Early Light

Issues, Part 4: Border Security and Immigration

2012-01-01T17:45:00.000-08:00

Immigration and border security go hand-in-hand.

First, we need to address border security. Immigration laws are meaningless if they are easily circumvented by crossing the border illegally.

The southern border needs to be secured. People are crossing the border illegaly not just to find work, but organized crime cartels are moving drugs and other contraband across the border. Mexico is in a state of civil war, though no one wants to call it that, and that civil war will increasingly spill across our border unless we take decisive action. Another grave concern is that Mexican government authorities, including the Mexican Army, are being targeted by the cartels for subversion. One result is that significant groups of corrupted Mexican military personnel have been observed escorting drug shipments on the US side of the border. If it were a potentially hostile country, like Iran, doing this, there would be a temptation in some circles to declare war and deal with the situation decisively. In Mexico's case, however, it is very obvious that, while there is corruption in the Mexican government, it is not a deliberate policy on the part of anyone in Mexico, except for the cartels and their allies, to violate US territory in order to do harm to the United States. (In fact, despite the problems down there, Mexico is a good friend of the United States, perhaps a better friend to us than we are to Mexico.) However, the illegal activities along our southern border are out of control, and are disrupting American communities not just near the border, but across the country.

Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution very clearly spells out that it is the purview of the federal government to punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and to call forth the militia to enforce federal law, suppress insurrection and repel invasion. Narcotics trafficking touches on all of these responsibilities. A 500-kg package of cocaine dropped in one of our communities probably does more damage to America than a 500-kg bomb dropped in the same place. In the process of smuggling narcotics and other contraband into our country, foreign powers (the cartels) commit piracy and felonies on the high seas, they cross our border illegally, they damage American communities and kill Americans. As these foreign forces cross our border, this is an invasion, and as they establish allies within the United States who break our laws and defy just and proper government authority that is legally established and exercised, this will eventually develop into an insurrection, just like it has happened in Mexico. Furthermore, it is too easy for terrorists to mix in with the flow of those who cross our frontier illegally, and if tons of drugs can be brought in, what is preventing nuclear and other very powerful weapons from being brought in? The federal government must act to deal with this, or the federal government will be in such obvious violation of its Constitutional mandates as to render itself irrelevant and replaceable according to the standards established in our Declaration of Independence.

Let me state that more clearly. Either the federal government does its job, or we have a duty as established in our Declaration of Independence to overthrow government authority by any means necessary (peaceful, legal means preferably, via lawsuits, political action, and elections) and replace certain government officials with people who know what the Constitution requires them to do and who will do it. Those who cynically foment the unrest leaking up from Mexico need to understand that as this unrest spreads from Mexico across the border and destroys our communities, there will inevitably come a time when it will not be just innocent, law-abiding Americans who will suffer.

We need to immediately deploy military forces along the southern border and in contiguous waters near our coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico to deal with what has become a clear and present danger to national security.

This will have the inevitable effect of causing smugglers to move contraband and illegal immigrants into our country crossing our coastlines, via our ports and airports, and across our northern border. We need to immediately begin moving in the direction of more adequately protecting these areas, and more thoroughly inspecting cargo, freight and passengers that enter US territory in places other than along our southern border.

If our government were doing what it is supposed to be doing under our Constitution, we would not have such a big bureaucracy dealing with social services, education, health care, and so on, at the national level. If our economy were functioning the way it should, we could easily get by with a smaller bureaucracy working tax issues.

It would be wrong to simply downsize the government and throw all these people, who have invested years as public servants in government service, out in the street, especially when we do not have adequate numbers of people monitoring immigration, customs and our borders and ports. As we downsize some federal agencies and departments, we should offer the affected employees an opportunity to transfer into expanded immigration, customs and border patrol functions. Not all of these jobs are badge-and-gun-carrying enforcement jobs; there needs to be improved office and clerical support to keep track of immigrants who are in the country legally, and other such functions, so there is room for some of our people to be more effectively utilized in jobs not unlike ones they now have. In the long run, control of our border should be a civilian function, so ultimately, the military would need to be withdrawn and the baton passed to better-manned and -equipped civilian agencies that can do this job.

Another approach that needs to be taken simultaneously is to decentralize the decision regarding legality of some substances to the states and their political subdivisions, in accordance with the Tenth Amendment. If a state wants to use certain substances, such a marijuana, for medical purposes, the matter should not be a federal issue. Movement of those substances across state lines becomes a federal issue, and it is appropriate for federal resources to be made available to states that are having difficulties enforcing state laws. However, I can make an argument that a decision to use some drugs is a Ninth Amendment issue, I can make an argument that the decision to legalize or prohibit use of some drugs is a Tenth Amendment issue.

The illegal movement of marijuana or cocaine across our borders into our communities is a federal issue that must be addressed decisively for reasons previously outlined, but a stricter reading of the Constitution would mean states would have more authority to decide if buying, selling or consuming such drugs within the state is a crime, and as some states decide that it will not be a crime, that will greatly ease the burden of federal enforcement regarding illegal trafficking. Some states will become havens for legal drug use, and others will be more drug-free. This is how our federal system was intended to function. People can vote with their feet, and move to a state that suits their needs and desires.

Regarding immigration, immigration laws should be revised.

People who seek to enter the country legally should have more attention paid to their cases and situations, so as to ensure that we are letting the right people in, and to ensure prompt attention is given to applications for visas, renewals, citizenship, and so on, and to ensure prompt attention is given to people whose permission to be in our country is expiring. This is not a coded message for a heavy-handed "round 'em up and kick 'em out" approach. Some immigrants have tried to do the right thing the right way, and get caught up in the bureaucracy. They should be dealt with using common sense and compassion. However, there are also people here in this country legally, but with nefarious purposes. Their activities and files should be monitored adequately, in a manner prescribed by law.

People who have entered the country illegally deserve no amnesty. Rather, I would propose that US consulates in foreign countries - especially in Mexico - be adequately staffed to deal with applications from people who seek to enter the country to work. Such applications should cost a minimal amount, and if the applicants meet certain basic criteria, they should be allowed in the country. While here, they need to keep authorities apprised of their location and activities. If they work, they will pay the same taxes as US citizens, but they will not be eligible to collect Social Security, unemployement insurance, or certain other "entitlements", and they must stay out of trouble and obey our laws. If they get into minor trouble, their permission to be in our country can be revoked, and if they are found in the country without permission, they should be penalized by imprisonment in a minimum security facility for a period of time, and then transported, at their expense, to the country of their citizenship and denied the opportunity to apply for re-entry into the United States for a period of time.

Thus, I would propose that an announcement be made that, effective on a certain date, applications will be accepted at consulates in foreign countries. The illegal immigrants must leave the country and apply at a consulate in a foreign country for permission to be in the US legally. After that certain date, anyone found in the country who has entered the country illegally will be handled as outlined in the paragraph immediately above. From the time the announcement is made until the given date, there should be stepped-up enforcement of immigration laws to encourage people who entered illegally to leave immediately, though care should be taken not to obstruct their departure with this stepped-up enforcement.

If the economy is handled as I suggest in a previous post, America will be booming, and there will be plenty of work for US citizens, and people who seek to enter our country legally, obey our laws, and work productively for a period of time will have jobs available to them as well. Also, they will be contributing tax dollars, but will not be a burden on some of our entitlement programs. Currently, illegal aliens are often driven into an underground economy, and become a burden on some of our entitlement programs, without contributing to our tax base, because their earnings are illegal and thus not taxed; my suggestion would help reverse that.

Furthermore, by allowing a streamlined process for people to enter the country and work here legally, we will ease the pressure exerted by the hordes who seek to enter the country illegally, making our border security job easier.

Regarding who is allowed into our country, we need to recognize Islamic law for what it is - a political agenda that is in sharp conflict with our Constitution - and limit immigration of people who advocate this political agenda. However, we should consider easing restrictions on people who face religious persecution in countries subject to Islamic law. Political Islam is very much akin to Nazism or communism, and we should not allow it to destroy our country amid cries of religious freedom. Our Constitution is not a suicide pact. There will be difficulties discerning which Muslims are peaceful and could constructively add to American society, and separating them from those who seek to destroy our country and make it a part of some caliphate. It is the fault of Muslims, not the fault of America, that there exists a tenet of Islam known as taqiyya, making it acceptable to deceive infidels as to the true nature of their intentions. To be sure, not all Muslims practice taqiyya, but how can we know which ones intend us no harm, and which ones merely say they intend us no harm in order to get inside our gates? We need to err on the side of caution and on the side of preservation of our Republic, and that means erring on the side of keeping people that we have doubts about outside our borders.

In this same context, we should consider which people we allow in from countries that are experiencing an influx of Muslim immigrants who seek to take over rather than assimilate into their host country. For example, many European countries are getting quite intolerable for decent, law-abiding, non-Muslim people. Increasingly, non-Muslims are discriminated against, targeted by violent crime, and persecuted by government authorities if they decry what is being done to them and their countries. Non-Muslims who seek to escape what many European and certain other countries are becoming should be accepted eagerly, but regarding Muslims, again, it is the fault of Islam, with its tenets of jihad and taqiyya, that we should be cautious about them.

I will undoubtedly be called racist for my concerns about Islam.

Muslims will be the first to tell you that a fellow Muslim is a fellow Muslim. Only infidels are categorized as Serbs, Croats, Russians, Germans, Chinese, Thai, or whatever. But submission to Allah is open to anyone who honestly recites the shahada in Arabic (this act is known as the kalima). Consequently, Islam is not a race nor is it, theoretically, racist; Muslims claim it is a religion, and for many it is, but for many, Islam is and has always been a political agenda as well. It is precisely those Muslims who seek to impose this political agenda on us, and replace our Constitution with the Quran, who will call me racist. Fortunately, though, the term racist has been so misused and abused that it has lost its impact. (In a way, though, this is sad, too, because racism still exists in the world.) For the record, I am a Republican, and anyone who knows anything about our Grand Old Party knows that the Party of Lincoln has been at the forefront of fighting against racism ever since the GOP was founded.

Many other immigration concerns center around China. China has a very large and very active espionage network targeting America, and various businesspeople and students form key parts of this network. To be sure, a big part of the reason why the network is successful is because so many of its operatives are innocent of any crime, and unaware they are being used by Chinese intelligence. They take papers and reports that are available to the public, perhaps not realizing that this information becomes pieces of a puzzle being assembled by Communist Chinese intelligence services. While I have a great deal of admiration for China, and I think, in the long run, it is good for both America and China to be on friendly terms with each other, I also believe we should prudently and carefully consider the pros and cons of our interactions with China under the communist government that is in power there.

None of the immigration and border security plans will be able to address our problems if we do not deal effectively with corruption in Washington, DC. Officials, both elected and appointed, on both sides of the aisle, are selling us out to the highest bidder. The high bidders include foreign powers, such as potentially hostile governments and foreign-based and -controlled criminal cartels, which, in turn, are associated with terrorist organizations. This is at the heart of the OKBOMB, it is at the heart of 9/11 and the Sibel Edmonds case, it is at the heart of the scandal surrounding the outing of Valerie Plame, and it is at the heart of the current Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal. (These cases all need to be honestly investigated, by the way, with no obstruction of justice from higher-ups.) Furthermore, many officials are in the habit of doing favors for domestic businesses while on the government payroll, in the expectation that when they leave government service, those businesses will take care of them.

Government officials ask if certain elements of the American people are a threat to the government. Christians and veterans of military service are inevitably among the groups that concern our public servants.

America was founded on the principle that it is government that threatens the law-abiding people, not the other way around. Our Declaration of Independence addressed this matter, and our Constitution was written with this fact in mind.

Our "President" pals around with convicted terrorists and with religious leaders who call for our Creator to damn and destroy our great nation. Other officials peddle influence to and take bribes from foreign criminal cartels which do business with terrorist groups. Yet, hypocritically and cynically, it is they who accuse us of being a threat to America, and of being terrorists.

Our public servants violate their Constitutional oaths of office, they commit treason against our country, and even now they scheme to take our freedoms away and destroy our Republic.

So, are we a threat to our government? Yes, absolutely. Our desire to uphold the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, makes us a threat to a government significantly populated and controlled by those who seek to destroy our Constitution.

The American people will get better government, and we will get it out of a box. Hopefully, better government will come out of a mail box, or a ballot box, or possibly a jury box, but if necessary, we will get better government out of a cartidge box.

In the Book of Esther, we hear of Haman's hatred for the Jews, and how Haman had a gallows built to hang Mordecai on. In fact, though, Mordecai had served the king more honorably than had Haman. Ultimately, Haman's plot backfired, and in his righteous anger, the king ordered that Haman be hanged on the gallows which Haman had constructed to hang Mordecai.

Similarly, we hear stories of FEMA camps and of preparations by our government to imprison honest, law-abiding citizens, because those citizens threaten the schemes of the corrupt government officials who treasonously sabotage our nation.

I hope these stories are true, because our Creator, Who knows what is in our hearts and minds, will deliver the victory to the real, honest, decent Americans, and when He does, we will need a place to keep all the crooks. Like Haman's gallows, such FEMA camps might come in useful, but perhaps not useful for the purpose for which they were intended. ;)

Issues, Part 3: America's Economy

2012-01-01T11:00:00.000-08:00

The US economy is currently little better than stagnating, with "growth" of approximately 3% or less per year, depending on which statistics one considers. Historically, in the 1890's the US economy became the world's largest economic entity except for colonial empires (the British empire was the largest economic entity until 1941). From 1941 to 2004, the US economy was the world's largest economic entity; in 2004, it was surpassed by the European Union, though the US economy is still much bigger than that of individual European countries.

In contrast to that, the People's Republic of China has been striving for 10% growth per year. Typically, the PRC falls short, but growth of 5% or more per year is common.

In other words, Communist China's economy is growing at least twice as fast as America's, and, at times, it is growing three or even four times as fast.

Growing faster, China's economy will surpass America's. It is possible this has already happened, and it is possible this is happening now; otherwise, it will happen in the future, more likely sooner than later.

This should be of grave concern to Americans, as economic power is the foundation of military and political power. When the US economy outgrew Great Britain's, and later that of the British Empire, America stepped out in front of Great Britain as a world power. In fact, within a decade of surpassing the economic power of the British Empire, the United States was one of two superpowers in the world and, as the Soviet Union collapsed, America was left as the only superpower.

The European Union is nowhere near as united as it could be, and, in any case, the United States is on generally friendly terms with most European Union member nations; in fact, we are in a military alliance with many of them. Consequently, the EU surpassing the US in economic power is not a matter for immediate, grave concern.

However, if China surpasses the US in economic power, this is a matter of very serious concern.

China has a very different view of government power and what rights people have than what America has traditionally had. For example, in an effort to control the growth of China's population, China has implemented a policy of one child per family. A family that has a second child finds the second child being killed by the government (via an injection of alcohol or iodine into the soft part of the baby's head) in order to comply with China's population growth policy. Such post-birth "abortion" is murder, and it is evil; there are no arguments one could make to redeem this policy, but rather, any attempt to do so would call into question the humanity and the sanity of the person trying.

For other examples of Communist China's attitude towards people, one merely has to consider the Tiannanmen Square Massacre of 1989, where Chinese tanks crushed peaceful protestors under their tracks, or China's ongoing oppression of all manner of peaceful dissidents, such the house arrest of Chen Guangcheng - this latter man had attention called to his plight by Batman star Christian Bale, who was roughed up by Chinese security men when he tried to visit Chen recently.

If China's heavy boot ever has the military power to come down on America, it is safe to bet that Chinese authorities will not be as pleasant to Americans as they are to their own people. Assuming China's economy is surpassing that of the United States right now, it will be, in my opinion, at least a decade before China will have the military power to challenge America beyond China and the immediate vicinity of its borders. However, on the trajectory we are now on, our children, who are in school now, will be middle-aged in a world where China controls our debt, dominates us economically, and has the military power to impose its will not only on America, but on a coalition of America plus several nations which are today our key allies.

Our lackluster economic performance presents a danger to our national security.

The danger to our national security goes far beyond our relative economic stagnation.

Our military industrial complex no longer feels that it can survive by selling state-of-the-art weapons to the United States, or even to the US and our closest allies. The MIC lobbies to sell weapons to countries which are frankly one coup or election away from being hostile to our interests. Often times, these countries don't have the money to buy our weapons, so we have to give them special deals so they buy from us, and not from Russia or China or someone else. These deals include financial support in the form of military aid. Often, this still does not sweeten the pot enough for them. So, another aspect of the deal is giving the foreign power the right to produce at least parts of the weapon in their own country. Often, the entire weapon system is produced in that country. These deals offset the cost of the weapon system, allowing the foreign power to "buy American".

After such offsets, though, the reality is that the foriegn power is using US taxpayer money to buy a license from a US corporation. The foreign power gets the technology and the industrial infrastructure to build the weapon system, and the foreign power's people get the jobs to make it. What the American people get is the bill.

In the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States had the industrial infrastructure to make the tanks, planes, ships, trucks, and so on, needed to go across the oceans and defeat some really tough enemies. Today, however, we would either have to build the infrastructure, or fight our way overseas and seize it, not to mention the raw materials and other resources needed for the production of military hardware.

As alarming as all this is, we are really only scratching the surface of US vulnerability to foreign powers. At my blog, I have done posts on Communist Chinese espionage, and Beijing's activity stealing US computer technology. I have not addressed other Chinese espionage activity, wherein key US government and academic officials are on the payroll of China's People's Liberation Army intelligence services. The impact of this activity is far more alarming. The Clinton Administration sold critical US military technology to Communist China. In return, China illegally laundered money into the campaign chests of the Democrats during the 1996 election year. Furthermore, as of the late 1990's, Congressional investigations revealed that China had stolen classified information on every thermonuclear warhead design then in the US arsenal. China is known to share nuclear secrets with Pakistan, whose ISI has close ties to Al Qaeda. Nuclear weapons information from China has been found as far afield as Africa.

So, we have an economic situation here that is a clear and present danger to US national security, and, indeed, to the security of our friends and allies.

There are several factors touched on so far in this post, and some of them I will go into in more detail here at the blog. However, for now, let me refocus on factors that are more economic in nature.

We have been told that free trade is in our best interests. The theory is that if two countries each produce two different products, but with different degrees of efficiency for each product, then free trade would allow each country to focus on the one product it produces more efficiently, and trade this product for the other. In theory, both countries would become more wealthy, and have more goods at less cost.

The reality is that as we began to implement free trade policies, foreign products were cheaper, and initially Americans felt an increase in their buying power, as they were able to buy more goods at lower prices. However, this also resulted in jobs making these products going to places where production costs were cheaper. The low monetary price Americans paid for these products on a global market was quickly offset by the fact that the jobs went overseas, as well, leaving Americans increasingly moving from higher-paying manufacturing jobs to lower-paying service-oriented jobs.

American labor, with legal protections against hazardous working conditions (however imperfect those protections are), and with insurance against on-the-job injuries and against unemployment, and in a nation where environmental protection is factored into production costs, cannot compete with labor in many foreign countries, where the workers are essentially slaves and where the corporations and the government do not care about the environment.

Our tax laws hurt us much more. There is a general rule of thumb: what we tax, we tend to get less of, and what we subsidize, we tend to get more of. Currently, we tax work and subsidize unemployment. Politicians in the United States cynically manipulate America's economy for their own political gain. By fanning the flames of class warfare, they blame the rich and successful, and seek to tax them, using the money thereby derived as "walking around" money, giving it to less affluent voters. Those voters, in turn, vote for the politician that is giving them the money. The cynical politicians get exactly what they want.

This system is more sinister than it appears on the surface.

First, by taxing those who work and take risks, there is a disincentive for them to take further risks and work harder. The net result is that these businesspeople cannot hire as many workers as they otherwise would like to, nor can they pay the employees they have as much as they otherwise could. People who foolishly vote for the politician who is trying to buy their vote with government handouts do not realize that it is the fault of this politician that they do not have a job or that the job they do have is not more lucrative than it is.

Furthermore, these politicians write a tax law that is often hundreds of pages long. When implemented by the bureaucracies, the tax code is now thousands of pages long, and has the force of law. In all these pages, the politicians have loopholes that save plenty of money for their friends. If you are rich enough, you can buy access to a politician, and get loopholes put in for your business; or, you can afford to have accountants and lawyers find you existing loopholes.

But, the middle economic class can't afford all this, and so the middle class pays the full brunt of taxes directly, and pays for it indirectly through underemployment. The lower economic classes pay for this through underemployment and unemployment. The middle economic class blames the lower economic class for being leeches (and some of them are), but the reality is that both classes are being played off one against the other. The upper economic class has bought access to politicians on both sides of the aisle, as well as to professional help to navigate the tax laws.

The economy in our country is really quite a mess, the impact of this mess is severe on the typical American, and will become more severe as time goes on.

And, we haven't even gotten to the Federal Reserve system and to Wall Street bailouts!

Key aspects of this problem can be solved quite simply.

First and foremost, we need to implement a low, flat income tax. The personal income tax should be 10%, and the corporate income tax should be 15%.

This tax is on all gross income. This process makes it easy for businesses to project their income, know what percent will be taken off the top and given to the federal government, and to then know that with the rest, they must pay their expenses and have some profits left over. Businesses will be able to focus their attention on producing goods and services, and on making money, rather than on how to keep the money they have away from the federal government.

If you make the tax on net income, then the debate begins about what are legitimate business expenses, and now you need lawyers to argue the matter and accountants to keep track of it all. This stifles small business, and leads us back to where we are now.

The tax should be on all income, not just income over a certain amount. In theory, a bum on the street and a multi-billionaire will each pay ten percent of personal earnings to the federal government. In reality, the bum may be hard to find in order to audit, and, in any case, the tax derived from his income does not justify the effort to find him and audit him.

This would eliminate mandatory personal income tax returns. Most people have jobs, and their income tax is automatically deducted from their paycheck. They would typically have no need to file a return. An exception would be, for example, a person who makes money fixing cars or doing odd jobs on the side. Legally, this person would be required to file a tax return and pay ten percent of the gross earnings that had not otherwise been taxed. In reality, like the bum, below a certain income threshhold, the tax dollars to be gained would not justify the expense of an inquisition by the IRS to go audit the typical household.

Furthermore, in my opinion, tax rates that differ based on income are unfair, and, regardless of how courts may have ruled, are specifically a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Just because one person earns more money than another, it is in principle wrong to take a greater percentage of that money. Additionally, it is foolish to do so, because this becomes a disincentive to greater productivity, at a time when America needs to produce wealth; by not penalizing increased profits, people and businesses are not discouraged from growing the economy, which will result in more jobs and better-paying jobs for Americans.

By the way... as the economy grows, there will be more tax dollars available to government entities.

Politicians seem to think that raising taxes gets them more money. Only marginally so is this the case. Beyond a certain point, people who are taxed more produce less. Since they get to keep less of what they make, why should they keep working? Ronald Reagan understood this well. When he was an actor, the marginal tax code for income over a certain threshhold was greater than 90%.

(Source)

With such a confiscatory tax rate, why should someone be productive upon reaching that threshhold? The government did not get 90% of millions of dollars of income; instead, people worked up to that threshhold, and then took a vacation for the rest of the year. With the tax rate on all income low, more people will keep working and producing wealth, and tax dollars will keep flowing to the government. A lower tax rate of 10% or 15% results in more tax dollars in the long run.

In addition to a low, flat income tax, we need to revisit "free trade". It may make sense to have free trade with nations that have similar laws protecting workers and the environment, but "free trade" with nations that have no concern for their people or for the environment places Americans in an impossible situation. Tariffs on imports from such nations could help level the playing field.

Beyond that, we should consider the reality of our opportunity cost. Under ideal circumstances, people are fully employed producing goods and services that they produce more efficiently, and under these circumstances, the free trade theory makes sense. However, circumstances are far from ideal. Instead of full employment, we have significant unemployment, and we provide government subsidies funded by tax dollars for the unemployed. It may be cheaper to pay slave labor in a foreign country a dollar an hour to make shirts, rather than to pay an American ten dollars an hour to make them. But, is it cheaper to pay that same foreign worker a dollar an hour to make shirts, on top of paying the American ten dollars an hour as an unemployment subsidy? In the latter case, the real cost of the shirts produced to Americans is eleven dollars an hour, rather than one. This is only the case to Americans; other countries buying the same shirts may only be paying the dollar an hour for the shirts, not the eleven dollars an for the shirts plus the unemployment subsidy. Consequently, other countries see their standard of living rise relative to America's.

On top of this, we need to look hard at the impact of tax havens, and stop exporting our best high-tech, defense-related jobs (and our defense industry, for that matter). Technology matters in particular need to be addressed, and a significant part of the solution for this is investigating and prosecuting those officials in government and academia who commit treason by selling our intellectual property to the highest bidder.

We need to revisit government regulation in general, eliminating, for example, quotas based on race.

Also, the philosophy of "too big to fail" needs to be recognized for what it is: a cover story, allowing politicians to channel taxpayer dollars to their rich patrons, while oppressing the smaller businesses, which generate the most jobs, innovation, and often the most technological break-throughs. What "too big to fail" does is keep the biggest corporations on top by subsidizing them the moment they start to go under.

We are told stability is nice, but it really isn't for those who are on the bottom. Was stability a nice thing for the Pharoah's slaves who were building the pyramids? Was stability a nice thing for black slaves in the South two hundred years ago? Just as the instability of the Exodus resulted in Hebrew slaves establishing their own country in the Middle East long before anyone call that place "Palestine", and just as the instability of the Civil War resulted in slaves being freed, so would a little instability in the American business sector result in small, innovative businesses growing at the expense of businesses which have lost their competitive edge, and which have come to rely on government bailouts to stay afloat. The executives who run these businesses need to fail and be held accountable for their failure; they should not be getting a bonus to stash in an offshore bank account, funded by the very people whose economy they ruin. Some of them need to be investigated for financial crimes, because some of the "bad" decisions sure seem to go beyond stupidity.

When we implement this policy, America will have more than enough economic growth, as well as technological advancement, to stay competitive in the 21st century - a century otherwise projected to possibly be one where China eclipses America economically, politically and militarily.

Some aspects of this plan will be addressed in more detail or revisited in subsequent posts on issues related to those aspects. We will also consider this country's monetary system in a future post. ;)

Issues, Part 2: Size and Scope of Government

2012-01-01T07:15:00.000-08:00

The Declaration of Independence spells out pretty clearly our belief that people have a Creator, and that our rights are given to us by our Creator, and not by any earthly power. Government is not the source of our rights, but rather, governments are instituted by the governed to protect those rights, which are intrinsic to our humanity. The main function of government is to keep us alive and free, protecting our rights, and those governments that seek to achieve more are precisely those governments most likely to achieve less.

Furthermore, it is our belief that we are all created equal. To be sure, the Declaration of Independence states "that all men are created equal"; the founders made no mention of women, and in the implementation, not all men were included in the category of those considered equal. My vision of the United States is a country in which all people are considered equal, but in what way? We are not all equally rich or talented, but we are all equally human, and thus endowed with equal rights. Again, our government is instituted to protect our equal rights before the law, and not to guarantee an equality of outcome. Each person has unique gifts and unique circumstances; different people have different motivations, different desires, different dreams, and put forth different levels of effort. A government that seeks to guarantee an equality of outcome is implicitly a government that seeks to stomp on our rights and deny us the humanity and individuality endowed upon us by our Creator; it is thus imperative to question the motives of those who tell us to celebrate diversity as they seek to impose upon us an agenda that destroys individuality.

Slavery, an abomination upon humanity, an abomination which is codified in Islamic law and one which still haunts us right here in America in the form of human trafficking for various purposes, was much more of a blight upon the people in America when this country was founded. People of African ancestry were forced to work as slaves, and this was legal in America at the time. For many years of American history, women did not have the right to vote, people of different ethnic groups were discriminated against in various ways... indeed, the promise of being equally human has been implemented in a manner that is far from perfect, and even today, we struggle with understanding how we are equal and how to legally define and protect our equality.

As decades passed, we struggled with these issues, and have made progress. Slavery is now outlawed by the Thirteenth Amendment, the Fifteenth Amendment codifies that former slaves and people will not have their right to vote denied based on race, the Nineteenth Amendment guarantees that women will have the right to vote, and so on. We can see that there has been a process moving us generally in the direction of better laws to enforce our belief that all people are created equal. Indeed, when we consider the history of English-speaking people, the fight - well before the American Revolution - between the subjects of the British crown and the Kings of England over the rights of the people, the struggle in America for the rights of blacks and women from the time of our Revolution up until the present, and when we then further consider the struggle that our neighbors in Latin America had to wage to win their freedom from European colonial powers, and then consider the struggle worldwide and throughout the course of human history, we see that our American Revolution was part of an evolutionary (please don't take this word out of context) process for humanity to define and secure its God-given rights against those who would deny those rights from us, whether because they do not believe in God, as the communists officially do not, or whether they would deny us our humanity in the name of their god, as Islamic law even today seeks to do by codifying discrimination against women and non-Muslims in a political agenda known as sharia.

After a failed experiment with a weak confederation, our Constitution was written to give us a federal government that was strong, but which was very limited in scope. Certain powers were delegated to the federal government, and certain powers were prohibited from the states. Many of the founders of this country considered a Constitution delegating powers to the federal government to be inadequate, as it did not prohibit the federal government from infringing upon God-given rights of the people. Others argued that, since the federal government was not given these powers, it did not have them; what, therefore, was the problem? It was proposed that rights reserved by the people be enumerated so as to be specifically protected in a Bill of Rights. But then it was argued that our rights are too many to list (indeed, they are infinite), and that any attempt to list them would leave some out, and that future governments might attempt to infringe on those rights not listed; thus, the reasoning goes, it is better to not list rights, and not imply thereby that the government may infringe upon unlisted rights.

The Ninth and Tenth Amendments resolved the dispute. The main body of the Constitution spells out what powers are delegated by the people - with whom ultimate earthly authority exists - to the federal government, and what powers are prohibited from the states in order to ensure a strong federal government. Then, the First through Eighth Amendments specifically listed those rights that our country's founders did not want infringed. The founding fathers based their choice of which rights to list on their recent experience, fighting what was arguably the most powerful nation of the day in a long and difficult war, a war that erupted due to infringement of the very rights now being enumerated. However, the key was in explicitly stating that there are rights reserved which are not going to be enumerated, and powers not delegated to the federal government which are similarly not going to be enumerated; this was done in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, respectively. The net result was that the people delegated certain powers to the federal government that were appropriate for a national government to exercise; the people prohibited certain powers from the states which, if exercised by the states, would weaken the nation; the people enumerated certain rights that they wanted the government to specifically and deliberately avoid infringing; and the people concluded by reserving all other rights not enumerated to themselves, and reserving all other powers neither delegated to the federal government nor prohibited from the states, as powers of the states, of their political subdivisions, and of the people themselves.

This is not widely understood in America today. Since it is not widely understood, we have deviated from the intended implementation of our form of government. And, this deviation has resulted in a wide variety of problems, not the least of which is a government that now threatens the very liberties it was intended to protect.

The Constitution is the supreme law of our land. It needs to be studied and understood. Laws that are not Constitutional should not be passed and, if passed, they should not be implemented or enforced and, if implemented or enforced, they should be challenged and struck down in our legal system. This, in a nutshell, is the role of Congress, the Executive, and the Judicial Branches, respectively.

However, political expediency in an atmosphere of popular ignorance has given opportunities to politicians that are perhaps well-meaning but unwise, perhaps incompetent, and perhaps subversive to our way of life.

For example, the Constitution, which is essentially a contract wherein the people delegate certain powers to a federal government, gives the federal government the right to employ some people - a President, Senators and Representatives, Justices.... Implicit is the right to employ others to execute the laws of the land and administer the government. The government may contract with people to work for it, and it is reasonable and proper to have stipulations regarding pensions for those who have made a career in public service. But, where in the Constitution do the people delegate to the federal government the authority to have a pension program mandatory for nearly all citizens? The answer, of course, is that the Constitution does not delegate such authority to the federal government. If such authority is proper for government to have, it is reserved to the states or to their political subdivisions; otherwise, it is reserved to the people. Similarly, where is the authority to have a federally-mandated healthcare program for the general population? Any such program is in complete violation of the letter and spirit of the Constitution.

This brings me to a practical matter of immediate importance in our nation's history, a matter that is timely considering that I write this in the first hours of a Presidential election year: that matter is Obamacare.

President Obama has been portrayed to us as a scholar of our Constitution.

First, I will address this portrayal in a manner that is generous to President Obama.

Obama is a fraud and an idiot, and any portrayal of him as a Constitutional scholar is a lie. I write this because, if Obama is indeed a scholar of our Constitution, he is a completely incompetent one; his attempt to implement mandatory nationwide healthcare for the general population is a very clear violation of the Constitution of which he is supposed to be a scholar. The Constitution does not delegate such power to the federal government. Therefore, such power is reserved to the states or to the people; or else the power is a right not enumerated in the Bill of Rights, and no government entity has any authority at all to establish a mandatory healthcare program for the general population. In trying to implement Obamacare, Obama proves that he obviously knows nothing about our Constitution, and is thus an incompetent idiot and a fraud. And now we have to question the motives and intentions of our media for not calling attention to this.

An alternative explanation is far less flattering to President Obama.

Obama is every bit as smart and knowledgeable about the Constitution as one might expect him to be. In this case, he knows full well that a mandatory federal healthcare program is not Constitutional, and he implements it anyway. This is a violation of his oath of office. For what purpose does he violate his oath and subvert our Constitution? He is moving us down the slippery slope of a totalitarian government, which, by offering us everything we think we want, will succeed only in taking from us everything we have (hat tip to President Ford). Why does Obama wish to move America down the slippery slope toward totalitarianism?

Barack Hussein Obama, alleged to be our 44th President of the United States (I have questions about his eligibility, and thus about the validity of his Presidency), is either 1) an incompetent idiot and a fraud, who is in way over his head, and who was thus likely placed there by people who wish to control him and, through him, control this great nation, or else he is 2) a conman and a "wannabe" dictator. I see no other option here. And I would like to point out that proof that one of these options is true does not exclude the possibility that the other might also be true.

As we read our Constitution, logical questions arise regarding matters such as education and the environment, both of which should generally be matters addressed more by state and local governments than by the federal government. The Clinton-Gore team, which in the 1996 election stayed on message through a chant of "Medicare, Medicaid, education and the environment", ran on a platform that was not Constitutional - and won re-election!

This brings me to another matter. We have two Democrat Presidencies, both of which were founded on platforms that were not Constitutional, and both of which were, by the way, known for their illegal conduct and for cozy relations with foreign powers hostile to this country. What does this say about the Democrats, at least at a national level, that Clinton, Gore and Obama would win their primary elections? What does this say about the American people, that both Clinton and Obama would go on to win the general election, with Clinton going so far as to win re-election?

Many issues brought up peripherally in this post will be addressed more in-depth in subsequent posts. Meanwhile, if you would like to review our Constitution, may I suggest some of the many links in the sidebar?

Issues, Part 1: Introduction

2012-01-01T05:30:00.000-08:00

I posted this as my status on Facebook, which I here modified by adding the word "hostile": "As long as hostile foreign powers...":

For the record, I am not a conservative. I sympathize with ideology commonly described as "conservative", but I do not seek to "conserve" today's America; I seek to restore America to its path toward the ideals upons which this country was founded. In this respect, I am a radical and an extremist. I have absolutely no intention of negotiating with those who seek to destroy this country. Foreign powers that try to destroy this country need to be dealt with via the full range of options available to America. The goal should be their unconditional surrender. Domestic enemies who violate Constitutional laws need to be prosecuted to fullest extent of the law. As long as hostile foreign powers are not actually working to destroy America, and as long as domestic enemies exercise their Constitutional rights within the bounds of the law, then I seek to take peaceful, lawful political action against them, but I am not looking to reach across the aisle to any of these people.

This post prompted a discussion with one of my friends regarding what part of the conservative agenda I do not agree with. I asked him to be more specific in what he was asking about. He responded that he wanted to know about immigration.

Immigration cannot be viewed alone, as it is part of a larger picture, overlapping with other issues. Additionally, in my interactions at Facebook and in my posts here at the blog, I often point out problems, but seldom suggest solutions. Consequently, in this series, I am providing my own views regarding issues facing this country during this Presidential election year. First I will address those issues that provide necessary background, beginning with philosophy regarding the size and scope of federal government, and continuing with the economy. Then, I will address immigration and border security, and transition to other issues of importance.

Qiya

2011-12-30T07:11:00.000-08:00

Some time ago, in the country of Fuxiuguo, in a beautiful valley along a river, there was a village called Qiya. The river had been subject to flooding, but the people of Qiya had built a dam to control the river, and now the village was prosperous.

There in Qiya, Mr. Nuli worked very hard, and provided a nice home for his family. They had a nice piece of land along the river, with livestock and beautiful gardens. Under Mr. Nuli, the land was very productive. Working it was both lucrative and pleasant.

Mr. Tantu saw Mr. Nuli's land, and realized that if he bought the land and developed it, then sold the development to people who wanted to live and work along the river, he could make a great deal of money. But, he knew Mr. Nuli had no desire to sell his family's home and business.

Near Mr. Nuli's land lived one Mr. Zhisou. Mr. Zhisou had lived in Fuxuiguo a very long time. In fact, he lived in this country when it was known as Meiguo, and remembered the time when everyone worked hard like Mr. Nuli, dreaming that one day their work would pay off, and they would have a good life like Mr. Nuli does now. But that was before Emperor Haowan came to power. Under Emperor Haowan and his minister, Mr. Fushisixiang, Meiguo changed. People became so enamored with having a good life that they no longer wanted to work for it and earn it; they just wanted to have it, and their desires knew no bounds. The country changed so dramatically that one day a new emperor came to power, Fubai, and he declared that the country would now be known as Fuxuiguo.

Now, Mr. Zhisou kept a low profile. He lived in a very modest hut with very few possessions. The emperor's administrator, Mr. Haoshou, saw to the needs of the people, and felt sorry for Mr. Zhisou. When the emperor's men were giving out rice, Mr. Haoshou made sure Mr. Zhisou got an extra bag of rice; when the emperor's men were giving out firewood, Mr. Haoshou saw to it that Mr. Zhisou got an extra bundle.

One day there began a great rainstorm. The rain lasted for days and days, and the water level behind the dam began to get higher and higher. Mr. Tantu talked with Mr. Haoshou about the water level behind the dam. Mr. Haoshou assured Mr. Tantu that the dam was very strong, and would not break, even if the rains lasted for many weeks. Mr. Tantu was not convinced, though, and went to Mr. Zhizhang, who was Mr. Haoshou's supervisor. Mr. Tantu explained that he was concerned the dam might break, and that the ensuing flood would destroy the entire village. Mr. Zhizhang agreed that this was a grave concern, and asked Mr. Tantu for advice. Mr. Tantu told Mr. Zhizhang that it would be better to release some of the water, and wash out a few of the homes along the river, than to let the water accumulate until the dam broke and the flood destroyed the entire village. Mr. Zhizhang agreed that they must immediately release a great quantity of water in order to preserve the dam which would, in turn, preserve the village.

Meanwhile, Mr. Haoshou was making the rounds on the dam, checking it to make sure it was holding up to the flood. When Mr. Zhizhang's emergency order to release the water came through, Mr. Tanzang was on watch at the dam. Sadly, he was unaware that Mr. Haoshou was on the dam, and when the water was released, it swept Mr. Haoshou away, drowning him. The sudden surge of water crashed down the river, and destroyed Mr. Nuli's garden, sweeping Mr. Nuli and much of his livestock downstream, where their bodies were never recovered. Other people who lived near the river had their homes destroyed, too, and lost loved ones.

Mrs. Nuli was devastated at the loss of her beloved husband and her way of life, but she and her children were still alive, and she was thankful for this.

The disaster in the village was so great that Emperor Fubai himself came to the village to console the people. He told them how terrible it was, and how thankful he was that things did not turn out worse. He promised the people help so they could have a fresh start. He said that, in time, people would look for reasons as to why this happened, and would begin to invent wild stories. Emperor Fubai said that it was a terrible rainstorm that caused this tragedy, and warned people not to believe the crazy conspiracy theories that they would inevitably hear, as believing these stories would dishonor the memories of those who died as a result of this tragic rainstorm.

Mr. Tanzang was promoted to become the administrator. Under Mr. Zhizhang's supervision, he conducted an investigation, and determined that the decision to release the water was the correct one, as it preserved the dam intact, and saved the village. Per the emperor's instructions, he offered a generous amount of money to the people who had suffered, so they could rebuild their lives. He bought the Nuli family's land from Mrs. Nuli for a generous price, so she could take her family and establish a new life somewhere else.

Mr. Zhisou's home was very modest, but surprisingly, it was never in any danger from the rainstorm or from the sudden flood of water. The land that had belonged to Mr. Nuli, though, was used for a public project. Mr. Tantu's company got the contract from Mr. Tanzang to redevelop the land in the public interest. The project was very profitable to Mr. Tantu's company.

Time passed, and Mrs. Nuli began to establish her new life. But, as she talked to other people from Qiya, she heard stories about how Mr. Tantu had wanted her family's land. She also heard stories about how Mr. Tantu recommended that some of the water be released to preserve the dam and thus protect the village. She also heard stories about how Mr. Haoshou, who was very respected in Qiya, thought the dam was far stronger than necessary to save the village, even if the rain got much worse. And, she was puzzled about how Mr. Haoshou so tragically drowned when Mr. Tanzang released the water from the dam, and about how Mr. Tanzang was then promoted into Mr. Haoshou's job. Finally, it broke her heart to think of her home being completely destroyed as the land was redeveloped, and the stories she heard about how profitable the redevelopment project was to Mr. Tantu pushed her over the edge.

Distraught, Mrs. Nuli went to see Mr. Kungfutse, better known to his students as Confucius, to inquire of the Master's opinion on these events.

The Master told her that it was a terrible tragedy, and that a thorough investigation by the emperor's administrator showed it could not have been prevented. The Master explained that it is common, in the wake of such tragedies, to seek reasons why they occur, but that the simplest explanation is always the best. Confucius told her that she should get on with her life and take care of her children, rather than sacrificing their future to dwell on a past that she cannot change.

Saddened, Mrs. Nuli began to leave, as Mr. Zhisou arrived outside the Master's residence. She looked at Mr. Zhisou, whom the whole village knew to be crazy, as he yelled to Confucius:

"The peacock is killed for its beautiful plummage! Great trees in the forest are cut down for their wood! Does a candle not burn itself out? Everyone understands the value of having so much worth, but who understands the value of having so little?"

Mrs. Nuli looked at crazy old Mr. Zhisou, and asked him what all that meant.

"Dams do indeed break under too much stress, but it is not the dam that contains the river's water over which the emperor needs to concern himself."

Unity and Faith, Part 5

2011-11-27T10:02:00.000-08:00

We continue our consideration of events in Nigeria. In Part 1 we looked at the broad political situation there, paying attention to the North/South divide in Nigerian politics. In Part 2 we saw how that North/South divide is, in large part, a Muslim/Christian divide. In Part 3, we considered in greater depth the religious aspect of violence in Nigeria, including accusations of police abuses - abuses which seemed to target Muslims more than Christians.

In Part 4, we saw a report from 2009 about how the leader of Boko Haram was captured in an operation by security forces, and then died in police custody. We went on to see how, though economic disparity is often blamed for unrest, Boko Haram has its base among an educated middle class, and its leaders themselves claim their motivation is Islam; we also saw how, in Nigeria's corruption, northern Muslim elites were the main perpetrators. Then, we saw how Boko Haram claimed earlier this year that their militants had arrived after training in Somalia, and Boko Haram was threatening attacks that would be both wider and fiercer than their previous attacks, which, as of 2009, they were saying were going to make Nigeria ungovernable. Finally, we began to look at Boko Haram's international connections, and introduced the smuggling operations involving Nigeria, including the movement of heroin from South Asia.

We now look at more recent developments, including connections between Boko Haram and other terrorist organizations, and accusations of connections between Boko Haram and government officials. We begin with Boko Haram claims al-Qaeda links, November 24, 2011:

Kano - A purported spokesperson for Islamist sect Boko Haram claimed on Thursday that the group, blamed for attacks including the suicide bombing of UN headquarters in Nigeria, has links with al-Qaeda.

"It is true we have links with al-Qaeda," the man identifying himself as Abul Qaqa told reporters in a phone conference in the Hausa language spoken throughout Nigeria's mainly Muslim north.

"They assist us and we assist them."

This is nothing new. We previously saw how Boko Haram had claimed to have people trained in Somalia, and, in general, we have in many posts considered how ideology, like contraband, moves across the Sahara and Sahel in Africa - it is not surprising if al Qaeda has connections with Boko Haram.

Skipping down:

The group is believed to have a number of factions with varying aims. Nigeria's secret police alleged this week that some Boko Haram members have links to politicians following the arrest of another alleged spokesperson for the group.

Abul Qaqa refuted the secret police claims during the phone conference.

For information on the alleged links to political leaders, we consider Boko Haram: How SSS established case against Senator Ndume from November 27, 2011:

The Department of State Service (SSS) appears to have established a strong connection between the detained Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume and the former spokesperson of the dreaded Boko Haram sect, Ali Sanda Umar Konduga (a.ka Al-Zawahiri).

Information pieced together by Sunday Vanguard, at the weekend, suggest that part of the evidence the SSS has assembled against the senator is what a security source described as "the two-way communication link, via telephone between the senator and the man known as Al-Zawahiri". It was learnt that the "connect is so strong that even the attempt by the senator's wife to address a press conference on Friday afternoon had to be quickly thwarted by the senator himself."

"When it was discovered that the woman (wife) was attempting to address the press on the matter of the detention of her husband", the source continued, "it was impressed on the husband that should such a press conference be addressed, the Department would go to town with details of its findings which allegedly link the senator to Al-Zawahiri.

"At that point, the man had to make a quick contact with the wife, putting a halt to the move for a press conference".

Sunday Vanguard was also made to understand that whereas further investigations were still on, "the evidence we have suggests that when the Police Headquarters was bombed, it was the same Al-Zawahiri who announced to the world claiming responsibility on behalf of Boko Haram and we also believe that, prior to that incident, the two men had communication or were in contact."

"If that is fully established, the puzzle we are attempting to solve is why the senator did not alert the authorities; but the investigations continue", the security source disclosed.

The allegations go so far as to suggest that Senator Ndume had prior knowledge of a terrorist attack, and did nothing. Farther down in the article, political leaders were interviewed about this issue. Generally, they called for honest investigations and a fair judicial process, seeking to avoid a media circus. (Oh, that our own political leaders in America had such wisdom and integrity!)

As touched on above, though, Boko Haram is denying connections to Senator Ndume. From Boko Haram threatens to attack PDP, CPC, ACN, others •Warns landlords to eject political parties •Denies links with Ndume •Boko Haram will end soon —Jonathan •JTF recovers 2 explosive devices in Maiduguri, November 25, 2011:

MEMBERS of the Islamic sect, Boko Haram, have said that they have no dealings with Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume, who was arrested in Abuja early this week for allegedly sponsoring the movement, according to various reports which they claimed they read on pages of newspapers.

Speaking in a telephone interview with the media in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, on Thursday, spokesman for the sect, Abu Qaqa, who relayed the message to the press on behalf of the chief spokesman, Abu Dardam, said that the Yusufia movement was a religious sect, as such its members had no business with politics as being insinuated in government circles and among security agencies.

Qaqa further said that long before now, they were aware that Usman Al-Zawahiri, who was arrested and charged to court along with Ndume, was working for the State Security Service (SSS) and as such, what is happening is only a gimmick. He said that in order to prove to the world that the sect had no interest in politics or politicians, its next step was going to be attacks on all political party offices from national to the state levels.

He said the sect also read what the state chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Baba Basharu, had been saying about how the movement came into being. According to him, everybody knew what the sect stood for and no politician or political party was associated with it in any way. Therefore, for lying about them, he said Alhaji Basharu had been marked for death.

Speaking on whether the sect had links with Al-Qaeda, Qaqa said wherever Muslim groups which shared the same ideology and were working for the cause of Allah, his sect was with such groups, saying whoever felt that his group had links with Al-Qaeda, based on their ideology in promoting Islam and fighting to free their people from Western claws, was right. But he insisted that any group that did not have his sect’s kind of ideology was not part of them and his sect was not with such a group. He said it was for that reason his group was insisting that it had no links with any political party; be it ANPP, PDP, ACN, CPC and others.

Making good on these threats, Boko Haram has recently targeted Geidam in the northern Nigerian state of Yobe.

We now review Boko Haram bombs Yobe, November 27, 2011:

Churches, homes and the police headquarters in the small northeast Nigerian town of Geidam of Yobe state were set ablaze in a wave of night time gun and bomb attacks by the radical Islamist sect, the police said on Sunday.

Boko Haram, whose name translates as "Western education is forbidden" from the local Hausa language, has claimed responsibility for dozens of shootings and attacks with improvised explosive devices this year.

The Hausa, a Sahelian people in Nigeria's north, are one of the country's major ethnic groups. They have communities in Niger and as far away as Sudan and Cote d'Ivoire. Boko Haram's roots among them may help explain connections to foreign terrorist organizations: the organizations would be foreign to Nigeria, but perhaps not to the Hausa.

Also, Boko Haram clarified the meaning of its name. In Part 4 we quoted an article from Niberia's Vanguard which quotes a statement made by Boko Haram:

WE SPEAK AS BOKO HARAM

For the first time since the Killing of Mallam Mohammed Yusuf, our leader, we hereby make the following statements.

1) First of all that Boko Haram does not in any way mean "Western Education is A sin" as the infidel media continue to portray us. Boko Haram actually means "Western Civilisation" is forbidden. The difference is that while the first gives the impression that we are opposed to formal education coming from the West, that is Europe, which is not true, the second affirms our believe in the supremacy of Islamic culture (not Education), for culture is broader, it includes education but not determined by Western Education.

Continuing with Boko Haram bombs Yobe:

"The Geidam divisional police headquarters and First Bank were bombed on Saturday evening by Boko Haram and fire was exchanged into the night between police and Boko Haram members," a police spokesman told reporters.

"Four policemen were killed, 20 wounded, eight churches and 20 market stalls as well as Geidam council secretariat are completely destroyed."

Geidam is a small town in Yobe state, which straddles the Nigeria-Niger border, and is the home of the powerful state governor. Boko Haram often targets politicians, who the sect say are corrupt and have left the northeast region impoverished.

Boko Haram's attacks have mostly taken place in and around Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, which borders Yobe state and neighbouring countries Niger, Cameroon and Chad.

A boost in military numbers in recent months in Borno has pushed the sect's attacks further afield, security sources say.

Boko Haram claimed responsibility for an attack in Damaturu, the capital of Yobe, earlier this month that left at least 65 dead. It was also behind two bombings in the capital Abuja this year, the latest in August, a suicide attack at the U.N. building which killed 26 people.

Notice that one of the targets was a bank. From Boko Haram threat: Bauchi banks now close 2pm, dated November 11, 2011:

Bauchi— Commercial banks in Bauchi State are now panicking following alleged reports that members of the Boko Haram sect planned to bomb the financial houses in the state to protest the alleged freezing of the accounts of their late founder, Mohammed Yusuf, by the Federal Government.

The Police Public Relations Officer, Assistant Superintendent, Mohammed Barau, however, said they were unaware of the development, adding that security had been beefed up in the state to ensure safety of life and property.

Sources said that there had been panic withdrawals even as customers now visit their banks very early for business.

Boko Haram's attacks and threats of more are indeed inducing terror among the intended victims, and this most definitely includes the economic sector.

Next, we consider an excerpt from Page 10 of Key Issues in Nigeria's 2011 Elections, dated March 29, 2011, by Sola Tayo. The paper addresses Nigeria in the run-up to the recent elections, but I claim that the same dynamics are at play even now.

Nigeria is often spoken of as having unfulfilled potential. Analysts talk about it eclipsing South Africa to become the continent's largest economy,^[5] but such plaudits mean little if a country continues to suffer the effects of poor wealth distribution. Growth needs to be combined with developmental improvement if Nigeria is to be a continental leader. Meaningful efforts to address wealth inequality could be the key to tackling violence; this is blamed on religious differences when poverty is often a bigger factor. Improving the overall quality of life for all Nigerians should mean fewer people feeling disadvantaged or marginalized, and the concept of national unity might be embraced.

However, there is a risk that any sense of national pride and unity will continue to dissipate and people may react to situations according to their religious or regional grouping rather than acting in the national interest. Ordinary, disaffected people are vulnerable to being manipulated into serving the interests of the richer and more powerful, whether in the name of religion or ethnicity. Elements of this manipulation are already evident in conflicts across Nigeria, including over oil, religion and citizenship.

The suggestion is that Nigeria's unrest is due to poor wealth distribution, but I have already made the point that in the case of Boko Haram, the core is middle class and claims Islam, not economics, is the driving force.

But, notice the initial part of the passage, about "unfulfilled potential", and the concluding part, about "manipulation" evident in conflicts over oil. Nigeria already is a regional power, and could become, as mentioned in the passage, a continental leader.

What other (potential) African continental leaders have met a tragic demise just this past year?

Considering now some analysis of the events in Nigeria, we review excerpts from Analysis: What will follow Boko Haram?

MAIDUGURI, 24 November 2011 (IRIN) - Across the road from Maiduguri railway station, in the corner of a now abandoned property, a leafy neem tree provides a canopy for the remains of a mosque flattened by the Nigerian army.

The mosque had belonged to Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad (People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad), better known as Boko Haram - loosely translated from Hausa, the lingua franca of northern Nigeria, as "western education is forbidden".

Its destruction followed coordinated attacks by Boko Haram militants against police stations and government buildings in four northern states in July 2009. After several days of fighting, more than 800 people were dead, including the Salafist group's leader, 39-year-old cleric Mohamed Yusuf, killed while in police custody.

Boko Haram's revenge was dramatic. Seen initially as an insular local sect - one of many in the north - it reached out of Borno State, on the fringes of the Sahara Desert, to bomb the Nigerian capital, Abuja, and make common cause with the global Jihadist movement. Western governments are scrambling to provide counter-insurgency training to confront the group, which views the Nigerian state as illegitimate, and demands Sharia law even in the southern half of the country where the majority is non-Muslim.

The rank-and-file Boko Haram have no intentions of working within the political system - not even getting the support of corrupt political leaders who are selling the system out. Their goal is to replace the entire corrupt system, and institute strict Islamic law everywhere, forcing the Christian south into dhimmitude.

But, those who control and manipulate them have a different agenda. In Part 4 of this series, we saw mention of a "northern Muslim élite" that was responsible for much of the corruption. And, this could easily tie in with the allegations against Senator Ndume.

We now examine excerpts from the end of Boko Haram plans to bomb Defence Headquarters - Report dated September 9, 2011:

Illegal immigrants: Customs boss summons state comptrollers

The Comptroller-General of Immigration, Mrs Rose Uzoma, on Thursday, read the Riot Act to the state comptrollers of immigration and other top officers of the service for allowing illegal immigrants into the country and constituting a security risk to the nation.

Mrs Uzoma, who summoned the state comptrollers of immigration service to an emergency meeting in Abuja, on the growing insecurity in the country, was worried that intelligence reports had pointed to the fact that some of the people involved in the recent bomb blasts in Nigeria were foreigners.

[snip]

Mrs Uzoma, who emphasised that she would no longer tolerate excuses from any of the state comptrollers where there were noticeable lapses, particularly blamed the security lapses being experienced on the officers in charge of the northern states.

This northern Muslim élite clearly has ties in the security forces, and is pulling strings to facilitate the movement of people and contraband across the northern borders. These people include jihadis tied in with international terrorist organizations, and this contraband now includes weapons from Libya's vast arsenal that fell into the hands of the jihadis. But, that's not all.

A November, 2009, NATO research paper entitled An assessment of crime related risks in the Sahel has this to say on page 2 about Nigeria's other connections in the international underworld:

Nigerians, who are notoriously active in the Golden Crescent (Pakistan, India, Afghanistan), work closely with Latin American cartels. Nigeria is still the biggest regional producer of cannabis⁴, with plantations bringing farmers 200 million dollars and generating profits of 12 billion dollars for traffickers.

Finally, we consider another excerpt from Key Issues in Nigeria's 2011 Elections, Page 10:

If the hopes of the people for fairness and prosperity continue to be held to ransom by the interests of a very powerful minority, Nigeria is at increasing risk of a downward spiral of disenchantment, with potentially disastrous consequences. The uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East show that disillusioned people will only take so much. This has been acknowledged by the Governor of Nigeria's Central Bank, Lamido Sanusi, who warned that events like those in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya could be experienced in Nigeria if developmental issues were not addressed.

This "very powerful minority" includes infidels, to be sure, but it also includes a "northern Muslim élite" tied in to international narcotics-, arms- and human-trafficking, which it uses to finance jihad.

Who in the infidel world benefits from keeping Nigeria in a state of disarray, rather than allowing it to become a continental leader and major player on the world scene?

Perhaps I should rephrase the question.

Who pulled the strings of intervention in Libya and Côte d'Ivoire?

Men of Integrity, Part 2

2011-11-25T11:30:00.000-08:00

In Part 1, we considered a brief recent history of Burkina Faso. Highlights included how Thomas Sankara led a military coup in 1983 (one of a series the country had seen), seizing power with the help of his friend Blaise Compaoré. Sankara established a Castro-style revolutionary government, complete with revolutionary committees and torture, defying the powers of international bankers and French neo-colonialists. Sankara was trying to establish Upper Volta, as the country was then known, as a truly independent nation - independent of the manipulating foreign powers that seek to keep so many African nations subdued.

Compaoré murdered his childhood friend, seizing power in 1987 in a country that Sankara had renamed "Burkina Faso", and began to align his country's policies more closely with the goals and desires of these international puppet masters. As a result of Compaoré's new policies, Burkina Faso supported bands of armed thugs who stirred up trouble in Sierra Leone and Liberia, as well as in neighboring Côte d'Ivoire, where strongman Alassane Ouattara, a fellow Burkinabé countryman, was this year installed as "president" with assistance from French military power operating under UN auspices, and in violation of Ivoirian law.

Guillaume Soro, another Burkinabé who owns very nice houses ;) in Burkina Faso and France, is one of Ouattara's chief lieutenants in what I might call an occupation of Côte d'Ivoire.

So, what we have is an obvious attempt by foreign powers, including neo-colonial France and international bankers, to use the power they have consolidated in Burkina Faso to spread their influene throughout western Africa, with their most recent conquest being Côte d'Ivoire.

Needless to say, relations between Compaoré and Ouattara are cordial. The text of Burkina Faso: President, Ouattara Aim to Boost Ties, November 18, 2011:

Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaore, who backed Alassane Ouattara during Ivory Coast's political crisis, hosted a joint cabinet meeting with the Ivorian leader Friday to boost bilateral cooperation.

Compaore said the joint meetings were designed to foster stronger integration between the neighbouring west African states.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Compoare added that he was "happy about the return of peace and institutional stability in our sister republic, Ivory Coast".

Compaore was firmly behind Ouattara in the impasse that arose from the November 2010 elections, when Laurent Gbagbo refused to accept he had lost, although Compaore's mediation efforts appeared to achieve little.

The crisis ended with the arrest in April of Gbagbo, whose resistance gave rise to clashes that left thousands dead.

At the joint meeting, Ouattara thanked Burkina's leader for his "personal involvement ... in the denouement of the Ivorian crisis".

Some three million Burkinabe work in Ivory Coast, mostly on cocoa plantations.

An estimated 80,000 Burkinabe fled Ivory Coast during the country's political unrest. - ANP/AFP

But, the main thing they are working on bilaterally is the consolidation of power.

For some background, we consider an excerpt from COTE D'IVOIRE: Barakissa Ouédraogo, "We must talk, otherwise we’ll keep killing one another", from earlier this year:

OUAGADOUGOU, 4 July 2011 (IRIN) - As Ivoirian and international officials discuss truth, reconciliation and trying those suspected of war crimes, Barakissa Ouédraogo, one of more than 100,000 Burkinabé who fled Côte d'Ivoire for Burkina Faso during the post-election violence, says helping families rebuild destroyed homes would do more to foster stability.

Ouédraogo said she regularly received death threats and that Burkinabé friends in Côte d’Ivoire were killed and maimed. "The violence just got to be too much - so many killed, so many injured. We had to flee." She said presidents come and go, and that it is the people who must decide not to let politics lead to killing. Ouédraogo was born in Côte d’Ivoire, where Burkinabé have lived for generations. Having fled to Burkina in January, she recently returned to Abidjan's Abobo District to assess the damage at her shelled home.

"I think these truth and reconciliation processes are just theatre, decoration. If you ask me, the money that would go into organizing such things could be used to fix holes in roofs, to help families who are really destitute. If you see your home repaired, you get some relief. Whatever your ethnicity, whatever your politics, that would ease your pain. There are still people living outdoors.

"You're going to go to talk to a commission, tell them how your family was killed and you want to forgive, then what? You return to the street because your home is flattened."

One of the main causes of "flattened" homes was the use of French firepower - helicopter gunships, for example - to support Ouattara's thugs as they ousted President Gbagbo. The "truth and reconciliation processes" mentioned, for which another of my series on events in the region is named (see sidebar), is an attempt to whitewash the crimes of Ouattara's thugs and their French allies, and blame everything on Gbagbo's supporters.

So, Burkina Faso under Blaise Compaoré played a key role in destabilizing the region and in particular in overthrowing the legitimate government of Ivoirian President Laurent Gbagbo.

But, as we saw in Part 1, what goes around comes around.

First, we consider the backdrop to the drama that is about to play out in the region. From WEST AFRICA: Sahel the danger zone for food insecurity:

DAKAR, 27 October 2011 (IRIN) - Erratic rains and high imported rice and wheat prices against a backdrop of chronic food insecurity and malnutrition in parts of the Sahel, will leave millions of people at risk of food insecurity, according to the latest crop assessments.

"We are definitely going to have a difficult year," said Patricia Hoorelbeke, West Africa head of NGO Action Against Hunger (ACF), adding that the NGO is considering expanding its food and nutrition programmes in the region.

Food production

Food production is expected to be lower than usual in parts of western Niger, Chad's Sahelian zone, southern Mauritania, western Mali, eastern Burkina Faso, northern Senegal and Nigeria, according to a report by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and a separate assessment by USAID's food security monitor FEWS NET.

The link at the end of the passage has some interesting infographics. In the short term (i.e., for the rest of this year) there will be food supply "stress" in Mauritania - fairly distant from Burkina Faso:

But, as 2012 opens, the situation will worsen, engulfing the entire country of Mali (where there are other troubles) and spreading to the other side of Burkina Faso.

As the passage itself indicates, eastern parts of Burkina Faso will become directly affected.

A stressed food supply, caused by drought, has been known to help generate fairly chaotic conditions; Somalia is a classic example of this.

For some additional background on the developing food insecurity situation throughout the Sahelian region of Africa, which includes the area we are considering, I suggest an article by Alex Thurston, published in The Christian Science Monitor, entitled Sahel Grapples with Food Insecurity, November 21, 2011, and cross-posted at Thurston's blog: Focus on Sahelian Food Shortages.

The food insecurity situation is noteworthy in Chad, where there are chronic problems with malnutrition and food shortages, and is of real concern in Niger, already shaded in the graphic above to have a stressed area near its capital, which is near the border with Burkina Faso. Skipping down in WEST AFRICA: Sahel the danger zone for food insecurity:

Returnees from Libya

The return to Niger and Chad of migrants from Libya who previously sent money home to help mitigate crop deficit is already pushing some families into further food insecurity, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). "These returns have aggravated extreme poverty and hunger which is affecting more than half of Niger's 2.5 million people threatened with food insecurity this year," said IOM.

While international attention and government involvement has been relatively high in Niger compared to the devastating drought of 2005, Oumarou Lalo Keita, principal adviser to the prime minister, said international agencies have been slow to respond to government appeals for increased aid over recent months as a result of the return of some 90,000 migrants from Libya. "There is clearly cause for concern," he said. Following the 2009-2010 drought, the country does not have sufficient emergency food stocks, he said. "We experience difficulties year-on-year, and there is still a gap between needs and the support we receive."

While governments and aid agencies in West Africa are for the most part well-versed in responding to food insecurity, readiness and capacity is still low in some areas.

Part of the Chadian Sahel and eastern Burkina Faso are not receiving as much international attention, said ACF's Hoorelbeke. "Chadian Sahel is hardly covered - there are not enough agencies there... If there is a situation that we hear very little about, it is eastern Burkina Faso, where we are likely to see a real problem this year," she told IRIN.

The same guys who pull strings in western Africa have been busy in Libya. And now, people returning from Libya are going to be a problem, and not just because they are refugee mouths to feed instead of wage-earners as they were under Gaddafi. From Burkina Faso, Niger - Libya weapons fear, November 14, 2011:

Ouagadougou - Burkina Faso and Niger are concerned about regional insecurity following the conflict in Libya which they fear has led to new arms trafficking, Niger's prime minister said Monday.

"It is a major concern, the trafficking of arms is a real threat to the region," Rafini Briji said on a visit to Ouagadougou.

"The conflict in Libya has created very complicated situations since the arms depots were opened and people from all quarters helped themselves and took them [arms] in all directions," he said.

Briji said Niger and Burkina Faso were worried about armed groups and the concentration of weapons all around their two countries.

In response they have decided to reinforce their co-operation to ensure security in the Sahel-Saharan zone, Briji added.

During a visit to South Africa on Friday, Niger's President Mahamadou Issoufou asked for military aid to help fight armed groups and traffickers, saying the Libyan conflict had aggravated terrorist threats.

Since the overthrow and killing of Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi, experts have expressed concern that part of Gaddafi's considerable stock of weapons could end up in the hands of al-Qaeda's branch in North Africa which has bases in the Sahel and is currently holding several foreign hostages.

To be sure, the Sahara/Sahel region was already a crossroads for smugglers moving South American cocaine to Europe, moving Asian heroin to the Americas, and moving arms to anyone with a means to pay for them. But, Libya was well-stocked with arms, and the area is now going to be flooded with weapons - and not just with military-grade automatic rifles.

Perhaps the potential for trouble is why Compaoré's government in Burkina Faso is taking a page from the playbook of Compaoré's childhood friend Thomas Sankara, whom Compaoré murdered to seize power, and trying a new plan to alleviate food insecurity problems. From BURKINA FASO: “Blue revolution” needed to boost dry-season harvest:

OUAGADOUGOU, 17 November 2011 (IRIN) - The Burkina Faso government is attempting for the first time to implement a nationwide dry-season agricultural campaign to counteract possible food insecurity in areas that received poor or erratic rainfall this year. But the government, alongside others in the region, also needs to invest in a "blue revolution" - small-scale irrigation systems to help farmers grow crops in drought-prone zones - says the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Some 146 out of 351 communes across 10 of Burkina Faso's 13 regions were affected by low grain outputs, according to the government's provisional estimates. The regions most affected by poor rains were the northern millet-producing zone, the Sahel, the Centre north, the Centre west, the East and the Centre east.

"At the moment the food security situation is not alarmist, but there are pockets spread out across the country that could be in a critical situation, and that need to be closely monitored," the Deputy-director of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Burkina Faso, Ariane Waldvogel, told IRIN.

One thing is for sure: If food insecurity in and around Burkina Faso develops into a real crisis, this could be the spark that allows all these nomadic mercenaries with all their new Libyan toys to ignite a real flame in Burkina Faso - a country that has in recent months experienced unrest - bringing the troubles that Compaoré helped cause elsewhere home to roost.

Blog Updates

2011-11-24T09:45:00.000-08:00

I am continuously updating the blog.

It is not so much a question of posts (bloggers post new updates daily, and some post even more often than that) as it is a question of the sidebar.

New widgets get added to the sidebar fairly often, and there is ongoing maintenance to the links provided.

Today, I have added in a widget linking to the election offices for all fifty of the US states. This widget is currently right next to the widget with links to the state court and judicial systems.

The FEC link can be found with the US government links. Also, there is a miscellaneous resource widget that has links to sites that provide information on money in federal and state politics, as well as a plethora of other links.

There is an international news and analysis widget, and it has a great many links to international news sources and various blogs and other sources. More news and analysis links can be found in the widgets for individual US states and for various countries, which are organized by continent (for this purpose, I take the Suez Canal as the boundary between Africa and Asia, so Israel is in Asia, and Egypt in Africa).

The links alone make my blog worth bookmarking. Whenever I want to know what is going on anywhere in the world, I start at and from my blog. ;)

There are excellent sites linked in the sidebar that provide links to campaigns for federal and various state elected offices. It is not my intention to duplicate (mainly, copy) the excellent work done elsewhere. However, I do have many links to many races for US President, US Senate, US House of Representatives, to various races for state offices, and to some national and state political parties and political action committees. If you have a link you would like to see in the sidebar for a polical campaign, please leave a comment, preferably including the URL.

Especially, if you have a link to an NGO, a news source, a think tank, a recommended blog, a government or international entity, etc., please leave a comment with the URL.

Coming soon will be more links to government and political websites in the non-US English-speaking world.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Moscow Nights, Part 2

2011-11-21T07:15:00.001-08:00

In Part 1 we took a cursory glance at select examples of corruption in Russia, finishing by calling attention to how Vladimir Putin talked about (over a decade ago) introducing the "dictatorship of the law" on Russia's lawlessness. We now further examine the situation in Russia.

We begin by considering an article from September 12, 2011, entitled We introduce to you a new vacation spot for government leaders... which, complete with pictures, documents a nice, new road leading off into nowhere - but which actually leads to a "tourist complex":

The official web page of the Republic of Altai Government says that, in 2009, Gazprom decided to build a tourist complex, Altai Inn, and that the complex would kick-start development of Altai's massive tourist potential. True, Gazprom people told us that the inn was intended for meetings with business partners, corporate events and for hosting foreign guests. So the tourist potential will obviously cater to a very narrow circle of people. Judging from the way we were pushed out of the inn, we were not members of that circle.

Rumours in Altai claim that the circle is, in fact, even narrower: indeed, guest and partner will be one and the same person, the number one person. We were immediately reminded of the unfortunate experience of journalists and archaeologists from the mountainous part of Altai who tried to attract public attention to the villa and the road. At their request, the Prosecutor's Office discovered some irregularities in the builders' operations and even fined the road contractor but, as a result, the initiators of the inspection had some trouble with the law.

We left the grounds ourselves, not waiting to be pushed out. Gazprom is apparently building the Altai Inn with its own money. The official customer is its subsidiary firm, Gazpromneft. The land, as we were told by the regional administration, had been bought from a deer-breeding farm that went bust and that it did not have the status of a nature reserve. The total cost of the complex is about 1.5 billion roubles. The company will decide how to use the tourist facility and it answered all our questions in the same way as the guards did: "This is private property".

But the road is not private property.

The documents in fact do not refer to it as a road but, rather coyly, as a "spur off highway M52”. The customer is the state-owned institution Gorno-Altai Avtodor, which means the republic's administration. We easily discovered the cost on the Internet: four billion roubles, ie, 200 million per kilometre. By comparison, the annual budget of the whole republic is nine billion. But it is not the locals who are paying: at the Prime Minister's special order, the "spur" leading to Gazprom's complex has been financed out of the Federal Budget, ie, with tax payers' money.

Skipping down just a bit:

[A local named Lev] told us that he was breeding and selling horses, that gays held jamborees on the bank of Katun every summer and finally told us the details of how the Prime Minister himself allegedly came to inspect the tourist complex: "We expected him to fly in by chopper but he drove by jeep."

At that point, one of us noted that the grass growing around the house was cannabis. Lev looked a bit embarrassed and said that the locals were not interested in the grass: "Even the locusts don't eat it here; it's only for those who come here every summer."

It seems federal money was used to build a road to a private country getaway (known in Russian as a "dacha") with a very exclusive guestlist: Vladimir Putin. And, by the way, those who accompany Putin may have an interest in smoking pot.

Why does Russia tolerate Putin?

All countries are unique, but Russia is more unique than most other countries. Russia is not European, yet Russia is not Asian. Russia is Russian - but, the definintion of that word "Russian" is what presents the challenge.

So, why does this place and its people tolerate Putin?

Some analysis from Why haven't the 2011 protests hit Russia? from November 21, 2011:

Russia is far from a brutal war or famine. In fact, it lacks many of the social and economic conditions plaguing Arab states and Western liberal democracies. Despite declining polls, Putin and Co. still remain popular. Russia has successfully weathered the global economic crisis, has no sovereign debt problem, no mortgage crisis, and no widespread household debt. According to Rosstat, overall unemployment is low, around six per cent, but joblessness among young people 16-25 years old is quite high, 26.1 per cent, and comparable to that in Arab states and the West.

Yet this has not caused many young people to lose faith in capitalism or the Putin system. "In Russia everyone knows the emperor wears no clothes, even when he's dressed in Armani and Brioni. Yet we don't have 'occupiers'", writes Malor Sturua in Moskovskii komsomolets. "The ideals of our youth are Putin and [the oligarch Roman] Abramovich, power and money. They aren't drawn to occupy Moscow's 'Wall Street'. They prefer to be a part of it."

Moreover, Sturua continues, Russia is "submerged in a pool of social passivity and civic apathy. Civil society has not ripened in it. Authoritarian society has ripened where they chose the Presidents and nominate the Prime Ministers several years before the elections in secret from the people. And the people who do this are a million times less than one per cent of the Russian population. 'Stability' plays the role of progress. And as they explain not long ago, the Brezhnev stagnation was damn good for the Soviet Union."

Now we consider excerpts from Integrating Russia’s Post-Imperium, by Dmitri Trenin, November 2, 2011:

With Russia's 2012 presidential elections effectively over since Vladimir Putin's decision to reclaim his old Kremlin office, it is time to turn from personalities to policies. Putin plans to stay in the Kremlin for two more presidential terms, another 12 years, as he is enabled to do by the recently-amended constitution. So who will be Russia's next president is now a certainty; less obvious is what he hopes to achieve.

One issue, however, has now shot to the top of Russia's political agenda: Eurasian integration. In early October, Putin wrote a newspaper article that proclaimed what appears to be his reigning foreign-policy goal: a Eurasian Union of former Soviet states. Two weeks later, in St. Petersburg, he hosted a meeting of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) prime ministers, eight of whom signed an agreement establishing a free-trade area among their countries. On January 1, 2012, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia, which now form a customs union, will join a single economic space.

And Putin wants even more: a "Eurasian Schengen" (free movement of people among the three countries, built on the example of the European Union) by 2015, followed by a currency union and, ultimately, full economic integration. Indeed, Putin wants to restructure Russia's relations with the former Soviet states to create not merely a bigger market, but eventually an economic bloc-cum-security alliance.

[snip]

In his much-quoted newspaper piece, Putin denied that his new integration plans are aimed at restoring the Soviet Union under another name. This is a credible claim, for three basic reasons: the complete evaporation of Russia's imperial élan, its unwillingness to pay other countries' bills, and the new countries' unwillingness to cede too much sovereignty to the former hegemon.

[snip]

Putin is ambitious, but he is also cautious. He probably sees that only mutual economic interest can do the trick. Creating a new Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON, the Soviet-era trade bloc), or a new Warsaw Pact, is as impossible as a latter-day Soviet Union. Eurasian economic integration, if it stands a chance, must follow a different path.

If all parties concerned join voluntarily, and proceed in a step-by-step manner, as with the EU or the North American Free Trade Agreement, Eurasian integration will benefit all of those involved. Rather than behaving like an empire secretly trying to re-invent itself, Russia has an opportunity to become a regional leader. But Eurasian integration will fail if Russia's partners see the process as Moscow’s attempt at political domination.

[snip]

In the West, Putin's best-remembered statement about the Soviet Union described its end as the "greatest catastrophe of the twentieth century." But Putin's other comments, less familiar to Western readers, refer to the Soviet system as "unviable." In his ruthless judgment, those who want the USSR back "have no brains."

The picture that emerges is one of Putin presenting himself as a strong, perhaps paternalistic leader, not unlike some of Russia's tsars. A comparison to Stalin is not totally inappropriate, provided one also considers the contrasts. This strong leader guarantees strength and stability to Russia during times of global turmoil, and Russians, who have had three revolutions in the past century, and centuries of troubles at the hand of foreign and domestic powers, are not unattracted by this prospect. Yes, Putin is corrupt, but cynicism would dictate that all leaders are, and at least under Putin, Russians have stability and a chance to work their way into a better life and become "part of it".

Yet, Putin's plan is not to rebuild the USSR, which was founded on ideology and preached a world revolution; rather, Putin is about business, regardless of which side of the law the business is on. This is an economic empire being built - it is everything Soviet ideologues ever accused the United States in particular and capitalists in general of being.

But, instead of a phoenix arising from the ashes of the Soviet Union, Russia's corrupt leadership today is fiddling while Russia burns. From Russia's Dangerous Implosion, November 19, 2011:

Russia is set to experience a debilitating demographic crisis. Its population will sicken and drop by one-third, and its dominant Slavic-Orthodox population will dwindle and be surpassed by its Islamic faction. The consequences of this crisis will, unless the world gets better leadership than the likes of Barack Obama, and soon, have dire and direct and lasting effects for the rest of the world.

According to RIA Novosti, Russia's Kremlin-funded answer to Reuters, between 1950 and 2000 Russia's share of the world population fell by half, from 4% to 2%. And, according to RIA, it will fall by half again before this century is out, dropping to just 1%. That means only one out of every 100 people on the planet will be citizen of the Russian Federation.

If you look at a map of the world in 2100 with boundaries redrawn to reflect share of world population (RIA helpfully draws one for you), Russia is invisible. While the population of the rest of the world has grown, Russia's has fallen back to the level it had in 1950 under Stalin. By 2100, the population if the USA will be more than triple that of Russia.

If we start analyzing the causes of this catastrophe, we make initial note of the fact that Russia has the world's highest rate of abortion. In 2009 Russia exterminated a shocking 1.3 million fetuses, 73 for every 100 babies born. Russia has more abortions each year than the United States, a country with more than double Russia's population. By contrast, Russia's birth rate ranks #166 out of 195 world nations. Hardly any babies are being conceived, and more than 40% of those that are conceived are exterminated before being born.

The fate of babies that are born in Russia is a bleak one. Russia ranks #6 in the world for fatality by suicide. It has the second-highest prevalence of AIDS in Eurasia. It is #7 in the world for cigarette consumption and #5 in the world for alcohol consumption. Its rate of fatality by fire is ten times that of the United States, and it is the most dangerous place in the world to drive a car or get on a plane.

All this leads Russians to a very early grave: Russia's average life expectancy of 65.5 years places it #135 out of 194 world countries. That's the bottom third of the planet.

Russians have given up on the future, seeking desperately to have fun today, and perhaps a better tomorrow; that the day after is doomsday means nothing - or, perhaps, it means everything, and has become the justification.

For whatever reason, Mother Russia is dying.

From Russia: the logic of decline, September 16, 2011:

There are specific factors that precipitate the demise of a system. Above all, it is the ruling team that cannot be replaced. If there is no political competition, there can be no development. How important is it who personifies power? Judge for yourselves: Putin, who is associated with certainty (we know what to expect from him) may accelerate the processes of decay. For his part, Medvedev, with his diffuse position and penchant for mimicry, might slow them down. But what is better for Russia: rapid or slow decay? Putin's regime, relying on security structures and their control of property, is inherently repressive and incapable of modernisation.

Another factor of decline is the obsession of the power apparatus, above all security men, with their personal enrichment. All civilisations perished when their elites started thinking about their own purses. Sparta and the Ottoman Empire were invincible until the Spartans and the Janissaries engaged in trade.

[snip]

The "Kushchevskaya syndrome", which has been repeated many times all across Russia, i.e. the intertwining of the mob, business, government and repressive bodies, is further proof of degradation of a system that cannot function even according to its own rules.

[snip]

The Russian ruling class not only deprives society of its viability. It is setting a trap for itself. The most successful mechanism that humanity has developed for self-preservation (including of the elite) is free competition. As soon as the East European elites agreed that they would not cling to power, they guaranteed development for their societies and security for themselves. The fact that the Russian ruling team is trying to secure an infinite monopoly for itself attests to its lack of confidence and inability to run a free society. Monopoly implies the need constantly to protect it and it makes it impossible to relinquish power without fearing for one's life. So far, only Mikhail Gorbachev has managed to break out of this vicious circle without fearing for his personal safety. The fate of Arab rulers who have lost power or are desperately clinging on to it cannot but prompt anxious thoughts in Russian rulers. If they hope they will be able to avoid sharing the fate of other "autocrats" they are in for a disappointment: the last twenty years have not seen a single instance of a happy end to one-man rule.

[snip]

Everything is beginning to fall apart. The once all-powerful institution of leadership is losing its influence. There is a growing awareness in the midst of the political class that relying on Putin as guarantor of security may soon pose a threat to the very survival of that class. The state and its security structures are perceived by the population as a hostile force. When 73% of respondents believe that the gap between the rich and the poor has widened over the last ten years and 52% that the government has more thieves and corrupt officials than in the 1990s and finally, when more than half the respondents are sure that the coming elections will not be fair - that is a sign of alienation of the population from power.

Moscow is well-lit by power, money, and good times, but all around, dusk is falling on one of the world's great countries, as a great people, which has been through so much, parties its way into a long, dark night.

This One Before, Part 4

2011-11-13T17:30:00.000-08:00

We continue from Part 3 considering the connections between the US government and Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel.

This map, from Mexico's Drug-Related Violence, a report by June S. Beittel of the Congressional Research Service dated May 27, 2009, shows the geographic extent of the Sinaloa Cartel's activity as of 2009; notice that the Sinaloa Cartel had the greatest geographic area of activity.

Some recent news and analysis came out in an article entitled US Prosecutors Seeking to Prevent Dirty Secrets of Drug War From Surfacing in Cartel Leader's Case, from November 5, 2011; we quote the beginning:

US Government Using National Security to Conceal Evidence, Attorneys for Narco-Trafficker Zambada Niebla Claim

The criminal case of accused Sinaloa drug organization leader Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla is straying even further into the path of a cover-up under the guise of national security, if pleadings filed by his attorneys are to be believed.

Lawyers for the alleged Mexican narco-trafficker, son of one of the top figures in the Sinaloa "cartel," recently filed a motion asking the court to block U.S. prosecutors' efforts to exclude the defense from discussions with the judge over the treatment of evidence deemed classified material. Zambada Niebla's attorneys contend they must be part of those discussions since the supposed classified material goes to the heart of their client's claims in the case.

The information the US government is seeking to withhold from Zambada Niebla's attorneys, they believe, is likely related to a key figure in the case, an informant, Mexican attorney Humberto Loya Castro, who served as an intermediary between the Sinaloa Cartel leadership and US government agents seeking to obtain information on rival narco-trafficking organizations.

The analysis goes on, at one point quoting from an affidavit dated October 24, 2011, entitled DECLARATION OF FERNANDO X. GAXIOLA, and filed in the ongoing case UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. JESUS VICENTE ZAMBADA-NIEBLA, which the article addresses. Here I quote an excerpt from the same part of the affidavit quoted by the article:

9. Mr. Loya-Castro stated that agents told him that, in exchange for information about rival drug trafficking organizations, the United States government agreed to dismiss the prosecution of the pending case against Mr. Loya-Castro, not to interfere with his drug trafficking activities and those of the Sinaloa Cartel, to not actively prosecute him, Chapo, Mayo, and the leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel, and to not apprehend them. The agents stated that this arrangement had been approved by high-ranking officials and federal prosecutors. Mr. Loya-Castro told Chapo and Mayo about this arrangement, and they agreed and relied on this agreement by providing the requested information. Mr. Zambada-Niebla was told of this agreement and relied on this arrangement by providing the requested information to Mr. Loya-Castro, who would then pass along the information to the agents. The agents told Mr. Loya-Castro that, when he went to meet with Chapo, he should notify the agents in advance. The agents assured Mr. Loya-Castro that they would not follow him and would not interfere with the meetings so that he could be calm and obtain as much information as possible, and Mr. Loya-Castro informed Chapo that the agents would be aware that he was going to meet with him. The agents also told Mr. Loya-Castro to be careful when he spoke on the telephone with Chapo because they could be heard by Mexican authorities, and therefore he should not be explicit about the information that he gave Chapo over the telephone. The agents also allowed Mr. Loya-Castro to be present at confidential meetings where information about the Sinaloa Cartel was being discussed and allowed him to pass the information along to Chapo.

10. Mr. Loya-Castro stated that he gave the agents significant information that he relayed from Chapo, Mayo, and Mr. Zambada-Niebla, which resulted in numerous arrests of major figures in rival drug trafficking organizations. He said he was present when Chapo received a call from Mr. Zambada-Niebla in which Mr. Zambada-Niebla provided information about a major rival drug trafficker for the purpose of passing on to the DEA, which he did pass on and which helped lead to the apprehension of that individual. Mr. Loya-Castro stated that, under his agreement with the government, the charges against him were dismissed in 2008.

11. Mr. Loya-Castro stated that, in 2007, he asked his main handler, a DEA agent named "Manny," to help him obtain the same deal that he had received for Mr. Zambada-Niebla who had outstanding federal charges in the District of Columbia, in exchange for information. Thereafter, Mr. Loya-Castro negotiated the same deal for Mr. Zambada-Niebla. In 2009, Manny informed Loya-Castro that the federal prosecutor in Washington D.C. and the DEA had agreed that Mr. Zambada-Niebla's charges would also be dismissed and he would not be subject to prosecution in exchange for information. As a result, they arranged a meeting between the DEA agents and Mr. Zambada-Niebla in Mexico City so that the parties could establish a more personal relationship and so they could deal directly under the same arrangement that Mr. Loya-Castro had. Mr. Loya-Castro told Mr. Zambada-Nieble that he was immune from arrest and prosecution under the existing agreement and that the agents wanted to continue the same arrangement with him.

Basically, the DEA teamed up with the Sinaloa Cartel. The Sinaloa Cartel would help provide information that the DEA would use to take down the Sinaloa Cartel's rivals; in return, certain key Sinaloa Cartel figures would be immune from prosecution. This relations ship was going back several years.

Of course, the predictable outcome would be that the Sinaloa Cartel would come to dominate the drug-trafficking in Mexico.

Might this arrangement help explain the greater extent of geographic influence of the Sinaloa Cartel as opposed to the other cartels in Mexico?

We now consider excerpts from Mexico's Drug Cartels by the Congressional Research Service, updated February 25, 2008, from pages 13-15 (of 21) (I fixed some misspellings):

Enforcer Gangs

[snip]

Sinaloa Cartel

In response to the Zetas, the Sinaloa cartel established its own heavily-armed enforcer gangs, the Negros and Pelones. Both are less sophisticated than the Zetas, and focused on attacks against adversaries.³⁹ Edgar "La Barbie" Valdés Villarreal is alleged to be the head of the Negros. The Negros are believed to be "responsible for the recent rise in attacks against police officers in Nuevo Laredo, in an attempt to wrest control over the local police from the Zetas."⁴⁰

In recent turf wars in Tamaulipas, Guerrero, Michoacán, Nuevo León, and Tabasco, the Zetas have alleged that the Sinaloa cartel and Negros leader "La Barbie," enjoy police protection. The Mexican government dismissed these charges, noting that it has at varying times focused on prosecutions of different cartels, and each time the affected cartel charges that the government is working on behalf of a rival organization.⁴¹ In May 2006, "La Barbie" made similar allegations of police protection of the Zetas in a full-page ad in a Mexico City daily.⁴²

Police Corruption

Mexican cartels advance their operations, in part, by corrupting or intimidating law enforcement officials. For example, Nuevo Laredo municipal police have reportedly been involved in the kidnapping of Gulf cartel competitors to hand over to the Zetas. The Zetas then hold them for ransom or torture them for information about their drug operations.⁴³ The International Narcotics Control Board⁴⁴ (INCB) reports that although Mexico has made concerted efforts to reduce corruption in recent years, it remains "a serious problem."⁴⁵ Recent efforts to combat corruption include promoting professionalism in law enforcement agencies and inclusion of rule of law lessons in training. Nevertheless, the INCB recommends that Mexico continue to promote efforts to combat corruption.⁴⁶

Some agents of Mexico's Federal Investigative Agency (AFI) are believed to work as enforcers for the Sinaloa cartel, and the Attorney General's Office (PGR) reported in December 2005 that one-fifth of its officers are under investigation for criminal activity. The PGR reported in late 2005 that nearly 1,500 of AFI's 7,000 agents were under investigation for suspected criminal activity and 457 were facing charges. In November 2005, a video depicting the interrogation of four Zetas who revealed their methods of torture, ties to Mexican law enforcement agencies, and recruitment techniques, was given to the Dallas Morning News. The video ends with the murder of one of the Zetas. The Mexican government sent mixed signals about the involvement of AFI agents in the kidnapping of the Zetas, first announcing that eight agents were under investigation, and then announcing that AFI agents had no connection to the kidnapping and murder of the four Zetas.⁴⁷ However, a report from a non-governmental organization says that "subsequent U.S. and Mexican press reports based on Mexican court files have concluded that AFI agents probably kidnapped the Zetas in the resort city of Acapulco, then handed them over to members of the Sinaloa cartel to be interrogated and executed."⁴⁸

This might put into perspective a recent report entitled Neither Rights Nor Security: Killings, Torture, and Disappearances in Mexico's "War on Drugs". The report made a splash in some circles about rampant torture and other abuses by Mexican authorities during recent years.

Of course, it could be that authorities on both sides of the border have been corrupted, with key officials allowing the trafficking of arms to the Sinaloa Cartel and obstructing justice on its behalf, and steering the conduct of counternarcotics operations to take down the Sinaloa Cartel's competitors.

That might also explain not just the... uh... aggressive law enforcement tactics... :) being used by Mexican authorities, but also the rise of some apparent vigilantes in some parts of Mexico. From Shadowy group says it targets cartel; some in Veracruz are glad, October 19, 2011, by Tracy Wilkinson:

Reporting from Veracruz, Mexico— The callers to the radio program were voicing their support for the Matazetas, the Zeta killers.

Better they fight among themselves. Let them kill each other. Anything to rid us of the thugs who long ago took control of our city and are slaughtering our people.

It is a sign of the desperation and deep outrage over surging drug-war violence that a shadowy group of vigilante killers is not only tolerated but welcomed by many here in Mexico's third-most populous state.

Yet it also comes with a disturbing question: Just who is behind the killings of Zetas — another drug gang? Agents acting on behalf of the government or military? An ad hoc group whose presence is being tolerated by authorities as well as the public?

Or, are these vigilantes that are fed up with the excessive crime and with the excessive government corruption? Skipping down:

Their sudden rise and the surgical precision with which the killers systematically picked off nearly 100 people in 17 days has led to conjecture among some people that they may be operating with implicit or direct support of the government or military. Some suggest that the June kidnapping, torture and killing of three marine cadets in Veracruz might have propelled the marine corps to begin acting outside the law. Officials dismiss such speculation, and others wonder why a group aspiring to be a clandestine death squad would post videos on YouTube.

The case against Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla - and several related cases - are being prosecuted in northern Illinois. In fact, according to a February 18, 2010, press release from the US Attorney's office in the Northern District of Illinois, several Chicago-area-based agencies were key in cooperating to bring Mr. Zambada's case to court:

The DEA led the investigation in Chicago, together with the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division and the Chicago Police Department. Also assisting in the overall investigation were DEA's National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), the High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) task force, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Police Department; the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of Illinois; the Chicago and Peoria offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the Chicago offices of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Cook County Sheriff's Department, and other state and local law enforcement agencies. The investigation was coordinated by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago, and with the assistance of agents and analysts of the Special Operations Division (SOD), and attorneys from the Criminal Division's Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section (NDDS), which is prosecuting related cases.

It sure looks suspicious that the current President, under whose administration much of this gun-trafficking scandal has occurred, is from the same part of the country as key law enforcement agencies that helped put together this case against Zambada.

What might have happened that US authorities are now prosecuting a guy they supposedly had a deal with? And, what classified information might the government be trying to keep under wraps during the course of this prosecution?

Pearls of the Sun God, Part 2

2011-10-22T19:15:00.000-07:00

We continue from Part 1 examining the events in Somalia, which have taken an interesting turn.

Anyone following the news from the Horn of Africa knows that the TFG, together with AMISOM, launched an offensive to clear Al Shabaab terrorists from Mogadishu and its environs.

From AMISOM PRESS RELEASE: TFG/AMISOM Commence Operations to Secure Final Sector of Mogadishu, October 10, 2011:

10 civilian deaths from continued Al Shabaab mortaring in Heliwa and Karaan Districts last week have prompted the Somali National Army, supported by AMISOM, to undertake operations in the North of the Mogadishu.

Operations are aimed at securing the former Arafat Hospital and the Pasta Factory on the Industrial Road, and driving the Al Qaeda linked extremists out of the city.

And, more recently, from AMISOM PRESS RELEASE: Control of Deynile Critical to Security of Mogadishu, October 21, 2011:

Mogadishu, 21 October, 2011; AMISOM Force Commander, Maj. Gen. Fred Mugisha, today undertook a tour of the frontline following the commencement yesterday of operations in support of the Somali National Army, aimed at pushing al-Qa'ida linked extremists from the strategic Deynile district on the outskirts of Mogadishu.

"Deynile is of vital strategic importance as it controls access to the Afgoye Corridor which links the capital to the terrorist-controlled areas of southern Somalia, allowing them to reinforce and resupply their fighters in Masla and Balaad in the far northeastern edges of the city," he said following his tour.

"The Afgoye Corridor is also home to hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons and securing it will allow humanitarian aid, which the extremists have so far been restricting, to finally reach them," he said. "The extremists have also been using the suburbs of Deynile as a base to assemble improvised explosive devices, including car and truck bombs such as those recently employed to target civilians in the capital."

He said that the success of this operation was critical for the security of Mogadishu. "As was to be expected, given Deynile's significance, the operation has encountered heavy resistance but steady progress is being made. In the face of this resistance, AMISOM has suffered casualties," he added.

The offensive has had some success - which generates new problems. As we previously pointed out, control of key economic areas in Mogadishu served as a source of income for Al Shabaab, as the organization "taxed" merchants and businesses.

Of course, we have also been told a big part of the problem in Somalia now is a famine.

But, then, the famine is starting to look a little suspicious.

We now consider an article entitled Somalia: Manufacturing a famine by Rasna Warah, October 19, 2011:

On July 18 this year, the United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea tabled a report to the UN Security Council.

The report stated that United Nations agencies, international humanitarian aid organisations and local Somali non-governmental organisations had been forced to move their operations or cease them entirely in many parts of Somalia, mainly due to "an alarming void in international humanitarian aid and development assistance," and also because of "threats from elements of Al Shabaab," who control much of southern Somalia.

Two days later, the UN's World Food Programme — the largest distributor of food aid to Somalia — declared that Bakool and Lower Shebelle, two regions in southern Somalia, had been hit by the worst famine in 20 years.

The UN agency further claimed that 3.7 million people across the country — almost half the total Somali population – were in danger of starving, of which 2.8 million were in the south.

This declaration led to a massive multimillion-dollar fund-raising campaign by UN and international humanitarian agencies. Meanwhile, journalists began referring to the famine as a "biblical event." By September, Time magazine was reporting that the famine had expanded and that a full 12.4 million people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda were at risk from hunger.

The magazine also stated that in southern Somalia, 63 per cent of the population was either starving or at risk of it.

These figures did not convince many Somali analysts, including Ahmed Jama, a Nairobi-based agricultural economist and former consultant with the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation.

"I was disturbed by the WFP announcement because Lower Shebelle is Somalia's breadbasket and had even experienced a bumper harvest last year," he told this writer.

Skipping down:

But was there really widespread famine, or were the famine figures exaggerated or misinterpreted? FSNAU's estimates for Somali populations "in crisis" in the period August-September 2011 were highest in the most fertile southern parts of Somalia, and were highest in those areas controlled by Al Shabaab.

Significantly, there were only 490,000 people (less than one-eighth of Nairobi's population) in Somalia who were experiencing what the IPC classifies as "famine" or a "humanitarian catastrophe."

In fact, about half of the nearly four million people that the WFP claims are starving are actually experiencing what is known as a "humanitarian emergency"; the rest are in an "acute food and livelihood crisis."

Therefore, I think the widely reported "famine" in Somalia is highly exaggerated. What Somalia is experiencing is generalised food insecurity, not widespread famine. Unfortunately, most media organisations have failed to mention or comprehend this fact.

Is it possible that the "famine" in Somalia was "manufactured" to raise funds? The sequence of events leading to the famine appeal certainly raises suspicions. According to Jama, the timing of the famine declaration in July was probably a response to the shortfall of funds that WFP has recently been experiencing and also to divert attention from the criticism that the UN agency was subjected to after the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia released its 2010 report in March last year.

Then, WFP was castigated by the UN Monitoring Group for colluding with corrupt Somali contractors who are known to sell or divert food aid. Sources interviewed by the Monitoring Group — an entity mandated by the UN Security Council to monitor arms embargo violations in Somalia — estimated that up to half of the food aid reaching Somalia was regularly diverted, not just by Somali transport contractors, but by WFP personnel and NGOs operating in Somalia. That 2010 report led some donors, notably the US, to withdraw funding to WFP’s operations in Somalia.

Rasna then goes on to explain how the European Union has invested a considerable amount of money - 175 million Euros over the past 15 years - to develop the agricultural infrastructure of the Shabelle region of Somalia - "Somalia's breadbasket" - and the question presents itself as to how a famine could occur in a "breadbasket" whose infrastructure has been built up with so much investment over more than a decade. Later on, Rasna points out that the EU funds this through the UN, and relies on UN reports to assess the effectiveness of the program - without any independent or EU audits.

An opportunity for someone? To divert and profit from control of international aid? And, perhaps more... after all, there is international traffic of ships, aircraft, and trucks moving that international aid, from developed countries to Somalia, and then the ships, aircraft and trucks go back... I wonder if they are empty when they go back.

The interesting turn, though, is a Kenyan armed invervention, prompted - supposedly - by lawlessness that spilled over from Somalia into Kenya.

From Kibaki gambles on regional war with Al Shabaab, October 21, 2011 (also available here):

Panic in Lamu

Some witnesses say the kidnappings along Kenya's coast were carried out by groups linked to the Somali pirates whose operations have come under pressure from heavier international maritime policing in the region. The kidnappings generated panic. The resort town of Lamu, favoured by (relatively) wealthy European tourists, emptied within days and this at the start of the tourist high season, which this year was forecast to generate a record US$1 billion in revenue.

Those abductions were further aggravated by the kidnapping of two Spanish aid workers in the sprawling Dadaab refugee camp. This was the shot that sent Kenya's armed forces into south-central Somalia. Invoking Article 61 of the United Nations charter on territorial integrity, some 1,600 Kenyan troops launched their first cross-border military offensive, Operation Linda Nchi (Protect the Nation), since the end of the Shifta War in 1967. Derided in the region for their lack of fighting experience, the Kenyan armed forces have deployed mechanised infantry with aerial cover from fighter aircraft and helicopter gunships. We hear that Somali TFG troops will be joining them in the battle for Afmadow.

The real prize, though, is the port city of Kismayo. Both Kenya's military and its Amisom counterparts believe that the capture of Kismayo, from which Al Shabaab now derives much of its revenue, will choke off the militants.

Kismayo... in Part 1 we discussed how Al Shabaab taxes, among other things, the charcoal industry, which exports charcoal to the Arabian Peninsula. But, a port town is important for moving other commodities, as well.

By the way: the Kenyan attack seems to be supported by US drone activity which has resulted in losses of some of our drones.

Either way, Kismayo is important to Al Shabaab, and Al Shabaab is preparing to defend it. From Kenya-Somalia: A risky intervention, October 20, 2011:

On the move

"Many people have been leaving in the last three days. No-one wants to get caught up in the fighting, I have sent my family to the villages," said a resident of Afmadow, a town 140km north of Kenya's border.

Describing the intervention as a "joint Kenya-Somali operation", the commander of Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces in the border area, Gen. Yusuf Hussein Dhumal, told IRIN from his base in Tabta, 65km north of the Kenyan border, that his forces were in control of Qoqani, 50km south of Afmadow town.

"We are being delayed by heavy rains. Our aim was to be in Afmadow by now but the rains have made that impossible. We will push until we chase them [Al-Shabab] from Kismayo."

Mohamed Ahmed Ilkase, a reporter for Somali national TV travelling with the Somali forces, told IRIN Al-Shabab was reportedly regrouping in Afmadow.

A resident of the port city of Kismayo, 500km south of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, said Al-Shabab had been reinforcing its positions in the city and conscripting people "to fight the enemy. They have been bringing many militias since Monday [17 October] and have been calling on residents to register to fight."

He said families had started leaving the city. "Some are going south [towards Kenya], while many others are going north to Mogadishu."

Al Shabaab has time to dig in to defend Kismayo, conscripting local people to fight. The time is available because heavy rains are slowing the movement of the military forces trying to seize the town... heavy rains in a region that has a famine caused by drought.

Of course, it is not uncommon for an area devastated by drought to have heavy rain, which still does not make up for an extended time of below-average rainfall. And, it is not uncommon in arid regions of the world for sudden heavy rain to bring vehicular movement to a standstill.

We consider an excerpt from an article entitled Taliban Heroin Flooding Kenya on its Way To Europe and The Americas from December 14, 2009 (the post appears to be a copy of an article from The Standard (Kenya), to which I link in the sidebar, but I have (curiously) not been able to find the article there; italics, boldface and other formatting are in the original):

Kenya is fast becoming a key hub for trafficking of drugs from Afghanistan to the rest of the world.

According to reports by the United Nations, "30 to 35 metric tonnes" of Afghan heroin pass through East Africa each year.

This is two-thirds the volume going through West Africa. The largest ever drug haul in Kenya, in December 2004, was 1.1 metric tonnes with a street value of over Sh13 billion.

The proceeds from the drugs are used to finance terrorism activities in Northern Africa and some other sub-Saharan states. It is also suspected that the illicit drug trade supports the unending conflict in neighbouring Somalia.

The Taliban, among whom the world's most notorious terrorist Osama bin Laden hides, are reported to earn $100 million (Sh8 billion) a year from protecting the drug trade. Drug barons are rumoured to sit in Afghan government positions raking in billions more. The UN puts the potential export value of Afghan narcotics at about $3.4 billion (Sh270 billion) a year. So much is grown that destroying it all is impossible: With stockpiles of 10,000 metric tonnes awaiting export, the UN this year proposed creating a "flood of drugs" in the country to destroy the value of opium.

This last comment is interesting; if the Afghan opium fields were suddendly destroyed, for example, by spraying herbicide on or by burning the opium plants, there is still enough Afghan heroin in the "pipeline" to supply the world until another harvest - and, perhaps, for longer. This stuff has been getting stockpiled under the watch of US-led international forces in Afghanistan.

Skipping down:

On November 24, a ministerial declaration supporting UN efforts against drugs and organised crime was signed in Kenya. Dated December 8, the report quotes Antonio Maria Costa, the Executive Director on the UN Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) as saying: "Drugs are enriching not only organized crime but also terrorists and other anti-Government forces,"

He describes the situation as a worrisome development.

"In East Africa... 30 to 35 tonnes of Afghan heroin [are] trafficked each year causing a dramatic increase in heroin addiction and spreading of HIV and Aids in the slums of Nairobi and Mombasa."

The official said the rise is also connected to state failure in Somalia.

"Mainly because of the drastic situation in Somalia, he said, East Africa was becoming a free economic zone for all sorts of trafficking — drugs, migrants, guns, hazardous wastes and natural resources."

West Africa has traditionally been associated with the international drug trade but Kenya now leads states in East Africa that have emerged as favourites for drug traffickers.

Obviously, this development of Kenya becoming a hub for drug-trafficking is not something that happened over night. For example, drug-trafficking through Kenya was addressed in an article entitled Traffickers' drugs haven in Kenya by Karen Allen, May 9, 2006

Mules

It is something that worries Titus Naikuni, chief executive of Kenya Airways.

His airline crews have been amongst those used as drug mules.

Five of his staff have been arrested over the past year, trying to bring narcotics into Europe.

With extra security measures now in place, he says his employees are aware that international drug cartels are now targeting them.

The travel industry is used to move drugs from Kenya to Europe.

It is interesting that the previously-described "panic in Lamu" is resulting in a dramatically-decreased number of tourists coming in from Europe to Kenya. Decreased business might have an impact on the travel industry... at a minimum, fewer tourists means that honest customs and immigration officials (assuming some can be found) have more time to examine aircraft, passengers and cargo, and thus to detect drug shipments.

We now consider an excerpt from a recent report, Termites at Work: Transnational Organized Crime and State Erosion in Kenya by Peter Gastrow, September, 2011:

While to the onlooker Kenya appears to be in a relatively healthy state, it is in fact weakening due to a process of internal decay. Endemic corruption and powerful transnational criminal networks are “white-anting” state institutions and public confidence in them. Termites are at work, hollowing out state institutions from the inside. As a result, development is being hampered, governance undermined, public trust in institutions destroyed, and international confidence in Kenya’s future constantly tested.

The country is perceived as one of the most corrupt in the world, ranked far down at 154th on a list of 178 countries that feature in the 2010 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index.⁵ Close to 90 percent of Kenyans surveyed rated their country as being between corrupt and extremely corrupt, while only 8.5 percent regarded it as slightly corrupt.⁶ Bribery has become a normal part of life. In 2010, 58.6 percent of persons who sought the services of the Nairobi City Council paid bribes, 54.4 percent of those who sought the services of the police did the same, and 47.8 percent who sought the services of the judiciary also resorted to bribes.⁷ It is this corruption- ridden environment that enables criminal networks to thrive. They can buy protection, information, and power.

I wonder if the corruption includes collaborating with transnational cartels that traffic in Afghan heroin (and Latin American cocaine)?

Kenya's intervention in Somalia is not about stabilizing Somalia, a neighbor which has been in chaos for decades. The intervention is about control of a route for moving heroin from Afghanistan where it is produced, via Iran and Pakistan, to the Somali port of Kismayo, from which heroin is trafficked through the lawless areas of southern Somalia and across the border into Kenya, and from there smuggled to lucrative markets in Europe and elsewhere.

And, the US is actively supporting this intervention, just like the US occupies Afghanistan, where the heroin is now comfortably produced and even stockpiled.

This One Before, Part 3

2011-10-16T20:00:00.000-07:00

In Part 1 we began to examine an incident in which US government agents were ambushed in Mexico, and reviewed how most of the weapons the Mexican drug cartels use are in fact military-grade weapons that cannot have come from gunshops and gunshows on the US side of the border. In Part 2 we considered the attack more in-depth, and saw how it must have been a deliberate attack targeting US agents, and how those agents were likely sold out by US authorities.

In a related series, we saw in Take A Long Holiday, Part 1 how the Palestinian Authority's key leaders have been involved in trafficking heroin for decades, and we saw some of the impact this has on Palestinians in the West Bank. In Take A Long Holiday, Part 2, we considered the movement of drugs through western Africa, looking at cocaine moving from Latin America to Europe, and connections from Islamic terrorist groups leading the other way through Latin America, all the way to the US border.

There have been a great many very predictable developments since then. In fact, I have not blogged about this because it is playing out pretty much the way I had anticipated. I do feel, though, that it is time for an update.

We now consider in its entirety an article entitled Mexico unlikely base for terrorism, from October 14, 2011:

MEXICO CITY –The alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States has cast Mexico into the news as a potential staging area for a terrorist operation.

But experts say the likelihood of such a plot going undetected in Mexico by U.S. authorities is low and that Mexico's drug cartels would be unlikely to become involved in such a plot.

U.S. officials alleged Tuesday that an Iranian-American and a member of Iran's Quds Force sought to enlist a Mexican drug cartel in a plot to kill Saudi Ambassador Adel Al-Jubeir in Washington, perhaps by bombing a restaurant he was known to frequent.

One of the men, Manssor Arbabsiar, 56, a naturalized U.S. citizen holding Iranian and U.S. passports, was said to have met in the Mexican border city of Reynosa with a Drug Enforcement Administration informant who he thought was a member of a violent drug cartel.

The barrage of 251,287 unredacted U.S. diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks released more than a month ago suggest that American diplomats maintain a steady focus on Iran's activities in Latin America. In Mexico, that meant keeping an eye on a mosque in Torreon, watching the impact of Iran's "dynamic" new ambassador, gauging public attitudes toward Iran and coaching agents at Mexico's National Security and Investigation Center – CISEN in its Spanish initials – the domestic intelligence agency.

Strategic Forecasting Inc., an Austin, Texas, global intelligence firm commonly called Stratfor, on Wednesday described as unlikely any use of Mexico as a staging ground for a terrorist attack emanating from the Middle East.

It noted that while the U.S.-Mexico border is porous and prone to security breaches, the U.S. government has "extremely active intelligence capabilities" embedded in Mexico. It added that Mexico is generally hostile to enemies of the United States, not wanting to risk possible intervention by U.S. forces should its territory be used in any attack.

The cartels have pragmatic interests in maintaining their core business of narcotics smuggling without greater interference, it added.

"Any plan to use Mexican drug cartels to carry out attacks against the U.S. would threaten the very existence of the cartel," a Stratfor analysis said.

"Mexican drug cartels are already facing challenges – struggling with one another and with the Mexican government for control over transportation routes that will allow them to transit cocaine from South America to the U.S. Any foray into international terrorism would be bad for business," Stratfor said.

So, the experts feel that Mexican drug cartels are not getting in bed with terrorists from the Middle East and Southwest Asia - at least not to the point of being willing to commit terrorist attacks on their behalf.

Of course, this opens up a whole line of questions regarding what could result in the Persian Gulf based on the allegations of this plot, and that, in turn, opens the door to speculation about who might be telling how much of the truth and who might benefit from the lies. But, this series does not deal with the Persian Gulf.

Then there is the question about illegal activities in the Western Hemisphere: drug trafficking, trafficking of weapons and other contraband, bribery and corruption... all these things go hand-in-hand. And, terrorism is financed through these activities. Terrorist organizations are big into trafficking drugs to fund their activities - so much so that they often lose sight of their political agenda, and focus on their profit motive - and into trafficking arms, which they use for terrorist attacks and for security for their other illegal activities.

It is increasingly difficult to separate terrorism from other illegal activities.

For an overview of what is publicly known about the "Fast and Furious" scandal, we consider excerpts from NRA's LaPierre: 'Fast and Furious' Was Plot Against Second Amendment, dated October 14, 2011:

The government-sanctioned gunrunning operation Fast and Furious was a plot to undermine Second Amendment rights in the United States, National Rifle Association officerWayne LaPierre charged on Friday in an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV.

"It's the only thing that makes any sense," LaPierre said. "Over a period of two or three years they were running thousands and thousands of guns to the most evil people on earth. At the same time they were yelling '90 per cent... of the guns the Mexican drug cartels are using come from the United States.'

That was a phony figure from the very start. Even the Wikileaks cables from our own State Department prove they are coming from Central America, they are not coming from the U.S. Every police officer will tell you that they're coming from Russia, they're coming from China, most of them are coming from Central America and a lot of them are coming from defections from the Mexican Army," said LaPierre, the NRA's executive vice president and CEO.

But LaPierre said that President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were determined to make it appear that most weapons used by the Mexicans came from north of the border, "so they could stick more gun legislation on honest American gun owners of the United States."

LaPierre insisted that the whole Fast and Furious scandal, in which he said "thousands and thousands" of weapons were allowed to cross into Mexico, would never have come to light at all if it hadn't been for the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in Arizona in December.

"We wouldn't know about this at all if [Terry] had not been killed and some of the good, honest, decent federal agents down the line had enough of the stench coming out of Washington and started to use the Whistleblower Act to go public and call the Justice Department out on this whole rotten, stinking scheme.

"Otherwise thousands of guns would still be going over the border into the Mexican drug cartels and the president and the attorney general and the secretary of state would all be running around going '90 percent of the guns come from America' in an attempt to seek political advantage and in an attempt to enact more gun control laws on honest American citizens and use this whole issue politically against the Second Amendment of the United States."

LaPierre summarizes the scandal nicely:

"Look at what has happened," he said. "We had our Department of Justice under the Obama administration running thousands and thousands of guns over the border and watching them go directly into the hands of some of the most evil people on earth, the Mexican drug cartels.

"At the same time they were letting the reputation of good, honest, decent Americans, law-abiding American gun dealers, be ruined.

"They ordered these sales to be made, they even overrode the InstaCheck system and ordered the dealers to make the sales. Then, when it all starts coming out, there's a massive cover-up."!

LaPierre compares the activities of the Obama Administration with those of a Latin American dictatorship, then offers an excellent assessment:

"What has happened in Fast and Furious is the equivalent of our Justice Department becoming willing co-conspirators with the Mexican drug cartels in their crimes."

Our Justice Department has become willing co-conspirators with the Mexican drug cartels.

Keep that in mind.

The claim that 90% of the arms used in the drugs wars come from the US has documentation that seems to support the claim, until one parses the supporting passages.

For example, in an excerpt from FIREARMS TRAFFICKING: U.S. Efforts to Combat Arms Trafficking to Mexico Face Planning and Coordination Challenges, dated June, 2009, pages 14-16 (pgs 19-21 of 83 in the pdf):

According to U.S. and Mexican government and law enforcement officials and data from ATF on firearms seized in Mexico and traced from fiscal year 2004 to fiscal year 2008, a large portion of the firearms fueling the Mexican drug trade originated in the United States, including a growing number of increasingly lethal weapons. As is inherently the case with various types of illegal trafficking, such as drug trafficking, the extent of firearms trafficking to Mexico is unknown;¹⁰ however, according to ATF, a large number of guns are seized from criminals by the military and law enforcement in Mexico, and information on many of these guns is submitted to ATF for the purposes of tracing their origins and uncovering how the guns arrived in Mexico.¹¹ ATF maintains data on the firearms that are seized in Mexico and submitted for a trace, and, from these firearms trace requests, ATF officials told us, they are often able to detect suspicious patterns and trends that can help identify and disrupt arms trafficking networks on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Using ATF's eTrace data, which currently serves as the best data we found available for analyzing the source and nature of firearms trafficked and seized in Mexico, we determined over 20,000, or 87 percent, of firearms seized by Mexican authorities and traced from fiscal year 2004 to fiscal year 2008 originated in the United States. Figure 3 shows the percentages of firearms seized in Mexico and traced from fiscal year 2004 to fiscal year 2008 that originated in the United States. Over 90 percent of the firearms seized in Mexico and traced over the last 3 years have come from the United States.

Around 68 percent of these firearms were manufactured in the United States, while around 19 percent were manufactured in third countries and imported into the United States before being trafficked into Mexico. ATF could not determine whether the remaining 13 percent foreign sourced arms had been trafficked into Mexico through the United States, due to incomplete information.

While the eTrace data only represents data from gun trace requests submitted from seizures in Mexico and not all the guns seized, it is currently the only systematic data available, and the conclusions from its use that the majority of firearms seized and traced originated in the United States were consistent with conclusions reached by U.S. and Mexican government and law enforcement officials involved personally in combating arms trafficking to Mexico. In 2008, of the almost 30,000 firearms that the Mexican Attorney General’s office said were seized, only around 7,200, or approximately a quarter, were submitted to ATF for tracing.

The report goes on to explain difficulties in how the system operates, and how those difficulties prevent a greater number of weapons from being traced. Furthermore, the report then indicates that experience of law enforcement personnel on both sides of the border supports this conclusion that 90% of the firearms come from the US.

However, look at what the report actually says. For 2008, 30,000 firearms were seized. Only 7,200 were submitted for tracing. Only 90% of those - about 6,480 firearms - were traced back to the US. That leaves over 23,000 firearms - 78% of the total seized - unaccounted-for regarding origins, and it means only a little over 20% of the firearms are actually traced back to the US.

Footnote 10 from the above passage is educational:

¹⁰While there is no data on the total number of firearms trafficked to Mexico, the Government of Mexico maintains data on the number of firearms seized in Mexico. Information, such as serial numbers, on many of these seized firearms is submitted to ATF's National Tracing Center for tracing. ATF's National Tracing Center attempts to trace the firearms using the information submitted. Between fiscal years 2004-2008, around 52 percent of trace requests from Mexico that were submitted to ATF's National Tracing Center identified the first retail dealer. Furthermore, according to ATF, the identification of the country of manufacturing origin of a firearm does not depend on identifying the first retail dealer but rather on the initial description of the firearm.

Again, there are no statistics on the total number of weapons trafficked to Mexico. There are only statistics from the US side of the border regarding what has been submitted to US authorities for tracing, and in this case, the number that came up was 52% of the trace requests identified a retailer, presumably in the US.

Let's go with the higher 90% figure, which is really 90% of 24% - because only 24% of the weapons seized in Mexico are submitted to US authorities for tracing.

That still leaves over three-quarters of the weapons seized in Mexico coming from somewhere else.

In other words, the Obama Administration is misleading everyone.

The political reason is obvious. As LaPierre points out (and as we knew), the political agenda is to generate propaganda that can be used to destroy our right to keep and bear arms. And, when all the dust settles, this is what the Obamanistas will plead guilty to.

But what is really going on?

LaPierre mentions - as have I, previously - that the cartels are mainly getting their weapons from Russia, China, and Central America, in addition to through defections from the Mexican Army.

Of course, this trend was noticed years ago. We consider an excerpt from Globalization and Transnational Organized Crime: The Russian Mafia in Latin America and the Caribbean by Bruce Michael Bagley, dated November 15, 2002, pages 9-10:

The third prong of the Russian mafia's strategy of expansion abroad over the 1990s focused on penetration of the Western Hemisphere, initially the United States and Canada. By the mid-1990s, frustrated by the disappointing results of their Asian strategy, Russian organized crime groups became increasingly interested in and focused on new opportunities for criminal activity in Latin America and the Caribbean. Specifically, they realized that the region offered open markets for Russian and Soviet bloc arms in exchange for drugs to be smuggled back to Europe and Russia and easy access to global financial networks for money laundering purposes. Moreover, the region's relatively weak states and deeply imbedded "culture of corruption" provided a familiar environment reminiscent of the one in post-Soviet Russia in which Russian criminal organizations had originally arisen and flourished. In effect, the Russian mafia adapted the previous Soviet-era tactics of forging ties in the Americas via attractive offers of cheap weapons and "technical assistance." This time around, however, the technical assistance proffered was in the realm of money laundering rather than in the use of sophisticated Soviet weaponry.

These arms-trafficking ties go back for years.

Military-grade weapons move one way, drugs move back the other way.

As I have stated, criminals get firearms the way they get drugs - illegally. If a plane, boat or truck goes one way carrying drugs, why can't it go back the other way carrying firearms. This is what they would have us believe regarding the US - drugs come north, weapons move south.

But, the drug trade is not confined to the US/Mexican border.

As I have repeatedly pointed out - and as anyone should know - the drug trade is global. Particularly, I have repeatedly pointed out how cocaine moves from Latin America through Africa to Europe, and how heroin moves from South Asia through the Balkans to Europe, and now through Africa to Europe and the Americas. Military-grade weapons move through Africa, too; Islamic terrorist organizations use them for jihad in Africa and against Israel, but some of the weapons make it to the Americas where they equip drug cartels.

So, why don't we hear about all this - the drugs moving through Africa, the ties that Islamic terrorists have with Latin America, the weapons-trafficking to Mexico of Russian and Chinese arms...? Sure, when it was politically convenient, we hear about an alleged Iranian plot, though there are questions that are raised regarding that, which are outside the scope of this series. But, Hezbollah - an Iranian proxy - has been active in Latin America for many years. Why don't we hear about that?

It is a question of money.

"What has happened in Fast and Furious is the equivalent of our Justice Department becoming willing co-conspirators with the Mexican drug cartels in their crimes."

From US Prosecutors Confirm Classified Information Colors Zambada Niebla's Case, dated October 4, 2011:

Prosecutors in the Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla case on Monday, Oct. 3, filed a motion in federal court in Chicago rebutting the accused Mexican narco-trafficker's argument that he has been denied access to critical evidence in preparing his defense due to a tardy call by the prosecution for national-security procedures to be invoked in his case.

In their pleadings, prosecutors again affirm the government's position that there was no immunity deal offered to the accused narco-trafficker or to the leadership of the Sinaloa drug-trafficking organization.

The pleadings filed by the prosecution do not address directly why the government is seeking to invoke national-security procedures for Zambada Niebla's case.

However, the government's motion does confirm that "classified materials" related to the case do exist, but also insists those classified materials do not support Zambada Niebla's immunity claims.

To date, no U.S. media outlet, other than Narco News, has reported on the US government's effort to invoke national security in the Zambada Niebla case.

Monday's filing by prosecutors confirms that Zambada Niebla's case does raise national security issues that require, according to those prosecutors, that special procedures be established by the court — under a 30-year-old law known as the Classified Information Procedures Act — to assure that classified materials do not become public during the court proceedings.

Zambada Niebla, son of one of the leaders of the Sinaloa "Cartel," arguably the most powerful international narco-trafficking organization on the planet, argues in his criminal case that he and the other leadership of Mexico's Sinaloa drug-trafficking organization, were, in effect, working for the U.S. government for years by providing US agents with intelligence about rival drug organizations.

The Sinaloa Cartel is in bed with the US government.

From Court Pleadings Point to CIA Role in Alleged "Cartel" Immunity Deal, September 11, 2011:

The fingerprints of the CIA have surfaced in a controversial federal criminal case pending in Chicago against Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, an alleged kingpin in the Sinaloa "drug cartel."

US government prosecutors filed pleadings in the case late last week seeking to invoke the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), a measure designed to assure national security information does not surface in public court proceedings.

[snip]

"That is a very reasonable conclusion [that the CIA is likely involved in this case in some way]," says a former federal agent familiar with national security procedures. "Seeking CIPA protection, yup, there is hot stuff to hide."

Does this look like something we have seen before?

From Cracking the Case: An Interview With Sibel Edmonds by Scott Horton, August 22, 2005:

SH: Okay, and you mention when you talk about criminal activity, drug-running, money-laundering, weapons-smuggling...

SE: And these activities overlap. It's not like okay, you have certain criminal entities that are involved in nuclear black market, and then you have certain entities bringing narcotics from the East. You have the same players when you look into these activities at high-levels you come across the same players, they are the same people.

SH: Well, when we're talking about those kind of levels of liquid cash money we probably also have to include major banks too, right?

SE: Financial institutions, yes.

And, from 'The Stakes Are Too High for Us to Stop Fighting Now' An interview with FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds by Christopher Deliso August 15, 2005:

SE: The fact that there are no investigations -- I will give you an analogy, okay? Say if we decided to have a "war on drugs," but said in the beginning, "right, we're only going to go after the young black guys on the street level." Hey, we already have tens of thousands of them in our jails anyway, why not a few more? But we decided never to go after the middle levels, let alone the top levels...

It's like this with the so-called war on terror. We go for the Attas and Hamdis -- but never touch the guys on the top.

CD: You think they [the government] know who they are, the top guys, and where?

SE: Oh yeah, they know.

CD: So why don't they get them?

SE: It's like I told you before -- this would upset "certain foreign relations." But it would also expose certain of our elected officials, who have significant connections with high-level drugs- and weapons-smuggling -- and thus with the criminal underground, even with the terrorists themselves.

The analogy with the "war on drugs" is right on the money, because it is really the same war these days.

Here is what is going on: the drug cartels are paying off the Obama Administration at the highest levels. The Obamanistas are assisting one cartel in eliminating its rivals. The Sinaloa Cartel passes intelligence to the US on the other cartels; US and Mexican authorities eliminate these rivals. Agencies get drug busts, and politicians get paid to steer government operations against some cartels and away from another. And, the Obamanistas help arm one cartel in its fight against the others, in addition to taking direct action against the other cartels. In return, the Obamanistas get an opportunity to disarm the American people, and this becomes the cover story if they get caught.

I wonder... how much foreign drug-trafficking money is being laundered to the Democrats to accomplish this? And, I wonder how many Republicans are involved? Maybe there are no Republicans involved in this scandal, and that is why it is not being hushed up... unlike the Sibel Edmonds case, which involved corruption on both sides of the aisle, and was effectively silenced under Bush-43, despite Democrats who promised to follow up on it.

License to Intrude, Part 2

2011-10-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

There is a great deal going on in the world, and keeping up with things can be challenging. So, as I was reviewing news from the Caucasus region, I was surprised when I came across an article addressing a situation related to a topic I had previously written about. At this point, I suggest you read Part 1.

And now, we begin by reviewing an excerpt from Facebook privacy row: Social network giant admits to 'bugs', dated September 28, 2011 (boldface in original):

In its latest privacy blunder, the social networking site was forced to confirm that it has been constantly tracking its 750 million users, even when they are using other sites.

The social networking giant says the huge privacy breach was simply a mistake - that software automatically downloaded to users' computers when they logged in to Facebook 'inadvertently' sent information to the company, whether or not they were logged in at the time.

Most would assume that Facebook stops monitoring them after they leave its site, but technology bloggers discovered this was not the case.

In fact, data has been regularly sent back to the social network's servers - data that could be worth billions when creating 'targeted' advertising based on the sites users visit.

The website's practices were exposed by Australian technology blogger Nik Cubrilovic and have provoked a furious response across the internet.

In a post entitled Logging out of Facebook is not enough, from September 25, 2011, Cubrilovic begins to provide an explanation as to how Facebook monitors the online activity of its users, even after they log out of Facebook. At the end of this post, he summarizes:

Specifically the datr and lu cookies are retained after logout and on subsequent requests, and the a_user cookie, which contains your userid, is only cleared once the session is restarted. Most importantly, connection state is retained through these HTTP connections. There is never a clean break between a logged in session and a logged out session - but I will have more on that in a follow-up post.

Interestingly, Facebook - until only a few days ago - was placing cookies on computers that identified the Facebook account associated with the computer, and what other websites the computer accessed, even after the Facebook user was logged out.

This information was being sent back to Facebook.

The most important of these cookies contained the user's ID. Reportedly, this cookie is now deleted on logout. But, there were other cookies. From Facebook Fixes Logout Issue, Explains Cookies, September 27th, 2011:

The Other Cookies

This leaves a number of other cookies, and I will be explaining the purpose of each one as per information from Facebook.

The datr cookie is set when a browser first visits facebook.com. The purpose of it, as per Facebook, is:

We set the 'datr' cookie when a web browser accesses facebook.com (except social plugin iframes), and the cookie helps us identify suspicious login activity and keep users safe. For instance, we use it to flag questionable activity like failed login attempts and attempts to create multiple spam accounts.

The lu cookie is also set the first time a browser visits facebook.com and is used to identify the browser pre-fill the users email address in the login form. The purpose of it, as per Facebook again, is:

the 'lu' cookie helps protect people using public computers. The data it contains is used to make subtle changes to the login form, such as prefilling your email address and unchecking the "Keep me logged in" option if we detect multiple users signing in with the same browser. If you log out, this cookie does not contain your user id and Facebook will not prefill the email field.

These cookies, by the very purpose they serve, uniquely identify the browser being used - even after logout. As a user, you have to take Facebook at their word that the purpose of these cookies is only for what is being described. The previous a_user cookie that was fixed identified your user account and has been fixed, these cookies identify the browser and are not re-associated with your logged in account.

Nik Cubrilovic compiled a table showing how cookies with particular identifying data were preserved on and even added to a computer after logout from Facebook. This includes information categorized as "act". Continuing with Facebook Fixes Logout Issue, Explains Cookies:

Most of the remaining cookies are not very interesting - they set things like the language of your browser and device dimensions. The most interesting cookie, for me (after the userid, obviously), was act. The values for this cookie for the requests I logged were 1316962370811/2;, 1316972790935/11; and 1317032073811/0;. It is a timestamp for each request, in milliseconds since UNIX epoch (1st January 1970). What interested me was that not only was the timestamp accurate to milliseconds (ie. thousandths of a second) but that an additional number was being added to it. My gut instinct was that the additional number (ie. the /11, /0 and /2 in those exaples) was being added to make the timestamp unique for each and every request. Facebook confirmed this:

It is a monotonically increasing counter of actions since the start of logging. As we shared, this is for the collection of performance data -- nothing else.

I understand the technical reason for that - they can store the timestamp as a primary key in their logging backend and not have to associate benchmarking of each request back to a user. I believe Facebook here when they say that although this is a unique identifier it isn't used to link back to a user id - but it is definitely being logged and it can be linked to a user.

A lawsuit has now been filed against Facebook regarding this matter.

For further background on the situation and the lawsuit, you can review: Lawmakers seek FTC probe of Facebook post-log out tracking by Elinor Mills, September 28, 2011; Facebook sued over tracking users after logout by Elinor Mills, September 30, 2011; and Facebook Sued for Tracking Users After Log-Off; Class-Action Status Sought by Joel Rosenblatt and Sara Forden, September 30, 2011.

The judge presiding over the case is Magistrate Judge Paul Singh Grewal, who was appointed in 2010. In addition to legal experience in a wide range of subject areas, including civil rights and contract matters, Judge Grewal has his Bachelor of Science degree from MIT, and has particular experience regarding technology-related issues. Judge Grewal recently had the Google/Oracle mediation referred to him. Judging by his background, Judge Grewal would seem like an excellent presiding judge for a case of this kind.

This case is of interest. As the Electronic Privacy Information Center points out (pgs 5-6 of 14) in a September 29, 2011, letter submitted to the Federal Communications Commission regarding a Facebook feature called "Ticker" (superscripts refer to footnotes in original):

Ticker allows a user to see the Facebook posts of complete strangers — or even Facebook interactions between complete strangers — to which a friend of the user has connected. Facebook users were initially surprised by this phenomenon, prompting a host of negative comments on Facebook's blog,²¹ blog posts criticizing Facebook,²² advice on how to ensure the privacy of a user's post,²³ advice on removing Ticker entirely,²⁴ and even a petition to Facebook to remove Ticker.²⁵ Frictionless sharing will amplify Ticker's problems because under the frictionless sharing model social apps will automatically post the user's activity to the ticker feeds of anyone to which the user is connected. Thus, in addition to being populated by traditional Facebook activities — "likes," comments, wall posts, picture posts, and so on—Ticker will soon be filled with detailed information about users' media consumption and lifestyle habits—the TV shows they watch, the books they read, the websites they visit, and the routes they jog, most likely without users affirmatively setting their preferences to share such information.

Users have already reported problems caused by the new availability of personal information on Ticker.²⁶ And once social apps enter the picture, Facebook users could unknowingly share information about nearly every aspect of their lives, ranging from the embarrassing but otherwise innocuous revelation of questionable music taste ("[u]sers unaware of their Ticker broadcasts will be upset, for some time, that Ticketmaster told the world they'll be attending Boyz II Men's reunion show")²⁷ to the potentially dangerous revelation that one is consuming the "wrong" political or religious content ("Once you are on the WP Social Reader app, everything you read within the app will automatically be shared in the following ways....").²⁸ Indeed, the Iranian government has a history of retaliating against those who engage in politicized Facebook activity. For example, one Iranian-American graduate student who was politically active on Facebook received a threatening email that read "we know your home address in Los Angeles," and directed the user to "stop spreading lies about Iran on Facebook."²⁹

Wow! The government of Iran is using Facebook information to target political dissidents. Aren't they one of the founding members of the "Axis of Evil"?

More background can be found in another Electronic Privacy Information Center document, entitled Complaint, Request for Investigation, Injunction, and Other Relief In the Matter of Facebook, Inc. and the Facial Identification of Users from June 10, 2011 (pgs 5-7 of 34):

21. Facial recognition systems include computer-based biometric techniques that detect and
identify human faces.¹⁸

[snip]

25. The Chinese government is currently building an elaborate network infrastructure to enable the identification of people in public spaces. The "All-Seeing Eye" relies on the massive deployment of facial recognition technology.²¹

26. According to documents obtained by EPIC under the Freedom of Information Act, the US Department of Homeland Security is pursuing a far-reaching program to automate the identification and tagging of individuals, both citizens and non-citizens, based upon their facial images.²²

27. Among other programs, DHS is promoting face recognition technology so that federal marshals can surreptitiously photograph people in airports, bus and train stations, and elsewhere leading to the creation of new capabilities for government monitoring of individuals in public spaces.²³

28. Facial recognition technology and its application for mass surveillance was described by Adm. John Poindexter, the architect of "Total Information Awareness."²⁴

[snip]

30. Social networking services have played a transformative role in several regions of the world, but governments also seek access to images of political organizers to obtain actual identities and to enable investigation and prosecution.

31. In Iran, government agents have posted pictures of political activists online and used "crowd-sourcing" to identify individuals.²⁵ There is also evidence that Iranian researchers are working on developing and improving facial recognition technology to identify political dissidents.²⁶

32. Facebook currently grants government access to user information on merely a "good faith belief" that the disclosure is required by law or when it is necessary to protect Facebook from people it believes are violating its "Statement of Rights of Responsibilities."²⁹

[In the original, footnotes numbered 27 and 28 are not found.]

So, it is not only the government of Iran. Information that is publicly available is being used by Communist China. And, assuming neither misconduct nor mistake on the part of Facebook executives and employees, the US government can arrive with a national security letter and have access to all this information about US citizens.

Of course, at the other end of the spectrum, a situation could develop where corruptible Facebook employees or executives might come to be working with rogue government agents, foreign powers and transnational organized crime. Possibilities include:

1) Your personal information, including biometric data, gets passed to cartels specializing in identity theft.

2) Foreign intelligence services target you for an espionage operation, because you work in a place of interest. For example, a job as mundane as that of a Facebook employee could be interesting, because of the information you can pass them on other people that they might recruit as spies.

3) Political leaders establish an "enemies" list; speak out against the policies of an administration, and you find yourself subject to enhanced searches at airports, you get an audit by the IRS, and your bank accounts get frozen because of some "mistake" that connects you to terrorism.

This is everything the Gestapo or the KGB ever wish they could have had, and more.

And, we haven't even looked at the extremely unlikely worst case scenario: where Facebook executives/employees are collaborating in activities they know to be illegal with politicians whose corruption they share.

Pearls of the Sun God, Part 1

2011-09-05T11:10:00.000-07:00

We begin a new series looking at the situation in Somalia.

In addition to the civil war, which has been going on for two decades now, the situation in Somalia is once again complicated by drought which threatens many Somalis with starvation.

We begin with excerpts from Somalia famine: UN warns of 750,000 deaths, from September 5, 2011:

As many as 750,000 people could die as Somalia's drought worsens in the coming months, the UN has warned, declaring a famine in a new area.

The UN says tens of thousands of people have died after what is said to be East Africa's worst drought for 60 years.

Bay becomes the sixth area to be officially declared a famine zone - mostly in parts of southern Somalia controlled by the Islamist al-Shabab.

Some 12 million people across the region need food aid, the UN says.

The situation in the Bay region was worse than anything previously recorded, said senior UN's technical adviser Grainne Moloney.

"The rate of malnutrition [among children] in Bay region is 58%. This is a record rate of acute malnutrition," she told journalists in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

This is almost double the rate at which a famine is declared.

"In total, 4 million people are in crisis in Somalia, with 750,000 people at risk of death in the coming four months in the absence of adequate response," the UN's Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) says.

Bay is in southern Somalia, part of a region that is controlled by the Al Shabaab Islamist militants that are affiliated with Al Qaeda. Its capital, Baidoa, was the national capital for a short time during the 2000's. Al Shabaab is battling the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), which is the internationally-recognized national government of Somalia, for control of this and other regions of Somalia.

The drought is, of course, a problem in much of East Africa, but its impact on Somalia, especially that part of Somalia controlled by Al Shabaab, is worse, because of insecurity and the attitudes of the militants.

Skipping down:

Unni Karunakara, head of medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), says al-Shabab's restrictions on aid workers mean many people in Somalia cannot be helped - and says aid agencies should be more open about this when appealing for more money.

"The grim reality of Somalia today is we are not able to get to south and central Somalia, which we consider to be the epicentre of the crisis," he told the BBC World Service.

"What is needed is a better representation of the challenges that aid agencies, including MSF, face in delivering assistance in Somalia today.

"Even if we are able to get food and supplies to the main ports of Somalia, I think there is a real challenge in being able to deliver that assistance - what I call the 'last-mile' problem."

Some officials from al-Shabab, which has links to al-Qaeda, have accused Western aid groups of exaggerating the scale of the crisis for political reasons.

Somalia's TFG is having problems with Al Shabaab even in the nation's capital. We review Somalia: Govt forces clash with armed militias in Mogadishu dateed September 3, 2011 (I have made some minor edits, in [brackets], though it is still a little rough; importantly, however, we appreciate the efforts of the journalists to bring this information to a much wider audience by writing in English):

MOGADISHU (Sh. M. Network) – The forces of Somali interim federal government forces clashed [with] armed militias dressed in government military uniform[s] who have checkpoints in the war weary Mogadishu by taking illegal money from public buses.

The government forces including police and military on Saturday morning launched a security crackdown in parts of the capital in a bid to clear out all checkpoints manned [by] armed militiamen.

Local residents said heavy firefight[s] rocked parts of Wadajir district southwest of the Somali capital.

They said the two parts used both heavy and light weapons during the armed confrontation.

But, after hours of taking over the checkpoints, Somali soldiers came under counter attack from the militias, erupting fierce fighting there.

However, there have been casualties but not known so far the number of dead people and injuries.

Meanwhile, the district commissioner of Mogadishu's Wadajir told Shabelle that government forces attacked civilian people in the district, looting properties. But he declined to give further details about the casualties.

(Control of Banaadir, the region where Mogadishu is located,
as of March 13, 2010; map prepared by Kermanshahi.)

Armed men in government uniforms seem to be a significant problem in Mogadishu. We consider Armed men force 300 families to flee from IDPs camp in Mogadishu , Sepember 5, 2011:

MOGADISHU (Sh. M. Network) – Armed men dressed in Somali government military uniforms have forcedsome 300 famine displaced people to flee from IDPs [Internally Displaced Person - EL] camps in Mogadishu’s Hodan district.

Witnesses said the internationally displaced people at Tarbunka area in Mogadishu were bullied and intimidated by armed men.

The witnesses said the armed assailants also destroyed and tore down IDPs makeshift settlements and huts.

Mohamed Ali, one of the people forced to flee, told Shabelle that there are no any casualties during the incident.

Ali asked Somali government to save them from the armed men who accustomed to bother the IDPs.

The TFG is working with African Union countries to bring more peacekeepers into the country, especially to stabilize the capital. From Somalia says more peacekeepers will be deployed to Mogadishu, September 5, 2011:

MOGADISHU (Sh. M. Network) – The Somali government has said additional peacekeeping forces form some of African countries will be deployed to the horn of African nations.

Transitional Federal Government (TFG) Defense Minister Hussein Arab Isse reported that 3,000 additional peacekeepers will be deployed to Mogadishu in October, composed of troops from Djibouti and Sierra Leone.

The African Union (AU) held a technical workshop on the AU Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) to identify the next steps in Somalia.

Late last month, a military spokesman Major Ken Jabbie said Sierra Leone will send a battalion of 850 soldiers to boost an African Union mission in war-torn Somalia after April next year.

Jabbie said a five-man reconaissance mission was already in Mogadishu where the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) is supporting government troops who have recently fought bloody battles with the Al Qaeda-inspired Shebab rebels who want to topple the administration.

On August 9 the AU made an urgent call for 3,000 more troops to secure the war-battered capital after Shebab rebels, who had controlled around half of the city, pulled out of the city claiming a change in military tactics.

The 9,000-strong mission is currently made up of troops from Uganda and Burundi.

Driving out the Al Shabaab militants is important, as they are widely perceived to be the reason why a drought has resulted in a famine that is killing thousands and threatening hundreds of thousands in Somalia. From Could Somali famine deal a fatal blow to al-Shabab? by Farouk Chothia, August 9, 2011:

Somalia's militant Islamist group al-Shabab is in crisis, as it battles to cope with the famine that is far worse in areas under its control than other parts of the country, leading to reports of splits in the leadership of the al-Qaeda-linked group.

The famine has forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee the Lower Shabelle and Bakool regions in search of food.

Many are escaping to the capital, Mogadishu, where over the weekend the group made what it called a tactical withdrawal of its forces from the northern suburbs that were under its control.

Others are walking for days to reach camps in neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia, arch-foes of al-Shabab.

"It is not a good picture for al-Shabab," says US-based Somali journalist Abdirahman Aynte, who is writing a book on the movement.

"Nearly 500,000 people have left. Al-Shabab cannot do anything about it. They have become bystanders."

He says al-Shabab - formed as the youth wing of the now-defunct Union of Islamic Courts in 2006 - had genuine support when it took power in most of south and central Somalia, as people longed for an end to the lawlessness that has gripped the country since the fall of the Siad Barre regime in 1991.

"Even though al-Shabab had draconian laws, they were somewhat popular because of the stability they provided," says Mr Aynte.

"Government areas were not safe - even soldiers were involved in robbing and looting. In al-Shabab areas, you will have your hands amputated if you steal. It was a deterrent."

Kenya-based Somali journalist Fatuma Noor, who travelled through al-Shabab territory last year, says the famine has damaged the group's credibility.

"Al-Shabab are losing support. People are saying that the drought in the region was caused by a lack of rains, but the famine was man-made. They are asking - why has it been only in al-Shabab's areas?" Ms Noor says.

The connection between Al Shabaab and the famine is in part due to Al Shabaab's practice of extorting money from agencies that want to help. Skipping down:

"Al-Shabab has a humanitarian co-ordination office, which charges a registration fee of $4,000 to $10,000 (£2,400 to £6,000). They also charge a project fee - 20% of the overall cost of digging a borehole or setting up a feeding centre," Mr Aynte says.

The al-Shabab observer who preferred anonymity says the group's leadership is heavily divided over the food crisis - something the UN could have exploited to gain access to starving people.

Al-Shabab's southern leaders - especially Muktar Ali Robow, who comes from famine-hit Lower Shabelle, and Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who is seen as the elder statesman of Somali Islamists - favour accepting Western aid.

However, they were overruled by the overall leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane, who has led al-Shabab into forging close ties with al-Qaeda.

"Robow's people are directly affected by this famine. So he wants aid agencies to come in. But Godane is suspicious of the UN and doesn't want them in Somalia. So he blocked it," the observer says.

"Robow is now accusing Godane [who hails from the breakaway region of Somaliland] of letting people starve."

The accusations of some factions allowing people loyal to other factions to starve is helping build rivalries.

Furthermore, like any street gang in an American city, control of turf means the ability to extort money from lucrative activities going on in that turf - and Al Shabaab has recently suffered military setbacks, resulting in a loss of control of parts of Mogadishu, which Al Shabaab's leaders have spun as a maneuver rather than a battlefield loss.

Additionally, Al Shabaab's use of the charcoal industry - which cuts trees to make charcoal which is exported to the Arabian Peninsula - as a source of income may have intensified the drought, as some environmental experts claim that cutting trees contributes to reduced rainfall. Regardless, Al Shabaab's extortion of local business activities means that Al Shabaab is no longer dependent on foreign funding, though extortion of aid operations would be a nice bonus.

The fact that Al Shabaab is losing credibility may be causing people to cooperate with government and African Union Mission for Somalia (AMISOM) forces against Al Shabaab. From an AMISOM press release entitled AMISOM finds bomb-making factory in Mogadishu, from August 15, 2011:

A large bomb-making factory has been discovered by African Union troops in northern Mogadishu. AMISOM troops yesterday uncovered a cache of bomb-making components including improvised detonators, switches for suicide vests and a considerable amount of explosives.

The find came after a two-day operation to dislodge a number of extremists who were still occupying a former steel factory located north of Wardhigley District. There was clear evidence that the site was being used as a centre for the manufacture of suicide bombs and improvised explosive devices with which extremists have targeted innocent civilians, as well as government and AMISOM troops.

[snip]

Lt Col Paddy Ankunda, the AMISOM Force spokesperson said,

"We owe this success to the help and support from the people of Somalia, with whom we continue to rely on for information and tip-offs. This is a serious setback to the extremists who wish to harm the civilian populace."

This is in addition to the report of Al Shabaab weapons discovered in Bakara Market from two days previously:

Somali Police and African Union troops uncovered a large store of artillery shells in a disused house yesterday in Bakara Market from where the extremist militant group has recently withdrawn. It is believed these munitions were being stockpiled for use in making improvised bombs.

After a tip-off from residents in the city the Somali police went to the shell-damaged house in the centre of Bakara Market. When African Union troops, AMISOM, were called in they discovered 137 artillery shells of 155mm calibre. The extremist group, who until recently had been fighting soldiers of the African Union and Somali government, are not known to have the artillery weapons to fire these shells.

Of course, what I find interesting is how, under Islam, a fellow Muslim is supposed to be a fellow Muslim; only infidels are categorized (Russians, English, Croats, Serbs...). Yet, the reality is that Al Shabaab uses clan affiliation as a means of dividing up Somalis, and setting them against the government - even as Al Shabaab leadership apparently allows some Al Shabaab-affiliated clans to starve while permitting others to get food.

More to follow.

When Dovrefjell Crumbled, Part 2

2011-08-06T09:45:00.000-07:00

We continue from Part 1 with our analysis of the "terrorist" incident in Norway and its political fallout.

When I saw Right wing blogger reveals identity yesterday in Norway Post, I knew my analysis from Part 1 was substantially correct. In Right wing blogger reveals identity:

The ultra right-wing blogger "Fjordman", much quoted by Andreas Behring Breivik who is charged with the July 22nd terrorist acts, is revealing his identity in the Friday issue of the newspaper VG.

"Fjordman" has been quoted a number of times in Breivik's "Manifest" which he published just hours before he carried out his terrorist acts on July 22nd. He said "Fjordman" was "a source of inspiration".

Notice how they refer to Fjordman as an "ultra right-wing blogger".

Now, consider this from Breivik's political idol «Fjordman» emerges from anonymity August 5, 2011 (boldface is in the original):

(VG Nett) In an exclusive interview with VG, Peder Jensen (36) sheds his alias as the right wing blogger «Fjordman», and talks about his shock at being cited as an influence by terrorist Anders Behring Breivik.

Thursday he was questioned for several hours by Norwegian police about his supposed interaction with Breivik (32).

Under the alias «Fjordman», he has been a prolific blogger on different far-right websites, and was cited extensively in Breivik's rambling manifesto.

Again, "right wing" and "far-right".

They can't just call Fjordman a blogger or a citizen-journalist; our "free press" (the propaganda arm of those in power) has to tell the reader what to think of this guy: he's "right wing". Previous conditioning lets you realize that "right wing" is bad.

Skipping down:

Police sources confirm that Jensen has been questioned as the blogger «Fjordman», and that they are certain of his identity.

- I feel it's my duty to give a statement to the police, and I wanted to do this interview because my name eventually would have emerged anyway, resulting in a media frenzy. It is also a way for me to clear my name, says Jensen.

Norwegian police confiscated his computer Thursday, and even though he was questioned as a witness, he feels that the police are looking to implicate him.

Fjordman made a big mistake.

As an anonymous blogger and citizen-journalist, he made an extremely valuable contribution in getting the truth about what was happening in Norway, Scandinavia and Europe out to the world, doing so in impeccable English to ensure the widest possible readership.

Because he was anonymous, people had to focus on what he was saying; once someone's identity is known, the focus shifts from what is being said to who is saying it, and the smears and persecution begin.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

~Oscar Wilde

But, for the same reason he wrote, he felt compelled to come forth and talk to the police; not because he had any information to add (he could have sent that anonymously), but to help his community and the cause of decency.

The result was predictable: he feels investigators are now trying to implicate him.

There is nothing Fjordman or anyone else can say or do that will clear his name; the neocommies are convinced he is guilty (guilty of opposing them!) and will do anything they can, legal or not, moral or not, to crucify him.

And for the rest of us, we already knew Fjordman was completely innocent; his denunciation of the terrorist attack was unnecessary, too, because we already knew he didn't approve of it. Read his writings, and you will know he is a decent person.

But, he has now thrown himself at the mercy of those who have no decency; of those for whom another man's decency is merely vulnerability to be exploited.

I now reproduce in its entirety a post from Gates of Vienna entitled Fjordman: My Afternoon With The Police :

The following message just came in from Fjordman, who adds that he intends to keep a low profile in the near future.

____________________

I am shocked by the hostile treatment I received at the hands of the police.

Lars Hedegaard heard my story and commented that he had never known of any witness who has been treated in this manner in any Western country, except for totalitarian societies such as the Third Reich.

My lawyer, who is experienced and has seen many tough cases before, did not expect anything like this to happen. He assumed this would be relatively easy, and even suggested that I might get by without a lawyer. I insisted on having one present just in case, which most likely helped a little bit. Things would have been even worse had that not been the case. My lawyer later said that in my case they operated at best at the very fringes of what could be considered legal.

I was never accused of doing anything criminal, obviously because I had nothing to do with the terror attacks and they know this. Yet without the slightest hint of proof of any lawbreaking, I was treated as a murder suspect.

To my total surprise I had to go to my flat, where for several hours half a dozen police officers went through all of my DVDs, searched through my old printed travel photographs from years back, searched through all of my (many) books, checked my kitchen equipment, went through all of my clothes, and confiscated a suitcase that contained nothing more than clothes and some books. They also confiscated several digital devices, including my camera and my laptop. It is quite clear that they wanted information about non-violent Islam-critical networks in Europe that they suspected might be contained in my PC, even though they denied this to me.

Please remember that the police and the Police Security Service (PST) apparently had no clue who I was until I literally knocked on their door of my own free will, even though I knew full well that I would have to give up my anonymity after doing so. I had very little information about Breivik since I have never met him, something which he himself has admitted, yet I still handed over what little information I had. I also answered their questions honestly, even though, technically speaking, I did not have to do so.

If you believe the mass media, the police were still not sure that I really was Fjordman until a couple of hours after I had turned up at the police station. As soon as they understood that this was indeed the case, they rushed through a quick decision to search my flat and confiscate my computer equipment immediately. They must have realized at this point that I had nothing at all to do with the terror attacks.

I personally suspect that this was mainly a political decision.

Fjordman, you are a good man, but you should have remained anonymous. You should have made the neocommie-controlled police develop some kind of probable cause or get some kind of warrant. Let them do an investigation. If they do an honest one, they might actually find out who really helped and motivated this guy, whether this guy was aware of any help or not.

By the way, I reproduce the above post in its entirety, not to steal any thunder from GOV, but to make sure Fjordman's story gets out.

Fjordman was acquainted with the bloggers from GOV, which was also named in the terrorist's manifesto. I believe it is just a matter of time before someone "outs" the GOV bloggers and shuts them up, whether because of this incident or for some other reason. If nothing else, the GOV bloggers must have accumulated quite a few fatwas by now for pointing out aspects of Islam that certain adherents of the Religion of Peace and their allies would wish to keep in obscurity.

The clear intent of the politically-motivated police operation in Norway is to identify and silence opponents of the ruling Labor Party and of its allies around the world.

We now consider excertps from Hatred, smears and the liberals hell-bent on bullying millions of us into silence by Melanie Phillips, August 1, 2011:

The baleful effects of the recent attacks in Norway, where Anders Breivik bombed Oslo's government district and then gunned down teenagers at a Labour party camp, murdering at least 77 people, have not been limited to that horrific carnage.

For the atrocity has produced a reaction among people on the political Left in Britain, Europe and the U.S. that is in itself shocking and terrifying.

Former Norwegian prime minister and current chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee Thorbjorn Jagland has said that, in response to the violent attacks, David Cameron and other European leaders should use a more 'cautious' approach when talking about multiculturalism.

Cameron has said multiculturalism (the doctrine that gives the values of minorities equal status to those of the majority) has failed, and has also talked about 'Islamist extremism' as a cause of terrorism.

Jagland, however, said leaders would be 'playing with fire' if they continued to use rhetoric that could be exploited by extremists such as Breivik.

This is similar to the aftermath of the OKBOMB. Bill Clinton immediately gave the cue, signalling that he hoped there was no Middle East connection; the FBI did not officially find one, but investigative reporter Jayna Davis did in her well-researched and well-documented New York Times best-seller The Third Terrorist. But, President Clinton and his neocommie Clintonites played the aftermath for political purposes.

This is also eerily similar to the aftermath of the shooting in Tucson in January, 2011, in which Judge John Roll was killed and Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was very seriously wounded, along with a list of other victims killed and wounded. After this incident, there was again a push by the neocommies to limit the freedom of speech of those who would defend traditional American values by saying that such rhetoric incited violence.

Skipping down in Hatred, smears and the liberals hell-bent on bullying millions of us into silence:

Jagland seems to be cynically exploiting the murder of more than 70 innocents to make a connection which is as obnoxious as it is opportunistic in order to bully into silence those who express such legitimate democratic concerns.

Shockingly, he is merely one of many who are doing so.

As soon as the atrocity happened, people on the Left saw a heaven-sent opportunity to smear mainstream conservative thinkers and writers by making a grossly distorted association between Breivik's attack and their ideas.

They claimed that anyone on 'the Right' who had spoken out against multiculturalism or Islamic extremism was complicit in the atrocity and therefore had a moral duty to stop writing about such things.

A moral duty to stop speaking the truth about Islam, and how Islam lends itself to the persecution of non-Muslims, of Muslims whose views differ from the views of those in authority, of women, of other minorities...

What you see here is the neocommies trying to play the victim card to silence their opponents and the opponents of their allies.

Skipping down:

Moreover, he also mentioned dozens of other conservative or liberal writers and thinkers. Among others, he quoted: Winston Churchill, George Orwell, Mahatma Gandhi, the Labour MP Frank Field, Tory Nicholas Soames, philosopher Roger Scruton, Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson and Swedish thriller writer Lars Hedegaard.

Why don't the headlines read that the murderer took his inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi? It would be just as true, but far less politically useful.

Continuing:

Oh, and William Shakespeare, as well as the fathers of English liberalism John Stuart Mill and John Locke.

So the fact that Hundal singled me out like this while failing to mention these others (apart from a brief reference to Mr Clarkson) was an egregious smear — which was soon circulating and building up hatred on Twitter and the internet.

Soon, others joined in the hate-fest — even across the Atlantic. In the Toronto Star, columnist Heather Mallick wrote that unlike 'almost everyone else praised by the killer', I had not said I was horrified by the atrocity in Norway. Not only that, but whereas everyone else had wept at the murder of schoolchildren, 'she [Phillips] spits'.

[snip]

As one Guardian reader commented following Milne's contemptible attack, the fact that he had deliberately blurred the distinction between reasonable political opinions with which one might disagree and the actions of a terrorist meant he was creating hysteria and polarisation.

Indeed, the result of such incitement has been a veritable tsunami of electronically-generated mob hatred.

That was the goal.

No, it is those who under the cover of accusing me of incendiary writing are themselves inciting hatred.

The claim that 'blood is on my hands' can so easily translate into someone seeking my own blood. Heaven forbid that should happen — but if it did, there would be a direct causal link with those who have whipped up this wicked firestorm.

Indeed, those who have exploited the killing of innocents in Norway to provoke such an eruption of distortion, demonisation and irrationality should disgust and alarm all decent people everywhere.

(For more background on the reactions to this incident, see The Oslo Fallout: A Review of Views Unfit to Print by Srdja Trifkovic, August 1, 2011. For more thoughts on Fjordman, see The Forced Resignation of Fjordman from August 5, 2011, written by GOV blogger Baron Bodissey, who actually knew Fjordman.)

So, the "terrorist" attack in Norway... Cui bono?

In its entirety, Labour climbs on latest poll from August 6, 2011:

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg's Labour Party (AP) climbs 11.7 percentage points on Norfakta's latest poll, and now has the support of 40.4 per cent of the electorate.

The poll was made for the newspapers Nationen and Klassekampen, and was taken after the terrorist attacks on July 22nd.

The poll also shows a marked drop for the Conservatives (Høyre) and the right wing Progress Party (FrP).

Høyre is supported by 21.4 per cent of the voters, and FrP 16.2 per cent.

For the other parties the changes are minimal.

(NRK)

In Part 1 I explained how I thought the neocommies of Norway's Labor Party were working together with Islamists to pull this off. I further explained how I thought the Islamists got a neo-Nazi to actually do the work. My summary:

Better to grease 'em now for a political and propaganda victory. ;)

It may very well be the exact mechanics of the behind-the-scenes work is different from what I suspect, but these are the players behind this, of that I am sure.

Why? Well, answer me this:

Cui bono?

Dan's Brother Angel, Part 5

2011-08-04T19:20:00.000-07:00

We pick up where we left off at the end of Part 4.

Back in 2006, Choudary organized another inflammatory protest in response to the Danish cartoon issue. From Muslim cartoon protest leader escapes with £500 fine, dated July 5, 2006:

The extremist Muslim who organised the infamous protests against the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed has escaped with a fine of just £500.

Firebrand solicitor Anjem Choudary, 39, was the ringleader of the march outside the Danish Embassy in London last February.

But today it emerged that he had been fined just £500 for failing to give police the required six days notice of the protests.

The maximum fine he could have received was £1,000 and last night Choudary's paltry punishment provoked fury.
Andrew Dismore, Labour MP for Hendon in North London said: 'He should have been given the maximum sentence possible. '£500 is a ridiculously small sum given this man's appalling track record.

'But the real issue is why the Crown Prosecution Service and the police have chosen to prosecute him on such a minor charge. We were promised much more than that after these protests.

'It will have cost more to bring the case to court that he has been fined and I'm sure he will now go around crowing that he has beaten the system.'

Beaten the system?

I would say so. After all, he has been receiving checks from the British taxpayer for doing all this. From Hate cleric on £25k benefits, January 6, 2010:

The Muslim cleric's untaxed income of £25,740 is thousands more than 21-year-old gunner Jack Sadler was earning before he was blown up by a roadside bomb.

And Jack's outraged dad Ian, 60, said: "These lads don't get paid what they deserve because they sacrifice so much. Choudary just doesn't deserve the money full stop.

"Whose team is he cheering for anyway? It's appalling there are young soldiers out there serving Queen and country and they're getting a pittance while this man takes his handouts. It's wrong these people's lives are being subsidised. It's utterly galling."

It's more than galling.

Returning to Muslim cartoon protest leader escapes with £500 fine:

One marcher, Omar Khayam, 22, of Bedford, even dressed up as a suicide bomber. In all, six protesters, including Choudary, were charged. Four are still awaiting trial while one man's case has been discontinued.

So, one of Choudary's operatives is a guy named Omar Khayam.

Funny thing about Khayam is that he is a convicted drug trafficker. From Muslim 'fanatic' exposed as a hypocrite as he's jailed after £2.6m drug factory raid, November 25, 2010:

A Muslim who dressed as suicide bomber in protest over cartoons showing the Prophet Mohammed has been jailed for 13 years for a massive drug conspiracy.

Omar Khayam, 27, was part of a gang who aimed to flood the Bedford area with £2.6million worth of heroin.
And far from being devout, his part in the conspiracy exposes him as a hypocrite as drug dealing is expressly forbidden under Islamic law.

In February 2006, Khayam, the son of a retired Urdu teacher, shocked the nation by dressing up as a suicide bomber - just months after the 7/7 bombings in London.

He was involved in angry protests outside the Danish Embassy in London after cartoons showing Mohammed had been published in Denmark

Luton Crown Court was told two police officers stumbled across a heroin and cannabis factory in Ashburnam Road in Bedford on December 3 last year.

They had gone to arrest a man for an unrelated offence. He was not there but they noticed powder on the floor and objects covered by large plastic bags.

Prosecutor Natalie Carter said the officers returned with colleagues seven minutes later and searched the flat. Two men that were there had escaped through a window.

They recovered 26.2kg of heroin, along with 24.5kg of caffeine and 4.5kg of paracetamol to be used as 'bash' to cut the drugs. There was also a third of a kilo of crack cocaine with a street value of £17,500 and £124,795 in cash.

Other equipment including mixing bags, scoops, scales, face masks and a hydraulic press was also seized.

The street value of the heroin, once it had been cut, was £2.6million. The haul of drugs is believed to be the largest ever seized in Bedfordshire.

The work of one of Choudary's operatives - trafficking heroin and cocaine.

Let's review what we know from elsewhere (I leave it to you to search and verify this information):

- Increasingly, South American cocaine moves eastward to Africa, then northward to Europe.

- The role of Islamic terrorist groups in moving cocaine through Africa is growing.

- Islamic terrorist groups have a growing presence in Latin America.

- Islamic terrorist groups have long been trafficking heroin. Decades ago, it was the PLO moving heroin it produced in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, which the PLO controlled. Today, it is Afghan heroin. In each case, the heroin from Islamic terrorist suppliers is the best quality smack in the world.

- The UK is a significant destination of Afghan heroin, and this has begun since the "War on Terror" began.

At this point, you might want to review the information in Part 1, Part 2, and mainly Part 3.

Finally, we consider excerpts from Asian Terror Gangs Target UK With Killer Heroin, February 22, 2009:

TERROR chiefs plan to flood our streets with heroin in a terrifying plot to wage "chemical jihad" on Britain.

And they have been using hate-filled Muslim gangs as their UK dealers.

Pakistani and Afghan-based al-Qaida and Taliban warlords are sitting on a £6billion stash of deadly heroin.

And they have ordered their dealers to sell it only to non-Muslims.

The ruthless racket is a two-pronged attack which peddles death and misery with heroin while netting massive sums to pay for future terror attacks.

A senior security source told the Daily Star Sunday: "The Afghan poppy fields are probably the biggest financial contributor to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

"The UK's heroin trade is increasing at an alarming rate and most of the cash helps arm terrorists with bombs and guns."

[snip]

Our investigators went on the hunt for heroin in Luton and did a deal in the back of a taxi.

Pulling out a handful of wraps, the driver said: "I'll sort you a fix for £10 but a gram's £50. It's knockout gear." Asked where the drugs came from he said: "Poppy fields between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"The big bosses have Taliban and al-Qaida connections and we're often told only to deal it to non-Muslims. They call it chemical jihad and hope to ruin lives while getting massive payouts at the same time.

"I'm more interested in the money. I knock it out to anyone, whatever their beliefs.

"But there are lots of big-hitters who only sell to non-Muslims – to poison them."

Anjem Choudary isn't just a "cleric" with low approval ratings among mainstream Muslims for his incitement to hatred. Serving as a key player in the UK's political wing of the world's Islamic terrorist movement, Choudary is also a crime boss, responsible for moving Afghan heroin to destroy the infidel world from the inside while funding jihad with the profits... all subsidized by the British taxpayer. ;)

Dan's Brother Angel, Part 4

2011-08-04T19:15:00.000-07:00

We begin by examining the first two-thirds of Extremists behind anti-war protest driven off the streets by moderate Muslims, from May 30, 2009:

The Muslim community turned on extremists in their midst yesterday, telling them they were 'sick and tired' of their behaviour.

The angry confrontation came in Luton, where anti-Islamist protesters brandished England flags last Sunday, before clashing with police.

The latest violence erupted as arguments raged between fellow Muslims shortly after Friday morning prayers in the Bury Park area of the town.

Passing traffic ground to a halt as the large group of moderates confronted about a dozen extremists.

As the radical Muslims began to set up their stall, they were surrounded by a crowd shouting 'we don't want you here' and 'move on, move on'.

Angry words were exchanged and scuffles broke out between members of both groups, with the extremists shouting 'Shame on you' and 'Get back to your synagogue'.

The moderates chanted 'Out, Out, Out', and after an uneasy stand-off, police officers were able to persuade the extremist group to leave the area.

One police officer and two community support officers struggled to hold them apart until more officers arrived.

Buses and cars were unable to move as the crowd spilled into the road.

Farasat Latif, of the Islamic Centre in Luton, which was firebombed after the protest against the soldiers, said moderate members of his community took action because police had failed to move the group on.

During the protest against the homecoming parade of the Royal Anglian regiment in March, the extremists had shouted 'baby killers' and 'butchers of Basra' as well as brandishing placards against the Iraq war.

He said the extremists, who follow the militant group led by Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammed, had fuelled feelings against the Muslim community which led to a march last Sunday in Luton which was disrupted by white, right-wing extremists.

Notice the reference to Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammed. One of this guy's key disciples is Anjem Choudary, who (from The unholy past of the Muslim cleric demanding the Pope's execution, dated September 19, 2006), after moving to London in 1996

...met the cleric Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed at a mosque in Woolwich. Bakri, who is now banned from returning to Britain from Lebanon, had formed Al Muhajiroun, committed to the creation of a worldwide Islamic state, and Choudary quickly became a leading light in the group and its successor organisation, Al Ghurabaa.

This guy Anjem Choudary is the extremist who wants to institute sharia in the UK. From Sharia law in bid to conquer London, August 4, 2011:

Islamists are trying to enforce their severe Sharia law code of conduct in London, to drag "enveloped in sin" Britain to a sin-free society by any means - from abstention to amputation.

They've started a campaign to make certain areas of London and other cities Islamic law-controlled zones – starting with Walthamstow, East London. They do believe that Islam and Sharia are unstoppable in Europe.

"Muslims will be commanding good and forbidding evil, presenting Islam as an alternative, to the Muslim and non-Muslim community. Ultimately we believe that Muslims can live together, trade according to the Sharia, resolve their problems according to the Sharia, and even police themselves, to a large extent. Hopefully one day we will have Islamic Emirates which will have authority locally, security locally, and even provide welfare locally," day-dreams Anjem Choudary, spokesperson for Muslims Against the Crusades.

Choudary and his friends are fly-posting parts of London with a large Muslim population. They want to ban drinking, gambling, and playing music. And they say they’ve got bands of young men ready to patrol and enforce Sharia law, by any means.

The antics of Choudary's group have been going on for a few years now. From Muslims rally for Sharia law in UK, prompting nationalist protests from June 21, 2010:

Muslim protestors gathered in London on Sunday calling for aspects of Sharia law to be introduced in Britain. The rally turned into chaos, sparking a counter-demonstration by English right-wing nationalists.

"We find many of these people who call for human rights and one law," said Asad Ullah, member of the Muslims against the Crusades group. "They come and they say that they want equality. But what equality do you get when one man legislates over another? Is he not more superior than you? You are worshipping him by submitting to and obeying his laws... We will get oppression like this until we all submit to one law, and that is the law of God."

Ullah's comments are stupid, to say the least.

What this group seeks to do is replace laws made by popular consent with laws made by some "religious leader"; my question, what equality do you get when one mullah legislates over the people in the name of a guy who supposedly talked to God fourteen centuries ago?

This group seeks to bring totalitarianism cloaked in the piety of a religion.

A few meters away from Ullah, Maryam Namazie, spokesperson for One Law for All, a campaign that opposes the introduction of Sharia law, struggled to get her voice heard. She attended the rally along with a group of other moderate Muslims and non-Muslims who came to commemorate the first anniversary of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, killed following last year’s Iranian election.

"The British government is making a huge mistake giving them access to bring Sharia law here," Namazie said. It thinks it can reduce terrorism by doing that. It doesn’t understand that this is the political wing of the terrorist movement and they are here to suppress people’s rights. And we’re not going to allow it."

This is the movement that Choudary is pushing.

However, Choudary himself has some credibility problems within the Muslim community. Apart from the 2009 incident mentioned at the opening of this blog, where Muslims that I might characterize as more mainstream tried to drive Choudary's kind off the streets of Luton, and apart from the incident mentioned immediately above, where more mainstream Muslims counterprotested, it seems his previous antics are credited within certain parts of the UK's Muslim community with helping to provoke a reaction.

In an article entitled Who are the EDL? by Muhammad Amin, December 12, 2010, the author points to an incident which he says was formative for the English Defence League; as British troops returned to the UK from overseas, those who would go on to form the EDL were in attendance. They were not the only ones; notice this description of radical cleric Anjem Choudhary and his supporters:

Other visitors to Luton that day included a group of bearded busy bodies bumbling about. They were circled by Police, who defended them, as they waved placards insulting the soldiers and the army, in a manner similar to going up to a lion and saying 'you're a big smelly man-eater and I don't like it'. The natives grew restless, and the Police had to act as a buffer between supporters and protestors, letting them make a hasty exit before an increasingly angry mob. These bearded men were known as Islam4UK, and were led by Anjem Choudhary, who had been instrumental in an outlawed and outrageous group called Al-Muhajiroun. Choudhary seems to place himself at some self-conceived forefront of a struggle to bring Shariah Law to Britain, and yet has been shown in the Daily Mail to have had, in the past, a predilection for alcohol and cigarettes, and with his thumbs up beside a person displaying Mayfair magazine. He has been a leading member of groups apart from Al-Muhajiroun and Islam 4 UK, and now fronts a group known as Muslims Against Crusades. The media frenzy around this individual because of his outrageous and intransigent remarks.

Part of the reason Choudary has a credibility problem is that his "outrageous and intransigent remarks" are perceived to have helped contribute to the rise of so-called right-wing reactionary groups.

Choudary has even earned himself a bad reputation among Muslims on this side of the Atlantic. From Anjem Choudary part of the Muslim Lunatic Fringe - updated 7/14/11:

Choudary is the British nutcase from Al-Muhajirun and Muslims4UK that many Muslims have warned about (see list of articles below). You can find many more responses to these sorts of individuals and groups here. This "Imam" from Britain has in the past sent letters to the grieving families of fallen British soldiers, telling them he has "no sympathy whatsoever" for their plight, urging them instead to become Muslims to "save" themselves "from the hellfire". With this disgusting stunt he placed himself squarely in the same league as the "Reverend" Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church.

In 2008 Choudary launched his sickest rant yet as he branded Christmas "evil". The Muslim fanatic shocked Christians and even those of his own faith by slamming the festival as "the pathway to hellfire". And the hardline nut, 41, who recently praised the Mumbai terror massacre, urged all Muslims to reject traditional yuletide fun.

Muslims in Britain are totally fed up with Choudary and his organizations: Muslim communities around the country have shunned al-Muhajiroun and its various entities for years and refused to give them a platform. Instead, they have to work through front organisations, hire private halls, set up high-street stalls or leaflet people with their poisonous little tracts. They are utterly marginal but are still able to generate huge coverage through provocation. Their recent barracking of British troops returning from Iraq and a counter mini-riot in Luton has poisoned relations in the town. The Muslim community of Luton, which had already chased them out of the mosques, has taken to chasing them off the streets too in a desperate bid to signal their utter disgust and consternation. Anjem Choudary's latest wheeze to incite the ire of the national press and to irritate the hell out of Britain's Muslims as well as everyone else is to use a legal loophole to relaunch al-Muhajiroun this week, which had been disbanded in 2004. Only its successor groups, al-Ghurabaa and the Saviour Sect, were banned in 2006 under terrorism legislation. It seems fairly clear that Choudary expects, and indeed makes the calculation, that the reformed al-Muhajiroun will be banned pretty quickly to generate the notoriety and street-cred that he wants to sustain. As they play a propagandistic role, they will continue to find ways to dodge past legal restrictions by using coded language or forming new entities. The law is obviously a blunt and ineffectual tool. Yahya Birt

But, that's not all.

Aside from the fact that Choudary seeks to impose his will on the people of the UK, with his useful dupes like Ullah saying that to support the current UK government is worshipping a man (and, of course, letting Choudary tell you what to do in the name of his prophet is not), the rest of the Muslim community wonders under what authority Choudary sets himself up as an expert.

From Is Anjem Choudhary (The Partisan Follower of Omar Bakri Muhammad Fustuq al-Mudallis) a Qualified Islamic Judge of a Sharee'ah Court in the UK?! dated March, 2008:

So we ask Choudary: at which Islamic institute did you study for you to be bestowed with the honour of becoming a "judge at a Shariah Court in the UK" and a "Principal Lecturer"? Not only is the so-called 'London School of Shariah' nothing but a re-hash of Omar Bakri's blind followers but there is no premise to this place and no actual location!? Furthermore, Choudhary has no knowledge of the Arabic language! Hardly an endorsement therefore of him being any sort of "judge"!

So, Choudary is disavowed by various, more mainstream, Muslim groups.

But, is that all?

Returning to The unholy past of the Muslim cleric demanding the Pope's execution, a little above the previously cited quote from this source:

It's a long way from his days as a medical student at Southampton University, where, friends say, he drank, indulged in casual sex, smoked cannabis and even took LSD. He called himself 'Andy' and was famed for his ability to drink a pint of cider in a few seconds.

One former acquaintance said: "At parties, like the rest of us, he was rarely without a joint. The morning after one party, I can remember him getting all the roaches (butts) from the spliffs we had smoked the night before out of the ashtrays, cutting them up and making a new one out of the leftovers.

"He would say he was a Muslim and was proud of his Pakistani heritage, but he did-n't seem to attend any of the mosques in Southampton, and I only knew of him having white girlfriends. He certainly shared a bed with them."

On one occasion, 'Andy' and a friend took LSD together. The friend said: "We took far too much and were hallucinating for 20 hours."

The only sign of religious fervour came in flashes of anger over Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. A friend from that time said: "You didn't want to get him started on that. He would go on and on about the fatwa and he supported calls for the book to be banned. But he would have a glass of cider in his hand when he was carrying on about it."

I wonder if his past as a recreational user is his Choudary's only connection to the UK drug scene?

Stay tuned for Part 5.

Truths Denied, Part 2

2011-08-02T15:00:00.000-07:00

I was not planning to get back to this series quite so soon, but two comments left by one reader of mine at Part 1 prompts this.

The blatant lies that pass for the politically correct story of the 9/11 attacks are very clear in this presentation by architect Richard Gage of the organization Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

The videos total about two hours of viewing time, and spell out solid, peer-reviewed scientific evidence as to why the official story cannot possibly be true. The focus here is on the World Trade Center, but once one part of the official lie comes unraveled, the rest will follow fairly easily.

What I find interesting about all this in the context of Part 1 is the part where Mr. Gage talks about how explosives could have been placed in the building without the occupants knowing.

Apparently, there was an elevator upgrade going on in the months prior to the attack.

The elevators were located among the core columns that would need to be brought down in order to completely collapse the structures of the Twin Towers.

This ties in with Sibel Edmonds' report quoted in Part 1 where she saw information that blueprints for US skyscrapers had been sent overseas some time before 9/11. Someone needed enough technical information to know what kind of explosives was needed to bring the Twin Towers down, and where to place them. Then, this someone got the inside help necessary to place the explosives, presumably under cover of the elevator upgrade.

Still, even if we knew these details, the mystery is not solved. Enough explosives were used to not just bring the Twin Towers down, but to essentially pulverize the buildings in mid-air.

Why?

Stick around.

When Dovrefjell Crumbled, Part 1

2011-08-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

In this post, we begin to review the situation in Norway, considering first the recent events associated with Anders Behring Breivik, the person allegedly (admittedly?) responsible for a bombing in Oslo and a shooting spree on nearby Utoya Island.

A post at Debbie Schlussel's blog entitled Karma #2: Norway Utoya Camp Was Also FATAH PLO Terrorist Camp from July 29 links to an article entitled Fatah Youth condemns Norway attacks, over 90 killed from Palestine's Ma'an News Agency that was updated on July 25; here is the text of the article:

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Fatah Youth released a statement on Saturday condemning attacks in Norway which have reportedly killed over 90 people.

"It is with consternation that we have received the dramatic news of an awful terrorist attack against a summer camp ran by our comrades of Norwegian Labor Youth 'AUF,'" the statement said.

The Fatah Youth group had taken part in the summer camp in the past on the Island of Utoya, near Oslo, where over 90 people were reportedly killed in a shooting spree on the Island and a bomb attack in Oslo on Friday, news reports said.

"Fatah Youth declares its consternation about the terror attack. There are no words to describe an attack against people that have been our comrades in our struggle for freedom and independence. Very few people have stood by our side as much as the Norwegian people, and particularly our AUF comrades."

"We know those who have been cowardly assassinated. Those are people that have stood for the human and national rights of the Palestinian people both in Europe and while visiting Palestine.

"Fatah Youth has participated for almost 15 years in the same summer camp and our youth has benefited by learning and sharing experiences on democracy and advocacy for peace and justice.

"We hope that those responsible for this criminal terror attack will be brought to justice. Such sick minds should not have a place in any society.

"As a people that has been victim of state terror for the last 64 years, the Palestinian people and particularly Fatah Youth presents its condolences to the families of those killed and sends a strong message of support to our comrades from the Norwegian AUF as well as from other sister parties that were participating in this summer camp," the statement concluded.

This camp that was attacked at Utoya was not just anti-Israeli and supportive of the "Palestinian" cause; it was actually a camp were Fatah terrorists were involved in political indoctrination with young people associated with Norway's Labor Party.

Who would attack that kind of a camp? The obvious answer is that the attacker would have to be someone who supported Israel and who presumably disagreed with Palestinian Arab terrorism.

I wonder if the obvious answer is the correct one.

We next consider an excerpt from 'Hitler would have put him on a poster': Norwegian killer had plastic surgery to look more Aryan, claims intelligence chief dated July 31, 2011:

The right-wing extremist who massacred 77 people during a twin terror attack in Norway had plastic surgery to make him look more Aryan, according to a intelligence official.

Anders Behring Breivik, 32, has the blond hair, blue eyes and strong features stereotypically associated with the group.

However, according to Janne Kristiansen, the head of Norway's intelligence agency the PST, there is no way that Breivik's look was natural.

'You do not have that Aryan look naturally in Norway,' she said.

'Hitler would have had him on posters. He has the perfect, classic Aryan face.

'He must have had a facelift,' she added in an interview with The Sunday Times.

This information fits with the reminiscences of an old schoolfriend, who has recalled that Breivik boasted of having had plastic surgery a decade ago, a time when he had befriended 'a group of people obsessed with their bodies'.

'I remember we were at a party, and he told me he had had his nose and chin operated on by a plastic surgeon in America,' the friend told the Sunday Telegraph.

Why would a right-wing terrorist who had plastic surgery to alter his looks to the point that he could have been a posterboy for the Nazis attack a camp of people who were enemies of the Jewish state?

This doesn't make any sense.

If he's a Nazi posterboy, he should have been there participating or perhaps even teaching. The Fatah/Labor Party/Hitler Youth types at that camp should have been friends of his.

We next consider a passage found in Killer's Manifesto: The Politics Behind the Norway Slaughter by William Boston, from July 24, 2011:

The document, 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, is something of a template for right-wing terrorism, a rambling manifesto that at times rails at "cultural Marxists" and "multiculturalism" and blames them for the destruction of Western culture. Elsewhere he offers detailed instructions on Web-based self-publishing, comments on his TV habits and provides tips for building a successful terrorist cell. With the exception of some highly personal descriptions of growing up and his pain over the divorce of his parents, the document is eerily reminiscent of the jihadist instruction manuals that have been widely distributed over the Internet since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"It is a complete mirroring of al-Qaeda, a cut-and-paste image of a jihadist manifesto," Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College, tells TIME.com.

Why did a right-wing anti-Muslim terrorist publish a manifesto that "is eerily reminiscent of the jihadist instruction manuals that have been widely distributed over the Internet since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks?"

From Norway gunman in mass murders wants to appear in court in uniform, July 25, 2011:

Mr. Breivik laid out his extreme nationalist philosophy as well as his attack methods in a 1,500-page manifesto. It also describes how he bought armor, guns, tons of fertilizer and other bomb components, stashed caches of weapons and wiping his computer hard drive - all while evading police suspicion and being nice to his neighbors.

Why take the security precaution of wiping the computer hard drive, if you then email a manifesto to 1003 recipients? What was he hiding by wiping the hard drive? He has hinted at other terrorist cells in existence. Was he protecting their identity? But, then, why allow himself to be captured? Why not escape, or perhaps go down fighting? In captivity, any information that he had on his hard drive he could conceivably divulge, or at least point investigators in its direction. The only thing to be gained by wiping the hard drive but allowing himself to be taken alive would be to slow investigators down; but, if the tide of history is on his side, that wouldn't make much difference, would it?

We next consider excerpts from Communist Influence in the Mideast Uprisings by Christian Gomez, March 24, 2011:

In an interview with the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun, on July 4, 1925, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was asked if he thought that the revolutionary turmoil in China, India, Persia, Egypt, and other Eastern countries was a sign that the Western powers had dug themselves graves in the East and would end up being buried there.

"Yes, I do," Stalin answered, before going on to assert that these countries of Asia and the Middle East constitute a rear threat that will bring about a "revolutionary crisis in the West." The West will be "attacked on two sides — in the rear as well as in front," he said, and "will be forced to admit that it is doomed."

The West is doomed... where else have we heard this rhetoric?

It's not from the Nazis; they believed the East was doomed, and wanted to attack eastward to gain living space for Aryans.

But, Islamic terrorists hate nearly all things Western; there is even a terrorist group in Nigeria that takes its name from such hatred.

A comment from Karma #2: Norway Utoya Camp Was Also FATAH PLO Terrorist Camp can be very enlightening:

@ Motives

I doubt that you are RIGHT. I am German and the Anger towards Islam grows from Day to Day IN EUROPE.
France and the Netherlands are already Black, England is lost.

Leftist professors, in lock-step with Leftist politicians
are ignoring the situation.

Time for a Change and Change will Come, mark my words.

Continuing with Communist Influence in the Mideast Uprisings:

In the decades that followed, Stalin and his Kremlin successors did their best to insure that the Middle East would indeed become the graveyard that would doom the United States and the non-communist countries of the West. An army of Soviet agents, advisors, agitators, propagandists, and terrorist trainers were dispatched throughout the Middle East to set it aflame. Since 1990 and the apparent collapse of communism, it has become fashionable to consider concerns of a continuing Marxist-Leninist threat in the region passé, a relic of the "Cold War mentality." After all, communist ideology and organization have been supplanted by Islamist ideology and organization, right?

But did the elaborate networks established throughout the Middle East during the Soviet era disappear? Or do the dire words spoken by Stalin in 1925 also bespeak a relevance to the recent events that are roiling the Arab states of the Mediterranean from Rabat in Morocco to the Suez Canal in Egypt, to Amman in Jordan, and along the Arabian peninsula from Yemen to Oman and Bahrain?

Commentators on both the Left and Right, from Chris Matthews at MSNBC to William Kristol at the Weekly Standard, have all taken jabs at Glenn Beck and Art Thompson, CEO of The John Birch Society, for challenging the conventional wisdom and daring to point out to the oblivious what the mainstream media is still either ignorant of or just unwilling to acknowledge — that these revolutions demonstrate an unmistakable Islamo-communist connection.

The article goes on to outline connections between communist subversives and Islamic extremists, mainly the Muslim Brotherhood; farther down, we come to this:

A Bit Player to Begin With

Sorting through the available evidence, it would appear that the Brotherhood played only a secondary role in Egypt's recent turmoil, involving itself only when it realized that it could capitalize on the turn of events and benefit politically from them.

Other than the Brotherhood, the only group with the organizational skill and capacity that could stage such demonstrations is the Communist Party of Egypt (CPE), a criminal organization with a notorious pedigree.

One of the founding leaders of the CPE in 1942 was Henri Curiel, an Egyptian of Italian ancestry and a Soviet agent who would decades later become one of the KGB's principal coordinators of terrorism in Europe. Expelled from Egypt in 1950 for his communist activities, Curiel settled in France and set up a KGB network that funneled money, arms, and documents to such left-wing transnational terror groups as the German Baader-Meinhoff Gang, the Basque ETA, the Japanese Red Army, and the Uruguayan Tupamaros.

Among Curiel's many other claims to infamy is his KGB role in helping manage Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, the spokesman for Ayatollah Khomeini in Paris and, following the Islamic Revolution, the Ayatollah's Foreign Minister in Tehran. Curiel's tie to the Islamic Revolution and governing regime in Iran gives further credence to the connection between radical Islam and communism.

An article in Socialist Review of February 2009 notes:

Many regarded and still regard Khomeini as a "fundamentalist." This isn't so.... Khomeini fashioned a radical reinterpretation of Shia Islam, under influence from the popular Shia theologian Ali Shariati who had attempted to incorporate the ideas of Frantz Fanon and Karl Marx into Islam.

The CPE's longstanding ties with Islamists can be observed throughout its history and in its current coordination with the Brotherhood, as admitted by CPE spokesman Salah Adly. The role of the CPE in the events in Egypt is revealed in the communist website "21stcenturymanifesto," which admits: "The Egyptian Communist Party is deeply involved in the current struggle against the continuation of the Mubarak dynasty."

According to this analysis, it was neocommunists, the remnants of Soviet subversion going back almost a century, the heirs to Marxist agitation, who toppled Egypt's Mubarak; the Muslim Brotherhood hopped on the bandwagon, and undoubtedly hopes to hijack the revolution.

This analysis is consistent with what I have heard from other sources.

It would make sense that this is what is going on in Libya, too; when he supported terrorism, ~~Gaddafi~~ ~~Khadaffy~~ whatever was useful to the neocommies; but when, in the wake of 9/11, he decided that supporting terrorism might just earn him a place among the Axis of Evil (especially considering the A. Q. Khan network had trafficked Chinese nuclear weapons designs to him), suddenly terrorism went out of style. As ~~Gadhafi~~ whatever moved away from terrorism, he was no longer useful to the neocommies, so they targeted him with their Arab Spring revolutionary zeal.

This is why all the pundits can say that not everyone in the revolutionary movement there (and elsewhere) is an Islamic extremist, even though we know Islamic extremists are trying to leverage this wave of revolutions.

And make no mistake about it: an alliance between neocommies (the heirs to those who supported every kind of terrorism until the Soviet Union fell) and Islamic extremists will turn the Arab Spring into a Hazy Shade of Winter.

But, what does this mean for Norway?

Let's consider the aftermath of this terrorist event. Anyone following the news knows what's going on, but we can review an excerpt from Political Opportunism Follows Norway Tragedy by Alex Newman, dated July 25, 2011 (please see the original for numerous links which I did not reproduce):

Libertarians, conservatives, neo-Nazis, nationalists, racist groups, Masons, Muslims, Zionists, neo-cons, collectivists, anti-immigration activists — every group with the slightest connection to ideas even remotely along the lines of the killer's has issued statements. As if "ideas" could somehow be responsible for the rampage.

The reason for the frightened frenzy, however, is simple. Despite calls for calm, mourning, and rationality, a sizable segment of the media and political establishment began manipulating the tragedy almost instantly, seeking to score points for their pet causes or against their perceived political opponents.

The cries have almost become hysterical — particularly vicious against anyone perceived to be anti-Muslim, anti-"multiculturalism," or anti-immigration. And the political blame game is still growing.

"Right-wing extremists" should not be allowed to have gun licenses, suggested a Norwegian academic in one of the nation's big newspapers. Despite the fact that Norway has extraordinarily strict gun control, anti-gun zealots around the world are also exploiting the tragedy. "The staggering toll of young lives taken by a gunman at the Utoya youth camp reminds us all, once again, that guns are the enablers of mass killers," the U.S.-based Brady Campaign said in statement. In Australia and other nations, activists were on the attack as well.

Calls for more "hate crimes" prosecutions and tighter policing of the Internet have also exploded, even though in much of Europe broad swaths of political discourse have already been criminalized. Some countries, such as Finland, have just announced that they would be scrutinizing the web more closely.

Editorials urging a Europe-wide "crackdown" on "right-wing extremism" have appeared, too. They went hand-in-hand with the announcement that the European Union’s police agency would be creating a new taskforce to focus on "non-Islamic extremism" in Northern Europe.

In the United Kingdom, anti-immigration activists are under extraordinary pressure as authorities investigate potential links between the Norwegian terrorist and groups like the English Defence League (EDL). Pressure groups are calling for the EDL to be classified as an "extremist" organization and for a march it was planning to be prohibited.

Across Europe, a host of political parties, ranging from mainstream Christian Democrats to smaller nationalist parties, are also under intense fire. The media has been waging an unprecedented campaign to demonize them. Incredibly, politicians such as Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom Party are even being partly blamed for the atrocity by some of the more extreme commentators. "I would say Wilders is not legally guilty," historian Dirk-Jan van Baar was quoted as saying in Dutch state media. "But as a politician he must be perfectly aware that there is such a thing as political responsibility."

This is occurring despite the fact that many of these groups, these political parties, these organizations have tried to keep those who call for violence and unlawful activities out of their ranks. Back to an excerpt from 'Hitler would have put him on a poster': Norwegian killer had plastic surgery to look more Aryan, claims intelligence chief:

Breivik's links with the far-right English Defence League have also become clearer, as it emerged that he was a member of the Norwegian Defence League, an offshoot of the British group.

Lena Andreassen, a former leader of the NDL, confirmed that Breivik had been a member of the group, which is led by British football hooligans, but said: 'I kicked him out because he had extremist views.'

Any group that has a concern about the connections between Islam and terrorism, or that has questions about Islamic immigration, or that is against the neocommie agenda... no matter how peaceful, no matter how mainstream, no matter the group's efforts to promote lawful, peaceful action and keep violent extremists out... they're all now being targeted as suspected terrorists, while terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Fatah are now more than ever somehow the victims.

How did this get spun like this?

From ANALYSIS: Muslim Brotherhood Positions On Terrorism- Denial, Deception, Defense, And Obstruction, January 20, 2008 (I have reproduced two links found in the excerpt; both are pertinent, but we will look at the second):

A review of almost twenty years of statements and documents produced by a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood organization makes it possible to understand the public approach of the Brotherhood toward terrorism. The analysis reveals that it is almost always possible to parse Brotherhood positions on terrorism into one of four conceptual categories, each of which follows in a logical progression:

1. DENIAL- Since the Brotherhood is pursuing Islamization and eventually Shariah (Islamic Law), it is necessary at all costs to deny that Islam as a religion has any connection to violence or terrorism. Of course, the Brotherhood represents Islamism as opposed to Islam in this regard but since the general audience does not understand that distinction, it is Islam which is the Brotherhood reference. They cannot afford to fail in this denial and the denial strategy is usually pursued through sophistry. That is, the Brotherhood claims that Islam is unfairly associated with terrorism while Christianity, Judaism, and other religions are not (e.g. Abortion bombers are not called Christian Terrorists) and/or that other religious terrorism is just as dangerous as Islamic terrorism. The Brotherhood may be winning this battle (see here.)

The second link is to Government renames Islamic terrorism as 'anti-Islamic activity' to woo Muslims, from January 17, 2008:

Ministers have adopted a new language for declarations on Islamic terrorism.

In future, fanatics will be referred to as pursuing "anti-Islamic activity".

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said that extremists were behaving contrary to their faith, rather than acting in the name of Islam.

Security officials believe that directly linking terrorism to Islam is inflammatory, and risks alienating mainstream Muslim opinion.

In her first major speech on radicalisation, Miss Smith repeatedly used the phrase "anti-Islamic".

In one passage she said: "As so many Muslims in the UK and across the world have pointed out, there is nothing Islamic about the wish to terrorise, nothing Islamic about plotting murder, pain and grief.

"Indeed, if anything, these actions are anti-Islamic".

Newspeak: war is peace, freedom is slavery, and Islamic terrorism is anti-Islamic... and how much more anti-Islamic can you get than an attack on the people who support Palestinian Islamic terrorists?

Skipping down in ANALYSIS: Muslim Brotherhood Positions On Terrorism- Denial, Deception, Defense, And Obstruction (I fixed two typos):

3. DEFENSE

[snip]

Given the sensitivity in the West towards terrorism at home, the Brotherhood has a far more difficult job explaining Al Qaeda terrorism which it does by suggesting that while nothing "justifies" such terrorism, Al Qaeda actions spring from justified anger at U.S. foreign policy. This strategy provides a natural interface for the Brotherhood with the political far-left and, in Europe, the Brotherhood has been successful in forging such alliances.

The link in the quote then further details Muslim Brotherhood ties to the UK's neocommies.

Finally:

4. OBSTRUCTION- Having explained the violence of Islamist groups as a response to legitimate grievances, the Brotherhood is free to obstruct counter-terror efforts. One portion of its efforts is devoted to protecting its charities (e.g. Holy Land) and associated infrastructure which help to support Hamas and other Palestinian terrorism. The second part of the effort lies in hindering wider U.S counter-terror policies which it does by providing inaccurate analysis, positing plots and conspiracies about a "war on Islam" and opposing almost every counter-terror initiative undertaken by the government, suggesting instead that the correct response to terrorism is to change U.S. foreign policy, the ultimate goal of the obstruction. Again, the natural ally is the far-left and the Brotherhood has been successful in the U.S and forming such alliances with respect to counterterrorism policy.

And this brings us full circle.

As I pointed out in my previous post, Hazy Shade of Winter, Part 4, Palestinian terrorists routinely sacrifice Palestinian children to make propaganda. How much more so will Islamic terrorists sacrifice young infidels to make propaganda?

Anders Behring Breivik was a "lilly white". Jihadists probably helped him prepare his manifesto; his hard drive was wiped, probably to cover his connections to Islamic terrorists, such as Fatah and Hamas, and to the Muslim Brotherhood, which wages the ideological jihad and provides cover for the terrorists.

And, the attack has had the desired effects:

1) Denial: It is not just people associated with Islam who commit terrorism, but Muslims and Muslim sympathizers are themselves targets.

2) Defense: Islamic terrorism is now more understandable given that those who support Islamic terrorists are targets of right-wing terrorism.

3) Obstruction: Counterterror efforts need to focus not on Islamic groups, but on those political organizations that oppose Islamic immigration, socialism, and anything else that destroys the fabric of their nation.

This operation was conducted by a neo-Nazi/Islamist alliance.

The cost for this tremendous political and propaganda victory was a few dozen young people who were training to be neocommie operatives and allies (useful dupes) of the Islamic terrorist groups.

But, they will be easily replaced by the wave of recruits that will undoubtedly step up to take their place.

Meanwhile, the Islamists and neo-Nazis work together to take over Norway, and will presumably do so within a couple of decades - by which time, Anders Behring Breivik will be released from prison and be hailed as a hero.

Alliances between Nazi-types and Islamists work well, but between these two groups and the communists, the alliances always break down in a bloodbath.

So, these neocommie kids that were killed... well, when someday they realized how they had been duped into supporting their own destruction by an Islamist/neo-Nazi alliance, they would have been very upset. And, with all that political agitation training they had as kids, they could have severely disrupted the Islamic Republic of Norway....

Better to grease 'em now for a political and propaganda victory. ;)

Hitler and Stalin would have both been very proud.

Hazy Shade of Winter, Part 4

2011-07-31T06:30:00.000-07:00

In this post, we will examine some of the terrorist tactics against Israel and the propaganda campaign those tactics drive. You may wish to review previous posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3, but it is not really necessary to understand this post.

In response to a link on Facebook, there was posted a link to a site called If Americans Knew, the goal of which is "to provide full and accurate information" about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, which the site describes as "one of the world's major sources of instability."

A cursory glance through the site shows so much distortion that it is difficult to know where to begin.

I shall begin with "the children", because liberals so often justify by saying they are being committed for "the children".

The website offers this graphic on the front page, along with a link to supporting information:

What they don't tell you is that it is deliberate policy of Palestinian-based terrorist groups to maximize suffering on behalf of innocent Palestinians in order to have data to support a propaganda campaign against Israel.

For example, an excerpt from statements made by PA Workers' Union Official Bassam Zakarneh indicates that Hamas leaders hid in tunnels and deliberately launched rockets from a position with a great many children and elderly (video clip/transcript):

After the [UN discussion of the Goldstone Report] was postponed, voices criticized us: "Because of you, the blood of 1,400 martyrs was spilt in vain." This was heard especially from the mouthpieces of the Hamas movement, from the same leaders who used these martyrs as sandbags, while they hid in tunnels. They would place a missile, cover it with a tent, amid buildings with 200 children and old people, and they would launch the missile and hide.

This tactic presents Israeli forces with a dilemma: do nothing, and innocent Israelis die, or suppress the rocket fire, and innocent Arabs die. Either way, the terrorists calling the shots are hidden in a safe place; either way, the terrorists either kill Israelis or they get something they can use as propaganda, knowing that their useful dupes in the West will spread the statistics without looking further into the matter.

And, this is not an isolated incident. From A Gaza War Full of Traps and Trickery, January 10, 2009 (see original for links which I did not reproduce):

Hamas, with training from Iran and Hezbollah, has used the last two years to turn Gaza into a deadly maze of tunnels, booby traps and sophisticated roadside bombs. Weapons are hidden in mosques, schoolyards and civilian houses, and the leadership's war room is a bunker beneath Gaza's largest hospital, Israeli intelligence officials say.

[snip]

Interviews last week with senior Israeli intelligence and military officers, both active and retired, as well as with military experts and residents of Gaza itself, made it clear that the battle, waged among civilians and between enemies who had long prepared for this fight, is now a slow, nasty business of asymmetrical urban warfare. Gaza's civilians, who cannot flee because the borders are closed, are "the meat in the sandwich," as one United Nations worker said, requesting anonymity.

Needless to say, the Israelis will get the blame for not allowing the civilians to leave. But, the real problem is that Gazans live under the domination of a terrorist thugocracy; unless and until they overthrow their terrorist government, Gazans will continue to be the meat in the sandwich.

Israeli officials confirm that they are trying to protect their troops; however, within the bounds of that, they try to minimize civilian casualties among Gazans, but this is difficult, since the terrorists use Gazan civilians as human sheilds.

Skipping down in the article:

But the most important strategic decision the Israelis have made so far, according to senior military officers and analysts, is to approach their incursion as a war, not a police operation.

Civilians are warned by leaflets, loudspeakers and telephone calls to evacuate battle areas. But troops are instructed to protect themselves first and civilians second.

[snip]

Today, he said, "the mind-set from top to bottom is fight and fight cruel; this is a war, not another pinpoint operation."

Israeli officials say that they are obeying the rules of war and trying hard not to hurt noncombatants but that Hamas is using civilians as human shields in the expectation that Israel will try to avoid killing them.

Israeli press officers call the tactics of Hamas cynical, illegal and inhumane; even Israel's critics agree that Hamas's regular use of rockets to fire at civilians in Israel, and its use of civilians as shields in Gaza, are also violations of the rules of war. Israeli military men and analysts say that its urban guerrilla tactics, including the widespread use of civilian structures and tunnels, are deliberate and come from the Iranian Army's tactical training and the lessons of the 2006 war between Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Violation of the Law of Armed Conflict is very deliberate policy on the part of Hamas terrorist leadership.

What else is left out of the story is that, in addition to using children and non-combatants as human shields to maximize casualties among the civilian population and thus have something for which to condemn Israel, the terrorists also train children beginning at a very early age for jihad against Israel; this, too, is a clear violation of the Law of Armed Conflict.

When they talk about "children", too many international sources refer to anyone under the age of 18. That is a trick the gun control crowd uses in the US: they decry gun deaths of children, not acknowledging that most of these are 16- and 17-year-olds killing each other in gang-related activity. Dig deeper; go to the little kids who are being raised to hate infidels and who are being taught to be suicide bombers throughout the Islamic world. Don't just take your information from one souce; do your own research.

It is a question of the terrorist regimes that indoctrinate their people like this, and that kill those who oppose such extreme views, maintaining themselves in power by terrorizing their own people, so they can terrorize their neighbors in Israel.

There can be no peace with such a regime.

Israel is a democracy that is in a perpetual state of war or near-war, constantly having to defend itself or be ready to defend itself against neighbors who would rather die destroying Israel than have peace with a nation that they have claimed has no right to exist.

Depending on how you define "Arab", the Arabs have anywhere from a dozen to nearly two dozen countries in the world; Arabs in Palestine have had their own country, the Kingdom of Jordan, since before Israel existed. The Jewish people have only one country: Israel - and it is very small.

Yet, the regime that controls "Palestine" and claims to want self-determination in fact indoctrinates its people to seek death fighting Israel rather than to live in peace; these terrorists cynically maximize casualties among their own people for propaganda victories.

And, Westerners soak up terrorist propaganda and regurgitate it as if it were true.

There can be no peace with such people, other than the peace that is imposed after a military victory so decisive that the terrorist regimes dare not rise up while the generation is still alive that lived through the defeat.

Israeli military power and the sound, consistent defeat of aggressor nations that have attacked Israel is what brings some semblance of peace to a region that is involved in wars that often have nothing to do with Israel (Iraq/Kuwait, Egypt/Yemen, Libya/Chad, Iran/Iraq).

Truths Denied, Part 1

2011-07-23T19:15:00.001-07:00

None of this information is new. It has all been put out previously by other sources, and I do not know or recall how I came across it, thus I do not know to whom I should give credit. I consolidate it here in this post for my benefit and for the benefit of my readers.

From Twin Towers Engineered To Withstand Jet Collision February 27, 1993:

Engineers had to consider every peril they could imagine when they designed the World Trade Center three decades ago because, at the time, the twin towers were of unprecedented size for structures made of steel and glass.

"We looked at every possible thing we could think of that could happen to the buildings, even to the extent of an airplane hitting the side," said John Skilling, head structural engineer. "However, back in those days people didn't think about terrorists very much."

Skilling, based in Seattle, is among the world's top structural engineers. He is responsible for much of Seattle's downtown skyline and for several of the world's tallest structures, including the Trade Center.

Concerned because of a case where an airplane hit the Empire State Building, Skilling's people did an analysis that showed the towers would withstand the impact of a Boeing 707.

"Our analysis indicated the biggest problem would be the fact that all the fuel (from the airplane) would dump into the building. There would be a horrendous fire. A lot of people would be killed," he said. "The building structure would still be there."

Skilling - a recognized expert in tall buildings - doesn't think a single 200-pound car bomb would topple or do major structural damage to a Trade Center tower. The supporting columns are closely spaced and even if several were disabled, the others would carry the load.

"However," he added, "I'm not saying that properly applied explosives - shaped explosives - of that magnitude could not do a tremendous amount of damage."

He took note of the fact that smoke and fire spread throughout the building yesterday. He said that is possibly because the pressurizing system that stops the spread of smoke didn't work when the electric power went off. Skilling, 72, was not involved in the design of the building mechanics.

Although Skilling is not an explosives expert, he says there are people who do know enough about building demolition to bring a structure like the Trade Center down.

"I would imagine that if you took the top expert in that type of work and gave him the assignment of bringing these buildings down with explosives, I would bet that he could do it."

The following quotes are taken from oral interviews of emergency responders who were present at 9/11 in New York. The collection of transcipts of the oral interviews can be found at The Sept. 11 Records:

Battalion Chief Brian Dixon

File No. 9110166
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
BATTALION CHIEF BRIAN DIXON
Interview Date: October 25, 2001
Transcribed by Laurie A. Collins

MR. CAMPBELL: Today's date is October 25th. The time is 12:41 p.m. This is Patrick Campbell, fire marshal of the Fire Department of the City of New York. I'm conducting an interview regarding the events of September 11th. I'm here with Battalion Chief Brian Dixon in his office. Also present is --

MR. STEPONAITIS: Fire Marshal Stephen Steponaitis, Fire Department.

MR. CAMPBELL: You can identify yourself too.

CHIEF DIXON: Battalion Chief Brian Dixon.

Q. Chief, we're conducting an interview, just like I said, regarding the events of September 11th. What we're looking for is from the time that you became aware of the incident up until any time during the day. We're looking for people you'd seen, just what you noticed around you. You can just go on on your own.

[snip]

A: . . . Ganci was just figuring out where they were putting people. I was watching the fire, watching the people jump and hearing a noise and looking up and seeing -- it actually looked -- the lowest floor of fire in the south tower actually looked like someone had planted explosives around it because the whole bottom I could see -- I could see two sides of it and the other side -- it just looked like that floor blew out.

I looked up and you could actually see everything blew out on the one floor. I thought, geez, this looks like an explosion up there, it blew out. Then I guess in some sense of time we looked at it and realized, no, actually it just collapsed. That's what blew out the windows, not that there was an explosion there but that windows blew out.

Firefighter Christopher Fenyo

File No. 9110295
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
FIREFIGHTER CHRISTOPHER FENYO
Interview Date: December 11, 2001
Transcribed by Nancy Francis

BATTALION CHIEF KENAHAN: Today's date is December 11, 2001. The time is 12:31. This is Battalion Chief Dennis Kenahan of the Safety Battalion of the Fire Department of the City of New York. I'm conducting an interview with Christopher Fenyo of Engine 35 in the quarters of Engine 35.

Q. Chris, just tell us what you saw on September 11th.

A. This is Firefighter 6th Grade Christopher Fenyo. . . .

[snip]

There was an explosion at the top of the Trade Center and a piece of Trade Center flew across the West Side Highway and hit the Financial Center, and Arthur went to hook up with another chauffeur to the Financial Center.

[snip]

About a couple minutes after George came back to me is when the south tower from our perspective exploded from about midway up the building.

[snip]

At that point a debate began to rage because the perception was that the building looked like it had been taken out with charges. We had really no concept of the damage on the east side of 2 World Trade Center at that point, and at that point many people had felt that possibly explosives had taken out 2 World Trade, and officers were gathering companies together and the officers were debating whether or not to go immediately back in or to see what was going to happen with 1 World Trade at that point. The debate ended pretty quickly because 1 World Trade came down.

Battalion Chief Dominick DeRubbio

File No. 9110064
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
BATTALION CHIEF DOMINICK DeRUBBIO
Interview Date: October 12, 2001
Transcribed by Laurie A. Collins

MR. CUNDARI: The time is 10:15, and this is George Cundari with Murray Murad from the Fire Department of the City of New York. I'm conducting an interview with the following individual.

Q. Please state your name, rank, title and assigned command.

A. My name is Battalion Chief Dominick DeRubbio. I'm assigned to Division 8. I'm doing the 25R group in Battalion 21. That morning I was surplus, so I was assigned to the field comm. unit.

[snip]

A. . . . After a while we were looking up at the tower, and all of a sudden someone said it's starting to come down.

Q. This would be the north tower coming down?

A. This would be the first one.

Q. Or the south tower?

A. This one here. It was weird how it started to come down. It looked like it was a timed explosion, but I guess it was just the floors starting to pancake one on top of the other.

Paramedic Daniel Rivera

File No. 9110035
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
PARAMEDIC DANIEL RIVERA
Interview Date: October 10, 2001
Transcribed by Laurie A. Collins

MS. BASTEDENBECK: Today is October 10th, 2001. The time is 1520 hours. My name is Chris Bastedenbeck. I work for the New York City Fire Department. I'm conducting an interview with the following individual.

Please state your name, your rank, your title, where you're assigned.

PARAMEDIC RIVERA: Daniel Rivera, paramedic. I'm assigned to Battalion 31, Station 36 in Brooklyn.

Q. I'd just like you to give me the events of September 11th, 2001.

[snip]

A. . . . Then that's when -- I kept on walking close to the south tower, and that's when that building collapsed.

[snip]

Q. How did you know that it was coming down?

A. That noise. It was a noise.

Q. What did you hear? What did you see?

A. It was a frigging noise. At first thought it was -- do you ever see professional demolition where they set the charges on certain floors and then you hear "Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop"? That's exactly what -- because I thought it was that. When I heard that frigging noise, that's when I saw the building coming down.

Q. What did you do?

A. Run. . . .

[snip]

A. . . . Then the next thing you know, the next building collapsed. I was right in front of that building.

Q. So you were still over there when the second building collapsed?

A. Right, because I ran back. Not too bright of me, of course. I ran right back in, and I was right -- I could actually touch the building when it collapsed, the second time when it collapsed.

But again, I was prepared because I heard that same noise. It was like a waterfall noise. That's when I ran.

Firefighter Edward Cachia

File No. 9110251
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
FIREFIGHTER EDWARD CACHIA
Interview Date: December 6, 2001
Transcribed by Laurie A. Collins

CHIEF KENAHAN: Today's date is December 6th, 2001. The time is 2 p.m. This is Battalion Chief Dennis Kenahan of the New York City Fire Department, Safety Division. I'm conducting an interview with Ed Cachia of Engine 53.

Q. Please state your recollections for September 11th.

[snip]

A. . . . As my officer and I were looking at the south tower, it just gave. It actually gave at a lower floor, not the floor where the plane hit, because we originally had thought there was like an internal detonation explosives because it went in succession, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then the tower came down.

With that everybody was just stunned for a second or two, looking at the tower coming down.

Chief Frank Cruthers

File No. 9110179
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
CHIEF FRANK CRUTHERS
Interview Date: October 31, 2001
Transcribed by Elisabeth F. Nason

MR. RIGNOLA: This is Salvatore Rignola. I'm here with my partner Fire Marshal Cliff Krug. Today's date is Wednesday, October 31, 2001. The time is approximately 9:50. I'm at 9 Metrotech, 7th floor, speaking to Chief Cruthers, who is the Citywide Tour Commander. Chief, I'm going to ask you some questions about the events that happened on September 11, the year 2001.

Q. Tell me when you initially received the alarm and how you responded and where you went.

[snip]

A. . . . There were some units there, along with a Battalion Chief and I gave them some instructions as to what to try to do. And while I was still in that immediate area, the south tower, 2 World Trade Center, there was what appeared to be at first an explosion. It appeared at the very top, simultaneously from all four sides, materials shot out horizontally. And then there seemed to be a momentary delay before you could see the beginning of the collapse.

Firefighter James Curran

File No. 9110412
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
FIREFIGHTER JAMES CURRAN
Interview Date: December 30, 2001
Transcribed by Elisabeth F. Nason

BATTALION CHIEF MALKIN: December 30, 2001. The time is now 1233 hours. This is Battalion Chief Malkin of the Safety Battalion. I'm conducting an interview today with Firefighter sixth grade James Curran of Ladder Company 8. We are in the quarters of Ladder Company 8. There is nobody else in the room. This interview is in regards to the events of September 11, 2001. What follows is the interview with Fireman Curran.

Q. Take it away.

[snip]

A. . . . We started filing out and following the line of the building. I got just to underneath the north walkway. A guy started screaming to run. When I got underneath the north bridge I looked back and you heard it, I heard like every floor went chu-chu-chu. Looked back and from the pressure everything was getting blown out of the floors before it actually collapsed. . . .

Captain Karin Deshore

File No. 9110192
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
CAPTAIN KARIN DESHORE
Interview Date: November 7, 2001
Transcribed by Elisabeth F. Nason

INVESTIGATOR TAMBASCO: Today is November 7. I'm Mike Tambasco with the World Trade Center Task Force. We are doing an interview with Captain Karin Deshore of Battalion 46 into the events of September 11 at the World Trade Center. Interview time is beginning at 0549 a.m.

Q. Captain, would you be good enough to tell us your story?

[snip]

A. . . . I had no clue what was going on. I never turned around because a sound came from somewhere that I never heard before. Some people compared it with an airplane. It was the worst sound of a rolling sound, not a thunder. I can't explain it, what it was. All I know is -- and a force started to come hit me in my back. I can't explain it. You had to be there. All I know is I had to run because I thought there was an explosion.

I ran about 10, 12 feet up this little grassy hill and by then this force and this sound caught up with me already. I threw myself behind the last support column of the pedestrian overpass. It became pitch dark. The sound got worse, the force just kept passing me. At times I thought it was like an orange light maybe, coming past me.

I was unaware what was happening. I thought it was just a major explosion. I didn't know the building was collapsing. I was sitting with my left side towards the support beam, total darkness, total noise. I felt beyond alone. I felt desolated. I felt like, all I could say was people think about their families and whatever. All I kept saying to myself within me I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die.

I can't tell you how long it was before it died down. I just felt like the darkness the loneliness and being alone was the worst thing I ever experienced in my life and not being able to breathe. There was no air. Whatever this explosion was simply sucked all the oxygen out of the air. You couldn't breathe and the feeling of suffocation, I can't explain no further on that.

[snip]

Somewhere around the middle of the World Trade Center, there was this orange and red flash coming out. Initially it was just one flash. Then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building and that building had started to explode. The popping sound, and with each popping sound it was initially an orange and then a red flash came out of the building and then it would just go all around the building on both sides as far as I could see. These popping sounds and the explosions were getting bigger, going both up and down and then all around the building.

I went inside and I told everybody that the other building or there was an explosion occurring up there and I said I think we have another major explosion. I don't know if we are all going to be safe here. I told them I can't force you, but I don't know if we are going to be safe here. I'm going to try to get as far away from this building as possible. Unbeknown to me, a half a block down was the water.

[snip]

So here these explosions are getting bigger and louder and bigger and louder and I told everybody if this building totally explodes, still unaware that the other building had collapsed, I'm going in the water. I said I can swim. . . .

Again, I didn't see what was happening behind me, but knowing of all the explosions I thought here was another explosion coming and this sound again and this wave of this force again. I just jumped on the boat, closed the door with my left hand and just sank down to my knees. Here whatever it was just came right at us again.

Firefighter Kenneth Rogers

File No. 9110290
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
FIREFIGHTER KENNETH ROGERS
Interview Date: December 10, 2001
Transcribed by Elisabeth F. Nason

BATTALION CHIEF KENAHAN: December 10, 2001. The time is 10:48 a.m. This is Battalion Chief Dennis Kenahan of the Safety Battalion of the New York City Fire Department. I'm conducting an interview with Kenny Rogers, Firefighter first from Ladder 16 in the quarters of Ladder 16.

Q. All right Kenny, please give me any information you have regarding the events of September 11.

[snip]

A. . . . Meanwhile we were standing there with about five companies and we were just waiting for our assignment and then there was an explosion in the south tower, which according to this map, this exposure just blew out in flames. A lot of guys left at that point. I kept watching. Floor after floor after floor. One floor under another after another and when it hit about the fifth floor, I figured it was a bomb, because it looked like a synchronized deliberate kind of thing. I was there in '93.

Firefighter Richard Banaciski

File No. 9110253
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
FIREFIGHTER RICHARD BANACISKI
Interview Date: December 6, 2001
Transcribed by Elisabeth F. Nason

BATTALION CHIEF KENAHAN: December 6, 2001. The time is 3:30 p.m. This is Battalion Chief Kenahan of the Safety Battalion of the Fire Department of the City of New York. I'm conducting an interview with Rich Banaciski of Ladder 22.

Q. Please tell us the events of September 11 as you recall them?

[snip]

A. . . . We were there I don't know, maybe 10, 15 minutes and then I just remember there was just an explosion. It seemed like on television they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions.

Assistant Commissioner Stephen Gregory

File No. 9110008
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER STEPHEN GREGORY
Interview Date: October 3, 2001
Transcribed by Nancy Francis

MR. McALLISTER: This is Kevin McAllister from the Bureau of Administration. It's October 3rd, 2001, 1540 hours. I'm with Jim Drury from the Bureau of Investigations and Trials and with Commissioner Stephen Gregory of the Bureau of Communications. We're in Commissioner Gregory's office and we are now commencing the interview.

COMMISSIONER GREGORY: On Tuesday, September 11th, I was sitting in my office, it was just shortly before 9:00 o'clock, having a cup of coffee, and I heard on the scanner in my office on the PD SOD frequency police units frantically screaming about a plane that had just crashed into the World Trade Center. . .

[snip]

A. . . . I know I was with an officer from Ladder 146, a Lieutenant Evangelista, who ultimately called me up a couple of days later just to find out how I was. We both for whatever reason -- again, I don't know how valid this is with everything that was going on at that particular point in time, but for some reason I thought that when I looked in the direction of the Trade Center before it came down, before No. 2 came down, that I saw low-level flashes. In my conversation with Lieutenant Evangelista, never mentioning this to him, he questioned me and asked me if I saw low-level flashes in front of the building, and I agreed with him because I thought -- at that time I didn't know what it was. I mean, it could have been as a result of the building collapsing, things exploding, but I saw a flash flash flash and then it looked like the building came down.

Q. Was that on the lower level of the building or up where the fire was?

A. No, the lower level of the building. You know like when they demolish a building, how when they blow up a building, when it falls down? That's what I thought I saw. And I didn't broach the topic to him, but he asked me. He said I don't know if I'm crazy, but I just wanted to ask you because you were standing right next to me. He said did you see anything by the building? And I said what do you mean by see anything? He said did you see any flashes? I said, yes, well, I thought it was just me. He said no, I saw them, too.

I don't know if that means anything. I mean, I equate it to the building coming down and pushing things down, it could have been electrical explosions, it could have been whatever. But it's just strange that two people sort of say the same thing and neither one of us talked to each other about it. I mean, I don't know this guy from a hole in the wall. I was just standing next to him. I never met the man before in my life. He knew who I was I guess by my name on my coat and he called me up, you know, how are you doing? How's everything? And, oh, by the way did you... It was just a little strange.

Q. On the television pictures it appeared as well, before the first collapse, that there was an explosion up on the upper floors.

A. I know about the explosion on the upper floors. This was like eye level. I didn't have to go like this. Because I was looking this way. I'm not going to say it was on the first floor or the second floor, but somewhere in that area I saw to me what appeared to be flashes. I don't know how far down this was already. I mean, we had heard the noise but, you know, I don't know.

Deputy Commissioner Thomas Fitzpatrick

File No. 9110001
WORLD TRADE CENTER TASK FORCE INTERVIEW
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER THOMAS FITZPATRICK
Interview Date: October 1, 2001
Transcribed by Elisabeth F. Nason

ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER DRURY: We can begin by stating your name and your rank.

MR. FITZPATRICK: Tom Fitzpatrick, Deputy Commissioner for Administration, assigned to the Commissioners office.

ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER DRURY: Just for the record, its Monday, October 1, 2:40 p.m., conference room 8N6 at headquarters.

MR. FITZPATRICK: On the morning of the event I was in my office and I was alerted by Commissioner Feehan and one of the secretaries outside that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I looked out the window, saw a slice in the side of the north tower, and then Bill came down the hall and said let's go. So we responded from headquarters.

[snip]

A. . . . We looked up at the building straight up, we were that close. All we saw was a puff of smoke coming from about 2 thirds of the way up. Some people thought it was an explosion. I don't think I remember that. I remember seeing, it looked like sparkling around one specific layer of the building. I assume now that that was either windows starting to collapse like tinsel or something. Then the building started to come down. My initial reaction was that this was exactly the way it looks when they show you those implosions on TV.

Finally, from Letter to Thomas Kean from Sibel Edmonds August 5, 2004 (see also here):

In October 2001, approximately one month after the September 11 attack, an agent from a [city name omitted] field office, re-sent a certain document to the FBI Washington Field Office, so that it could be re-translated. This special agent, in light of the [September 11] terrorist attacks, rightfully believed that, considering his target of investigation (the suspect under surveillance), and the issues involved, the original translation might have missed certain information that could prove to be valuable in the investigation of terrorist activities. After this document was received by the FBI Washington Field Office and re-translated verbatim, the field agent's hunch appeared to be correct. The new translation revealed certain information regarding blueprints, pictures, and building material for skyscrapers being sent overseas. It also revealed certain illegal activities in obtaining visas from certain embassies in the Middle East, through network contacts and bribery. However, after the re-translation was completed and the new significant information was revealed, the unit supervisor in charge of certain Middle Eastern languages, Mike Feghali, decided not to send the re-translated information to the special agent who had requested it. Instead, this supervisor decided to send this agent a note stating that the translation was reviewed and that the original translation was accurate. This supervisor stated that sending the accurate translation would hurt the original translator and would cause problems for the FBI language department.

We have statements from the people who engineered and supervised the construction of the Twin Towers that one airplane crashing into one of the towers would be insufficient to bring it down; yet, we are told this happened twice in one day, and a third building that wasn't even hit came down as well.

Next, we have eyewitness statements from emergency responders, some with significant experience and rank, that the collapse of the Twin Towers looked like a controlled implosion.

Finally, we have a report from a credible witness that US intelligence services were aware that key information regarding US skyscrapers, including blueprints, had been sent overseas prior to 9/11.

This combination of information suggests the terrorist plot on 9/11 was far more intricate and well-planned than we have been led to believe.

If Osama bin Laden just wanted a terrorist attack, hijacking the planes and crashing them would have been more than adequate. Islamic terrorists had been working on similar plots for several years prior to 9/11.

If Osama bin Laden wanted to destroy the Twin Towers, a scheme to steal technical information on them and then plant explosives would have been adequate. They would not need to place just the right amount of explosives in just the right places to minimize collateral damage, as is done with a conventional implosion; instead, the emphasis would have been on making sure the building came down, and maximizing collateral damage - overkill would be good, and that's what we saw.

Why do both?

And, why was the 9/11 attack not listed as one of the crimes Sheikh bin Laden was wanted for?

It is difficult to imagine pulling off either aspect of this operation without some kind of inside help. However, with the kind of money Osama bin Laden had funding his terrorist operations, it would not be difficult to buy some help - especially if the people whose help he was buying did not know what exactly they were helping to do or who their boss was.

The dynamic that allowed this operation to go off successfully, and which prevented an adequate investigation of it, is alive and well. A very similar dynamic was in place yielding similar results for the OKBOMB incident, and a dynamic not unlike this one is in place now with the scandal involving ATF agents being directed to allow firearms to cross the border into the hands of Mexican drug cartels these past few years.

In this series, we will look at some of the information surrounding 9/11, but with frequent references to other situations and events.

Comment on Defensible Borders and "Occupied" Land

2011-07-13T18:14:00.000-07:00

Tammy Bruce posted a link to a note on Facebook that linked back to this: The Topography of Defensible Israeli Borders.

Here was my extensive comment to her note:

The article brings up good points that are routinely neglected in the typical media discourse. Here are some of the points the article brings up, plus a few.

"Palestine" also refers to the territory of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan; the PLO and others want to "liberate" this, too.

The territory of Israel is considered "occupied" by the "Palestinian" leadership. The "Palestinian" leadership has never backed off from the idea that they need to "liberate" the entire region, killing or driving into the sea every single Jew there.

"Palestinian" Arabs are latecomers to the area; the Jews had the Holy Land as a homeland even after Rome changed the province's name. It was when Arabs attacked in the seventh century, waging Islamic jihad, that many Jews finally left. The Muslim Arabs built nothing, and very few stayed. As late the end of the nineteenth century, there was essentially nothing and no one there; that is why the international community agreed to establish the Jewish homeland there - they didn't have to move anybody.

Even today, most of Samaria and Judea are empty, except for a few cities.

And so on...

The Arabs keep getting clobbered every time they attack. Allah is letting them down. They know that the only chance they have is to negotiate Israel back to the 1967 "borders", and then attack from there. If they can do this, they will be able to launch their attack from the high ground overlooking the densely populated coastal plain that is the core of Israel. Arab artillery will be able to shell the whole region, Arab forces will descend to attack, and the hills of Judea and Samaria will block Israeli radar to attacking Arab military aircraft.

Israel should keep all the land the IDF has taken in repelling the Arab attacks, for security reasons, but also as a price the Arabs pay for their continued aggression. Egypt, in signing a peace treaty with Israel (which I think is now very much in jeopardy) deserved to have the Sinai returned. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan also has good relations with Israel, now, but Jordan occupied the West Bank as a result of the War of Independence. It is not really Jordanian territory; it should belong to Israel, if we are to keep with the Balfour Declaration.

Still, Israel does not want to do this. But, it is important that Israel maintain a presence in the Golan Heights and along the Jordan River. In the Golan Heights, the Syrians would currently have to ascend to attack, and the fight would be in mostly deserted land. Should Israel give up the Golan Heights, the Syrians would be able to descend to attack, shelling into populated Israeli territory. This is kind of parallel to the situation in Samaria and Judea. Currently, Israel has forces along the Jordan River. They could fight a delaying action, withdrawing up into the hills, as Israeli forces mobilized and marshalled for the defense and counterattack. Furthermore, with Israeli radars and surface-to-air missiles in the hills of the "West Bank", Israel is far less vulnerable to surprise Arab air attack coming through the airspace of Jordan. Give this up to the people who have repeatedly sworn to kill them, and the Israelis will be in real jeopardy.

The Arabs enthusiastically collaborated with the Nazis in the extermination of the Jews during World War II, and have frequently announced their desire to destroy Israel as a nation, driving its people into the sea. It is written in Islamic holy texts that Jews must be exterminated; the Muslim Arabs consider it their duty to Allah to destroy Israel and kill all Israelis. They frequently announce this intention in the media in Arabic, intended for domestic consumption; they are a little less obvious with what they say to the international community in English.

Until the Arabs change their rhetoric, both in Arabic and in English, and until they demonstrate a commitment to doing things peacefully, there can be no peace in the region. Beyond Israel, the Arabs repeatedly fight among themselves; Egypt invaded Yemen, Iraq invaded Kuwait, Jordan got tired of PLO agitation and drove the PLO out - during this latter fight, the PLO was crossing the Jordan River to surrender to Israelis so they wouldn't be murdered at the hands of their fellow Palestinian Arabs of Jordan. The problem is not Israel; it is the Arab regimes in the region.

In my opinion, Israel should never give up Judea and Samaria; it is acceptable that they allow the Palestinian Arabs in the few population centers there to rule themselves, but the uninhabited expanses of the West Bank were intended by the Balfour Declaration to belong to Israel, and Israel had to take them in self defense against one of many Arab attacks. Israel should keep Samaria and Judea regardless of any settlement.

Thanks for keeping this issue on the front burner, Tammy. Obama's recipe of withdrawal to the 1967 "borders", which echoes a proposal by Saudi Arabia, is a recipe for what the Arabs want most - an Israel vulnerable to a new war of annihilation.

Take A Long Holiday, Part 2

2011-07-08T19:00:00.000-07:00

I hope you are familiar with Part 1 and with other things I have written at this blog, because this topic is headed in your direction.

To establish some background, we begin with a passage from Cocaine, kidnapping and the al-Qaeda cash squeeze, from March 6, 2010:

The three al-Qaeda agents assured the Colombians that they would have no problem moving their shipment of European-bound cocaine through the Islamist badlands of the Sahara.

As supporters of the terrorist organisation's North African branch, they would guarantee shipment of the drugs through territory they controlled - so long as they were paid fee of $2,000 per kilo.

The trio, all from the impoverished desert nation of Mali, thought they were setting up a deal with representatives of Colombia's Marxist FARC guerrillas to smuggle up to 1,000 kgs of cocaine.

In fact, they were speaking to informants for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) who secretly taped the meeting in Ghana in a sting operation in December.

[snip]

Every business needs cash flow, and Islamic terror is no exception. Across the world, al-Qaeda is turning to drug smuggling and sharply stepping up kidnapping and extortion to plug the gap in its finances caused by a fierce international crackdown on its original sources of cash. The trend raises the prospect of new floods of illegal drugs entering the West, and a sharply increased risk to Western tourists and businesspeople as they travel outside Europe.

When the terror group first began its activities more than a decade ago, it did not need to resort to criminal activities of a kind which might offend the strict Koranic principles proclaimed by its founder, Osama bin Laden. Deep-pocketed donors, in countries like Saudi Arabia, and Islamic charities throughout the Middle East channelled the cash needed to bankroll bin Laden's drive to create an Islamic caliphate across the region.

There has been a nexus between terrorism and organized crime for decades. These guys run in the same circles, and ever since the Cold War began to die down, terrorists began to look to drug trafficking as a source of money. Credible evidence suggests Al Qaeda and its predecessors were getting a significant amount of funding from trafficking Afghan heroin going all the way back to the 1980's jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden's group had previously been able to rely on wheeler-dealers like Abdul al Hamid al Mujil, known in jihadist circles as "the million dollar man" for his ability to solicit donations to the cause of holy war.

The 60-year-old Saudi was a regular visitor to Afghanistan during the 1990s and on friendly terms with bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, as he channelled funds from Arab states to al-Qaeda.

But in August 2006, al Mujil and the Philippine and Indonesian branches of the International Islamic Relief Organisation, which he headed, were designated by the US treasury as financiers of terrorism.

Western firms were prohibited from doing business with him, UN member states froze his assets and Saudi Arabia restricted the outflow of funds from the charity.

Deprived of his largesse, groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (the Arabic name for North Africa) are turning increasingly to international crime to provide their cash flow. And for bin Laden, that represents a dilemma.

At first he did not want al-Qaeda to dirty its hands with the drugs trade. But he apparently was won round by a combination of fiscal necessity and the argument, as often voiced on jihadist websites, that the drugs trade weakens Western "infidels" by feeding their sinful addictions.

Kidnapping of Western tourists to the Sahara has also become a lucrative money-spinner for al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Its members also traffic everything from arms to cigarettes to people.

And, AQIM is connected to Nigeria's Boko Haram which, in turn, just got people back from training with Al Shabaab in Somalia, as mentioned in Unity and Faith, Part 4. There we also considered Iranian trafficking of arms and heroin through Nigeria. And, in Hazy Shade of Winter, Part 3, we considered evidence of and rationale for Shi'ite Iran's support of Sunni extremist groups.

If you think about it, it all kind of comes together.

We now consider excerpts from South American drug gangs funding al-Qaeda terrorists, December 29, 2010:

Islamic rebels familiar with the barren terrain of the Sahara have struck deals under which they provide armed security escorts for drug traffickers in return for a slice of their profits.

Counter-terrorism experts said that the terrorists belong to the Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) group, which has kidnapped a series of Westerners and killed a British tourist last year.

They warned that the money they receive from drugs gangs could be used to attract new recruits and plan terrorist attacks on European cities.

Olivier Guitta, a counter-terrorism and foreign affairs consultant, said that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Marxist rebel group, was the "force behind the agreement with AQIM".

In the past drugs were flown or shipped from South America straight to Spain or Portugal but the introduction of more rigorous controls in those countries led FARC to change its way of operating.

"Since the routes going through Europe became much more difficult to use, FARC saw an opportunity to use the Sahel and North Africa as its new drug route," said Mr Guitta.

"And since AQIM has a hold over the area and was already involved in major smuggling operations it made sense to offer them a deal.

"AQIM is an independent unit of al-Qaeda and does not share the monies with al-Qaeda central but is looking to pull off terror attacks on its own in Europe."

I have been warning about this for some time.

In Côte d'Ivoire, the legitimate government of President Gbagbo was overthrown, and French-backed strongman (and friend of Sarkozy) Ouattara was installed with French military force under UN auspices. In Libya, Gaddafi's regime is being destabilized, with the intent to overthrow it.

There are many factors in play. One of them is to open up a way for South American cocaine to enter Africa via Côte d'Ivoire; another is to open up Libya as a staging ground to move cocaine into Europe's soft underbelly, possibly to open up connections with long-established transnational criminal cartels based nearby in the Balkans and Turkey - important players and key connections in trafficking Afghan heroin.

These newly-opened routes will provide redundancy against interdiction, offering options against those routes currently in use to move cocaine from South America to Europe.

But, a major focus of this series is what is happening on this side of the Atlantic, so let's continue:

Terrorists linked to al-Qaeda in north Africa have made $130m (£84m) from helping drugs gangs and kidnap ransoms since 2007, according to one report citing an investigation by the Algerian government.

[snip]

Algeria's paramilitary police have reported dozens of clashes with AQIM rebels carrying Kalashnikovs and providing armed escorts for drug smugglers since 2008.

[snip]

Counter-terrorism officials in Europe and the United States fear that the Sahara is fast becoming a safe haven for the activities of Islamic terrorists, along the lines of Somalia and Yemen.

May I suggest you also review Standing There on Freedom's Shore, Part 1 and Standing There on Freedom's Shore, Part 2 for further background on what is happening in and around the Sahara/Sahel region?

But Mr Guitta said attempts by Europe, the US and some north African states such as Morocco to tackle the growing links between terrorism and drug trafficking are hampered by the attitudes of other governments.

"In South America, only Colombia really helps. In Africa, most other countries do not co-operate very much and a few allegedly actually profit from the drug trafficking," he said.

Once you've made the connection to Columbia and its fight against the FARC, connections to Venezuela's strongman Chavez jump out at you.

But, it doesn't end there.

Here is Mexican Groups Team Up With Islamic Terrorists, from July 16, 2008, in its entirety (see the original for a link which I did not reproduce):

The same Mexican drug cartels that violently smuggle their goods through the United States' porous southern border are buying arms from radical Islamic terrorists and teaming up with them to distribute narcotics in Europe and the Middle East.

An alarming U.S. government intelligence report reveals this dangerous relationship, lending credibility to what advocates of immigration enforcement—including a barrier along the southern border—have said for years: National security is at risk. The southern border is not utilized only by desperate, hard-working people in search of the American dream.

Published by the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), the report identifies terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the Palestine Liberation Front and the Palestine Liberation Organization as Arab associates of Mexican drug-trafficking cartels. All are officially designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S. Department of State.

The Islamic terrorist groups have trafficked large amounts of heroin and cocaine in Europe and the Middle East sold to them by Mexican drug cartels as well as similar enterprises in South America. In turn, the terrorist groups have established multi million-dollar contracts in order to sell weapons to Mexican drug traffickers that are commercialized by providers in Yemen, Kuwait and Syria.

The investigation was conducted by the three U.S. government agencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), probing Islamic groups operating on the common border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. It revealed that these groups launder money, sell arms and traffic drugs of the same Mexican criminal organizations that operate within a stone's throw of the United States.

And this brings us full circle: Islamic terrorist groups are based and operating literally a stone's throw from the United States, receiving their funding from trafficking drugs in this hemisphere.

And the reason we can't have honest investigations of this is because the investigations would connect the terrorists to the drug traffickers, and the drug traffickers to corrupt officials in Washington. That's why there is no effective policy to control the flow of drugs and terrorists into the US along the border with Mexico: the drug traffickers are paying Washington officials for ineffective control of the border, so they can move their drugs to a very lucrative North American market.

The only good news is that now Europe is becoming the destination-of-choice for South American cocaine. :)

Take A Long Holiday, Part 1

2011-07-07T16:15:00.000-07:00

I hope you're ready for this series, because you'll never guess where it leads! :)

First, please check out the photo essay Holy Heroin by Tanya Habjouqa, from July, 2007. Here's one photo, with its caption:

Next, we consider the beginning of East Jerusalem suffers heroin plague, July 6, 2011:

"I didn't think I would ever stop", Abu Salah tells the circle. "After 14 years of buying and selling, hashish, heroin and cocaine, I had lost control of my life. I had no job. I would never speak to my family."

His story, and the clinic we are sitting in, is an indication of how Palestine's drug problem is fast becoming a crisis. The towns in and around East Jerusalem have become breeding grounds for addiction, made vulnerable by poverty and a lack of security.

Unlike neighbouring Egypt and Lebanon, Palestine has no historic connection with the drugs trade. Its arrival has been sudden and spectacular, with heroin in particular spreading like wildfire. Al Quds University estimates there are over 6,000 addicts in East Jerusalem today, compared with 300 in 1986.

In the town of Al Ram, pressed up against Israel's Separation Barrier, degradation has set in. Once a lively suburb of Jerusalem, since 2006 it has been locked out by the Barrier, which surrounds it on three sides. The effect of this sudden disconnection from the city has been devastating.

One-third of all businesses have been forced to close, 75 per cent of youths under 24 are unemployed, and around half of the town's 62,000 residents have been denied the ID they require to enter Jerusalem.

Al Ram, like neighbouring Abu Dis and Al Ezzariya, has been left in limbo. It is now classified as a mixture of Area B and C, under the terms of the 1993 Oslo Accords, which stipulates Israeli security control with some Palestinian Authority administration. Palestinian police are forbidden from operating here without permission, so residents live with anarchy.

"There is no authority, no security and no police", says Dr Ajman Afghani of al Maqdese, a social development NGO. "It is easy to steal cars and rob houses, and it has become like a supermarket for drugs". Palestinian Authority Spokesman Ghassan Khatib acknowledges the problem; "these areas are suffering because we are not allowed to function, and is Israel is neglecting them as a policy."

It goes without saying that the drug problem is Israel's fault - at least according to Israel's detractors. For example, from The scourge of drugs in Jerusalem, dated January 3, 2011:

Conclusion

The city of Jerusalem is of special interest to Israeli politicians as they consider it to be the "undivided" capital of their state. As a result, they are seeking ways to end the Palestinian presence in the city and have plans to reduce the Arab population of East Jerusalem so that the Palestinians become a minority of not more than a quarter of the total population over the next ten years. Israeli policies to isolate the city from its Palestinian heritage and culture through closing institutions are part of this process, known as "Judaization" of the Holy City. Those who resist are seeing their homes demolished and themselves "deported" from their occupied city to the occupied West Bank.

It appears to be a clear policy that Israel uses the illegal trade in drugs as a weapon against the Arab presence in Jerusalem, ruining the health of young people and weakening their mental and moral strength. The drugs to which the Israeli police turn a blind eye are destroying young Palestinians on an intellectual, cultural and economic level as part of the process to destroying them completely. The problem is exacerbated by the decline in social and moral values, civil unrest and political tensions arising from the occupation. Rising unemployment and the widening circle of poverty play their part.

The failure of the Palestinian Authority and Arab politicians to take this seriously means that there is a serious lack of programmes in place to help Palestinians in Jerusalem to tackle the drug problem. International impotence in the face of the Israeli occupation does nothing to help this situation. It appears to have been forgotten that according to international law Jerusalem is still occupied territory and is thus supposed to be protected from geographic and demographic change at the hands of the occupying power, Israel. As long as the world ignores even that fundamental point, then it is unlikely that any significant progress is going to be made towards combating the evils of drugs in the Holy City of Jerusalem.

But, is there another side to the regional drug problem?

For background, we consider information presented to Congress twenty-one years ago. From The World's Largest Drug Field -- (by Dennis Eisenberg) (Extension of Remarks - July 27, 1990):

As the U.S. government cracks down on the Colombian drug traffic, Lebanon's lush Bekaa Valley has emerged as the largest 'killing field' on the globe. Already producing 80 percent of the world's cannabis, its farmers have now planted a record acreage of poppies to cope with the growing demand for the even more profitable heroin.

Hundreds of acres of fruit orchards, wheat fields, and vineyards of the Bekaa Valley -- known in Roman times as the breadbasket of the world -- have been uprooted to make way for the intensive cultivation of crops in eager demand by international drug dealers.

The Syrian government, which invaded the area to 'bring law and order,' is an active partner with local merchants and raked in an estimated $1 billion last year. This money was desperately needed, as the Syrians have to pay off their vast debts to the Soviet Union before Moscow will supply any more sophisticated missiles, fighter planes, and other weapons for President Hafez Assad's 800,000-strong army.

Syrian troops not only guard the poppy and cannabis fields to prevent theft and ensure that supplies are not sold to competing bidders, but they also intervene to settle disputes between rival terrorist gangs, who have their own drug estates and transportation networks to Scandinavia, France, Finland, Holland, Belgium, and West Germany. Yasser Arafat's PLO (known locally as the 'poppy lovers' organization') uses its links with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to rake in massive profits from sending drugs via Holland to its network of agents in Britain, West Germany, and Ireland for international distribution. Terror groups today spend far more time as merchants of death selling drugs than carrying out violent attacks for their cause.

European police first stumbled on this trade when Scotland Yard special units, in cooperation with the Dutch Narcotics Squad, unearthed a haul of 300,000,000 pounds' worth of top-grade 'Lebanese Gold' transported from Lebanon in two freighters chartered by the PLO. Earlier, and six-man PLO squad led by one of Arafat's chief aides, Ali Mahmoud Buro, was arrested at Heathrow Airport after customs men found a 150-kilogram cache of Bekaa Valley cannabis in their luggage.

Following up on these leads as well as information from Western intelligence services operating in the Middle East, Scotland Yard detectives recently cracked down on a vast IRA-PLO money-laundering operation. The IRA was using British banks and other financial organizations to purchase arms with their drug profits for terrorist operations in Ireland, Britain, Germany, and France.

An intelligence source told me: 'Most of the IRA and Arab terror group leaders spend far more time and energy today buying legal businesses under registered company names and stashing money away in their private banking accounts than fighting for 'freedom and liberation.'

The Palestine Liberation Organization - Yasser Arafat's crowd - was so into heroin trafficking that it was known as the "Poppy Lovers' Organization". Wow! And their ties went to the IRA - not any alliance against any kind of common enemy, just simple drug trafficking.

Experts say the drug trade is worth $6 billion a year to Lebanon. The street value in Western cities is a staggering $150 billion.

As no one in Lebanon even pretends to try to stop the growth of cannabis and poppies, three-quarters of the 4,280-square-kilometer Bekaa Valley is cultivated with these two crops. The Muslim farmers in the eastern and central valleys of the Bekaa, especially in the town of Manara, have concentrated on the easy-to-grow cannabis weed to provide Western marijuana and hashish users with their needs. Poppies, which are the source of opium before it is converted into heroin, require greater skill in care and extraction and until recently have been planted near the homes of local peasants.

Farmers have discovered, however, that heroin is a far more profitable crop. They have been helped by the Syrians, who supplied them with mobile laboratories transported in army trucks. As a result, peasants can plant poppies among cannabis fields even in the mountains of the Bekaa to increase their profits. Heroin from the Bekaa is considered to be superior even to the best quality Turkish-produced drug.

Of course, today the best heroin comes from Afghanistan. But two decades ago, Lebanon was the happening place.

Skipping down:

Although the civil war in Lebanon is theoretically one between various Christian and Muslim sects, there is close cooperation between all groups when it comes to the mind-boggling profits being made from the drug business. The local trades are mostly Christian Lebanese who buy entire harvests from one Muslim village after another. In return for 'protection' by Syrian soldiers in areas controlled by Damasus, they hand over half their profits to officers working under Kenaan.

I was told by an intelligence source: 'The entire Lebanon is really a country of 24 fiefdoms, each one ruled by its own Mafia chief whose wealth and power spring from the drug trade. The Lebanese civil war is really about who controls the best cannabis and poppy fields as well as ports from where to export the drug harvest. It also explains why the Syrian government refuses to withdraw from the Bekaa and has even strengthened its vast armies stationed there.

So, much of the unrest in the Middle East was, at least twenty-plus years ago, fighting over the trade in illegal drugs.

Do you suppose this is still a problem?

(And, by analogy, do you suppose this might be part of the reason why the war in Afghanistan has been going on so long?)

Yasser Arafat died a very rich man. According to a 60 Minutes report from November 7, 2003, entitled Arafat's Billions

(CBS) Yasser Arafat diverted nearly $1 billion in public funds to insure his political survival, but a lot more is unaccounted for.

Jim Prince and a team of American accountants - hired by Arafat's own finance ministry - are combing through Arafat's books. Given what they've already uncovered, Arafat may be rethinking the decision. Lesley Stahl reports.

------------------------

"What is Mr. Arafat and the Palestinian Authority worth today?" asks accountant Jim Prince. "Who is controlling that money? Where is that money? How do we get it back?"

So far, Prince's team has determined that part of the Palestinian leader's wealth was in a secret portfolio worth close to $1 billion -- with investments in companies like a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Ramallah, a Tunisian cell phone company and venture capital funds in the U.S. and the Cayman Islands.

Although the money for the portfolio came from public funds like Palestinian taxes, virtually none of it was used for the Palestinian people; it was all controlled by Arafat. And, Prince says, none of these dealings were made public.

[snip]

Martin Indyk, a top adviser on the Middle East in the Clinton administration and now head of the Saban Center, a Washington think-tank, says Arafat was always traveling the world, looking for handouts. Money, he says, is "essential" to Arafat's survival.

"Arafat for years would cry poor, saying, 'I can't pay the salaries, we're gonna have a disaster here, the Palestinian economy is going to collapse,'" says Indyk. "And we would all mouth those words: 'The Palestinian economy is going to collapse if we don't do something about this.' But at the same time, he's accumulating hundreds of millions of dollars."

[snip]

According to Indyk, "The Israelis came to us and said, basically, 'Arafat's job is to clean up Gaza. It's going to be a difficult job. He needs walking-around money,' because the assumption was that he would use it to get control of all of these terrorists who'd been operating in these areas for decades."

Obviously, that hasn't happened. No one knows this better than Dennis Ross, who was Middle East negotiator for the first President Bush and President Clinton, and now heads the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He says Arafat's "walking-around money" financed a vast patronage system.

[snip]

All told, U.S. officials estimate Arafat's personal nest egg at between $1 billion and $3 billion.

[snip]

He also uses the money to bolster his own standing. Both Israeli and U.S. sources say those recent outpourings of support at Arafat's compound were "rent-a-rallies," and that Arafat has spent millions to support terrorists and purchase weapons.

At this point, you might wish to do an internet search and see how much money you gave to Yasser Arafat. For example, according to a February 2, 2006, report entitled U.S. Aid to the Palestinians, the total for US money to the Palestinian Authority from FY2002 to FY2006 was in the hundreds of millions of dollars; of course, half way through this time frame, Arafat died, but you get the idea.

And, the US wasn't the only country to give the PA money.

So, if you are reading this, chances are your government gave this drug-dealing terrorist some "walking-around money" on your behalf.

All this time, Arafat was also making money by trafficking drugs. And, much of this drug money, plus the money that your government so generously donated to the Palestinian Authority on your behalf, all went to make Yasser Arafat personally wealthy, and to fund his support of terrorists.

Meanwhile, the heroin addiction problem was growing, and the "Palestinians" were some significant victims of their own leadership's narcotrafficking. For example, in East Jerusalem, it went from 300 addicts in 1986 to 6000 today. Needless to say, the Palestinian leadership didn't spend a whole lot of money on taking care of the "Palestinians" who were getting addicted to the heroin that the Palestinian leadership was helping move; in fact, it has been since the Oslo Accords of 1993 which paved the way for the Palestinian Authority to take control of the "occupied" areas of the "West Bank" that the problem has really gotten bad.

And, Israel (and, by extension, America, for supporting Israel) gets the blame for it all.

But, this problem is hitting closer to home than you think. ;)

Hazy Shade of Winter, Part 3

2011-07-04T20:00:00.000-07:00

In Part 1 we looked at President Obama's call for Israel's withdrawal to the 1967 "borders" and began considering how suicidal that would be for Israel; in Part 2 we saw how a former Mossad chief, considered a "hawk", picked up the same refrain, contradicting Prime Minister Netanyahu's assertion that the 1967 borders would not work - this at a time when Israel should present a united front against the Obama Administration, whose pronouncements, if implemented, would literally lead to Israel's destruction.

We now pick up the story from a very different angle.

The "Arab Spring" is a name given to a wave of uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, as Arab unrest leads to the overthrow of long-established regimes. Use of the term "Spring" implies that this should be counted on the plus side for the Arabs in those lands, and for humanity as a whole.

However, revolutionary fervor tends to get misdirected, misguided and hijacked; it doesn't take a senior analyst in the US intelligence or diplomatic community to recognize the possibility that things could quickly become worse than ever.

We begin with excerpts from Historic Relations Between Muslim Brotherhood and Iran, dated April 10, 2010, by Nabil Al-Bukairi. The first addresses how different factions of the Muslim Brotherhood view the situation with the Houthi rebels (a Shia insurgent group in Yemen):

The press releases of Muslim brotherhood in Egypt and Syria concerning the development of Houthi invasion to Saudi lands raised an exaggerated argument about the reality of the Iranian-Muslim brotherhood relation. The Egyptian release urged King Abdullah of Saudi to immediately stop the war against Houthi rebels calling him to increase his efforts to reach consolation between the two Yemeni fighting sides instead. Some have understood this stance as support for Houthi rebels in the war, and therefore support for Iran.

However, in contrast, the Syrian Muslim brotherhood laid the blame for the war on Houthi rebels who according to the release is a tool in the hands of regional parties who have an extension project in the region; indirectly referring to Iran.

These two contrary stances display the scale of differences between the different Muslim brotherhood sections and Tehran, and therefore reflex how mysterious is the Iranian-Muslim brotherhood relation.

In other words, the Egyption MB seemed to support the Houthi rebels as proxies of Iran. But, Syria seemed to support Riyadh. At first glance, this may seem surprising, since we normally consider Syria as having closer ties to Iran.

The lesson I draw from this is that, like anything else in the Middle East, alliances are not always what we might expect just by examining the surface. In that part of the world, there is factionalism that often seems to be the driving factor in events.

Skipping down:

Iran and Muslim brotherhood Today

Since the fall of Baghdad, the Iranian-Muslim brothers relation have not been well. There are some of the Muslim brotherhood who doubt the Iranian policy towards regional and Arabian issues like the issues of Afghanistan and Iraq and afterward Lebanon and Yemen. It is true that Egyptian and Palestinian Muslim brotherhood have an intimate relationship with Iran; a result of Iran’s support for the right struggle of Palestinian people against the Israeli invaders.

However, the case seems to be the opposite with Muslim brotherhood in Yemen, Lebanon, or in the gulf for example. In these countries, the Muslim brotherhood are angry at the Iranian intervention in the internal affairs of their countries like the case in Iraq, Lebanon, and finally in Yemen. Therefore, Muslim brothers are not pro-Iranian policy in their countries as some like to describe them.

Al-Bukairi concludes by assessing that Iran is acting in Iran's own interests, pure and simple, and advises caution to any Arab Sunni groups that may be considering an alliance. But, caution is also advised regarding Sunni/Shi'ite hostilities, which "only served the Israeli goals."

Apparently, in this Houthi/Yemen fight, each side accuses the other of being allied with unsavories. Yemen says the Houthis are backed by Iran; the Houthis say Yemen's government is affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

(Frankly, I suspect both accusations are true.)

According to The Muslim Brotherhood's Ideological Ties to Iran & its Islamic Revolution by Diana Gregor, from earlier this year (numbers in [brackets] are footnotes; see original):

Iran's revolution has served as a model for both Sunni and Shiite Islamist movements seeking power. Thomas Joscelyn from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies concluded that: "[...] ties between the Brotherhood and Iran predate 1979. Hassan al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, believed that Sunnis and Shiites should overcome their differences to face their common enemies. So, too, did Ayatollah Khomeini, who openly advocated an alliance between the two main branches of Islam." [8]

Iran has maintained informal ties to the Muslim Brotherhood for many years. Mehdi Khalaji, senior fellow at the Washington Institute, noted: "If Iran were to develop close relations with the Brotherhood, Iranian influence would grow considerably in the Arab world, giving Tehran a significant say among Arab radicals [...]." [9]

This last article footnoted, by Mehdi Khalaji, is interesting. From Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and Iran, February 12, 2009:

Ties between Iran and Sunni Extremists

Egypt has long been suspicious of the connection between the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Iran, based in large part on Iran's longstanding strong ties to Hamas -- an offshoot of the Brotherhood. The recent conflict in Gaza is likely to further arouse Cairo's suspicions. During the fighting, Iran was highly vocal in their support of Hamas, blasting the Egyptian government for its inaction. Hamas leader Khaled Mashal thanked Iran for its support of his organization, asserting that the "people of Gaza . . . have always appreciated the political and spiritual support of the Iranian leaders and nation." According to Iranian state television, Mashal reportedly said that "Iran has definitely played a big role in the victory of the people of Gaza and is a partner in that victory."

Iran has also forged stronger working relations with other Sunni extremists. According to the New York Times, Saudi authorities allege that the leader of "al-Qaeda in the Persian Gulf," Abdullah al-Qaraqi, lives and moves freely in Iran, along with more than a hundred Saudis working for him. The Treasury Department, in its recent enforcement action, announced that Saad bin Laden, son of Usama bin Laden, was arrested by Iranian authorities in early 2003 but that "[a]s of September 2008, it was possible that Saad bin Laden was no longer in Iranian custody." According to Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, Saad bin Laden is now most likely in Pakistan.

It seems Iran is trying to establish itself as the leader of the anti-Western jihad, and is cultivating necessary contacts to do so. While Arab governments have oppressed the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran has reached across the Sunni/Shi'ite aisle to lend a helping hand.

On February 26, 2011, Brian Fairchild began WikiLeaks Cables Reveal Muslim Brotherhood Ties to Iran with the following:

The Obama administration believes that the Muslim Brotherhood is an acceptable player in forming a new government in Egypt despite the fact that about a dozen very public quotes from the former and current leaders of the Brotherhood, which I provided in a Pajamas Media article last week, reveal the Brotherhood's Salafi-jihadi worldview and support for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

These quotes are readily available to anyone who wants to take the time to look for them, but the Obama team's acceptance of the Brotherhood is all the more mystifying due to the fact that the government's own classified State Department cables document that Iran, our arch-enemy in the region, has been clandestinely supporting it as a proxy in Egypt.

The link in the passage was in the original; it provides a whole list of quotes from the Muslim Brotherhood showing how the MB supports terrorism and is a threat to everything that should be important to the United States.

What else is of concern is that the Muslim Brotherhood is very organized and in a strong position to leverage unrest throughout the region into political power. From Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood Lurks as a Long-Term Threat to Freedom by James Phillips, February 8, 2011, which begins:

Although Egypt's widely supported protest movement was reportedly instigated by secular opposition activists, the largest and most well-organized group within Egypt's diverse coalition of opposition groups remains the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement determined to transform Egypt into an Islamic state that is hostile to freedom.

In other words, the MB is going to pull an Iranian Revolution on us.

Skipping down to the end of the article:

Hijack Prevention

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood pursues a radical long-term Islamist agenda while masking its hostility to freedom and genuine democracy with self-serving tactical rhetorical moderation. The Obama Administration should patiently seek to advance freedom and stability in Egypt through a transition to a more representative government that gives the Muslim Brotherhood the smallest possible opportunity to hijack the reform process.

The worst possible outcome of the present crisis would be to open the door to a takeover by a totalitarian Islamist group hostile to the United States while working to replace President Mubarak’s authoritarian regime.

This "worst possible outcome" is exactly what the Obama Administration seems to be engineering.

The Obama team has given the green light to French involvement in Côte d'Ivoire. Under the auspices of the UN, Sarkozy has installed his friend Ouattara as strongman of Côte d'Ivoire, deposing President Gbagbo, in violation of Ivoirian law and with a terrible toll of civilian casualties. Many of those civilians were killed by French air attacks, but many were also killed by Ouattara's supporters, who are mostly Muslims, and whose atrocities often take the form of religious attacks on Gbagbo's predominantly Christian supporters: jihad by any other name....

In Sudan, the Bashir regime is committing a preplanned genocide in Southern Kordofan. I have written about this in previous posts, especially in Land of the Blacks, Part 5, where I call attention to the fact that Bashir appointed his henchman Harun, also under ICC indictment for his activities in Darfur, as governor of Southern Kordofan two years ago. Obviously, Bashir saw an opportunity with Obama coming into office to rework the ethnic composition of the Nuba Mountains. From The Abandoned Army: War Returns to Sudan's Nuba Mountains (notice the different spelling of Harun; I adopt the spelling on the ICC indictment and arrest warrant):

Under the current regime, there have been extensive efforts to "Islamize" the Nuba, by force if necessary.

[snip]

The new governor, Ahmad Haroun, is a veteran of the largely Arab Murahileen mounted militias formed to raid Southern Sudanese tribes in the border regions during the 1980s. In the 1990s Haroun was involved in the brutal campaign to punish the Nuba of South Kordofan for supporting the SPLA, a reprisal campaign that did not differentiate between Muslim and non-Muslim and left roughly 200,000 civilians dead. By 2003 Haroun was Minister of the State for the Interior and played a major part in organizing the Arab Janjaweed militia to attack non-Arab Muslim civilians suspected of supporting the Darfur insurgency. In respect to these activities, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Haroun on multiple charges of crimes against humanity in April 2007. In response, Khartoum appointed Haroun to head an investigation into human rights abuses in Darfur.

Wow!

And, Obama does nothing about this.

In Egypt, the Obama Administration supported ousting Mubarak, knowing the Muslim Brotherhood would be the best situated to replace him. In Libya, Obama used US forces to begin ousting ~~Gadaffi~~ ~~Khadafy~~ whatever, knowing Libyan rebels would have a healthy sprinkling of Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood.

And then Obama calls for Israel to suicidally return to the 1967 "borders", which are completely indefensible, and which would thus invite yet another Arab attack, akin to all the previous Arab attacks that were beaten back resulting in the lines of control that exist today in the West Bank and Golan Heights.

It seems quite clear to me that the Obama Administration's strategy is to promote, at every opportunity, the success of Islam's holy warriors throughout the region, giving preference to the worst of the bunch, who are allied to Tehran, where Iranian President ~~Adminijihad~~ whatever has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel. The only thing keeping Obama from throwing Israel under the bus is a substantial pro-Israel lobby, which he needs to please America's Jewish voters to win re-election. (In 2008, he had roughly three quarters of America's Jewish vote.)

This "Arab Spring" is turning out to be a very cold "spring", full of murky maneuverings. In fact, to me, it looks more like a hazy shade of winter.

Conspiracy Theories

2011-07-04T13:12:00.001-07:00

From a discussion on Facebook, I reproduce my extensive comment:

Sibel Edmonds has pretty much told us what is going on. For several years, she talked around a gag order, then she was ordered to do a deposition, and she named names. I have the links at my blog. The Sibel Edmonds Deposition
The first many minutes of the deposition are objections and so on, but then it gets interesting.

Sibel Edmonds was a low-level interpreter at the FBI's Washington, DC, Field Office; she speaks Turkish, among other important languages. She had applied to do work for the FBI, but only in the wake of 9/11 did they suddenly want to get caught up on their backlog of untranslated information.

In the information she translated, there was a great deal to clue us in that blueprints of US skyscrapers had been sent to the Middle East, and that Al Qaeda was going to crash airliners into US skyscrapers - not surprising, since Al Qaeda had been toying with the idea for a decade.

However, the information on this came in through channels that collect intelligence on narcotics and money-laundering operations, not on terrorism. The cartels that trafficked heroin through Turkey at the time, tied in to the Turkish Deep State, were connected to Al Qaeda, and that is how the information got passed; Al Qaeda, like other terrorist organizations since the end of the Cold War, funds its terrorist operations through organized crime, and trafficking Afghan heroin is a major aspect of this.

On the other end, though, the connections went to very important US officials, both elected and appointed, from both major parties, who were on the payroll of these Turkish organized crime groups.

Consequently, a serious investigation into 9/11 would have connected key Washington politicians to transnational organized crime and even to Al Qaeda itself. These officials derailed any attempts at such investigations by using State Secrets Privelege, telling the FBI that an investigation would hurt sensitive national security and foreign relations interests, when in fact the intervening officials were protecting their own criminal activity.

None of this is now secret; do an internet research, and you can confirm everything written here.

What I find interesting is her assertions that she saw papers that showed we knew Al Qaeda was going to attack with airplanes, and that she knew blueprints of skyscrapers had gone to the Middle East.
9/11 theories have it either 1) it was the Muslims, and stop being a conspiracy-theorist, the Musims are a threat, or 2) it was an inside job, and the Muslims were just the fall guys.

The truth is that Islam lends itself to terrorism, and, while there are good people who are Muslims, a disproportionate number of the world's terrorists are Muslims. They hate infidels, and they did attack us; the intelligence community was following the development of their plans to use aircraft to attack us for a decade prior to 9/11. Documents to support this were made available during the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, and I have copies.

But, the Twin Towers were designed to be able to withstand multiple airliner hits per tower; yet, two hits took down the Twin Towers and WTC-7.

Islamic terrorists did indeed attack, but the hijacking of the aircraft and their crashing into buildings was only part of the plan; it succeeded against all odds, and did far more damage than was even remotely possible.

It is my belief they laundered drug money through computers in the towers that were still running while the people who were supposed to be operating them were contemplating jumping out of windows to escape the fire. The buildings were imploded; I believe this was in part to destroy the computers and cover up the evidence of money-laundering.

To do this required some inside help, but, as we established from the Sibel Edmonds case, there is enough corruption in the US tied to friends of Al Qaeda for the help to be available.

I have more information, and more theories that fit the facts.

The Plame case is connected to the Edmonds case; both cases give us a glimpse of the same iceberg by looking at different parts of it that broke the surface of the water.

The Terrance Yeakey case is more remote, and at first does not appear to be connected, but I believe very similar dynamics are involved.

Investigative reporter and author Jayna Davis connected the OKBOMB to the Middle East, specifically to Iraq intelligence operatives.

In my opinion, a thorough investigation of the OKBOMB would have connected the Clinton Administration to narcotics traffickers. Instead, Clinton declared that it was only right-wing terrorists, covering up the Middle East connection, and used the attack for domestic political purposes; he then won re-election, just barely.

Terrance Yeakey was a sergeant with the OKPD, a first responder at the OKBOMB. He saw something very suspicious, and was brutally murdered for what he saw. The OKBOMB and the TiNRATs, Part 1.

Do your own research. My theories are my theories, but the facts can be readily confirmed, and I tried to clearly identify what were my theories and hypotheses, and what are verifiable facts.

Text of the Declaration of Independence

2011-07-04T02:15:00.000-07:00

The full text of the Declaration of Independence:

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their future security — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. — The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free system of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislature, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

If these guys in Washington knew anything about America, this country they think they rule, and if they knew anything about our history, they would not push us as much as they do.

The reckoning came once beginning on April 19, 1775, and is coming again.

Happy Birthday, America!

May we do what pleases our Creator, so He will again establish us as a beacon of hope to all humanity.

For When Words Fail

2011-07-01T16:00:00.000-07:00

From OKC Police: Meth-Smoking Mom Delays Abused Child's Medical Care, June 23, 2011:

Police collected evidence from the LaQuinta Inn after the toddler was taken to Children's Hospital.

Police said the child had numerous bruises and an injury on the base of his skull.

A family member said the boy had lye burns on his throat, face and eyes, signs of sexual abuse, bleach poisoning, and at one point, was hanging from a ceiling with a dog collar.

From OKC Drug Addicts Prostitute Toddler For Meth, June 24, 2011:

She has been accused of allowing two men to rape and abuse a 3-year-old boy in exchange for drugs.

From London protesters: 'Behead those who insult prophet', February 3, 2006:

Placards calling for anyone who insults the prophet Mohammed to be beheaded have been waved during an angry protest outside the Danish Embassy in London.

Surah 2:191:

And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers.

Surah 9:5:

So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them; surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

From Dad kills 20-yr-old for talking to boyfriend on cellphone, June 3, 2011:

The girl's boyfriend has her heart-rending screams recorded on his cellphone. However, he could not muster the courage to approach police.

From Luby's Massacre Remains Among Nation's Worst Mass Shootings, April 16, 2007:

(April 16, 2007)—Fifteen years ago last October, 35-year-old George Hennard of Belton drove his pickup truck through the widow of the Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, got out and opened fire on 80 terrified noon-hour diners with a pair of semi-automatic pistols.

Armed with a Glock 17 and a Ruger P-89, Hennard worked his way methodically through the restaurant, sparing some and killing others.

The gunfire continued for an agonizing ten minutes until four police officers arrived and opened fire on the gunman, leaving him wounded and cornered.

For people who can be reasoned with, there are words;
for people who can't, there's Smith & Wesson...

and Kalashnikov.

(With this post, I begin a new label: Firearm Ownership.)