The Official Newsletter of the Alphatraz Deathcamp Survivor’s Society
The Alphatraz Gazetteer
The Free Press Demanded by a Free People
The Official Newsletter of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy & The Conservative Underground Resistance
4th Resurrected Detroit Edition Ya’ can’t Dog a DOG!
My Two Cents,
By Mark E. Juppe, Imperial, Exalted Editor For Life
& Grand Imperial Pooh Baah
New Columnist
Oil Spill
It seems pretty clear and obvious to me that Chairman Obama never
had any desire or intention of protecting the gulf shores. This to me is
illustrated best by the grounding of the 16 barges by the Coast Guard because
they required certifications of life vests and fire extinguishers.
It is Obama’s intention to make this, THE Three Mile Island of oil
drilling. By the way, I might remind all my readers that nobody died during
the drama at Three Mile Island. But Jane Fonda, Jack Lemon & Michael
Douglas made that that was forgotten, while making a fortune off of the
movie, “China Syndrome.”
No Budget
The Democrats have come right out and told the pubic that they will
not present a budget to the congress this year on 1 October. My thought on
this subject is that they know full well that if they did, and with all of the press
coverage that the annual budget gets every year, that they are doing this
because the press would then HAVE to run stories on the trillions of dollars in
deficit spending that are projected far beyond the foreseeable future.
The fingerprints of the Government’s Ponzie scheme with Medicare
& Medicaid to help pay for Obamacare will come to light, and Obamacare
itself, Cap & Trade, Projected Energy tax increases, Value Added Taxation
plans, all will brightly on display for all the world to see. And that such a
sight will turn the stomach of even the most fanatically loyal and devote of
Kool Aide drinkers!
Life is a STRUGGLE! Enjoy it! Lick the Blade!!!
30 May 2010
Can you imagine the huge and cry that the press would bemoan if
the congress tried this under a Republican President?
Stan McCrystal
Every General knows the implications of his comments. Both on
& off the record. Now I am still unclear as to any quotes directly attributed
to McCrystal. But, it could be that he said something knowing full well that
this would win him a final trip home. Thomas Sowell has a column in this
issue regarding just that.
Patreaus
Yes, he now has a demotion. Being assigned to the post of his
subordinate unit commander, McCrystal. This should be some indication of
the contempt that this White House has for him. Although I don’t know
why. It was Patreaus who put into effect this policy of “if you make contact,
break contact.” This to me, IS THE HEIGHT OF STUPIDITY!!! If it is not
our intention to defeat the enemy on the battlefield, wherever and whenever
he is met, then what the fuck are we doing there? Is this some mad man’s
game of metal masturbation???!!!
If he does NOT understand, that if we don’t defeat them there, that
we will have to try and defeat them HERE, then this man is NOT a war
fighter. He is a tool of the administration, for whom he has carried more
water than Gunga Din, and has just been rewarded with a slap in the face.
The fact that the Taliban has given their endorsement, should say
it all.
Afghan Smuggling
It was announced yesterday (6/28/10), that many of the Afghan
Political Elite have been flying out Billions of US dollars in AID (Agency
for International Development-US State Department Office), money from
Kabul airport for the past 18 months. Such were the results of a Joint
Customs & DEA Investigation in Afghanistan.
Yes, the rats are jumping from the sinking ship. We all knew it
was coming.
Russian Spies
Just in case one of you ever by chance gets to see a copy of this
issue; Job Well Done! But we’ll NEVER let you see us bleed!
Until July, With Warmest Regards,
Mark E. Juppe
Letters To & From the Editor
A New Subscriber & Associate…
We have just been contacted by another publisher, by the
name of Chris Graham, publisher of “The Counter Terrorist
Magazine: www.thecounterterroristmag.com
I think this is a stellar publication, with first rate articles and
analysis. I highly encourage everybody to visit this site and look
through the attachment below for an example of just what an
exceptional magazine it is.
Furthermore, Chris has put a call for contributions to his
magazine. His initial request for any and all personnel and personal
experience concerning FID missions. As an example, Chris pointed
to the Article Sniper vs. Sniper. As for specific details, any and all
interested parties can obtain details from myself or I will put you in
touch with Christ directly.
Welcome Chris and thank you!
Vol 3 No 1
http://digital.ipcprintservices.com/publication/?i=29671&pre=1
1
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The Alphatraz Gazetteer

The Official Newsletter of the Alphatraz Deathcamp Survivors Society
& the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
4th Resurrected Detroit Edition
Mark:
Keep me posted regarding interest in Firsthand. Can be yours
or another's, now or in the future. Doesn't have to be FID. I was
intersted in FID, because I think that is the heart of some of the most
valuable GWOT work, It seems an area that may be easier to avoid
dislosure of sensitive info than some others and even though I have
done FID work in Iraq, your community really holds the greatest
resident expertise for this...
RE The CT mag subscription push deal, I am trying to
confirm with SSI to support three simultaneous efforts (you and two
gear co's owned by friends/operators) as a proof of concept. Will let
you know when we can pull the trigger- should be soon.
Please shoot me your # and I will give a call as soon as I have purpose? To fool the American people into thinking that they are
news.
S/F
Chris Garcia
(561) 267-4648
The S-1 Report
June 23, 2010
A Sad Day
by Thomas Sowell
The flap about General Stanley McChrystal's "resignation" was some of the parallels are striking.
nobody's finest hour. But there are some painful lessons in all this that
go beyond any of the individuals involved-- the general, the president
or any of the officials at the Pentagon or the State Department.
What is far more important than all these individuals put
together are the lives of the tens of thousands of Americans fighting in
Afghanistan. What is even more important is the national security of
this country.
It is certainly not politic for a general or his staff to express an American before it was all over.
their contempt for civilian authorities publicly. But what is far more
important-- from the standpoint of national security-- is whether what generals can survive, what will that mean for America's ability to win
those authorities have done deserves contempt.
My hope is that General McChrystal will write a book about
his experiences in Afghanistan-- and in Washington. The public needs
to know what is really going on, and they are not likely to get that
information from politicians.
This is, after all, an administration that waited for months last
year before acting on General McChrystal's urgent request for 40,000
more troops, which he warned would be necessary to prevent the
failure of the mission in Afghanistan. He got 30,000 eventually-- and a Can Republicans Win the Hispanic Vote?
public statement by President Obama about when he wants to start
withdrawing American troops from that country.
In no previous period of history has an American president
announced a timetable for pulling out troops. They may have had a
timetable in mind, but none of these presidents was irresponsible
enough to tell the world-- including our enemies-- when our troops
would be leaving.
Such information encourages our enemies, who know that
they need only wait us out before they can take over, whether in
Afghanistan or elsewhere. At the same time, it undermines our allies,
who know that relying on the United States is dangerous in the long
30 June 2010
run, and that they had better make the best deal they can get with our
enemies.
But the worst aspect of the national security policy of this
administration is its clear intention to do nothing that has any
realistic chance of stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons. This
may be the most grossly irresponsible policy in all of history, because
it can leave this generation-- and future generations-- of Americans at
the mercy of terrorists who have no mercy and who cannot be
deterred, as the Soviet Union was deterred.
All the current political theater about "international
sanctions" is unlikely to make the slightest difference to Iran. Nor is
the administration itself likely to expect it to. What then is its
doing something serious when all that they are doing is putting on a
charade by lining up countries to agree to actions that they all know
will not have any real effect.
There is another aspect to General McChrystal's
"resignation."
Everyone seems to be agreed that Stanley McChrystal has
been a soldier's soldier-- someone who knows what to do on a
battlefield and is not afraid to put himself in danger to do it.
Do we need more generals like this or do we need political
generals who know how to cultivate Washington politicians, in order
to advance their own careers?
Some people see a parallel between McChrystal's
"resignation" and President Harry Truman's firing of General
Douglas MacArthur. No two situations are ever exactly the same, but
MacArthur was proud not only of his military victories but
also of the fact that he won those victories with lower casualty rates
among his troops than other generals had. But General MacArthur
too was not always discreet in what he said, and also had reasons to
have contempt for politicians, going all the way back to FDR, who cut
the army's budget in the 1930s, while Nazi Germany and imperial
Japan were building up huge military machines that would kill many
If we are creating an environment where only political
military victories without massive casualty rates? Or to win military
victories at all?
Monday, June 14, 2010
by Star Parker
New Census data shows the continued trend that the
United States is becoming a nation increasingly less white.
According to this latest report, 48.6% of children born
in the U.S. between July 2008 and July 2009 were “non-white
minorities.” That’s up two percentage points from two years
earlier, and soon the figure will cross the 50% mark.
The largest growth demographic is Hispanics, who
accounted for almost 55% of our population growth. And, most
of this growth – two thirds – came from births, not from
immigration.

2
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The Alphatraz Gazetteer
The Official Newsletter of the Alphatraz Deathcamp Survivors Society
& the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
4th Resurrected Detroit Edition
Aside from the knowledge that the country is becoming
more colorful, an obvious thing we’ve got to be thinking about is
what this means politically. Given that Democrats have been
getting the majority of Hispanic and black votes – the two largest
minorities – the straightforward conclusion appears to be that
demographic trends favor the Democrat Party.
In the 2008 elections, white voters, for the first time
ever, accounted for less than 75% of the total vote. It’s been
noted that if each ethnic group voted as it did in 2008, but made
of up the same percentage of the electorate as it did 20 years
ago, John McCain would be our president today.
Clearly, demographic realities present real challenges to
the Republican Party and the values that it is supposed to be
championing – limited government and free markets.
Most recent polling from Gallup shows Hispanics
generically favoring Democrats over Republicans by 2 to 1.
Republicans have got to make headway with this
population.
We need them for building the political consensus to
make the critical changes to fix our country - cutting the massive
growth in government that Democrats have put in motion, cutting
spending to eliminate trillion dollar deficits, reducing our now
massive $13 trillion dollar debt, and to come up with creative
solutions to the $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities we’re now
looking at in our major entitlement programs – Social Security
and Medicare. And, of course, holding the line on taxes.
Otherwise stated, if Republicans cannot start pulling in a
bigger chunk of this Hispanic vote, it will be tough to be optimistic
that we’ll be able to reverse the direction that Democrats have
initiated – transformation of our country into a European style
social welfare state.
Can Republicans reverse this political trend?
I say yes. The reason is that it is in the interests of our
Hispanic citizens to support what Republicans are trying to do.
We’ve got in front of us right now two contrasting
snapshots of what America’s future could look like. These two
snapshots happen to be our two states with the nation’s largest
Hispanic populations. California and Texas.
California today is America’s Greece. Over-governed,
over-taxed, over-regulated, over-unionized, with excessive
spending and impossible entitlements commitments. If you want
to know the path that our federal government is now on, just look
at California.
In a recent survey by Chief Executive magazine, CEOs
rated California as the worst state in the country for doing
business. It is the only state they awarded a grade of “F” in the
category of “Taxation and Regulation.”
Over the last year and half, California lost over a million
jobs and its overall level of employment is down where it was ten
years ago. Its unemployment rate is several points above the
national average.
Texas, on the other hand, was rated number one by
CEOs. A low tax, low regulation, right-to-work state,
unemployment in Texas is several points below the national
average. And Texas has had net positive job creation through the
recent recession.
Hispanics who think California is model for America’s
future can keep voting for Democrats. But my guess is most will
prefer the Texas model.
Life is a STRUGGLE! Enjoy it! Lick the Blade!!!
30 June 2010
If Republicans make this choice clear to these folks,
political change has got to happen.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Club Fed for Illegal Aliens
by Michelle Malkin
Thanks to their international "human rights" advocates,
Gitmo detainees receive art therapy, movie nights and video games at
their U.S. taxpayer-funded camp in Cuba. Now, the left's bleeding
heart lobby wants to provide similar taxpayer-sponsored perks to
illegal alien detainees on American soil. Welcome to the open-borders
Club Fed.
According to an internal Department of Homeland Security
e-mail obtained by the Houston Chronicle, the Immigration and
Customs Enforcement agency plans a radical overhaul of the
immigration detention system. No, the reforms will not increase the
nation's measly, chronically underfunded detention bed capacity --
fewer than 35,000 beds last fiscal year to cover an estimated illegal
alien population of between 12 million and 20 million. The Obama
ICE leadership is headed in the exact opposite direction.
ICE chief John Morton -- the same man who signaled last
month that he may refuse to process illegal aliens sent to him by
Arizona law enforcement officials -- has already eliminated 50
detention facilities. This despite a DHS inspector general report
released last spring exposing the federal government's bipartisan
failure to expand detention space capacity to end the dangerous game
of illegal alien "catch and release."
Instead, among the p.c. makeover measures under
consideration or about to be made by Obama's ICE agency in the next
30 days:
-- "Softening" the physical appearance of privately
contracted detention facilities with "hanging plants."
- Giving illegal alien detainees e-mail access and free
Internet-based phone service.
- Abandoning lockdowns, lights-out, visitor screening and
detention uniform requirements.
- Serving fresh veggies and continental breakfast and
providing Bingo sessions, arts and crafts classes, and, yes, movie
nights.
Ensuring humane treatment of detainees is one thing. This,
on the other hand, is beyond ridiculous. Detention centers should be
clean, safe and temporary way stations for illegal immigrants on their
way out the door. These proposals turn the immigration detention
centers into permanent Dave & Buster's-style comfort zones for
illegal aliens biding their time until the next amnesty. Dancing
lessons? Game halls? This is an invitation for abuse -- and a recipe for
exploitation by smugglers and drug cartels. Open-borders and civil
liberties activists will end up endangering DHS/ICE workers -- and
the rest of us -- under the guise of "immigrant human rights."
The left-wing campaign by the American Civil Liberties
Union, change.org and illegal alien activists targeting our detention
system began in earnest after 9/11. Under the Bush administration,
hundreds of illegal aliens of Arab descent were detained and
questioned as "material witnesses" in counterterrorism probes. The
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The Alphatraz Gazetteer

The Official Newsletter of the Alphatraz Deathcamp Survivors Society
& the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
4th Resurrected Detroit Edition 30 June 2010
use of immigration laws in the war against Islamic jihadists became a Dayna. Over thirty years ago, Jerry and his then high school
rallying point for the open-borders propagandists. sweetheart, Dayna, chose to abort two of their children.
The New York Times hysterically reported that most of these Jerry deeply empathizes with any man who has taken the life
post-9/11 detainees were held for months without charges. In fact, 60 of another human and lives daily with that burden and emotional
percent of the 762 immigrants detained after the 9/11 attacks were trauma. The negative psychological impact of abortion on women has
charged within 72 hours. And the Justice Department inspector general been well publicized, but less so have been the effects of abortion on
found that there were legitimate reasons for delay in the remaining men.
cases, including logistical disruptions in New York City after 9/11, such In researching the topic, we found a variety of books,
as electrical outages, office shutdowns and mail service cancellation websites and support groups dedicated to male post-abortion trauma,
that slowed delivery of charging documents. Immigrant abuse charges as well as a number of studies on the issue. One study reported that
were hurled recklessly by the likes of Al Gore, who slandered DHS's 82 percent of male parents of a recently aborted baby (ranging from
detention program during a paid appearance in Saudi Arabia -- despite two days to 37 months) experienced depression. Another study found
the DOJ's failure to find any such patterns. that men experienced anxiety, helplessness, guilt, and a dual sense of
The truth got lost along the way. So did common sense. responsibility and regret during an abortion. An additional study
Allowing illegal alien terror suspects to roam free in the immediate reported that many biological fathers need professional support in
aftermath of the 9/11 attacks would have been a dereliction of duty. dealing with abortion and its impact on relationships.
And countless homeland security experts and DHS inspector general According to Guy Condon and David Hazard, authors of
reports have repeatedly spotlighted lax enforcement in the detention Fatherhood Aborted:
safety net over the past decade. The Profound Effects of Abortion on Men, post-abortive
Hundreds of thousands of "absconders" remain on the loose men suffer from a whole host of problems, including relationship
because of failure (or refusal) to detain them. The immigration lawyers' struggles, inability to trust friends, rage, addictions and sexual
racket has lobbied for compassionate "alternatives" to detention that compulsions, sleeplessness, bad dreams, nightmares, sexual
routinely result in deportation fugitives simply ditching the process and dysfunction, depression, fear of failure, fear of rejection, and
disappearing. loneliness.
Their goal is not to improve detention. Their goal is to Fortunately, Jerry and Dayna’s story did not have a negative
sabotage it -- all while law-breakers munch on croissants and joyfully ending. They married after high school, but continued to be haunted
shout "BINGO!" by the unspoken grief and burden of the two children they had
June 25, 2010 aborted. Ten years and three children later, they came to a crisis in
their marriage where they needed to honestly confront the lingering
effects of the two abortions. There were unresolved issues but they
found helpful resources to successfully work through them and make
peace with the past.
Having found hope in their grief and regret, they deeply
wanted others to avoid making these same mistakes. They felt the
best way they could do so would be to support young people facing
A Woman's "Choice" That Affects Men: Post- similar tough decisions, and decided to start a pregnancy resource
Abortion Trauma center in Prattville, Ala., in this effort. Having opened its doors in
1992, “Grace Place” PregnancyResource Center continues to thrive
by Jerry DeBin and serve young mothers and fathers experiencing an unplanned
Author's note: This piece is co-authored by Jeanne Monahan. pregnancy even today.
This Father’s Day will be a celebration for dads all over the Jerry and Dayna helped to start Grace Place to share truth
country, an opportunity for children to thank and honor their fathers. about abortion, to give hope in situations that appear hopeless and to
Yet for many men, the memory of involvement in a past abortion, of help restore the lives of men and women broken by abortion. They
“cards they will not receive,” will be painful and palpable. also discovered that the process helped complete the healing in their
In a debate where the primary focus is a woman’s body and a marriage and family.
woman’s right to choose whether or not to carry a child to his or her An estimated 50 million abortions have been performed in
delivery, the “other partner,” the father of the baby, is rarely given the U.S. since the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. For each
consideration, and is often completely disregarded altogether. The of those 50 million babies, there is a father. Even adjusting those
question of abortion is myopically women-centric. numbers to allow for men who father more than one aborted child,
Abortion advocates often mock pro-life men. Men are told the count of post-abortion men in America is easily 30 million. This
they shouldn’t speak out because they can never become pregnant. Yet, Father’s Day let us honestly engage men in the conversation about
it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to acknowledge that two women cannot abortion and its impacts on everyone involved. There remain
a baby make. significant, long-term consequences of Father’s Day cards that will
Less acknowledged is the fact that this decision deeply not come this week … all across America.
impacts the dad, too. Wednesday, June 02, 2010
This year three Father’s Day cards will stand prominently on
Jerry’s kitchen countertop, telling the wonderful story of the lives of his
three grown children. But there is an empty space next to the cards
which tells another story that continues to grieve Jerry and his wife,
4
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 Ya’ can’t Dog a DOG!

The Alphatraz Gazetteer

The Official Newsletter of the Alphatraz Deathcamp Survivors Society
& the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
4th Resurrected Detroit Edition 30 June 2010
The Resurrection of Rod Blagojevich removed herself from the running when she took a top White House
adviser post instead. Who was the "SEIU official" Team Blago spoke
by Michelle Malkin with and met? Internal communications in December 2008 fingered
We've had the Summer of Love and the Summer of the Obama's longtime Chicago pal and SEIU Local 1 President Tom
Shark. Now, are you ready for the Summer of Corruption? On Balanoff. Balanoff, not coincidentally, had been appointed by Blago
Thursday, jury selection begins in the federal trial of disgraced former to the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board.
Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois. The timing couldn't be Two days before Christmas 2008, legal counsel Greg Craig
worse for Blago's old Chicago pals in the White House. Just as Team released an official self-exonerating report outlining contacts
Obama tries to bury one job-trading scandal, another one resurfaces. between Team Obama and Team Blago. Balanoff, it turns out, had
It's a useful reminder that Washington didn't turn Obama indeed spoken with Jarrett. The Obama defense? Despite her much-
into a business-as-usual politician. He was born and bred among the touted political brilliance, the legal team argued, Jarrett "did not
slimiest in their class. understand the conversation to suggest that the Governor wanted
At the center of the Blago trial is the convergence of the the cabinet seat as a quid pro quo for selecting any specific
Chicago political machine -- the corrupt Democratic Party candidate to be the President-Elect's replacement." The Blago
establishment, Big Labor heavies at the Service Employees subpoena of the president filed last month begs to differ -- and
International Union and Team Obama. directly implicates Obama:
In December 2008, the political ties that bind them all came "...despite President Obama stating that no representatives
under national scrutiny when federal prosecutors publicly released of his had any part of any deals, labor union president (presumably
their criminal complaint against Blagojevich. SEIU figured prominently SEIU's Andy Stern) told the FBI and the United States Attorneys
in Blago's secretly taped musings on how to profit from his power to that he spoke to labor union official on Nov. 3, 2008, who received
appoint Obama's Senate replacement. So did a larger union umbrella a phone message from Obama that evening. After labor union
federation, Change to Win, led by SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna official listened to the message, labor union official told labor union
Burger. Blago hatched a plan to snag a $300,000-a-year job as head president, "I'm the one." Labor union president took that to mean
of Change to Win in exchange for appointing a union-friendly that labor union official was to be the one to deliver the message on
successor to Obama. behalf of Obama that Senate Candidate B was his pick."
Like Obama, Blago enjoyed massive campaign donations and It's going to be a long, hot summer of Chicago corruption.
on-the-ground support from the SEIU's Purple Army. Like Obama, Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Blago repaid his Big Labor backers with labor-friendly executive
orders and legislative largesse to facilitate union organizing and carve
out major portions of the health care industry for them. At the time of
his arrest, Blago was preparing another executive order to expand the
union power grab over an even larger portion of home health care
workers targeted by the SEIU.
Blagojevich did the country an extraordinary unintended
Stuck on Stupid: Obama's Czar Fetish
favor. As health care analyst David Catron wrote: "He has made it by Michelle Malkin
clear to the meanest intelligence that Obama emerged from a Here is the Obama Disaster Management Theory: In times
hopelessly corrupt political culture. Barack Obama oozed from the of crisis, you can never have enough unelected, un-vetted political
same stinking Chicago swamp that produced Blagojevich, and a man appointees hanging around. Nearly two months after the BP oil spill,
whose formative years were spent wallowing in the muck with such the White House will now name an oil spill restoration point person
creatures isn't likely to be long in the White House before the stench to oversee recovery efforts in the Gulf of Mexico. Too many czars have
of pay-to-play politics begins to pervade the place." already spoiled this administration's credibility. Might as well pile on
Fast-forward. Nearly two years later, Obama's legal fixers another.
can't mask the Chicago-esque odor of Sestak-gate. The president's The new oil spill czar is not to be mistaken for the old oil
legal team, led by chief fixer and legal counsel Bob Bauer,
spill czar, U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who was officially
orchestrated a Memorial Day weekend document dump intended to
designated the "National Incident Commander of the Unified
squash mounting public criticism of the administration's alleged
government job offer to Pennsylvania Democratic senatorial candidate
Command for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico"
Joe Sestak. Bauer's memo acknowledged that "options for Executive on April 30. Allen was appointed by Department of Homeland
Branch service were raised with him" through former President Bill Security Secretary Janet Napolitano 10 days after the disaster, which
Clinton, whom White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel enlisted to Napolitano claimed the administration had been on top of since, um,
woo Sestak. "Day One."
Blago knows all about working with Team Obama through Fifty-six days later, President Obama has deemed the
intermediaries to explore, ahem, "options." Blago's then-Chief of Staff leadership skills of Allen, Napolitano, Energy Secretary Steven Chu,
John Harris allegedly mapped out a "three-way deal" to give the environmental czar Carol Browner, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar
White House a "buffer" obscuring the obvious quid pro quo. SEIU and the rest of his self-declared "all hands on deck" crew insufficient.
would assist Obama with Blago's appointment of a union-friendly The new disaster czar also comes on top of the "National Commission
candidate; Blago would get his cushy union job; and SEIU would be on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling," created
rewarded down the road with favors from the White House. Team by executive order on May 22 and "tasked with providing
Blago reached out to the SEIU. An unnamed SEIU official agreed to recommendations on how we can prevent and mitigate the impact of
float their plan and "see where it goes." any future spills that result from offshore drilling."
The Senate candidate Blago allegedly approached was top As I've noted before regarding Obama's czar-mania, this
Obama adviser and Chicago political godmother Valerie Jarrett, who White House has bypassed the Senate advise-and-consent role and
5
Life is a STRUGGLE! Enjoy it! Lick the Blade!!!
 Ya’ can’t Dog a DOG!
The Alphatraz Gazetteer
The Official Newsletter of the Alphatraz Deathcamp Survivors Society
& the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
4th Resurrected Detroit Edition
unilaterally created a two-tiered government. It's fronted by cabinet
secretaries able to withstand public scrutiny (some of them just barely)
and then managed behind the scenes by shadow secretaries with broad
powers beyond congressional reach. Bureaucratic chaos serves as a
useful smokescreen to obscure the true source of policy decision-
making. While past administrations dating back to the Nixon era have
designated such "superaides," none has exploited and extended the
concept as widely as Obama has (we're up to the 40th appointed czar,
by Washington-based watchdog group Judicial Watch's count).
It's government by proxy and government by press release all
rolled into one.
According to White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, the latest
commissar will have the power to oversee government efforts "to
increase the health and the vitality of the species there, the wildlife and
the natural beauty that we all know is the Gulf of Mexico." This will
make the power-grabbing environmental lobby happy. And the new
czar appointment will feed the photo-op-hungry news cycle. But
instead of rushing to move "past the cleanup and response phase of this
disaster," shouldn't this czar-crazy regime concentrate on the
immediate mitigation tasks at hand?
Folks in the Gulf don't need any more Romanov-style
apparatchiks or blue-ribbon crony panels to show them the way toward
relief. Florida public officials and foreign shippers say the protectionist
Jones Act is preventing vessels from abroad from providing cleanup
aid. And Louisiana GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal has exposed White House
obstructionism and delays in approving the construction of barrier
walls to stop the oil spread.
After waiting weeks for approval, Jindal received a green light
from the White House to put up just five barrier islands -- a minuscule
amount of his plan. Tired of waiting for approval of the rest of his plan,
Jindal this week ordered the National Guard to circumvent the Beltway
foot-dragging and start building the walls immediately.
Executive leadership doesn't need to be outsourced when the
executive in office knows how to lead. While Obama squawks, Jindal
acts. While Washington appoints more gasbags, the National Guard is
dropping sandbags.
The president's czar fetish is his crisis crutch -- a desperate,
public relations habit that he can't break. What 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue needs is a visit from retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, the
Hurricane Katrina military relief coordinator who offered timeless and
timely advice for the disaster-stricken: Don't get stuck on stupid.
Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption:
Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2010).
Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.
COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM
June 22, 2010
Degeneration of Democracy
by Thomas Sowell
When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the
1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately
sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to
politics. Such people were a valuable addition to his political base,
since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler's rhetoric and had far
less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions.
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30 June 2010
"Useful idiots" was the term supposedly coined by V.I.
Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship
in the Soviet Union.
Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is
to thrive, or ultimately even survive. In our times, American
democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes
by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem
to be concerned about it.
The president's poll numbers are going down because
increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his,
but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this
nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies.
Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it
say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of
money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to
whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere.
And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20
billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by
their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Many among the public and in the media may think that
the issue is simply whether BP's oil spill has damaged many people,
who ought to be compensated. But our government is supposed to
be "a government of laws and not of men." If our laws and our
institutions determine that BP ought to pay $20 billion-- or $50
billion or $100 billion-- then so be it.
But the Constitution says that private property is not to be
confiscated by the government without "due process of law."
Technically, it has not been confiscated by Barack Obama, but that
is a distinction without a difference.
With vastly expanded powers of government available at
the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and
organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers
that were never granted to the government by the Constitution.
If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you
don't believe in Constitutional government. And, without
Constitutional government, freedom cannot endure. There will
always be a "crisis"-- which, as the president's chief of staff has
said, cannot be allowed to "go to waste" as an opportunity to
expand the government's power.
That power will of course not be confined to BP or to the
particular period of crisis that gave rise to the use of that power,
much less to the particular issues.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt arbitrarily took the United
States off the gold standard, he cited a law passed during the First
World War to prevent trading with the country's wartime enemies.
But there was no war when FDR ended the gold standard's
restrictions on the printing of money.
At about the same time, during the worldwide Great
Depression, the German Reichstag passed a law "for the relief of the
German people." That law gave Hitler dictatorial powers that were
used for things going far beyond the relief of the German people--
indeed, powers that ultimately brought a rain of destruction down
on the German people and on others.
If the agreement with BP was an isolated event, perhaps
we might hope that it would not be a precedent. But there is
nothing isolated about it.
The man appointed by President Obama to dispense BP's
money as the administration sees fit, to whomever it sees fit, is only
the latest in a long line of presidentially appointed "czars"
controlling different parts of the economy, without even having to
be confirmed by the Senate, as Cabinet members are.
Those who cannot see beyond the immediate events to the
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issues of arbitrary power-- versus the rule of law and the preservation murderous hatred of Muslims like the Ft. Hood shooter, he
of freedom-- are the "useful idiots" of our time. But useful to whom?
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Who Does President Obama Really Hate?
by Ben Shapiro
At every point in some boy's life, he has to face down a
bully and fight him. It's a rite of passage, a transitional moment
in which every young man must establish who he is and how far
he'll let his enemies go. For me, that moment came when I was
10 years old. One of the kids at school -- he seemed 8 feet tall at
the time -- was smacking me with a ruler across the shoulders
during P.E. class. Eventually, I'd had enough; I grabbed him
around the neck and punched him on the top of the head. His
nose started bleeding, to my surprise (I'm not exactly Joe
Frazier). Naturally, the principal blamed me ("do you know how
much money his father makes?" she asked my dad), but the bully
never bothered me again.
The same holds true of presidents. Every president has to
draw a line in the sand. Every president has to determine just
how far he's willing to be pushed around. Every president has to
decide who his enemies are, and then face them down.
President Obama has decided that his real enemies aren't
Iranian genocidal dictators, anti-Semitic reporters or Muslim
terrorists. His real enemies are conservatives and corporations.
How can we tell? From his rhetoric. Obama doesn't punch America's Youth," and the host of "The Ben Shapiro Show" on 810 AM in Orlando, FL. To
anyone in the face directly (not that his fists would do much
damage, judging from the way he throws a baseball). But he does
lash out at his enemies with his most valuable tool: his silver
tongue. When Obama talks about his enemies, his honeyed
mouth becomes a blunt instrument rather than a scalpel. The
supposed master of the nuances of the English language is
apparently rendered stupefyingly inarticulate when faced with
those he dislikes; he's suddenly a WWE wrestler pumped up on
testosterone, the mic boosted to deafening levels. He calls people
out. He uses colorful and confrontational language. He threatens
physical force.
When faced with the prospect of Americans who don't
like his policies, Obama tells his followers to "argue with them
and get in their face." When confronted with his administration's
inability to handle the Gulf oil spill, Obama sends out his lackeys strategy to plug the leak. After Iranian protesters took to the streets in
to threaten BP in purple terminology; " [we'll] keep our boot on
[BP's] neck," they say. This week, Obama doubled down, stating
that he had traveled to the Gulf region "so I know whose ass to
kick."
Meanwhile, Obama's confrontational tone becomes
downright dainty when faced with actual terrorists, murderers
and anti-Semites. All of a sudden, the Chicago thug disappears,
replaced by the man of considered diplomacy. After waiting for
crucial days to comment on the burgeoning Iranian resistance in
June 2009, Obama finally spoke ... with all the force of a small
mewling kitten. "I would suggest that Mr. Ahmadinejad think
carefully about the obligations he owes to his own people,"
Obama hesitantly intoned. When Obama was faced with the
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30 June 2010
urged Americans not to "jump to conclusions."
When Jew-hater Helen Thomas suggested that Jews in
Israel return to the lands of the Holocaust, Germany and
Poland, Obama said that her remarks were "out of line, " but
said it was a "shame, because Helen's someone who ... was a
real institution." (So was Father Coughlin, for the record.)
It would be one thing if Obama spoke softly and carried
a large stick. But he speaks in velvet whispers and carries a
corsage for the enemies of Western Civilization. John Brennan,
Obama's pro-jihad alleged counterterrorism adviser, explains
Obama's delicacy when it comes to those who truly threaten us:
"We're trying to be very careful and precise in our use of
language because I think the language we use and the images
we project really do have resonance."
That isn't true, though, with regard to those who
criticize President Obama in the natural course of legitimate
political debate, nor is it true of private companies he can attack
for his own political benefit. He'll slap them, punch them,
scratch them, kick them with all the blustery force he can
muster. After all, they're his chosen enemies.
You can tell a lot about a man by the enemies he
makes. And you can tell who Obama's enemies are by the anger
he displays when confronted with them; Obama's misplaced
rage tells us more about where he stands than his
teleprompter-ed utterances ever will. The problem for President
Obama is that the enemies he identifies seem a good deal less
dangerous than the friends he seeks.
Ben Shapiro, 26, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School. He is the author of
three books including the national bestseller "Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate
find out more about Ben Shapiro and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers
and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
The Presidential Anti-Semite Strikes Again
by Ben Shapiro
This is not a presidency known for its reactive speed. After
British Petroleum's oil rig sprung a leak in the Gulf of Mexico, it took
more than a week for the Obama administration to mobilize; it has
been well over a month, and the administration still has no coherent
2009, risking life and limb to defy the terroristic Ahmadinejad
regime, President Barack Obama futzed around for days before
weakly condemning the regime's crackdown.
But this week, when Israel rightly stopped a Turkish ship
carrying terrorist supporters from breaking the naval blockade
surrounding the Gaza Strip, Obama responded within hours. "The
United States deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries sustained,"
intoned White House spokesman William Burton. The Obama
administration also embraced a United Nations Security Council
resolution "deeply regret(ting) the loss of life and injuries resulting
from the use of force during the Israeli military operation in
international waters against the convoy sailing to Gaza."
This is language the White House normally reserves for
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actual terrorists. For example, when Britain released Pan Am bomber
Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the White House released a statement that
it "deeply regrets the decision." For the Obama administration,
legitimate Israeli self-defense is now on par with the release of a mass
murderer.
And this was clearly self-defense. The so-called "activists"
aboard the Turkish flotilla aimed at the Gaza Strip were caught on tape
lynching Israeli soldiers -- and declaring their intention to do so the day
before the incident. These weren't members of Greenpeace. They were
members and friends of the IHH, a Turkish-sponsored terrorist
organization with links to al-Qaida and Hamas. Weeks in advance of
the flotilla's launch, organizers were declaring their intent to break the
Gaza blockade -- an act aimed directly at funneling weapons to Hamas,
because Israel already sends millions of tons of aid to the residents of
the Gaza Strip.
But that didn't stop Obama from inserting his large proboscis
into yet another situation where it does not belong. Of course, we're
used to that by now. On virtually every foreign policy crisis of his
presidency, this pathetic poseur has been wrong (Honduras, North
Korea, Russia, Greece, Afghanistan and Iran, among others). This
situation is no exception.
What is exceptional is Obama's swiftness. He didn't pause for
one instant to consider supporting Israel. He immediately leapt to the
"nonpartisan" position, eschewing an American ally and attempting to
placate the anti-Semitic international community. He drew moral
equivalence between Hamas and Israel. He even went so far as to call
up Islamist Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to give his
condolences for those who died trying to provide support to terrorists
in Gaza. Not only that, he informed members of the international
community that he would be working to secure the release of captured
terrorist supporters from the Israeli government. How's that for quick
action?
This is just another indicator of Obama's anti-Semitism. How
else are we to interpret his lightning-fast, knee-jerk anti-Israel
response? When an obviously Muslim man hopped onto a table at Fort
Hood and shot to death 12 American military personnel and one
civilian while shouting "Allahu akbar," Obama responded by cautioning
Americans not to jump "to conclusions until we have all the facts."
When an obviously Muslim Times Square bomber attempted to blow
up an SUV during the matinee of "Next to Normal," Obama's allies
were kind enough to remind us not to react too quickly to the obvious
hypothesis.
But when Jews defend themselves from mobs hitting them
with clubs and stabbing them with shivs, the president's on it like white
on rice. He's there to allow anti-Israel resolutions through the U.N.
He's there to comfort terrorist backers, such as Erdogan and Hamas,
from the brutality of Israeli commandos armed with paintball guns.
(Yes, you read that right; they were carrying paintball guns.)
There's only one world leader who was faster than Obama to
the microphone: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And it wasn't by much. It
didn't really matter, of course; no matter who got to the microphone
first, an anti-Semite was going to issue the first statement. Obama may
not be on Ahmadinejad's genocidal level, but he clearly is willing to let
those who would perpetrate genocide grab the upper hand in the
Middle East.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
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Obama and Economics: Intellectually
Clueless
by Larry Elder
While in high school, I was standing at a bus stop next to a
gas station. A kid tossed a candy wrapper on the station lot.
Somebody yelled, "Hey, pick that up." The kid, with a straight face,
defended himself. He said, "I just created a job." Someone would be
hired, he explained, to pick up the trash, and this would be good for
the economy.
Don't laugh. The kid probably works for the Obama
administration.
Congress is now considering yet another "stimulus"
package. But did the administration's previous one work? Of the
$787 billion stimulus package, President Obama said it would "save
or create" 3.5 million new jobs. Has it?
The National Association for Business Economics polled 68
private-sector members. Seventy-three percent said the
employment at their companies was neither higher nor lower as a
result of the stimulus package.
What about the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office?
A February 2009 Washington Times article said:
"President Obama's economic recovery package will
actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to
do nothing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said
Wednesday.
"CBO, the official scorekeepers for legislation, said the
House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so
much government debt that within a few years they would crowd
out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic
Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done
nothing."
What do normal, regular, real-world people think? In
December 2009, a Rasmussen poll asked likely voters whether the
"stimulus" helped, hurt or did nothing.
They agreed with the private-sector economists and the
CBO -- the stimulus did not work. And more felt it did damage than
thought it helped: "A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone
survey finds that 30 percent of voters nationwide believe the $787-
billion economic stimulus plan has helped the economy. However,
38 percent believe that the stimulus plan has hurt the economy.
This is the first time since the legislation passed that a plurality has
held a negative view of its impact."
Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and commentator Ed
we-need-health-care-reform-and-I-don't-care-how-much-it-costs
Schultz think one way. Believers in the free market and limited
government think another. As between these two camps, which one
better understands how the real world works?
Zogby International asked questions about economics of
nearly 5,000 people. George Mason University economist Dan Klein
co-authored a report on the responses given to eight basic
economic questions. (Correct answers and "not sure" responses
were ignored -- only flatly incorrect responses were counted.) Do
housing restrictions increase the price of housing? The answer is
yes. Whether the restrictions are good or bad is a separate issue.
But restrictions on any good increase the price of that good --
whether houses or horseshoes. Do minimum wages increase
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unemployment? The answer is yes. Whether one accepts this as a
worthy trade-off is a separate question. Is our standard of living
higher than it was 30 years ago? It is. Whether we are "addicted" to
oil or facing cataclysmic "global warming" is a separate issue. The
other questions involved licensing, rent control, the definition of a
monopoly, the definition of exploitation, and whether free trade leads
to unemployment.
Respondents self-identified as progressive/very liberal,
liberal, moderate, conservative, very conservative, or libertarian. Who
did better?
"On every question," wrote Klein, "the left did much worse.
On the monopoly question, the portion of progressive/very liberals
answering incorrectly (31 percent) was more than twice that of
conservatives (13 percent) and more than four times that of
libertarians (7 percent). On the question about living standards, the
portion of progressive/very liberals answering incorrectly (61 percent)
was more than four times that of conservatives (13 percent) and
almost three times that of libertarians (21 percent)."
Maybe those with more education performed better? No, the
report said. "We work with three levels of schooling: (1) high school
or less; (2) some college (but not a degree); (3) a college degree or
more. In our data, economic enlightenment is not correlated with
going to college."
The left blames the financial collapse on "greed," ignoring
the role played by government involvement -- Freddie Mac, Ginnie
Mae, the Federal Housing Administration, the Community
Reinvestment Act and elsewhere. Leftists point to "insufficient
regulation" on Wall Street for reckless behavior, rather than to the
players' assumption that too-big-to-fail would protect them.
On the BP Gulf oil spill, Obama wants to find "whose ass to
kick." He's called for a moratorium on new offshore drilling. But why
do we drill offshore for oil more than a mile deep? Is it that on-land
and safer, shallow water areas are off-limits -- thus pushing
companies to extract oil from more dangerous places? Have the
restrictions on clean nuclear power altered how and where we obtain
energy?
Republicans, in the eight-question economics poll, averaged
1.61 incorrect answers. Democrats averaged 4.59 wrong answers. So
in the President's search for "ass to kick," start here.
Thursday, June 03, 2010
Israel Alone
by Larry Elder
Vice President Joe Biden, wrong on virtually every major
foreign policy issue since his election to the Senate in 1972, nailed this Arabia, Egypt and Jordan fear Iran more than they do Israel.
one: He warned that actors on the international stage would test the
new, inexperienced President.
He knew that President Barack Obama's enemies would
perceive his strength-through-peace (versus peace-through-strength)
approach as weakness. They do and are acting accordingly.
Candidate Obama vowed to hold high-level talks with Iran and courtroom disclosure of sources and methods. He increased troop
North Korea without "preconditions." Obama promised a "reset" of all
things President George W. Bush, with no more talk of "victory" in Iraq strategy for that country and Iraq.
and Afghanistan. He reneged on the promised missile shield defense in
Poland and the Czech Republic. He waits for countries like China and
Russia, both of which have business interests in Iran, to agree to
"tough, crippling" sanctions.
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30 June 2010
The President dropped the term "war on terror" and refuses
to call Islamofascists "Islamofascists." He apologetically says America
is vital in maintaining world peace "whether we like it or not." He
sent a videotaped message to Iran telling of our willingness to re-
engage the country -- if only it would unclench its fist. It unclenched
more time for Iran to pursue a nuclear bomb. The administration was
painfully slow to acknowledge that the Times Square truck bomb
attempt involved foreign Islamic terrorists.
The administration chastised Israel for settlement
construction in an area of east Jerusalem that President Bill Clinton,
President George W. Bush and even Palestine Liberation
Organization leader Yasser Arafat assumed would be part of Israel in
any peace agreement. During Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's state visit, Obama treated him worse than a White
House dinner gate-crasher.
How's the hope and change working out?
North Korea, in an act of war, sank a South Korean ship.
Iran may now have sufficient materiel and technical knowledge to
build a nuclear bomb. The Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah -
- under the nose of United Nations "peacekeepers" -- continues to
stock southern Lebanon with weapons that threaten Israel.
Now comes the anti-Israel "humanitarian" flotilla.
After Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, the terror
group Hamas seized power. Israel and Egypt began a naval blockade
of ships in and out of Gaza. Though Israel had uprooted every Israeli
settler from Gaza, Hamas fired thousands of rockets into Israel, a
bombardment that continues today.
Israel already sends humanitarian aid into Gaza and allows
others to do so. Israel even agreed to allow the supposed
humanitarian flotilla cargo to enter, provided Israeli security could
check it for weapons. And never mind that some of the flotilla's
"humanitarian activists" appear to have ties to terror organizations.
The flotilla's attempt to run the blockade resulted in nine
deaths when the Israeli military boarded ships to inspect the cargo.
As Israel's enemies hoped, Israel stands accused of a
"disproportionate" response.
But why the flotilla now?
The most significant intervening event is the election of
President Obama. Now Israel's most important ally considers Israeli
intransigence the principal obstacle to peace with the Palestinians in
particular and in the Middle East in general. The activists got the
message: Israel is on the defensive.
Israel, with good reason, feels alone.
Obama, like Bush in his second term, seems willing to accept
a nuclear-armed Iran -- even as Iran threatens Israel with
annihilation. Obama apparently considers a nuclear-armed Iran
inevitable, even if it ignites a regional nuclear arms race -- since Saudi
Give Obama credit for continuing many of Bush's policies.
Gitmo remains open, the administration finally understanding that
the prison exists for a reason. He continued rendition, the terror
surveillance program and the increased use of drone predators in
Pakistan. He used the same "state secrets" argument to fight
strength in Afghanistan and continues the Bush "clear and hold"
But Jimmy Carter governed as a strength-through-peace
president. He pressured the Shah of Iran to release "political
prisoners." The shah was toppled, only to be followed by the
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repressive and threatening Islamic Republic of Iran. Carter urged
Americans to abandon their "inordinate fear of communism." Soviet
leader Leonid Brezhnev considered Carter weak and rewarded him by
invading Afghanistan. This triggered a chain reaction from which the
world continues to suffer. The Arabs and Muslims who fought to expel
the Soviet Union then turned on the United States and the West in a
grand plan for an Islamic world.
Israel's response to the flotilla was an act of self-defense. The
Western world's reaction has been shameful. Western countries once
again fail to distinguish the arsonist from the firefighter.
In 1962, the United States imposed a naval blockade -- a
"quarantine" -- on Cuba. What would we have done to a
"humanitarian" flotilla determined to help Fidel Castro place Soviet
missiles 90 miles from Florida?
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Can Black Americans Afford Obama?
by Walter E. Williams
My March 2008 column "Is Obama Ready for America?"
started out: "Some pundits ask whether America is ready for Obama.
The much more important question is whether Obama is ready for
America and even more important is whether black people can afford
Obama." Let's look at this.
In 1947, Jackie Robinson, in signing a contract with the
Brooklyn Dodgers, broke the color bar in Major League Baseball. In
1950, three blacks broke the color bar in the National Basketball
Association (NBA): Earl Lloyd (Washington Capitals), Chuck Cooper
(Boston Celtics) and Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton (New York Knicks).
Their highly successful performances opened the way for other blacks
to follow -- peaking at 27 percent in Major League Baseball and 80
percent in the NBA.
Without a question, the first blacks, relative to their white
peers, in professional sports were exceptional. There's no sense of
justice that should require that these players be as good as they were in
order to get a job. But the fact of business, in order to deal with racial
hostility and stereotypes of incompetence, they had to be first rate and
possess character beyond question. It was not only important for their
careers, it was important for their fellow blacks. At the time the sports
color bar was being broken, black people could ill afford stumblebums.
Today, black people can afford stumblebums in several sports. In fact,
black people can afford for the Philadelphia Sixers to put Williams in
their starting lineup. Any person watching me mess up royally would
have to be a lunatic to say, "Those blacks can't play basketball." The
bottom line is that whether we like it or not, whether for good reason or
bad reason, whether it's fair or unfair, people make stereotypes, and
stereotypes can have effects.
In that March 2008 column, I said, "For the nation and for
black people, the first black president should be the caliber of a Jackie
Robinson and Barack Obama is not. Barack Obama has charisma and
charm but in terms of character, values and understanding, he is no
Jackie Robinson." Obama's electoral success was truly remarkable. It's
a testament to the essential goodness of the American people. A June 6-
9, 2008 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll reported "that 17 percent
were enthusiastic about Obama being the first African American
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30 June 2010
President, 70 percent were comfortable or indifferent, and 13 percent
had reservations or were uncomfortable."
President Obama, with the assistance of devious House and
Senate leadership, has gotten a health care law enacted that the
majority of American voters are against. According to a recent
Rasmussen poll, 58 percent of voters support repeal of the health care
law. Under the president's leadership, the 2010 budget deficit will
reach more than $1.5 trillion, about 10 percent of gross domestic
product, the largest deficit since the end of World War II. We're not
that far behind the troubled nation of Greece, which has a current
budget deficit of nearly 13 percent of GDP. Our national debt at $13
trillion is about 90 percent of GDP and budgeted to grow by $9
trillion over the next decade. On the diplomatic front, the Obama
team is not doing much better, showing every sign of permitting a
terrorist nation like Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.
Early indications suggest that the Barack Obama presidency
might turn out to be similar to the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter.
That's bad news for the nation but especially bad news for black
Americans. No white presidential candidate had to live down the
disgraced presidency of Carter but I'm all too fearful that a future
black presidential candidate will find himself carrying the heavy
baggage of a failed black president. That's not a problem for white
liberals who voted for Obama who received their one-time guilt-
relieving dose from voting for a black man to be president, but it is a
problem for future generations of black Americans.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Economic Myths, Fallacies and Stupidity
by Walter E. Williams
George Orwell admonished, "Sometimes the first duty
of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious." That's
what I want to do -- talk about the obvious. Suppose that a
person is faced with the choice of spending $50,000 on a brand-
new car or paying two years worth of college tuition for his 18-
year-old. What is the solution? That's a stupid question. In the
world of economic decision making, there are no solutions --
only tradeoffs, where having more of one thing means having
less of another. Having one desire fulfilled means having
another unfulfilled. For example, there's no solution to our
health care issues. Congress' health care law simply substitutes
its judgment on the delivery of medical services in the name of
helping the uninsured. The tradeoff is that Americans have less
of something else such as fewer personal choices, less after-tax
income and very likely a lower quality of medical services.
How about the criticism that businesses are just in it for
money and profits? That's supposed to be an anti-business slam
but upon simple examination, it reflects gross stupidity or
misunderstanding. Wal-Mart owns 8,300 stores, of which 4,000
are in 44 different countries. Its 2010 revenues are expected to
top $500 billion. Putting Wal-Mart's revenues in perspective,
they exceed the 2009 GDP of all but 18 of the world's 181
countries. Why is Wal-Mart so successful? Millions of people
voluntarily enter their stores and part with their money in
exchange for Wal-Mart's products and services. In order for that
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to happen, Wal-Mart and millions of other profit-motivated
businesses must please people.
Compare our level of satisfaction with the services of
those "in it just for the money and profits" to those in it to serve
the public as opposed to earning profits. A major non-profit
service provider is the public education establishment that
delivers primary and secondary education at nearly a trillion-
dollar annual cost. Public education is a major source of
complaints about poor services that in many cases constitute
nothing less than gross fraud.
If Wal-Mart, or any of the millions of producers who are
in it for money and profits, were to deliver the same low-quality
services, they would be out of business, but not public schools.
Why? People who produce public education get their pay, pay
raises and perks whether customers are satisfied or not. They are
not motivated by profits and therefore under considerably less
pressure to please customers. They use government to take
customer money, in the form of taxes.
The U. S. Postal Service, state motor vehicle
departments and other government agencies also have the taxing
power of government to get money and therefore are less diligent
about pleasing customers. You can bet the rent money that if
Wal-Mart and other businesses had the power to take our money
by force, they would be less interested and willing to please us.
The big difference between entities that serve us well and
those who do not lies in what motivates them. Wal-Mart and
millions of other businesses are profit-motivated whereas
government schools, USPS and state motor vehicle departments
are not.
In the market, when a firm fails to please its customers
and fails to earn a profit, it goes bankrupt, making those
resources available to another that might do better. That's unless
government steps in to bail it out. Bailouts send the message to
continue doing a poor job of pleasing customers and husbanding
resources. Government-owned nonprofit entities are immune to
the ruthless market discipline of being forced to please
customers. The same can be said of businesses that receive
government subsidies.
The ruthlessness of the market discipline, which forces
firms to please customers and thereby earn profits, goes a long
way toward explaining hostility toward free market capitalism.
Friday, June 18, 2010
He Blinded Me With Science
by Jonah Goldberg
A little over a year ago, President Barack Obama reversed George
W. Bush's restrictions on embryonic stem cell research.
Just for the record, Bush didn't "ban" embryonic stem cell research,
as so many critics claimed, and he didn't restrict non-embryonic stem cell
research at all. He merely ruled that scientists shouldn't create any new
embryonic stem cell lines, because creating life to destroy it is unethical and
immoral.
This view, according to Obama (and Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton,
The New York Times, et al.), was unscientific. Hence, his administration
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30 June 2010
would "make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology." This
language was a carryover from the presidential campaign, when all of the
Democratic candidates bemoaned the Neanderthalic "Republican war on
science," to borrow a phrase from a popular liberal book. Hillary Clinton,
for instance, promised that her administration would "restore scientific
integrity by supporting the independent work of government scientists" and
end the "open season on open inquiry."
For good or for ill, Obama beat Hillary for the nomination, but he
carried the "liberals love science" torch nonetheless. At his inauguration, he
pledged, "We will restore science to its rightful place."
Fast-forward to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The White
House issued a blanket moratorium on deepwater oil drilling. Obama cited a
report commissioned by the Interior Department that purported to
recommend the ban.
"The recommendations contained in this report," declared the
document, "have been peer-reviewed by seven experts identified by the
National Academy of Engineering."
Except that was untrue. In fact, it was such a glaring lie that the
seven engineers who peer-reviewed an earlier version of the document felt
obliged to come forward to clear the air.
"The Secretary should be free to recommend whatever he thinks is
correct," wrote the scientists, "but he should not be free to use our names to
justify his political decisions."
The draft these experts saw was substantively different from the
document that bore their names. The draft called for a moratorium on
issuing new permits, not stopping existing drilling (a move many experts
believe would be unsafe).
One of the experts, Benton Baugh, president of Radoil, told the
Wall Street Journal, that if the draft had said to halt drilling, "we'd have said
'that's craziness.'"
Now, the experts are absolutely right that the White House is
under no obligation to listen to them. Temporarily banning deepwater
drilling might be the right call (I briefly thought it was myself). But it's a
political call.
Needless to say, there is something ugly and hypocritical about
glorifying the absolute authority of scientists and sanctimoniously preening
about your bravery in "restoring" that authority -- and then ignoring the
scientists when politically expedient.
But it is bordering on the grotesque to handpick scientists to give
you an opinion and then lie about what they actually said, and implement a
policy they don't endorse. (According to the Journal, the Interior Department
has apologized to the scientists. But the administration publicly refuses to
acknowledge it did anything wrong).
The most important point isn't about cheap politics and hypocrisy.
It's about the fundamental misunderstanding of the role of science in
policymaking.
Obama once told reporters "the promise that stem cells hold does
not come from any particular ideology; it is the judgment of science, and we
deserve a president who will put that judgment first."
Putting aside the fact that it now appears many scientists were
wrong about the promise of stem cells (at least so far), this is morally
deranged. If scientists discovered that experimentation on 5-year-old
children showed huge promise to cure diseases or solve the energy crisis, we
wouldn't say, "Oh, well, scientists say it's OK."
And, no, I'm not arguing that embryos and children are morally
equivalent. I'm arguing that the answer to these questions lies in the realm of
morality, philosophy and even theology more than it does in science.
Scientists once believed that blacks "deserved" to be slaves and that women
shouldn't work. Were politicians right to defer to the scientific consensus
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then? Scientists built the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. I wouldn't expect Foundations
pacifists to defer uncritically to those scientists' moral judgments. First and foremost, it needs to be noted that being aware
Scientists are technicians, not moral philosophers. While they can of one’s surroundings and identifying potential threats and
provide facts that inform good decision-making, they can't distill morality in a dangerous situations is more of a mindset than a hard skill. Because
test tube. Politicians shouldn't abdicate to the guys in white coats their of this, situational awareness is not something that can be practiced
responsibilities to answer moral questions the white coats can't answer. only by highly trained government agents or specialized corporate
But you know what the white coats can do? They can tell us whether security countersurveillance teams. Indeed, it can be exercised by
anyone with the will and the discipline to do so.
banning deepwater oil drilling will make us safer. Too bad Obama isn't
An important element of the proper mindset is to first
listening.
recognize that threats exist. Ignorance or denial of a threat — or
The S-2 Report completely tuning out one’s surroundings while in a public place —
makes a person’s chances of quickly recognizing the threat and
Surveillance & Countersurveillance avoiding it slim to none. This is why apathy, denial and complacency
June 10, 2010 | 0856 GMT can be (and often are) deadly. A second important element is
understanding the need to take responsibility for one’s own
security. The resources of any government are finite and the
authorities simply cannot be everywhere and cannot stop every
criminal action. The same principle applies to private security at
businesses or other institutions, like places of worship. Therefore,
people need to look out for themselves and their neighbors.
Another important facet of this mindset is learning to trust
your “gut” or intuition. Many times a person’s subconscious can
notice subtle signs of danger that the conscious mind has difficulty
quantifying or articulating. Many people who are victimized
frequently experience such feelings of danger prior to an incident,
but choose to ignore them. Even a potentially threatening person
not making an immediate move — or even if the person wanders off
quickly after a moment of eye contact — does not mean there was
no threat.
Levels of Awareness
A Primer on Situational Awareness
By Scott Stewart
The world is a wonderful place, but it can also be a
dangerous one. In almost every corner of the globe militants of some
political persuasion are plotting terror attacks — and these attacks
can happen in London or New York, not just in Peshawar or Baghdad.
Meanwhile, criminals operate wherever there are people, seeking to
steal, rape, kidnap or kill.
Regardless of the threat, it is very important to recognize
that criminal and terrorist attacks do not materialize out of thin air. In
fact, quite the opposite is true. Criminals and terrorists follow a
process when planning their actions, and this process has several
distinct steps. This process has traditionally been referred to as the
“terrorist attack cycle,” but if one looks at the issue thoughtfully, it
becomes apparent that the same steps apply to nearly all crimes. Of
course, there will be more time between steps in a complex crime like
a kidnapping or car bombing than there will be between steps in a
simple crime such as purse-snatching or shoplifting, where the steps
can be completed quite rapidly. Nevertheless, the same steps are
usually followed.
People who practice situational awareness can often spot this
planning process as it unfolds and then take appropriate steps to
avoid the dangerous situation or prevent it from happening
altogether. Because of this, situational awareness is one of the key
building blocks of effective personal security — and when exercised
by large numbers of people, it can also be an important facet of
national security. Since situational awareness is so important, and
because we discuss situational awareness so frequently in our
analyses, we thought it would be helpful to discuss the subject in People typically operate on five distinct levels of
detail and provide a primer that can be used by people in all sorts of awareness. There are many ways to describe these levels
situations. (“Cooper’s colors,” for example, which is a system frequently used
12
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in law enforcement and military training), but perhaps the most
effective way to illustrate the differences between the levels is to
compare them to the different degrees of attention we practice while
driving. For our purposes here we will refer to the five levels as
“tuned out;” “relaxed awareness;” “focused awareness;” “high alert”
and “comatose.”
The first level, tuned out, is like when you are driving in a
very familiar environment or are engrossed in thought, a daydream, a
song on the radio or even by the kids fighting in the backseat.
Increasingly, cell phone calls and texting are also causing people to
tune out while they drive. Have you ever gotten into the car and
arrived somewhere without even really thinking about your drive
there? If so, then you’ve experienced being tuned out.
The second level of awareness, relaxed awareness, is like
defensive driving. This is a state in which you are relaxed but you are
also watching the other cars on the road and are looking well ahead
for potential road hazards. If another driver looks like he may not
stop at the intersection ahead, you tap your brakes to slow your car
in case he does not. Defensive driving does not make you weary, and
you can drive this way for a long time if you have the discipline to
keep yourself at this level, but it is very easy to slip into tuned-out
mode. If you are practicing defensive driving you can still enjoy the
trip, look at the scenery and listen to the radio, but you cannot allow
yourself to get so engrossed in those distractions that they exclude
everything else. You are relaxed and enjoying your drive, but you are
still watching for road hazards, maintaining a safe following distance
and keeping an eye on the behavior of the drivers around you.
The next level of awareness, focused awareness, is like
driving in hazardous road conditions. You need to practice this level of
awareness when you are driving on icy or slushy roads — or the roads
infested with potholes and erratic drivers that exist in many third-
world countries. When you are driving in such an environment, you
need to keep two hands on the wheel at all times and have your
attention totally focused on the road and the other drivers. You don’t
dare take your eyes off the road or let your attention wander. There
is no time for cell phone calls or other distractions. The level of
concentration required for this type of driving makes it extremely
tiring and stressful. A drive that you normally would not think twice
about will totally exhaust you under these conditions because it
demands your prolonged and total concentration.
The fourth level of awareness is high alert. This is the level
that induces an adrenaline rush, a prayer and a gasp for air all at the
same time — “Watch out! There’s a deer in the road! Hit the brakes!”
This also happens when that car you are watching doesn’t stop at the
stop sign and pulls out right in front of you. High alert can be scary,
but at this level you are still able to function. You can hit your brakes
and keep your car under control. In fact, the adrenalin rush you get
at this stage can sometimes even aid your reflexes. But, the human
body can tolerate only short periods of high alert before becoming
physically and mentally exhausted.
The last level of awareness, comatose, is what happens
when you literally freeze at the wheel and cannot respond to stimuli,
either because you have fallen asleep, or, at the other end of the
spectrum, because you are petrified from panic. It is this panic-
induced paralysis that concerns us most in relation to situational
awareness. The comatose level of awareness (or perhaps more
accurately, lack of awareness) is where you go into shock, your brain
ceases to process information and you simply cannot react to the
reality of the situation. Many times when this happens, a person can
go into denial, believing that “this can’t be happening to me,” or the
person can feel as though he or she is observing, rather than actually
participating in, the event. Often, the passage of time will seem to
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30 June 2010
grind to a halt. Crime victims frequently report experiencing this
sensation and being unable to act during an unfolding crime.
Finding the Right Level
Now that we’ve discussed the different levels of awareness,
let’s focus on identifying what level is ideal at a given time. The
body and mind both require rest, so we have to spend several hours
each day at the comatose level while asleep. When we are sitting at
our homes watching a movie or reading a book, it is perfectly fine to
operate in the tuned-out mode. However, some people will attempt
to maintain the tuned-out mode in decidedly inappropriate
environments (e.g., when they are out on the street at night in a
third-world barrio), or they will maintain a mindset wherein they
deny that they can be victimized by criminals. “That couldn’t
happen to me, so there’s no need to watch for it.” They are tuned
out.
Some people are so tuned out as they go through life that
they miss even blatant signs of pending criminal activity directed
specifically at them. In 1992, an American executive living in the
Philippines was kidnapped by a Marxist kidnapping gang in Manila
known as the “Red Scorpion Group.” When the man was debriefed
following his rescue, he described in detail how the kidnappers had
blocked off his car in traffic and abducted him. Then, to the surprise
of the debriefing team, he said that on the day before he was
abducted, the same group of guys had attempted to kidnap him at
the exact same location, at the very same time of day and driving
the same vehicle. The attackers had failed to adequately box his car
in, however, and his driver was able to pull around the blocking
vehicle and proceed to the office.
Since the executive did not consider himself to be a
kidnapping target, he had just assumed that the incident the day
before his abduction was “just another close call in crazy Manila
traffic.” The executive and his driver had both been tuned out.
Unfortunately, the executive paid for this lack of situational
awareness by having to withstand an extremely traumatic
kidnapping, which included almost being killed in the dramatic
Philippine National Police operation that rescued him.
If you are tuned out while you are driving and something
happens — say, a child runs out into the road or a car stops quickly
in front of you — you will not see the problem coming. This usually
means that you either do not see the hazard in time to avoid it and
you hit it, or you totally panic and cannot react to it — neither is
good. These reactions (or lack of reaction) occur because it is very
difficult to change mental states quickly, especially when the
adjustment requires moving several steps, say, from tuned out to
high alert. It is like trying to shift your car directly from first gear
into fifth and it shudders and stalls. Many times, when people are
forced to make this mental jump and they panic (and stall), they go
into shock and will actually freeze and be unable to take any action
— they go comatose. This happens not only when driving but also
when a criminal catches someone totally unaware and unprepared.
While training does help people move up and down the alertness
continuum, it is difficult for even highly trained individuals to
transition from tuned out to high alert. This is why police officers,
federal agents and military personnel receive so much training on
situational awareness.
It is critical to stress here that situational awareness does
not mean being paranoid or obsessively concerned about your
security. It does not mean living with the irrational expectation that
there is a dangerous criminal lurking behind every bush. In fact,
people simply cannot operate in a state of focused awareness for
extended periods, and high alert can be maintained only for very
brief periods before exhaustion sets in. The “flight or fight” response
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can be very helpful if it can be controlled. When it gets out of control,
however, a constant stream of adrenaline and stress is simply not
healthy for the body or the mind. When people are constantly
paranoid, they become mentally and physically burned out. Not only
is this dangerous to physical and mental health, but security also
suffers because it is very hard to be aware of your surroundings when
you are a complete basket case. Therefore, operating constantly in a
state of high alert is not the answer, nor is operating for prolonged
periods in a state of focused alert, which can also be overly
demanding and completely enervating. This is the process that results
in alert fatigue. The human body was simply not designed to operate
under constant stress. People (even highly skilled operators) require
time to rest and recover.
Because of this, the basic level of situational awareness that
should be practiced most of the time is relaxed awareness, a state of
mind that can be maintained indefinitely without all the stress and
fatigue associated with focused awareness or high alert. Relaxed
awareness is not tiring, and it allows you to enjoy life while rewarding
you with an effective level of personal security. When you are in an
area where there is potential danger (which, by definition, is almost
anywhere), you should go through most of your day in a state of
relaxed awareness. Then if you spot something out of the ordinary
that could be a potential threat, you can “dial yourself up” to a state
of focused awareness and take a careful look at that potential threat
(and also look for others in the area).
If the potential threat proves innocuous, or is simply a false
alarm, you can dial yourself back down into relaxed awareness and
continue on your merry way. If, on the other hand, you look and
determine that the potential threat is a probable threat, seeing it in
advance allows you to take actions to avoid it. You may never need to
elevate to high alert, since you have avoided the problem at an early
stage. However, once you are in a state of focused awareness you are
far better prepared to handle the jump to high alert if the threat does
change from potential to actual — if the three guys lurking on the
corner do start coming toward you and look as if they are reaching for
weapons. The chances of you going comatose are far less if you jump
from focused awareness to high alert than if you are caught by
surprise and “forced” to go into high alert from tuned out. An
illustration of this would be the difference between a car making a
sudden stop in front of a person when the driver is practicing
defensive driving, compared to a car that makes a sudden stop in
front of person when the driver is sending a text message.
Of course, if you know that you must go into an area that is
very dangerous, you should dial yourself up to focused awareness
when you are in that area. For example, if there is a specific section
of highway where a lot of improvised explosive devices detonate and
ambushes occur, or if there is a part of a city that is controlled (and
patrolled) by criminal gangs — and you cannot avoid these danger
areas for whatever reason — it would be prudent to heighten your
level of awareness when you are in those areas. An increased level of
awareness is also prudent when engaging in common or everyday
tasks, such as visiting an ATM or walking to the car in a dark parking
lot. The seemingly trivial nature of these common tasks can make it
all too easy to go on “autopilot” and thus expose yourself to threats.
When the time of potential danger has passed, you can then go back
to a state of relaxed awareness.
This process also demonstrates the importance of being
familiar with your environment and the dangers that are present
there. Such awareness allows you to avoid many threats and to be on
the alert when you must venture into a dangerous area.
Clearly, few of us are living in the type of intense threat
environment currently found in places like Mogadishu, Juarez or
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30 June 2010
Kandahar. Nonetheless, average citizens all over the world face
many different kinds of threats on a daily basis — from common
thieves and assailants to criminals and mentally disturbed
individuals aiming to conduct violent acts to militants wanting to
carry out large-scale attacks against subways and aircraft.
Many of the steps required to conduct these attacks must
be accomplished in a manner that makes the actions visible to the
potential victim and outside observers. It is at these junctures that
people practicing situational awareness can detect these attack
steps, avoid the danger and alert the authorities. When people
practice situational awareness they not only can keep themselves
safer but they can also help keep others safe. And when groups of
people practice situational awareness together they can help keep
their schools, houses of worship, workplaces and cities safe from
danger.
And as we’ve discussed many times before, as the terrorist
threat continues to devolve into one almost as diffuse as the
criminal threat, ordinary citizens are also becoming an increasingly
important national security resource.
June 24, 2010 | 0855 GMT
Criminal Intent and Militant Funding
By Scott Stewart
STRATFOR is currently putting the finishing touches on a
detailed assessment of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), the al Qaeda-
inspired jihadist franchise in that country. As we got deeper into
that project, one of the things we noticed was the group’s
increasing reliance on criminal activity to fund its operations. In
recent months, in addition to kidnappings for ransom and extortion
of businessmen — which have been endemic in Iraq for many years
— the ISI appears to have become increasingly involved in armed
robbery directed against banks, currency exchanges, gold markets
and jewelry shops.
This increase in criminal activity highlights how the ISI has
fallen on hard times since its heyday in 2006-2007, when it was
flush with cash from overseas donors and when its wealth led the
apex leadership of al Qaeda in Pakistan to ask its Iraqi franchise for
financial assistance. But when considered in a larger context, the
ISI’s shift to criminal activity is certainly not surprising and, in fact,
follows the pattern of many other ideologically motivated terrorist or
insurgent groups that have been forced to resort to crime to support
themselves.
The Cost of Doing Business
Whether we are talking about a small urban terrorist cell or
a large-scale rural insurgency, it takes money to maintain a militant
organization. It costs money to conduct even a rudimentary
terrorist attack, and while there are a lot of variables in
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calculating the costs of a single attack, in order to simplify things,
we’ll make a ballpark estimate of not more than $100 for an attack
that involves a single operative detonating an improvised explosive
device or using a firearm. (It certainly is possible to construct a lethal
device for less, and many grassroots plots have cost far more, but we
think $100 is a fair general estimate.) While that amount may seem
quite modest by Western standards, it is important to remember that
in the places where militant groups tend to thrive, like Somalia and
Pakistan, the population is very poor. The typical Somali earns
approximately $600 a year, and the typical Pakistani living in the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas makes around $660. For many
individuals living in such areas, the vehicle used in an attack
deploying a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) is a
luxury that they can never aspire to own for personal use, much less
afford to buy only to destroy it in an attack. Indeed, even the $100 it
may cost to conduct a basic terrorist attack is far more than they can
afford.
To be sure, the expense of an individual terrorist attack can
be marginal for a group like the ISI or the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan
(TTP). However, for such a group, the expenses required to operate
are far more than just the amount required to conduct attacks —
whether small roadside bombs or large VBIEDs. Such groups also
need to establish and maintain the infrastructure required to operate
a militant organization over a long period of time, not just during
attacks but also between attacks. Setting up and operating such an
infrastructure is far more costly than just paying for individual
attacks.
In addition to the purchasing the materials required to
conduct specific terrorist attacks, a militant organization also needs to
pay wages to its fighters and provide food and lodging. Many also
give stipends to the widows and families their fighters leave behind.
In addition to the cost of personnel, the organization also needs to
purchase safe-houses, modes of transportation (e.g., pickup trucks or
motorcycles), communications equipment, weapons, munitions and
facilities and equipment for training. If the militant organization hopes
to use advanced weapons, like man-portable air defense systems, the
costs can go even higher.
There are other costs involved in maintaining a large,
professional militant group, such as travel, fraudulent identification
documents (or legitimate documents obtained through fraud),
payment for intelligence assets to monitor the activities of
government forces, and even the direct bribery of security, border
and other government officials. In some places, militant groups such
as Hezbollah also pay for social services such as health care and
education for the local population as a means of establishing and
maintaining local support for the cause.
When added together, these various expenses amount to a
substantial financial commitment, and operations are even more
expensive in an environment where the local population is hostile to
the militant organization and the government is persistently trying to
cut off the group’s funding. In such an environment, the local people
are less willing to provide support to the militants in the way of food,
shelter and cash, and the militants are also forced to spend more
money on operational security. Information about the government
must also be purchased or coerced, and more “hush money” must be
paid to keep people from telling the government about militant
operations. In an environment where the local population is friendly,
they will shelter militants and volunteer information about
government forces and will not inform on militants to the
government.
Sponsorship
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One way to offset the steep cost of operating a large
militant organization is by having a state sponsor. Indeed, funding
rebel or insurgent groups to cause problems for a rival is an age-old
tool of statecraft, and one that was exercised frequently during the
Cold War. During that period, the United States worked to counter
communist governments around the globe, and the Soviet Union
and its partners operated a broad global array of proxy militant
groups. In terms of geopolitical struggles, funding proxy groups is
far less expensive than engaging in direct warfare in terms of both
money and battlefield losses. Using proxies also provides benefits in
terms of deniability for both domestic and international purposes.
For the militant group, the addition of a state sponsor can
provide an array of modern weaponry and a great deal of useful
training. For example, the FIM-92 Stinger missiles that the United
States gave to Afghan militants fighting Soviet forces greatly
enhanced the militants’ ability to counter the Soviets’ use of air
power. The training provided by the Soviet KGB and its allies, the
Cuban DGI and the East German Stasi, revolutionized the use of
improvised explosive devices in terrorist attacks. Members of the
groups these intelligence services trained at camps in Libya,
Lebanon and Yemen, such as the German Red Brigades, the
Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), the Japanese Red Army
and various Palestinian militant groups (among others), all became
quite adept at using explosives in terrorist attacks.
The prevalence of Marxist terrorist groups during the Cold
War led some observers to believe that the phenomenon of modern
terrorism would die with the fall of the Soviet Union. Indeed, many
militant groups, from urban Marxist organizations like the Tupac
Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) in Peru to rural based
insurgents like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),
fell on hard financial times after the fall of the Soviet Union. While
some of these groups withered away with their dwindling financial
support (like the MRTA), others were more resourceful and found
alternative ways to support their movement and continue their
operations. The FARC, for example, was able to use its rural power
in Colombia to offer protection to narcotics traffickers. In an ironic
twist, elements of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a
right-wing death squad set up to defend rich landowners against the
FARC, have also gone on to play an important role in the Colombian
Norte del Valle cartel and in various “bacrim” smuggling groups.
Groups such as the PIRA and its splinters were able to fund
themselves through robbery, extortion and “tiger kidnapping”.
In some places, the Marxist revolutionaries sought to keep
the ideology of their cause separate from the criminal activities
required to fund it following the loss of Soviet support. In the
Philippines, for example, the New People’s Army formed what it
termed “dirty job intelligence groups,” which were tasked with
conducting kidnappings for ransom and robbing banks and armored
cars. The groups also participated in a widespread campaign to
shake down businesses for extortion payments, which it referred to
as “revolutionary taxes.” In Central America, the Salvadoran
Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) established a
finance and logistics operation based out of Managua, Nicaragua,
that conducted a string of kidnappings of wealthy industrialists in
places like Mexico and Brazil. By targeting wealthy capitalists, the
group sought to cast a Robin Hood-like light on this criminal
activity. To further distance itself from the activity, the group used
American and Canadian citizens to do much of its pre-operational
surveillance and employed hired muscle from disbanded South
American Marxist organizations to conduct the kidnappings and
guard the hostages. The FMLN’s financial problems helped lead to
the peace accords signed in 1992, and the FMLN has since become
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one of the main political parties in El Salvador. Its candidate, Mauricio
Funes, was elected president of El Salvador in 2009.
Beyond the COMINTERN
The fall of the Soviet Union clearly did not end terrorism.
Although Marxist militants funded themselves in Colombia, the
Philippines and elsewhere through crime, Marxism was not the only
flavor of terrorism on the planet. There are all sorts of motivations for
terrorism as a militant tactic, from white supremacy to animal rights.
But one of the most significant forces that arose in the 1980s as the
Soviet Union was falling was militant Islamism. In addition to the
ideals of the Iranian Revolution, which led to the creation of Hezbollah
and other Iranian-sponsored groups, the Islamist fervor that was
used to drum up support for the militants fighting the Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan eventually gave birth to al Qaeda and its jihadist
spawn.
Although Hezbollah has always been funded by the
governments of Iran and Syria, it has also become quite an
entrepreneurial organization. Hezbollah has established a fundraising
network that stretches across the globe and encompasses both
legitimate businesses and criminal enterprises. In terms of its criminal
operations, Hezbollah has a well-known presence in the tri-border
region of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, where the U.S. government
estimates it has earned tens of millions of dollars from selling
electronic goods, counterfeit luxury items and pirated software,
movies and music. It also has an even more profitable network in
West Africa that deals in “blood diamonds” from places like Sierra
Leone and the Republic of the Congo. Cells in Asia procure and ship
much of the counterfeit material sold elsewhere; nodes in North
America deal in smuggled cigarettes, baby formula and counterfeit
designer goods, among other things. In the United States, Hezbollah
also has been involved in smuggling pseudoephedrine and selling
counterfeit Viagra, and it has played a significant role in the
production and worldwide propagation of counterfeit currencies. The
business empire of the Shiite organization also extends into the
narcotics trade, and Hezbollah earns large percentages of the
estimated $1 billion in drug money flowing each year out of Lebanon’s
Bekaa Valley.
On the jihadist side of militant Islamism, jihadist groups
have been conducting criminal activity to fund their movement since
the 1990s. The jihadist cell that conducted the March 2004 Madrid
Train Bombings was self-funded by selling illegal drugs, and jihadists
have been involved in a number of criminal schemes ranging from
welfare fraud to interstate transportation of stolen property.
In addition, many wealthy Muslims in Saudi Arabia the
Persian Gulf states and elsewhere saw the jihadist groups as a way to
export their conservative Wahhabi/Salafi strain of Islam, and many
considered their gifts to jihadist groups to be their way of satisfying
the Muslim religious obligation to give to charity. The governments of
Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen, Syria and Pakistan saw jihadism as a
foreign policy tool, and in some cases the jihadists were also seen as
a tool to be used against domestic rivals. Pakistan was one of the
most active countries playing the jihadist card, and it used it to
influence its regional neighbors by supporting the growth of the
Taliban in Afghanistan as well as Kashmiri militant groups such as the
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) for use against its archrival, India.
After 2003, however, when the al Qaeda franchise in Saudi
Arabia declared war on the Saudi government (and the oil industry
that funds it), sentiment in that country began to change and the
donations sent by wealthy Saudis to al Qaeda or al Qaeda-related
charities began to decline markedly. By 2006, the al Qaeda core
leadership — and the larger jihadist movement — was experiencing
significant financial difficulties. Today, with Pakistan also experiencing
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a backlash from supporting jihadists who have turned against the
state, and with the Sunni sheikhs in Iraq turning against the ISI
there, funding and sanctuary are becoming increasingly difficult for
jihadists to find.
In recent years, the United States and the international
community have taken a number of steps to monitor the
international transfer of money, track charitable donations and
scrutinize charities. These measures have begun to have an effect
— not just in the case of the jihadist groups but for all major
militant organizations. These systems are not foolproof, and there
are still gaps that can be exploited, but overall, the legislation,
procedures and tools now in place make financing from abroad
much more difficult than it was prior to September 2001.
The Need to Survive
And this brings us where we are today regarding terrorism
and funding. While countries like Venezuela and Nicaragua play
around with supporting the export of Marxism through Latin
America, the funding for Marxist movements in the Western
Hemisphere is far below what it was before the fall of the Soviet
Union. Indeed, transnational drug cartels and their allied street
gangs pose a far greater threat to the stability of countries in the
region today.
Groups that cannot find state sponsorship, such as the
Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) in
Nigeria, will be left to fund themselves through ransoms for
kidnapped oil workers, selling stolen oil and from protection money.
(It is worth noting, however, that MEND also has some powerful
patrons inside Nigeria’s political structure.) And groups that still
receive state funding, like Iranian proxies Hezbollah and Hamas as
well as Shiite militant groups in Iraq and the Persian Gulf region,
will continue to get that support. (There are frequent rumors that
Iran is supporting jihadist groups in places like Iraq and Afghanistan
as a way to cause pain to the United States.)
Overall, state sponsorship of jihadist groups has been
declining since supporting countries realized they were being
attacked by militant groups of their own creation. Some countries,
like Syria and Pakistan, still keep their fingers in the jihadist pie, but
as time progresses more countries are coming to see the jihadists
as threats rather than useful tools. For the past few years, we have
seen groups like al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb resort to narcotics
smuggling and the kidnapping of foreigners to fund their operations
and that trend will likely increase. For one thing, the jump from
militant attacks to criminal activity is relatively easy to make.
Criminal activity (whether it’s robbing a bank or extorting business
owners for “taxes”) requires the same physical force — or at least
the threat of physical force — that militant groups perfect over
years of carrying out insurgent or terrorist attacks.
While such criminal activity does allow a militant group to
survive, it comes with a number of risks. First is the risk that
members of the organization could become overly enamored with
the criminal activity and the money it brings and abandon the cause
— and the austere life of an ideological fighter — to pursue a more
lucrative criminal career. (In many cases, they will attempt to retain
some ideological facade for recruitment or legitimacy purposes. On
the other hand, some jihadist groups believe that criminal activities
allow them to emulate the actions of the Prophet Mohammed, who
raided the caravans of his enemies to fund his movement and
allowed his men to take booty.) Criminal activity can also cause
ideological splits between the more pragmatic members of a militant
organization and those who believe that criminal behavior tarnishes
the image of their cause. And criminal activity can turn the local
population against the militants — especially the population being
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targeted for crimes — while providing law enforcement with
opportunities to arrest militant operatives on charges that are in
many cases easier to prove than conspiring to conduct terrorist
attacks. Lastly, reliance on criminal activity for funding a militant
group requires a serious commitment of resources — men and guns
— that cannot be allocated to other activities when they are being
used to commit crimes.
As efforts to combat terrorism continue, militant leaders will
increasingly be forced to choose between abandoning their cause or
possibly tarnishing its public image. When faced with such a choice,
many militant leaders — like those of the ISI — will follow the
examples of groups like the FARC and the PIRA and choose to pursue
criminal means to continue their struggle.
June 17, 2010 | 0855 GMT
Watching for Watchers
By Scott Stewart
In last week’s Security Weekly we discussed how situational
awareness is a mindset that can — and should — be practiced by everyone. We
also described the different levels of situational awareness and discussed which
level is appropriate for different sorts of situations. And we noted how all
criminals and terrorists follow a process when planning their acts and that this
process is visible at certain times to people who are watching for such behavior.
When one considers these facts, it inevitably leads to the question:
“What in the world am I looking for?” The brief answer is: “warning signs of
criminal or terrorist behavior.” Since this brief answer is very vague, it becomes
necessary to describe the behavior in more detail.
Surveillance
It is important to make one fundamental point clear up front. The
operational behavior that most commonly exposes a person planning a criminal
or terrorist act to scrutiny by the intended target is surveillance. Other portions
of the planning process can be conducted elsewhere, especially in the age of the
Internet, when so much information is available online. From an operational
standpoint, however, there simply is no substitute for having eyes on the
potential target. In military terms, surveillance is often called reconnaissance,
and in a criminal context it is often referred to as casing or scoping out.
Environmental activist and animal rights groups trained by the Ruckus Society
refer to it as “scouting.” No matter what terminology is being used for the
activity, it is meant to accomplish the same objective: assessing a potential
target for value, vulnerabilities and potential security measures. Surveillance is
required so that criminals can conduct a cost-benefit analysis.
The amount of time devoted to the criminal surveillance process will
vary, depending on the type of crime and the type of criminal involved. A
criminal who operates like an ambush predator, such as a purse-snatcher, may
lie in wait for a suitable target to come within striking distance. This is akin to a
crocodile lying in a watering hole waiting for an animal to come and get a drink.
The criminal will have only a few seconds to size up the potential target and
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conduct the cost-benefit calculation before formulating his plan, getting ready
and striking.
On the other extreme are the criminals who behave more like
stalking predators. Such a criminal is like a lion on the savannah that carefully
looks over the herd and selects a vulnerable animal believed to be the easiest
to take down. A criminal who operates like a stalking predator, such as a
kidnapper or terrorist, may select a suitable target and then take days or even
weeks to follow the target, assess its vulnerabilities and determine if the
potential take is worth the risk. Normally, stalking criminals will prey only on
targets they feel are vulnerable and can be successfully hit, although they will
occasionally take bigger risks on high-value targets.
Of course, there are many other criminals who fall somewhere in the
middle, and they may take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours to
watch a potential target. Regardless of the time spent observing the target, all
criminals will conduct this surveillance and they are vulnerable to detection
during this time.
Given that surveillance is so widely practiced, it is quite amazing to
consider that, in general, criminals and terrorists are terrible at conducting
surveillance. There are some exceptions, such as the relatively sophisticated
surveillance performed by Greenpeace and some of the other groups trained
by the Ruckus Society, or the low-key and highly detailed surveillance
performed by some high-end art and jewelry thieves, but such surveillance is
the exception rather than the rule.
The term “tradecraft” is an espionage term that refers to techniques
and procedures used in the field, but term also implies quite a bit of finesse in
the practice of these techniques. Tradecraft, then, is really more of an art
rather than a science, and surveillance tradecraft is no exception. Like playing
the violin or fencing with a foil, it takes time and practice to become a skilled
surveillance practitioner. Most individuals involved in criminal and terrorist
activity simply do not devote the time necessary to master this skill. Because
of this, they have terrible technique, use sloppy procedures and lack finesse
when they are watching people.
Although everybody planning a criminal or terrorist attack conducts
preoperational surveillance, that does not necessarily mean they are good at it.
The simple truth is that these individuals are able to get by with such a poor
level of surveillance tradecraft because most victims simply are not looking for
them. And this is where we tie the discussion back into last week’s Security
Weekly. Most people do not practice situational awareness. For those who do,
the poor surveillance tradecraft exhibited by criminals is good news. It gives
them time to avoid an immediate threat and contact the authorities.
Demeanor Is the Key
The behavior a person needs to outwardly display in order to master
the art of surveillance tradecraft is called good demeanor. Good demeanor is
not intuitive. In fact, the things one has to do to maintain good demeanor
frequently run counter to human nature. Because of this, intelligence and
security professionals who work surveillance operations receive extensive
training that includes many hours of heavily critiqued practical exercises,
often followed by field training with a team of experienced surveillance
professionals. This training teaches and reinforces good demeanor. Criminals
and terrorists do not receive this type of training and, as a result, bad
surveillance tradecraft has long proved to be an Achilles’ heel for terrorist and
criminal organizations.
Surveillance is an unnatural activity, and a person doing it must
deal with strong feelings of self-consciousness and of being out of place.
People conducting surveillance frequently suffer from what is called “burn
syndrome,” the erroneous belief that the people they are watching have
spotted them. Feeling “burned” will cause surveillants to do unnatural things,
such as suddenly ducking back into a doorway or turning around abruptly
when they unexpectedly come face to face with the target. People
inexperienced in the art of surveillance find it difficult to control this natural
reaction. Even experienced surveillance operatives occasionally have the
feeling of being burned; the difference is they have received a lot of training
and they are better able to control their reaction and work through it. They are
able to maintain a normal looking demeanor while their insides are screaming
that the person they are surveilling has seen them.
In addition to doing something unnatural or stupid when feeling
burned, another very common mistake made by amateurs when
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conducting surveillance is the failure to get into proper “character” for the job
or, when in character, appearing in places or carrying out activities that are
incongruent with the character’s “costume.” The terms used to describe these
role-playing aspects of surveillance are “cover for status” and “cover for action.”
Cover for status is a person’s purported identity — his costume. A person can
pretend to be a student, a businessman, a repairman, etc. Cover for action
explains why the person is doing what he or she is doing — why that guy has
been standing on that street corner for half an hour.
The purpose of using good cover for action and cover for status is to
make the presence of the person conducting the surveillance look routine and
normal. When done right, the surveillance operative fits in with the mental
snapshot subconsciously taken by the target as the target goes about his or her
business. Inexperienced people who conduct surveillance frequently do not use
good cover for action or cover for status, and they can be easily detected.
An example of bad cover for status would be someone dressed as “a
businessman” walking in the woods or at the beach. An example of bad cover for
action is someone pretending to be sitting at a bus stop who remains at that bus
stop even when several buses have passed. But mostly, malefactors conducting
surveillance practice little or no cover for action or cover for status. They just
lurk and look totally out of place. There is no apparent reason for them to be
where they are and doing what they are doing.
In addition to “plain old lurking,” other giveaways include a person
moving when the target moves, communicating when the target moves, avoiding
eye contact with the target, making sudden turns or stops, or even using hand
signals to communicate with other members of a surveillance team or criminal
gang. Surveillants also can tip off the person they are watching by entering or
leaving a building immediately after the person they are watching or simply by
running in street clothes. Sometimes, people who are experiencing the burn
syndrome exhibit almost imperceptible behaviors that the target can sense more
than observe. It may not be something that can be articulated, but the target just
gets the gut feeling that there is something wrong or odd about the way a certain
person behaves. Innocent bystanders who are not watching someone usually do
not exhibit this behavior or trigger these feelings.
The U.S. government often uses the acronym “TEDD” to illustrate the
principles that can be used to identify surveillance conducted by
counterintelligence agencies, but these same principles also can be used to
identify criminal and terrorist surveillance. TEDD stands for time, environment,
distance and demeanor. In other words, if a person sees someone repeatedly
over time, in different environments and over distance, or someone who
displays poor surveillance demeanor, then that person can assume he or she is
under surveillance. If a person is being specifically targeted for a planned attack,
he or she might be exposed to the time, environment and distance elements of
TEDD, but if the subway car the person is riding in or the building where the
person works is the target, he or she might only have the demeanor of the
attacker to key on because the attacker will not be seen by the observer over time
and distance or in different environments. Time, environment and distance are
also not applicable in cases involving criminals who behave like ambush
predators. Therefore, when we are talking about criminal surveillance,
demeanor is the most critical of the four elements. Demeanor will also often
work in tandem with the other elements, and poor demeanor will often help the
target spot the surveillant at different times and places.
In a situation where a building or subway car is targeted for an attack
rather than a specific person, there are still a number of demeanor indicators
that can be observed just prior to the attack. Such indicators include people
wearing unseasonable clothing in warm weather (such as trench coats); people
with odd bulges under their clothing or wires sticking out from their clothing;
people who are sweating profusely, mumbling or fidgeting; people who appear
to be attempting to avoid security personnel; and people who simply appear to
be out of place. According to many reports, suicide attackers will often exhibit an
intense stare as they approach the final stage of their attack plan. While not
every person exhibiting such behavior is a suicide bomber or shooter, avoiding
such a person rarely has much of a downside.
One technique that can be helpful in looking for people conducting
long-term surveillance is to identify places that provide optimal visibility of a
critical place the surveillant would want to watch (for example, the front door of
a potential target’s residence or office). These optimal observation points are
often referred to as “perches” in surveillance jargon. Perches can then be
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watched for signs of hostile surveillance like people who don’t belong there,
people making demeanor mistakes, etc.
This principle can also be extended to critical points along
frequently and predictably traveled routes. Potential targets can conduct
simple pattern and route analyses to determine where along the route they are
most predictable and vulnerable. Route analysis looks for vulnerabilities, or
choke points, on a particular route of travel. Choke points have two main
characteristics: They are places where the potential target must travel and
where rapid forward motion is difficult (such as sharp, blind curves). When a
choke point provides a place where hostiles can wait with impunity for their
victims and have access to a rapid escape route, the choke point becomes a
potential attack site. These characteristics are found in attack sites used by
highly professional kidnap/assassination teams and by criminal “ambush
predators” such as carjackers. While the ideal tactic is to vary routes and times
to avoid predictable locations, this is also difficult and disruptive and is
warranted only when the threat is high. A more practical alternative is for
potential targets to raise their situational awareness a notch as they travel
through such areas at predictable times in order to be on the alert for potential
hostile surveillance or signs of an impending attack.
The fact that operatives conducting surveillance over an extended
period of time can change their clothing and wear hats, wigs or other light
disguises — and use different vehicles or license plates — also demonstrates
why watching for mistakes in demeanor is critical. Of course, the use of
disguises is also an indicator that the surveillants are more advanced and
therefore potentially more dangerous. Because of a surveillant’s ability to
make superficial changes in appearance, it is important to focus on the things
that cannot be changed as easily as clothing or hair, such as a person’s facial
features, build, mannerisms and gait. Additionally, while a surveillant can
change the license plate on a car, it is not as easy to alter other aspects of the
vehicle such as body damage (scratches and dents). Paying attention to small
details can produce significant results over time.
As we noted last week — and it is worth repeating here — paying
attention to details and practicing situational awareness does not mean being
paranoid or obsessively concerned about security. When people live in a state
of paranoia, looking for a criminal behind every bush, they become mentally
and physically exhausted. Not only is this dangerous to one’s physical and
mental health, but security also suffers because it is very hard to be aware of
your surroundings when you are exhausted. Therefore, while it is important to
watch for the watchers, watching should not involve feelings of fear or
paranoia. Knowing what is occurring in the world around them empowers
people and gives them a sense of security and well-being, allowing them to
spot the good things in life as well as the potential dangers.
June 8, 2010 | 0856 GMT
The Limits of Public Opinion: Arabs, Israelis
and the Strategic Balance
By George Friedman
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Last week’s events off the coast of Israel continue to resonate.
Turkish-Israeli relations have not quite collapsed since then but are at
their lowest level since Israel’s founding. U.S.-Israeli tensions have
emerged, and European hostility toward Israel continues to intensify.
The question has now become whether substantial consequences will
follow from the incident. Put differently, the question is whether and
how it will be exploited beyond the arena of public opinion.
The most significant threat to Israel would, of course, be
military. International criticism is not without significance, but nations
do not change direction absent direct threats to their interests. But
powers outside the region are unlikely to exert military power against
Israel, and even significant economic or political sanctions are unlikely
to happen. Apart from the desire of outside powers to limit their
involvement, this is rooted in the fact that significant actions are
unlikely from inside the region either.
The first generations of Israelis lived under the threat of
conventional military defeat by neighboring countries. More recent
generations still faced threats, but not this one. Israel is operating in an
advantageous strategic context save for the arena of public opinion and
diplomatic relations and the question of Iranian nuclear weapons. All
of these issues are significant, but none is as immediate a threat as the
specter of a defeat in conventional warfare had been. Israel’s regional
enemies are so profoundly divided among themselves and have such
divergent relations with Israel that an effective coalition against Israel
does not exist — and is unlikely to arise in the near future.
Given this, the probability of an effective, as opposed to
rhetorical, shift in the behavior of powers outside the region is unlikely.
At every level, Israel’s Arab neighbors are incapable of forming even a
partial coalition against Israel. Israel is not forced to calibrate its
actions with an eye toward regional consequences, explaining Israel’s
willingness to accept broad international condemnation.
Palestinian Divisions
To begin to understand how deeply the Arabs are split,
simply consider the split among the Palestinians themselves. They are
currently divided between two very different and hostile factions. On
one side is Fatah, which dominates the West Bank. On the other side is
Hamas, which dominates the Gaza Strip. Aside from the geographic
division of the Palestinian territories — which causes the Palestinians
to behave almost as if they comprised two separate and hostile
countries — the two groups have profoundly different ideologies.
Fatah arose from the secular, socialist, Arab-nationalist and
militarist movement of Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser in the
1950s. Created in the 1960s, Fatah was closely aligned with the Soviet
Union. It was the dominant, though far from the only, faction in the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The PLO was an umbrella
group that brought together the highly fragmented elements of the
Palestinian movement. Yasser Arafat long dominated Fatah; his death
left Fatah without a charismatic leader, but with a strong bureaucracy
increasingly devoid of a coherent ideology or strategy.
Hamas arose from the Islamist movement. It was driven by
religious motivations quite alien from Fatah and hostile to it. For
Hamas, the liberation of Palestine was not simply a nationalist
imperative, but also a religious requirement. Hamas was also hostile to
what it saw as the financial corruption Arafat brought to the Palestinian
movement, as well as to Fatah’s secularism.
Hamas and Fatah are playing a zero-sum game. Given their
inability to form a coalition and their mutual desire for the other to fail,
a victory for one is a defeat for the other. This means that whatever
public statements Fatah makes, the current international focus on Gaza
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and Hamas weakens Fatah. And this means that at some point, Fatah
will try to undermine the political gains the flotilla has offered
Hamas.
The Palestinians’ deep geographic, ideological and
historical divisions occasionally flare up into violence. Their
movement has always been split, its single greatest weakness. Though
revolutionary movements frequently are torn by sectarianism, these
divisions are so deep that even without Israeli manipulation, the
threat the Palestinians pose to the Israelis is diminished. With
manipulation, the Israelis can pit Fatah against Hamas.
The Arab States and the Palestinians
The split within the Palestinians is also reflected in
divergent opinions among what used to be called the confrontation
states surrounding Israel — Egypt, Jordan and Syria.
Egypt, for example, is directly hostile to Hamas, a religious
movement amid a sea of essentially secular Arab states. Hamas’ roots
are in Egypt’s largest Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood,
which the Egyptian state has historically considered its main
domestic threat. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime has
moved aggressively against Egyptian Islamists and sees Hamas’
ideology as a threat, as it could spread back to Egypt. For this and
other reasons, Egypt has maintained its own blockade of Gaza. Egypt
is much closer to Fatah, whose ideology derives from Egyptian
secularism, and for this reason, Hamas deeply distrusts Cairo.
Jordan views Fatah with deep distrust. In 1970, Fatah
under Arafat tried to stage a revolution against the Hashemite
monarchy in Jordan. The resulting massacres, referred to as Black
September, cost about 10,000 Palestinian lives. Fatah has never truly
forgiven Jordan for Black September, and the Jordanians have never
really trusted Fatah since then. The idea of an independent
Palestinian state on the West Bank unsettles the Hashemite regime,
as Jordan’s population is mostly Palestinian. Meanwhile, Hamas with
its Islamist ideology worries Jordan, which has had its own problems
with the Muslim Brotherhood. So rhetoric aside, the Jordanians are
uneasy at best with the Palestinians, and despite years of Israeli-
Palestinian hostility, Jordan (and Egypt) has a peace treaty with
Israel that remains in place.
Syria is far more interested in Lebanon than it is in the
Palestinians. Its co-sponsorship (along with Iran) of Hezbollah has
more to do with Syria’s desire to dominate Lebanon than it does with
Hezbollah as an anti-Israeli force. Indeed, whenever fighting breaks
out between Hezbollah and Israel, the Syrians get nervous and their
tensions with Iran increase. And of course, while Hezbollah is anti-
Israeli, it is not a Palestinian movement. It is a Lebanese Shiite
movement. Most Palestinians are Sunni, and while they share a
common goal — the destruction of Israel — it is not clear that
Hezbollah would want the same kind of regime in Palestine that
either Hamas or Fatah would want. So Syria is playing a side game
with an anti-Israeli movement that isn’t Palestinian, while also
maintaining relations with both factions of the Palestinian
movement.
Outside the confrontation states, the Saudis and other
Arabian Peninsula regimes remember the threat that Nasser and the
PLO posed to their regimes. They do not easily forgive, and their
support for Fatah comes in full awareness of the potential
destabilizing influence of the Palestinians. And while the Iranians
would love to have influence over the Palestinians, Tehran is more
than 1,000 miles away. Sometimes Iranian arms get through to the
Palestinians. But Fatah doesn’t trust the Iranians, and Hamas,
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though a religious movement, is Sunni while Iran is Shiite. Hamas and
the Iranians may cooperate on some tactical issues, but they do not
share the same vision.
Israel’s Short-term Free Hand and Long-term Challenge
Given this environment, it is extremely difficult to translate
hostility to Israeli policies in Europe and other areas into meaningful
levers against Israel. Under these circumstances, the Israelis see the
consequences of actions that excite hostility toward Israel from the
Arabs and the rest of the world as less dangerous than losing control of
Gaza. The more independent Gaza becomes, the greater the threat it
poses to Israel. The suppression of Gaza is much safer and is something
Fatah ultimately supports, Egypt participates in, Jordan is relieved by
and Syria is ultimately indifferent to.
Nations base their actions on risks and rewards. The
configuration of the Palestinians and Arabs rewards Israeli
assertiveness and provides few rewards for caution. The Israelis do not
see global hostility toward Israel translating into a meaningful threat
because the Arab reality cancels it out. Therefore, relieving pressure on
Hamas makes no sense to the Israelis. Doing so would be as likely to
alienate Fatah and Egypt as it would to satisfy the Swedes, for example.
As Israel has less interest in the Swedes than in Egypt and Fatah, it
proceeds as it has.
A single point sums up the story of Israel and the Gaza
blockade-runners: Not one Egyptian aircraft threatened the Israeli
naval vessels, nor did any Syrian warship approach the intercept point.
The Israelis could be certain of complete command of the sea and air
without challenge. And this underscores how the Arab countries no
longer have a military force that can challenge the Israelis, nor the will
nor interest to acquire one. Where Egyptian and Syrian forces posed a
profound threat to Israeli forces in 1973, no such threat exists now.
Israel has a completely free hand in the region militarily; it does not
have to take into account military counteraction. The threat posed by
intifada, suicide bombers, rockets from Lebanon and Gaza, and
Hezbollah fighters is real, but it does not threaten the survival of Israel
the way the threat from Egypt and Syria once did (and the Israelis see
actions like the Gaza blockade as actually reducing the threat of
intifada, suicide bombers and rockets). Non-state actors simply lack the
force needed to reach this threshold. When we search for the reasons
behind Israeli actions, it is this singular military fact that explains
Israeli decision-making.
And while the break between Turkey and Israel is real,
Turkey alone cannot bring significant pressure to bear on Israel beyond
the sphere of public opinion and diplomacy because of the profound
divisions in the region. Turkey has the option to reduce or end
cooperation with Israel, but it does not have potential allies in the Arab
world it would need against Israel. Israel therefore feels buffered
against the Turkish reaction. Though its relationship with Turkey is
significant to Israel, it is clearly not significant enough for Israel to give
in on the blockade and accept the risks from Gaza.
At present, Israel takes the same view of the United States.
While the United States became essential to Israeli security after 1967,
Israel is far less dependent on the United States today. The quantity of
aid the United States supplies Israel has shrunk in significance as the
Israeli economy has grown. In the long run, a split with the United
States would be significant, but interestingly, in the short run, the
Israelis would be able to function quite effectively.
Israel does, however, face this strategic problem: In the short
run, it has freedom of action, but its actions could change the strategic
framework in which it operates over the long run. The most significant
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threat to Israel is not world opinion; though not trivial, world opinion
is not decisive. The threat to Israel is that its actions will generate
forces in the Arab world that eventually change the balance of power.
The politico-military consequences of public opinion is the key
question, and it is in this context that Israel must evaluate its split
with Turkey.
The most important change for Israel would not be unity
among the Palestinians, but a shift in Egyptian policy back toward the
position it held prior to Camp David. Egypt is the center of gravity of
the Arab world, the largest country and formerly the driving force
behind Arab unity. It was the power Israel feared above all others.
But Egypt under Mubarak has shifted its stance versus the
Palestinians, and far more important, allowed Egypt’s military
capability to atrophy.
Should Mubarak’s successor choose to align with these
forces and move to rebuild Egypt’s military capability, however, Israel
would face a very different regional equation. A hostile Turkey
aligned with Egypt could speed Egyptian military recovery and create
a significant threat to Israel. Turkish sponsorship of Syrian military
expansion would increase the pressure further. Imagine a world in
which the Egyptians, Syrians and Turks formed a coalition that
revived the Arab threat to Israel and the United States returned to its
position of the 1950s when it did not materially support Israel, and it
becomes clear that Turkey’s emerging power combined with a
political shift in the Arab world could represent a profound danger to
Israel.
Where there is no balance of power, the dominant nation
can act freely. The problem with this is that doing so tends to force
neighbors to try to create a balance of power. Egypt and Syria were
not a negligible threat to Israel in the past. It is in Israel’s interest to
keep them passive. The Israelis can’t dismiss the threat that its
actions could trigger political processes that cause these countries to
revert to prior behavior. They still remember what underestimating
Egypt and Syria cost them in 1973. It is remarkable how rapidly
military capabilities can revive: Recall that the Egyptian army was
shattered in 1967, but by 1973 was able to mount an offensive that
frightened Israel quite a bit.
The Israelis have the upper hand in the short term. What
they must calculate is whether they will retain the upper hand if they
continue on their course. Division in the Arab world, including
among the Palestinians, cannot disappear overnight, nor can it
quickly generate a strategic military threat. But the current
configuration of the Arab world is not fixed. Therefore, defusing the
current crisis would seem to be a long-term strategic necessity for
Israel.
Israel’s actions have generated shifts in public opinion and
diplomacy regionally and globally. The Israelis are calculating that
these actions will not generate a long-term shift in the strategic
posture of the Arab world. If they are wrong about this, recent actions
will have been a significant strategic error. If they are right, then this
is simply another passing incident. In the end, the profound divisions
in the Arab world both protect Israel and make diplomatic solutions
to its challenge almost impossible — you don’t need to fight forces
that are so divided, but it is very difficult to negotiate
comprehensively with a group that lacks anything approaching a
unified voice.
June 15, 2010 | 0855 GMT
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second prong of the strategy — flooding the region with ethnic
Russians — is no longer an option because of Russia’s
demographic profile. The Russian birth rate has been in decline
for a century, and in the post-Cold War era, the youngest
tranche of the Russian population simply collapsed. The
situation transformed from an academic debate about Russia’s
future to a policy debate about Russia’s present.
The bust in the birth rate in the 1990s and 2000s has
generated the smallest population cohort in Russian history, and
in a very few years, those post-Cold War children will
themselves be at the age where they will be having children. A
small cohort will create an even smaller cohort, and Russia’s
population problems could well evolve from crushing to
irrecoverable. Even if this cohort reproduces at a sub-Saharan
African birthrate, even if the indications of high tuberculosis and
The Kyrgyzstan Crisis and the Russian HIV infections among this population cohort are all wrong, and
Dilemma even if Russia can provide a level of services for this group that
it couldn’t manage during the height of Soviet power, any
By Peter Zeihan demographic bounce would not occur until the 2050s — once
STRATFOR often discusses how Russia is on a bit of a the children of this cohort have sufficiently aged to raise their
roll. The U.S. distraction in the Middle East has offered Russia a own children. Until 2050, Russia simply has to learn to work
golden opportunity to re-establish its spheres of influence in the with less. A lot less. And this is the best-case scenario for
region, steadily expanding the Russian zone of control into a Russia in the next generation.
shape that is eerily reminiscent of the old Soviet Union. Since
2005, when this process began, Russia has clearly reasserted
itself as the dominant power in Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan,
Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Ukraine, and has
intimidated places like Georgia and Turkmenistan into a sort of
silent acquiescence.
But we have not spent a great amount of time explaining
why this is the case. It is undeniable that Russia is a Great Power,
but few things in geopolitics are immutable, and Russia is no
exception.
Russian Geography, Strategy and Demographics
Russia’s geography is extremely open, with few
geographic barriers to hunker behind. There are no oceans,
mountains or deserts to protect Russia from outside influences —
or armies — and Russia’s forests, which might provide some
measure of protection, are on the wrong side of the country. The
Russian taiga is in the north and, as such, can only provide refuge
for Russians after the country’s more economically useful parts
have already fallen to invaders (as during the Mongol
occupation).
Despite its poor geographic hand, Russia has managed to
cope via a three-part strategy:
1. Lay claim to as large a piece of land as possible.
2. Flood it with ethnic Russians to assert reliable
control.
3. Establish an internal intelligence presence that
can monitor and, if need be, suppress the indigenous Simply put, Russia does not have the population to
population. sustain the country at its present boundaries. As time grinds on,
Throughout Russian history, this strategy has been Russia’s capacity for doing so will decrease drastically. Moscow
repeated until the Russian state reached an ocean, a mountain understands all this extremely well, and this is a leading
chain, a desert, or a foe that fought back too strongly. In many rationale behind current Russian foreign policy: Russia’s
ways, the strategies of the Kremlin of 2010 are extremely similar demographics will never again be as “positive” as they are now,
to those of Catherine the Great, Ivan the Terrible or Joseph and the Americans are unlikely to be any more distracted than
Stalin. they are now. So Russia is moving quickly and, more important,
But it is no longer the 17th century, and this strategy intelligently.
does not necessarily play to Russia’s strengths anymore. The
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Russia is thus attempting to reach some natural anchor
points, e.g., some geographic barriers that would limit the state’s
exposure to outside powers. The Russians hope they will be able
to husband their strength from these anchor points. Moscow’s
long-term strategy consistently has been to trade space for time
ahead of the beginning of the Russian twilight; if the Russians can
expand to these anchor points, Moscow hopes it can trade less
space for more time.
Unfortunately for Moscow, there are not many of these
anchor points in Russia’s neighborhood. One is the Baltic Sea, a
fact that terrifies the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania. Another is the Carpathian Mountains. This necessitates
the de facto absorption not only of Ukraine, but also of Moldova,
something that makes Romania lose sleep at night. And then
there are the Tien Shan Mountains of Central Asia — which brings
us to the crisis of the moment.
The Crisis in Kyrgyzstan
The former Soviet Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan is
not a particularly nice piece of real estate. While it is in one of
those mountainous regions that could be used to anchor Russian
power, it is on the far side of the Eurasian steppe from the
Russian core, more than 3,000 kilometers (1,800 miles) removed
from the Russian heartland. The geography of Kyrgyzstan itself
also leaves a great deal to be desired. Kyrgyzstan is an artificial
construct created by none other than Stalin, who rearranged
internal Soviet borders in the region to maximize the chances of
dislocation, dispute and disruption among the indigenous
populations in case the Soviet provinces ever gained
independence.
Stalin drew his lines well: Central Asia’s only meaningful
population center is the Fergana Valley. Kyrgyzstan obtained the
region’s foothills and highlands, which provide the region’s water;
Uzbekistan gained the fertile floor of the valley; and Tajikistan
A little more than five years ago, Western
walked away with the only decent access to the valley as a whole.
nongovernmental organizations (and undoubtedly a handful of
As such, the three states continuously are jockeying for control
intelligence services) joined forces with some of these regional
over the only decent real estate in the region.
factions in Kyrgyzstan to overthrow the country’s pro-Russian
Arguably, Kyrgyzstan has the least to work with of any of
ruling elite in what is known as a “color revolution” in the
the region’s states. Nearly all of its territory is mountainous; what
former Soviet Union. Subsequently, Kyrgyzstan — while not
flat patches of land it does have on which to build cities are
exactly pro-Western — dwelled in a political middle ground the
scattered about. There is, accordingly, no real Kyrgyz core.
Russians found displeasing. In April, Russia proved that it, too,
Consequently, the country suffers from sharp internal differences:
can throw a color revolution and Kyrgyzstan’s government
Individual clans hold dominion over tiny patches of land
switched yet again. Since then, violence has wracked the
separated from each other by rugged tracts of mountains. In
southern regions of Jalal-Abad, Batken and Osh — strongholds
nearly all cases, those clans have tighter economic and security
of the previous government. In recent days, nearly 100,000
relationships with foreigners than they do with each other.
Kyrgyz residents have fled to Uzbekistan.
The interim government of Prime Minister Roza
Otunbayeva is totally outmatched. It is not so much that her
government is in danger of falling — those same mountains that
make it nearly impossible for Bishkek to control Osh make it
equally difficult for Osh to take over Bishkek – but that the
country has de facto split into (at least) two pieces. As such,
Otunbayeva — whose government only coalesced due to the
Russian intervention — has publicly and directly called upon the
Russians to provide troops to help hold the country together.
This request cuts to the core weakness in the Russian strategy.
Despite much degradation in the period after the Soviet
dissolution, Russia’s intelligence services remain without peer.
In fact, now that they have the direct patronage of the Russian
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prime minister, they have proportionally more resources and
influence than ever. They have proved that they can rewire
Ukraine’s political world to expunge American influence,
manipulate events in the Caucasus to whittle away at Turkey’s
authority, cause riots in the Baltics to unbalance NATO members,
and reverse Kyrgyzstan’s color revolution.
But they do not have backup. Were this the 19th century,
there would already be scads of Russian settlers en route to the
Fergana to dilute the control of the locals (although they would
certainly be arriving after the Russian army), to construct a local
economy dependent upon imported labor and linked to the
Russian core, and to establish a new ruling elite. (It is worth
noting that the resistance of Central Asians to Russian
encroachment meant that the Russians never seriously attempted
to make the region into a majority-Russian one. Even so, the
Russians still introduced their own demographic to help shape the
region more to Moscow’s liking.) Instead, Russia’s relatively few
young families are busy holding the demographic line in Russia
proper. For the first time in Russian history, there is no surplus
Russian population that can be relocated to the provinces.
And without that population, the Russian view of the
Fergana — to say nothing of Kyrgyzstan — changes dramatically.
The region is remote and densely populated, and reaching it
requires transiting three countries. And one of these states would
have something to say about that. That state is Uzbekistan.
The Uzbek Goliath
After the Russians and Ukrainians, the Uzbeks are the
most populous ethnicity in the former Soviet Union. They are a
Turkic people who do not enjoy particularly good relations with
anyone. Uzbekistan’s ruling Karimov family is roundly hated both
at home and abroad; the Central Asian country boasts one of the
most repressive governing systems in modern times.
Uzbekistan also happens to be quite powerful by Central
Asian standards. There are more Uzbeks in Central Asia than
there are Kyrgyz, Turkmen, Tajiks and Russians combined. The
Uzbek intelligence services are modeled after their Russian
counterparts, interspersing agents throughout the Uzbek
population to ensure loyalty and to root out dissidents. It is the
only country of the five former Soviet states in the region that
actually has a military that can engage in military action. It is the
only one of the five that has most of its cities in logical proximity
and linked with decent infrastructure (even if it is split into the
Tashkent region and the Fergana region by Stalinesque
cartographic creativity). It is the only one of the five that is both
politically stable (if politically brittle) and that has the ability to
project power. And it is also the only Central Asian state that is
self-sufficient in both food and energy. To top it all off, some 2.5
million ethnic Uzbeks reside in the other four former Soviet
Central Asian states, providing Tashkent a wealth of tools for
manipulating developments throughout the region.
And manipulate it does. In addition to the odd border
spat, Uzbekistan intervened decisively in Tajikistan’s civil war in
the 1990s. Tashkent is not shy about noting that it thinks most
Tajik, and especially Kyrgyz, territory should belong to
Uzbekistan, particularly the territory of southern Kyrgyzstan,
where the current violence is strongest. Uzbekistan views many
of the Russian strategies to expunge Western interests from
Central Asia as preparation for moves against Uzbekistan, with
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the Russian-sponsored coup in Kyrgyzstan an excellent case in
point.
From March through May, Uzbekistan began activating
its reserves and reinforcing its Fergana border regions, which
heightened the state of fear in Bishkek from shrill to panic
mode. Given Uzbek means, motive and opportunity, Moscow is
fairly confident that sending Russian peacekeepers to southern
Kyrgyzstan would provoke a direct military confrontation with
an angry and nervous Uzbekistan.
In STRATFOR’s view, Russia would win this war, but
this victory would come neither easily nor cheaply. The Fergana
is a long way from Russia, and the vast bulk of Russia’s military
is static, not expeditionary like its U.S. counterpart. Uzbek
supply lines would be measured in hundreds of meters, Russian
lines in thousands of kilometers. Moreover, Uzbekistan could
interrupt nearly all Central Asian natural gas that currently flows
to Russia without even launching a single attack. (The Turkmen
natural gas that Russia’s Gazprom normally depends upon
travels to Russia via Uzbek territory.)
Yet this may be a conflict Russia feels it cannot avoid.
The Russians have not forward-garrisoned a military force
sufficient to protect Kyrgyzstan, nor can they resettle a
population that could transform Kyrgyzstan. Therefore, the
Russian relationship with Kyrgyzstan is based neither on
military strategy nor on economic rationality. Instead, it is
based on the need to preserve a certain level of credibility and
fear — credibility that the Russians will protect Kyrgyzstan
should push come to shove, and Kyrgyz fear of what Russia will
do to it should they not sign on to the Russian sphere of
influence.
It is a strategy strongly reminiscent of the U.S. Cold
War containment doctrine, under which the United States
promised to aid any ally, anytime, anywhere if in exchange they
would help contain the Soviets. This allowed the Soviet Union to
choose the time and place of conflicts, and triggered U.S.
involvement in places like Vietnam. Had the United States
refused battle, the American alliance structure could have
crumbled. Russia now faces a similar dilemma, and just as the
United States had no economic desire to be in Vietnam, the
Russians really do not much care what happens to Kyrgyzstan
— except as it impacts Russian interests elsewhere.
But even victory over Uzbekistan would not solve the
problem. Smashing the only coherent government in the region
would create a security vacuum. Again, the Americans provide a
useful corollary: The U.S. “victory” over Saddam Hussein’s Iraq
and the Taliban’s Afghanistan proved that “winning” is the easy
part. Occupying the region over the long haul to make sure that
the victory is not worse than the status quo antebellum is a
decade-to-generational effort that requires a significant
expenditure of blood and treasure. Russia desperately needs to
devote such resources elsewhere — particularly once the United
States is no longer so preoccupied in the Middle East.
Russia is attempting to finesse a middle ground by
talking the Uzbeks down and offering the compromise of non-
Russian troops from the Collective Security Treaty Organization,
a Russian-led military organization, as an alternative to Russian
forces. This may resolve the immediate crisis, but neither the
Uzbeks nor the challenges they pose are going anywhere. And
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unlike Russia, Uzbekistan boasts very high demographic growth.
The bottom line is this: Despite all of Russia’s recent
gains, Moscow’s strategy requires tools that the Russians no
longer have. It requires Moscow delving into the subregional
politics of places that could well bleed Russia dry — and this is
before any power that wishes Russia ill begins exploring what it
and the Uzbeks might achieve together.
July 1, 2010 | 0856 GMT

The following are the 11 individuals detained in the

investigation, along with summaries of their alleged activities listed in
the criminal complaint:
The Dismantling of a Suspected Russian
Intelligence Operation
By Fred Burton and Ben West
The U.S. Department of Justice announced June 28 that an
FBI counterintelligence investigation had resulted in the arrest on June
27 of 10 individuals suspected of acting as undeclared agents of a
foreign country, in this case, Russia. Eight of the individuals were also
accused of money laundering. On June 28, five of the defendants
appeared before a federal magistrate in U.S. District Court in
Manhattan while three others went before a federal magistrate in
Alexandria, Va., and two more went before a U.S. magistrate in Boston.
An 11th person named in the criminal complaint was arrested in Cyprus
on June 29, posted bail and is currently at large.
The number of arrested suspects in this case makes this
counterintelligence investigation one of the biggest in U.S. history.
According to the criminal complaint, the FBI had been investigating
some of these people for as long as 10 years, recording conversations in
their homes, intercepting radio and electronic messages and
conducting surveillance on them in and out of the United States. The
case suggests that the classic tactics of intelligence gathering and
counterintelligence are still being used by Russia and the United States.
Cast of Characters
Christopher Metsos
 Claimed to originally be from Canada.
 Acted as an intermediary between the Russian
mission to the United Nations in New York and suspects
Richard Murphy, Cynthia Murphy, Michael Zottoli and
Patricia Mills.
 Traveled to and from Canada.
 Met with Richard Murphy at least four times
between February 2001 and April 2005 at a restaurant in
New York.
 Was first surveilled in 2001 in meetings with other
suspects.
 Left the United States on June 17 and was detained
in Cyprus on June 29, but appears to have skipped bail.
Richard and Cynthia Murphy
 Claimed to be married and to be U.S. citizens.
 First surveilled by the FBI in 2001 during meetings
with Mestos.
 Also met with the third secretary in the Russian
mission to the United Nations.
 Communicated electronically with Moscow.
 Richard Murphy’s safe-deposit box was searched in
2006 and agents found a birth certificate claiming he was
born in Philadelphia; city officials claim there is no such
birth certificate on record.
 Engaged in electronic communications with
Moscow.
 Traveled to Moscow via Italy in February 2010.
Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley
 Claimed to be married and to be natives of Canada
who are naturalized U.S. citizens.
 FBI searched a safe-deposit box listed under their
names in January 2001.
 FBI discovered that Donald Heathfield’s identity
had been taken from a deceased child by the same name in
Canada and found old photos of Foley taken with Soviet
film.

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 Engaged in electronic communications with Moscow.
 Tracey Foley traveled to Moscow via Paris in March the deep-cover couples (Heathfield/Foley and Lazaro/Palaez) and the
2010.
Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills
 Claimed to be married and to be a U.S. citizen
(Zottoli) and a Canadian citizen (Mills).
 First surveilled in June 2004 during a meeting with
Richard Murphy.
 Engaged in electronic communications with Moscow.
Juan Lazaro and Vicky Pelaez
 Claimed to be married and to be a naturalized U.S.
citizen born in Peru (Pelaez) and a Peruvian citizen born in
Uruguay (Lazaro).
 First surveilled at a meeting in a public park in an
unidentified South American country in January 2000.
 Evidence against Vicky Pelaez was the first gathered
on the 11 suspected operatives.
 Lazaro appeared to communicate with a diplomat at
the Russian Embassy in an unidentified South American
country.
 Engaged in electronic communications with Moscow.
Anna Chapman
 First surveillance mentioned was in Manhattan in
January 2010.
 Communicated with a declared diplomat in the
Russian mission to the United Nations on Wednesdays.
 Knowingly accepted a fraudulent passport from an
undercover FBI agent whom she believed to be a Russian
diplomatic officer June 26, but turned it in to the police the
next day shortly before her arrest.
Mikhail Semenko
 First surveillance mentioned in the criminal
complaint was in June 2010 in Washington.
 Revealed to an undercover officer that he had
received training and instruction from “the center” (a common
term for the Moscow headquarters of Russia’s Foreign
Intelligence Service, or SVR).
 Accepted a payment of $5,000 and followed orders
given by an undercover FBI agent posing as a Russian
diplomatic officer to deliver the money to a drop site in
Washington.
Their Mission
According to the FBI, some of the alleged “undeclared agents”
moved to the United States in the 1990s, while others (such as Anna
Chapman) did not arrive until 2009. The FBI says nine of the suspects
were provided with fake identities and even fake childhood photos and
cover stories (part of what would be called a “legend”) in order to
establish themselves in the United State under “deep cover.” Chapman
and Semenko used their own Russian identities (Chapman is divorced
and may have taken her surname from her former husband). The true
nationalities of the other suspects are unknown, but several passages in
the criminal complaint indicate that most of them were originally from
Russia. The Russian SVR allegedly provided the suspects with bank
accounts, homes, cars and regular payments in order to facilitate “long-
term service” inside the United States, where, according to the criminal
complaint, the individuals were supposed to “search [for] and develop
ties in policymaking circles” in the United States.
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The FBI criminal complaint provides evidence that two of
two short-term cover agents (Semenko and Chapman) were operating
without knowledge of each other or in connection with the other two
couples and Metsos, who did interact. This suggests that they would
not have formed one network, as is being reported, but perhaps
discrete networks. The criminal complaint provides evidence
indicating that most of the operatives were being run out of the SVR
residence at the U.N. mission.
It is unclear exactly how successful the 11 accused
individuals were in finding and developing those ties in policymaking
circles. The criminal complaint accuses the individuals of sending
everything from information on the gold market from a financier in
New York (a contact that Moscow apparently found helpful, since it
reportedly encouraged further contact with the source) to seeking out
potential college graduates headed for jobs at the CIA. The criminal
complaint outlines one recorded conversation in which Lazaro told
Pelaez that his handlers were not pleased with his reports because he
wasn’t attributing them properly. Pelaez then advised Lazaro to “put
down any politician” (to whom the information could be attributed)
in order to appease the handlers, indicating that the alleged
operatives did not always practice scrupulous tradecraft in their
work. Improperly identifying sources in the field ultimately
diminishes the value of the information, since it cannot be adequately
assessed without knowing where it came from. If these kinds of
shortcuts were normally taken by Pelaez, Lazaro and others, then it
would reduce their value to the SVR and the harm that they may have
done to the United States. The suspects were allegedly instructed by
their handlers in the United States and Russia to not pursue high-
level government jobs, since their legends were not strong enough to
withstand a significant background investigation. But they allegedly
were encouraged to make contact with high-level government
officials, in order to have a finger on the pulse of policymaking in
Washington.
Tradecraft
The criminal complaint alleges that the suspects used
traditional tradecraft of the clandestine services to communicate with
each other and send reports to their handlers. The suspects allegedly
transmitted messages to Moscow containing their reports encrypted
in “radiograms” (short-burst radio transmissions that appear as
Morse code) or written in invisible ink, and met in third countries for
payments and briefings. They are also said to have used “brush
passes” (the quick and discreet exchange of materials between one
person and another) and “flash meets” (seemingly innocuous, brief
encounters) to transfer information, equipment and money. The
criminal complaint also gives examples of operatives using coded
phrases with each other and with their operators to confirm each
other’s identities.
In addition to the traditional tradecraft described in the
criminal complaint, there are also new operational twists. The
suspects allegedly used e-mail to set up electronic dead drops to
transmit encrypted intelligence reports to Moscow, and several
operatives were said to have used steganography (embedding
information in seemingly innocuous images) to encrypt messages.
Chapman and Semenko allegedly employed private wireless networks
hosted by a laptop programmed to communicate only with a specific
laptop. The FBI claims to have identified networks (and may have
intercepted the messages transmitted) that had been temporarily set
up when a suspect was in proximity to a known Russian diplomat.
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These electronic meetings occurred frequently, according to the FBI,
and allowed operatives and their operators to communicate covertly
without actually being seen together.
Operations are said to have been run largely out of Russia’s
U.N. mission in New York, meaning that when face-to-face meetings
were required, declared diplomats from the U.N. mission could do the
job. According to the criminal complaint, Russian diplomats handed off
cash to Christopher Metsos on at least two occasions, and he allegedly
distributed it to various other operatives (which provided the grounds
for the charge of money laundering). The actual information gathered
from the field appears to have gone directly to Russia, according to the
complaint.
It is important to note that the accused individuals were not
charged with espionage; the charge of acting as an undeclared agent of
a foreign state is less serious. The criminal complaint never alleges that
any of the 11 individuals received or transmitted classified information.
This doesn’t mean that the suspects weren’t committing espionage.
(Investigators will certainly learn more about their activities during
interrogation and trial preparation.) According to the criminal
complaint, their original guidance from Moscow was to establish deep
cover. This means that they would have been tasked with positioning
themselves over time in order gain access to valuable information (it is
important to point out that “valuable” is not synonymous with
“classified”) through their established occupations or social lives. This
allows agents to gain access to what they want without running
unnecessary security risks.
Any intelligence operation must balance operational security
with the need to gather intelligence. Too much security and the
operative is unable to do anything; but if intelligence gathering is too
aggressive, the handlers risk losing an intelligence asset. If these people
were operating in deep cover, the SVR probably invested quite a bit of
time and money training and cultivating them, likely well before they
arrived in the United States. According to information in the criminal
complaint, the suspects were actively meeting with potential sources,
sending reports back to Moscow and interacting with declared Russian
diplomats in the United States, all the while running the risk of being
caught. But they also took security measures, according to the
complaint. There is no evidence that they attempted to reach out to
people who would have fallen outside their natural professional and
social circles, which could have raised suspicions. In many ways, these
individuals appear to have acted more like recruiters, seeking out
people with access to valuable information, rather than agents trying to
gain access to that information themselves. However, all we know now
is based on what was released in the criminal complaint. An
investigation that lasted this long surely has an abundance of evidence
(much of it likely classified) that wasn’t included in the complaint.
Counterintelligence
According to authorities, the suspected operatives were under
heavy surveillance by U.S. counterintelligence agents for 10 years.
Working out of Boston, New York and Washington, the FBI employed
its Special Surveillance Group to track suspects in person; place video
and audio recorders in their homes and at meeting places to record
communications; search their homes and safe-deposit boxes; intercept
e-mail and electronic communications; and deploy undercover agents
to entrap the suspects.
Counterintelligence operations don’t just materialize out of
thin air. There has to be a tip or a clue that puts investigators on the
trail of a suspected undeclared foreign agent. As suggested by
interviews with the suspects’ neighbors, none of them displayed
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unusual behavior that would have tipped the neighbors off. All
apparently had deep (but not airtight) legends going back decades
that allayed suspicion. The criminal complaint did not suggest how
the U.S. government came to suspect these people of reporting back
to the SVR in Russia, although we did notice that the beginning of the
investigation coincides with the time that a high-level SVR agent
stationed at Russia’s U.N. mission in New York began passing
information to the FBI. Sergei Tretyakov (who told his story in the
book by Pete Earley called “Comrade J,” an abbreviation of his SVR
codename, “Comrade Jean”), passed information to the FBI from the
U.N. mission from 1997 to 2000, just before he defected to the United
States in October 2000. According to the criminal complaint, seven of
the 11 suspects were connected to Russia’s U.N. mission, though
evidence of those links did not begin to emerge until 2004 (and some
as late as 2010). The timing of Tretyakov’s cooperation with the U.S.
government and the timing of the beginning of this investigation
resulting in the arrest of the 11 suspects this week suggests that
Tretyakov may have been the original source who tipped off the U.S.
government. So far, the evidence is circumstantial — the timing and
the location match up — but Tretyakov, as the SVR operative at
Russia’s U.N. mission, certainly would have been in a position to
know about operations involving most of the people arrested June 27.
Why Now?
Nothing in the complaint indicates why, after more than 10
years of investigation, the FBI decided to arrest the 11 suspects June
27. It is not unusual for investigations to be drawn out for years, since
much information on tradecraft and intent can be obtained by
watching foreign intelligence agencies operate without knowing they
are being watched. Extended surveillance can also reveal additional
contacts and build a stronger case. As long as the suspects aren’t
posing an immediate risk to national security (and judging by the
criminal complaint, these 11 suspects were not), there is little reason
for the authorities to show their hand and conclude a fruitful
counterintelligence operation.
It has been suggested that some of the suspects were a flight
risk, so agents arrested all of them in order to prevent them from
escaping the United States. Metsos left the United States on June 17
and was arrested in Cyprus on June 29, however, his whereabouts are
currently unknown, as he has not reported back to Cypriot authorities
after posting bail. A number of the suspects left and came back to the
United States numerous times, and investigators appear not to have
been concerned about these past comings and goings. It isn’t clear
why they would have been concerned about someone leaving at this
point.
The timing of the arrests so soon after U.S. President Barack
Obama’s June 25 meeting with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev
also raises questions about political motivations. Medvedev was in
Washington to talk with Obama in an attempt to improve relations
between the two countries on the day the FBI officially filed the
criminal complaint. The revelation of a network of undeclared foreign
agents operating in the United States would ordinarily have a
negative effect on relations between the United States and the foreign
country in question. In this case, though, officials from both countries
made public statements saying they hoped the arrests would not
damage ties, and neither side appears to be trying to leverage the
incident. Indeed, if there were political motivations behind the timing
of the arrests, they remain a mystery.
Whatever the motivations, now that the FBI has these
suspects in custody it will be able to interrogate them and probably
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gather even more information on the operation. The charges for now
don’t include espionage, but the FBI could very well be withholding this
charge in order to provide an incentive for the suspects to plea bargain.
We expect considerably more information on this unprecedented case
to come out in the following weeks and months, revealing much about
Russian clandestine operations and their targets in the United States.
June 29, 2010 | 0858 GMT
The 30-Year War in Afghanistan
By George Friedman
The Afghan War is the longest war in U.S. history. It began in
1980 and continues to rage. It began under Democrats but has been
fought under both Republican and Democratic administrations,
making it truly a bipartisan war. The conflict is an odd obsession of
U.S. foreign policy, one that never goes away and never seems to end.
As the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal reminds us, the Afghan
War is now in its fourth phase.
The Afghan War’s First Three Phases
The first phase of the Afghan War began with the Soviet
invasion in December 1979, when the United States, along with Saudi
Arabia and Pakistan, organized and sustained Afghan resistance to the
Soviets. This resistance was built around mujahideen, fighters
motivated by Islam. Washington’s purpose had little to do with
Afghanistan and everything to do with U.S.-Soviet competition. The
United States wanted to block the Soviets from using Afghanistan as a
base for further expansion and wanted to bog the Soviets down in a
debilitating guerrilla war. The United States did not so much fight the
war as facilitate it. The strategy worked. The Soviets were blocked and
bogged down. This phase lasted until 1989, when Soviet troops were
withdrawn.
The second phase lasted from 1989 until 2001. The forces the
United States and its allies had trained and armed now fought each
other in complex coalitions for control of Afghanistan. Though the
United States did not take part in this war directly, it did not lose all
interest in Afghanistan. Rather, it was prepared to exert its influence
through allies, particularly Pakistan. Most important, it was prepared
to accept that the Islamic fighters it had organized against the Soviets
would govern Afghanistan. There were many factions, but with
Pakistani support, a coalition called the Taliban took power in 1996.
The Taliban in turn provided sanctuary for a group of international
jihadists called al Qaeda, and this led to increased tensions with the
Taliban following jihadist attacks on U.S. facilities abroad by al Qaeda.
The third phase began on Sept. 11, 2001, when al Qaeda
launched attacks on the mainland United States. Given al Qaeda’s
presence in Afghanistan, the United States launched operations
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designed to destroy or disrupt al Qaeda and dislodge the Taliban. The
United States commenced operations barely 30 days after Sept. 11,
which was not enough time to mount an invasion using U.S. troops as
the primary instrument. Rather, the United States made
arrangements with factions that were opposed to the Taliban (and
defeated in the Afghan civil war). This included organizations such as
the Northern Alliance, which had remained close to the Russians;
Shiite groups in the west that were close to the Iranians and India;
and other groups or subgroups in other regions. These groups
supported the United States out of hostility to the Taliban and/or due
to substantial bribes paid by the United States.
The overwhelming majority of ground forces opposing the
Taliban in 2001 were Afghan. The United States did, however, insert
special operations forces teams to work with these groups and to
identify targets for U.S. airpower, the primary American contribution
to the war. The use of U.S. B-52s against Taliban forces massed
around cities in the north caused the Taliban to abandon any thought
of resisting the Northern Alliance and others, even though the
Taliban had defeated them in the civil war.
Unable to hold fixed positions against airstrikes, the Taliban
withdrew from the cities and dispersed. The Taliban were not
defeated, however; they merely declined to fight on U.S. terms.
Instead, they redefined the war, preserving their forces and
regrouping. The Taliban understood that the cities were not the key to
Afghanistan. Instead, the countryside would ultimately provide
control of the cities. From the Taliban point of view, the battle would
be waged in the countryside, while the cities increasingly would be
isolated.
The United States simply did not have sufficient force to
identify, engage and destroy the Taliban as a whole. The United
States did succeed in damaging and dislodging al Qaeda, with the
jihadist group’s command cell becoming isolated in northwestern
Pakistan. But as with the Taliban, the United States did not defeat al
Qaeda because the United States lacked significant forces on the
ground. Even so, al Qaeda prime, the original command cell, was no
longer in a position to mount 9/11-style attacks.
During the Bush administration, U.S. goals for Afghanistan
were modest. First, the Americans intended to keep al Qaeda bottled
up and to impose as much damage as possible on the group. Second,
they intended to establish an Afghan government, regardless of how
ineffective it might be, to serve as a symbolic core. Third, they
planned very limited operations against the Taliban, which had
regrouped and increasingly controlled the countryside. The Bush
administration was basically in a holding operation in Afghanistan. It
accepted that U.S. forces were neither going to be able to impose a
political solution on Afghanistan nor create a coalition large enough
control the country. U.S. strategy was extremely modest under Bush:
to harass al Qaeda from bases in Afghanistan, maintain control of
cities and logistics routes, and accept the limits of U.S. interests and
power.
The three phases of American involvement in Afghanistan
had a common point: All three were heavily dependent on non-U.S.
forces to do the heavy lifting. In the first phase, the mujahideen
performed this task. In the second phase, the United States relied on
Pakistan to manage Afghanistan’s civil war. In the third phase,
especially in the beginning, the United States depended on Afghan
forces to fight the Taliban. Later, when greater numbers of American
and allied forces arrived, the United States had limited objectives
beyond preserving the Afghan government and engaging al Qaeda
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wherever it might be found (and in any event, by 2003, Iraq had taken
priority over Afghanistan). In no case did the Americans use their main
force to achieve their goals.
The Fourth Phase of the Afghan War
The fourth phase of the war began in 2009, when U.S.
President Barack Obama decided to pursue a more aggressive strategy
in Afghanistan. Though the Bush administration had toyed with this
idea, it was Obama who implemented it fully. During the 2008 election
campaign, Obama asserted that he would pay greater attention to
Afghanistan. The Obama administration began with the premise that
while the Iraq War was a mistake, the Afghan War had to be
prosecuted. It reasoned that unlike Iraq, which had a tenuous
connection to al Qaeda at best, Afghanistan was the group’s original
base. He argued that Afghanistan therefore should be the focus of U.S.
military operations. In doing so, he shifted a strategy that had been in
place for 30 years by making U.S. forces the main combatants in the
war.
Though Obama’s goals were not altogether clear, they might
be stated as follows:
1. Deny al Qaeda a base in Afghanistan.
2. Create an exit strategy from Afghanistan similar to the one in
Iraq by creating the conditions for negotiating with the
Taliban; make denying al Qaeda a base a condition for the
resulting ruling coalition.
3. Begin withdrawal by 2011.
To do this, there would be three steps:
1. Increase the number and aggressiveness of U.S. forces in
Afghanistan.
2. Create Afghan security forces under the current government
to take over from the Americans.
3. Increase pressure on the Taliban by driving a wedge between
them and the population and creating intra-insurgent rifts via
effective counterinsurgency tactics.
In analyzing this strategy, there is an obvious issue: While al
Qaeda was based in Afghanistan in 2001, Afghanistan is no longer its
primary base of operations. The group has shifted to Pakistan, Yemen,
Somalia and other countries. As al Qaeda is thus not dependent on any
one country for its operational base, denying it bases in Afghanistan
does not address the reality of its dispersion. Securing Afghanistan, in
other words, is no longer the solution to al Qaeda.
Obviously, Obama’s planners fully understood this. Therefore,
sanctuary denial for al Qaeda had to be, at best, a secondary strategic
goal. The primary strategic goal was to create an exit strategy for the
United States based on a negotiated settlement with the Taliban and a
resulting coalition government. The al Qaeda issue depended on this
settlement, but could never be guaranteed. In fact, neither the long-
term survival of a coalition government nor the Taliban policing al
Qaeda could be guaranteed.
The exit of U.S. forces represents a bid to reinstate the
American strategy of the past 30 years, namely, having Afghan forces
reassume the primary burden of fighting. The creation of an Afghan
military is not the key to this strategy. Afghans fight for their clans and
ethnic groups. The United States is trying to invent a national army
where no nation exists, a task that assumes the primary loyalty of
Afghans will shift from their clans to a national government, an
unlikely proposition.
The Real U.S. Strategy
Rather than trying to strengthen the Karzai government, the
real strategy is to return to the historical principles of U.S. involvement
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in Afghanistan: alliance with indigenous forces. These indigenous
forces would pursue strategies in the American interest for their own
reasons, or because they are paid, and would be strong enough to
stand up to the Taliban in a coalition. As CIA Director Leon Panetta
put it this weekend, however, this is proving harder to do than
expected.
The American strategy is, therefore, to maintain a sufficient
force to shape the political evolution on the ground, and to use that
force to motivate and intimidate while also using economic incentives
to draw together a coalition in the countryside. Operations like those
in Helmand province — where even Washington acknowledges that
progress has been elusive and slower than anticipated — clearly are
designed to try to draw regional forces into regional coalitions that
eventually can enter a coalition with the Taliban without immediately
being overwhelmed. If this strategy proceeds, the Taliban in theory
will be spurred to negotiate out of concern that this process
eventually could leave it marginalized.
There is an anomaly in this strategy, however. Where the
United States previously had devolved operational responsibility to
allied groups, or simply hunkered down, this strategy tries to return
to devolved responsibilities by first surging U.S. operations. The
fourth phase actually increases U.S. operational responsibility in
order to reduce it.
From the grand strategic point of view, the United States
needs to withdraw from Afghanistan, a landlocked country where
U.S. forces are dependent on tortuous supply lines. Whatever
Afghanistan’s vast mineral riches, mining them in the midst of war is
not going to happen. More important, the United States is
overcommitted in the region and lacks a strategic reserve of ground
forces. Afghanistan ultimately is not strategically essential, and this is
why the United States has not historically used its own forces there.
Obama’s attempt to return to that track after first increasing
U.S. forces to set the stage for the political settlement that will allow a
U.S. withdrawal is hampered by the need to begin terminating the
operation by 2011 (although there is no fixed termination date). It
will be difficult to draw coalition partners into local structures when
the foundation — U.S. protection — is withdrawing. Strengthening
local forces by 2011 will be difficult. Moreover, the Taliban’s
motivation to enter into talks is limited by the early withdrawal. At
the same time, with no ground combat strategic reserve, the United
States is vulnerable elsewhere in the world, and the longer the Afghan
drawdown takes, the more vulnerable it becomes (hence the 2011
deadline in Obama’s war plan).
In sum, this is the quandary inherent in the strategy: It is
necessary to withdraw as early as possible, but early withdrawal
undermines both coalition building and negotiations. The
recruitment and use of indigenous Afghan forces must move
extremely rapidly to hit the deadline (though officially on track
quantitatively, there are serious questions about qualitative
measures) — hence, the aggressive operations that have been
mounted over recent months. But the correlation of forces is such
that the United States probably will not be able to impose an
acceptable political reality in the time frame available. Thus, Afghan
President Hamid Karzai is said to be opening channels directly to the
Taliban, while the Pakistanis are increasing their presence. Where a
vacuum is created, regardless of how much activity there is, someone
will fill it.
Therefore, the problem is to define how important
Afghanistan is to American global strategy, bearing in mind that the
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forces absorbed in Iraq and Afghanistan have left the United States extremely sensitive to the geopolitical issues involved, which are
vulnerable elsewhere in the world. The current strategy defines the significant and complex.
Islamic world as the focus of all U.S. military attention. But the world Reconsidering Basic Strategy
has rarely been so considerate as to wait until the United States is The economic crisis in Europe has caused the Germans,
finished with one war before starting another. Though unknowns among others, to reconsider their basic strategy. Ever since World
remain unknowable, a principle of warfare is to never commit all of War II, the Germans have pursued two national imperatives. The first
your reserves in a battle — one should always maintain a reserve for the was to maintain close relations with the French — along with the rest
unexpected. Strategically, it is imperative that the United States begin of Europe — to eliminate the threat of war. Germany had fought three
to free up forces and re-establish its ground reserves. wars with France since 1870, and its primary goal was not fighting
Given the time frame the Obama administration’s grand another one. Its second goal was prosperity. Germany’s memory of
strategy imposes, and given the capabilities of the Taliban, it is difficult
the Great Depression plus its desire to avoid militarism made it
to see how it will all work out. But the ultimate question is about the obsessed with economic development and creating a society focused
American obsession with Afghanistan. For 30 years, the United States on prosperity. It saw the creation of an integrated economic structure
has been involved in a country that is virtually inaccessible for the in Europe as achieving both ends, tying Germany into an unbreakable
United States. Washington has allied itself with radical Islamists, relationship with France and at the same time creating a trading bloc
fought against radical Islamists or tried to negotiate with radical that would ensure prosperity.
Islamists. What the United States has never tried to do is impose a Events since the financial crisis of 2008 have shaken
political solution through the direct application of American force. ThisGerman confidence in the European Union as an instrument of
is a new and radically different phase of America’s Afghan obsession. prosperity, however. Until 2008, Europe had undergone an
The questions are whether it will work and whether it is even worth it. extraordinary period of prosperity, in which West Germany could
June 22, 2010 | 0856 GMT simultaneously integrate with East Germany and maintain its long-
term economic growth. The European Union appeared to be a
miraculous machine that automatically generated prosperity and
political stability alongside it.
After 2008, this perception changed, and the sense of
insecurity accelerated with the current crisis in Greece and among the
Mediterranean members of the European Union. The Germans found
themselves underwriting what they regarded as Greek profligacy to
protect the euro and the European economy. This not only generated
significant opposition among the German public, it raised questions
in the German government. The purpose of the European Union was
to ensure German prosperity. If the future of Europe was Germany
shoring up Europe — in other words, transferring wealth from
Germany to Europe — then the rationale for European integration
became problematic.
The Germans were certainly not prepared to abandon
Germany and Russia Move Closer European integration, which had given Germany 65 years of peace. At
the same time, the Germans were prepared to consider adjustments
By George Friedman to the framework in which Europe was operating, particular from an
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle will brief French economic standpoint. A Europe in which German prosperity is at risk
and Polish officials on a joint proposal for Russian-European from the budgeting practices of Greece needed adjustment.
“cooperation on security,” according to a statement from Westerwelle’s The Pull of Russia
spokesman on Monday. The proposal emerged out of talks between In looking at their real economic interests, the Germans
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Dmitri were inevitably drawn to their relationship with Russia. Russia
Medvedev earlier in June and is based on a draft Russia drew up in supplies Germany with nearly 40 percent of the natural gas Germany
2008. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will be present at the uses. Without Russian energy, Germany’s economy is in trouble. At
meeting. Andreas Peschke said, “We want to further elaborate and the same time, Russia needs technology and expertise to develop its
discuss it within the triangle [i.e., France, Germany and Poland] in the economy away from being simply an exporter of primary
presence of the Russian foreign minister.” commodities. Moreover, the Germans already have thousands of
On the surface, the proposal developed by Merkel and enterprises that have invested in Russia. Finally, in the long run,
Medvedev appears primarily structural. It raises security discussions Germany’s population is declining below the level needed to maintain
about specific trouble spots to the ministerial level rather than the its economy. It does not want to increase immigration into Germany
ambassadorial level, with a committee being formed consisting of EU because of fears of social instability. Russia’s population is also
foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Russia’s foreign minister. falling, but it still has surplus population relative to its economic
All of this seems rather mild until we consider three things. needs and will continue to have one for quite a while. German
First, proposals for deepening the relationship between Russia and the investment in Russia allows Germany to get the labor it needs
European Union have been on the table for several years without much without resorting to immigration by moving production facilities east
progress. Second, the Germans have taken this initiative at a time when to Russia.
German foreign policy is in a state of flux. And third, the decision to The Germans have been developing economic relations with
take this deal to France and Poland indicates that the Germans are
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Russia since before the Soviet collapse, but the Greek crisis forced them
to reconsider their relationship with Russia. If the European Union was
becoming a trap in which Germany was going to consistently subsidize
the rest of Europe, and a self-contained economy is impossible, then
another strategy would be needed. This consisted of two parts. The first
was insisting on a restructuring of the European Union to protect
Germany from the domestic policies of other countries. Second, if
Europe was heading toward a long period of stagnation, then Germany,
heavily dependent on exports and needing labor, needed to find an
additional partner — if not a new one.
At the same time, a German-Russian alignment is a security
issue as well as an economic issue. Between 1871 and 1941 there was a
three-player game in continental Europe — France, Germany and
Russia. The three shifted alliances with each other, with each shift
increasing the chance of war. In 1871, Prussia was allied with Russia
when it attacked France. In 1914, The French and Russians were allied
against Germany. In 1940, Germany was allied with Russia when it
attacked France. The three-player game played itself out in various
ways with a constant outcome: war.
The last thing Berlin wants is to return to that dynamic.
Instead, its hope is to integrate Russia into the European security
system, or at least give it a sufficient stake in the European economic
system that Russia does not seek to challenge the European security
system. This immediately affects French relations with Russia. For
Paris, partnership with Germany is the foundation of France’s security
policy and economy. If Germany moves into a close security and
economic relationship with Russia, France must calculate the effect this
will have on France. There has never been a time when a tripartite
alliance of France, Germany and Russia has worked because it has
always left France as the junior partner. Therefore, it is vital for the
Germans to present this not as a three-way relationship but as the
inclusion of Russia into Europe, and to focus on security measures
rather than economic measures. Nevertheless, the Germans have to be
enormously careful in managing their relationship with France.
Even more delicate is the question of Poland. Poland is caught
between Russia and Germany. Its history has been that of division
between these two countries or conquest by one. This is a burning issue
in the Polish psyche. A closer relationship between Germany and
Russia inevitably will generate primordial fears of disaster in Poland.
Therefore, Wednesday’s meeting with the so-called triangular
group is essential. Both the French and the Poles, and the Poles with
great intensity, must understand what is happening. The issue is partly
the extent to which this affects German commitments to the European
Union, and the other part — crucial to Poland —is what this does to
Germany’s NATO commitments.
The NATO Angle
It is noteworthy the Russians emphasized that what is
happening poses no threat to NATO. Russia is trying to calm not only
Poland, but also the United States. The problem, however, is this: If
Germany and Europe have a security relationship that requires prior
consultation and cooperation, then Russia inevitably has a hand in
NATO. If the Russians oppose a NATO action, Germany and other
European states will be faced with a choice between Russia and NATO.
To put it more bluntly, if Germany enters into a cooperative
security arrangement with Russia (forgetting the rest of Europe for the
moment), then how does it handle its relationship with the United
States when the Russians and Americans are at loggerheads in
countries like Georgia? The Germans and Russians both view the
United States as constantly and inconveniently pressuring them both to
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take risks in areas where they feel they have no interest. NATO may
not be functional in any real sense, but U.S. pressure is ever-present.
The Germans and Russians acting together would be in a better
position to deflect this pressure than standing alone.
Intriguingly, part of the German-Russian talks relate to a
specific security matter — the issue of Moldova and Transdniestria.
Moldova is a region between Romania and Ukraine (which adjoins
Russia and has re-entered the Russian sphere of influence) that at
various times has been part of both. It became independent after the
collapse of communism, but Moldova’s eastern region,
Transdniestria, broke away from Moldova under Russian
sponsorship. Following a change in government in 2009, Moldova
sees itself as pro-Western while Transdniestria is pro-Russian. The
Russians have supported Transdniestria’s status as a breakaway area
(and have troops stationed there), while Moldova has insisted on its
return.
The memorandum between Merkel and Medvedev
specifically pointed to the impact a joint security relationship might
have on this dispute. The kind of solution that may be considered is
unclear, but if the issue goes forward, the outcome will give the first
indication of what a German-Russian security relationship will look
like. The Poles will be particularly interested, as any effort in Moldova
will automatically impact both Romania and Ukraine — two states
key to determining Russian strength in the region. Whatever way the
solution tilts will define the power relationship among the three.
It should be remembered that the Germans are proposing a
Russian security relationship with Europe, not a Russian security
relationship with Germany alone. At the same time, it should be
remembered that it is the Germans taking the initiative to open the
talks by unilaterally negotiating with the Russians and taking their
agreements to other European countries. It is also important to note
that they have not taken this to all the European countries but to
France and Poland first — with French President Nicolas Sarkozy
voicing his initial approval on June 19 — and equally important, that
they have not publicly brought it to the United States. Nor is it clear
what the Germans might do if the French and Poles reject the
relationship, which is not inconceivable.
The Germans do not want to lose the European concept. At
the same time, they are trying to redefine it more to their advantage.
From the German point of view, bringing Russia into the relationship
would help achieve this. But the Germans still have to explain what
their relationship is with the rest of Europe, particularly their
financial obligation to troubled economies in the eurozone. They also
have to define their relationship to NATO, and more important, to the
United States.
Like any country, Germany can have many things, but it
can’t have everything. The idea that it will meld the European Union,
NATO and Russia into one system of relationships without alienating
at least some of their partners — some intensely — is naive. The
Germans are not naive. They know that the Poles will be terrified and
the French uneasy. The southern Europeans will feel increasingly
abandoned as Germany focuses on the North European Plain. And
the United States, watching Germany and Russia draw closer, will be
seeing an alliance of enormous weight developing that might threaten
its global interests.
With this proposal, the Germans are looking to change the
game significantly. They are moving slowly and with plenty of room
for retreat, but they are moving. It will be interesting to hear what the
Poles and French say on Wednesday. Their public support should not
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be taken for anything more than not wanting to alienate the Germans
or Russians until they have talked to the Americans. It will also be
interesting to see what the Obama administration has to say about this.
The S-3 Report
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
America: Graduating From God? (Part 1)
by Chuck Norris
This past week, I read a blog post that noted how prayer was
banned at a high-school graduation in Indiana but not in Alabama.
Then I read another news report, this one about a California high
school that changed its graduation "opening prayer" to "a moment of
silence." No big shocker there.
Tragically, these types of devaluing religious news stories are
a dime a dozen today. Spiritual regression is not only a trend but also
an epidemic.
The Fuller Youth Institute just reported that 40 percent of
even churchgoing high-school seniors "significantly struggle with their
faith and with finding a church after graduation." And other statistics
show that by the time they end their college education, 90 percent
will have dropped out of church.
Attrition in church attendance and faith in God is definitely
on the rise. And so is animosity toward America's Judeo-Christian
heritage.
Removing God from the public square is not new, but its
pace is progressively increasing at alarming rates. Omitting any
reference to God is pervasive not only in textbooks but also now at
historical sites, including in Washington, D.C. In 2006, the Jamestown
Settlement in Virginia, to which tens of thousands of schoolchildren
come each year to learn about the first English colony in America (13
years before the Pilgrims at Plymouth), omitted from its tours the first
purpose mentioned in the 1606 charter: to spread the Christian
religion. In 2007, the U.S. Mint "accidentally" omitted the words "In
God We Trust" on the first 50,000 or so George Washington
presidential dollars. The same year, the National Park Service covered
up and omitted the words "Praise be to God" on the capstone replica
display in the Washington Monument. Then, in 2008, the new
580,000-square-foot Capitol Visitor Center suffered a series of
religious oversights and corruptions in various historical displays of
our Capitol and country's heritage. Is it any coincidence that the most
recently erected memorials in D.C. contain no references to God,
either? And of course, the Texas textbook wars include battles over
omissions and revisions of America's godly heritage in public-school
curricula.
Speaking of our culture's devaluing of religion, only weeks
after television's Comedy Central's executives nixed a program
because of its controversial depiction of Muhammad, the founder of
Islam, the network announced a sacrilegious and shameful new series
titled "JC," a comedy about God and Jesus Christ, who (in the
programs) will be "JC" -- a regular guy who moves to modern-day
New York to "escape his father's enormous shadow." And God is
portrayed as a lethargic man and deadbeat father. Isn't this political
incorrectness and hate language at its core? Does America really need
to stoop to such deplorable depths and dung for a laugh?
Life is a STRUGGLE! Enjoy it! Lick the Blade!!!
30 June 2010
Is it just me or do others not see the major movement to
whitewash God from our culture? Do our governing officials really
think eliminating the Almighty is any answer to our problems? Don't
they see omissions of God are also avoidances of the very being
who can help us out of or through our troubles? Or do we believe
that our country can experience true recovery and success without
God's intervention or blessing? Does America believe it can
graduate without or from God?
Right now, needing our patriot assistance is Rep. Randy
Forbes, whose congressional address on America's Judeo-Christian
heritage has received more than 3 million views on YouTube.
Forbes, along with the members of the bipartisan Congressional
Prayer Caucus, has reintroduced H. Res. 397, "America's Spiritual
Heritage Resolution." The resolution would recognize our nation's
spiritual heritage milestones, reject current attempts to erase all
religious history from public buildings and educational resources,
and establish a week for Americans to remember and reflect on the
spiritual principles upon which our nation was founded. The
resolution has gained bipartisan support, with 79 co-sponsors. Has
your representative sponsored or supported the resolution? If not,
please contact that person today to ask that he/she does so.
George Washington gave a very wise and timely word in
his Farewell Address to all Americans (including all government
officials) who even entertain the thought that they can graduate
from God. It also serves as a great "commencement address" to all
graduates this spring: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead
to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable
supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism,
who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness,
these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere
politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to
cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with
private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the
security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious
obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of
investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the
supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.
Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on
minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to
expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious
principle."
America, don't ever forget: Your Founders expected you to
graduate with God, not from him.
Next week, in Part 2, Chuck will discuss "the No. 1
advocate for a godless society."
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
America: Graduating From God? (Part 2)
by Chuck Norris
Last week, I discussed a series of evidences about how God
is being omitted from American life, culture and politics. This week, I
will detail the No. 1 advocate for a godless society: our president.
First, even during his campaign for the presidency, Barack
Obama sarcastically belittled America's Judeo-Christian heritage and
degraded its adherents with trite remarks typical of any atheistic
antagonist: "Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian
nation"; "the dangers of sectarianism are greater than ever";
31
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"religion doesn't allow for compromise"; "the Sermon on the Mount (is)
a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense
Department would survive its application"; and "to base our
policymaking on such commitments (as moral absolutes) would be a
dangerous thing." (See the YouTube video "Barack Obama On The
Importance Of A Secular Government.")
Second, President Obama denied America's rich Judeo-
Christian heritage before the eyes and ears of other countries when he
publicly declared in Turkey on April 6, 2009, "We do not consider
ourselves a Christian nation." (Who are the "we" to whom he refers?
Would our former presidents agree with his "we"?)
Third, in countless speeches over the past year, he has
sympathized with and supported pro-Islamic culture, theology and
practice. The New York Times recently published a multiple-page
report on how the "White House quietly courts Muslims in (the) U.S."
Fourth, Obama emphatically declared as president-elect that
"only government" is our savior. By advocating such, the federal
government vies for divine omnipotence and deliverance, which
America's Founders understood to be the Creator's roles.
It was only a matter of time before such wayward power
sought to control even churches. A clear example of this came out just
this past month, through Obama's faith-based initiative committee
recommendations. The federal government is seeking not only to
minimize the language preachers use through politically correct hate-
crime laws but also to alter the messages they preach, from saving souls
to saving the earth. Obama's faith-based council specifically
recommends "bringing the power of 370,000 houses of worship across
the country to the fight of climate change by greening buildings and
promoting environmental stewardship in their congregations."
Lastly, President Obama has turned a blind eye and a deaf ear
to anti-Judeo-Christian issues, such as the Army's rescinding of
Franklin Graham's invitation to the Pentagon's National Day of Prayer
event, atheists' lawsuits to remove the national motto ("In God We
Trust") from the walls of the new Capitol Visitor Center in Washington,
D.C., the building of a mosque right next to New York's ground zero
and the American Civil Liberties Union's disposal of memorial crosses
for veterans in the Mojave Desert and at Mount Soledad.
Ben Franklin could have been speaking before the president
and Congress today when he gave these words at the Constitutional
Convention: "In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when
we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for the
divine protection. Our prayers, sir, were heard, and they were
graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must
have observed frequent instances of a superintending providence in our
favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of
consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national
felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we
imagine that we no longer need his assistance? I have lived, sir, a long
time, and the longer I live the more convincing proof I see of this truth,
that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to
the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise
without his aid?"
These are three questions every Washington politician in
particular needs to answer: "And have we now forgotten that powerful
friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance? And if
a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable
that an empire can rise (again) without his aid?"
Speaking of aid, needing our patriot assistance right now is
Rep. Randy Forbes, whose congressional address on America's Judeo-
Life is a STRUGGLE! Enjoy it! Lick the Blade!!!
30 June 2010
Christian heritage has received more than 3 million views on
YouTube. Forbes, along with the members of the bipartisan
Congressional Prayer Caucus, has reintroduced H. Res. 397,
"America's Spiritual Heritage Resolution." The resolution would
recognize our nation's spiritual heritage milestones, reject current
attempts to erase all religious history from public buildings and
educational resources, and establish a week for Americans to
remember and reflect on the spiritual principles upon which our
nation was founded. The resolution has gained bipartisan support,
with 79 co-sponsors. Has your representative sponsored or supported
the resolution? If not, please contact that person today to ask that
he/she does so.
If Psalm 33:12 says that "blessed is the nation whose God is the
Lord," how would the verse read for the nation who has given God the
boot?
Friday, June 18, 2010
Obama's Latest Shakedown
by David Limbaugh
President Obama's oil spill speech revealed, once again, how
stunningly shameless he is. This relentless ideologue is not even
marginally competent at masking his ongoing crusade to apply a
wrecking ball to every sector of our economy and remake it in his own
image.
And I do mean "his" own image. Once again, his speech was
loaded with first-person references, from "I refuse to let (Gulf Coast
residents lose their way of life)" to "I expect (the new commission
tasked with determining the cause of the explosion) to do that work
thoroughly and impartially" to "I am happy to look at other ideas and
approaches from either party." More on that last howler in a moment.
Obama's MO is so predictable that sophisticated
practitioners of Marxist transformation should be embarrassed. Then
again, Obama doesn't need to be subtle; he is the president -- a
president who rejects the constitutional limitations that applied to his
mortal predecessors.
After sitting on his hands for months, he comes out
rhetorically swinging with both barrels of his teleprompter blazing.
First, declare a crisis -- meticulously distorting the facts, especially
those relative to what caused the crisis. Second, isolate a scapegoat
(along with the awful, resource-exploiting, oil-inhaling, pre-Obama
America) to be demonized and bullied into conspiring with him to
launch his transformational solution -- a solution that has nothing to
do with solving the "crisis." In the meantime, shield the true culprits
from any blame. Third, unveil his grandiose plan for salvation by the
federal government, provided it first acquires structurally new
powers. All the while, he not only downplays the government's
culpability in all of this but also overstates its (and his) response to
date.
A returning space traveler watching his speech would have
assumed Obama actually had been "kicking tail" throughout this
"crisis" instead of partying and playing golf. Upon watching the
speech, the traveler would not have experienced the megadoses of
deja vu felt by the rest of us, who had watched this movie -- starring
this very president -- many times before.
32
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To be sure, the oil spill has been terrible, and BP doubtlessly
bears much blame. But do any of us know all the facts? Should the
president be unilaterally declaring BP's strict liability as if he were the
final judge, jury and executioner -- without even affording the company
any opportunity to defend itself?
Alinsky-starved radicals might find it gratifying for a
dictatorial president to beat up on such an evil agent of capitalism, but
some of us find his approach unseemly and disturbing. Besides denying
the company any semblance of due process and fairness, how about his
habitual expenditure of negative energy -- pointing fingers -- instead of
employing a constructive approach?
No matter how culpable BP is ultimately determined to be,
Obama's bullying should not deflect our attention from another culprit
here: environmental extremists.
Just as Obama blamed Wall Street and exempted government
(liberal policies) and quasi government entities (Freddie and Fannie)
for their complicity in the financial meltdown and just as he blamed
doctors, pharmaceuticals and insurance companies for soaring health
care costs caused mostly by socialistic governmental policies, he is
summarily blaming BP and exempting unreasonable liberal
environmental policies for shutting down more conventional and safer
drilling methods -- and venues. As usual, he and his ilk greatly
contribute to problems and then use those problems as catalysts to
justify even greater doses of their destructive socialistic prescriptions.
It's maddening.
Just as Obama browbeat and bought off the American Medical
Association and big pharma to go along with Obamacare, he
summoned BP executives to his office. Flanked by Attorney General
Eric Holder, who has threatened criminal action against BP, he shook
down BP into forking over a $20 billion installment to defer the
government's further wrath. BP is but another prop Obama has chosen
to advance another plank of his statist agenda -- this time his plan to
shut down our conventional energy industry in favor of new, quixotic
alternative energy methods that will succeed only in propelling this
nation even faster toward Third World status.
I'm surprised Obama didn't give another "shout-out" to "Joe
Medicine Crow" as he began his speech designed to pretend he cares
about the victims of the oil spill (even his lib media enablers aren't
buying it this time) -- for the sole purpose of passing cap and trade on
their backs. Cap and trade has already failed, but so had health care
before he finally crammed it through.
Just as Obama fraudulently promised to listen to Republican
ideas at his bogus health care summit after he'd shut them out of the
process from the beginning, he promised to "look at other ideas and
approaches from either party" on his cap-and-trade fiasco. Oh, yes, he's
all about considering the ideas of others and the will of the American
people. And I'm all about advancing liberalism. LOL.
Monday, May 31, 2010
The European Union Will Come Apart
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
This past week, I read a blog post that noted how prayer was
banned at a high-school graduation in Indiana but not in Alabama.
Then I read another news report, this one about a California high
Life is a STRUGGLE! Enjoy it! Lick the Blade!!!
30 June 2010
school that changed its graduation "opening prayer" to "a moment of
silence." No big shocker there.
Tragically, these types of devaluing religious news stories are
a dime a dozen today. Spiritual regression is not only a trend but also
an epidemic.
The Fuller Youth Institute just reported that 40 percent of
even churchgoing high-school seniors "significantly struggle with
their faith and with finding a church after graduation." And other
statistics show that by the time they end their college education, 90
percent will have dropped out of church.
Attrition in church attendance and faith in God is definitely
on the rise. And so is animosity toward America's Judeo-Christian
heritage.
Removing God from the public square is not new, but its
pace is progressively increasing at alarming rates. Omitting any
reference to God is pervasive not only in textbooks but also now at
historical sites, including in Washington, D.C. In 2006, the
Jamestown Settlement in Virginia, to which tens of thousands of
schoolchildren come each year to learn about the first English colony
in America (13 years before the Pilgrims at Plymouth), omitted from
its tours the first purpose mentioned in the 1606 charter: to spread
the Christian religion. In 2007, the U.S. Mint "accidentally" omitted
the words "In God We Trust" on the first 50,000 or so George
Washington presidential dollars. The same year, the National Park
Service covered up and omitted the words "Praise be to God" on the
capstone replica display in the Washington Monument. Then, in
2008, the new 580,000-square-foot Capitol Visitor Center suffered a
series of religious oversights and corruptions in various historical
displays of our Capitol and country's heritage. Is it any coincidence
that the most recently erected memorials in D.C. contain no
references to God, either? And of course, the Texas textbook wars
include battles over omissions and revisions of America's godly
heritage in public-school curricula.
Speaking of our culture's devaluing of religion, only weeks
after television's Comedy Central's executives nixed a program
because of its controversial depiction of Muhammad, the founder of
Islam, the network announced a sacrilegious and shameful new series
titled "JC," a comedy about God and Jesus Christ, who (in the
programs) will be "JC" -- a regular guy who moves to modern-day
New York to "escape his father's enormous shadow." And God is
portrayed as a lethargic man and deadbeat father. Isn't this political
incorrectness and hate language at its core? Does America really need
to stoop to such deplorable depths and dung for a laugh?
Is it just me or do others not see the major movement to
whitewash God from our culture? Do our governing officials really
think eliminating the Almighty is any answer to our problems? Don't
they see omissions of God are also avoidances of the very being who
can help us out of or through our troubles? Or do we believe that our
country can experience true recovery and success without God's
intervention or blessing? Does America believe it can graduate
without or from God?
Right now, needing our patriot assistance is Rep. Randy
Forbes, whose congressional address on America's Judeo-Christian
heritage has received more than 3 million views on YouTube. Forbes,
along with the members of the bipartisan Congressional Prayer
Caucus, has reintroduced H. Res. 397, "America's Spiritual Heritage
Resolution." The resolution would recognize our nation's spiritual
heritage milestones, reject current attempts to erase all religious
history from public buildings and educational resources, and
33
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The Official Newsletter of the Alphatraz Deathcamp Survivors Society
& the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
4th Resurrected Detroit Edition 30 June 2010
establish a week for Americans to remember and reflect on the spiritual -- While corporate profits are 30.6 percent higher than
principles upon which our nation was founded. The resolution has one year ago, wages are up by only 1.6 percent, less than half
gained bipartisan support, with 79 co-sponsors. Has your their rate of increase two years ago.
representative sponsored or supported the resolution? If not, please -- Financial sector profits make up 35.7 percent of all
contact that person today to ask that he/she does so. domestic corporate profits. These gains are driven by trading
George Washington gave a very wise and timely word in his
revenue, which does not reflect real economic growth.
Farewell Address to all Americans (including all government officials)
Schwanninger and Sherraden report, "In the first quarter of
who even entertain the thought that they can graduate from God. It2010, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America
also serves as a great "commencement address" to all graduates this
earned 72 percent, 45 percent and 16 percent of their net
spring: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political
revenue (respectively) from trading profits."
prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain -- Personal savings dropped from a high of almost 6
would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to
percent to 2.7 percent in March, 2010, so households have cut
subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of
their debt by just $300 billion since it peaked in 2008. So
the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the
household debt, which rose from 60 percent of GDP in 1990 to
pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not
almost 100 percent in 2008, has only dropped to 97 percent. It
trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply
has a long, long way to go before it goes down enough to free
be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if
consumers to spend more.
the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the -- Meanwhile, retail sales have averaged only a 1.7
instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us withpercent increase over the past three quarters, half of which was
caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained merely to restock inventories. Schwanninger and Sherraden
without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined
note that "in a typical recovery, the rebound is closer to 3.5
education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both
percent." And most of that increase is due to expanding
forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of
government cash transfer payments, which now make up 18.3
religious principle." percent of personal income. "Excluding transfer payments,
America, don't ever forget: Your Founders expected you to graduatepersonal income increased just 0.3 percent since the third
with God, not from him. quarter of 2009."
Wednesday, June 09, 2010 -- And stimulus spending, which has failed to generate
private sector growth, is now winding down. Only 43 percent of
the tax benefits and entitlement spending remain to be doled
out, as does 63 percent of the contracts, grants and loans in the
stimulus package.
-- The strengthening of the dollar due to the collapse of
Here Comes the Double-Dip Recession the euro will dry up U.S. export trade. Exports to EU nations
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann account for 21 percent of American and 20 percent of Chinese
The drop in the stock market (now about 1,000 points on exports. Schwanninger and Sherraden note that "a European
the Dow) is a graphic indication of the stark fact that we are slowdown will reduce demand for the two primary engines of
entering the infamous double dip of the recession, long feared world economic growth."
and predicted. The economy is not in a V after all (down and then But this second downturn in the economy will be
up) but in a W (down, up, down again and then, finally, up). And accompanied by inflation, making it worse than the first
the cause of the second dip is not the recession itself, but the recession. With interest rates set to rise (because the fed is no
cure administered to it by President Obama and the Democratic longer massively purchasing securities to keep them down),
Congress. taxes set to go up (because of Obama's ideology) and global
Consider the indications (data provided by New America energy use about to increase, sending prices higher (because
Foundation, analysis by Sherle R. Schwanninger and Samuel the rest of the world is recovering), prices have to go up. But
Sherraden): with no growth in real personal income and household credit
-- Gross domestic product growth has only been 2.2 close to all-time highs, there is not enough demand to pay the
percent, 5.6 percent and 3.2 percent for each of the last three higher prices, so a deeper slump will ensue.
quarters, well below the rebounds typical in past recessions. The solution? Cut -- don't raise -- taxes. And bring
-- Total civilian employment has rebounded by only 1 down the deficit through massive spending cuts. Reduce our
percent since the depth of the unemployment five months ago. In borrowing needs by slashing our spending. Free up capital to
1973, at a comparable point, it had rebounded by 7 percent. In feed job growth.
1981, by 8 percent. In 1990, by 4 percent. And in 2001, by 3 It should be evident to all that Obamanomics is a
percent. U-6, the broadest measure of unemployment, stands at disaster. It reminds one of nothing so much as the Medieval
17.1 percent practice of bleeding the patient to make him well by expelling
-- Housing prices have dropped by 30 percent since the evil spirits that dwelt within. When the patient did not
2006, and "many economists expect housing prices to decline at recover, they just bled him more and, when he died, they just
least another 10 percent," according to Schwanninger and said that the spirits killed him. The practice of spending,
Sherraden. borrowing and then taxing to fuel job growth is the modern
analogy.
34
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Friday, June 04, 2010 So what? Doesn't every administration have corruption?
When I patiently explained that no other administration in
modern American history had set itself up as loftily as the Hope and
Change reformers had done, or when I cited endless examples of
Obama's broken promises on everything from lobbyists to
transparency to Washington business as usual, liberal critics changed
The Summer of Corruption Plot Thickens the subject again:
RACIST FASCIST EVIL FOX NEWS RIGHT-WING HATE
by Michelle Malkin MONGER!
In Chicago politics, there's an old term for the publicly Two major job-trading scandals plus the start of the Blago
subsidized pay-offs and positions meted out to the corruptocrats' trial this past week -- on top of a year's worth of uninhibited White
friends and special interests: boodle. House wheeling and dealing, broken transparency pledges, Justice
In the age of Obama, Hope and Change is all about the boodle. Department stonewalling and brass knuckle-bullying of political
So it was with the stimulus. And the massive national service opponents -- have finally turned the once-derided thesis of my book
expansion. And the health care bill. And the financial reform bill. And "Culture of Corruption" into conventional wisdom.
the blossoming job-trading scandals engulfing the White House. Obama sold America a Chicago-tainted bill of goods. A
There's always been an ageless, interdependent relationship nation of slow learners is finally figuring it out.
between Windy City politicos and "goo-goos" (the cynical Chicago term
for good government reformers). Chicago-style "reform" has always Friday, June 04, 2010
entailed the redistribution of wealth and power under the guise of
public service. And it has inevitably led to more corruption.
In March 2010, this column first took note of allegations by
Democrats Joe Sestak and Andrew Romanoff that the White House had
offered them jobs in exchange for dropping their respective bids against
Obama-favored incumbent Sens. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania and
Lift the Siege of Gaza
Michael Bennet in Colorado. White House legal counsel Bob "The by Pat Buchanan
Fixer" Bauer's attempt to bury questions about the Sestak affair with a In June 1948, our wartime ally imposed a blockade on
Memorial Day weekend document dump failed. So has the attempt to Berlin, cutting off and condemning to death or Stalinist domination 2
make Rahm Emanuel-enlisted former president Bill Clinton the sole million Germans, most of whom, not long before, had cheered Adolf
scapegoat. Hitler.
Bauer's memo mentions "efforts" (plural, not singular) to woo Harry Truman responded with the Berlin airlift, in perhaps
Sestak. But the White House refuses to divulge what offers besides the most magnanimous act of the Cold War.
Clinton's were extended to Sestak. Moreover, White House spokesman For nine months, U.S. pilots flew into Tempelhof, carrying
Robert Gibbs has now denied that Team Obama was involved in the everything from candy to coal, saving a city and earning the eternal
one Clinton offer that has been publicized -- an unpaid appointment on gratitude of the people of Berlin, and admiration everywhere that
an intelligence board for which Sestak was ineligible. moral courage is admired.
After months of silence, Romanoff finally stepped forward this That was an America that lived its values.
week to acknowledge that the White House had dangled several And today, President Obama should end his and his
positions before him, too. He released e-mails detailing not one, not country's shameful silence over the inhumane blockade of Gaza that
two, but three different paid positions offered by White House Deputy is denying 1.5 million beleaguered people the basic necessities of a
Chief of Staff Jim Messina -- whose boss, Emanuel, was subpoenaed decent life.
this week by impeached former Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Time to start acting like America again.
Illinois to testify in his Senate pay-for-play corruption trial. That bloody debacle in the Eastern Mediterranean last
So, can I say "I told you so" now? Sunday was an inevitable result of Israel doing what it always seems
In July 2009, when "Culture of Corruption" was first released, to do: going beyond what is essential to her security, to impose
liberal critics scoffed: collective punishment upon any and all it regards as hostile to Israel.
How could you possibly write a 400-page book about Barack Israel claims, and film confirms, that its commandos
Obama's rotten administration when he's only been in office six rappelling down onto the Turkish ship were attacked with sticks and
months?! metal rods. One was tossed off a deck, another tossed overboard into
When I proceeded to rattle off case after case of Chicago-style a lifeboat.
back-scratching, transparency-trampling and crooked special interest- But that 2 a.m. boarding of an unarmed ship with an
dealing in the new White House, liberal critics such as "The View's" Joy unarmed crew, carrying no munitions or weapons, 65 miles at sea,
Behar interjected: was an act of piracy. What the Israeli commandos got is what any
B-b-b-but what about Bush? Why don't you write a book armed hijacker should expect who tries to steal a car from a driver
about Bush? Wha-'bout-Bush? Wha-'bout-Bush? Wha-'bout-Bush? who keeps a tire iron under the front seat.
When I pointed out that I had reported extensively on And the response of these highly trained naval commandos
cronyism in the Bush era (see Harriet Miers, FEMA and the to the resistance they encountered? They shot and killed nine
Department of Homeland Security), and when I further pointed out passengers, and wounded many more.
that while the Bush-bashing market overflowed, there remained a But we have a blockade of Gaza, say the Israelis, and this
massive vacuum of critical analysis of Obama, liberal critics sputtered: flotilla was a provocation. Indeed, it was. And Selma was a
35
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provocation. The marchers at Edmund Pettus Bridge were disobeying
orders of the governor of Alabama and state police not to march.
Yet, today, liberal Democrats who regard Martin Luther King
as a moral hero for championing nonviolent civil disobedience to
protest injustice are cheering not the unarmed passengers trying to
break the Gaza blockade, but the Israelis enforcing the blockade.
Where were these fellows when "Bull" Connor really needed
them?
Comes the retort: Israel is a friend and ally, and we stand with
our friends.
But is not Turkey a friend and ally of 50 years, whose soldiers
died alongside ours in Korea and who accepted Jupiter missiles
targeted on Russia, even before the Cuban missile crisis? Was it not
Turkey whose citizens were wounded and killed in the bloody debacle?
Why are we not at least even-handed between our friends?
On the trip to Israel where he was blindsided by news that
Israel would build 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem, Joe
Biden told Shimon Peres, "There is absolutely no space between the
United States and Israel when it comes to Israel's security."
And that is the problem.
America is a superpower with interests in an Arab world of
300 million and an Islamic world of 1.5 billion -- interests Israel treats
with indifference if not contempt when it comes to doing what she
regards as necessary for her security.
While Israel had a right to build a wall to protect her people
from terror attack, did she have a right to build it on Palestinian land?
While Israel had a right to go after Hezbollah when her
soldiers were shot on the border and several kidnapped, did Israel have
a right to conduct a five-week bombing campaign that smashed
Lebanon, killing hundreds of civilians and creating upward of a million
refugees?
While Israel had a right to go into Gaza to stop the firing of
crude rockets on Sderot, did she have a right to smash utilities and
public buildings and kill 1,400 people, most of them civilians?
Is whatever Israel decides to do in the name of her security
fine with us, because there is "absolutely no space" between our
interests and hers, our values and Israel's values?
Even with Winston Churchill's Britain, there was "space"
between us on strategic goals and national policies.
Israel has a right to secure Gaza to deny Hamas access to
weapons, especially rockets that could reach Israel. But that does not
justify denying 1.5 million people what they need to live in decency.
According to The Washington Post, "80 percent of the
population (of Gaza) depends on charity. Hospitals, schools, electricity
systems and sewage treatment facilities are all in deep disrepair."
With our silence, we support this. And we wonder why they
hate us.
Obama should tell the Israelis that Joe got it wrong. There is
space between us. The Gaza siege must end. And America will herself
be sending aid, but will also support Israel's right to inspect trucks and
ships to see to it no weapons get through to Gaza.
Let's start behaving like who we once were.
Friday, June 04, 2010
The Convenient Villian
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by Jonah Goldberg
On May 29, two days before Israel's botched raid of six
"humanitarian" ships bound for Gaza, Robert Naiman, the policy
director of something called "Just Foreign Policy," wrote an item on
the Huffington Post headlined "Gaza Freedom Flotilla Shows
Awesome Power of Nonviolent Resistance."
Naiman waxed lyrical about how the moral authority of
nonviolence had compelled Turkish-controlled Cyprus to help the
flotilla while Greek-controlled Cyprus had allegedly caved to Israeli
pressure in refusing to help the heirs of Gandhi (it couldn't have
been because the Turks were up to no good).
"All this," Naiman gushed, "and the main confrontation
between the Israeli occupation authorities and the Gaza Freedom
Flotilla has not yet begun."
Roughly 48 hours later, the "main confrontation" unfolded.
In fairness, the majority of "peace activists" on the ships were
nonviolent, offering passive resistance. But on the last boat Israelis
boarded, the supposed disciples of peace attacked the Israeli
commandos. These new Gandhians beat the Israelis with metal bars
and even threw one Israeli overboard.
Funny, I'm no expert, but that's not how Gandhi behaved
in the movie. Maybe there was a sequel with Chuck Norris as the
Mahatma? "Gandhi's back, and this time it's personal!"
The commandos had been equipped with paintball guns out
of deference to the professed pacifism of the activists. But when the
goons attacked, out came the real sidearms. Nine "humanitarians"
were killed.
Now, one wouldn't expect Naiman to take Israel's side.
He'd lose his social justice decoder ring for that. But one might
expect him to at least lament the failure of his comrades to stick to
their principled nonviolence.
One might also expect kosher pigs to fly.
After the incident, Naiman returned to the Huffington Post
not to lament the outbreak of violence but to salute the resolve of
the "humanitarians."
He opened with a question: "How do you know when
someone is serious about pursuing a strategy of nonviolent
resistance until victory for justice is achieved?" And then he
answered it: "When they refuse to turn back in the face of state
violence. Damn the commandos. Full speed ahead." He then went
on to celebrate another propaganda ship heading toward Gaza.
How do you know when a proselytizer of nonviolence is full
of it? When he doesn't object to the use of violence.
Among Israel's friends, there's a deep and wide consensus
that the "flotilla fiasco" was a public relations disaster, proof that
Israel doesn't know how to work with the global media to shape
world opinion.
The first part is almost indisputable at this point. The raid
was a disaster. As for the second part -- that Israel's problems are
about public relations -- I'm not so sure.
The assumption is that world opinion is open to hearing
Israel's side of the story. But that hasn't been the case for years.
From the "Jenin massacre" that was no massacre to the idiotic
charges of "genocide" that erupt across the Arab world, the moment
Israel defends itself from missiles or "martyrs," the presumption is
always that Israel is the villain. When it turns out the facts support
Israel, it's at best a footnote or proof the Israelis have manipulated
the media.
Question: If Israel is always hell-bent on murder,
massacres and genocide, why is it so bad at it? If its battle plan
called for a slaughter, why kill "only" nine people? Why not sink all
of the boats?
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Meanwhile, is it really the case that Hamas is objectively
"good" at public relations? Or Hezbollah? Or Iran? Really? I just don't
see it. To me, these PR operations are less "Wag the Dog" and more
Baghdad Bob (the Monty Pythonesque spokesman for Saddam
Hussein's regime). But instead of everyone laughing at the lies and
idiocy, millions of people nod their heads in agreement.
North Korea recently sank a South Korean ship. The
international reaction has been muted and sober. Turkey -- the
Palestinians' new champion -- has been treating Kurdish nationalists
harshly for generations; no one cares. The Russians crush Chechens,
the Chinese trample Uighurs. Real genocides unfold regularly in
Africa. Iran is pursuing a nuclear bomb. Hamas is openly dedicated to
the destruction of Israel. So is Iran.
And yet the only villain as far as much of the world is
concerned is Israel. Always Israel.
But none of these facts matter. Indeed, it's tiring even to
recount them in an environment where big lies matters more than
obvious truths, where self-defense is "aggression," where restraint is
"genocide," and where the heirs of Gandhi wield steel pipes.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Oil: The Real Green Fuel
by Jonah Goldberg
A rolling "dead zone" off the Gulf of Mexico is killing sea life
and destroying livelihoods. Recent estimates put the blob at nearly the
size of New Jersey.
Alas, I'm not talking about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. As
terrible as that catastrophe is, such accidents have occurred in U.S.
waters only about once every 40 years (and globally about once every
20 years). I'm talking about the dead zone largely caused by fertilizer
runoff from American farms along the Mississippi and Atchafalaya
river basins. Such pollutants cause huge algae plumes that result in
oxygen starvation in the gulf's richest waters, near the delta.
Because the dead zone is an annual occurrence, there's no
media feeding frenzy over it, even though the average annual size of
these hypoxic zones has been about 6,600 square miles over the last
five years, and they are driven by bipartisan federal agriculture, trade
and energy policies.
Indeed, As Steven Hayward notes in the current Weekly
Standard, if policymakers continue to pursue biofuels in response to
the current anti-fossil-fuel craze, these dead zones will get a lot bigger
every year. A 2008 study by the National Academy of Sciences found
that adhering to corn-based ethanol targets will increase the size of the
dead zone by as much as 34 percent.
Of course, that's just one of the headaches "independence"
from oil and coal would bring. If we stop drilling offshore, we could lose
up to $1 trillion in economic benefits, according to economist Peter
Passell. And, absent the utopian dream of oil-free living, every barrel
we don't produce at home, we buy overseas. That sends dollars to bad
regimes (though more to Canada and Mexico). It may also increase the
chances of disaster because tanker accidents are more common than rig
accidents.
But wait a minute -- isn't that precisely why we're investing in
"renewables," to free ourselves from this vicious petro-cycle? Don't the
Billy Sundays of the Church of Green promise that they are the path to
salvation?
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This is infuriating and dangerous nonsense, as Matt Ridley
demonstrates in his mesmerizing new book, "The Rational Optimist."
Let's start with biofuels. Ethanol production steals precious land to
produce inefficient fuel inefficiently (making food more scarce and
expensive for the poor). If all of our transport fuel came from biofuel,
we would need 30 percent more land than all of the existing food-
growing farmland we have today.
In Brazil and Malaysia, biofuels are more economically
viable (thanks in part to really cheap labor), but at the insane price of
losing rainforest while failing to reduce the CO2 emissions that
allegedly justify ethanol in the first place. According to Ridley, the
Nature Conservancy's Joseph Fargione estimates rainforest clear-
cutting for biofuels releases 17 to 420 times more CO2 than it offsets
by displacing petroleum or coal.
As for wind and solar, even if such technologies were wildly
more successful than they have been, so what? You could quintuple
and then quintuple again the output of wind and solar and it wouldn't
reduce our dependence on oil. Why? Because we use oil for
transportation, not for electricity. We would offset coal, but again at
an enormous price. If we tried to meet the average amount of energy
typically used in America, we would need wind farms the size of
Kazakhstan or solar panels the size of Spain.
If you remove the argument over climate change from the
equation (as even European governments are starting to do), one
thing becomes incandescently clear: Fossil fuels have been one of the
great boons both to humanity and the environment, allowing forests
to regrow (now that we don't use wood for heating fuel or grow fuel
for horses anymore) and liberating billions from backbreaking toil.
The great and permanent shortage is usable surface land and fresh
water. The more land we use to produce energy, the less we have for
vulnerable species, watersheds, agriculture, recreation, etc.
"If you like wilderness, as I do," Ridley writes, "the last thing
you want is to go back to the medieval habit of using the landscape
surrounding us to make power."
The calamity in the gulf is heartrending and tragic. A
thorough review of government oversight and industry safety
procedures is more than warranted. But as counterintuitive as it may
be to say so, oil is a green fuel, while "green" fuels aren't. And this
spill doesn't change that fact.
Friday, June 04, 2010
Inviting War
by Oliver North
WASHINGTON -- Sixty years ago this month, the North Korean
People's Army, enticed by the Truman administration's
announcement that Korea was no longer within the "U.S. defensive
perimeter," launched a surprise attack across the 38th parallel --
the arbitrary demarcation line drawn by the United Nations between
the Republic of Korea and the communist north, the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea. The onslaught was so successful that in
a matter of just three days, Seoul was captured and the poorly
trained and equipped ROK military was smashed. Hundreds of
American advisers and hastily deployed reinforcements were killed,
captured or listed as missing in action. By mid-July, the remnants of
U.S. and ROK forces were driven into a tiny defensive perimeter
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around the port of Pusan.
Three years and more than 150,000 American casualties
later, an armistice ended the fighting -- but not the war. Ever since,
American national security policy has been based on the idea that
attacks against the U.S. homeland, our national interests and our
allies could be prevented by "containing communism" and maintaining
sufficient nuclear and conventional forces to deter aggression.
American intelligence capabilities were focused on knowing what our
adversaries were up to and sharing that information with our allies.
Until Jimmy Carter came along, it was a strategy that generally
worked.
Carter decided -- and Congress agreed -- to gut U.S. defense
and intelligence budgets, dramatically reduce the U.S. military
presence in the Republic of Korea and replace deterrence with
"diplomatic engagement." America's adversaries wasted no time in
taking advantage of his perceived naivet<é>e and weakness. Though
the U.S. withdrawal from South Korea was stopped thanks to a major
political movement launched by World War II hero Maj. Gen. Jack
Singlaub, other American allies weren't so fortunate.
While Americans here at home were distracted by economic
woes that included double-digit inflation and interest rates, Panama,
Nicaragua, Iran, Angola, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique and eventually
Afghanistan all succumbed to "revolutionary" regimes or outright
invasion during Carter's mercifully brief tenure as commander in
chief. He used the threat of reduced arms sales and aid for Israel to
initiate the novel concept of a "Palestinian homeland" during
negotiations for a peace treaty with Egypt.
Though Ronald Reagan restored the idea of "peace through
strength" and carried out his promise to confront Soviet expansion,
we still are paying the price for the Carter administration's ineptness
and misfeasance. The undetected nuclear weapons programs in both
North Korea and Iran trace their lineage to Carter's intelligence cuts.
As a consequence, two of America's most steadfast allies -- Israel and
the Republic of Korea -- now face the clear and present danger of
existential annihilation. Both democracies are literally under the gun -
- and getting little but platitudes or worse from the Obama
administration.
After the Cheonan, an ROK navy patrol boat, blew up in
international waters, killing 46 sailors March 26, Seoul's military -- as
our mutual defense treaty requires -- turned to the U.S. for advice on
how to respond. The O-Team counseled caution -- urging the South
Koreans to invite an "international committee" to conduct a "fair,
impartial and transparent investigation" to determine what happened.
They did -- and the panel found overwhelming evidence that the
Cheonan had been sunk by a torpedo fired from a North Korean
submarine. The Obama administration's response to this overt act of
war: to refer the matter to the United Nations. In Pyongyang, the
brutal regime that has starved its people to build nuclear weapons
now promises "total war."
It's even worse for Israel -- abandoned by the Obama
administration and beleaguered by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear
weapon's detonating on Tel Aviv, renewed rocket attacks on civilians
from Iranian-supplied Hamas terrorists in Gaza, and a rearmed,
Iranian-supplied Hezbollah terror movement in southern Lebanon.
Last week's flawed effort by Israel Defense Forces to inspect a so-
called "humanitarian aid flotilla" for weapons and military equipment
has resulted in international opprobrium because nine "activists"
aboard the vessels were killed. The O-Team's response: to demand
that the United Nations conduct a "fair, impartial and transparent
investigation." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has to be thankful no
one insisted on a U.N. investigation after more than 70 were killed in
Waco, Texas, in April 1993.
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30 June 2010
Americans once again are distracted by economic woes and
a Gulf oil spill. The U.S. intelligence community is leaderless and in
nearly total disarray. Our southern border is an open passage for
unlawful entry at best -- and a virtual invasion path for well-armed
enemies at worst. The Iranian regime, having brutally suppressed
its internal opposition, overtly is arming Hezbollah, Hamas and al-
Qaida while racing to acquire nuclear weapons and the means of
delivering them. The vicious despots running North Korea -- having
escaped any retribution for repeated violations of international law -
- commit an act of war, and the U.S. backs down. Meanwhile the
Obama administration is intent on turning the U.S. military, already
engaged in a two-front war, into a laboratory for radical social
experiments. Even Jimmy Carter didn't try that.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Doomed?
by Oliver North
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. -- It was a gentle rebuke while I stood in line to
pay for a cup of coffee at a truck stop just off Interstate 95 a few miles
from Fort Bragg: "You folks in the media have a hard time getting
things right, don't you?"
"How's that?" I responded to the bearded gentleman behind
me. I had seen him dismount from the cab of a Peterbilt over-the-
road, long-haul 18-wheeler. He looked to be about my age and was
wearing a gray T-shirt emblazoned with one word: "Army."
"You're Ollie North," he said, acknowledging that my
sunglasses and a black "Fox News" baseball hat weren't much of a
disguise.
He introduced himself as a U.S. Army veteran of the war we
had shared four decades ago in Vietnam. He kindly noted that I had
been embedded with his son's unit in Afghanistan, and as we exited
the restaurant, he got to the nature of his complaint. Pointing to a
newspaper vending machine on the sidewalk, he said: "That headline,
'Afghanistan Now Longest U.S. War,' is wrong. And I've been hearing
the same thing on the radio for the past 500 miles. Anybody who
thinks Afghanistan is our longest war doesn't know history, and that
means we're doomed to repeat it. I've crisscrossed the Trail of Tears a
couple of dozen times with this rig. My great-great-grandfather
fought the Apach'es for better than 20 years. And Afghanistan is
nothing like Vietnam. You set 'em straight, Colonel."
I replied, "Roger that," and with his challenge ringing in my
ears, we shook hands, mounted our metal steeds and rode off in
different directions.
It didn't take much research in readily available archives to
confirm that my truck driver historian was right about Afghanistan's
not being America's longest war. The U.S. Army's campaigns against
Geronimo, Cochise and other Apache leaders in New Mexico, Arizona
and Texas went on continuously for nearly 40 years. Though
Afghanistan has surpassed Vietnam in duration, it isn't even our
longest foreign military engagement. That distinction belongs to U.S.
military operations during the Philippine Insurrection -- which began
concurrently with the end of the Spanish-American War, in 1898, and
lasted until 1913. Notably, the number of U.S. casualties suffered in
the Philippines -- more than 7,100 -- is approximately the same as the
number of U.S. casualties to date in Afghanistan.
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All of this begs the question: Why all the false comparisons
between Vietnam and Afghanistan? The short answer -- mainstream-
media ignorance -- is too easy. The stark differences between
Afghanistan and Vietnam -- how they started, the nature of our
enemies, and how they were, and are, being fought -- ought to be
obvious to anyone.
In Vietnam, we went to war to support a beleaguered ally that
was being overrun by a foreign-directed insurgency and an invading
army that was directly supported by two superpowers, the Soviet Union
and Communist China. The military force we sent to fight in Southeast
Asia was largely conscripted and eventually disheartened by dissention
at home. During the war, more than 58,200 U.S. soldiers, sailors,
airmen, guardsmen and Marines were killed and another 153,000 were
wounded. Nearly 2,500 remain missing in action.
We went to war in Afghanistan because radical Islamic
terrorists who launched from there killed 3,000 innocents on U.S. soil
on 9/11. The enemy we face there today is an opium-financed
insurgency that obtains support from elements in Pakistan and Iran --
but nothing on the scale of what our enemies received in Vietnam. The
all-volunteer U.S. military deployed in the shadows of the Hindu Kush
is the best-educated, most technologically advanced and now the most
combat-experienced fighting force the world ever has seen. To date,
more than 1,080 Americans have been killed in action; more than
6,200 have been wounded; and we have one MIA.
My trucker-cum-media critic was right; there are few parallels
between Vietnam and Afghanistan. The only real similarity is in the
possible outcome. We had better pray they are not the same, for the
disaster wrought in Vietnam nearly wrecked our military.
The T-shirt the trucker's son gave him says it all. The U.S.
Army will celebrate its 235th anniversary June 14. Like the Army
George Washington was appointed to command, it is an all-volunteer
force, and therefore morale and winning are crucial.
During the brutal winter of 1777-78, Washington wrote that he
was "sorely vexed" by politicians unwilling to provide essential
equipment, supplies, medicine and uniforms to his troops. Today in the
city that bears his name, politicians are dickering over how "deep" they
can go in cutting our defense budget. The present commander in chief
has decided to treat the young men and women of our military like lab
rats in a radical social-engineering experiment. These actions could
well prove more lethal to our military than the winter at Valley Forge --
and determine the outcome of the present and any future war.
Finally, my veteran-historian, long-haul trucker-philosopher's
admonition about not knowing history was only a little bit off. George
Santayana actually wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are
doomed to repeat it." Let's hope those we elect to Congress this
November won't allow our military to be doomed.
June 24, 2010
June 25, 2010
Could the Obama Administration be Blocking
Gulf Clean-up Efforts Intentionally?
by Floyd and Mary Beth Brown
At first blush this sounds like an outlandish question with a
conspiratorial twist. The corollary question goes like this: Is the Obama
Life is a STRUGGLE! Enjoy it! Lick the Blade!!!
30 June 2010
administration intentionally scaling back clean-up efforts in the Gulf
in an attempt to maximize the damage so Democrats in Congress will
have an excuse to take effective control over yet another major sector
of our economy and impose crippling and draconian new taxes on the
American people?
We first learned of this controversy reading Sher Zieve who
wrote in the Canada Free Press: "Obama is doing the bare minimum
so that destruction will be at an all-time maximum -- in order to
shove his Cap and Trade bill (which will complete our destruction)
down our throats."
Zieve added: "The BP oil disaster was custom-made for The
Obama. The effective oil-skimmer systems utilized by the Saudis and
others would work to greatly minimize the damage being caused to
the US Gulf Coast. But, The Obama continues to drag his heels as
States and lives are destroyed."
Fox News reported that when the Dutch government offered
to help us clean up the oil spewing from the leaking BP oil rig, Obama
initially turned them down cold. Norwegian and Dutch firms offered
to help us too, but Obama said no.
It is reputed that the Roman Emperor Nero played his fiddle
while Rome burnt to the ground so he could falsely blame the disaster
on Christians and thereby rationalize a campaign of persecution
against them.
Is it possible that Barack Hussein Obama and statists on
Capitol Hill are using this crisis as an excuse to drive prices up at the
pump, drive your utility bills through the roof, regulate your behavior
and diminish your standard of living in this already queasy economy?
This much is certain -- in spite of what Obama told the
American people during his Oval Office address to the nation, he did
not adequately respond to this crisis. The administration has clearly
failed in terms of organization and the use of resources available to
the federal government.
Moreover, it's now indisputable that statists on Capitol Hill
are attempting to exploit this disaster to push so-called cap and trade
legislation. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell recently
revealed: "At the same time as Americans wonder when this gusher
will ever be plugged, we hear word that the administration and my
good friend the majority leader want to piggy back their controversial
new national energy tax -- also known as cap and trade -- to an oil
spill response bill that could and should be an opportunity for true
bipartisan cooperation. So here again, we see the administration
using a crisis, in this case the disaster in the gulf, as an opportunity to
muscle through Congress another deeply unpopular bill that has
profound implications for small business and struggling households."
But why let something as trivial as the truth get in the way
when it comes to pushing an extreme "green" agenda? Liberals like
Barack Obama made this problem worse so they could "solve" the
problem and, as we've come to expect, they plan to "solve" the
problem by making it worse.
So, true to form, Obama declared a moratorium on off-shore
drilling and to make matters worse, Obama wants to institute a
massive new energy tax, masquerading as sound energy policy (so-
called cap and trade), that will dramatically raise the cost of just
about everything you produce or consume, deprive you of income,
control your behavior and repress your liberties.
Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, once said that you
should never let a good crisis go to waste and Barack Obama and
Democrats on Capitol Hill aren't about to let this crisis go to waste.
He may pontificate about holding BP to account but Obama and his
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leftist cronies fully intend to exploit this crisis to sneak liberty-stealing
cap and trade legislation past the American people.
June 23, 2010
Guns Save Lives
by John Stossel
It's all too predictable. A day after a gunman killed six people
and wounded 18 others at Northern Illinois University, The New York
Times criticized the U.S. Interior Department for preparing to rethink
its ban on guns in national parks.
The editorial board wants "the 51 senators who like the
thought of guns in the parks -- and everywhere else, it seems -- to
realize that the innocence of Americans is better protected by carefully
controlling guns than it is by arming everyone to the teeth."
As usual, the Times editors seem unaware of how silly their
argument is. To them, the choice is between "carefully controlling
guns" and "arming everyone to the teeth." But no one favors "arming
everyone to the teeth" (whatever that means). Instead, gun advocates
favor freedom, choice and self-responsibility. If someone wishes to be
prepared to defend himself, he should be free to do so. No one has the
right to deprive others of the means of effective self-defense, like a
handgun.
As for the first option, "carefully controlling guns," how many
shootings at schools or malls will it take before we understand that
people who intend to kill are not deterred by gun laws? Last I checked,
murder is against the law everywhere. No one intent on murder will be
stopped by the prospect of committing a lesser crime like illegal
possession of a firearm. The intellectuals and politicians who make
pious declarations about controlling guns should explain how their
gunless utopia is to be realized.
While they search for -- excuse me -- their magic bullet,
innocent people are dying defenseless.
That's because laws that make it difficult or impossible to
carry a concealed handgun do deter one group of people: law-abiding
citizens who might have used a gun to stop crime. Gun laws are laws
against self-defense.
Criminals have the initiative. They choose the time, place and
manner of their crimes, and they tend to make choices that maximize
their own, not their victims', success. So criminals don't attack people
they know are armed, and anyone thinking of committing mass murder
is likely to be attracted to a gun-free zone, such as schools and malls.
Government may promise to protect us from criminals, but it
cannot deliver on that promise. This was neatly summed up in book
title a few years ago: "Dial 911 and Die." If you are the target of a crime,
only one other person besides the criminal is sure to be on the scene:
you. There is no good substitute for self-responsibility.
How, then, does it make sense to create mandatory gun-free
zones, which in reality are free-crime zones?
The usual suspects keep calling for more gun control laws. But
this idea that gun control is crime control is just a myth. The National
Academy of Sciences reviewed dozens of studies and could not find a
single gun regulation that clearly led to reduced violent crime or
murder. When Washington, D.C., passed its tough handgun ban years
ago, gun violence rose.
The press ignores the fact that often guns save lives.
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It's what happened in 2002 at the Appalachian School of
Law. Hearing shots, two students went to their cars, got their guns
and restrained the shooter until police arrested him.
Likewise, law professor Glen Reynolds writes, "Pearl, Miss.,
school shooter Luke Woodham was stopped when the school's vice
principal took a .45 from his truck and ran to the scene. In (last)
February's Utah mall shooting, it was an off-duty police officer who
happened to be on the scene and carrying a gun".
It's impossible to know exactly how often guns stop
criminals. Would-be victims don't usually report crimes that don't
happen. But people use guns in self-defense every day. The Cato
Institute's Tom Palmer says just showing his gun to muggers once
saved his life.
"It equalizes unequals," Palmer told "20/20". "If someone
gets into your house, which would you rather have, a handgun or a
telephone? You can call the police if you want, and they'll get there,
and they'll take a picture of your dead body. But they can't get there
in time to save your life. The first line of defense is you."
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Free to Choose
by John Stossel
America's current struggles notwithstanding, life here is
pretty good. We have a standard of living that's the envy of
most of the world.
Why did that happen? Prosperity isn't the norm.
Throughout history and throughout the world, poverty has been
the norm. Most of the world still lives in dire poverty. Of the 6
billion people on earth, perhaps 1 billion have something close
to our standard of living. Why did America prosper when most
of the people of the world are still poor?
Milton Friedman taught me the answer. More than any
other American, Friedman, who won the Nobel Prize in
economics in 1976, clearly warned the world about the
unintended consequences of big government.
"We've become increasingly dependent on
government," said Friedman. "We've surrendered power to
government; nobody has taken it from us. It's our doing. The
results -- monumental government spending, much of it
wasted, little of it going to the people whom we would like to
see helped."
That's from Friedman's PBS TV series "Free to Choose,"
which aired 30 years ago and became the basis of his No. 1
bestseller by the same name. We'll celebrate the anniversary of
"Free to Choose" on my Fox Business show tomorrow night.
The title says a lot. If we are free to make our own
choices, we prosper. That was a new idea to many back then.
At the time -- when inflation and interest rates were in double
digits and unemployment approached 10 percent -- people
thought a wise government could ensure economic growth,
guarantee full employment and eliminate poverty. Friedman
explained that the opposite was true, that bigger government
had brought us "burdensome taxes, high inflation, a welfare
system under which neither those who receive help nor those
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who pay for it are satisfied. Trying to do good with other people's
money simply has not worked."
No, it hasn't. So why, 30 years later, is America doing so
much more of it?
Because people still have not learned Friedman's lesson.
Because of that, I give money to a charity that offers
teachers free copies of some of my TV news videos that explain
the benefits of free markets. The video most popular in high
schools is one in which I ask students, "When so many nations
remain poor, why did America become prosperous?" Many
answer, "Because we have democracy." Yet India has democracy,
and India has been poor for years. "India is overpopulated," they
say. They don't know that India has the same population density
as New Jersey.
Other students suggest that America prospered because
of our natural resources. But Hong Kong has no natural
resources. It's basically a rock. It is also more densely populated
than India. Yet, in just 50 years, Hong Kong went from poverty to
American levels of wealth.
How? In "Free to Choose," Friedman explained that it was
the free market. Overlooking the amazing Hong Kong skyline, he
said: "This miracle hasn't been achieved by government action --
by someone sitting in one of those tall buildings and telling people
what to do. It's been achieved by allowing the market to work."
Walking down a crowded street, he added, "They are free
to buy from whom they want, to sell to whom they want, to work
for whom they want.
Sometimes it looks like chaos, and so it is, but
underneath it's highly organized by the impersonal forces of a
free marketplace."
At the time of his series, India was a symbol of
enlightened central planning.
"India has tremendous economic and human potential,"
Friedman commented. "The human tragedy is that in India that
potential has been stifled by the straightjacket imposed by an all-
wise and paternalistic government. Central planning has
condemned India's masses to poverty and misery." What counted
most for Friedman was that people should be free to try
innovative ideas and succeed ... or fail.
"The free market enables people ... to trade with
whomever they want; to buy in the cheapest market around the
world; to sell in the dearest. ... (B)ut most important of all: If
they fail, they bear the cost."
"Most important of all." It's clear what he would have
thought of today's government bailouts.
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Israel's Gaza Blockade: It Works
by Jonah Goldberg
Outraged by Arizona's immigration policies, the Los Angeles
City Council wants to boycott the Grand Canyon State. When will the
United Nations condemn Los Angeles for its callous pursuit of
collective punishment? To be sure, the boycott is mainly symbolic, but
at least in principle the measure is aimed at hurting all Arizonans
Life is a STRUGGLE! Enjoy it! Lick the Blade!!!
30 June 2010
regardless of whether they support the "regime" in Phoenix. That's
collective punishment.
And why isn't the world outraged by the wholesale
deprivation we're inflicting on the North Koreans? Why do we even
bother talking about sanctions against Iran, which will surely hurt the
average Iranian more than the mullahs and the kleptocrats running
the Revolutionary Guard? We've been maintaining an embargo
against Cuba for half a century. In the lead-up to the Iraq war, the
supposed voices of peace and sanity argued for "giving the sanctions
time to work" and "keeping Iraq in the box" -- the "box" being a stiff
sanctions regime. What was so great about the sanctions against
South Africa if they too were a form of collective punishment?
Only one blockade is deemed indefensibly beyond the pale:
Israel's blockade of Gaza. Why? Because it imposes "collective
punishment." The U.N. Human Rights Council, which rarely finds
time to condemn the barbaric practices of its own members, routinely
denounces the blockade as a crime against humanity.
The blockade, which is surely causing real suffering, is
entirely the fault of Hamas and the Palestinians who support it. When
the brutal terrorist outfit consolidated power in a bloody coup, it
proceeded to rain down missiles indiscriminately on Israel for years
(talk about collective punishment). Israel finally launched a strike to
stop the attacks and was, predictably, denounced as an aggressor by
the usual suspects. Even now, Hamas won't accept the supposedly
vital humanitarian cargo seized by the Israelis last week. Why?
Because it's lost its propaganda value, and because it's been sullied by
Jewish hands.
Recently, I debated my friend Peter Beinart on television
about the flotilla incident. In the current New York Review of Books,
he tears into liberal American Jews for their support of the blockade,
a symbol of Israel's descent into illiberalism. He laments that about
80 percent of Gazans are on food aid and -- allegedly -- many staples
are being denied the Gazans. "Chocolate is not something that can be
turned into a missile," Beinart told me on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor."
"And yet, it's not allowed to be imported into Gaza."
Meanwhile, the White House, which initially leaked that
there would be "no daylight" between the U.S. and Israel over the
flotilla, now wants to use the international furor to leverage Israel
into loosening the blockade.
By all means let the Gazans have their chocolate. Though as
William A. Jacobson, a Cornell law professor and
legalinsurrection.com blogger, notes, claims that such items are
banned should be taken with a grain of salt. But this is a terrible
moment to consider abandoning the blockade.
Why? Because it would rightly be seen as giving the
organizers and supporters of this seaborne propaganda stunt a
victory. It would signal that America can be conned. It would reward
Turkey's outrageous insult to us (a NATO ally) and to Israel, a
longtime friend of Turkey. It would undermine Egypt and other Arab
governments (including Fatah) that don't want Iran's clients in
Hamas strengthened (their propaganda notwithstanding). And it
would signal that Iran is the most important power in the Middle
East.
Alas, it seems President Obama cannot think straight about
Israel because he has so many preconceived notions about it and his
role on the world stage. Like so many liberals, he claims to be
"realistic," but he actually sees things through a literary prism, living
in a world of symbolism and metaphors.
It's amazing to read news reports about how the blockade
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"serves as a symbol" of this or that. "You know what else the blockade To suggest that Obama should devote his full attention to
serves as?" asks Commentary's Abe Greenwald. "A blockade. It fixing a single problem (a leaking oil well) that the federal
separates Israel's sworn enemies from those who would help them arm government has no competence or responsibility to fix is not
and kill Israelis. Oh, and by the way, as a blockade, and not a symbol, leadership but childish fantasy.
the blockade works." Making rules for deepwater drilling is a legitimate function
Alas, such realism has no place in this debate. of government, and so is holding polluters accountable for the
Sunday, June 13, 2010 damage they cause. Plugging oil wells is the function of oil
companies.
The federal government does have a responsibility to help
mitigate the harm done by the leaking petroleum. But Obama does
not need to be on hand for it to carry out that mission, any more than
the chairman of Toyota needs to be carrying a wrench on the factory
Why, Oh, Why Doesn't Obama Save Us? floor. If the president cannot formulate a policy and direct those
under him to carry it out, he has no business being president --
by Steve Chapman because there is no other way to be president.
Not long ago, Barack Obama was pilloried for being too When his critics accuse Obama of being detached and
activist, too meddlesome and too inclined to see himself as the messiah. passionless, they are really faulting him for being calm, rational and
He was forcing health care reform down our throats, running General realistic. Those qualities, a contrast to the cocky style of his
Motors, wrecking the financial system and promising to make the immediate predecessor, are what got him elected. If Americans had
oceans recede. wanted a leader to channel rage or grief, they would have chosen
But that was a different guy, from a parallel universe. The someone more demonstrative.
President Obama we all know is a passive, detached do-nothing. Or so Obama has gone wrong -- as conservatives have often been
we have been hearing since the British Petroleum oil spill gained our correct in pointing out -- when he has pressed against the limits of his
attention. rightful powers, taking on responsibilities far greater than the federal
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican who once government should assume. A president who does too much is far
denounced Democrats for scheming to "increase dependence on more dangerous to life, liberty and property than one who does too
government," now demands that Washington do more for his state. little.
Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who recently So if Obama is erring on the side of circumspection, more
called on Congress to zero out the Environmental Protection Agency, power to him. When he was running for the White House in 1968,
challenges the administration to "save the Louisiana coast, save the Democrat Eugene McCarthy was asked if he felt he would be a good
fisheries, save the wetlands." president. "I think I would be adequate," he replied. Here is a goal for
Funny how nobody said that at the 2008 Republican national Obama that conservatives as well as liberals should be willing to
convention, where the chant was "drill, baby, drill." Back then, real endorse: Just be adequate.
men didn't protect sea turtles. Steve Chapman blogs daily at
"For 35 days, he hasn't used the full force of our newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/steve_chapman. To find out more
government," Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., complained of the president about Steve Chapman, and read features by other Creators Syndicate
last month. That's right: a conservative lamenting that Obama is being writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at
too cautious and prudent in his deployment of federal power. www.creators.com.
What's next? Griping that he's not enough of a socialist? COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM
It may not be a surprise to find Republicans damning Obama
when he does and when he doesn't. But it is novel for them to act as Monday, June 07, 2010
though the president is an omnipotent national father, without whose
tender care we are all lost.
"America wants a leader, not a politician," proclaims former
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, writing in USA Today. He says
Obama should emulate former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who
after the 9/11 attacks "camped out at Ground Zero" to lead the
The Simple Path to Middle East Peace
response. "There is no substitute for being there," Romney lectures the by Star Parker
president. Television personality Art Linkletter, who recently passed
This is part of Romney's ongoing campaign to make sure no away at age 97, had the secret for achieving peace in the Middle
one ever again takes him seriously. Obama is not a mayor. He is East.
commander in chief at a time when we are fighting two major wars, Linkletter, who experienced many setbacks and tragedies
confronting a North Korea that recently sunk a South Korean naval in his life, observed, “Things turn out best for the people who make
vessel, trying to prevent Iran from getting nukes and grappling with an the best out of the way things turn out.”
international crisis involving Israel. Adherence to this simple bit of wisdom sums up why Israel
He is also responsible for directing policy and making budget has been a story of success and miracles and why the Palestinian
decisions involving numerous federal departments and agencies that Arabs languish.
Take the case of Gaza, that is getting so much attention
exist because the GOP, after all, didn't abolish them during its time in
now.
power.
The Israelis decided to unilaterally pull their presence out
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of Gaza in 2005 and turned control for its administration over to the
Palestinians. It presented an opportunity for the Palestinians to show
the Israelis and the world that they could govern themselves and
pave a path for prosperity and peace for their people.
Were circumstances ideal?
Certainly not. But that’s the point. Circumstances are never
ideal. Our only choice is always, as Art Linkletter said, to “make the
best of the way things turn out.”
But in a culture of blame and entitlement, your problems
never get solved because they are always someone else’s fault. You
can never move forward because circumstances are never ideal.
As the Israelis readied to withdraw, the Palestinian Authority
Prime Minister announced “We are telling the entire world, today Gaza
and tomorrow Jerusalem.”
Instead of focusing on starting to build on what they had,
the focus was the ongoing political agenda against the Israelis.
Soon the Palestinians were embroiled in a civil war, killing
each other, until the terrorist group Hamas gained the upper hand in
Gaza. Next on the agenda was smuggling in arms and shooting
missiles into Israel.
Meanwhile, as result of the Israeli political decision to
withdraw from Gaza, 8500 Israelis that were living there were evicted
from their homes and forced to move and build new lives elsewhere.
A group of these families picked up and moved several miles
inland into a barren patch of arid desert along the Gaza/Egyptian
border. They used the funds the Israeli government paid them as
compensation for their property to invest and build a new agricultural
community in the middle of nowhere.
There are now 180 families living in Halutza (Hebrew for
“pioneer”). They pipe in desalinated water from the Mediterranean
coast, fertilize the sand, and grow produce. Today, five years after
being evacuated from Gaza, they are exporting $50 million dollars a
year of organic potatoes, carrots, and peppers from their new
community.
Art Linkletter would call this, “making the best of the way
things turn out.”
Halutza is the history of Israel in microcosm. Taking difficult
and unfortunate circumstances and building anew.
Only 62 years after its founding in the ashes of the
Holocaust, Israel has a per capita GDP almost on par with
industrialized European nations, has the highest per capita venture
capital investment in the world, and has more companies listed on the
NASDAQ than any non-US country.
Intel Corporation’s facility in Israel is its only microchip
design facility outside the US and is responsible for the design of most
Intel chips powering our personal computers today.
All this accomplished under constant siege and war because
the Palestinians have rejected every proposal to live side by side since
they first rejected the state they were offered by the United Nations
in 1947, which gave them more territory than they claim would
satisfy them today.
A culture of blame, entitlement, and hate is a path to
nowhere. This is as true in the Middle East as it is in America’s inner
cities, put on the government plantation years ago.
In 1957, Golda Meir, a future prime minister of Israel, spoke
at the National Press Club in Washington. She said, unfortunately
prophetically, “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children
more than they hate us.”
The world is still waiting.
Friday, June 04, 2010
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30 June 2010
The Summer of Corruption Plot Thickens
by Michelle Malkin
In Chicago politics, there's an old term for the publicly
subsidized pay-offs and positions meted out to the corruptocrats'
friends and special interests: boodle.
In the age of Obama, Hope and Change is all about the
boodle. So it was with the stimulus. And the massive national service
expansion. And the health care bill. And the financial reform bill. And
the blossoming job-trading scandals engulfing the White House.
There's always been an ageless, interdependent relationship
between Windy City politicos and "goo-goos" (the cynical Chicago
term for good government reformers). Chicago-style "reform" has
always entailed the redistribution of wealth and power under the
guise of public service. And it has inevitably led to more corruption.
In March 2010, this column first took note of allegations by
Democrats Joe Sestak and Andrew Romanoff that the White House
had offered them jobs in exchange for dropping their respective bids
against Obama-favored incumbent Sens. Arlen Specter in
Pennsylvania and Michael Bennet in Colorado. White House legal
counsel Bob "The Fixer" Bauer's attempt to bury questions about the
Sestak affair with a Memorial Day weekend document dump failed.
So has the attempt to make Rahm Emanuel-enlisted former president
Bill Clinton the sole scapegoat.
Bauer's memo mentions "efforts" (plural, not singular) to
woo Sestak. But the White House refuses to divulge what offers
besides Clinton's were extended to Sestak. Moreover, White House
spokesman Robert Gibbs has now denied that Team Obama was
involved in the one Clinton offer that has been publicized -- an
unpaid appointment on an intelligence board for which Sestak was
ineligible.
After months of silence, Romanoff finally stepped forward
this week to acknowledge that the White House had dangled several
positions before him, too. He released e-mails detailing not one, not
two, but three different paid positions offered by White House
Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina -- whose boss, Emanuel, was
subpoenaed this week by impeached former Democratic Gov. Rod
Blagojevich of Illinois to testify in his Senate pay-for-play corruption
trial.
So, can I say "I told you so" now?
In July 2009, when "Culture of Corruption" was first
released, liberal critics scoffed:
How could you possibly write a 400-page book about
Barack Obama's rotten administration when he's only been in office
six months?!
When I proceeded to rattle off case after case of Chicago-
style back-scratching, transparency-trampling and crooked special
interest-dealing in the new White House, liberal critics such as "The
View's" Joy Behar interjected:
B-b-b-but what about Bush? Why don't you write a book
about Bush? Wha-'bout-Bush? Wha-'bout-Bush? Wha-'bout-Bush?
When I pointed out that I had reported extensively on
cronyism in the Bush era (see Harriet Miers, FEMA and the
Department of Homeland Security), and when I further pointed out
that while the Bush-bashing market overflowed, there remained a
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massive vacuum of critical analysis of Obama, liberal critics sputtered:
So what? Doesn't every administration have corruption?
When I patiently explained that no other administration in
modern American history had set itself up as loftily as the Hope and
Change reformers had done, or when I cited endless examples of
Obama's broken promises on everything from lobbyists to transparency
to Washington business as usual, liberal critics changed the subject
again:
RACIST FASCIST EVIL FOX NEWS RIGHT-WING HATE
MONGER!
Two major job-trading scandals plus the start of the Blago
trial this past week -- on top of a year's worth of uninhibited White
House wheeling and dealing, broken transparency pledges, Justice
Department stonewalling and brass knuckle-bullying of political
opponents -- have finally turned the once-derided thesis of my book
"Culture of Corruption" into conventional wisdom.
Obama sold America a Chicago-tainted bill of goods. A nation
of slow learners is finally figuring it out.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Afghan War Becoming a Bloody Farce
by Tony Blankley
Since last summer, President Obama has publicly doubted
whether Afghan President Hamid Karzai's corruption and
incompetence make him a fit partner for our policy goals in
Afghanistan. Now, according to Saturday's New York Times:
"Mr. Karzai (has) lost faith in the Americans and NATO to
prevail in Afghanistan."
Regretfully, both presidents are correct. Neither of them has
a national partner in whom he can place any reasonable confidence.
The two governments cannot agree on a common fighting strategy. Nor
can those facts be materially changed in time to make a difference,
given President Obama's firm commitment to start withdrawing troops
no later than the middle of next year.
The current price for staying is approximately one American
troop fatality a day (plus several wounded and an undisclosed number
of killed and wounded American contract employees). British troops
are being killed at the same rate proportional to their troop level. The
fatality rate for the remainder of NATO forces (proportionally) is about
one-fifth the Anglo-American level of sacrifice.
As these truths become more broadly understood and
accepted, I think more Americans -- Republicans and Democrats,
hawks and doves, liberals and conservatives -- will come around to the
lamentable conclusion that a continued, substantial U.S. militarily
presence in Afghanistan will do no good for the United States or the
long-suffering people of Afghanistan.
As the New York Times article Saturday went on to observe
regarding Mr. Karzai's state of mind:
"People close to (Karzai) say he began to lose confidence in
the Americans last summer, after national elections in which
independent monitors determined that nearly one million ballots had
been stolen on Mr. Karzai's behalf. The rift worsened in December,
when President Obama announced that he intended to begin reducing
the number of American troops by the summer of 2011. 'Karzai told me
that he can't trust the Americans to fix the situation here,' said a
Western diplomat in Kabul. ... He believes they stole his legitimacy
Life is a STRUGGLE! Enjoy it! Lick the Blade!!!
30 June 2010
during the elections last year. And then they said publicly that they
were going to leave."
I made this same point three months ago in this space
when I reiterated my call from November for us to get out of
Afghanistan: "If we need a credible 'local partner,' our local partner
needs a reliable, supportive 'large brother' (to wit: the United States).
But by first hesitating to support Mr. Karzai, then saying we will
support him -- but only for 18 months, then publicly admonishing
him to end the endemic corruption, then leaking the fact that his own
brother is a major drug smuggler, we have undermined and
infuriated him, without whom we cannot succeed in Afghanistan."
Then this spring, as the toxic relations between Mr. Obama
and Mr. Karzai became the subject of newspaper headlines rather
than mere diplomatic gossip, Mr. Obama invited Mr. Karzai to the
White House to be treated right royal. Fine food and fine words could
not undo the fatal damage done to the alliance by the public White
House words of the previous year. Mr. Karzai was intent on undoing
American policy, and he has succeeded.
The essence of Mr. Obama and Gen. Stanley A.
McChrystal's strategy for counterinsurgency and "population-centric"
mini-nation-building was to: (1) Build up allied troop levels quickly,
(2) as a first step, drive the Taliban out of Marja, an insignificant
town of 60,000 in Helmand province, and set up some governance to
demonstrate the feasibility of our "clear, hold and build" strategy, and
(3) go on in June to execute the Kandahar Offensive, which would
overwhelm and replace the Taliban in their spiritual homeland
stronghold. Gen. McChrystal called this the "decisive" battle of the
nine-year-old Afghan war. But as early as April, the London Times
reported, "Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, threatens to block NATO
offensive (in Kandahar)." This entire strategy was premised on
inducing Mr. Karzai to let us help him set up minimally competent
local governance on which the local people could rely. It was openly
said that we would get rid of Mr. Karzai's powerful mobster brother,
Wali, in Kandahar as a necessary precondition for good governance.
But Mr. Karzai, who had lost faith in the U.S., didn't
cooperate. No decent governance could be set up in Marja, where
Taliban executions of U.S. friendly locals are being carried out in
daylight, in public.
Mr. Karzai has refused to remove his brother, and the
White House has moved up the date to judge our success in
Afghanistan from June 2011 to December 2010. U.S. Brig. Gen.
Frederick B. Hodges, director of operations for southern Afghanistan,
told the London Times: "Our mission is to show irreversible
momentum by the end of 2010. That's the clock I'm using." Gen.
McChrystal has shifted his strategy away from population-centric
nation-building to Special Forces night raids against the Taliban.
Then, last week, Gen. McChrystal begrudgingly announced,
"The Kandahar operation (previously scheduled to ramp up in June
and largely conclude by August) will unfold more slowly and last
longer than the military had planned." According to British Maj. Gen.
Nick Carter, who commands allied forces in Kandahar, "One would
hope that by November-time, one is demonstrating positive trends."
Thomas Paine, during the Revolutionary War, argued in
"The Crisis" that there are serious moments in the life of a country
when "to deceive is to destroy; and it is of little consequence, in the
conclusion, whether men deceive themselves, or submit, by a kind of
mutual consent, to the impositions of each other."
We are at such a moment in this forlorn war in
Afghanistan. Only self-deception can justify the continued sacrifice of
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our finest young men and women in uniform. Given the two presidents their mortgage on time. He has bailed out his buddies in the banking
in command and their irreversible dispositions toward this war and industry and nationalized the auto and health industries for the
each other, failure is virtually inevitable. For a lesson in how wartime benefit of his union friends.
allied presidents ought to struggle to work together for victory, consider He has insulted the Cambridge police and defended
the Franklin D. Roosevelt/Winston Churchill partnership. Muslim terrorists like Maj. Nidal Hassan. He has utilized advisers
What is not inevitable is the number of American (and allied) who are Marxists (former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones), anti-Semites
troops who must die before failure becomes undeniable. (foreign policy adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, special adviser Samantha
Wednesday, June 16, 2010 Power, National Security Adviser Adm. James Jones), racists
(Attorney General Eric Holder), sycophantic pro-Islamists (Deputy
National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and
Counterterrorism John Brennan), kooks (Director of White House
Office of Science and Technology John Holdren), perverts (Safe
Schools Czar Kevin Jennings), and paid thugs (Rahm Emanuel).
Is President Obama the Worst President in When Obama took office, the national debt was just under
$10 trillion. Now it is $12 trillion, and by 2015, it will be at least $19.6
History? trillion. Unemployment under Obama increased to 9.7 percent, up
by Ben Shapiro from 7.6 percent when Bush left office. The inflation rate has yet to
I host a radio show on WEUS 810 AM in Orlando, Fla., on explode, but most economists believe it will have to unless Obama
Sundays 1-4 p.m. EST. On last week's show, I had firebrand drastically raises taxes, destroying the economy even further.
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) as a guest. "Is President Carter can't touch this guy.
Obama better or worse than Jimmy Carter?" I asked her. "Worse. As for Buchanan, the man was a symptom of his times -- an
Easily worse," she replied. She went on to say that without question, active supporter of admitting Kansas to the Union as a slave state and
Obama was the worst president in U.S. history. of Chief Justice Roger Taney's execrable opinion in Dred Scott. He
Is it true? was also responsible for a near-war in Utah against the Mormons,
There are only two other true contenders for the title of inflation of the currency, and the abominable state of the Union's
"worst president in U.S. history": Jimmy Carter and James Buchanan. military position at the beginning of the Civil War.
Warren G. Harding's tenure was corrupt but not disastrous, and It would be difficult for Obama to top this record of pure
Andrew Johnson's presidency failed because of his Southern roots and disgrace -- after all, he doesn't have to face down the internal specter
wrongful adherence to extreme states rights concepts in the aftermath of a looming war over a major moral issue like slavery, so his tenure
of the Civil War, not because his administration effectuated any grave can't be as cataclysmically destructive. But like Buchanan, he'll try to
damage to the nation. Only Buchanan matches the record of subvert American principles all the same.
incompetence, failure and wrongheadedness pursued by Obama. In short, Obama may not be the worst president in
Take Jimmy Carter, for example. He was responsible for the American history. But he's easily the worst American president in
fall of the Shah in Iran and the subsequent rise of the Ayatollahs. He modern history -- and we'll have to reassess the case in two and a half
emboldened the Soviets to invade Afghanistan. He oversaw the Three years, because there's no sign Obama will change his ways. There is
Mile Island incident and presided over a high unemployment rate of 7.1 good news, though. All of America's worst presidents served one
percent and staggering inflation and interest rates, both of which term, and American recovered. That's because if any of them had
topped 18 percent by early 1980. His presidency saw gas rationing and served a second, America could have been utterly decimated.
shortages, the surrender of the Panama Canal and the boycott of the Americans had better wake up and place Obama in his proper context
1980 Olympics. Pretty bad by any measure. by 2012, or it may be too late for recovery.
During his entire first term, Carter's record doesn't touch the Ben Shapiro, 26, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law
Obama administration's record in its first year and a half. Obama has School. He is the author of three books including the national
already tacitly OK'd the Iranian nuclear program and derided Israel's bestseller "Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's
nuclear program. He has allowed Iranian protestors to be slaughtered Youth," and the host of "The Ben Shapiro Show" on 810 AM in
in the streets without so much as a peep for days on end. Obama has Orlando, FL. To find out more about Ben Shapiro and read features
allowed the Russians to sponsor an uprising in Kyrgyzstan that resulted by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators
in the removal of a U.S. airbase. He has lent legitimacy to an Islamist Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM.
Turkish government and sold American debt to a communist Chinese
government that supports North Korea. He has presided over the
largest oil spill in world history in the Gulf of Mexico and spent his
efforts blaming everyone but himself.
He's poised to raise our taxes at the end of the year. He's
pushing for comprehensive "immigration reform" that will really act as
an amnesty for illegal immigrants. He has denigrated Arizona before
Mexico, bowed before the king of Saudi Arabia and the Chinese
president and the Japanese emperor, hugged a Venezuelan quasi-
dictator, and undermined a constitutional uprising in Honduras. He
has pushed carbon taxes and gas taxes and estate taxes. He has
propped up unfit mortgage borrowers and penalized those who pay
45
Life is a STRUGGLE! Enjoy it! Lick the Blade!!!
 Ya’ can’t Dog a DOG!

The Alphatraz Gazetteer

The Official Newsletter of the Alphatraz Deathcamp Survivors Society
& the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
4th Resurrected Detroit Edition 30 June 2010
The S-4 Report

46
Life is a STRUGGLE! Enjoy it! Lick the Blade!!!
 Ya’ can’t Dog a DOG!

The Alphatraz Gazetteer

The Official Newsletter of the Alphatraz Deathcamp Survivors Society
& the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
4th Resurrected Detroit Edition 30 June 2010

47
Life is a STRUGGLE! Enjoy it! Lick the Blade!!!