Detroit - Results of Liberal policies

The Next Wave of Housing Crashes

How things have changed

How life changes...

OLD VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.
CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'

ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome." Then Rev. .Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight. Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an
interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bug and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Czar Green and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and once peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.
MORAL OF THE STORY: We're fucked!

Detroit's socialist nightmare is America's future

Source

Thursday, October 29, 2009
From Porter Stansberry in the S&A Digest:

One of the most important things to remember about socialism – or coercion of any kind – is it fails eventually because human beings have an innate desire for liberty and a strong need for personal property rights. In fact, the origins of government lie in the need of agricultural communities to protect themselves from violence and theft. So it is particularly ironic that in more recent times, it is government itself that has more frequently played the role of bandit. When you start taxing people at extreme rates to pay for socialist "benefits," when you start telling them which schools their children must attend, when you start giving jobs away to people based on race instead of ability... you quash human freedom, which bogs down productivity... and if continued for long enough, leads to social collapse.

I find it perplexing that only 20 years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the West continues to implement laws that mimic all of the failed policies of our former "communist" foes. In fact, our current president won the election by promising to "spread the wealth around." But... truth be told... we don't have to look to Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union to find a society destroyed by coercion, socialism, and the overreaching power of the State. We could just look at Detroit...

In 1961, the last Republican mayor of Detroit lost his re-election bid to a young, intelligent Democrat, with the overwhelming support of newly organized black voters. His name was Jerome Cavanagh. The incumbent was widely considered to be corrupt (and later served 10 years in prison for tax evasion). Cavanagh, a white man, pandered to poor underclass black voters. He marched with Martin Luther King down the streets of Detroit in 1963. (Of course, marching with King was the right thing to do... It's just Cavanagh's motives were political not moral.) He instated aggressive affirmative action policies at City Hall. And most critically, he greatly expanded the role of the government in Detroit, taking advantage of President Lyndon Johnson's "Model Cities Program" – the first great experiment in centralized urban planning.

Mayor Cavanagh was the only elected official to serve on Johnson's task force. And Detroit received widespread acclaim for its leadership in the program, which attempted to turn a nine-square-mile section of the city (with 134,000 inhabitants) into a "model city." More than $400 million was spent trying to turn inner cities into shining new monuments to government planning. In short, the feds and Democratic city mayors were soon telling people where to live, what to build, and what businesses to open or close. In return, the people received cash, training, education, and health care.

The Model Cities program was a disaster for Detroit. But it did accomplish its real goal: The creation of a state-supported, Democratic political power base. The program also resulted in much higher taxes – which were easy to pitch to poor voters who didn't have to pay them. Cavanagh pushed a new income tax through the state legislature and a "commuter tax" on city workers.

Unfortunately, as with all socialist programs, lots of folks simply don't like being told what to do. Lots of folks don't like being plundered by the government. They don't like losing their jobs because of their race.

In Detroit, they didn't like paying new, large taxes to fund a largely black and Democratic political hegemony. And so, in 1966, more than 22,000 middle- and upper-class residents moved out of the city.

But what about the poor? As my friend Doug Casey likes to say, in the War on Poverty, the poor lost the most. In July 1967, police attempted to break up a late-night party in the middle of the new "Model City." The scene turned into the worst race riot of the 1960s. The violence killed more than 40 people and left more than 5,000 people homeless. One of the first stores to be looted was the black-owned pharmacy. The largest black-owned clothing store in the city was also burned to the ground. Cavanagh did nothing to stop the riots, fearing a large police presence would make matters worse. Five days later, Johnson sent in two divisions of paratroopers to put down the insurrection. Over the next 18 months, an additional 140,000 upper- and middle-class residents – almost all of them white – left the city.

And so, you might rightfully ask... after five years of centralized planning, higher taxes, and a fleeing population, what did the government decide to do with its grand experiment, its "Model City"? You'll never guess....

Seeing it had accomplished nothing but failure, the government endeavored to do still more. The Model City program was expanded and enlarged by 1974's Community Development Block Grant Program. Here again, politicians would decide which groups (and even individuals) would receive state funds for various "renewal" schemes. Later, Big Business was brought into the fold. In exchange for various concessions, the Big Three automakers "gave" $488 million to the city for use in still more redevelopment schemes in the mid-1990s.

What happened? Even with all of their power and all of the money, centralized planners couldn't succeed with any of their plans. Nearly all of the upper and middle class left Detroit. The poor fled, too. The Model City area lost 63% of its population and 45% of its housing units from the inception of the program through 1990.

Even today, the crisis continues. At a recent auction of nearly 9,000 seized homes and lots, less than one-fifth of the available properties sold, even with bidding starting at $500. You literally can't give away most of the "Model City" areas today. The properties put up for sale last week represented an area the size of New York's Central Park. Total vacant land in Detroit now occupies an area the size of Boston – Detroit properties in foreclosure have more than tripled since 2007.

Every single mayor of Detroit since 1961 has been a Democrat. Every single mayor of Detroit since 1974 has been black. Detroit has been a major recipient of every major social program since the early 1960s and has received hundreds of billions of dollars in government grants, loans, and programs. We now have a black, Democrat president, who is promising to do to America as a whole what his political mentors have done to Detroit.

Those of you with a Democratic political affiliation may think what I've written above is biased or false. You may think what you like. But there is no way to argue that what the government has done to Detroit is anything but a horrendous crime. You may think what I've written above is merely a political analysis. Perhaps so, but politicians drive macroeconomic policy. And macroeconomic policy determines key financial metrics, like the trade-weighted value of a currency and key interest rates.

The likelihood America will become a giant Detroit is growing – rapidly. Politicians now control the banking sector, most of the manufacturing sector (including autos), a large amount of media, and are threatening to take over health care and the production of electricity (via cap and trade rules). These are the biggest threats to wealth in the history of our country. And these threats are causing the world's most accomplished and wealthy investors to actively short sell the United States – something that is unprecedented in my experience.

The bankruptcy of the United States is now certain

Source

From Porter Stansberry in the S&A Digest:

It's one of those numbers that's so unbelievable you have to actually think about it for a while... Within the next 12 months, the U.S. Treasury will have to refinance $2 trillion in short-term debt. And that's not counting any additional deficit spending, which is estimated to be around $1.5 trillion. Put the two numbers together. Then ask yourself, how in the world can the Treasury borrow $3.5 trillion in only one year? That's an amount equal to nearly 30% of our entire GDP. And we're the world's biggest economy. Where will the money come from?

How did we end up with so much short-term debt? Like most entities that have far too much debt - whether subprime borrowers, GM, Fannie, or GE - the U.S. Treasury has tried to minimize its interest burden by borrowing for short durations and then "rolling over" the loans when they come due. As they say on Wall Street, "a rolling debt collects no moss." What they mean is, as long as you can extend the debt, you have no problem. Unfortunately, that leads folks to take on ever greater amounts of debt… at ever shorter durations… at ever lower interest rates. Sooner or later, the creditors wake up and ask themselves: What are the chances I will ever actually be repaid? And that's when the trouble starts. Interest rates go up dramatically. Funding costs soar. The party is over. Bankruptcy is next.

When governments go bankrupt it's called "a default." Currency speculators figured out how to accurately predict when a country would default. Two well-known economists - Alan Greenspan and Pablo Guidotti - published the secret formula in a 1999 academic paper. That's why the formula is called the Greenspan-Guidotti rule. The rule states: To avoid a default, countries should maintain hard currency reserves equal to at least 100% of their short-term foreign debt maturities. The world's largest money management firm, PIMCO, explains the rule this way: "The minimum benchmark of reserves equal to at least 100% of short-term external debt is known as the Greenspan-Guidotti rule. Greenspan-Guidotti is perhaps the single concept of reserve adequacy that has the most adherents and empirical support."

The principle behind the rule is simple. If you can't pay off all of your foreign debts in the next 12 months, you're a terrible credit risk. Speculators are going to target your bonds and your currency, making it impossible to refinance your debts. A default is assured.

So how does America rank on the Greenspan-Guidotti scale? It's a guaranteed default. The U.S. holds gold, oil, and foreign currency in reserve. The U.S. has 8,133.5 metric tonnes of gold (it is the world's largest holder). That's 16,267,000 pounds. At current dollar values, it's worth around $300 billion. The U.S. strategic petroleum reserve shows a current total position of 725 million barrels. At current dollar prices, that's roughly $58 billion worth of oil. And according to the IMF, the U.S. has $136 billion in foreign currency reserves. So altogether... that's around $500 billion of reserves. Our short-term foreign debts are far bigger.

According to the U.S. Treasury, $2 trillion worth of debt will mature in the next 12 months. So looking only at short-term debt, we know the Treasury will have to finance at least $2 trillion worth of maturing debt in the next 12 months. That might not cause a crisis if we were still funding our national debt internally. But since 1985, we've been a net debtor to the world. Today, foreigners own 44% of all our debts, which means we owe foreign creditors at least $880 billion in the next 12 months - an amount far larger than our reserves.

Keep in mind, this only covers our existing debts. The Office of Management and Budget is predicting a $1.5 trillion budget deficit over the next year. That puts our total funding requirements on the order of $3.5 trillion over the next 12 months.

So… where will the money come from? Total domestic savings in the U.S. are only around $600 billion annually. Even if we all put every penny of our savings into U.S. Treasury debt, we're still going to come up nearly $3 trillion short. That's an annual funding requirement equal to roughly 40% of GDP. Where is the money going to come from? From our foreign creditors? Not according to Greenspan-Guidotti. And not according to the Indian or the Russian central bank, which have stopped buying Treasury bills and begun to buy enormous amounts of gold. The Indians bought 200 metric tonnes this month. Sources in Russia say the central bank there will double its gold reserves.

So where will the money come from? The printing press. The Federal Reserve has already monetized nearly $2 trillion worth of Treasury debt and mortgage debt. This weakens the value of the dollar and devalues our existing Treasury bonds. Sooner or later, our creditors will face a stark choice: Hold our bonds and continue to see the value diminish slowly, or try to escape to gold and see the value of their U.S. bonds plummet.

One thing they're not going to do is buy more of our debt. Which central banks will abandon the dollar next? Brazil, Korea, and Chile. These are the three largest central banks that own the least amount of gold. None own even 1% of their total reserves in gold.

I examined these issues in much greater detail in the most recent issue of my newsletter, Porter Stansberry's Investment Advisory, which we published last Friday. Coincidentally, the New York Times repeated our warnings - nearly word for word - in its paper today. (They didn't mention Greenspan-Guidotti, however... It's a real secret of international speculators.)

Crux Note: The S&A Digest comes free with a subscription to Porter Stansberry's Investment Advisory. Porter says his latest issue is the most important he's ever written. If you don't act right now to protect yourself from the dollar, he thinks the odds are very high you'll be wiped out over the next 12 months. To learn more, click here.

Who's Who of Climategate

Global Warming Hoax

He's Barack Obama

Glenn Beck: The Extremist Agenda

Fall of the Republic

Obama Deception

Population Reduction! What The World Refuses To See!!

Climate Treaty Will Create World Government Dictatorship

NoWorldSystem.com
October 20, 2009

The Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations will hold their 15th conference on climate change through December 7-18th. At the conference, globalists like Obama will sign the ‘Copenhagen Climate Change Treaty’ that will replace the Kyoto treaty that is set to expire in 2012.

Lord Christopher Monckton, the man who warned many this week of the treaty appeared on Glenn Beck’s radio program, he makes it clear that the treaty will create a World Government Dictatorship that will have complete authority over all nations by intervening in the economy and environment of any individual country in the world without consent. The treaty will also allow the distribution of wealth from developed countries like the U.S. to Third World Countries like Africa, in other words; taxpayer-funded socialist welfare!





The reason why many believe Obama will sign this new global treaty is because Obama has supported global tax legislation in the past which would have given $845 billion of foreign aid to Third World Countries to satisfy the United Nations’ goal of reducing poverty by 2015.

Here’s what the Copenhagen treaty draft says about the distribution of wealth:

17. [[Developed [and developing] countries] [Developed and developing
country Parties] [All Parties] [shall] [should]:](a) Compensate for damage to
the Lesser Developed Countries’ economy and also compensate for lost
opportunities, resources, lives, land and dignity, as many will become
environmental refugees;(b) Africa, in the context of environmental justice,
should be equitably compensated for environmental, social and economic losses
arising from the implementation of response measures.

Meanwhile globalists like Brown are using fear of impending doom saying if the Copenhagen treaty is not passed that man-made Global Warming will do permanent damage to the globe.: “We must make history.” “If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement in some future period can undo that choice. By then it will be irretrievably too late. So we should never allow ourselves to lose sight of the catastrophe we face if present warming trends continue.”



Al Gore has said, ”This treaty must be negotiated this year. Not next year. This year.”

The creation of a New World Order has been in the works for decades, technically America is already under the thumb of World Government in more ways than one. To understand what is about to take place in America we have to understand that Agenda 21 is the blueprint for a New World Order of the 21st century.

Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which humans exist.

You can read the entire UN document here.

Excerpt: “Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.”





According to Agenda 21 the future the globalists would like to have is a world full of conservation of wildlife, but complete bureaucratic rule over all aspects of human life where essentially humans are treated like dirt and everything we do will be subjected to inventory. When you think about the phrase ‘New World Order’ just think about mass de-population of mankind, the total enslavement of man, forcing humans into compact cities surrounded by protected wildlife where he is prohibited from entering, a socialist distribution of wealth, the complete control of all governments wealth and power in the hands of a few oligarchical dictators in the United Nations. It all sounds like a movie straight out of Hollywood, but the reality is globalists are moving forward at an exponential rate this year and pushing this treaty on America would mean complete servitude to the United Nations.
Last updated by infolution on October 20, 2009 at 9:01pm PST

Lord Christopher Monckton Speaking at Bethel University

On Global Warming and Obama Ceeding Sovereignty to the NWO

CNN Host shows colors (literally)

Original article

CNN's Tony Harris is so pumped-up as the Olympic Committee is about to announce their first cuts. This reminds me of his despairing reaction to the Cambridge, MA cop who "acted stupidly" announcing that he and his department would not apologize to Obama and their demanding Obama apologize. I will embed that clip below today's announcement.

Here's the same reaction by CNN's Tony Harris when the Cambridge, MA Police Dept. announced they would not apologize for "acting stupidly."

How Breitbart Conquered ACORN

Save America! US on slippery slope to economic collapse

Peter Schiff: Americans must prepare for deepening unemployment, inflation and possible breadlines

Celente: Revolution next for U.S

Webster Tarpley: US Dollar is Dead

Sharia in the US

The Unsustainable Debt

Obama Proposes New Law 'Prevention Detention'

Hyperinflation Nation

The Democrats and Obama caused the financial crisis

The FED is a ponzi scheme

Obama Helps Banksters Loot American Economy

By Paul Craig Roberts

Link

There is no economy left to recover. The US manufacturing economy was lost to offshoring and free trade ideology. It was replaced by a mythical "New Economy."

The "New Economy" was based on services. Its artificial life was fed by the Federal Reserve’s artificially low interest rates, which produced a real estate bubble, and by "free market" financial deregulation, which unleashed financial gangsters to new heights of debt leverage and fraudulent financial products.

The real economy was traded away for a make-believe economy. When the make-believe economy collapsed, Americans’ wealth in their real estate, pensions, and savings collapsed dramatically while their jobs disappeared.

The debt economy caused Americans to leverage their assets. They refinanced their homes and spent the equity. They maxed out numerouscredit cards. They worked as many jobs as they could find. Debt expansion and multiple family incomes kept the economy going.

And now suddenly Americans can’t borrow in order to spend. They are over their heads in debt. Jobs are disappearing. America’s consumer economy, approximately 70% of GDP, is dead. Those Americans who still have jobs are saving against the prospect of job loss. Millions are homeless. Some have moved in with family and friends; others are living in tent cities.

Meanwhile the US government’s budget deficit has jumped from $455 billion in 2008 to $2,000 billion this year, with another $2,000 billion on the books for 2010. And President Obama has intensified America’s expensive war of aggression in Afghanistan and initiated a new war in Pakistan.

There is no way for these deficits to be financed except by printing money or by further collapse in stock markets that would drive people out of equity into bonds.

The US government’s budget is 50% in the red. That means half of every dollar the federal government spends must be borrowed or printed. Because of the worldwide debacle caused by Wall Street’s financial gangsterism, the world needs its own money and hasn’t $2 trillion annually to lend to Washington.

As dollars are printed, the growing supply adds to the pressure on the dollar’s role as reserve currency. Already America’s largest creditor, China, isadmonishing Washington to protect China’s investment in US debt and lobbying for a new reserve currency to replace the dollar before it collapses. According to various reports, China is spending down its holdings of US dollars by acquiring gold and stocks of raw materials and energy.

The price of one ounce gold coins is $1,000 despite efforts of the US government to hold down the gold price. How high will this price jump when the rest of the world decides that the bankruptcy of "the world’s only superpower" is at hand?

And what will happen to America’s ability to import not only oil, but also the manufactured goods on which it is import-dependent?

When the over-supplied US dollar loses the reserve currency role, the US will no longer be able to pay for its massive imports of real goods and services with pieces of paper. Overnight, shortages will appear and Americans will be poorer.

Nothing in Presidents Bush and Obama’s economic policy addresses the real issues.

Instead, Goldman Sachs was bailed out, more than once. As Eliot Spitzer said, the banks made a "bloody fortune" with US aid.

It was not the millions of now homeless homeowners who were bailed out. It was not the scant remains of American manufacturing—General Motors and Chrysler—that were bailed out. It was the Wall Street Banks.

According to Bloomberg.com, Goldman Sachs’ current record earnings from their free or low cost capital supplied by broke American taxpayers has led the firm to decide to boost compensation and benefits by 33 percent. On an annual basis, this comes to compensation of $773,000 per employee.

This should tell even the most dimwitted patriot who "their" government represents.

The worst of the economic crisis has not yet hit. I don’t mean the rest of the real estate crisis that is waiting in the wings. Home prices will fall further when the foreclosed properties currently held off the market are dumped. Store and office closings are adversely impacting the ability of owners of shopping malls and office buildings to make their mortgage payments. Commercial real estate loans were also securitized and turned into derivatives.

The real crisis awaits us. It is the crisis of high unemployment, of stagnant and declining real wages confronted with rising prices from the printing of money to pay the government’s bills and from the dollar’s loss of exchange value. Suddenly, Wal-Mart prices will look like Nieman Marcus prices.

Retirees dependent on state pension systems, which cannot print money, might not be paid, or might be paid with IOUs. They will not even have depreciating money with which to try to pay their bills. Desperate tax authorities will squeeze the remaining life out of the middle class.

Nothing in Obama’s economic policy is directed at saving the US dollar as reserve currency or the livelihoods of the American people. Obama’s policy, like Bush’s before him, is keyed to the enrichment of Goldman Sachs and the armament industries.

Matt Taibbi describes Goldman Sachs as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentless jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." [Rolling Stone, July 13, 2009] Look at theGoldman Sachs representatives in the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. This bankster firm controls the economic policy of the United States.

Little wonder that Goldman Sachs has record earnings while the rest of us grow poorer by the day.

Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economyand Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Clickhere for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

Goldman Sachs Conspiracy

National Debt Roadtrip

Pallywood - Mohammad Badwan

The amazing life and deeds of Mohammed Badwan - The Human Shield

Imagine a Palestinian boy who, as any other boy, liked football, playing in the yard, taunting his sisters, catching flies, running away from the boring lessons at school, etc. All was well with Mohammed Badwan until the the black magic of the Israeli military drastically changed the life of the lad. Here is his picture - during the first encounter with IDF:

The first time the name of the youngster comes up in the Palestinian chronicles is an article (_adalah.org/eng/pressreleases/04_05_03nl.php_) on the Adalah site:

Most recently, on 15 April 2004, the Israeli military used Mohammed Badwan, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy from Biddo, West Bank as a human shield. Mohammed was taking part in a demonstration against the construction of The Wall in Biddo.

Not nice, agreed. But obviously the boy made a lasting impression on the Zionist aggressors, because a week barely passed, and he is used again - and in the same capacity (but now he is an year older). Electronic Intifada (_electronicintifada.net/v2/article2614.shtml_) knows the details:

According to the same sources, on 22nd April 2004, a 13 year old boy called Mohammed Said Essa Badwan/Badran was used as a human shield. Mohammed was peacefully taking part in spontaneous demonstration...

It becomes a habit with IDF (or with young Mohammed) apparently. Or, you can say, an innocent mistake in the date - nothing special.

But the amazing career of young Muhammad is only budding, just wait a bit. He is used again, now, according to Amnesty International (_amnestyusa.org/annualreport.php?id=ar&yr=2005&c=ISR_) report for 2005:

In April, Israeli soldiers used 13-year-old Muhammed Badwan as a "human shield" during a demonstration in the West Bank village of Biddu. The soldiers placed the boy on the hood of their jeep and tied him to the front windscreen to discourage Palestinian demonstrators from throwing stones in their direction.

Notice that he is still 13 years old. Again, it could be a clerical mistake, but the boy shows resilience and is highly reusable in his role of a human shield. This is probably why the Zionists decided to put him in some (hitherto secret) suspended animation machine. Apparently his age plays a critical role in their nefarious plans, since the next record of his appearance relates to 2007 (_lists.resist.ca/pipermail/onthebarricades/2008-April/000480.html_):

Palestinain children as young as 11 were used as human shields during an Israeli military invasion of Nablus in March 2007. 13 year-old Mohammad Badwan was tied by the arm to an Israeli military jeep...

It is Nablus now and three years later, but he is still 13 years old! And March of 2007 sees his return to Bidou in the same role. According to the Live Leak (_liveleak.com/view?i=76d_1173007758_)

Israeli human rights activists have accused border police of using a 13-year-old Palestinian as a human shield. Rabbis for Human Rights say that Mohammed Badwan was tied by police to a jeep during a recent demonstration in the West Bank village of Bidou.

This was posted in March 2007 too. Surely our boy gets around. Besides, is it possible that he's developed some affinity for a specific border police jeep? Because the picture used is usually the same, sometimes cropped and sometimes not.

And if you thought for a moment that the wretched semi-existence of Mohammad, which could be described as frozen - woken up - tied to a jeep - frozen again, has a happy end, you are mistaken, because he was activated again recently - in 2009, according to Pakistani Scandals (_pakistaniscandals.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/palestinian-child-used-as-human-shield-by-israel_):

This is what happened to a Palestinian child who joined Teenagers throwing stones at Israeli border police. Muhammad Badwan was grabbed by officers and tied by an arm to the grille covering the windscreen of their security vehicle. Last night the 13 year olds father said the police had illegally used his son as a human Shield to try to stop the demonstrators throwing stones at them.

There are more events with different dates where Muhammad participated, but I hope you have got the picture by now.

American capitalism gone with a whimper

Original Article


It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Stanislav Mishin

Ronald Reagan as if talking to Obama

1964 Republican National Convention - "A Time for Choosing"


If you don't have the time, here's the excerpts

"...Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy "accommodation." And they say if we'll only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he'll forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer—not an easy answer—but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right.

We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we're willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Now let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace—and you can have it in the next second—surrender.

Admittedly, there's a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face—that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand—the ultimatum. And what then—when Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we're retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he's heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he'd rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us.

You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin—just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well it's a simple answer after all.

You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." "There is a point beyond which they must not advance." And this—this is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said, "The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we're spirits—not animals." And he said, "There's something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."...

Muslim Demographics

Obama’s Grand Delusion about Iran

A clearer, tougher policy is required — urgently.

Original article

May 1, 2009- by 'Reza Kahlili'

President Obama must be clear and concise with his policy toward Tehran. An Iran with nukes must never be allowed. The mullahs must abandon their enrichment activity and allow full International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections of all suspected sites. And they must stop supporting terrorism. Only then should they be welcomed by the world community.

If the mullahs continue to defy U.N. Security Council resolutions, there must be serious consequences. It could start with a naval blockade of Iran’s refined oil imports, which account for almost half of its domestic consumption. If that does not persuade them, then taking out the mullahs’ nuclear installations would be a better solution than facing a nuclear-armed Iran. Hesitation with Iran will only result in an inevitable nuclear confrontation with dire consequences, not only for Iranians but the region and the world.

The mullahs’ lobbyists in the U.S. have been trying hard to influence the Obama administration with their delusional picture of the leaders of Iran. The mullahs say a softer tone will earn their love and that their problems are not with America but with Israel.

In a recent New York Times column, Roger Cohen defended the mullahs against claims that they are a messianic apocalyptic cult. He said the regime is “the same ‘messianic apocalyptic cult’ that has survived 30 years, ushered the country from the penury of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war … cooperated with America on Afghanistan before being consigned to ‘the axis of evil,’ and kept its country at peace in the 21st century.”

Apparently, Mr. Cohen has been living in a cave for the past 30 years, during which the Iranian regime was busy with the bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, the torture and killing of American hostages such as CIA agent William Buckley in 1985, the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, and the bombings of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994 and the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996. Other atrocities include:

• the massacre of as many as 30,000 political prisoners in 1988
• the stabbing and mutilation in France of Shahpour Bakhtiar in 1991 — the last prime minister under the shah — and the ensuing release of a French hostage by Hezbollah in exchange for the French turning a blind eye to the killing
• the Mafia-style assassination of the Kurdish opposition leaders in Germany in 1992 (Mykonos Trial)
• the serial killings of Iranian dissident intellectuals in 1998
• the 1998 stabbing and mutilation of the leader of Iran’s National Party and his wife (Dariush and Parvaneh Forouhar) while tied to the chair in their home facing Mecca
• the killing of the students in their uprising of July 1999
• the 2003 rape, torture, and killing of Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian/Canadian reporter in Tehran
• and the recent imprisonment of Roxana Saberi , a U.S. journalist on trumped-up charges of espionage.
• some of the highest-ranking Iranian authorities are currently either on Interpol’s most-wanted list or have arrest warrants issued for them by several courts around the world for their terrorist activities.

Mr. Cohen also claimed after a short visit to Iran that life was not that bad for the Iranian Jews under the Islamic rule of the mullahs. I guess Mr. Cohen did not get the chance to talk with the Jews who were blindfolded and taken in front of an execution squad and told they were going to die unless they signed a confession letter admitting they spied for Israel. He probably didn’t have the opportunity to talk to those Jews who, out of fear, converted to Islam but still had their passports confiscated every time they came back from a trip outside of Iran and had to put up with hair-raising questioning sessions in the Revolutionary Courts about their travels.

Mr. Cohen, a short visit to Iran does not make you an expert. I have lived it and seen it. I was a member of the Revolutionary Guards and chose to spy for America, thus putting my life and the lives of my family on the line to help America see the truth about the mullahs and the true aspirations of the great people of Iran.

It’s time to learn from past mistakes and understand the seriousness of the situation. A nuclear-capable Iran will create uncertainty, havoc, and total imbalance in world order. If one thinks the proliferation of arms by Iran to Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Iraqi militants, the Taliban, Sudan’s radical regime, and many terrorist groups around the world is a problem now, wait until dirty bombs show up everywhere.

The mullahs will sit at the negotiating table and shake hands, but as they have done for the past 30 years, they will sting you in the end just like a scorpion, for it is their nature to help Islam conquer the world. The Quran is their best guidance: deceive your enemies until such time as you are powerful enough to destroy them.

“Today Iran, with the grace of God, is controlling the entire nuclear fuel cycle,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on state television of the nuclear fuel facility in Isfahan, which is capable of producing 10 tons of nuclear fuel annually. Once fully operational, it could produce sufficient plutonium for two nuclear weapons a year.

Iranian officials have also announced an increase in the number of centrifuges at Iran’s uranium enrichment facility in Natanz (7,000, up from 6,000) and indicated their progress in testing a more advanced type of centrifuge.

It is estimated that Iran currently possesses over 26 kilograms of U-235 in its stockpile of low-enriched uranium and produces close to two kilograms more a month. The amount needed for a first-generation atomic bomb is 21.6 kilograms, and the time needed for the conversion of low-enriched uranium to weapons grade uranium is estimated to be two to six months. This is while the Revolutionary Guards, with the help of North Korea, are working on long-range ballistic missiles in tests that are concealed by its space project. As long as America continues to step back from its red line, both Iran and North Korea will take a more offensive posture in their policies.

Learn the lessons of history, Mr. President. If you don’t, the world is in peril.

____________________________________________________________
"Reza Kahlili" is a pseudonym for an ex-CIA spy whose code name is “Wally.” Currently residing in the United States, he is writing a book about his experiences as a CIA agent in Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

Israel’s Plight: 1948 and Today

Original article

The interview with historian Benny Morris that appears in today’sForeign Policy website raises interesting questions. Morris, as interviewer Evan R. Goldstein points out, was once a hero of the academic Left, and a leading advocate of the rights of Palestinians. But reality has over the years forced Morris to reconsider much of his early assumptions.

Now, he has, like the majority of his countrymen, become “more cynical about the prospects for a two-state solution.” He makes a basic argument: “The Palestinian national movement has never … reconciled itself to Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.” Once a supporter of the Oslo Accords, Morris has become what Goldstein calls an “embittered pessimist.” Like the shattered Israeli Left and once strong peace movement, Israelis know that they are not on the verge of peace, and that given Palestinian and Arab attitudes, the conflict may not be resolvable.

Every new American presidential administration, including that of Barack Obama, starts with the assumption that they are positioned as no one before has been to restart the “peace process.” The policy makers in the Obama administration think that given a new attitude and favorable response in the world to Obama’s charismatic personality, that he will succeed where others have failed.

If so, President Obama is poised to learn a tough lesson. He could save himself a great deal of trouble and useless “negotiating” by listening to Morris, and trying to come up with other solutions than another round of meaningless peace negotiations. It took the events of 2000 to shatter Morris’s own illusions. Not only did Arafat reject the offers of Barak and Clinton, but, says Morris, “they launched a terroristic and guerrilla war …suggesting that they are not just after the territories but want to drive the Jews out of Palestine.” Israel later unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005- though of course the Palestinians still call it “occupied Gaza,”-and the Palestinian response to Israel’s withdrawal “turned it into a base for rocket attacks.” Morris, who once went to prison for refusing to serve as a reservist in the occupied territories, now holds that the Palestinian’s irredentism is not going to disappear.

The proof is in the pudding. Israel agrees with Morris. The left-wing parties barely exist, and the center-right has won every Israeli election since 2001. Morris argues that the Palestinians believe the Jews have no legitimate right to be in Palestine and that they never did. The problem is the same one that existed in 1947 and 1948, when the Zionist movement accepted partition. Only they did. The Arab states then, and the Palestinian leadership now, do not. As Morris says: “Jewish Israeli society and Palestinian Arab societ are in a different place in terms of history, culture, and values.” Morris cites Muslim terrorism, the Muslim attitude towards women, and the long history of violence and hatred. That means, he sorrowfully concludes, that “it is inconceivable that a society of Jews and Arabs could function right now as one state in Palestine.” Morris has one potential solution: attaching the West Bank and Gaza to Jordan- already a majority Palestinian area- and making that the new Palestinian state.

That, of course is an old solution, rejected many times by Jordan, as well as Palestinian nationalists. But Morris argues it is more realistic and possible than any of the alternatives.

I, for one, think that Morris’ analysis of the hopelessness of a two-state solution as it is now proposed is correct. And it is not surprising. My wife and I have written a new book, which is being published today, and will be in bookstores by May 12^th if not before. Its title is A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel, and is published by Harper/Harper Collins. You can order ithere on Amazon.com.

One of the things we have found is that if you look back at Israel’s origins, and the problems facing President Truman from 1945 to 1948, is the continued rejectionism of the Arab and Palestinian leadership back then. When the UN set up a special commission to investigate a potential solution for Palestine, Jamal Husseini, vice chair of the Arab Higher Committee, told the UN that Palestinian Arabs would not collaborate with the UN commission and would not even testify before it. When the UNSCOP commission finally came out for a two state solution, the Arab League denounced partition and Zionism as completely illegitimate. Palestine, as the minister of foreign affairs for Trans-Jordan put it, had to be “an Arab state.” Husseini added that the Arab would drench the Holy Land “with the last drop of our blood in the lawful defense of all and every inch of it.” They had a simple goal: “no partition, no further Jewish immigration and no Jewish State.” Going back to ancient times, he and other Arab leaders argued that Jews had no ties to Palestine at all, and that the Zionists sought to take it “from the Arab inhabitants.”

When the UN finally voted for partition on Nov. 29, 1947, the Arab delegates stormed out of the UN hall. Prince Faisal of Saudi Arabia and Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League, stood up, one journalist wrote, “their white robes and headdresses shook as the mentioned to the delegates from the other Arab states to follow them. At the door…Pasha shouted, ‘Any line of partition drawn in Palestine will be a line of fire and blood.” And as the world learned, when Israel was created on May 15, 1948—five Arab nations immediately invaded the new Jewish state.

The story is the same, decades ago, and today. The Israelis opt for peace; the Arabs opt for an all Arab Palestine, without Jews. Sometimes, history does not move very far.

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Comments

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Professor Guvinoff:

When we use words like “problem” and “solution” we tacitly suppose that each “problem” has a “solution” that will come with it, to be discovered through the exercise of logic. This is quite appropriate in the realm of home work assignments or examination tests in math and science.

The “problem” the UN was supposed to solve with the creation of Israel was not a mathematical issue at all. The absolute hate towards the jews has been “written”, as often repeated in the movie “Lawrence of Arabia”, some 14 centuries ago, and there is no detectable effort to unwrite it, anymore than the UN is about to negociate a resolution on the “Excesses of the Koran”.

The obstacle to the security of Israel is not a “problem”, like any logical challenge would be, so any statement regarding the pursuit of a “solution” is at best a contrivance towards some other purpose.

Instead of admitting honestly that there is no legal remedy to the existencial threats faced by Israel, we keep “discussing” the “solution”.

The rare palestinians who are offering any respect towards the jews, like Wafa Younes (spelling?), the young lady who conducted a small orchestra of a dozen or so palestinian kids, who performed a concert for a jewish retirement home recently, are repudiated by the palestinians authorities.

I hope her and her musicians are safe, but I worry.

The so-called “peace process” is still an abstraction, which cannot materialize unless some serious behavior modification comes first.

Detoxification from alcohol and other substances is possible, but it takes a long time and a lot of courage. We don’t hear about “haters anonymous” groups popping up left and right in the middle east. In the meantime, Israel can only be practical and diligent about its security, because rockets, amateurish or else, cannot be countered by feelings alone.