21 Signs That The Once Great U.S. Economy Is Being Gutted
Alex Jones INFOWARS.COM
The Economic Collapse
February 13, 2011
Once upon a time, the United States was the greatest industrial powerhouse that the world has ever seen. Our immense economic machinery was the envy of the rest of the globe and it provided the foundation for the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the world. But now the once great U.S. economic machine is being dismantled piece by piece. The U.S. economy is being gutted, neutered, defanged, declawed and deindustrialized and very few of our leaders even seem to care. It was the United States that once showed the rest of the world how to mass produce televisions and automobiles and airplanes and computers, but now our industrial base is being ripped to shreds. Tens of thousands of our factories and millions of our jobs have been shipped overseas. Many of our proudest manufacturing cities have been transformed into “post-industrial” hellholes that nobody wants to live in anymore.
Meanwhile, wave after wave of shiny new factories is going up in nations such as China, India and Brazil. This is great for those countries, but for the millions of American workers that desperately needed the jobs that have been sent overseas it is not so great.
This is the legacy of globalism. Multinational corporations now have the choice whether to hire U.S. workers or to hire workers in countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages. The “great sucking sound” that Ross Perot warned us about so long ago is actually happening, and it has left tens of millions of Americans without good jobs.
So what is to become of a nation that consumes more than it ever has and yet continues to produce less and less?
Well, the greatest debt binge in the history of the world has enabled us to maintain (and even increase) our standard of living for several decades, but all of that debt is starting to really catch up with us.
The American people seem to be very confused about what is happening to us because most of them thought that the party was going to last forever. In fact, most of them still seem convinced that our brightest economic days are still ahead.
After all, every time we have had a “recession” in the past things have always turned around and we have gone on to even greater things, right?
Well, what most Americans simply fail to understand is that we are like a car that is having its insides ripped right out. Our industrial base is being gutted right in front of our eyes.
Most Americans don’t think much about our “trade deficit”, but it is absolutely central to what is happening to our economy. Every year, we buy far, far more from the rest of the world than they buy from us.
In 2010, the U.S. trade deficit was just a whisker under $500 billion. This is money that we could have all spent inside the United States that would have supported thousands of American factories and millions of American jobs.
Instead, we sent all of those hundreds of billions of dollars overseas in exchange for a big pile of stuff that we greedily consumed. Most of that stuff we probably didn’t need anyway.
Since we spent almost $500 billion more with the rest of the world than they spent with us, at the end of the year the rest of the world was $500 billion wealthier and the American people were collectively $500 billion poorer.
That means that the collective “economic pie” that we are all dividing up is now $500 billion smaller.
Are you starting to understand why times suddenly seem so “hard” in the United States?
Meanwhile, jobs and businesses continue to fly out of the United States at a blinding pace.
This is a national crisis.
We simply cannot expect to continue to have a “great economy” if we allow our economy to be deindustrialized.
A nation that consumes far more than it produces is not going to be wealthy for long.
The following are 21 signs that the once great U.S. economy is being gutted, neutered, defanged, declawed and deindustrialized….
#1 The U.S. trade deficit with the rest of the world rose to 497.8 billion dollars in 2010. That represented a 32.8% increase from 2009.
#2 The U.S. trade deficit with China rose to an all-time record of 273.1 billion dollars in 2010. This is the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.
#3 The U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.
#4 In the years since 1975, the United States had run a total trade deficit of 7.5 trillion dollars with the rest of the world.
#5 The United States spends more than 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.
#6 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of all U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented only 11.5 percent and it continues to fall.
#7 The number of net jobs gained by the U.S. economy during this past decade was smaller than during any other decade since World War 2.
#8 The Bureau of Labor Statistics originally predicted that the U.S. economy would create approximately 22 million jobs during the decade of the 2000s, but it turns out that the U.S. economy only produced about 7 million jobs during that time period.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
#9 Japan now manufactures about 5 million more automobiles than the United States does.
#10 China has now become the world’s largest exporter of high technology products.
#11 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.
#12 The United States now has 10 percent fewer “middle class jobs” than it did just ten years ago.
#13 According to Tax Notes, between 1999 and 2008 employment at the foreign affiliates of U.S. parent companies increased an astounding 30 percent to 10.1 million. During that exact same time period, U.S. employment at American multinational corporations declined 8 percent to 21.1 million.
#14 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.
#15 Back in 1998, the United States had 25 percent of the world’s high-tech export market and China had just 10 percent. Ten years later, the United States had less than 15 percent and China’s share had soared to 20 percent.
#16 The number of Americans that have become so discouraged that they have given up searching for work completely now stands at an all-time high.
#17 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.
#18 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
#19 Since 2001, over 42,000 U.S. factories have closed down for good.
#20 In 2008, 1.2 billion cellphones were sold worldwide. So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States? Zero.
#21 Ten years ago, the “employment rate” in the United States was about 64%. Since then it has been constantly declining and now the “employment rate” in the United States is only about 58%. So where did all of those jobs go?
The world is changing.
We are bleeding national wealth at a pace that is almost unimaginable.
We are literally being drained dry.
Did you know that China now has the world’s fastest train and the world’s largest high-speed rail network?
They were able to afford those things with all of the money that we have been sending them.
How do you think all of those oil barons in the Middle East became so wealthy and could build such opulent palaces?
They got rich off of all the money that we have been sending them.
Meanwhile, once great U.S. cities such as Detroit, Michigan now look like war zones.
Back in 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was about 6 million dollars for the entire year.
As mentioned above, the U.S. trade deficit with China for 2010 was over 273 billion dollars.
What a difference 25 years can make, eh?
What do you find when you go into a Wal-Mart, a Target or a dollar store today?
You find row after row after row of stuff made in China and in other far away countries.
It can be more than a bit difficult to find things that are actually made inside the United States anymore. In fact, there are quite a few industries that have completely and totally left the United States. For certain product categories it is now literally impossible to buy something made in America.
So what are we going to do with our tens of millions of blue collar workers?
Should we just tell them that their jobs are not ever coming back so they better learn phrases such as “Welcome to Wal-Mart” and “Would you like fries with that”?
For quite a few years, the gigantic debt bubble that we were living in kind of insulated us from feeling the effects of the deindustrialization of America.
But now the pain is starting to kick in.
It has now become soul-crushingly difficult to find a job in America today.
According to Gallup, the U.S. unemployment rate is currently 10.1% and when you throw in “underemployed” workers that figure rises to 19.6%.
Competition for jobs has become incredibly fierce and it is going to stay that way.
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The great U.S. economic machine is being ripped apart and dismantled right in full view of us all.
This is not a “conservative” issue or a “liberal” issue. This is an American issue.
The United States is rapidly being turned into a “post-industrial” wasteland.
It is time to wake up America.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Obama and The Human Stain - Or How Political Correctness Gave America a Con-Man President
If Barack Were the Invisible Man He'd Be a Transparent Fraud
Obama & The Human Stain: Or How Political Correctness Gave America a Con-Man President
By Kelly O'Connell Sunday, February 13, 2011
CFP
The Human Stain, Philip Roth’s seminal novel regarding Political Correctness, racism, and the insipid hypocrisy of leftist morality, is a fitting backdrop to Barack Obama’s improbable presidency. In the story, Professor Coleman Silk, a half-Black Jewish professor, posing as a White man, is taken down by the mechanical application of PC rules to an accidental insult he gave to two African-Americans.
Now, we can introduce the 800-pound donkey in the room. Let’s ask a simple question: Could Barack have been elected president without the doctrine known as Political Correctness?
Or is simply to ask the question an unforgivable act of racism? In fact, the vast majority of Americans realize no person as inexperienced, untested, wildly liberal, or of such questionable past could ever have hoped to be elected without some kind of uncanny boost. But what is the result of this presidency based on nonsensical ideological doctrine? And what can be done to fight off the rise of the unscrupulous, unethical, incompetent and unqualified spore of the PC movement? This is the question addressed in this essay.
I. The Human Stain
In brief, the novel The Human Stain depicts a professor who twists ethnicity to his advantage, then was ironically tagged a racist when he made an innocent remark deemed anti-Black. Here is one writer’s summary of The Human Stain:
Professor Coleman Silk is driven from his position as Dean of Faculty at a small, New England liberal-arts school called Athena College because of a remark willfully misconstrued as racist. Coleman, a professor of classics, wonders why he has never seen two of his students in class. “Do they exist or are they spooks?” he asks his class. The absentees are, of course, black, and a decorous mob of the politically correct immediately launches itself at Coleman’s throat, despite his honest protests that he had used the word only in its primary signification, as a synonym for “ghosts.”
Roth’s tome is well-worth a read. The underlying premise of the story is electric—the implicit hypocrisy of Political Correctness against the backdrop of sin, ie the human stain, making for powerful, topical drama. Barack is like Coleman because both hid their true ethnic roots to gain political advantage. For example, Barack is arguably only half Black. He masks his White roots to gain leverage on opponents.
We are left with the question in The Human Stain, of whether the ambitious and aged Silk could have risen while still sharing his true racial history with his colleagues. Even his own family is unaware of his true identity. Likewise, could Barack have ever been elected without a pro-minority bias, egged-on by a PC media; further—could he possibly retain over 40% support today despite a wholly flaccid and injurious reign? Common sense says, “No!”
II. What is Political Correctness, From Where Did It Arise?
A. Cultural Marxism
The idea behind Political Correctness was hatched by a group of progressive German academics, the Frankfurt School, before WWII when they relocated to America to escape Hitler’s wrath. They realized Marx was wrong—the poor were not ready to revolt and throw off Capitalism for a property-less society. These Marxists decided the only way to create the society Marx envisioned was by subverting its institutions by misinformation, propaganda and seduction of the mentally unformed. Writes one expert,
If we look at it analytically, if we look at it historically, we quickly find out exactly what it is. Political Correctness is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. It is an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the hippies and the peace movement, but back to World War I. If we compare the basic tenets of Political Correctness with classical Marxism, the parallels are very obvious.
B. Elements of Political Correctness
William Lind explains the Elements of Political Correctness:
1. Both Marxism and Political Correctness are totalitarian ideologies, ie they allow no dissent and claim ultimate truth which people are then forced to follow.
2. Political Correctness, aka Cultural Marxism, claims all history is determined by power. Nothing else matters.
3. In Political Correctness certain groups are good—feminist women, (non-feminist women don’t exist) blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals. These groups are “victims,” defined as “good” despite how they act. White males are categorized as automatically evil.
4. Political Correctness relies on expropriation, ie arm-twisting use of the government to recover what was “stolen” from them.
III. The Obama Presidency, Unfit at Any Speed
A. Our Stillborn Napoleon
Obama’s incompetence has become so well attested, it’s reached apocryphal status. No matter what kind of imbecility is attributed to Barack, the average American would tend to believe it. But how did this transition of perception occur? How did one so touted as a super-competent, “messianic” mega-genius fall so utterly, so quickly?
According to Occam’s Razor, the likeliest explanation is that, whatever his IQ, Barack is, on a practical, real-world level—a staggering cretin. For example, he’s never taken note of the fact that socialism and Marxism always fail, and kill millions of the innocent along the way. How was one elected with all the fanfare of a Heisman winner, yet be such a zero? This can really only be explained by pointing out that Obama’s instinct for incompetence was masked by his lack of real leadership experience, which would have exposed his tragic instincts.
B. The Secular “Messiah”
How on earth did the Intelligentsia ever come to the conclusion Barack was anything more than a conceited, unenlightened, journeyman political hack? The fact Obama was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal/ Marxist made his elitist backers think of their own genius. Barack’s visceral socialism merely proved to the Ivy Leaguers and media drones he was a fetal Aristotle or freeze-dried Isaac Newton. Just add a presidency, and out would wriggle Obama Buddha from his Harvard Law Review chrysalis, ready to rule the world.
But, having been coddled and given every advantage by the establishment, Barack responded not by growing into each task, but by learning to be a con artist. That is, for every special position or opportunity Obama was handed, instead of seeing it as a challenge and chance to grow, he responded by raising his con-man act another notch. So by the time Barack reached the US presidency, 100 days after election to the US Senate, he was qualified for only a few things. These were: Speechifying, with a special emphasis on moral outrage; Marxist logic, in all its anti-intuitive convolution; and doing his con-man job of pretending to know everything as the African American Buddha.
Politically Correct special status belongs to such meritorious individuals as women, Blacks, or gays. Barack’s inclusion is described in a Los Angeles Times’ op-ed penned by a liberal writer trying to explain Obama’s come-from-nowhere appeal:
Obama is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination—the “Magic Negro.” The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture..“He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist.”
He’s there to assuage white “guilt” (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.
This op-ed also fostered an irreverent spoof by Rush Limbaugh.
IV. Obama & Herman Melville’s The Confidence Man
A. Melville’s Confidence Man
Herman Melville, in his last major work: The Confidence Man—His Masquerade, well plumbs the psyche of the professional trickster. Melville tells a colorful tale of a con-artist traveling aboard a riverboat in the mid-19th century down the Mississippi. The protagonist first charms, then cheats his fellow passengers. The Confidence Man begs the question: In whom can we safely place our confidence?
The story may have been written after Melville read the New York Post account titled Arrest of the Confidence Man, of “William Thompson, whose brazen deceptions ushered the term “confidence man” into the American vocabulary.” The story ran in 1849, a few years before Herman’s publication date of 1856.
Melville’s story is more a study of how the con-man’s victims react, than the criminal himself. Each person is psychologically sized up, won over to the evil doer’s confidences, and then robbed. And much like with Obama, the scam could not be pulled off without well-meaning, but fatuously naive people ready to be conned.
B. Sam Vaknin’s Diagnosis of Obama’s Malignant Narcissism
Dr. Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love—Narcissism Revisited. He famously diagnosed Barack as having a serious mental disorder, being a full-blown malignant narcissist. (A fascinating interview with Vaknin on Obama is found here: one, two, three, four, five) His description of the Narcissist:
Feels grandiose and self-important; Is obsessed with fantasies of unlimited success, fame, fearsome power or omnipotence, unequalled brilliance; Firmly convinced that he or she is unique; Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation—or, failing that, wishes to be feared and to be notorious; Feels entitled. Demands automatic and full compliance with his unreasonable expectations for special priority treatment; Devoid of empathy. Is unable or unwilling to identify with the needs of others; Behaves arrogantly and haughtily. Feels superior, omnipotent, omniscient, invincible, immune, “above the law”, and omnipresent (magical thinking). Rages when frustrated, contradicted, or confronted by inferiors.
V. Summary
So, Americans have the worst of all possible worlds. First, the poseur Barack was able to slip into the world’s highest office on the wings of a false, Marxist creed, Political Correctness. Second, Obama had spent his entire life learning how to pretend he is competent, effective, and even brilliant—while being continually advanced. But, instead of learning how to lead, he merely aped the outward traits of successful people. This left him particularly vulnerable to crises, since during normal times his leadership might go unnoticed, whereas during times of peril a leader’s quick decisions can make the difference between life and death. And so we observed Barack play golf while the Gulf Oil Spill hemorrhaged petrol for months.
Obama’s propensity to pretend he was qualified for various posts, despite any training, developed until he was a full-fledged con artist. This was perfectly symbolized by accepting the Nobel Peace Prize after 11 days of presidential eligibility, unaware this exposed him as a habitual fraud. But even his most recent actions, after two years of ineffectual service, were inane. He backed a radical Islamic sect, who favors Shari’ah Islamic law—the Muslim Brotherhood, after abandoning one of America’s most important allies in the Middle East, in the name of “democracy.” This reinforced perceptions of suspect analytic skills, a perpetual orientation towards radical Marxism, and default towards reactionary Islam.
Finally, Obama’s likely categorization as a Malignant Narcissist is unnerving because when conditions are most dire, we can expect the worst from Obama as a leader. We have already seen, even after getting repudiated in a gruesome election, Barack still demands hard leftist policies. And for all these reasons, he must be impeached from office for the survival of the American Republic.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Kelly O'Connell BioKelly O'Connell Most recent columns
Kelly O’Connell is an author and attorney. He was born on the West Coast, raised in Las Vegas, and matriculated from the University of Oregon. After laboring for the Reformed Church in Galway, Ireland, he returned to America and attended law school in Virginia, where he earned a JD and a Master’s degree in Government. He spent a stint working as a researcher and writer of academic articles at a Miami law school, focusing on ancient law and society. He has also been employed as a university Speech & Debate professor. He then returned West and worked as an assistant district attorney. Kelly is now is a private practitioner with a small law practice in New Mexico.
Kelly can be reached at: mailto:hibernian1@gmail.com?bcc=letters@canadafreepress.com
Obama & The Human Stain: Or How Political Correctness Gave America a Con-Man President
By Kelly O'Connell Sunday, February 13, 2011
CFP
The Human Stain, Philip Roth’s seminal novel regarding Political Correctness, racism, and the insipid hypocrisy of leftist morality, is a fitting backdrop to Barack Obama’s improbable presidency. In the story, Professor Coleman Silk, a half-Black Jewish professor, posing as a White man, is taken down by the mechanical application of PC rules to an accidental insult he gave to two African-Americans.
Now, we can introduce the 800-pound donkey in the room. Let’s ask a simple question: Could Barack have been elected president without the doctrine known as Political Correctness?
Or is simply to ask the question an unforgivable act of racism? In fact, the vast majority of Americans realize no person as inexperienced, untested, wildly liberal, or of such questionable past could ever have hoped to be elected without some kind of uncanny boost. But what is the result of this presidency based on nonsensical ideological doctrine? And what can be done to fight off the rise of the unscrupulous, unethical, incompetent and unqualified spore of the PC movement? This is the question addressed in this essay.
I. The Human Stain
In brief, the novel The Human Stain depicts a professor who twists ethnicity to his advantage, then was ironically tagged a racist when he made an innocent remark deemed anti-Black. Here is one writer’s summary of The Human Stain:
Professor Coleman Silk is driven from his position as Dean of Faculty at a small, New England liberal-arts school called Athena College because of a remark willfully misconstrued as racist. Coleman, a professor of classics, wonders why he has never seen two of his students in class. “Do they exist or are they spooks?” he asks his class. The absentees are, of course, black, and a decorous mob of the politically correct immediately launches itself at Coleman’s throat, despite his honest protests that he had used the word only in its primary signification, as a synonym for “ghosts.”
Roth’s tome is well-worth a read. The underlying premise of the story is electric—the implicit hypocrisy of Political Correctness against the backdrop of sin, ie the human stain, making for powerful, topical drama. Barack is like Coleman because both hid their true ethnic roots to gain political advantage. For example, Barack is arguably only half Black. He masks his White roots to gain leverage on opponents.
We are left with the question in The Human Stain, of whether the ambitious and aged Silk could have risen while still sharing his true racial history with his colleagues. Even his own family is unaware of his true identity. Likewise, could Barack have ever been elected without a pro-minority bias, egged-on by a PC media; further—could he possibly retain over 40% support today despite a wholly flaccid and injurious reign? Common sense says, “No!”
II. What is Political Correctness, From Where Did It Arise?
A. Cultural Marxism
The idea behind Political Correctness was hatched by a group of progressive German academics, the Frankfurt School, before WWII when they relocated to America to escape Hitler’s wrath. They realized Marx was wrong—the poor were not ready to revolt and throw off Capitalism for a property-less society. These Marxists decided the only way to create the society Marx envisioned was by subverting its institutions by misinformation, propaganda and seduction of the mentally unformed. Writes one expert,
If we look at it analytically, if we look at it historically, we quickly find out exactly what it is. Political Correctness is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. It is an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the hippies and the peace movement, but back to World War I. If we compare the basic tenets of Political Correctness with classical Marxism, the parallels are very obvious.
B. Elements of Political Correctness
William Lind explains the Elements of Political Correctness:
1. Both Marxism and Political Correctness are totalitarian ideologies, ie they allow no dissent and claim ultimate truth which people are then forced to follow.
2. Political Correctness, aka Cultural Marxism, claims all history is determined by power. Nothing else matters.
3. In Political Correctness certain groups are good—feminist women, (non-feminist women don’t exist) blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals. These groups are “victims,” defined as “good” despite how they act. White males are categorized as automatically evil.
4. Political Correctness relies on expropriation, ie arm-twisting use of the government to recover what was “stolen” from them.
III. The Obama Presidency, Unfit at Any Speed
A. Our Stillborn Napoleon
Obama’s incompetence has become so well attested, it’s reached apocryphal status. No matter what kind of imbecility is attributed to Barack, the average American would tend to believe it. But how did this transition of perception occur? How did one so touted as a super-competent, “messianic” mega-genius fall so utterly, so quickly?
According to Occam’s Razor, the likeliest explanation is that, whatever his IQ, Barack is, on a practical, real-world level—a staggering cretin. For example, he’s never taken note of the fact that socialism and Marxism always fail, and kill millions of the innocent along the way. How was one elected with all the fanfare of a Heisman winner, yet be such a zero? This can really only be explained by pointing out that Obama’s instinct for incompetence was masked by his lack of real leadership experience, which would have exposed his tragic instincts.
B. The Secular “Messiah”
How on earth did the Intelligentsia ever come to the conclusion Barack was anything more than a conceited, unenlightened, journeyman political hack? The fact Obama was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal/ Marxist made his elitist backers think of their own genius. Barack’s visceral socialism merely proved to the Ivy Leaguers and media drones he was a fetal Aristotle or freeze-dried Isaac Newton. Just add a presidency, and out would wriggle Obama Buddha from his Harvard Law Review chrysalis, ready to rule the world.
But, having been coddled and given every advantage by the establishment, Barack responded not by growing into each task, but by learning to be a con artist. That is, for every special position or opportunity Obama was handed, instead of seeing it as a challenge and chance to grow, he responded by raising his con-man act another notch. So by the time Barack reached the US presidency, 100 days after election to the US Senate, he was qualified for only a few things. These were: Speechifying, with a special emphasis on moral outrage; Marxist logic, in all its anti-intuitive convolution; and doing his con-man job of pretending to know everything as the African American Buddha.
Politically Correct special status belongs to such meritorious individuals as women, Blacks, or gays. Barack’s inclusion is described in a Los Angeles Times’ op-ed penned by a liberal writer trying to explain Obama’s come-from-nowhere appeal:
Obama is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination—the “Magic Negro.” The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture..“He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist.”
He’s there to assuage white “guilt” (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.
This op-ed also fostered an irreverent spoof by Rush Limbaugh.
IV. Obama & Herman Melville’s The Confidence Man
A. Melville’s Confidence Man
Herman Melville, in his last major work: The Confidence Man—His Masquerade, well plumbs the psyche of the professional trickster. Melville tells a colorful tale of a con-artist traveling aboard a riverboat in the mid-19th century down the Mississippi. The protagonist first charms, then cheats his fellow passengers. The Confidence Man begs the question: In whom can we safely place our confidence?
The story may have been written after Melville read the New York Post account titled Arrest of the Confidence Man, of “William Thompson, whose brazen deceptions ushered the term “confidence man” into the American vocabulary.” The story ran in 1849, a few years before Herman’s publication date of 1856.
Melville’s story is more a study of how the con-man’s victims react, than the criminal himself. Each person is psychologically sized up, won over to the evil doer’s confidences, and then robbed. And much like with Obama, the scam could not be pulled off without well-meaning, but fatuously naive people ready to be conned.
B. Sam Vaknin’s Diagnosis of Obama’s Malignant Narcissism
Dr. Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love—Narcissism Revisited. He famously diagnosed Barack as having a serious mental disorder, being a full-blown malignant narcissist. (A fascinating interview with Vaknin on Obama is found here: one, two, three, four, five) His description of the Narcissist:
Feels grandiose and self-important; Is obsessed with fantasies of unlimited success, fame, fearsome power or omnipotence, unequalled brilliance; Firmly convinced that he or she is unique; Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation—or, failing that, wishes to be feared and to be notorious; Feels entitled. Demands automatic and full compliance with his unreasonable expectations for special priority treatment; Devoid of empathy. Is unable or unwilling to identify with the needs of others; Behaves arrogantly and haughtily. Feels superior, omnipotent, omniscient, invincible, immune, “above the law”, and omnipresent (magical thinking). Rages when frustrated, contradicted, or confronted by inferiors.
V. Summary
So, Americans have the worst of all possible worlds. First, the poseur Barack was able to slip into the world’s highest office on the wings of a false, Marxist creed, Political Correctness. Second, Obama had spent his entire life learning how to pretend he is competent, effective, and even brilliant—while being continually advanced. But, instead of learning how to lead, he merely aped the outward traits of successful people. This left him particularly vulnerable to crises, since during normal times his leadership might go unnoticed, whereas during times of peril a leader’s quick decisions can make the difference between life and death. And so we observed Barack play golf while the Gulf Oil Spill hemorrhaged petrol for months.
Obama’s propensity to pretend he was qualified for various posts, despite any training, developed until he was a full-fledged con artist. This was perfectly symbolized by accepting the Nobel Peace Prize after 11 days of presidential eligibility, unaware this exposed him as a habitual fraud. But even his most recent actions, after two years of ineffectual service, were inane. He backed a radical Islamic sect, who favors Shari’ah Islamic law—the Muslim Brotherhood, after abandoning one of America’s most important allies in the Middle East, in the name of “democracy.” This reinforced perceptions of suspect analytic skills, a perpetual orientation towards radical Marxism, and default towards reactionary Islam.
Finally, Obama’s likely categorization as a Malignant Narcissist is unnerving because when conditions are most dire, we can expect the worst from Obama as a leader. We have already seen, even after getting repudiated in a gruesome election, Barack still demands hard leftist policies. And for all these reasons, he must be impeached from office for the survival of the American Republic.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Kelly O'Connell BioKelly O'Connell Most recent columns
Kelly O’Connell is an author and attorney. He was born on the West Coast, raised in Las Vegas, and matriculated from the University of Oregon. After laboring for the Reformed Church in Galway, Ireland, he returned to America and attended law school in Virginia, where he earned a JD and a Master’s degree in Government. He spent a stint working as a researcher and writer of academic articles at a Miami law school, focusing on ancient law and society. He has also been employed as a university Speech & Debate professor. He then returned West and worked as an assistant district attorney. Kelly is now is a private practitioner with a small law practice in New Mexico.
Kelly can be reached at: mailto:hibernian1@gmail.com?bcc=letters@canadafreepress.com
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Egypt’s own Obama
Hope and Change comes to Egypt, Mohamed ElBaradei
By Klaus Rohrich Saturday, February 12, 2011
CFP
As the saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for…” The change that Egyptians are seeking is a lot like the change Americans sought back in 2008, when the majority of voters wanted to put a resolute end to the administration of George W. Bush.
It’s how a little-known and untested Senator from Illinois managed to charm his way into the White House through vague promises of “hope and change.”
In their zealous ousting of the long-ruling and much-reviled strongman, Hosni Mubarak, the people of Egypt stand to make the same mistake that Americans made in 2008, except in this case, the mistake could well be fatal to any hopes or dreams of attaining the Arab world’s first spontaneous democracy.
Standing in the wings is Egypt’s own Obama, the incompetent and ineffectual Mohamed ElBaradei. Iran ran circles around ElBaradei during his tenure as Secretary General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as did North Korea, with both countries initiating robust nuclear weapons programs that the IAEA was powerless to slow, much less stop. ElBaradei, who doesn’t actually reside in Egypt, has coyly stated that if called upon to lead Egypt, he would be happy to shoulder the burden. ElBaradei would be readily acceptable to Western leaders as a replacement for Mubarak, as they see him as a nuanced, rational and cosmopolitan leader. He would be particularly acceptable to Barak Obama in that it would give the president an opportunity to kick off his own reelection campaign by pointing out to Americans that Egypt has also opted for “hope and change.”
But ElBaradei will soon find himself a pawn of the Muslim Brotherhood, the real force behind the events culminating in Mubarak’s ouster.
As Obama took the oath of office on Jan 20, 2009 his inaugural speech contained the phrase, “To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.” It’s a promise that hasn’t been kept, which in fact became the catalyst for Egypt’s revolution, as its economy slowly slipped off life support and its people were hard-pressed to feed themselves.
And in the true spirit of all community organizers’ admonition to never let a crisis go to waste, The Muslim Brotherhood quietly fomented revolutionary rhetoric and fanned the flames of civil unrest. Under Mubarak, Egypt maintained a stable border with Israel, which essentially brought relative peace to the Middle East. With Mubarak gone, we are left to wonder what will become of that relative peace.
Essam el-Erian, a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, claimed at a recent press conference that Muslims hold nothing against Jews; it’s Israel and Zionism they have problems with. And Western media outlets dutifully reported this as fact.
Given the voluminous admonitions by many Islamic clerics that all good Muslims have a sacred duty to kill Jews wherever they might be found, there is a real chance that this peace will not hold, particularly in a country that believes sharks swimming in the Red Sea are agents of the Mossad and Israel has flooded the streets of Cairo with prostitutes infected with AIDS to start an epidemic.
It’s much more likely that the Egyptians are going to wind up trading a headache for a bleeding ulcer, as the Muslim Brotherhood, which is superbly organized and motivated, seizes power and imposes a strict theocracy on Egypt, much in the way the Mullahs have done in Iran. If this comes to pass, then all bets for a stable Middle East are off, as Israel will be forced to defend itself on its northern and southern borders.
This is a second Holocaust waiting to happen, thanks to a US administration that has no understanding of geopolitical forces. It’s ineptitude bordering on criminal negligence.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Klaus Rohrich Saturday, February 12, 2011
CFP
As the saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for…” The change that Egyptians are seeking is a lot like the change Americans sought back in 2008, when the majority of voters wanted to put a resolute end to the administration of George W. Bush.
It’s how a little-known and untested Senator from Illinois managed to charm his way into the White House through vague promises of “hope and change.”
In their zealous ousting of the long-ruling and much-reviled strongman, Hosni Mubarak, the people of Egypt stand to make the same mistake that Americans made in 2008, except in this case, the mistake could well be fatal to any hopes or dreams of attaining the Arab world’s first spontaneous democracy.
Standing in the wings is Egypt’s own Obama, the incompetent and ineffectual Mohamed ElBaradei. Iran ran circles around ElBaradei during his tenure as Secretary General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as did North Korea, with both countries initiating robust nuclear weapons programs that the IAEA was powerless to slow, much less stop. ElBaradei, who doesn’t actually reside in Egypt, has coyly stated that if called upon to lead Egypt, he would be happy to shoulder the burden. ElBaradei would be readily acceptable to Western leaders as a replacement for Mubarak, as they see him as a nuanced, rational and cosmopolitan leader. He would be particularly acceptable to Barak Obama in that it would give the president an opportunity to kick off his own reelection campaign by pointing out to Americans that Egypt has also opted for “hope and change.”
But ElBaradei will soon find himself a pawn of the Muslim Brotherhood, the real force behind the events culminating in Mubarak’s ouster.
As Obama took the oath of office on Jan 20, 2009 his inaugural speech contained the phrase, “To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.” It’s a promise that hasn’t been kept, which in fact became the catalyst for Egypt’s revolution, as its economy slowly slipped off life support and its people were hard-pressed to feed themselves.
And in the true spirit of all community organizers’ admonition to never let a crisis go to waste, The Muslim Brotherhood quietly fomented revolutionary rhetoric and fanned the flames of civil unrest. Under Mubarak, Egypt maintained a stable border with Israel, which essentially brought relative peace to the Middle East. With Mubarak gone, we are left to wonder what will become of that relative peace.
Essam el-Erian, a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, claimed at a recent press conference that Muslims hold nothing against Jews; it’s Israel and Zionism they have problems with. And Western media outlets dutifully reported this as fact.
Given the voluminous admonitions by many Islamic clerics that all good Muslims have a sacred duty to kill Jews wherever they might be found, there is a real chance that this peace will not hold, particularly in a country that believes sharks swimming in the Red Sea are agents of the Mossad and Israel has flooded the streets of Cairo with prostitutes infected with AIDS to start an epidemic.
It’s much more likely that the Egyptians are going to wind up trading a headache for a bleeding ulcer, as the Muslim Brotherhood, which is superbly organized and motivated, seizes power and imposes a strict theocracy on Egypt, much in the way the Mullahs have done in Iran. If this comes to pass, then all bets for a stable Middle East are off, as Israel will be forced to defend itself on its northern and southern borders.
This is a second Holocaust waiting to happen, thanks to a US administration that has no understanding of geopolitical forces. It’s ineptitude bordering on criminal negligence.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Friday, February 11, 2011
No Signs of Intelligence
Barack Obama
No Signs of Intelligence / CFP
By Daniel Greenfield Friday, February 11, 2011
After the CIA director began reporting intelligence he obtained from his TV set and the Director of Intelligence claimed the Muslim Brotherhood was a secular organization, it’s obvious that there isn’t a trace of intelligence in the Obama Administration.
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To recap Obama’s foreign policy triumphs, he snubbed England, tried and failed to intimidate the little country of Honduras, picked a fight with Israel over some houses in Jerusalem, tried to budge China on its currency and got nowhere, got played by Russia on the START treaty and now helped overthrow a pro-American government in order to replace it with an anti-American government. It seemed impossible that anyone in the White House could ever top Carter—but Barack Hussein Obama has done it in only 2 years. What he will do in his remaining time doesn’t bear thinking about.
American prestige is at its lowest point in history. Our allies don’t trust us. Our enemies are slapping us around
Even if the American people manage to drive him out of the White House in 2012, he will leave behind an ugly mess to clean up. American prestige is at its lowest point in history. Our allies don’t trust us. Our enemies are slapping us around. The United States was fortunate to have a Reagan to replace Carter, a strong leader who restored and burnished the nation’s standing. The situation wouldn’t have been salvaged nearly as well if Howard Baker or George H.W. Bush had won instead. A Republican who ran for the presidency in 2008 only had to carry on, but in 2012 he will have clean up duty. And there’s no telling how much he will have to clean up. We will need a strong leader who can think on his or her feet, and has the courage to make a clean break with the last 4 years.
Obama finally got his Carter moment, and went him one better. This turned out to be that 3 AM phone call, but it would have been far better if he had slept through it. The country and the world would be better off if he just spent the rest of his term playing golf or playing with his model train set. But that isn’t happening. And we will all have to live with the consequences.
Egypt’s future after Mubarak’s exit will be either as a military dictatorship or an Islamic state
That’s the sum total of the achievements of the Soros sponsored revolution. Either way life will get harder and uglier. Economic reforms will go out the window and a civil war is not out of the question.
There are two paths here. Either Suleiman and the military will maintain control of Egypt with a few sidebar reforms. These reforms will increase the power of the Muslim Brotherhood, without giving them a direct line to take over. The other will occur if the military gives in to Obama’s pressure tactics and either allows ElBaradei to form a transition government or opens up the system all the way. The ElBaradei route will mean a repetition of the Aoun-Hezbollah alliance in Lebanon. A completely open system will repeat the ugly events of Iran in 1979. And then it’s time for the US embassy to start torching papers.
So in the “best case scenario”, Egypt will reverse Mubarak’s economic reforms and will have a less open system. In the worst case scenario, it will have an Islamic state. That is the great flag waving achievement here. And this is what Obama will go on claiming credit for, until the heads start rolling, and then he’ll figure out a way to blame Bush for it. But the real credit goes to his Nazi collaborator puppetmaster, György Soros.
With the 2012 election, Soros saw that he couldn’t count on Obama. He had already been expressing impatience with Obama. It may be a while till we know how much money and resources were poured into this effort to overthrow pro-American governments in the Middle East. And the neo-conservatives who allowed themselves to be used to cheer on his campaign have a lot to answer for.
Ironically, Soros’ campaign outwardly seemed to share some common elements with the Bush era neo-conservative campaign to bring down evil regimes. These tactics were denounced as unilateral and imperialistic by the same media enthusiastically cheering and participating in the Egyptian coup. But the Bush era campaign had targeted anti-American states with a history of supporting terrorism. And there was the difference.
Obama’s refusal to pressure Iran during the protests there, varied sharply with the intensity of the pressure he applied to Egypt. The same difference was there. Iran is anti-American. Egypt was pro-American under Mubarak. And Obama, like his boss, kicks his allies and gives our enemies the benefit of the doubt.
Evil is all that Obama believes in
At CPAC, Rick Santorum said that he thinks, Obama doesn’t believe in evil. I think he’s wrong. Evil is all that Obama believes in.
The alliance between Western leftists and regional Islamists is threatening to dramatically change the Middle East. Soros and his ilk are carrying on the work of the Soviet Union. The new “people’s revolutions” toppling regimes no longer come from Moscow, instead they come from 1060 Fifth Avenue and 175 Rue de la Loi. The Soviet Union has fallen, but there are successors carrying on its work, from the Red Baroness Ashton to Soros.
Carter’s man, Zbigniew Brzezinski pushed the Green Belt strategy against the USSR. The Obama Administration appears to have picked it up, but it is no longer directed against the Soviet Union. It exists for its own sake. Islam not as a weapon, but Islamism for the sake of Islamism. Because it is held to be a good by men who don’t know what good is. Who believe reflexively in evil.
The least that any responsible administration should do is make it clear that no Egyptian government that incorporates or allies with the Muslim Brotherhood will receive any aid. But the Obama Administration actually supports a political role for the Muslim Brotherhood.
But what of Egypt’s Christians, ask Lisa Graas? If any group in Egypt should have been encouraged to participate in the political process, it should have been Egypt’s disenfranchised Christians. The media has hardly mentioned them among all this. When it has, it insisted that the overthrow of Mubarak would be good for them.
“I think Mubarak’s resignation is a good thing for Coptic Christians, and other Egyptians. If he had not done so, there would likely have been riots and violence and a descent into chaos,” said Paul Marshall, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C., to The Christian Post.
No mention is made of the rights of Egypt’s Christians. Instead it’s suggested that they should be happy that the protesters and their violence didn’t further endanger them.
A single cautionary note comes from the Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein
“The current situation for the Copts stinks, but [longtime Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak is the best of the worst for us,” said the Rev. Paul Girguis of St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church in Fairfax County, which has about 3,000 members. “If Muslim extremists take over, the focus will be extreme persecution against Copts. Some people even predict genocide.”
Arguably the genocide has already begun. The Christians of the Middle East are an interruption in the narrative of Muslims who want to wipe out all traces of other peoples and religions from the region.
Pervasive vandalism and destruction of ancient artifacts from previous civilizations, whether it is Muslim looting and destruction of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the Taliban’s bombing of the Buddhas of Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia which actually has a fatwa forbidding the preservation of historical sites… punishable by death.
Egypt’s Copts, like Israel’s Jews or Turkey’s Armenians, are holdouts against a tide of Muslim genocidal violence with the aim of ethnically cleansing regions under their control.
The Iranianization of the Egyptian revolution
The Iranianization of the Egyptian revolution has been well under way. Stories like this should be painfully familiar from 1979
In the process many have formed some unusual bonds that reflect the non-ideological character of the Egyptian youth revolt, which encompasses liberals, socialists and members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
‘‘I like the Brotherhood most, and they like me,’’ says Sally Moore, 32, a psychiatrist, a Coptic Christian and an avowed leftist and feminist of mixed Irish-Egyptian roots. ‘‘They always have a hidden agenda, we know, and you never know when power comes how they will behave. But they are very good with organising, they are calling for a civil state just like everyone else, so let them have a political party just like everyone else - they will not win more than 10 per cent, I think.’‘
Many in the circle met during their university days. Islam Lotfi, a lawyer who is a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood Youth, says his group used to enlist others from the tiny leftist parties to stand with them in calling for civil liberties, to make their cause seem more universal. Many are now allies in the revolt, including Zyad al-Elaimy, 30, a lawyer who was then the leader of a communist group.
Quotes like this are altogether familiar from Iran. But you don’t need to worry about Dr. Sally Moore being forced to don a burqa. Moore came from London, when things get hairy, she’ll go back together. For now she reps the Popular Campaign in Support of ElBaradei, which is part of the Youth of the Egyptian Revolution, along the Muslim Brotherhood Youth.
The Muslim Brotherhood is explicitly using the Iranian model (see Atlas Shrugs) for Kamal Helbawi’s statement to Iran’s news agency.
Iran revolution example to follow, says Egyptian scholar London, Feb 10, IRNA – The Islamic revolution in Iran over three decades ago has set an example for others to follow, according to a prominent Egyptian scholar.
“It has had an impact not only on Egypt but all over the Muslim world,” Kamal Helbawi said on the eve of the 32nd anniversary of the 1979 revolution in Iran.
Kamal al-Halbavi, a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, expressed gratitude to Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei for his support of the revolution. Al-Halvavi said he hoped that Egypt would have a “a good government, like the Iranian government, and a good president like Mr. Ahmadinejad, who is very brave.”
Helbawi was the Muslim Brotherhood’s “spokesman to the West”. So much for the ‘split’ between Sunnis and Shiites.
And if Egypt falls to the Brotherhood, then the timeline to the Caliphate is shortened
And if Egypt falls to the Brotherhood, then the timeline to the Caliphate is shortened. Already ominous developments are beginning. And the news is only getting worse
The two-ship Iranian task force, consisting of two British-built vessels, Vosper Mark V-class frigate Alvand and supply ship Kharg, left Iran on 26 January, according to Iranian news sources. The next day, a senior naval officer announced that the task force, deployed as the 12th Naval Group, “would enter the Red Sea and the Mediterranean waters.” The prospect of a Mediterranean deployment is as unprecedented as the Saudi port visit. There is no guarantee it will actually happen, but the timing is interesting.
While the Mubarak regime was in power, there was little possibility of Egypt permitting an Iranian naval task force to transit the Suez Canal. I’m not convinced any Egyptian authority will agree to such a transit before the country’s political future is sorted out – I certainly don’t think the Iranians know their warships are approaching a Canal that will be opened to them by a specific, expected change in political conditions. But what I do perceive is a bold move by Iran.
Iran is throwing its weight around and daring anyone to stop them. The Mullahs and Ahmadinejad are confident that no one will. We’re quickly approaching an endgame.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Friday that a new Middle East is being created which would be free of the United States and Israel, as he backed the Arab uprisings but warned Egyptians to be watchful of America’s “friendly face.”
Massive crowds of Iranians, waving flags and chanting “Death to Mubarak!” and “Death to America!” descended on Tehran’s Azadi Square (Freedom Square) to listen to the hardliner who lashed out at the West and Israel in a speech marking the 32nd anniversary of the Islamic revolution.
“We will soon see a new Middle East materialising without America and the Zionist regime and there will be no room for world arrogance (the West) in it,” Ahmadinejad told the cheering crowds who gathered despite the cold and cloudy weather.
And yes there’s talk of an apocalypse a-coming
In his fiery style, Ahmadinejad, showed his messianic beliefs on Friday, saying the world was witnessing a revolution managed by Imam Mehdi, the 12 Shiite imam who disappeared as a five-year-old in the 10th century and who Shiites believe would return on the judgement day.
“The final move has begun. We are in the middle of a world revolution managed by this dear (12th Imam). A great awakening is unfolding. One can witness the hand of Imam in managing it,” said Ahmadinejad, wearing his trademark jacket.
There are too many enemies positioning themselves to take advantage of an Obama-ridden country
The combination of Obama’s domestic unpopularity and his international weakness means that Iran knows that they have to rack up as many gains as they can, before he can be potentially replaced by an American leader. The closer we get to the election, the worse it will get. And there are too many enemies positioning themselves to take advantage of an Obama-ridden country.
But there’s no need to worry. Everything will work out. Incidentally, over the last four years, Pakistan has doubled the size of its nuclear arsenal. Just one of those things that happened to happen.
Nuclear proliferation analysts from the Federation of American Scientists and the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) assess that since 2006, Pakistan has increased the size of its nuclear arsenal from 30-60 atomic bombs to approximately 110. That makes Pakistan the world’s fifth largest nuclear power ahead of Britain and France.
As for delivery systems, according to The Washington Post, Pakistan has developed nuclear-capable land- and air-launched cruise missiles. Its Shaheen II missile, with a range of 2,400 kilometers, is about to go into operational deployment.
Yes, the sponsors of the Taliban now have over a 100 nuclear missiles. Pakistan has more nuclear weapons than its former colonial masters in London do. How many will it have 10 years from now, while we keep on cutting our own arsenal? While we place Europe’s missile shield in Turkey, another Islamist state.
Pakistan’s missiles can’t reach London yet. Depending on where they launch from. But they will be able to. And then New York and Washington D.C. If they dispense with the warheads, they have enough to destroy every city in the US with a population above 200,000.
Again nothing to worry about. Just be very afraid of.
You know how afraid our governments are of Muslims, when all they can do is stage the occasional small scale of mass murder. How afraid are they going to be when they can kill 50 million people in a single day?
And how long do you think freedom of speech and religion will last when that day comes that the Muslim world forces the free world to choose?
Think about it, while there’s time. And think about how much US money given as payback for Pakistan’s on and off efforts against Al Qaeda was diverted to build those weapons.
Endgame.
No Signs of Intelligence / CFP
By Daniel Greenfield Friday, February 11, 2011
After the CIA director began reporting intelligence he obtained from his TV set and the Director of Intelligence claimed the Muslim Brotherhood was a secular organization, it’s obvious that there isn’t a trace of intelligence in the Obama Administration.
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To recap Obama’s foreign policy triumphs, he snubbed England, tried and failed to intimidate the little country of Honduras, picked a fight with Israel over some houses in Jerusalem, tried to budge China on its currency and got nowhere, got played by Russia on the START treaty and now helped overthrow a pro-American government in order to replace it with an anti-American government. It seemed impossible that anyone in the White House could ever top Carter—but Barack Hussein Obama has done it in only 2 years. What he will do in his remaining time doesn’t bear thinking about.
American prestige is at its lowest point in history. Our allies don’t trust us. Our enemies are slapping us around
Even if the American people manage to drive him out of the White House in 2012, he will leave behind an ugly mess to clean up. American prestige is at its lowest point in history. Our allies don’t trust us. Our enemies are slapping us around. The United States was fortunate to have a Reagan to replace Carter, a strong leader who restored and burnished the nation’s standing. The situation wouldn’t have been salvaged nearly as well if Howard Baker or George H.W. Bush had won instead. A Republican who ran for the presidency in 2008 only had to carry on, but in 2012 he will have clean up duty. And there’s no telling how much he will have to clean up. We will need a strong leader who can think on his or her feet, and has the courage to make a clean break with the last 4 years.
Obama finally got his Carter moment, and went him one better. This turned out to be that 3 AM phone call, but it would have been far better if he had slept through it. The country and the world would be better off if he just spent the rest of his term playing golf or playing with his model train set. But that isn’t happening. And we will all have to live with the consequences.
Egypt’s future after Mubarak’s exit will be either as a military dictatorship or an Islamic state
That’s the sum total of the achievements of the Soros sponsored revolution. Either way life will get harder and uglier. Economic reforms will go out the window and a civil war is not out of the question.
There are two paths here. Either Suleiman and the military will maintain control of Egypt with a few sidebar reforms. These reforms will increase the power of the Muslim Brotherhood, without giving them a direct line to take over. The other will occur if the military gives in to Obama’s pressure tactics and either allows ElBaradei to form a transition government or opens up the system all the way. The ElBaradei route will mean a repetition of the Aoun-Hezbollah alliance in Lebanon. A completely open system will repeat the ugly events of Iran in 1979. And then it’s time for the US embassy to start torching papers.
So in the “best case scenario”, Egypt will reverse Mubarak’s economic reforms and will have a less open system. In the worst case scenario, it will have an Islamic state. That is the great flag waving achievement here. And this is what Obama will go on claiming credit for, until the heads start rolling, and then he’ll figure out a way to blame Bush for it. But the real credit goes to his Nazi collaborator puppetmaster, György Soros.
With the 2012 election, Soros saw that he couldn’t count on Obama. He had already been expressing impatience with Obama. It may be a while till we know how much money and resources were poured into this effort to overthrow pro-American governments in the Middle East. And the neo-conservatives who allowed themselves to be used to cheer on his campaign have a lot to answer for.
Ironically, Soros’ campaign outwardly seemed to share some common elements with the Bush era neo-conservative campaign to bring down evil regimes. These tactics were denounced as unilateral and imperialistic by the same media enthusiastically cheering and participating in the Egyptian coup. But the Bush era campaign had targeted anti-American states with a history of supporting terrorism. And there was the difference.
Obama’s refusal to pressure Iran during the protests there, varied sharply with the intensity of the pressure he applied to Egypt. The same difference was there. Iran is anti-American. Egypt was pro-American under Mubarak. And Obama, like his boss, kicks his allies and gives our enemies the benefit of the doubt.
Evil is all that Obama believes in
At CPAC, Rick Santorum said that he thinks, Obama doesn’t believe in evil. I think he’s wrong. Evil is all that Obama believes in.
The alliance between Western leftists and regional Islamists is threatening to dramatically change the Middle East. Soros and his ilk are carrying on the work of the Soviet Union. The new “people’s revolutions” toppling regimes no longer come from Moscow, instead they come from 1060 Fifth Avenue and 175 Rue de la Loi. The Soviet Union has fallen, but there are successors carrying on its work, from the Red Baroness Ashton to Soros.
Carter’s man, Zbigniew Brzezinski pushed the Green Belt strategy against the USSR. The Obama Administration appears to have picked it up, but it is no longer directed against the Soviet Union. It exists for its own sake. Islam not as a weapon, but Islamism for the sake of Islamism. Because it is held to be a good by men who don’t know what good is. Who believe reflexively in evil.
The least that any responsible administration should do is make it clear that no Egyptian government that incorporates or allies with the Muslim Brotherhood will receive any aid. But the Obama Administration actually supports a political role for the Muslim Brotherhood.
But what of Egypt’s Christians, ask Lisa Graas? If any group in Egypt should have been encouraged to participate in the political process, it should have been Egypt’s disenfranchised Christians. The media has hardly mentioned them among all this. When it has, it insisted that the overthrow of Mubarak would be good for them.
“I think Mubarak’s resignation is a good thing for Coptic Christians, and other Egyptians. If he had not done so, there would likely have been riots and violence and a descent into chaos,” said Paul Marshall, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C., to The Christian Post.
No mention is made of the rights of Egypt’s Christians. Instead it’s suggested that they should be happy that the protesters and their violence didn’t further endanger them.
A single cautionary note comes from the Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein
“The current situation for the Copts stinks, but [longtime Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak is the best of the worst for us,” said the Rev. Paul Girguis of St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church in Fairfax County, which has about 3,000 members. “If Muslim extremists take over, the focus will be extreme persecution against Copts. Some people even predict genocide.”
Arguably the genocide has already begun. The Christians of the Middle East are an interruption in the narrative of Muslims who want to wipe out all traces of other peoples and religions from the region.
Pervasive vandalism and destruction of ancient artifacts from previous civilizations, whether it is Muslim looting and destruction of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the Taliban’s bombing of the Buddhas of Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia which actually has a fatwa forbidding the preservation of historical sites… punishable by death.
Egypt’s Copts, like Israel’s Jews or Turkey’s Armenians, are holdouts against a tide of Muslim genocidal violence with the aim of ethnically cleansing regions under their control.
The Iranianization of the Egyptian revolution
The Iranianization of the Egyptian revolution has been well under way. Stories like this should be painfully familiar from 1979
In the process many have formed some unusual bonds that reflect the non-ideological character of the Egyptian youth revolt, which encompasses liberals, socialists and members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
‘‘I like the Brotherhood most, and they like me,’’ says Sally Moore, 32, a psychiatrist, a Coptic Christian and an avowed leftist and feminist of mixed Irish-Egyptian roots. ‘‘They always have a hidden agenda, we know, and you never know when power comes how they will behave. But they are very good with organising, they are calling for a civil state just like everyone else, so let them have a political party just like everyone else - they will not win more than 10 per cent, I think.’‘
Many in the circle met during their university days. Islam Lotfi, a lawyer who is a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood Youth, says his group used to enlist others from the tiny leftist parties to stand with them in calling for civil liberties, to make their cause seem more universal. Many are now allies in the revolt, including Zyad al-Elaimy, 30, a lawyer who was then the leader of a communist group.
Quotes like this are altogether familiar from Iran. But you don’t need to worry about Dr. Sally Moore being forced to don a burqa. Moore came from London, when things get hairy, she’ll go back together. For now she reps the Popular Campaign in Support of ElBaradei, which is part of the Youth of the Egyptian Revolution, along the Muslim Brotherhood Youth.
The Muslim Brotherhood is explicitly using the Iranian model (see Atlas Shrugs) for Kamal Helbawi’s statement to Iran’s news agency.
Iran revolution example to follow, says Egyptian scholar London, Feb 10, IRNA – The Islamic revolution in Iran over three decades ago has set an example for others to follow, according to a prominent Egyptian scholar.
“It has had an impact not only on Egypt but all over the Muslim world,” Kamal Helbawi said on the eve of the 32nd anniversary of the 1979 revolution in Iran.
Kamal al-Halbavi, a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, expressed gratitude to Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei for his support of the revolution. Al-Halvavi said he hoped that Egypt would have a “a good government, like the Iranian government, and a good president like Mr. Ahmadinejad, who is very brave.”
Helbawi was the Muslim Brotherhood’s “spokesman to the West”. So much for the ‘split’ between Sunnis and Shiites.
And if Egypt falls to the Brotherhood, then the timeline to the Caliphate is shortened
And if Egypt falls to the Brotherhood, then the timeline to the Caliphate is shortened. Already ominous developments are beginning. And the news is only getting worse
The two-ship Iranian task force, consisting of two British-built vessels, Vosper Mark V-class frigate Alvand and supply ship Kharg, left Iran on 26 January, according to Iranian news sources. The next day, a senior naval officer announced that the task force, deployed as the 12th Naval Group, “would enter the Red Sea and the Mediterranean waters.” The prospect of a Mediterranean deployment is as unprecedented as the Saudi port visit. There is no guarantee it will actually happen, but the timing is interesting.
While the Mubarak regime was in power, there was little possibility of Egypt permitting an Iranian naval task force to transit the Suez Canal. I’m not convinced any Egyptian authority will agree to such a transit before the country’s political future is sorted out – I certainly don’t think the Iranians know their warships are approaching a Canal that will be opened to them by a specific, expected change in political conditions. But what I do perceive is a bold move by Iran.
Iran is throwing its weight around and daring anyone to stop them. The Mullahs and Ahmadinejad are confident that no one will. We’re quickly approaching an endgame.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Friday that a new Middle East is being created which would be free of the United States and Israel, as he backed the Arab uprisings but warned Egyptians to be watchful of America’s “friendly face.”
Massive crowds of Iranians, waving flags and chanting “Death to Mubarak!” and “Death to America!” descended on Tehran’s Azadi Square (Freedom Square) to listen to the hardliner who lashed out at the West and Israel in a speech marking the 32nd anniversary of the Islamic revolution.
“We will soon see a new Middle East materialising without America and the Zionist regime and there will be no room for world arrogance (the West) in it,” Ahmadinejad told the cheering crowds who gathered despite the cold and cloudy weather.
And yes there’s talk of an apocalypse a-coming
In his fiery style, Ahmadinejad, showed his messianic beliefs on Friday, saying the world was witnessing a revolution managed by Imam Mehdi, the 12 Shiite imam who disappeared as a five-year-old in the 10th century and who Shiites believe would return on the judgement day.
“The final move has begun. We are in the middle of a world revolution managed by this dear (12th Imam). A great awakening is unfolding. One can witness the hand of Imam in managing it,” said Ahmadinejad, wearing his trademark jacket.
There are too many enemies positioning themselves to take advantage of an Obama-ridden country
The combination of Obama’s domestic unpopularity and his international weakness means that Iran knows that they have to rack up as many gains as they can, before he can be potentially replaced by an American leader. The closer we get to the election, the worse it will get. And there are too many enemies positioning themselves to take advantage of an Obama-ridden country.
But there’s no need to worry. Everything will work out. Incidentally, over the last four years, Pakistan has doubled the size of its nuclear arsenal. Just one of those things that happened to happen.
Nuclear proliferation analysts from the Federation of American Scientists and the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) assess that since 2006, Pakistan has increased the size of its nuclear arsenal from 30-60 atomic bombs to approximately 110. That makes Pakistan the world’s fifth largest nuclear power ahead of Britain and France.
As for delivery systems, according to The Washington Post, Pakistan has developed nuclear-capable land- and air-launched cruise missiles. Its Shaheen II missile, with a range of 2,400 kilometers, is about to go into operational deployment.
Yes, the sponsors of the Taliban now have over a 100 nuclear missiles. Pakistan has more nuclear weapons than its former colonial masters in London do. How many will it have 10 years from now, while we keep on cutting our own arsenal? While we place Europe’s missile shield in Turkey, another Islamist state.
Pakistan’s missiles can’t reach London yet. Depending on where they launch from. But they will be able to. And then New York and Washington D.C. If they dispense with the warheads, they have enough to destroy every city in the US with a population above 200,000.
Again nothing to worry about. Just be very afraid of.
You know how afraid our governments are of Muslims, when all they can do is stage the occasional small scale of mass murder. How afraid are they going to be when they can kill 50 million people in a single day?
And how long do you think freedom of speech and religion will last when that day comes that the Muslim world forces the free world to choose?
Think about it, while there’s time. And think about how much US money given as payback for Pakistan’s on and off efforts against Al Qaeda was diverted to build those weapons.
Endgame.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Wheat Hoarding Likely to Be `Widespread,' Prompting Price Gains, UN Says
Wheat Hoarding Likely to Be `Widespread,' Prompting Price Gains, UN Says
By Luzi Ann Javier -
Bloomberg
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Feb 10, 2011 1:00 AM PT
Global wheat harvests may trail demand for a second year, spurring hoarding and further price gains, said the United Nations. Photographer: Kevin Lee/Bloomberg
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Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Alexia Howard, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, talks about the impact of higher wheat, corn and soybean prices on packaged food companies, including Kraft Foods Inc., Sara Lee Corp. and Campbell Soup Co. Howard speaks with Pimm Fox on Bloomberg Television's "Taking Stock." (Source: Bloomberg)
Global wheat harvests may trail demand for a second year, spurring hoarding and further price gains, said the United Nations.
“Whenever you get the market as tight as we are now, hoarding becomes widespread,” Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, said in an interview by phone from Rome.
Wheat, corn and soybeans soared to the highest levels since 2008 yesterday as a U.S. government report showed smaller crops and rising demand are eroding global inventories. Governments from Beijing to Belgrade are raising imports, limiting exports or releasing supply from stockpiles to curb inflation. Wheat in Chicago, the global benchmark, soared 72 percent in the past year as drought and floods ruined crops. Dry weather threatens production in China, the top producer.
“We need at least a 3 percent to 4 percent increase in total wheat production,” Abbassian said yesterday. The drought in China may cut the chance of replenishing world stockpiles, he said. Inventories may drop 6.4 percent this year, FAO data show.
About 42 percent of the total area planted with wheat in China’s eight major producing provinces has been hurt by a dry spell that may last into the spring, Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu said in a statement yesterday. Rain on the North China Plain has been “substantially” below-normal since October, according to the FAO on Feb. 8.
Food Costs
Wheat prices may keep rising until the next harvest as importers speed up purchases to cool inflation, Abbassian said. The chances of them staying high or extending gains are stronger than for a decline in the next six months, he said.
Higher prices of wheat, rice, sugar and dairy products helped push the FAO’s Food Price Index to a record for a second straight month in January, stoking inflation in emerging economies. The past month’s protests in North Africa and the Middle East were partly linked to food costs.
China’s consumer prices advanced 3.3 percent last year, breaching a government target of 3 percent. The January rate may have accelerated to 5.4 percent, according to the median estimate of 26 economists surveyed by Bloomberg, from 4.6 percent in December. Inflation in Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, hit a 21-month high of 7.02 percent in January.
The People’s Bank of China on Feb. 8 raised the one-year lending rate by 0.25 percentage point to 6.06 percent and the one-year deposit rate an equivalent amount to 3 percent.
Shandong, Henan
The provinces hit hardest in China are Shandong, Jiangsu, Henan, Hebei and Shanxi, providing 67 percent of production in 2009, the FAO said on Feb. 8. China has 14 million hectares (34.6 million acres) planted with winter wheat in those areas, of which about 5.16 million hectares may have been hurt, it said.
China is the largest wheat consumer, representing about 17 percent of global use in the year to June 30, according to data from the London-based International Grains Council. The country’s wheat output may have dropped to 114.5 million tons at the last harvest from 115.1 million tons a year earlier, the USDA estimates. Macquarie Group Ltd. expects production to drop a further 4 million tons this year.
“For a country as big as China showing some early problems, it’s not very encouraging,” Abbassian said. “We decided to flag out China early to give signals to other countries. For spring planting, it could affect decision-making.”
Planting Response
China’s potential for increased imports in the year from July 1 may spur U.S. and European farmers to plant more at the expense of other crops, he said. Increased acres and normal weather in Russia may more than compensate for potential losses in China, helping rebuild inventories, he said.
Global wheat production will probably drop 4.3 percent to 653 million tons in 2010-2011 from the previous year, while demand may expand 1.2 percent to 667 million tons, the FAO said in December. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates output at 645.4 million tons and demand at 665.2 million tons. Without a sufficient increase in plantings and normal weather, output may lag behind demand in 2011-2012, he said.
Wheat for March delivery traded at $8.7925 a bushel in Chicago at 4:37 p.m. Singapore time today after climbing to $8.9325 a bushel yesterday, the highest price for the most active contract since August 2008. The price may climb as high as $9.13 this year, according to a Bloomberg survey in December.
Sales and shipments by the U.S. to Egypt, the biggest buyer, jumped to 2.9 million tons since June 1, more than sixfold the 455,630 tons a year earlier, according to USDA data.
Algeria, Morocco
Algeria bought 2.95 million tons of all origins from Dec. 16 to Jan. 26, according to crops office FranceAgriMer. That was “probably” the most the country bought in a five-week period, said Xavier Rousselin, FranceAgriMer’s head of arable crops.Loadings of French soft wheat destined for Morocco more than tripled to 1.16 million tons from 350,000 tons a year earlier, the company said. Hoarding of agricultural products will intensify, although it will have limited impact on prices because of sufficient supply, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts including Jeffrey Currie said in January.
To contact the reporter on this story: Luzi Ann Javier in Singapore at ljavier@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Poole at jpoole4@bloomberg.net
House Republican leaders poised to give in
House Republican leaders poised to give in to conservative demands for more spending cuts
By: CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent Dana Bash
Feb. 10, 2011
WASHINGTON (CNN) – House Republican leaders under fire from fellow conservatives for backtracking on a promise to cut $100 billion in spending this year are suddenly trying to meet that goal, according to a senior House GOP aide.
"Right now there are a lot of moving parts but the leadership is working with the RSC (Republican Study Committee), the freshmen and the (House) Appropriations Committee to coalesce around a unified strategy to cut $100 billion," the senior House GOP aide tells CNN. He would speak only off the record because he was discussing internal GOP deliberations.
House Republicans will likely unveil their spending cuts as soon as Thursday, as part of a bill the House plans to vote on next week to keep the government running through the rest of this year. The current spending bill expires March 4.
Last week House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, announced cuts he is recommending for the rest of the year that would add up to $35 billion when compared to spending levels currently funding the government. Ryan's proposed cuts would be $58 billion compared to spending recommended by President Barack Obama for 2011. Republican leaders say the reason for that is because the fiscal year is nearly half over, and the cuts they had planned reflect that.
Either way those cuts fall far short of the $100 billion this year that House Republicans vowed to slash in their so-called Pledge to America.
Conservative Republicans in both the House and the Senate have been pressuring House GOP leaders to keep that promise.
Earlier Wednesday, the House Appropriations Committee released a list of some 70 proposed cuts to programs and agencies, the first specifics Republicans have offered.
"Make no mistake; these cuts are not low-hanging fruit. These cuts are real and will impact every district across the country - including my own," said House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers of Kentucky in a statement.
Some of the highlights in that GOP spending cut list include: EPA, $1.6 billion; job training programs, $2 billion; community health centers, $1.3 billion; high-speed rail, $1 billion; family planning, $327 million; National Institutes of Health, $1 billion; NASA, $374 million; IRS, $593 million.
Still, conservatives made clear the total amount planned for the chopping block, $35 billion compared with current funding levels, was nowhere near enough.
For example, House Republican Jeff Flake of Arizona, a new member of the Appropriations Committee, opposed the overall levels set by the committee and warned that he planned to offer amendments pushing for the full $100 billion that GOP leaders proposed to cut.
CNN's Deirdre Walsh contributed to this report.
By: CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent Dana Bash
Feb. 10, 2011
WASHINGTON (CNN) – House Republican leaders under fire from fellow conservatives for backtracking on a promise to cut $100 billion in spending this year are suddenly trying to meet that goal, according to a senior House GOP aide.
"Right now there are a lot of moving parts but the leadership is working with the RSC (Republican Study Committee), the freshmen and the (House) Appropriations Committee to coalesce around a unified strategy to cut $100 billion," the senior House GOP aide tells CNN. He would speak only off the record because he was discussing internal GOP deliberations.
House Republicans will likely unveil their spending cuts as soon as Thursday, as part of a bill the House plans to vote on next week to keep the government running through the rest of this year. The current spending bill expires March 4.
Last week House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, announced cuts he is recommending for the rest of the year that would add up to $35 billion when compared to spending levels currently funding the government. Ryan's proposed cuts would be $58 billion compared to spending recommended by President Barack Obama for 2011. Republican leaders say the reason for that is because the fiscal year is nearly half over, and the cuts they had planned reflect that.
Either way those cuts fall far short of the $100 billion this year that House Republicans vowed to slash in their so-called Pledge to America.
Conservative Republicans in both the House and the Senate have been pressuring House GOP leaders to keep that promise.
Earlier Wednesday, the House Appropriations Committee released a list of some 70 proposed cuts to programs and agencies, the first specifics Republicans have offered.
"Make no mistake; these cuts are not low-hanging fruit. These cuts are real and will impact every district across the country - including my own," said House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers of Kentucky in a statement.
Some of the highlights in that GOP spending cut list include: EPA, $1.6 billion; job training programs, $2 billion; community health centers, $1.3 billion; high-speed rail, $1 billion; family planning, $327 million; National Institutes of Health, $1 billion; NASA, $374 million; IRS, $593 million.
Still, conservatives made clear the total amount planned for the chopping block, $35 billion compared with current funding levels, was nowhere near enough.
For example, House Republican Jeff Flake of Arizona, a new member of the Appropriations Committee, opposed the overall levels set by the committee and warned that he planned to offer amendments pushing for the full $100 billion that GOP leaders proposed to cut.
CNN's Deirdre Walsh contributed to this report.