. He not only discusses what he thinks will happen, and gives his reasons why, but also gives some suggestions as to what Americans can do to prepare for the coming collapse of the United States.
As I have said many times, we are at war with Islam; our government needs to admit that. You cannot defeat an enemy that you not only don’t understand, but refuse to even mention. We did not choose this war, but after the civilized world re-opened the Pandora’s box of Islam, by giving worthless, barbarian countries like Saudi Arabia, and others, trillions of dollars for their oil, we are forced to fight it. Muslim nations were all dying after the final Crusades pushed them back in the late 15th century, and the threat virtually vanished when Ataturk finally (and wisely) disbanded the Caliphate in the early 1900′s, hoping to secularize the Muslim world and thereby advance it by over 1000 years and bring it into the modern world. But, by paying them trillions for oil (something which they certainly did not earn; virtually no Muslim country has any industry or economic activity, even today, except for selling oil) we have given them the means to once again spread their ideology of war, hatred, and misogyny that is Islam. (And this, by the way, is why we must stamp it out; it is NOT just a religion. If people want to waste hours a day banging their foreheads on the ground and sticking their asses in the air for Allah to have his way with them, that is their business, and they are free to do it. But, Islam is NOT just a religion. It is an ideology consisting a a system of laws and it dictates every aspect of a person’s life, including what happens in the bathroom, as we shall see. It is this system of law and government that distinguishes Islam from regular religions, and it is this aspect that we are at war with.) And, they not only use that money to spread their absurd ideology, based on the sayings of an ancient megalomaniacal, barbarian, pedophile, but they have also used it to buy weapons that we have happily, and stupidly, sold them.
I’ve already said how stupid it is that we are arming Pakistan with some of the most advanced F-16 fighter jets and 1000 laser guided bombs. I just hope they have radio controlled “kill” switches attached to the engines and detonators, so that we can disable them when they are used against us or India. And, we are now seeing how Turkey is using UAVs, stupidly sold to them by Israel, to attack Kurds. (And, of course, when war does finally break out in the Middle East, almost certainly in the next few months, those same drones will almost certainly be used against Israel!) How stupid were we to allow Turkey into NATO? Pretty!
And, most of us have heard how guards at Guantanamo are forced to wear white gloves when handling Korans! How stupid is that? No wonder a huge percentage of the prisoners at Guantanamo return to jihad as soon as they are released. Why wouldn’t they? After all, we apparently respect their “religion” and their “holy” book so much that we will only handle it with white gloves. Since we don’t respect (or at least should not respect) their “religion”, the handling of the Koran with “kid gloves” is exactly the wrong approach. (Although, as you read on, you will begin to understand that perhaps we want to use latex gloves when we handle those Korans.) You need to de-condition these 7th century Cretans, not further encourage them. A much more appropriate thing to do would be to introduce Koranic toilet paper.
To make matters worse, for years we have been hearing about the insane measures that nations are taking to “accommodate” Muslims. Sorry, but the fallacious nature of this policy should be obvious just by looking at what has happened in the United States when we tried to “accommodate” the Mexicans. We now have something like 10 to 15 million illegal Mexicans in our country. They are literally destroying the economy, and even viability, of some states like California and Arizona. And, even in those states that are well-removed from the border, you still hear “For Spanish, press 1″ when you call many numbers. If people want to immigrate into a new country, and they have a valuable skill, and they and their skill enhances the well-being of a community, fine. But, they must assimilate into the community. In the United States, we speak English. Learn it, or leave! European countries have bent over so far backwards to “accommodate” Muslim “customs” that many people now refer to it as “Eurabia”, a term coined by the insightful former Muslim, Bat Ye’or. But, although it is probably already too late, many European nations, like France and Spain, are waking up and have banned, or are seriously considering banning, the burqa in public places, although some nations, like England, stupidly refuse to follow suit. But, in the latest affront to civilization, The MailOnline announced, yesterday, “Shopping centre bosses approve ‘Asian squat toilets’ following cultural awareness course”
Why you might ask is ‘Asian squat toilets’ in quotes? Well, because in this politically correct world, they could not say “Muslim squat toilets”, but that’s what they are. But, of course, Asians don’t go rioting, pillaging and looting whenever their “sensibilities” are “insulted”, so they were called “Asian squat toilets”.
As the article explains:
For most of us, the squat toilet is nothing more than a staple of horror stories about old-fashioned French service stations or the exploits of adventurous backpackers in far-flung parts of India.
But this basic form of plumbing, also known as a Turkish toilet or Nile pan, could be coming to a shopping centre near you – and all in the name of cultural sensitivity.
From next week, shoppers in Rochdale who push open the cubicle door expecting the reassuring sight of a modern, clean lavatory could instead be faced with little more than a hole in the ground.
Bosses of the Greater Manchester town’s Exchange mall have installed two as part of an upgrade costing several thousand pounds after attending a cultural awareness course run by a local Muslim community activist.
A familiar sight in parts of the Middle East, and still sometimes seen in France and Italy, the toilets require users to squat above them, rather than sitting.
With one in ten of Rochdale’s population of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin, centre managers say they have been told some members of the local Asian community prefer them for cultural reasons.
Now, as pointed out by Robert Spencer, Muhammad also commanded his people to use an odd number of stones (3, 5, or 7) to clean themselves after using the toilet. I wonder if there will be a “stone” dispenser, and if they will have to hire someone just to clean those stones. If so, I guess you could look at this as a form of economic stimulus.
By the way, this practice of using stones to clean up after going to the bathroom is described in great detail by Omar Nasiri (pen name to protect his life) in “Inside the Jihad: My Life with Al Qaeda“. In this book, he describes his experiences in Al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 1990′s. It should be read by all Americans. It should be required reading for all members of the House and Senate, as well as anyone involved in counter-terrorism, since it helps to explain the jihad ideology, as well as what is really going on in the many training camps.
Of course, many of us who have followed the man-made global warming scam have realized that Al Gore was nothing more than a gold-digging, lying, political hack. But, I have to admit that even I was shocked to learn that he was also a “crazed sex poodle”. We all knew that he could not accept criticism and had a bad temper when presented with ideas that did not support his man-made global warming agenda. But, the following tape of a police interview with a licensed massage therapist who was apparently sexually assaulted by Al Gore puts him in an even worse light. I guess we all now know why Al “big lummox” Gore is getting a divorce. That surprised me when I heard it, because it is a bit unusual for someone who has been married for so long to get a divorce, but it certainly does happen. This revelation makes it clear why it is happening.
Of course, this will probably have little affect in the realm of the global warming scam, since that is run by the UN, which is, arguably, one of the most corrupt organizations on the planet. (Think the “oil for food” scandal, for starters, which did nothing but enrich Saddam Hussein and various other people associated with the UN.) But, hopefully, corporations like Apple and Google will think twice about their association with Al Gore. And, while not a public company, perhaps the venture capital firm Kliner, Perkins, Caulfeld, and Byers (http://www.kpcb.com/) will rethink their association with Al “crazed sex poodle” Gore. Admittedly, that is extremely unlikely, especially since KPCB is a private company, but one can only hope.
For a video replay of the event, you can view this. It is in Japanese, but you can get the jist (er jism) of the situation:
This is truly disgusting behavior by a “leader” of our country. As the licensed massage therapist said, it is a good thing that he did not have his finger on the button, due to his temperment! But, unfortunately, I think that this behavior is the norm for “leaders”. We know that Bill Clinton did it, and we know that most other presidents and “leaders” have behaved in similar ways. The question is, when do we say “enough is enough; you’ve screwed our world for long enough; we don’t believe you any more; and we don’t support you, and your globalist policies, any more!” Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer to that question, but I suspect that we will need to witness the destruction and bankruptcy of a once-great nation before it’s people wake up and create a new America, born of the ashes of a long-forgotten dream.
I’ve been saying for years that the greatest threat facing our civilization is Islam. Some people got a little wake up call on 9/11, but most have forgotten. Certainly, our leaders and government have forgotten. They refuse to shut down mosques, most of which have been radicalized; they continue to “play nice” with brutal Islamist regimes such as Saudi Arabia; and they refuse to do what needs to be done in Afghanistan and Pakistan to win the war against Islam. In fact, they even refuse to admit that it is a war against terror or, god forbid, “ISLAM”! They don’t even really have a name for it. (Moron Napolitano said terrorist attacks must be called “Man Made Disasters!” Please, give me a break. The BP oil spill was a man made disaster, although the government’s apparent complicity in making it worse, and not cleaning it up with every available asset, goes beyond “Man Made Disaster” and into the realm of a conspiracy to bankrupt and enslave Americans with a carbon tax, or cap and tax plan.)
The government just continues to waste the lives of American service members in a war it has no intention of winning. The administration needs to stop taking the advice of criminal animals who actively advocate a “New World Order” and a “Global Government”, like Henry Kissinger and Al Gore, and get down to the business of restoring the American economy, sealing our borders, and getting us out of wars that they don’t intend to win. You would think they would have learned their lessons with the Korean War and Viet Nam, but I guess they missed those history lessons in school. And, how could anyone seriously take the advice of a man who proudly stated “Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.” (Henry Kissinger, quoted by Monika Jensen-Stevenson in “Kiss the Boys Goodbye”, Dutton, 1990, page 97, quoting “The Final Days” by Woodward and Bernstein, Simon and Schuster, 1976).
In this video, Eric Stakelbeck shows us just some of the atrocities that are occurring in the United States, obviously under the “watchful eye” of the people who are being paid to supposedly protect us. This is a must see video for anyone who still believes that the government of the United States has any intention of doing anything about Islam.
It never ceases to amaze me how the Obama administration seems to be totally determined to fail at everything. Actually, I think the destruction of the United States into some state of the New World Order is the ultimate goal, so there may be a method to the madness, but the depth of the incompetence is staggering. It has to be more than a total lack of experience.
And now, we hear that General McChrystal, commander of forces in Afghanistan, apparently said, basically, that the administration is stupid and has no intention of letting the troops win the war in Afghanistan. Of course, he is right, because the administration never did intend to actually win the war, just like previous administrations never intended to win the Viet Nam War or the Korean War. And, for his candor, I suspect McChrystal will almost certainly be fired. There are some who say that a general should not speak out against his President; but, who is more qualified to call a fool a fool, and to point out the fact that he is not being allowed to do what has to be done to win the war. This is just like when Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War. MacArthur wanted to go ahead and finish the war, defeating the North Koreans (and the Chinese, who were only using North Korea as a proxy, just like Iran is currently using Hezbollah and Hamas as proxies). Truman insisted on a truce, essentially snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And, of course, this stupidity has given us the current world situation, with North Korea having nuclear weapons and a lunatic-in-command who would not only use them, but who would (and probably has) sold them to other states such as Iran, and perhaps even to al Qaeda.
Yes, McChrystal should probably have kept the truth to himself and resigned. But, at least this may help to wake up the American people, who are far more concerned with, and interested in, American Idol and their favorite sports team than world events that will ultimately control their futures.
I have to admit, I am not much of a card player. I do enjoy playing blackjack on the rare occasion that I visit a casino, because it is one of the only games where you can actually win if you know what you are doing. But, of course, if you are really good, you get kicked out of the casino, and many people have even been threatened by casinos if they are too good at blackjack, which should be a crime. If you are good enough to beat the house at blackjack, you should be allowed to beat the house with no restrictions. Believe me, the casinos will not go out of business if they actually allowed good blackjack players to play. But, that is another story.
This story is just a simple question about cards.
Say you go to a casino to play poker. You are dealt an ace of diamonds, a king of diamonds, a queen of diamonds, a 10 of diamonds, and a 9 of diamonds (a diamond suit royal flush) on your first hand. Should you be surprised? Should you be shocked? Should you be thrown out under suspicion of cheating?
Instead, lets say you are dealt a 4 of hearts, a 2 of diamonds, a queen of hearts, an ace of spades, and a 2 of clubs. Should you be shocked? Should you think it is, indeed, your lucky day? Should you be thrown out of the casino for cheating?
I suspect that most people would say that the first hand is almost impossible to believe, while the second hand would be a totally normal occurrence. But, the truth is that both are equally unlikely! The odds of being dealt either hand, starting with a full deck of 52, is 1 in 2,598,959. Yes, either specific hand is unlikely, but both are equally unlikely.
If you want to know why this is true, you can go to a good probability web site, where they will show you how odds are calculated. But, if you simply think about it, you are just as likely to be dealt an ace of diamonds as you are to be dealt a 4 of hearts. And, this is so for each of the other cards you are dealt, assuming that you are starting from a full deck of 52.
So, when you hear someone say something is so unlikely as to be impossible, remember this example. No matter how unlikely a given hand is in poker, some hand is dealt, and each hand is just as unlikely as any other hand, in terms of the actual cards dealt. (Of course, being deal a hand with two of a kind is much more likely than being dealt a hand with 3 of a kind, etc., but every specific hand is equally unlikely.) In the same way, as unlikely as it is to win some lotteries, someone almost always wins, eventually. Thus, since something always happens, specific odds are meaningless in the realm of determining what is possible from what is impossible.
As I have said many times before, the very idea of democracy in an Islamic nation is stupid. Islam is totally incompatible with democracy, on just about every level. But, the picture below shows one more reason why democracy in Islamic nations is a hopeless idea that will never work. It is also proof positive why we should get out of Afghanistan. It is clear that the US administration has no intention of actually winning the war, just like they had no intention of doing what had to be done to win the Viet Nam war. The purpose of the military is NOT nation building, especially when you are dealing with a bunch of 7th century morons.
It reminds me of another totally insane Muslim picture taking moment.
Both of which remind me of one of the images from the “Everybody Draw Muhammad” web site. (Which Facebook disgustingly removed when it caved in to Pakistani insistence that it be removed. Once again, the western media and corporate world plays the role of the “good dhimmi”.) But, you can see some of the better images at one of my web pages.
It never ceases to amaze me how the saying “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” has made for strange bed-fellows in the Islamic world. And, how the main stream media, and many “pundits” in the United States, and the West in general, simply do not understand this concept and phenomenon. In the most recent example of this doctrine, it was reported in today’s Timesonline, from England, that Saudi Arabia has informed Israel (and the United States), that they would open up a corridor across Saudi Arabia to allow Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” said a US defence source in the area. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [US] State Department.”
Sources in Saudi Arabia say it is common knowledge within defence circles in the kingdom that an arrangement is in place if Israel decides to launch the raid. Despite the tension between the two governments, they share a mutual loathing of the regime in Tehran and a common fear of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “We all know this. We will let them [the Israelis] through and see nothing,” said one.
The amazing thing about Saudi Arabia apparently giving Israel permission to overfly the country to attack Iran is that Saudi Arabia does not allow Israeli airlines to overfly the country, because they are afraid that the airlines would “contaminate” the country. (Apparently Jewishness is a disease in the mind of the Saudis.)
But, Saudi Arabia and most of the other Arab, Muslim nations in the Middle East, are afraid of Iran and it’s nuclear weapons, because they know full well that Shite Iran intends to take over control of the Middle East. Of course, now they have a little competition from Turkey, whose Islamist leader Recip Erdogan wants to bring back the Caliphate which Ataturk so wisely disbanded, for the good of the Muslims of the world, in 1924. But, without nuclear weapons, Turkey could only play second fiddle to a nuclear armed Iran.
Typical Islamic Taqiyya. Unfortunately, we all know this is a spoof, but don’t realize that most of what you hear from Muslims, especially as it relates to the terrorist flotilla, is lies and deceit, just as Mohammad commanded.
Of course, anyone who knows anything about the whole Muslim situation knows that it is all lies, obfuscation, deception, and treachery. Mohammad even commanded his people to lie; it is known as the principle of “Taqiyya“. We are constantly told that Palestinians (a group that never existed until a few years ago, by the way) are starving and totally destitute. After all, war is deceit, as described below from the referenced web site:
Muhammad—whose example as the “most perfect human” is to be followed in every detail—took an expedient view on lying. It is well known, for instance, that he permitted lying in three situations: to reconcile two or more quarreling parties, to placate one’s wife, and in war.[11] According to one Arabic legal manual devoted to jihad as defined by the four schools of law, “The ulema agree that deception during warfare is legitimate … deception is a form of art in war.”[12] Moreover, according to Mukaram, this deception is classified as taqiyya: “Taqiyya in order to dupe the enemy is permissible.”[13]
Several ulema believe deceit is integral to the waging of war: Ibn al-’Arabi declares that “in the Hadith [sayings and actions of Muhammad], practicing deceit in war is well demonstrated. Indeed, its need is more stressed than the need for courage.” Ibn al-Munir (d. 1333) writes, “War is deceit, i.e., the most complete and perfect war waged by a holy warrior is a war of deception, not confrontation, due to the latter’s inherent danger, and the fact that one can attain victory through treachery without harm [to oneself].” And Ibn Hajar (d. 1448) counsels Muslims “to take great caution in war, while [publicly] lamenting and mourning in order to dupe the infidels.”[14]
So, we are told that the Jews are committing crimes against humanity in the way that they are starving the Palestinians in Gaza. Looking at this video, it does not look like they are starving, or having all that bad of a time.
Of course, that is not to imply that all is well in Gaza. The following video shows how Hamas kills Palestinians at weddings for playing music and playing songs, and how they brainwash their children to hate and kill Jews. And, lets not forget their hatred for the United States, as shown by their public display of joy over the 911 atrocities.
AT&T Government Solutions has gotten the General Services Administration’s official blessing to start delivering Managed Trusted IP Services (MTIPS) to federal agencies through GSA’s Networx telecommunications acquisition.
Four of the five Networx vendors — Level 3 Communications declined to participate — have for months had MTIPS solutions that meet Homeland Security Department requirements to operate as a Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) access provider and comply with the Office of Management and Budget’s TIC requirements.
AT&T is the first of the four Networx vendors that offer MTIPS to get GSA’s authority to operate (ATO) and start delivering MTIPS. The company has previously announced MTIPS task orders with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Trade Commission.
When I heard that, I started laughing to myself, because I knew that AT&T has a terrible reputation for offering wireless services in many parts of the country. (Of course, this is not necessarily offering wireless services, but it does give some indications as to the overall competence of AT&T in the internet arena.) AT&T brags about their security capabilities, and yet this happens before the ink is even dry on their huge GSA contract to secure the internet for federal agencies.
According to the data we were given by the web security group that exploited vulnerabilities on the AT&T network, we believe 114,000 user accounts have been compromised, although it’s possible that confidential information about every iPad 3G owner in the U.S. has been exposed. We contacted Apple for comment but have yet to hear back. We also reached out to AT&T for comment. A call to Rahm Emanuel’s office at the White House has not be returned.
The specific information exposed in the breach included subscribers’ email addresses, coupled with an associated ID used to authenticate the subscriber on AT&T’s network, known as the ICC-ID. ICC-ID stands for integrated circuit card identifier and is used to identify the SIM cards that associate a mobile device with a particular subscriber.
Reportedly, the breach was performed by a group known as Goatse Security, which has been active in exposing security issues in various browsers over the last few years. It was reported that the information on the exposed list includes many famous people who were early adopters of the IPAD, as well as many people in sensitive government and corporate positions, including Rahm Emanuel. Information on various members of government agencies including NASA, Department of Hameland Security, FAA, FCC, National Institute of Health, Department of Justice, and various Senate and House staffers was exposed, as well as information on major executives at corporations such as Google, AOL, Goldman Sachs, and many venture capital firms, among others.
While it is not believed that the leaked information will lead to wider security compromises, as related to the actual security of GSM communications using the IPAD, further compromises cannot be ruled out.
The feds obviously don’t get it, but then I guess secure borders don’t fit in with the New World Order, NAFTA, and a North American Union. (And, we are now seeing how well the European Union worked out…NOT!)
Today, it was reported that “Osama bin Laden and top aides are hiding in Sabzevar, Iran“. While this news may come as a shock to many people, it certainly was not a shock to me. In fact, I’ve maintained for years that he is probably in Iran, or at least has taken regular sanctuary there over the years, along with Ayman al-Zawahiri and at least one of bin Laden’s sons, Saad. It was reported by Yossef Bodansky in his book, “The Secret History of the Iraq War”, on page 298:
By spring [2003], al-Qaeda already had an operational group of about twenty commanders in Iran. The group shuttled between a Special Revolutionary Guard guesthouse in the Namak Abroud area north of Tehran, and a safe house in Torbat-e Heydariyeh in northeast Iran. Among the key members of this leadership group were Saad bin Osama bin Laden (Osama’s son), Sayf-al-Adl (one of al-Qaeda’s senior military chiefs), and Muhammad Shawqi al-Istambuli (aka Abu-Khalid, one of the leaders of Ayman al-Zahahiri’s inner circle and the chief representative of al-Qaeda’s intelligence in Iran, where he had been stationed for almost five years). Another long-term resident of Iran, Mustafa Hamzah (aka Abu-Hazim), replaced Abu-Khalid as the al-Qaeda “resident” in Iran in early summer.
As the war drew near, additional senior officials moved into Iran. Among the first to arrive was Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi–a Jordanian, and one of al-Qaeda’s leading experts on weapons of mass destruction–who crossed the border from norther Iraq. In Tehran, Zarqawi was nominated chief of operations in and against Israel. Another key commander to arrive was Mahfuz Ould Waleed (aka Abu-Hafts), a Mauritanian. Once Tehran committed to the major escalation after the fall of Baghdad, the top leaders of al-Qaeda were invited to Iran in order to coordinate the escalation personally. A group of seven chiefs–including Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, and Suleiman Abu-Ghayth, an al-Qaeda spokesman–arrived in Tehran in early May. Another commander who was in Tehran at the time is known only as Al-Qassimi, al-Qaeda’s new chief of operations in the Persian Gulf and the Horn of Africa. Bin Laden and his aides were all housed in a special compound of Pasdaran safe houses, and were escorted to high-level meetings with the key leaders of Iran. According to eyewitnesses, bin Laden, Zawahiri, and their key aides were dressed like Pakistani Pashtuns. They had all trimmed their beards, nearly shaved their heads, and seemed to have added enough weitht to alter their figures.
At other points in the book, Bodansky points out that when the heat on Tehran got too high, they sent bin Laden and Zawahiri out of the country, although Saad bin Laden and others were allowed to stay behind to plan attacks. Zawahiri and bin Laden took shelter in various places, including Turkey. At one point, Bodansky reported that there was a hot debate among the various factions in Iran’s leadership as to whether they should extradite bin Laden and Zawahiri to Saudi Arabia or Egypt, but that did not happen.
Further evidence of close cooperation, and providing shelter, of al-Qaeda officials by Iran, was disclosed in Ken Timmerman’s book, ” Countdown To Crisis; The Coming Nuclear Showdown With Iran”. In it, on page 310, Timmerman reports:
In late 2004, Ayman al-Zawahri met again with top regime leaders, this time in a guesthouse to the north of Tehran. According to sources with direct knowledge of these meetings, the Egyptian deputy to Osama bin Laden was dressed with the turban and robes of an Iranian cleric, not in Arab-style clothing. He was living in Iran by this point, and traveled frequently around the country, keeping tabs on al-Qaeda operatives who were moving among different safe houses across Iran.
Later, on the same page:
Ater the first day of meetings, bin Laden himself was brought to the safe house. Like Zawahri, he wore Iranian clerical robes, not traditional Arab dress. On a table in the meeting room were Iranian flags; on the wall were pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini and Khamenei. An intravenous tube was strapped to the back of bin Laden’s hand. He looked frail and old.
So, if bin Laden has been spending a lot of time in Iran, under Iranian protection, since 9/11, that would go a long way to explain why he has not been captured. It also goes a long way to explain how some of the relatively sophisticated video and audio productions have been produced in the last 7 years. And, of course, it is just one more reason why we need to take out Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities.
While everyone wants to condemn Israel for just about everything they do, you hear little condemnation around the world against Hamas. But, in this video, you see some of the atrocities committed by Hamas against fellow Muslims in Palestine.
The video starts with Hamas raiding a Palestinian wedding party and killing the groom because there was music playing at the wedding. (After all, music is outlawed in Islam.) Later, it shows Hamas rounding up fellow Palestinians, reportedly to kill them, apparently because these people were not in political agreement with Hamas. Then, the video shows Palestinians dancing in the streets and celebrating the 911 attacks, followed by videos of Palestinian children being brainwashed to hate Jews, and being trained to be terrorists and suicide bombers. Finally, the creator of the video points out the fact that there has never been a “State of Palestine”, and thus, there were never “Palestinians”. This is all a fabrication by Muslims to destroy Israel.
The world needs to be better educated about the true nature of Islam, and Hamas.
I’ve maintained for years that Saddam Hussein did have WMDs leading up to the 2003 war. Of course, we knew he had them years before the war, because he used them on his own people and on Iran. But, I, and many other informed people, believe he had them in the months leading up to the war. Of course, the main stream media made a big deal about “Where are the WMDs?” But, of course, that was all politics spawned from a hatred of George W. Bush and his administration. Just because no significant stocks of WMDs were found in Iraq after the war started does not mean that they were not there. In fact, we did find chemicals in some locations that could only be reasonably assumed to be precursors for various WMDs. But, they were poorly reported, and completely ignored by the main stream media. Why the Bush administration did not make a big deal out of their small finds is beyond me; but then that administration did little but make big mistakes on just about every front from economics to sealing the border to foreign policy.
I liken it to a drug dealer who is growing marijuana in his basement. The police call and say “We believe you are growing marijuana. You had better stop it. We are going to come and raid your house in a month or two to prove it.” This keeps up for a couple of weeks. Finally, the police raid the house. What do you think the chances are that they will find marijuana plants? Probably close to zero, unless the drug dealer was a complete moron. And, Saddam Hussein, as brutal and evil as he was, was not stupid.
Ha’aretz has revived the mystery surrounding the inability to find weapons of mass destruction stockpiles in Iraq, the most commonly cited justification for Operation Iraqi Freedom and one of the most embarrassing episodes for the United States. Satellite photos of a suspicious site in Syria are providing new support for the reporting of a Syrian journalist who briefly rocked the world with his reporting that Iraq’s WMD had been sent to three sites in Syria just before the invasion commenced.
The newspaper reveals that a 200 square-kilometer area in northwestern Syria has been photographed by satellites at the request of a Western intelligence agency at least 16 times, the most recent being taken in January. The site is near Masyaf, and it has at least five installations and hidden paths leading underneath the mountains. This supports the reporting of Nizar Nayouf, an award-winning Syrian journalist who said in 2004 that his sources confirmed that Saddam Hussein’s WMDs were in Syria.
One of the three specific sites he mentioned was an underground base underneath Al-Baida, which is one kilometer south of Masyaf. This is a perfect match. The suspicious features in the photos and the fact that a Western intelligence agency is so interested in the site support Nayouf’s reporting, showing that his sources in Syria did indeed have access to specific information about secret activity that is likely WMD-related. Richard Radcliffe, one of my co-writers at WorldThreats.com, noticed that Masyaf is located on a road that goes from Hamah, where there is an airfield sufficient to handle relatively large aircraft, into Lebanon and the western side of the Bekaa Valley, another location said to house Iraqi weapons.
Mauro goes on to explain that Charles Duelfer, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, wrote a book in which he stated that he did not believe that the WMDs were spirited out of the country, although in statements made by Duelfer under questioning by Mauro, it became obvious that just because Duelfer did not believe that there were WMDs, he really did not know that they did not exist. He did admit that a lot of material was spirited out of Iraq and into Syria, but he did not believe that WMDs were included in that material.
Mauro also recounts some widely disseminated reports (but not by the main stream media) that:
General Georges Sada, the former second-in-command of the Iraqi Air Force, claimed in his 2006 book that he knew two Iraqi pilots that flew WMD into Syria over the summer of 2002, which came before a later shipment on the ground. I asked Duelfer if Nizar Nayouf or the two Iraqi pilots were spoken with.
And, later:
Don Bordenkircher, who served as the national director of jail and prison operations in Iraq for two years, told me that he spoke to about 40 Iraqis, either military personnel or civilians assigned to the military, who talked about the WMDs going to Syria and Lebanon, with some claiming they were actually involved. Their stories matched and were not contradictory, he said. Another military source of mine related to me how an Iraqi intelligence captain in Al-Qaim claimed to have witnessed the movement of suspicious convoys into Syria between February and March 2003.
He discusses many other reports that lend credibility to the discredited theory that WMDs were removed from Iraq, but one of the more persuasive arguments was near the end of the article.
Don Bordenkircher, who served as the national director of jail and prison operations in Iraq for two years, told me that he spoke to about 40 Iraqis, either military personnel or civilians assigned to the military, who talked about the WMDs going to Syria and Lebanon, with some claiming they were actually involved. Their stories matched and were not contradictory, he said. Another military source of mine related to me how an Iraqi intelligence captain in Al-Qaim claimed to have witnessed the movement of suspicious convoys into Syria between February and March 2003.
As I’ve maintained for years, Saddam Hussein had WMDs. They were spirited out of the country in the months leading up to, and the weeks following, the start of the 2003 war. Now that full-scale war is on the brink of breaking out in the Middle East, you can bet that we will see these WMDs appear in American towns and cities as Iran unleashes Hamas and Hezbollah operatives in the United States that have been armed with these materials, which most likely entered the country through the totally porous Mexican border.
I believe we are on the brink of a 5 front global war. It has been building for years, and all of the signs are in place for a crescendo. I don’t know whether it will happen next week or next month or maybe in a few months; but all of the signs and players are in place.
Where do I believe those fronts will be? The Middle East, Korean Peninsula, Afghanistan/Pakistan, Iraq, and the United States. Will it be nuclear? Almost certainly, at least in the Korean Peninsula and the Middle East. If terrorists do have nuclear weapons, which is highly probable (especially if you want to include dirty bombs), then it will also go nuclear within the United States. It will almost certainly involve chemical and/or biological weapons within the United States and the Middle East.
Iran has been working on nuclear weapons for about 30 years. Yes, I know they are Muslims, and thus backward and largely stupid and uneducated, especially in the sciences. But, Iran does have some intelligent people, and many of them have been educated in some of the best Western universities. Thus, they certainly have the brain power to build a bomb. And, lets face it, it is not rocket science. The United States built the first atomic bomb in about 4 years, over 60 years ago. And, at the time, we did not even know if it would work. Iranians not only know that it will work, but the knowledge of how to build a bomb has been public for decades. Plus, they purchased the working blueprints from Pakistan and North Korea.
And, again, it is not rocket science. Take two chunks of highly enriched uranium or plutonium, whose combined weight would exceed the critical mass, and drop one on the other from the top of a step ladder and you will have a nuclear explosion! (Of course, it may only be equivalent to a few tons of tnt, versus a few kilotons to over 100 kilotons if you do it correctly and really know what you are doing.) But, making a crude bomb is not difficult. Plus, of course, if you take any radioactive material and disperse it with “mother of Satan” or any other explosive, you have a dirty bomb. True, it would probably not kill many people, but it is an effective weapon of terror, and it could contaminate an area for a long time, and require hundreds of millions of dollars to decontaminate.
As far as chemical and biological weapons are concerned, we know there are plenty of sources. North Korea has produced huge quantities of anthrax, among other things, and contrary to what the main-stream media keeps insisting, I believe that Saddam Hussein was producing various chemical and biological weapons prior to the war. In fact, we know he had them, because he used them earlier against both his own people and Iran. The problem is that we kept warning him that we were going to attack. Thus, when we finally did attack, he had been able to clean up the labs and remove the materials. In fact, it was widely reported that just that situation happened. Shortly before the war began, and for a while after it started, huge caravans of trucks were seen leaving Iran to go Syria and the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. While the main stream media kept harping “Where are the WMD’s”, many knew what happened to them, including the new nominee for Director of National Intelligence, General Clapper. They had been spirited out of the country, to be used at another time. (Like in the very near future.) (And, a new article has just been published that provides further, strong evidence that the WMD’s that were in Iraq were moved from Iraq to Syria and Lebanon.) While we should have investigated these caravans, our military was ordered not to interfere or bomb them because they were Russian vehicles. In any case, apparently, the Russians and the Iranians spirited most of the chemical and biological weapons out of the country and into Lebanon and/or Syria. From there, I’m sure they have spread all around the world, including a large consignment to the United States, mostly through the totally porous Mexican border which both President Bush and President Obama have failed to even attempt to seal up. (Of course, just after the massive terrorist attacks in the United States that will be ordered by Iran once we finally attack Iran’s nuclear sites, there will be the inevitable Congressional hearings and investigative committees which will point fingers all over the place, trying to place the blame for the porous border, and the fact that not only did the government not even try to seal the border, but seemed to openly flaunt a “come to America and rape our economy” attitude.) (Can you say NAFTA and North American Union?)
We know for sure that the war will go nuclear in the Korean Peninsula, since we know that the Clinton administration helped North Korea to obtain the bomb at the worst, and at best certainly did nothing to prevent North Korea from obtaining the bomb. And, since obtaining the bomb, America’s “leaders” have done nothing but shake their finger at Kim Jong-il and say “You are making us mad. You had better cut it out, or we will get really mad.” To which Kim flips us the bird, and schedules another nuclear test or fires another missile at our nation (which we also do nothing about.)
And, lets not forget that North Korea and Iran are Siamese twins in the nuclear bomb game. North Korean technicians are intimately involved in the Iranian program, and Iran funds much of the North Korean nuclear research. Furthermore, Iranian officials are always present at North Korean nuclear tests, since the North Korean program is really their program, as well. They know that if the North Korean bomb works, their bomb will work, since they are of the same design. And, lets not forget that North Korea has produced lots of fissile material, some of which I suspect has made it’s way to Iran, and into some Iranian nuclear bombs. Plus, I find it hard to believe that Iran has been working on the fissile material for so long and does not have plenty of it from facilities that we don’t (publicly, at least) know about. Plus, there is plenty of fissile material available in the world on the black market, and it would be hard to believe that Iran has not been able to buy enough for at least a few bombs. Plus, it was reported that they bought a bomb in the early 1990′s, as well as a few KH-55 nuclear tipped cruise missiles. (These come with 200 kiloton nuclear warheads, not the little 10 kiloton “toy” bombs that North Korea has been testing.) They are now producing copies of these cruise weapons in Iran.
I’m not a big believer in coincidences. The fact that a North Korean submarine sank a South Korean naval ship on March 26, 2010, at about the same time that Syria delivered SCUD missiles to the Lebanese Hezbollah is probably not a coincidence. Neither is the fact that Turkey, a former friend, and, unfortunately, a member of NATO, has recently decided to provoke a war with Israel by sending a flotilla of “peace activists” (controlled by a band of terrorists) to break the blockade of Gaza that Israel has had to impose to ensure that more weapons are not delivered to Hamas from Iran.
It is well known that the United States military has been stretched too thin for years. I believe that the remaining Axis of Evil, Iran and North Korea, have teamed together to try to destroy America’s military (and America) by provoking another 3 war fronts; Korean Peninsula, Middle East, and massive terrorist attacks in the United States.
We should have prevented North Korea from getting the bomb, and we should have taken out Iran’s nuclear facilities years ago. Now, we are going to have to pay the price. Get ready for $300/barrel oil and massive terrorist attacks at home. But, maybe this war will save our economy, just like World War II brought us out of the depression. From what I have heard, (and you have to take the source with a grain of salt) the Bilderbergers and the Tri-Lateral Commission are in favor of war with Iran (and I guess North Korea), apparently for just this reason.
I only wish Israel had not been so stupid as to board the ship in international waters. They should have waited until it was out of international waters. And, of course, they should not have allowed themselves to be hoodwinked by Turkey into believing that the ship was actually populated by unarmed, peaceful people. As Turkey’s own Recep Erdogan said “There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” And, of course, that means that Islam is a lying, conniving, treacherous, violent, supremacist, dangerous ideology, and no Muslim is to be trusted, especially the head of a Muslim nation. (Of course, it goes without saying that letting Turkey into NATO was incredibly stupid, as is selling advanced armaments to Pakistan, but that is another story.)
When will the West ever wake up to the treachery and danger of Islam?
It’s been obvious that she is one of those incredibly stupid people in the world that make my blog work, but this video takes the cake. She is truly as stupid as she is ugly; and that is saying something!
Pat Condell has another excellent video on Islam. I have said that “to build a mosque at Ground Zero would be like erecting a statue of Hitler at Auschwitz, only worse”. This video expresses the sheer lunacy, and insult to all of those innocent people who were murdered on 9/11, that building a mosque at Ground Zero would represent.
This article is republished, with permission, from Stratfor.
By George Friedman
On Sunday, Israeli naval forces intercepted the ships of a Turkish nongovernmental organization (NGO) delivering humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Israel had demanded that the vessels not go directly to Gaza but instead dock in Israeli ports, where the supplies would be offloaded and delivered to Gaza. The Turkish NGO refused, insisting on going directly to Gaza. Gunfire ensued when Israeli naval personnel boarded one of the vessels, and a significant number of the passengers and crew on the ship were killed or wounded.
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon charged that the mission was simply an attempt to provoke the Israelis. That was certainly the case. The mission was designed to demonstrate that the Israelis were unreasonable and brutal. The hope was that Israel would be provoked to extreme action, further alienating Israel from the global community and possibly driving a wedge between Israel and the United States. The operation’s planners also hoped this would trigger a political crisis in Israel.
A logical Israeli response would have been avoiding falling into the provocation trap and suffering the political repercussions the Turkish NGO was trying to trigger. Instead, the Israelis decided to make a show of force. The Israelis appear to have reasoned that backing down would demonstrate weakness and encourage further flotillas to Gaza, unraveling the Israeli position vis-à-vis Hamas. In this thinking, a violent interception was a superior strategy to accommodation regardless of political consequences. Thus, the Israelis accepted the bait and were provoked.
The ‘Exodus’ Scenario
In the 1950s, an author named Leon Uris published a book called “Exodus.” Later made into a major motion picture, Exodus told the story of a Zionist provocation against the British. In the wake of World War II, the British — who controlled Palestine, as it was then known — maintained limits on Jewish immigration there. Would-be immigrants captured trying to run the blockade were detained in camps in Cyprus. In the book and movie, Zionists planned a propaganda exercise involving a breakout of Jews — mostly children — from the camp, who would then board a ship renamed the Exodus. When the Royal Navy intercepted the ship, the passengers would mount a hunger strike. The goal was to portray the British as brutes finishing the work of the Nazis. The image of children potentially dying of hunger would force the British to permit the ship to go to Palestine, to reconsider British policy on immigration, and ultimately to decide to abandon Palestine and turn the matter over to the United Nations.
There was in fact a ship called Exodus, but the affair did not play out precisely as portrayed by Uris, who used an amalgam of incidents to display the propaganda war waged by the Jews. Those carrying out this war had two goals. The first was to create sympathy in Britain and throughout the world for Jews who, just a couple of years after German concentration camps, were now being held in British camps. Second, they sought to portray their struggle as being against the British. The British were portrayed as continuing Nazi policies toward the Jews in order to maintain their empire. The Jews were portrayed as anti-imperialists, fighting the British much as the Americans had.
It was a brilliant strategy. By focusing on Jewish victimhood and on the British, the Zionists defined the battle as being against the British, with the Arabs playing the role of people trying to create the second phase of the Holocaust. The British were portrayed as pro-Arab for economic and imperial reasons, indifferent at best to the survivors of the Holocaust. Rather than restraining the Arabs, the British were arming them. The goal was not to vilify the Arabs but to villify the British, and to position the Jews with other nationalist groups whether in India or Egypt rising against the British.
The precise truth or falsehood of this portrayal didn’t particularly matter. For most of the world, the Palestine issue was poorly understood and not a matter of immediate concern. The Zionists intended to shape the perceptions of a global public with limited interest in or understanding of the issues, filling in the blanks with their own narrative. And they succeeded.
The success was rooted in a political reality. Where knowledge is limited, and the desire to learn the complex reality doesn’t exist, public opinion can be shaped by whoever generates the most powerful symbols. And on a matter of only tangential interest, governments tend to follow their publics’ wishes, however they originate. There is little to be gained for governments in resisting public opinion and much to be gained by giving in. By shaping the battlefield of public perception, it is thus possible to get governments to change positions.
In this way, the Zionists’ ability to shape global public perceptions of what was happening in Palestine — to demonize the British and turn the question of Palestine into a Jewish-British issue — shaped the political decisions of a range of governments. It was not the truth or falsehood of the narrative that mattered. What mattered was the ability to identify the victim and victimizer such that global opinion caused both London and governments not directly involved in the issue to adopt political stances advantageous to the Zionists. It is in this context that we need to view the Turkish flotilla.
The Turkish Flotilla to Gaza
The Palestinians have long argued that they are the victims of Israel, an invention of British and American imperialism. Since 1967, they have focused not so much on the existence of the state of Israel (at least in messages geared toward the West) as on the oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Since the split between Hamas and Fatah and the Gaza War, the focus has been on the plight of the citizens of Gaza, who have been portrayed as the dispossessed victims of Israeli violence.
The bid to shape global perceptions by portraying the Palestinians as victims of Israel was the first prong of a longtime two-part campaign. The second part of this campaign involved armed resistance against the Israelis. The way this resistance was carried out, from airplane hijackings to stone-throwing children to suicide bombers, interfered with the first part of the campaign, however. The Israelis could point to suicide bombings or the use of children against soldiers as symbols of Palestinian inhumanity. This in turn was used to justify conditions in Gaza. While the Palestinians had made significant inroads in placing Israel on the defensive in global public opinion, they thus consistently gave the Israelis the opportunity to turn the tables. And this is where the flotilla comes in.
The Turkish flotilla aimed to replicate the Exodus story or, more precisely, to define the global image of Israel in the same way the Zionists defined the image that they wanted to project. As with the Zionist portrayal of the situation in 1947, the Gaza situation is far more complicated than as portrayed by the Palestinians. The moral question is also far more ambiguous. But as in 1947, when the Zionist portrayal was not intended to be a scholarly analysis of the situation but a political weapon designed to define perceptions, the Turkish flotilla was not designed to carry out a moral inquest.
Instead, the flotilla was designed to achieve two ends. The first is to divide Israel and Western governments by shifting public opinion against Israel. The second is to create a political crisis inside Israel between those who feel that Israel’s increasing isolation over the Gaza issue is dangerous versus those who think any weakening of resolve is dangerous.
The Geopolitical Fallout for Israel
It is vital that the Israelis succeed in portraying the flotilla as an extremist plot. Whether extremist or not, the plot has generated an image of Israel quite damaging to Israeli political interests. Israel is increasingly isolated internationally, with heavy pressure on its relationship with Europe and the United States.
In all of these countries, politicians are extremely sensitive to public opinion. It is difficult to imagine circumstances under which public opinion will see Israel as the victim. The general response in the Western public is likely to be that the Israelis probably should have allowed the ships to go to Gaza and offload rather than to precipitate bloodshed. Israel’s enemies will fan these flames by arguing that the Israelis prefer bloodshed to reasonable accommodation. And as Western public opinion shifts against Israel, Western political leaders will track with this shift.
The incident also wrecks Israeli relations with Turkey, historically an Israeli ally in the Muslim world with longstanding military cooperation with Israel. The Turkish government undoubtedly has wanted to move away from this relationship, but it faced resistance within the Turkish military and among secularists. The new Israeli action makes a break with Israel easy, and indeed almost necessary for Ankara.
With roughly the population of Houston, Texas, Israel is just not large enough to withstand extended isolation, meaning this event has profound geopolitical implications.
Public opinion matters where issues are not of fundamental interest to a nation. Israel is not a fundamental interest to other nations. The ability to generate public antipathy to Israel can therefore reshape Israeli relations with countries critical to Israel. For example, a redefinition of U.S.-Israeli relations will have much less effect on the United States than on Israel. The Obama administration, already irritated by the Israelis, might now see a shift in U.S. public opinion that will open the way to a new U.S.-Israeli relationship disadvantageous to Israel.
The Israelis will argue that this is all unfair, as they were provoked. Like the British, they seem to think that the issue is whose logic is correct. But the issue actually is, whose logic will be heard? As with a tank battle or an airstrike, this sort of warfare has nothing to do with fairness. It has to do with controlling public perception and using that public perception to shape foreign policy around the world. In this case, the issue will be whether the deaths were necessary. The Israeli argument of provocation will have limited traction.
Internationally, there is little doubt that the incident will generate a firestorm. Certainly, Turkey will break cooperation with Israel. Opinion in Europe will likely harden. And public opinion in the United States — by far the most important in the equation — might shift to a “plague-on-both-your-houses” position.
While the international reaction is predictable, the interesting question is whether this evolution will cause a political crisis in Israel. Those in Israel who feel that international isolation is preferable to accommodation with the Palestinians are in control now. Many in the opposition see Israel’s isolation as a strategic threat. Economically and militarily, they argue, Israel cannot survive in isolation. The current regime will respond that there will be no isolation. The flotilla aimed to generate what the government has said would not happen.
The tougher Israel is, the more the flotilla’s narrative takes hold. As the Zionists knew in 1947 and the Palestinians are learning, controlling public opinion requires subtlety, a selective narrative and cynicism. As they also knew, losing the battle can be catastrophic. It cost Britain the Mandate and allowed Israel to survive. Israel’s enemies are now turning the tables. This maneuver was far more effective than suicide bombings or the Intifada in challenging Israel’s public perception and therefore its geopolitical position (though if the Palestinians return to some of their more distasteful tactics like suicide bombing, the Turkish strategy of portraying Israel as the instigator of violence will be undermined).
Israel is now in uncharted waters. It does not know how to respond. It is not clear that the Palestinians know how to take full advantage of the situation, either. But even so, this places the battle on a new field, far more fluid and uncontrollable than what went before. The next steps will involve calls for sanctions against Israel. The Israeli threats against Iran will be seen in a different context, and Israeli portrayal of Iran will hold less sway over the world.
And this will cause a political crisis in Israel. If this government survives, then Israel is locked into a course that gives it freedom of action but international isolation. If the government falls, then Israel enters a period of domestic uncertainty. In either case, the flotilla achieved its strategic mission. It got Israel to take violent action against it. In doing so, Israel ran into its own fist.
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to www.stratfor.com.
Well, May 20, 2010 has come and gone, and the world is still here! Of course, we heard the usual rantings from ignorant Muslims the world over, and some of the more ignorant, intolerant and stupid Muslim nations, like Pakistan, banned both YouTube and Facebook, to protect their religious lunatics from seeing what was happening. But, so far, there has been little in the way of violence by the unusually violent Muslims of the world. The most interesting thing, so far, is that the Facebook page, “Everybody draw Muhammad”, was hacked and taken down for a while, apparently by a hacker from a rising Islamic loony-bin country, Turkey. But, fear not defenders of liberty and free speech, the page is back on line.
In it, Harris describes what has happened to Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders after he made the film “Fitna” (which can be seen in the sidebar of my web site.)
Wilders, who lives under perpetual armed guard due to death threats, recently released a 15 minute film entitled Fitna (“strife” in Arabic) over the internet. The film has been deemed offensive because it juxtaposes images of Muslim violence with passages from the Qur’an. Given that the perpetrators of such violence regularly cite these same passages as justification for their actions, merely depicting this connection in a film would seem uncontroversial. Controversial or not, one surely would expect politicians and journalists in every free society to strenuously defend Wilders’ right to make such a film. But then one would be living on another planet, a planet where people do not happily repudiate their most basic freedoms in the name of “religious sensitivity.”
Witness the free world’s response to Fitna: The Dutch government sought to ban the film outright, and European Union foreign ministers publicly condemned it, as did UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Dutch television refused to air Fitna unedited. When Wilders declared his intention to release the film over the internet, his U.S. web-host, Network Solutions, took his website offline.
In the article, Harris explains that danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has been put under a death threat, and, as I described in a previous article, his home was attacked in February, 2010, by a crazed Muslim wielding an axe. (Is crazed Muslim redundant?) Fortunately, he was able to escape the attacker until the police arrived and shot the attacker. (Unfortunately, the attacker was not killed.)
This cartoon from the “Everybody draw Muhammad” web site clearly shows the irony in the situation with the Muslims that Harris brings up later in his article.
Harris goes on:
There is an uncanny irony here that many have noticed. The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn’t, we will kill you. Of course, the truth is often more nuanced, but this is about as nuanced as it ever gets: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn’t, we peaceful Muslims cannot be held responsible for what our less peaceful brothers and sisters do. When they burn your embassies or kidnap and slaughter your journalists, know that we will hold you primarily responsible and will spend the bulk of our energies criticizing you for “racism” and “Islamophobia.”
Harris then goes on to explain that his first book, “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason” was almost not published, because publishers were afraid of backlash from religious wackos. And, in this case, he was not talking about Islamic radicals. He was talking about Christian nutcases! Some people who even worked on the book project, like his agent and editor at the time, asked to have their names removed from the project for fears about their personal safety. I think this is a little extreme, since his excellent book was primarily dealing with Christianity, and it has been a few hundred years since Christians went around burning people at the stake and committing other atrocities that we see every day, today, being committed by Muslims. In fact, I don’t remember anyone being killed, or even threatened with death, when the “Piss Christ” was published. In fact, “Piss Christ” actually won an award for the photographer who created it, Andres Serrano. It won the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art’s “Awards in the Visual Arts” in 1988. That prize included a $15,000 cash award. Money for this award came from such organizations as (not surprisingly) the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. But, that organization is also supported by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a US government federally sponsored organization. (In other words, your tax dollars at work!) (1) (2)
Could you imagine what would have happened to an Islamic photographer who dunked a model of Muhammad into a glass of his own urine, photographed it, and then exhibited it? I think it is safe to say that he would not only not get an award sponsored, in part, by the Saudi government, but I suspect he would end up dead, like Theo van Gogh, after he and Ayan Hirsi Ali produced the film “Submission“. In fact, another of the “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” cartoons very accurately went to the twisted nature of Islamic justice, better known as sharia law. As the image below, featuring “Islamic Rage Boy” shows, many women who are raped in Islamic countries are stoned to death for having sex outside of marriage! After all, if they were raped, they had sex with a man who was not their husband; thus the death penalty applies. (Of course, she might be granted a trial, but to prove her innocence, she would have to produce 2 male witnesses, or 4 female witnesses, who would testify that she was forcibly raped. Yea, like that is likely to happen.) (She would need twice as many female witnesses as male witnesses, by the way, because Sura 2:282 of the Koran states: “And let two men from among you bear witness to all such documents [contracts of loans without interest]. But if two men be not available, there should be one man and two women to bear witness so that if one of the women forgets (anything), the other may remind her.”)Of course, we are constantly told by the main stream media, and the politicians, that Islam is the “religion of peace”. I have always said that it is the “religion of pieces”, as in the pieces left after a bomb explodes. You are not told that Muslims, themselves, largely support terrorism, oppression of women, and other aspects of Islam that are totally antithetical to civilization. In his article, Harris goes on to say:
The connection between the doctrine of Islam and Islamist violence is simply not open to dispute. It’s not that critics of religion like myself speculate that such a connection might exist: the point is that Islamists themselves acknowledge and demonstrate this connection at every opportunity and to deny it is to retreat within a fantasy world of political correctness and religious apology. Many western scholars, like the much admired Karen Armstrong, appear to live in just such a place. All of their talk about how benign Islam “really” is, and about how the problem of fundamentalism exists in all religions, only obfuscates what may be the most pressing issue of our time: Islam, as it is currently understood and practiced by vast numbers of the world’s Muslims, is antithetical to civil society. A recent poll showed that thirty-six percent of British Muslims (ages 16-24) believe that a person should be killed for leaving the faith. Sixty-eight percent of British Muslims feel that their neighbors who insult Islam should be arrested and prosecuted, and seventy-eight percent think that the Danish cartoonists should have been brought to justice. And these are British Muslims.
Occasionally, however, a lone voice can be heard acknowledging the obvious. Hassan Butt wrote in the Guardian:
When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy. By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the ‘Blair’s bombs’ line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.
As Sam Harris points out, you, as an average American citizen, have probably not even seen the original Mohammad cartoons that started the whole brouhaha. That is because most American publications self-censored and refused to publish the cartoons! One of the publications that did publish the cartoons (Free Inquiry) was rewarded by having their magazine banned from Waldenbooks and Borders!
If we refuse to identify the enemy, we have no hope of defeating them! Islam is, arguably, the most dangerous force facing civilization. It must be stopped in it’s tracks. It must be defeated and totally destroyed! As Harris points out towards the end of his article, even heroic ex-Muslims, like Ibn Warraq, have stated that Islam must be criticized.
It is perverse for the western media to lament the lack of an Islamic reformation and willfully ignore works such as Wilders’ film, Fitna. How do they think reformation will come about if not with criticism? There is no such right as ‘the right not to be offended; indeed, I am deeply offended by the contents of the Koran, with its overt hatred of Christians, Jews, apostates, non-believers, homosexuals but cannot demand its suppression.
It is time we recognized that those who claim the “right not to be offended” have also announced their hatred of civil society.
As I go through the hundreds of “cartoons” published on the “Everybody draw Muhammad Day” cartoon site, I am reminded of previous issues about which I have written. One thing that is always true is that humor, or satire, is useless unless there is some truth to it. One of the themes running through the new cartoons is the fact that Muhammad was a pedophile. Some might argue with that, but the fact is that his favorite wife was Aisha. He married her when she was 6 years old. This is a simple fact. Having a 6 year old bride is pedophilia. That is a fact. Muslim apologists will argue that he did not consummate the marriage when she was 6. OK, fine. When did he consummate the marriage? WHEN SHE WAS 9 YEARS OLD. That, my readers, is pedophilia! Period! And, because Muhammad was “the perfect man” al-insan al-kamil, his actions are repeated by modern day Muslims. No lesser a madman than Iran’s late Ayatollah Khomeini married a 10 year old girl when he was 28.
One of my favorites, from years ago, is this depiction of Mohammad and Aisha.
If people don’t believe that marrying off children is out of control in Islamic countries, all you need to do is look at one of my earlier articles, “Just When I Thought That Islam Could Not Stoop To A Lower Level“. Of course, there were other pertinent cartoons, given this gross abomination of human rights.
And, as if this atrocity is not bad enough, Muslims are programming their children and infants to hate anyone who is not a Muslim, and, of course, especially Jews. One reason that there will never be peace in the Middle East, at least not for a few generations, is because the minds of the current Palestinian children have been so poisoned by Hamas and Hezbollah that there is little chance for them to recover. As many people have pointed out, if you teach a child something at a young enough age, and instill a true belief in that “something”, no matter how fictional or incorrect it may be, most children will carry that belief for life. After all, that is why so many people are religious. They are taught to believe in some god as pliable children, and no matter how ridiculous or unlikely those beliefs are shown to be, they cling to them in later life. One cartoon pointed out this brainwashing in a poignant way. It is very reminiscent of articles that I have published before where the brainwashing of Palestinian children by cartoon-like characters has been exposed. I pointed out one of the many tv shows that Palestinian children are subjected to watching in an earlier post where I pointed out that belief in man-made global warming is much like a religion in the way it tries to scare and indoctrinate children. There, I showed a particularly disgraceful global warming commercial, as well as a tv show that teaches Palestinian children to hate Jews.
Now, I have said for years that what we need to do is to try to deprogram the Muslims. Thus, our treatment of them in Gitmo, and other facilities, for the most part (excluding water boarding, which seems to work to some degree, at least at extracting intelligence) is totally wrong. By forcing our people to handle the Koran with white gloves, and to show incredible respect towards the rantings of a schizophrenic megalomaniac, is totally unproductive. We need to teach Muslims that the Koran is a book, like any other book. In it’s case, as in the case of the Bible, it is mostly a work of fiction. It is certainly not to be revered or taken seriously. Thus, Koranic toilet paper would be a good start in Islamic detention centers, as shown in this great cartoon.
We now know that many of the barbarians that we caught have returned to jihadism after being released. As I reported earlier, catch and release does not work. We need to condition these barbarians to hate Islam and all that it stands for. As I recently wrote, the worst thing that we could do in connection to the barbarian that tried to blow up Times Square a couple of weeks ago is to give him “Halal food” as he is demanding. He should be allowed pork and beans and nothing else. If he refuses, oh well. Since good cartoons mirror truth, I liked these entries.
And, I have to admit that I’ve always said that some sort of pork program could be instituted to protect normal citizens, as shown in this cartoon.
Of course, one of the other problems with Islam is the way that it has become a cancer upon Western civilization. Not only that, but organizations like CAIR (Conspiring Assortment of Islamist Racists) are trying to take over the world, using our laws of free speech AGAINST us. This has been documented in a new book, ” Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America” , by P. David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry. In this book, Gaubatz managed to install himself into the bowels of this Islamist beast, and from that position expose the corruption and the goal to spread Islam around the world and to make it the dominant religion, even in America.
Some of the cartoons expressed this facet of Islam.
As Bat Ye’or frequently points out, Europe has almost become Eurabia, and will soon be, given the rates of Islamic immigration and the huge disparity between the birth rates of regular Europeans and Muslim Europeans.
And that really gets into the whole Islamic supremacist agenda. They intend to rule over your life, just like they have almost completely destroyed Europe and created Eurabia, as predicted by Bat Ye’or.
Another aspect of Islam is the sheer cultural clash. Clearly, Islam is not in tune with the rest of the world when it comes to interpersonal relations. This picture says it all! What a totally stark and disturbing separation between Islam and normal society. On the left, you see a normal couple showing affection for each other; on the right, you see a couple of Muslims.
Of course, how can the poor guy on the right know what he is sitting next to?
Of course, Westerners have ignored the Islamization of the world, and Europe in particular. Because of that, civilization is doomed. Even outrageous things like the genital mutilation of women, so common in Islamic nations, is ignored by the West. (Yes, I know it is also practiced by some non-Muslims, but it is largely a Muslim practice, but must be eliminated in all “cultures”.) Today, hundreds of thousands of women in the United States may be subject to genital mutilation. While most civilized people have no concept of female genital mutilation, courageous apostates from Islam, like Ayan Hirsi Ali and others, have written extensively about the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation, but most people in America are totally unaware of the practice.
There were so many other good cartoons and pictures. But, my favorite, which is not new, but which really expresses the truth about Islam like no other cartoon, is the one where “Muhammad Invents a New Religion”.
It is totally rediculous that the legal system is even considering granting Faisal Shahzad anything other than basic life necessities! He actually had the balls to request that he only be served “halal” foods; that is, foods that agree with idiotic Muslim food restrictions. You know, like only goats that have had their throats slit, and are allowed to bleed to death, etc. This is a total atrocity! Like all Muslims in captivity, he should be forced to be exposed to things that will make him realize how ludicrous his worship of an insane, epileptic, barbarian, pedophile is! At the very least, he should be forced to eat pork. I would recommend a diet of bacon for the morning, followed by pork hot dogs for lunch, followed by pork spare ribs for dinner. If he refuses to eat these meals, well, no harm done. Nature will see to it that the unfit are removed from the gene pool.
The very idea that our government and authorities cow-tow to the beliefs of these cretins is unbelievable! The idea that a guard at Gitmo must handle a Koran with white gloves goes against all sanity. Prisoners should be forced to use pages of the Koran for toilet paper! (A vastly superior, and more sanitary, procedure than using the “stones” that the pedophile taught them to use for that purpose.) When are our “leaders” going to realize that we really are in a civilizational war? The followers of the insane pedophile know that they are in a war; we seem to refuse to recognize that fact. You can’t win a war that you don’t realize you are in.
I don’t believe in coincidences. I also do not believe the 1000 point stock market crash on May 6, 2010 was the result of a “fat fingered” trader causing a computer generated selling crescendo. Is it possible? Yes. Was it likely to happen? No! I’ve been a very active trader of stocks and commodities for decades. I watch the market almost every waking minute, 6 days a week. I am considered a “day trader” in some of my accounts. I don’t hesitate to buy and sell in the period of minutes. I’ve never been a believer in buy and hold. And, given that I am monitoring hundreds of stocks and commodities at any give moment, and graphing out dozens of stocks, options, and commodities within a sophisticated, day trading, automated trading capable system, I have seen many market crashes and short squeezes. Never in my life have I seen anything like what happened on May 6. I was actually not in front of my computer monitors at the moment that the market melted down. I was walking from my truck to my computer screens at the minute of the breakdown. I was listening to CNBC on my XM satellite radio while I ran some errands. When I parked, the market was down about 300 points. When I got in my office a few moments later, the market was down over 900 points! I did a literal double-take, and I did some buying. (Although even I was not fast enough to intelligently enter orders; I just had some good-til-canceled orders executed, while I struggled to reset the dozens of low price alarms that were going off from the hundreds of stocks and commodity options that I trade and follow!) I had no doubt that the market would recover (to some extent), because there clearly was no reason for the almost instantaneous drop.
Yes, there are problems in Greece. But, those problems are simply the fruits of socialism coming home to roost. As the bumper sticker says, “Socialism is great until you run out of the other person’s money.” Well, Greece has been living under a totally unrealistic socialistic system for decades. Now that a majority of Greek citizens have become dependent on government goodies, the goodies have run out, and the people are upset. It reminds me of the woman who was so excited about Obama being elected president. She said something like “I am so happy. Now Obama will pay my mortgage.” Or, the morons who were calling the government after the passage of Obamacare asking how they could sign up for their free health care! Any time the government gets involved, you know two things. Costs will go up, not down, and services will degrade. But, most Americans are, sadly, stupid.
But, getting back to the point of the market crash. It was reported that a trader at Citibank had pushed the “b” (for billion) button instead of the “m” (for million) button when trading Proctor and Gamble. If Citibank has a trading system that is so stupid that it does not flag an error like that before executing a trade, they deserve to go bankrupt. In fact, that is really the point. The banks that went broke deserved to go broke, and should have gone broke. The idea that some private corporation is “too big to fail” is a recipe for disaster. Yes, some of these banks being forced to declare bankruptcy would have been painful. But, by bailing them out, the government only rewarded bad behavior, and just put the time of ultimate reckoning off by a few years. And, even worse than that, by bailing out these banks, the government has essentially bankrupted the entire country, and totally enslaved future generations to either dealing with government bankruptcy, or crippling taxes, rather than just letting a few companies go bankrupt. In the same way, Greece should simply say they are bankrupt, and will not repay the debts that they cannot afford to repay, in the same way that Iceland said they are not going to repay some of their debts. After all, trying to repay impossible to repay debts just leads to more trouble. Just like young Americans cannot expect much in the way of social security payments, because social security is, and always has been, a Ponzi scheme, former employees of GM cannot expect to get anything close to what they were promised in their retirement years, because their unions basically bankrupted GM. People who depend on a company, or especially the government, are setting themselves up for disaster. At some point, the “other person’s money” runs out, as Greek citizens are now finding out.
In the case of the market crash, it came on the verge of the Senate passing a bill that would require the auditing of the Federal Reserve system. The “Fed” is a private, totally unaccountable, corporation. It was founded in secret, and operates in secret. It could be argued that the Fed, and other private bankers and banks, rule the world. People like Obama are only doing their bidding. Before the crash, it looked like the Senate would pass a bill that would require frequent monitoring of the Fed, as well as reporting as to the banks that received the bailout funds. After the crash, it looks like that bill will be greatly restricted in it’s ability to monitor the Fed and expose bad banks.
Is it possible that the powers that be (the Federal Reserve and other international banking cartels), decided to give the government their own version of “Don’t Tread On Me!”? If that was the reason for the crash, it seems to have worked. Again, the timing and suddenness of the crash was very suspicious, if you, like me, don’t believe in coincidences.
I announced the Youtube video a few hours ago. It was released by the “Taliban Channel”, and they set up the channel on 4/30/10. Then, a few hours after the failed attrocity, they claimed credit for it. Looking at the video, which has been removed by YouTube, it was “professionally” produced, and was not something that someone could put together in a few hours, especially given the fact that they set up the channel the day before the attempted attack.
I wish I had recorded the video, so that it could now be shown. But, hopefully, the FBI, and other agencies, have made copies of it. But, it was clearly a video made to take claim for the bombing, and the creators clearly had advanced knowledge of the bombing. Know that, no matter what the “powers that be” tell you about it.
I was watching a series of videos recorded by Robert Spencer of Jihadwatch today. It is an excellent series of videos, and should be required viewing for everyone in the United States, and especially for politicians. This is because Robert Spencer is one of the very few people who truly understands Islam, and the deadly threat that we in the West face from it. With few exceptions, you are not told the truth about Islam, since the main stream media is terrified of Islam. In fact, in just the last few days, South Park had to censor one of it’s shows because the show’s creators had their lives threatened! (Of course, there is nothing unusual in the fact that people who speak out against Islam often have their lives threatened. The most infamous case was that of author Salmon Rushdie, who had a fatwa for his murder issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini after he wrote “Satanic Verses”. Some people who speak the truth about Islam have even been killed, like Theo van Gogh. But, the whole point of the South Park episode was about people allowing Islam to censor what they say, and then South Park caved-in to Islamic censorship.) Sad.
But, episode 27 was a truly eye-opening discussion on the reasons for the stagnation present in the cultural and economic situations in Muslim nations.
As anybody who has followed Islam, and looked into the situation in Islamic countries realizes, it is well known that those countries tend to be poor and backward. And, of course, the reason for that is Islam itself, as Robert explained. Islam teaches that everything that occurs happens because it is the will of Allah. Thus, if you are poor, it is because Allah wants you to be poor. If you are rich, it is because Allah wants you to be rich. Personal initiative simply does not exist in Islam. In this episode, Robert Spencer explained this very clearly. (And, of course, if you are banging your head on the ground 5 times a day, with your ass raised for Allah to do his bidding, there is not much time left for work, anyway, but this is just my opinion.) But he also goes into an even more insidious reason why Islamic nations tend to be so poor and backward. It is because nobody, at least no Muslims, do any real work. They let the dhimmis do the work. Islamic law dictates that non-Muslims pay the jizya, which is essentially protection money. (If you don’t pay, and you don’t convert to Islam, you must be killed according to the Koran.) Islamic societies live off this protection money. Just look at places like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. A huge proportion of the workers are basically something between slaves and and indentured servants. (Of course, in Muslim countries they are called “guest workers” or something like that. But, the fact is that they are not much more than slaves, and there are, in fact, many slaves in Muslim countries today.)
Robert’s most insightful statement, as this video applies to the non-Muslim world, and especially Europe, which is largely socialistic at this point, and the United States which is rapidly becoming a socialist state, was when he said: “Once you run out of dhimmis, your society stagnates.” He did not go into the socialistic implications of this statement, but it rang out loud and clear to me. In America, you can see the bumper sticker “Socialism: A great idea ’til you run out of other people’s money”. (Full disclosure, I have this one on my truck.) Ayn Rand’s brilliant novel “Atlas Shrugged” was based on the fallacy of socialism. In it, the hero, John Galt, decided to round up all of the producers, like himself, and essentially go on strike. Then, the leaches in society had nobody to suck off, and society and the economy collapsed. It is a sad fact that more people now work for the government in the United States than work in manufacturing jobs. (That is to say, more people work for government than work in productive jobs, because the government does not produce anything; it just takes.) That is a very dangerous fact. And, we keep hearing that taxes may have to be increased. As it is, about 47% of Americans pay NO federal income taxes. They leave that nasty duty to the achievers. Well, as happened in Atlas Shrugged, at some point, the achievers will say NO. Enough is enough! At some point, America’s achievers may “go Galt”. If marginal taxes reach a certain level, many achievers will simply take the rest of the year off after their marginal rate hits a certain level, rather than working for less per hour than someone whose total job responsibility consists of asking “Do you want fries with that?” Think about it. It was not too long ago that the United States had a marginal tax rate over 90%! That meant that if you made $100/hour, after a certain point, the government stole more than $90 from you for every hour you worked. You got to keep less than $10/hour. If you are sane, and your time is worth $100/hour, why would you work for less than $10/hour? I certainly wouldn’t. (In fact, in this situation, with minimum wage laws, an achiever making less than $10/hour could be challenging minimum wage laws, since some states have declared a minimum wage at close to $10/hour.)
And, lets remember that there are many people, ranging from corporate executives to doctors, whose time is worth far more than $100/hour. In many cases, their time is worth more than $500/hour. But, if you have established yourself in one of those trades that are only available to achievers who have worked to achieve those pay levels, why would you work for less, per hour, than a plumber or electrician? (And, please, do not take this as denigrating plumbers or electricians. I am only pointing out that some people have sacrificed years of their lives, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, to reach a certain level of expertise, along with which they are entitled to a certain level of compensation. To expect a brain surgeon to work for the same hourly wage as an electrician is ludicrous. Only Carl Marx, himself, and perhaps Barack Obama, could envision such a situation.)
Today, a huge percentage of Americans are dependent on the government to at least some degree. According to a 2009 Heritage Foundation report, over 60 million Americans are now dependent on the government for housing, food, and medical care. This is truly shocking, and something that would have the founding fathers not turning over in their graves, but literally spinning in them! It’s a shame that Ponzi is not alive. Perhaps he could have started the Ponzi Prize, just like Alfred Nobel started the Nobel Prize. But then, social security and other government programs would almost always win the prize; who likes a rigged contest.
There is another quote that comes to mind. It is often attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville, but it probably originated elsewhere. But, it is something to think about, as we see it happening in the United States. “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.”
America had better wake up before it is too late. Unfortunately, I think that with the one-two punch of the bailout bill and the health care takeover, it may be too late. Our only hope, now, is probably to officially declare national bankruptcy.
North Korea is “feeling its oats” and embarking on increasingly dangerous and provocative activities. It has also been reported that they are getting ready for another nuclear test. And, of course, if North Korea, or any other nations or organizations, like al Qaeda, wanted to do maximum damage to the United States, they would simply explode a few nuclear weapons above our country. These could easily be fired from a ship a few hundred miles off the coast, and, as I have reported earlier, Iran has practiced just this exercise. If we were hit with an EMP attack, again, as I have reported, experts have testified before Congress that the result would be the death of about 90% of all Americans within a year, because without electricity we would be thrown back into the 19th century, and we cannot support more than about 10% of the population in that situation. But, of course, Congress does nothing about this. They worry about non-issues that they think will get them re-elected, like health care. Of course, the real reason they want control of health care is so that even more Americans are dependent upon the government, thus giving the government even more control over our lives.
One of the things that I have found amazing is that al Qaeda has not blown up some oil rigs yet. They certainly have the suicide wackjobs to do the job, and they certainly have the ships. The environmental damage of such an attack would be easy to imagine, along with the financial damage, which are both goals of the Islamists. Of course, the extreme damage that will be done by this attack will only shine a light on this form of attack, and I suspect we will see them in the future, if this was not the first such attack. It has been reported that al Qaeda may own as many as 15 cargo ships that could be used for many different types of attacks.
It should be pointed out that Obama has announced that the Department of Defense may get involved in the situation, and he also said that he is ordering SWAT teams to be sent to oil rigs in the Gulf. This sounds strange to me. Between the mention of the Department of Defense, and the deployment of SWAT teams to other oil rigs, it does suggest that this might be more than just an accident. Of course, Rush Limbaugh and others have suggested that the explosion on Earth Day, right as the government is trying to ram through Cap and Tax, just like they rammed through health care, with an apparently totally dedicated and determined objective of destroying America as we have known it, and enslaving it’s people, may be a little too convenient of a coincidence.
Things will get interesting. In the mean time, stock up on sea food. It is going to get very expensive.
It seems the guys over at http://m4gw.com (Minnesotans for Global Warming) are being threatened with a law sued by Dr. Michael Mann for the original “Hide The Decline” that they produced quite a while ago. (I posted it here.) They removed it from YouTube, but it is back. But, Mann is suing them for using his likeness and defaming him. So, Jeff Davis, the president of No Cap and Trade, has offered to support the people at Minnesotans for Global Warming in a legal case. In fact, Davis looks forward to the suit, because it would allow for full discovery, which is something that I suspect the global warmingistas do not want.
Anyway, in response to Mann’s threat to sue them, Minnesotans for Global Warming have created a sequel to their original “Hide the Decline” video.
As STRATFOR has noted for several years now, media coverage of the threat posed by dirty bombs runs in a perceptible cycle with distinct spikes and lulls. We are currently in one of the periods of heightened awareness and media coverage. A number of factors appear to have sparked the current interest, including the recently concluded Nuclear Security Summit hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama. Other factors include the resurfacing rumors that al Qaeda militant Adnan El Shukrijumah may have returned to the United States and is planning to conduct an attack, as well as recent statements by members of the Obama administration regarding the threat of jihadist militants using weapons of mass destruction (WMD). A recent incident in India in which a number of people were sickened by radioactive metal at a scrap yard in a New Delhi slum also has received a great deal of media coverage.
In spite of the fact that dirty bombs have been discussed widely in the press for many years now — especially since the highly publicized arrest of Jose Padilla in May 2002 — much misinformation and disinformation continues to circulate regarding dirty bombs. The misinformation stems from long-held misconceptions and ignorance, while the disinformation comes from scaremongers hyping the threat for financial or political reasons. Frankly, many people have made a lot of money by promoting fear since 9/11.
Just last week, we read a newspaper article in which a purported expert interviewed by the reporter discussed how a dirty bomb would “immediately cause hundreds or even thousands of deaths.” This is simply not true. A number of radiological accidents have demonstrated that a dirty bomb will not cause this type of death toll. Indeed, the panic generated by a dirty bomb attack could very well result in more immediate deaths than the detonation of the device itself. Unfortunately, media stories hyping the threat of these devices may foster such panic, thus increasing the death toll. To counter this irrational fear, we feel it is time once again to discuss dirty bombs in detail and provide our readers with a realistic assessment of the threat they pose.
Dirty Bombs Defined
A dirty bomb is a type of radiological dispersal device (RDD), and RDDs are, as the name implies, devices that disperse a radiological isotope. Depending on the motives of those planning the attack, an RDD could be a low-key weapon that surreptitiously releases aerosolized radioactive material, dumps out a finely powdered radioactive material or dissolves a radioactive material in water. Such surreptitious dispersal methods would be intended to slowly expose as many people as possible to the radiation and to prolong their exposure. Unless large amounts of a very strong radioactive material are used, however, the effects of such an exposure will be limited. People are commonly exposed to heightened levels of radiation during activities such as air travel and mountain climbing. To cause adverse effects, radiation exposure must occur either in a very high dose over a short period or in smaller doses sustained over a longer period. This is not to say that radiation is not dangerous, but rather the idea that the slightest amount of exposure to radiation causes measurable harm is not accurate.
By its very nature, the RDD is contradictory. Maximizing the harmful effects of radiation involves maximizing the exposure of the victims to the highest possible concentration of a radioisotope. When dispersing the radioisotope, by definition and design the RDD dilutes the concentration of the radiation source, spreading smaller amounts of radiation over a larger area. Additionally, the use of an explosion to disperse the radioisotope alerts the intended victims, who can then evacuate the affected area and be decontaminated. These factors make it very difficult for an attacker to administer a deadly dose of radiation via a dirty bomb.
It is important to note that a dirty bomb is not a nuclear device, and no nuclear reaction occurs. A dirty bomb will not produce an effect like the nuclear devices dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki. A dirty bomb is quite simply an RDD that uses explosives as the means to disperse a radioactive isotope, and the only blast effect will be from the explosives used to disperse the radioisotope. In a dirty bomb attack, radioactive material not only is dispersed, but the dispersal is accomplished in an obvious manner, and the explosion immediately alerts the victims and authorities that an attack has taken place. The attackers hope that notice of their attack will cause mass panic — in other words, the RDD is a weapon of fear and terror.
The radioisotopes that can be used to construct an RDD are fairly common. Even those materials considered by many to be the most likely to be used in an RDD, such as cobalt-60 and cesium-137, have legitimate medical, commercial and industrial uses. Organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency warn that such radioisotopes are readily available to virtually any country in the world, and they are almost certainly not beyond the reach of even moderately capable non-state actors. Indeed, given the ease of obtaining radiological isotopes and the ease with which a dirty bomb can be constructed, we are surprised that we have not seen one successfully used in a terror attack. We continue to believe that it is only a matter of time before a dirty bomb is effectively employed somewhere. Because of this, let’s examine what effectively employing a dirty bomb means.
Dirty Bomb Effectiveness
Like a nonexplosive RDD, unless a dirty bomb contains a large amount of very strong radioactive material, the effects of the device are not likely to be immediate and dramatic. In fact, the explosive effect of the RDD is likely to kill more people than the device’s radiological effect. This need for a large quantity of a radioisotope not only creates the challenge of obtaining that much radioactive material, it also means that such a device would be large and unwieldy — and therefore difficult to smuggle into a target such as a subway or stadium.
In practical terms, a dirty bomb can produce a wide range of effects depending on the size of the improvised explosive device (IED) and the amount and type of radioactive material involved. (Powdered radioisotopes are easier to disperse than materials in solid form.) Environmental factors such as terrain, weather conditions and population density would also play an important role in determining the effects of such a device.
Significantly, while the radiological effects of a dirty bomb may not be instantly lethal, the radiological impact of an RDD will in all likelihood affect an area larger than the killing radius of the IED itself, and will persist for far longer. The explosion from a conventional IED is over in an instant, but radiation released by a RDD can persist for decades unless the area is decontaminated. While the radiation level may not be strong enough to affect people exposed briefly in the initial explosion, the radiation will persist in the contaminated area, and the cumulative effects of such radiation could prove very hazardous. (Here again, the area contaminated and the ease of decontamination will depend on the type and quantity of the radioactive material used. Materials in a fine powdered form are easier to disperse and harder to clean up than solid blocks of material.) In either case, it will be necessary to evacuate people from the contaminated area, and people will need to stay out of the area until it can be decontaminated, a process that could prove lengthy and expensive.
Therefore, while a dirty bomb is not truly a WMD like a nuclear device, we frequently refer to them as “weapons of mass disruption” or “weapons of mass dislocation” because they may temporarily render contaminated areas uninhabitable. The expense of decontaminating a large, densely populated area, such as a section of London or Washington, is potentially quite high. This cost would also make a dirty bomb a type of economic weapon.
Historical Precedents
The world has not yet witnessed a successful dirty bomb attack by a terrorist or militant group. That does not necessarily mean that militant groups have not been interested in radiological weapons, however. Chechen militants have perhaps been the most active in the realm of radioactive materials. In November 1995, Chechen militants under the command of Shamil Basayev placed a small quantity of cesium-137 in Moscow’s Izmailovsky Park. Rather than disperse the material, however, the Chechens used the material as a psychological weapon by directing a TV news crew to the location and thus creating a media storm and fostering public fear. The material in this incident was thought to have been obtained from a nuclear waste or isotope storage facility in the Chechen capital of Grozny.
In December 1998, the pro-Russian Chechen Security Service announced it had found a dirty bomb consisting of a land mine combined with radioactive materials next to a railway line frequently used to transport Russian troops. It is believed that Chechen militants planted the device. In September 1999, two Chechen militants who attempted to steal highly radioactive materials from a chemical plant in Grozny were incapacitated after carrying the container for only a few minutes each; one reportedly died. This highlights another difficulty with producing a really effective dirty bomb: The strongest radioactive material is dangerous to handle, and even a suicide operative might not be able to move and employ it before being overtaken by its effects.
Still, none of these Chechen incidents really provided a very good example of what a dirty bomb detonation would actually look like. To do this, we need to look at incidents where radiological isotopes were dispersed by accident. In 1987, in Goiania, Brazil, a tiny radiotherapy capsule of cesium chloride salt was accidentally broken open after being salvaged from a radiation therapy machine left at an abandoned health care facility. Over the course of 15 days, the capsule containing the radioisotope was handled by a number of people who were fascinated by the faint blue glow it gave off. Some victims reportedly even smeared the substance on their bodies. The radiation was then dispersed by these people to various parts of the surrounding neighborhood, and some of it was even taken to nearby towns. In all, more than 1,000 people were contaminated during the incident and some 244 were found to have significant radioactive material in or on their bodies. Still, only four people died from the incident, and most of those who died had sustained exposure to the contamination. In addition to the human toll, the cleanup operation in Goiania cost more than $100 million, as many houses had to be razed and substantial quantities of contaminated soil had to be removed from the area.
In a more recent case involving a scrap dealer, this time in a slum outside New Delhi, India, eight people were admitted to the hospital because of radiation exposure after a scrap dealer dismantled an object containing cobalt-60. The material apparently arrived at a scrap shop March 12, and the owner of the shop was admitted to the hospital April 4 suffering from radiation-poisoning symptoms (again another case involving prolonged exposure to a radiation source). The radiation source was found at the scrap yard April 5 and identified as cobalt-60. Indian authorities hauled away eight piles of contaminated scrap. The cleanup operation was easier in the Indian incident, since the radioactive material was in metallic form and found in larger pieces rather than in powdered form seen in the cesium in Goiania. Intriguingly, a nearby scrap shop also was found to be contaminated April 16, but it appears from initial reports that the second site was contaminated by a second radioactive source that contained a weaker form of cobalt-60. Though we are watching for additional details on this case, so far, despite the long-term exposure to a potent radioactive source, no deaths have been reported.
At the other end of the spectrum from the Goiania and New Delhi accidents is the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in northern Ukraine, when a 1-gigawatt power reactor exploded. It is estimated that more than one hundred times the radiation of the Hiroshima bomb was released during the accident — the equivalent of 50 million to 250 million grams of radium. More than 40 different radioisotopes were released, and there was a measurable rise in cesium-137 levels across the entire European continent. No RDD could ever aspire to anything close to such an effect.
Chernobyl wrought untold suffering, and estimates suggest that it may ultimately contribute to the deaths of 9,000 people. But many of those affected by the radiation are still alive more than 20 years after the accident. While STRATFOR by no means seeks to downplay the tragic human or environmental consequences of this disaster, the incident is instructive when contemplating the potential effects of a dirty bomb attack. In spite of the incredible amounts of radioactive material released at Chernobyl, only 31 people died in the explosion and immediate aftermath. Today, 5.5 million people live in the contaminated zone — many within or near the specified EU dosage limits for people living near operational nuclear power plants.
It is this type of historical example that causes us to be so skeptical regarding claims that a small dirty bomb will cause hundreds or even thousands of deaths. Instead, the most strategic consequences of this sort of destruction are economic. By some estimates, the Chernobyl disaster will ultimately cost well in excess of $100 billion. Again, in our opinion, a dirty bomb should be considered a weapon of disruption — one that will cause economic loss, but would not cause mass casualties or any real mass destruction.
Fighting Panic
Analytically, based upon the ease of manufacture and the historical interest by militants in dirty bombs — which ironically may in part be due to the way the RDD threat has been hyped — it is only a matter of time before militants successfully employ one. Since the contamination created by such a device can be long-lasting, more rational international actors probably would prefer to detonate such a device against a target outside their own country. In other words, they would lean toward attacking a target within the United States or United Kingdom rather than the U.S. or British embassies in their home country.
And since it is not likely to produce mass casualties, a dirty bomb attack would likely be directed against a highly symbolic target — such as one representing the economy or government — and designed to cause the maximum amount of disruption at the target site. Therefore, it is not out of the question to imagine such an attack aimed at a target such as Wall Street or the Pentagon. The device would not destroy these sites, but would limit access to them for as long as it took to decontaminate them.
As noted above, we believe it is possible that the panic caused by a dirty bomb attack could well kill more people than the device itself. People who understand the capabilities and limitations of dirty bombs are less likely to panic than those who do not, which is the reason for this analysis. Another important way to help avoid panic is to carefully think about such an incident in advance and to put in place a carefully crafted contingency plan for your family and business. Contingency plans are especially important for those who work in proximity to a potential dirty bomb target. But they are useful in any disaster, whether natural or man-made, and something that should be practiced by all families and businesses. Such knowledge and planning provide people with the ability to conduct an orderly and methodical evacuation of the affected area. This allows them to minimize their exposure to radioactivity while also minimizing their risk of injury or death due to mass hysteria. For while a dirty bomb attack could well be messy and disruptive, it does not have to be deadly.
It has been reported that Obama is totally against nuclear war. I guess his policy is that if China or Russia want to destroy us by sending a few thousand nukes our way, that is OK. We won’t retaliate. After all, that would be stupid, since China has over 1 billion people, and if we decided to wipe out a few million of them with a nuclear strike, it would leave them virtually untouched. Of course, it is unlikely that China would attack us, at least openly, since they are highly dependent on our buying of the stuff that they make. Also, of course, if they were to destroy us with a nuclear attack, or an EMP attack, they would loose their sizable investment in the form of our treasury bills. And, while Russia has no such commerce or investment interest in us, it is highly unlikely that they would decide to wipe us out with a nuclear or EMP attack, since we would retaliate in kind.
But, the same cannot be said for Muslim nations, Muslim transnational groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, and many other offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood would like nothing more than to wipe us off the face of the earth. And, in fact, Iran’s chief loon, Mahmoud Ahmadimwit, has gloated about a “world without the United States”. He not only knows it can be accomplished, but he believes that he is the man who will bring it about. Now, you may be saying that is absurd. Even if Iran gets a few, or even a few hundred, nuclear weapons, he could not possibly wipe the United States off the face of the earth. First, as soon as we saw those incoming ICBM’s, we would be launching every available Trident missile from every available nuclear submarine at Iran. Each of those submarines carries 24 Trident II D-5 missiles, and each of those missiles has 8 independently target-able warheads. Each of those warheads has a yield of 475 kilotons, almost 50 times the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In a matter of minutes, Iran would be a vast radioactive parking lot, while most of the incoming nuclear missiles from Iran would be shot down, and those that landed would probably not kill more than a few hundred thousand Americans, assuming they hit in major population centers. In reality, they would probably only kill a few thousand Americans, at the most.
But, Ahmadimwit is a moronic believer in the 12th Imam. This person, who was supposed to have been a direct descendant of the barbarian pedophile known as Muhammad, is believed by the Twelthers to be hiding at the bottom of a well in Ifahan for over 1100 years, just waiting to return to lead true believers to paradise at a time of total Armageddon. (For an interesting story about just how loony these people are, read this article by Michael Ledeen. It actually describes how such people as the highest government officials in Iran actually drop agreements with the 12th imam down the well for his approval. I kid you not!) Thus, these Iranian leaders believe that they must bring about total Armageddon in order to bring about paradise. What better way to do that than to have the wrath of the United States unleashed on your country!
But, Iran really does want to destroy the United States, as do a number of other bad actors. And they know it would be relatively simple if they only had a few nuclear weapons. And, it might not even bring about retaliation by the United States, since the United States would probably not know who to retaliate against (except Muslims, somewhere.) (Although it could also be North Korea.) But, North Korea would really have nothing to gain, since we are not standing in their way of taking over the world, like we are (or should be) standing in the way of Islam taking over the world. So, the likely culprit would almost certainly be someone who bangs his head on the ground and sticks his ass in the air for Allah to have his way with him 5 times a day.
How could they do this, and how would it destroy the United States? With an EMP attack. As I pointed out, it has been estimated by many experts that an EMP attack on the United States could result in the death of 90% of the American population within 1 year. That is because virtually all electricity would be shut down, perhaps for a year or more, since we no longer make some of the highly specialized transformers that would be destroyed in the attack, and lead times can exceed a year, and we do not stock backups. After all, Congress is too worried about figuring out ways to cure non-existent problems, like health care, and ignore real problems, like an EMP attack. (Or, a major solar storm, or many other contingencies that could take down the power grid for over a year. And, the cure for this genuine problem would cost far, far less than allowing the government, which can’t really do anything well, and certainly can’t do anything cost effectively, to take over 1/7th of the nations economy, as they are now doing with health care.) And, as has been pointed out, Iran has practiced for just this scenario, by launching a missile from a freighter that blew up at high altitude. While we mocked it as a failure, they deemed it a success. It could only be a successful mission if the mission was an EMP attack.
So, how does this relate to Obama’s policy forcing nuclear war in the Middle East. Easy. It is now clear that Obama is not going to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities. George Bush promised to do that before he left office, but he did not. Sanctions are a total joke, because they will never be applied in a meaningful way because China and Russia will veto them. And, Iran has set up enough smuggling and other back channels that any sanctions would do nothing more than inconvenience the Iranian people. They would not stop their drive to acquire nuclear weapons and the means of delivering those weapons. So, that leaves the job up to Israel. Israel has stated, and with good reason, that they will not allow Iran to go nuclear. Unlike the United States, if Israel’s population centers were hit by a few nuclear weapons, it would be the end of Israel. Never mind that Israel could respond by turning Iran into a radioactive wasteland with its arsenal of nuclear weapons. It would be a meaningless victory, since the nation of Israel would be finished, while Iran would still survive, being vastly larger, geographically, and with far more people. Personally, I think Iran already has some nuclear capability, and has had that capability for quite some time. After all, they have been working on this for over 30 years. Yes, they are Muslims, and thus quite backward, in general, but they do have some well educated scientists, and making a nuclear bomb is not rocket science. We did it over 60 years ago, with technology over 60 years old, and we did not even know that it would work. Iran has known it would work, and has even had the plans for over a decade. They can’t be that stupid and inept to still be trying to get a nuclear device. All you need is the fissile material, and when you consider how much is available in the world, and how very little it takes to make a bomb (a few pounds with plutonium), I find it hard to believe that a large nation-state like Iran could not obtain some. But, once their nuclear reactor at Bushehr is complete and operating, it will be pumping out large quantities of plutonium that can easily be used to make bombs. And, as they gain more “declared” experience with centrifuge technology, they get closer to being able to create their own highly enriched uranium. As of now, they have publicly declared that they have enriched uranium to 20% purity. From that point, it will not take long to get to 90%, which is about what they need for a nuclear device. If they put this device on a simple scud missile, and fired it into the air from a few hundred miles off the US coast, it would create an EMP attack. 3 or more such launches could send the United States back to the 19th century, and 90% of the population would die, because in our 21st century America, we simply cannot support more than a few tens of millions of people without electricity. Only the Amish would thrive.
Knowing that Israel was finally getting ready to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities, alone, Obama diverted a shipment of 387 smart munitions to Diego Garcia. They were en-route to Israel. Without these smart “bunker busters”, Israel lacks the firepower to destroy Iran’s deeply buried and highly fortified nuclear facilities. Plus, given the fact that the United States and Iraq would not allow Israel to overfly Iraq, and Turkey has said that they are now on Iran’s side and would block any attack on Iran by the US or Israel, the only chance Israel would have to get their aircraft to Iran and back would be to overfly (and maybe even use bases in) Saudi Arabia. At first, the idea that Saudi Arabia might condone this, given that they don’t even allow Israeli commercial airlines to fly over the kingdom, since they are afraid that the Jews on those planes would “contaminate” the kingdom during an overflight, would seem insane. But, Saudi Arabia is terrified by Iran, and is also very upset with the United States for not taking out the Iranian nuclear facilities a long time ago. So, as unlikely as overflight, or especially basing, by Israeli military jets for the purpose of taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities might seem, it is not totally impossible. In fact, it was reported by the TimesOnline, that Saudi Arabian officials have already given the nod to Israeli overflights to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities. But, now that the US has blocked shipment of the necessary armament to Israel, Israel only has one alternative left, and that is to use nuclear weapons, either launched as missiles from Israel, or, more likely, launched from Israel’s fleet of submarines that are designed to launch nuclear tipped cruise missiles. These missiles, being nuclear, would have the necessary power to knock out the deeply buried and fortified nuclear facilities, even if they are not as accurate as smart bombs. And, if properly calibrated for yield, and properly targeted, the nuclear fallout may not be that much worse than what would result from conventional bombs destroying a facility filled with nuclear material. And, while some of Iran’s nuclear facilities are in, or near, major population areas, many are in sparsely populated areas where civilian deaths would be limited, even with a nuclear weapon. Just such a nuclear strike has been suggested. And, with Israel being denied access to accurate, bunker buster bombs, low-yield tactical nuclear missiles may be the only alternative. And, when you look at the sheer logistics of taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities with a conventional airborne attack, a few dozen cruise missiles, or Jerricho II or III ICBMs, equipped with tactical nuclear weapons may be the only available weapon for Israel to use to prevent Iran from eventually wiping them off the face of the earth, as Mahmoud Ahmadimwit has promised many times. The sheer incompetence, stupidity, and lack of responsibility shown by our leaders in facing the Iranian threat is astounding.
“This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR”
By George Friedman
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama on March 23. The meeting follows the explosion in U.S.-Israeli relations after Israel announced it was licensing construction of homes in East Jerusalem while U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was in Israel. The United States wants Israel to stop all construction of new Jewish settlements. The Israelis argue that East Jerusalem is not part of the occupied territories, and hence, the U.S. demand doesn’t apply there. The Americans are not parsing their demand so finely and regard the announcement — timed as it was — as a direct affront and challenge. Israel’s response is that it is a sovereign state and so must be permitted to do as it wishes. The implicit American response is that the United States is also a sovereign state and will respond as it wishes.
The polemics in this case are not the point. The issue is more fundamental: namely, the degree to which U.S. and Israeli relations converge and diverge. This is not a matter of friendship but, as in all things geopolitical, of national interest. It is difficult to discuss U.S. and Israeli interests objectively, as the relationship is clouded with endless rhetoric and simplistic formulations. It is thus difficult to know where to start, but two points of entry into this controversy come to mind.
The first is the idea that anti-Americanism in the Middle East has its roots in U.S. support for Israel, a point made by those in the United States and abroad who want the United States to distance itself from Israel. The second is that the United States has a special strategic relationship with Israel and a mutual dependency. Both statements have elements of truth, but neither is simply true — and both require much more substantial analysis. In analyzing them, we begin the process of trying to disentangle national interests from rhetoric.
Anti-Americanism in the Middle East
Begin with the claim that U.S. support for Israel generates anti-Americanism in the Arab and Islamic world. While such support undoubtedly contributes to the phenomenon, it hardly explains it. The fundamental problem with the theory is that Arab anti-Americanism predates significant U.S. support for Israel. Until 1967, the United States gave very little aid to Israel. What aid Washington gave was in the form of very limited loans to purchase agricultural products from the United States — a program that many countries in the world participated in. It was France, not the United States, which was the primary supplier of weapons to Israeli.
In 1956, Israel invaded the Sinai while Britain and France seized the Suez Canal, which the Egyptian government of Gamal Abdul Nasser had nationalized. The Eisenhower administration intervened — against Israel and on the side of Egypt. Under U.S. pressure, the British, French and Israelis were forced to withdraw. There were widespread charges that the Eisenhower administration was pro-Arab and anti-Israeli; certainly no one could argue that Eisenhower was significantly pro-Israel.
In spite of this, Nasser entered into a series of major agreements with the Soviet Union. Egypt effectively became a Soviet ally, the recipient of massive Soviet aid and a center of anti-American rhetoric. Whatever his reasons — and they had to do with U.S. unwillingness to give Egypt massive aid — Egypt’s anti-American attitude had nothing to do with the Israelis, save perhaps that the United States was not prepared to join Egypt in trying to destroy Israel.
Two major political events took place in 1963: left-wing political coups in Syria and Iraq that brought the Baathist Party to power in both countries. Note that this took place pre-1967, i.e., before the United States became closely aligned with Israel. Both regimes were pro-Soviet and anti-American, but neither could have been responding to U.S. support for Israel because there wasn’t much.
In 1964, Washington gave Cairo the first significant U.S. military aid in the form of Hawk missiles, but it gave those to other Arab countries, too, in response to the coups in Iraq and Syria. The United States feared the Soviets would base fighters in those two countries, so it began installing anti-air systems to try to block potential Soviet airstrikes on Saudi Arabia.
In 1967, France broke with Israel over the Arab-Israeli conflict that year. The United States began significant aid to Israel. In 1973, after the Syrian and Egyptian attack on Israel, the U.S. began massive assistance. In 1974 this amounted to about 25 percent of Israeli gross domestic product (GDP). The aid has continued at roughly the same level, but given the massive growth of the Israeli economy, it now amounts to about 2.5 percent of Israeli GDP.
The point here is that the United States was not actively involved in supporting Israel prior to 1967, yet anti-Americanism in the Arab world was rampant. The Arabs might have blamed the United States for Israel, but there was little empirical basis for this claim. Certainly, U.S. aid commenced in 1967 and surged in 1974, but the argument that eliminating support for Israel would cause anti-Americanism to decline must first explain the origins of anti-Americanism, which substantially predated American support for Israel. In fact, it is not clear that Arab anti-Americanism was greater after the initiation of major aid to Israel than before. Indeed, Egypt, the most important Arab country, shifted its position to a pro-American stance after the 1973 war in the face of U.S. aid.
Israel’s Importance to the United States
Let’s now consider the assumption that Israel is a critical U.S. asset. American grand strategy has always been derived from British grand strategy. The United States seeks to maintain regional balances of power in order to avoid the emergence of larger powers that can threaten U.S. interests. The Cold War was a massive exercise in the balance of power, pitting an American-sponsored worldwide alliance system against one formed by the Soviet Union. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has acted a number of times against regional hegemons: Iraq in 1990-91, Serbia in 1999 and so on.
In the area called generally the Middle East, but which we prefer to think of as the area between the Mediterranean and the Hindu Kush, there are three intrinsic regional balances. One is the Arab-Israeli balance of power. The second is the Iran-Iraq balance. The third is the Indo-Pakistani balance of power. The American goal in each balance is not so much stability as it is the mutual neutralization of local powers by other local powers.
Two of the three regional balances of power are collapsed or in jeopardy. The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the failure to quickly put a strong, anti-Iranian government in place in Baghdad, has led to the collapse of the central balance of power — with little hope of resurrection. The eastern balance of power between Pakistan and India is also in danger of toppling. The Afghan war has caused profound stresses in Pakistan, and there are scenarios in which we can imagine Pakistan’s power dramatically weakening or even cracking. It is unclear how this will evolve, but what is clear is that it is not in the interest of the United States because it would destroy the native balance of power with India. The United States does not want to see India as the unchallenged power in the subcontinent any more than it wants to see Pakistan in that position. The United States needs a strong Pakistan to balance India, and its problem now is how to manage the Afghan war — a side issue strategically — without undermining the strategic interest of the United States, an Indo-Pakistani balance of power.
The western balance of power, Israel and the surrounding states, is relatively stable. What is most important to the United States at this point is that this balance of power also not destabilize. In this sense, Israel is an important strategic asset. But in the broader picture, where the United States is dealing with the collapse of the central balance of power and with the destabilization of the eastern balance of power, Washington does not want or need the destabilization of the western balance — between the Israelis and Arabs — at this time. U.S. “bandwidth” is already stretched to the limit. Washington does not need another problem. Nor does it need instability in this region complicating things in the other regions.
Note that the United States is interested in maintaining the balance of power. This means that the U.S. interest is in a stable set of relations, with no one power becoming excessively powerful and therefore unmanageable by the United States. Israel is already the dominant power in the region, and the degree to which Syria, Jordan and Egypt contain Israel is limited. Israel is moving from the position of an American ally maintaining a balance of power to a regional hegemon in its own right operating outside the framework of American interests.
The United States above all wants to ensure continuity after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak dies. It wants to ensure that the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan remains stable. And in its attempts to manage the situation in the center and east, it wants to ensure that nothing happens in the west to further complicate an already-enormously complex situation.
There is very little Israel can do to help the United States in the center and eastern balances. On the other hand, if the western balance of power were to collapse — due to anything from a collapse of the Egyptian regime to a new Israeli war with Hezbollah — the United States might find itself drawn into that conflict, while a new intifada in the Palestinian territories would not help matters either. It is unknown what effect this would have in the other balances of power, but the United States is operating at the limits of its power to try to manage these situations. Israel cannot help there, but it could hurt, for example by initiating an attack on Iran outside the framework of American planning. Therefore, the United States wants one thing from Israel now: for Israel to do nothing that could possibly destabilize the western balance of power or make America’s task more difficult in the other regions.
Israel sees the American preoccupation in these other regions, along with the current favorable alignment of forces in its region, as an opportunity both to consolidate and expand its power and to create new realities on the ground. One of these is building in East Jerusalem, or more precisely, using the moment to reshape the demographics and geography of its immediate region. The Israeli position is that it has rights in East Jerusalem that the United States cannot intrude on. The U.S. position is that it has interests in the broader region that are potentially weakened by this construction at this time.
Israel’s desire to do so is understandable, but it runs counter to American interests. The United States, given its overwhelming challenges, is neither interested in Israel’s desire to reshape its region, nor can it tolerate any more risk deriving from Israel’s actions. However small the risks might be, the United States is maxed out on risk. Therefore, Israel’s interests and that of the United States diverge. Israel sees an opportunity; the United States sees more risk.
The problem Israel has is that, in the long run, its relationship to the United States is its insurance policy. Netanyahu appears to be calculating that given the U.S. need for a western balance of power, whatever Israel does now will be allowed because in the end the United States needs Israel to maintain that balance of power. Therefore, he is probing aggressively. Netanyahu also has domestic political reasons for proceeding with this construction. For him, this construction is a prudent and necessary step.
Obama’s task is to convince Netanyahu that Israel has strategic value for the United States, but only in the context of broader U.S. interests in the region. If Israel becomes part of the American problem rather than the solution, the United States will seek other solutions. That is a hard case to make but not an impossible one. The balance of power is in the eastern Mediterranean, and there is another democracy the United States could turn to: Turkey — which is more than eager to fulfill that role and exploit Israeli tensions with the United States.
It may not be the most persuasive threat, but the fact is that Israel cannot afford any threat from the United States, such as an end to the intense U.S.-Israeli bilateral relationship. While this relationship might not be essential to Israel at the moment, it is one of the foundations of Israeli grand strategy in the long run. Just as the United States cannot afford any more instability in the region at the moment, so Israel cannot afford any threat, however remote, to its relationship with the United States.
A More Complicated Relationship
What is clear in all this is that the statement that Israel and the United States are strategic partners is not untrue, it is just vastly more complicated than it appears. Similarly, the claim that American support for Israel fuels anti-Americans is both a true and insufficient statement.
Netanyahu is betting on Congress and political pressures to restrain U.S. responses to Israel. One of the arguments of geopolitics is that political advantage is insufficient in the face of geopolitical necessity. Pressure on Congress from Israel in order to build houses in Jerusalem while the United States is dealing with crises in the region could easily backfire.
The fact is that while the argument that U.S. Israel policy caused anti-Americanism in the region may not be altogether true, the United States does not need any further challenges or stresses. Nations overwhelmed by challenges can behave in unpredictable ways. Netanyahu’s decision to confront the United States at this time on this issue creates an unpredictability that would seem excessive to Israel’s long term interests. Expecting the American political process to protect Israel from the consequences is not necessarily gauging the American mood at the moment.
The national interest of both countries is to maximize their freedom to maneuver. The Israelis have a temporary advantage because of American interests elsewhere in the region. But that creates a long-term threat. With two wars going on and two regional balances in shambles or tottering, the United States does not need a new crisis in the third. Israel has an interest in housing in East Jerusalem. The United States does not. This frames the conversation between Netanyahu and Obama. The rest is rhetoric.
I’ve followed Islam for many years, just as I have followed Christianity for a long time. They are both totally without supporting evidence. But, there are some interesting questions that come up in regards to Muhammad. Jesus was supposedly a virgin (and probably never even existed, anyway). We know that Muhammad existed, since several of his front teeth that were knocked out in one of his many battles are in a Mosque. And, he was known to be a real barbarian, from the accounts by many historians who lived during his lifetime, the latter part of which was filled with almost constant warring and conquests, while there is absolutely no contemporaneous historic evidence that Jesus ever existed. All accounts of his “life” were written decades, or even centuries, after his supposed death. Of those, the most famous was by Josephus, but he was not alive when Jesus supposedly lived, and most historians agree that the brief mention of Jesus in Antiquities XVIII, Chapter 3, section 3 was a forgery inserted in the fourth century CE, by Eusebius, who said that lying for the advancement of the church was acceptable.
Anyway, we are now looking at Muhammad. We all know that his “favorite wife” was Aisha. He married her when she was a 6 year old child, and he was in his 50′s. He consummated the marriage when she was 9 years old. Why did she never become pregnant? Of course, at 9, she might not yet have reached puberty, but that is unlikely, since Islam puts such a high value on having daughters married off by the time they reach puberty, and this has descended from the teachings of Muhammad. But, when Muhammad died, she was 16 or 17, so she certainly would have been old enough to conceive, then. As time went on, Muhammad married many more women, including his son-in-law’s wife (after he convinced his son-in-law to divorce her, since Muhammad had seen her naked, and lusted after her), perhaps because he was desperate to have a son. But, while he had sex with them repeatedly, there were no children. Apparently, Muhammad was shooting blanks in his later life. (He did have several daughters with his first wife, but no children after he became a “prophet” and invented a religion.) Why is this not discussed? Why are there no special Islamic ruling elevating impotent men? After all, Muhammad was the perfect man. You might think this vital aspect of his life might be mentioned and revered somewhere in the Koran or Hadiths, but I don’t believe it is.
In what may be his most disgraceful, disingenuous performance of lies, deceit, and treachery, Al Gore has now told children that they know more than their parents!
I am sure it’s hard for you to hear these words, but there is something you can do to help. Why not sit your dad down and have a good talk to him. Tell him you want him to stop helping the big companies that are spoiling the future for you and all the other kids at school. Tell him that the family would rather have less money if he had a different job, one you could be proud of.
Of course, Hamilton tells the children not to hate their parents; they just don’t know any better.
So your dad is not really a bad person. He is not deliberately making the world a worse place for you and all the other kids. But he is telling lies to himself so he does not have to face up to the truth about what he does at work.
The thing is, though, that what your dad is doing is wrecking the future for my children too, and that makes me feel upset. Many Australians feel the same way; they think that what your father does is just plain wrong, and that he should stop.
Hey Al, Get Over It! Man-made global warming is a lie. Some of us have known that for years. Most people now realize it is a lie, thanks to the revelations of Climategate, as well as the chain of admissions that many of the “scariest” statements in the IPCC document were not true. Actually, it is worse than a lie; it was nothing more than an attempt to put a massive global tax in place that would finish off the economy of the United States for good, raise unemployment to levels never seen before, and make things so bad that Americans would actually start begging for a “world government” to “save” them. (Enslave them would be a better term, actually.)
If you want to see what many real scientists think may be one of the primary drivers of climate change over the last few billion years, see my previous article, “Lecture From CERN Describes How Cosmic Rays Like Cause of Climate Change (Not CO2)“. If you want to see one of Al’s previous whopping lies shown to be false (that CO2 drives temperature), see my post “The Crux of The Global Warming Fraud: Global Warmingistas Claim CO2 Drives Temperature, But Just The Opposite Is True“. In this article I take the very same Vostok ice core data that Al Gore deceptively graphed out in such a way that the true relationship between CO2 and temperature could not been seen, and show, very clearly, that temperature increases, then CO2 increases, and temperature decreases, followed by a decrease in CO2 levels! His lies and deceptions are amazing!
“. In this book, he describes his experiences in Al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 1990′s. It should be read by all Americans. It should be required reading for all members of the House and Senate, as well as anyone involved in counter-terrorism, since it helps to explain the jihad ideology, as well as what is really going on in the many training camps.
was almost not published, because publishers were afraid of backlash from religious wackos. And, in this case, he was not talking about Islamic radicals. He was talking about Christian nutcases! Some people who even worked on the book project, like his agent and editor at the time, asked to have their names removed from the project for fears about their personal safety. I think this is a little extreme, since his excellent book was primarily dealing with Christianity, and it has been a few hundred years since Christians went around burning people at the stake and committing other atrocities that we see every day, today, being committed by Muslims. In fact, I don’t remember anyone being killed, or even threatened with death, when the “Piss Christ” was published. In fact, “Piss Christ” actually won an award for the photographer who created it, Andres Serrano. It won the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art’s “Awards in the Visual Arts” in 1988. That prize included a $15,000 cash award. Money for this award came from such organizations as (not surprisingly) the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. But, that organization is also supported by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a US government federally sponsored organization. (In other words, your tax dollars at work!) (1) (2)
” , by P. David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry. In this book, Gaubatz managed to install himself into the bowels of this Islamist beast, and from that position expose the corruption and the goal to spread Islam around the world and to make it the dominant religion, even in America.
