Monday, November 28, 2011

Arab sanctions find Syria's 7 neighbors on alert. Russian missiles for Assad

Twenty-four hours before the Arab League Sunday, Nov. 27, clamped down sanctions on the Assad regime, the first ever against a member state, the armies of Syria's seven neighbors were already scrambling into position on standby on its borders for acts of retaliation. Military suspense mounted after the Arab League vote to cut off transactions with Syria's central bank, withdraw Arab funding from projects and other painful sanctions over Bashar Assad's refusal to halt his crackdown on protest.

debkafile's military sources report Israeli armored brigades pushed forward up to the Lebanese and Syrian borders; Ankara placed three armored brigades, its air force and navy in astate of preparedness, likewise Hizballah and the Lebanese and Jordanian armed forces, while the US and Russia are in the midst of a naval buildup opposite Syrian shores.

Military sources in the Gulf report that 150 Iranian Revolutionary Guards specialists had landed at a military airport south of Damascus on their way to Lebanon to join Hizballah which began bringing its rockets out of their hideouts.

Ahead of the Arab League vote, Qatar and Turkey were reported to be airlifting "volunteers" from Libya to fight alongside the rebel Free Syrian Army, some also transporting weapons, whereas Russia has begun another airlift to deliver top-notch missiles for Assad's forces.
Our sources report the two key items are advanced Pantsir-1 (SA-22 Greyhound) anti-air missiles for breaking a no-fly zone against most types of aircraft should one be imposed and supersonic Yakhont (SS-26) missiles for targeting vessels blockading Syria's shores at a distance of 300 kilometers.
On Nov. 25, debkafile reported:

Israeli and Jordanian armed forces declared a state of preparedness Friday, Nov. 25, after the Syrian General Command accused an "armed terrorist" group of an ambush killing 10 airmen including 6 elite pilots on the Homs-Palmyra road Thursday, "with the involvement of foreign parties, the foremost of which is Israel."

debkafile's military and intelligence sources report the ambush was another of the major operations against Assad regime's most sensitive targets executed by the Free Syrian Army this week.

It took place at a point on the highway east of Palmyra on the fringe of the Syrian Desert and close to the Syrian Air Force base at Tiyas.

The official statement aired on Syrian state TV said the attack claimed the lives of six elite pilots, one technical officer and three technical sub-officers of the airbase.
Our sources add that the rebel army must have penetrated the highest levels of Syria's military intelligence command for the attack and was clearly receiving targeting data from inside the armed forces.

The attack took place two days after the Free Syrian Army using rocket grenade launchers and heavy machine guns smashed into the Air Force Intelligence base of Harasta near Damascus, killing at least 10 Syrian troops. The ruling Baath party headquarters in Damascus was also attacked on Thursday.

The official statement broadcast Friday described the pilots as "qualitatively trained in piloting modern military aircraft" and "prepared to carry out "the sacred duty of liberating the land and restoring the usurped rights."

It went on to say: "The General Command… considers that the beneficiaries of this terrorist act are the enemies of the homeland and the nation, foremost being Israel."

The Syrian military vowed "to cut every evil hand that targets Syrian blood, and decisively confront all who threaten the homeland's security and stability."

The 24-hour lapse between the attack and the official statement indicated the level of dismay and confusion in Damascus over the sudden assault on the most stalwart buttress of the Assad dynasty in the nine-month crisis and a body blow to his regime.

Bashar Assad cannot afford to avoid retaliating. If he does, it will be an admission that the backbone of his armed forces is falling apart and out of control.

Since there is no knowing what form his revenge will take, Israel, Jordan and most likely Turkey too were braced Friday for trouble.

Assad no doubt took into account that bombing Free Syrian Army training bases across the border in Turkey would bring forth a Turkish military strike. So for now, he decided to point the finger at Israel, a reliable standby when the regime has its back to the wall. Jordan, through which large arms supplies reach the Syrian opposition, may seem to Damascus to be easy prey for the bombardment or raid of bases hosting Syrian rebels.
In the heat of the crisis, the Syrian ruler allowed the deadline set by the Arab League of his acceptance of hundreds of monitors go by Friday without an answer. "It is a last chance, a new chance for Syria,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters in Istanbul at a joint news conference with his Jordanian counterpart Nasser Judeh. By missing the deadline, Damascus faces possible economic sanctions spearheaded by the Arab League, which earlier this month suspended Syrian membership, amid growing international isolation.

Newt Gingrich, Grownup By Jed Babbin

Of the Republican Eight, he is best prepared to take a 3 a.m. call to the White House..

Hillary Clinton's "3 a.m. phone call" ad could have been a devastating attack on Obama's competence and experience. It failed to have an impact on voters because it ran four years too soon.

Against the backdrop of a sleeping child, the ad's narrator says there's something going on in the world, and a phone is ringing in the White House. He asks, who do you want answering the phone? Someone who knows the military, world leaders, and is tested and ready to lead? Unfortunately for Clinton, almost no one was interested in competence or national security in the last presidential election. Voters chose someone they didn't know, who lacked any education or experience relevant to the presidency.

As Obama's third year in office ends, we know him and his aberrant worldview. But the question raised by Clinton's ad has to be asked again, this time about the eight contenders for the Republican nomination. Who among them is best qualified on national security and defense?

Iran is on the verge of producing nuclear weapons and, perhaps, the ability to deliver them by ballistic missiles with sufficient range to reach most of Europe. The "Eurozone" nations are panicked because their common currency is on the brink, banks now war-gaming how to deal with the euro's imminent collapse. When the euro goes so will some of the nations that belong to it. There will be social upheaval, the fall of nations, and redrawing of the European map.

And that's not the half of it. China's continuing military buildup, cyberwar, Pakistan's continued sponsorship of terrorism and -- in the probable aftermath of the Arab Spring -- more nations eager to sponsor Islamic terrorism against us and Israel are all problems that won't be remedied by the passage of time.

So who among the Republicans will be ready and able to deal with the existential threats to America and our interests abroad? Who, among the contenders, is the grownup? Who is prepared by experience, knowledge, and understanding to deter or defeat these threats?

Among the top three, we have two former CEOs and one former Speaker of the House. The problem with both CEOs is in their training and management experience. America is not a business. A commander in chief is not the arbiter in chief or the listener in chief. He can't be entirely dependent on the knowledge of experts. A president has to be someone who has his own expertise and a depth of historical knowledge to evaluate what his advisers say and to decide, sometimes, that all of them are wrong. Herman Cain obviously lacks that knowledge and understanding. And so, quite apparently, does Mitt Romney.

In an interview with him after his failed 2008 campaign, Romney convinced me of his good intentions, intelligence, and sincerity. But I could not avoid concluding that he didn't have an independent base of knowledge of national security and foreign affairs.

In last week's CNN national security debate, Newt Gingrich said many things that set him apart from the rest.

Defending the Patriot Act against a Paulist tirade, Gingrich said "I don't want a law that says after we lose a major American city, we're sure going to come and find you. I want a law that says, you try to take out an American city, we're going to stop you."

While Romney, Perry, and Cain fumbled around the wisdom of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan -- all embracing some form of nation-building -- Gingrich said we should be furious with Pakistan for harboring Osama bin Laden. He said that if we are to keep troops in Afghanistan we need to put the military in charge, and tell the Pakistanis to either cooperate or get out of the way.

Gingrich was also the only candidate clear on Iran. On sanctioning the Iran Central Bank, he said, "I think it's a good idea if you're serious about stopping them having nuclear -- I mean, I think replacing the regime before they get a nuclear weapon without a war beats replacing the regime with war, which beats allowing them to have a nuclear weapon. Those are your three choices."

Mitt Romney proposed indicting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for violating the Genocide Convention. Seriously? Is that the depth of Romney's thinking?

Whether you love him or hate him, you have to admit that the only grownup in the room is Newt Gingrich. He has lectured at the National War College for about twenty years. He is the only one of the eight contenders who won't require on-the-job training on defense and national security.

Gingrich is the only presidential contender who has addressed the issue of military spending in correct terms. In his new "21st Century Contract with America," Gingrich writes:

We need to be able to discuss the threats that face us in a clear and open manner. The courage to be free is only sustained by the moral capacity to distinguish between good and evil. If evil cannot be called by name, we will not be able to deter -- or even recognize -- threats to our nation. Likewise, if we cannot proclaim the righteousness of our values, then we won't be able to mobilize the spirit necessary to defend America.… We need a new strategy that is as decisive and comprehensive as our bold and unprecedented response to the rise of the Soviet threat after World War II. It will streamline our security, intelligence and diplomatic departments, and recapitalize our military infrastructure."

There are at least two important trains of thought in that. First, Gingrich sees the need to structure our military and intelligence communities based on the threats we face, not on some arbitrary budget number. As I've written repeatedly, that is the only sound foundation for defense and intelligence planning and budgeting.

Second, Gingrich apparently understands the most ignored point about the war we are fighting. It is as much an ideological war as a kinetic one. Gingrich captured the idea that we have to fight the ideological war, which George Bush refused to do and Barack Obama has preemptively surrendered.

Endorsing Gingrich this past weekend, the New Hampshire Union Leader writes:,

Newt Gingrich is by no means the perfect candidate. But Republican primary voters too often make the mistake of preferring an unattainable ideal to the best candidate who is actually running. In this incredibly important election, that candidate is Newt Gingrich. He has the experience, the leadership qualities and the vision to lead this country in these trying times.

Every president inherits a margin for error that is determined by factors such as the strength of our economy, the aggressiveness and capabilities of our enemies, and the speed of world events. Since Obama took office, that margin for error has shrunk to the thinness of a razor's edge.

So who do we want answering that 3 a.m. phone call to the White House? On defense and national security, Newt Gingrich is the candidate best prepared to do so.

About the Author

Jed Babbin served as a Deputy Undersecretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush. He is the author of several bestselling books including Inside the Asylum and In the Words of Our Enemies.

http://spectator.org/archives/2011/11/28/newt-gingrich-grownup

Monday, November 21, 2011

Ron Paul: "Flawed" U.S. policies caused 9/11

after reading go to the link on the bottom and read comments. his ideas on foreign policy are nuts. he doesn't mention israel but he is saying that our presence in the mideast has created hatred of the US and israel. forget the fact that islam has attacked US interests before we ever had any troops in the mideast


Here he goes again. Ron Paul and Barack Obama agree that jihad terrorism is our fault, caused by our actions, and capable of being ended by something that we do. It never occurs to either of them how ethnocentric and condescending this is: they both assume that Muslims are just passive reactors to American enormities, not people who might be able to think for themselves and hate us for reasons of their own that are independent of what we do or don't do -- such as the doctrine of jihad. "Ron Paul: ‘Flawed’ US policies led to 9/11," by Justin Sink for [1] The Hill, November 20 (thanks to Wimpy):

Ron Paul said that American policymakers were at least partially at fault for the country being attacked on 9/11 during a discussion of foreign policy on CBS's Face the Nation Sunday.

Paul argued that the American military presence in Saudi Arabia - rather than ideological differences or anger over American prosperity - were motivation for the September 11 hijackers.

"Just remember that immediately after 9/11, we removed the base in Saudi Arabia, our policies definitely had an influence," Paul said. "To argue the case they want to do us harm because we're free and prosperous I think is a very dangerous notion, because it's not true."

Host Bob Schieffer then pressed Paul on whether that wasn't the equivalent of blaming America for the attacks.

"If you have a flawed policy, that may have influenced it… that's a far cry from blaming America," Paul responded.

"So what you're saying is that it was the government's fault," Schieffer then said.

"I'm saying the policymaker's fault," Paul responded. "[They] contributed to it, contributed to it."

Paul went on to say that if he became president, he would pull troops out of overseas bases, arguing that submarines and long-range missiles would work just as well as deterrents.

"Absolutely, and the people are with me on that, those troops oversees aggravate our enemies," Paul said....

Yes, indeed, just as American troops aggravated the Nazis in Europe in 1944 and 1945.

"I think the greatest danger for us now is to overreact… Iran doesn't have a bomb, there's no proof, and for us to overreact and talk about bombing Iran is much more dangerous," Paul said....
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/11/ron-paul-flawed-us-policies.html

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Steakhouse Staff Allegedly Took Cut

A ring of identity thieves recruited waiters at some of New York's most well-known steakhouses to steal credit-card information from diners that was then used to make millions of dollars in illicit purchases, authorities charged on Friday.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said 28 people were indicted in the case, including waiters accused of covertly swiping credit cards through small devices to record their information just before charging customers for meals.

Account numbers and other data were taken from patrons at Smith & Wollensky's, the Capital Grille, JoJo and Wolfgang's Steakhouse in Manhattan, as well as Morton's restaurant in Stamford, Conn., and the Bicycle Club in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Mr. Vance said.

At least 50 American Express black- and gold-card holders fell victim to the scheme between April 2010 and this month.

Authorities said the personal information was encoded onto forged duplicate cards that other members of the ring used to buy high-end merchandise and to steal cash from bank accounts.

Mr. Vance identified Luis Damian Jacas, whose nickname is "DJ," as the alleged head of the ring, overseeing "all aspects of the criminal operation."

"This is one organized, intelligent operator," Mr. Vance said.

A lawyer for Mr. Jacas, 40 years old, couldn't be reached for comment.

Another key member is 51-year-old Gregory Portacio, New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

Mr. Kelly said Mr. Portacio served as a "jack of all trades" for the ring, distributing the forged credit cards, advising on store security and fencing the stolen goods for 10 cents on the dollar.

As a 20-year-old, Mr. Portacio was convicted in the 1980 murder of a Queens housewife who was dragged to death alongside his vehicle when, authorities charge, he was trying to steal a necklace that wouldn't break. Mr. Portacio was also later convicted of a sexual assault on a Brooklyn woman, Mr. Kelly said.

"After several stints in prison," Mr. Kelly said, "Portacio turned to credit card fraud." He is still at large, Mr. Kelly said.

The operation enlisted seven waiters, who were known as "skimmers"; their slim, 3-inch-long devices were called "bacon-makers," an indictment said.

Jimmy Macagna, owner of the Bicycle Club, said a part-time bartender at the restaurant was among the accused. "We're all just shocked," Mr. Macagna said.

"I feel like I was victimized by his actions," said Mr. Macagna, whose restaurant opened three years ago.

Morton's Restaurant Group spokesman Roger Drake declined to comment except to say the company will cooperate with police. Representatives from the other restaurants declined to comment or couldn't be reached for comment.

After stolen credit-card information was transferred onto copies, the cards were passed out to "shoppers," who were told how to look and what to buy at stores such as Chanel, Neiman Marcus, Cartier, Hermes, Bloomingdales and Lord & Taylor across the country.

Mr. Vance said investigators don't yet have a total value for the stolen merchandise.

But he said a raid on an East Side storage facility allegedly used by the crew gave a glimpse into the operation: $1.1 million in luxury watches, 100 high-end luxury handbags, $140,000 worth of wine and $1.2 million in cash.

Mr. Kelly credited Detective Kenneth Baker with breaking the case by tracing a legitimate purchase made at the Capital Grille to one of the victims. The card holder then identified the waiter who served his party.

Mr. Vance's chief assistant district attorney, Daniel Alonso, said the case, which comes on the heels of charges against two men accused of stealing debit card information from 1,500 ATM customers, reflects the office's increased focus on cyber crimes.

Write to Sean Gardiner at sean.gardiner@wsj.com

Friday, November 18, 2011

Suspicion in Iran that Stuxnet caused Revolutionary Guards base explosions

Is the Stuxnet computer malworm back on the warpath in Iran?

Exhaustive investigations into the deadly explosion last Saturday, Nov. 12 of the Sejil-2 ballistic missile at the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Alghadir base point increasingly to a technical fault originating in the computer system controlling the missile and not the missile itself. The head of Iran's ballistic missile program Maj. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam was among the 36 officers killed in the blast which rocked Tehran 46 kilometers away.
(Tehran reported 17 deaths although 36 funerals took place.)

Since the disaster, experts have run tests on missiles of the same type as Sejil 2 and on their launching mechanisms.

debkafile's military and Iranian sources disclose three pieces of information coming out of the early IRGC probe:
1. Maj. Gen. Moghaddam had gathered Iran's top missile experts around the Sejil 2 to show them a new type of warhead which could also carry a nuclear payload. No experiment was planned. The experts were shown the new device and asked for their comments.
2. Moghaddam presented the new warhead through a computer simulation attached to the missile. His presentation was watched on a big screen. The missile exploded upon an order from the computer.

The warhead blew first; the solid fuel in its engines next, so explaining the two consecutive bangs across Tehran and the early impression of two explosions, the first more powerful than the second, occurring at the huge 52 sq. kilometer complex of Alghadir.

3. Because none of the missile experts survived and all the equipment and structures pulverized within a half-kilometer radius of the explosion, the investigators had no witnesses and hardly any physical evidence to work from.

Iranian intelligence heads entertain two initial theories to account for the sudden calamity: a) that Western intelligence service or the Israeli Mossad managed to plant a technician among the missile program's personnel and he signaled the computer to order the missile to explode; or b), a theory which they find more plausible, that the computer controlling the missile was infected with the Stuxnet virus which misdirected the missile into blowing without anyone present noticing anything amiss until it was too late.
It is the second theory which has got Iran's leaders really worried because it means that, in the middle of spiraling tension with the United States and Israel or their nuclear weapons program, their entire Shahab 3 and Sejil 2 ballistic missile arsenal is infected and out of commission until minute tests are completed. Western intelligence sources told debkafile that Iran's supreme armed forces chief Gen. Hassan Firouz-Abadi was playing for time when he announced this week that the explosion had "only delayed by two weeks the manufacturing of an experimental product by the Revolutionary Guards which could be a strong fist in the face of arrogance (the United States) and the occupying regime (Israel)."

Iran needs time to thoroughly investigate the causes of the fatal explosion and convince everyone that the computer systems controlling its missiles of the Stuxnet malworm will be cleansed and running in no time just like the Natanz uranium enrichment installation and Bushehr atomic reactor which were decontaminated between June and September 2010.

If indeed Stuxnet is back, the cleanup this time would take several months, according to Western experts - certainly longer than the two weeks estimated by Gen. Firouz-Abadi.

Those experts also rebut the contention of certain Western and Russian computer pros that Stuxnet and another virus called Duqu are linked.

The head of Iran's civil defense program Gholamreza Jalali said this week that the fight against Duqu is "in its initial phase" and the final report "which says which organizations the virus has spread to and what its impacts are has not been complete yet. All the organizations and centers that could be susceptible to being contaminated are under control."

Israel to employ high-tech weapons in Iran strike

American intelligence officials tell the Daily Beast Israel assembling multibillion-dollar array of high-tech weapons that would allow it to jam Tehran's defenses in case of pre-emptive strike
Ynet

Current and former US intelligence officials estimate that any Israeli attack on nuclear sites in Iran would go far beyond airstrikes from F-15 and F-16 fighter jets and likely include electronic warfare against the Islamic Republic's electric grid, Internet, cell phone network, and emergency frequencies for firemen and police officers.

The officials, who based their assessment on a US intelligence report published last summer, told the Daily Beast news website that Israel has been assembling a multibillion-dollar array of high-tech weapons that would allow it to jam, blind, and deafen Tehran's defenses in the case of a pre-emptive aerial strike.

According to the officials, one of the weapons Israel has developed is capable of mimicking a maintenance cell phone signal that commands a cell network to “sleep,” effectively stopping transmissions. The Israelis also have jammers capable of creating interference within Iran’s emergency frequencies for first responders, they told the Daily Beast.

The sources also said that in case of an attack on Iran, Israel would likely exploit a vulnerability that American officials detected two years ago in Iran's big-city electric grids, which are not “air-gapped”—meaning they are connected to the Internet and therefore vulnerable to a Stuxnet-style cyberattack.

One source told the Daily Beast that Israel has the capability to bring a denial-of-service attack to nodes of Iran’s command and control system that rely on the Internet.

According to the report, the likely delivery method for the electronic elements of this attack would be a drone the size of a jumbo jet.

The Daily Beast said Israel had already employed some of the technology at its disposal during its alleged aerial attack on a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007.

"Syrian military got a taste of this warfare when Israeli planes 'spoofed' the country’s air-defense radars, at first making it appear that no jets were in the sky and then in an instant making the radar believe the sky was filled with hundreds of planes," the report said.

A recent report published by the International Atomic Energy Agency suggested Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons. On Wednesday Defense Minister Ehud Barak caused a storm when told American broadcaster Charlie Rose he'd also seek nuclear weapons if he were Iranian.

Meanwhile, an Iranian website reported Thursday that "at least 36" members of the Revolutionary Guard were killed during last week's massive explosion at a military base outside Tehran. Initial reports said 17 people were killed in the blast.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

The New Welfare Swindle

Ever since I moved to the inner city one thing has puzzled me more than any other, and that is how my low-income neighbors get by. Assuming they aren't doing anything illegal, how do they afford their homes, their meals, their gadgets, their cars?

Few seem to work, even part time, for they are home in the morning when I leave for work, home if I stop by for lunch, and home when I return in the evening. They can't work the graveyard shift, for they keep me up half the night with their raucous music. I am left to conclude that they seldom, if ever work. Therefore, their funds must come from elsewhere. And none of them strike me as a trust fund baby.

The best I can figure is they make do with a patchwork of welfare programs. Besides, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which expires after five years, there is housing assistance, WIC (Women, Infants and Children) and Medicaid. There are food stamps, which also can be sold in parking lots for cash, and various lesser programs, such as heating assistance.

Beyond government subsidies, there is no shortage of help available from church and nonprofit groups. My mother volunteers at a pregnancy crisis center where the poor are given free diapers, clothing, and baby formula. Every day she has to turn away scammers who try to exceed their monthly allotment. Our parish sponsors a food pantry and local religious organizations provide free furniture. Meantime, nearly all of my neighbors have cable, big screen plasma TVs, and cell phones (I have none of these). From the smells that waft over our fence, many somehow afford illegal drugs.

But even with government subsidies, housing isn't completely covered. By my reckoning my neighbors must still come up with a few hundred dollars a month for rent and miscellaneous expenses.

THEN A SOCIAL WORKER friend clued me in. Many of the poor also collect federal disability benefits in the form of Supplemental Security Insurance, or "crazy money" as it is known on the streets, since one must "act crazy" to receive it. Oftentimes several people in the same household -- adults and children -- collect checks. This surprised me, since I had never for a moment guessed that my neighbors were disabled.

SSI was enacted in 1974 to supplement the Social Security benefits of disabled low-income seniors, and, as an afterthought, to help pay for the care of severely disabled children from poor families. As with any federal program, SSI has ballooned to Hindenbergian proportions, and now covers virtually any low-income person with any long-term ailment. Not surprisingly, easy-to-fake learning, behavioral, and mental disorders are the most common complaints, especially among children, making up 55 percent of all cases.

Poor adults, who in pre-welfare reform days were offered incentives to be idle and proliferant, are again incentivized to be idle and proliferant. And what an incentive it's been. Last year the Social Security Administration paid almost $50 billion in SSI benefits. More than $9 billion was paid to 1.2 million disabled children.

What's more, recipients are not required to get treatment for their or their children's maladies -- although this may be a good thing, since it is doubtless harmful for kids to take powerful psychotropic drugs for counterfeit or exaggerated symptoms.

My friend visits one such family in which four members collect SSI checks, one adult and three children. One child suffers from asthma, which would probably clear up if the mother -- who is unemployed -- bothered to clean her house. However, she has a monetary incentive not to clean or to seek treatment for her child, for if the asthma cleared up, and this was found out (an unlikely event since SSA workers routinely fail to conduct follow up visits), that could mean one less check. Also, like the now defunct Aid to Families with Dependent Children, SSI encourages dependency and is cyclical in nature. More than half who go on SSI as a child, requalify as adults. And the cycle continues.

Economically speaking, it makes perfect sense for the poor to rely on SSI. Compared to the old welfare, SSI is a plump cash cow. Here in Missouri, one of the least generous states, TANF recipients receive a measly $136 per person per month, while each SSI recipient takes home about $674. A family of four could amass $32,352 annually, not counting other benefits. Besides, since most of my neighbors dropped out of high school, there is not much they could do to earn a living other than work in fast food for minimum wage. And why put yourself through that when you can watch television all day and collect more in aid? Why bother trying to raise yourself up?

In 1988, there were 4.46 million SSI recipients. Today, there are 8 million. It is impossible to know how many of these are fakers gaming the system, but SSI recipients know no color or geographic boundary. Federal data shows that roughly half are white, half black. Nor does the phenomenon apply to all of the poor. My social worker friend visits several severely mentally handicapped persons who work menial jobs rather than accept government largess. They take pride in going to work every day and in setting a good example for their children. My neighbors would think them crazy.

About the Author

Christopher Orlet writes from St. Louis and is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator Online.

http://spectator.org/archives/2011/11/17/the-new-welfare-swindle

Detroit May Run Out of Cash Next Month

Detroit May Run Out of Cash Next Month, Unable to Meet Payroll, Situation Worse than Reported


Michigan Live reports Detroit could run out of cash in December, plan must include layoffs

Bing is expected to discuss a confidential Ernst & Young report obtained by the Detroit Free Press that suggests Detroit could run out of cash by April without steep cuts to staff and public services.

That's a grim prognosis, but according to Brown, the city actually could be unable to make payroll "as early as December."

"I know the report says April, but there are certain risk assumptions that when you take those into consideration, worst case scenario you could run out (of cash) in December," Brown said this morning on WJR-AM 760.

In his speech tonight, Bing is expected to propose privatizing the city's public bus system and lighting departments, both of which have been failing residents but reportedly cost them $100 million a year in subsidies.
Expect to see more stories like these, just as I have said for years. Many major cities are walking dead including Oakland, Miami, Cleveland, Houston, Los Angeles, Newark, and quite frankly too many to list. Public unions, untenable union wages and benefits, and prevailing wage laws coupled with politicians buying votes of public union members are to blame for most of this mess.

Bankruptcy, huge clawbacks on public union benefits, scrapping of all prevailing wages laws, and the end of all collective bargaining of public unions are the solutions.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Netherlands Sliding into the Abyss

In a new interview in the Dutch magazine Panorama, Geert Wilders talks about a variety of things, including his forthcoming book about Islam, which will be published in the U.S. in April. In it, he says, he’ll document the fact that “Islam is a dangerous ideology” and that “Muhammed really is one of the big bad guys” of history, whose negative influence continues to be felt today. Yes, Wilders acknowledges, there are genuinely moderate people who call themselves Muslims, and if they want to call themselves Muslims that’s fine with him – but there is no such thing as a moderate Islam.

What, asks the interviewer, is his great fear? Answer: that “if we don’t put an end to Islamization, it will slowly but surely insinuate itself into our society, at the cost of our freedom. And bit by bit things will go the wrong way. That’s why I’m extending this warning. Otherwise someday our children and grandchildren won’t have freedom any more.” To which the interviewer replies: “And if people say: come on, Geert, it’s not really so bad, is it?…What do you say then?” “I say: it’s worse than you think.”

It’s hard to believe that in the year 2011 there exist Dutchmen – outside of the perennially clueless cultural elite, that is – who are still able to believe that things aren’t “really so bad.” But, alas, there are. There are.

To be sure, thanks largely to pressure from Wilders and his Freedom Party, the last few years have seen reforms in Dutch immigration and integration policies. But has it been too little, too late? For the unfortunate fact is that one set of indicators after another continues to head south. Take a new report commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and produced by Risbo, a research institute at Erasmus University. It shows that of males in the Netherlands’ “Moroccan community” between the ages of 12 and 24, no fewer than 38.7 percent have come to the attention of the police at least once during the last five years in connection with some offense – mostly violent crimes and thefts.

The winner in this dubious sweepstakes is the historic city of Den Bosch, about fifty miles south of Amsterdam. In Den Bosch, just under half of young Moroccan males between 12 and 24 – 47.7 percent, to be exact – have police records. (That’s up from 45 percent last year.) In a long list of other cities – Zeist, Gouda, Veenendaal, Amersfoort, Maassluis, Oosterhout, Schiedam, Nijmegen, Utrecht, Ede, Leiden, and The Hague – the figure also topped 40 percent. In every municipality that was studied, incidentally, the scores for Moroccan youths far outstripped those for ethnic Dutch kids, among whom an average of 13 percent of boys in the same age cohort had come in for similar police attention during the same period.

One person who knows a good deal about the Dutch Moroccan youth milieu is filmmaker Roy Dames, who spent eight years – imagine! – working on Mocros, a documentary about young Moroccans in Rotterdam. (The film opened on November 10 in Amsterdam and Nijmegen, and will be aired on Dutch TV early next year.) In an interview with the Dutch edition of Metro, Dames, whose previous work includes documentaries about criminals, prostitutes, alcoholics, and homeless people, says that he “wanted to make a documentary about the Moroccan boys in the street, the street kids that you see everywhere. In 2002, when I started Mocros, Moroccan boys had a poor image. They still do. Many Moroccan boys are kicked out of school, cause trouble in the streets, and are in danger of leading a life of crime.”.

The ones he’s been following around all these years with his camera now average about twenty-three years old. They’re on welfare and get “an occasional job.” One of them has spent some time in prison. It’s not easy to get them to open up, he says, because they “live in a culture of silence and shame” in which pressure from family, friends, and community “is enormous.”

Spending all these years in the company of these youths hasn’t exactly protected Dames from their not-so-chummy side. At one point he was filming a (shall we say) uncongenial encounter between thirty of his young subjects and some hapless “youth workers” when suddenly the boys “turned on me” aggressively. Dames jumped in his car and sped off just in time – and had to put the project on hold for six months. (Apparently it took that long for the kids to cool down.)

One gathers that while Dames has a certain degree of sympathy for at least some of these kids, he also doesn’t pull any punches, and shows things how they are – which is not pretty. (A snotty little review in De Telegraaf gripes that the film, intentionally or not, will confirm all the prejudices of ethnic Dutch viewers – and the reviewer ends with that line, as if to make it clear that the last thing he wants to do is to explore the disturbing implications of this observation.)

It seems significant that the profile of Dames appeared in the Dutch edition of Metro, of all places. Metro is a chain of urban newspapers that can be picked up for free in subway stations and other such places (the Dutch trains are always full of discarded copies), and over the years I’ve noticed that the Dutch and Swedish editions of Metro are – scandalously – often the only places you’ll find news stories that are too politically incorrect for those countries’ “real” media to touch. Apparently Dames’s documentary falls into that category. Mocros has received “little attention in the media,” he laments, because “the Dutch press is politically correct” and would prefer not to have a “real debate” about the issues raised by films like his.

Well, we knew that already – heaven knows Geert Wilders does. But after the murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh, the hounding of Ayaan Hirsi Ali out of the country, and the prosecution of Wilders – all because they dared to express their opinions about Islam – and given the increasingly out-of-this-world statistics such as those included in the Risbo report, one wonders exactly what it would take to persuade the Dutch media that it’s time, at long last, to permit a truly wide-open, no-holds-barred discussion of Islam in the Netherlands. One fears that by the time some of the media moguls realize it’s time to let ‘er rip, it’ll already be much too late.


Friday, November 11, 2011

Pentagon chief hit with ‘anti-American’ charges

Pentagon chief hit with ‘anti-American’ charges: You wont believe unexplained background of Secretary of Defense


Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta partnered with a group that promotes world government to co-chair an initiative to regulate U.S. oceans and cede them to United Nations-based international law.

Panetta also keynoted the conference of a pro-Soviet, anti-war group during the height of the Cold War, and has previous unexplained close ties to the Institute for Policy Studies, a pro-Marxist think tank accused of anti-CIA activity.

And that’s just the start of Panetta’s controversial background and radical associations exposed in the recently released book, “Red Army: The Radical Network that must be defeated to save America,” by NY Times bestselling authors Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott.

The book also charges Panetta with anti-CIA activity. Penatta served as CIA chief under President Obama until his appointment to the secretary of defense post earlier this year.

Panetta caught in 1-world scheme

Until his ascent to CIA director in 2009, Panetta co-chaired the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, which is the partner of Citizens for Global Solutions in a push to ratify U.S. laws and regulations governing the seas.

The oceans initiative, dissected in the “Red Army” book, bills itself as a bipartisan, collaborative group that aims to “accelerate the pace of change that results in meaningful ocean policy reform.”

Among its main recommendations is that the U.S. should put its oceans up for regulation to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

That U.N. convention defines the rights and responsibilities of nations in their use of the world’s oceans, establishing guidelines for businesses, the environment and the management of marine natural resources.

Other recommendations of Panetta’s Joint Ocean Commission Initiative include:

  • The Administration and Congress should establish a national ocean policy. The Administration and Congress should support regional, ecosystem-based approaches to the management of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes.
  • Congress should strengthen and reauthorize the Coastal Zone Management Act.
  • Congress should strengthen the Clean Water Act.

The Joint Ocean Commission Initiative Leadership Council includes John Podesta, president and CEO of the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress, which is reportedly highly influential in advising the White House on policy.

Podesta served as co-chair of Obama’s presidential transition team.

“Red Army” found Panetta’s oceans initiative is a key partner of Citizens for Global Solutions, or CGS, which, according to its literature, envisions a “future in which nations work together to abolish war, protect our rights and freedoms and solve the problems facing humanity that no nation can solve alone.”

CGS states it works to “build the political will in the United States” to achieve this global vision.

The organization currently works on issues that fall into five general areas: U.S. global engagement; global health and environment; peace and security; international law and justice; and international institutions.

CGS is a member organization and supporter of the World Federalist Movement, which seeks a one-world government. The World Federalist Movement considers the CGS to be its U.S. branch.

The Federalist movement openly brings together organizations and individuals that support the establishment of a global federal system of strengthened and democratized global institutions with plenary constitutional power accountable to the citizens of the world and a division of international authority among separate global agencies.

The movement’s headquarters are located near the U.N. building in New York City. A second office is near the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands.

The locations are significant, since the movement heavily promotes the U.N. and is the coordinator of various international projects, such as the Coalition for the International Criminal Court and the Responsibility to Protect military doctrine.

Soviet agents, propaganda

Panetta, meanwhile, has unexplained ties to the Institute for Policy Studies, or IPS, which has long faced criticism for positions some say attempt to undermine U.S. national security and for its cozy relationship with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

A review of the voting record for Panetta, a member of Congress from 1977 to 1993, during the period in question shows an apparent affinity toward IPS’s agenda.

The IPS is funded by philanthropist George Soros’ Open Society Institute.

Panetta was reportedly on IPS’s official 20th Anniversary Committee, celebrated April 5, 1983, at a time when the group was closely aligned with the Soviet Union.

In his authoritative book “Covert Cadre: Inside the Institute for Policy Studies,” S. Steven Powell writes: “April 5, 1983, IPS threw a large twentieth-anniversary celebration to raise funds.

“On the fundraising committee for the event were 14 then-current members of the U.S. House of Representatives, including “Leon E. Panetta (D-Calif.), chairman of Budget Process Task Force of the House Committee on Budget (chairman of Subcommittee on Police and Personnel, Ninety-ninth Congress).”

Powell wrote that in the 1980s, Panetta commissioned the IPS to produce an “alternative” budget that dramatically cut defense spending.

“The congressional supporters for the Institute for Policy Studies included many of those who biennially commission I.P.S. to produce an ‘Alternative’ Budget that dramatically cuts defense spending while increasing the spending for social welfare to levels only dreamed of by Karl Marx,” wrote Powell in the November 1983 issue of the American Opinion.

“In this pact of I.P.S. intimates [are] such luminaries as … Leon Panetta (D.-California), Chairman of the Budget Process Task Force,” wrote Powell.

The IPS has long maintained controversial views and a pro-Marxist line on foreign policy. It was founded in 1963 by two former governmental workers, Marcus Raskin and Richard Barnet.

In his 1988 book “Far Left of Center: The American Radical Left Today,” Harvey Klehr, professor of politics and history at EmoryUniversity, said that IPS “serves as an intellectual nerve center for the radical movement, ranging from nuclear and anti-intervention issues to support for Marxist insurgencies.”

The FBI labeled the group a “think factory” that helps to “train extremists who incite violence in U.S. cities, and whose educational research serves as a cover for intrigue, and political agitation.”

The IPS has been accused serving as a propaganda arm of the USSR and even a place where agents from the Soviet embassy in Washington came to convene and strategize.

In his book “The KGB and Soviet Disinformation: An Insider’s View,” Ladislav Bittman, a former KGB agent, called the IPS a Soviet misinformation operation at which Soviet insiders worked.

Brian Crozier, director of the London-based Institute for the Study of Conflict, described IPS as the “perfect intellectual front for Soviet activities which would be resisted if they were to originate openly from the KGB.”

Marxist ideology

“Red Army” documents how Panetta keynoted the conference of a pro-Soviet, anti-war group during the height of the Cold War. Panetta also honored the founding member of that group, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, or WILPF, which was once named by the State Department as a “Soviet front.”

On April 11, 1984, Panetta, then a California congressman, entered into the congressional record a tribute in honor of WILPF’s founding member, Lucy Haessler.

In the record, Panetta praised Haessler as “one of the most dedicated peace activists I have ever known.”

Panetta later stated he was not aware of the WILPF’s communist background and was merely praising Haessler’s anti-war actions.

Still, in his Congressional praise, Panetta recognized that Haessler traveled to the Soviet Union as a member of the WILPF:

“She has also participated in peace conferences conducted by WILPF and the Woman’s International Democracy Foundation in France, the Soviet Union, Poland and East Germany,” read Panetta’s congressional praise.

Panetta hailed Haessler for her activism against the pending deployment of U.S. missiles to counter the Soviet build up:

“She joined thousands of dedicated peace activists where she expressed her concern about the impending deployment of Cruise missiles and Pershing II missiles in Europe,” he noted.

Haessler’s WILPF took on a pro-Soviet stance. It sponsored frequent exchange visits with the Soviet Women’s Committee and against “anti-Sovietism” while calling for President Reagan to “Stop the Arms Race.”

Panetta’s relationship with Haessler and the WILPF goes back to at least June 1979, when was the keynote speaker of WILPF’s Biennial Conference at the University of California at Santa Cruz. The conference was arranged by Haessler.

WILPF’s literature notes the conference honored Ava and Linus Pauling, who were prominent supports of ending nuclear proliferation.

Anti-CIA activity

“Red Army” exposes Panetta, former CIA chief under Obama, once proposed allowing Congress to conduct spot checks at its discretion of the country’s sensitive intelligence agency.

In 1987, Panetta, then a California congressman, introduced the CIA Accountability Act, which would have made the CIA subject to audits by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

Panetta’s legislation would have allowed the comptroller general, who directs the GAO, to audit any financial transactions of the CIA and evaluate all of the agency’s activities either at his own initiative or at the request of the congressional intelligence committees.

The CIA is the only government agency that contests the authority of the comptroller general to audit its activities, citing the covert aspects of its operations.

Panetta’s bill followed the Iran-Contra affair, which came to light in November 1986. During the Reagan administration, senior Reagan administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, the subject of an arms embargo. The weapons were intended to help secure the release of six American hostages being held by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror group.

Panetta’s bill suggested ways to protect CIA secrecy, including the maintenance of all work papers at CIA-controlled locations and a provision allowing the president to exempt any CIA officer or agent from GAO access.

Still, the act allowed for the comptroller to “inspect and copy any relevant books, documents, papers, records, and other information, including written or recorded information of all kinds, and property which belongs to, or is in possession or control of the CIA.”

Obama accused of deliberately overloading U.S. economy

Klein and Elliot’s “Red Army” charges Obama and progressive Democrats with deliberately overloading the U.S. financial system.

The book purports to exposes the radical socialist network that seized political power in Washington over decades, shaped Obama’s presidential agenda and threatens the very future of the U.S.

“Red Army” takes aim at such personalities as George Soros, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and groups such as the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Center for American Progress and the Institute for Policy Studies.
Some other highlights from “Red Army”:
  • The existence of a powerful “Marxist-socialist” bloc in Congress (explicitly formed as an arm of the Democratic Socialists of America) and how it is behind legislation in areas that affect all Americans, including the complete socialization of health care and comprehensive immigration reform, which, the book exposes, seeks to change the very nature of the American electorate.
  • The book exclusively reveals the radical origins of Obamacare and exposes the shocking misinformation campaign behind Obama’s economic policies, discussing the crafting of the massive “stimulus” legislation, as well as his plans for future economic “reform.”
  • In two chapters that every American must read, entirely new information is laid bare on the left’s unprecedented assault on our already over-liberalized education system.
  • The multipronged policy offensive aimed at disarming America by emboldening our enemies within and without, spurning traditional allies, subjecting us to the authority of foreign tribunals, and systematically dismantling the U.S. military.
  • It shows how elements of the news media not only collude with these radical groups, but are in some cases members of the very same extremist organizations they ought to be investigating.
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Libyan mercenaries arrive in Gaza with Grad multiple rocket launchers

Fifty Libyan Muslim Brotherhood mercenaries arrived in the Gaza Strip from Tripoli last month - in time to take part in the Jihad Islami's last missile offensive against Israel starting Oct. 29, debkafile's military sources report. They arrived at the wheels of minivans on which were mounted the new Grad multiple rocket-launchers which Palestinian terrorists fired for the first time last month. These mobile rocket-launchers were last seen on the Libyan battlefield in use against Muammar Qaddafi's army.

The 50 mercenaries did not bother to paint over the Libyan national colors or replace the trucks' Libyan license plates. Jihad Islami fighters kept them sequestered away from awkward questions about who sent them.

Gazan sources report the Libyan mercenaries left Tripoli on October 10 aboard two buses which drove them via Benghazi to Tobruk. They then entered Egypt as tourists.
On Oct. 21, the day Muammar Qaddafi was killed, they crossed the Suez Canal into the Sinai Peninsula.
The minivans mounted with the Grad multiple rocket launchers had been moved out of Libya by a separate route and were waiting in the care of Bedouin smugglers beside a Sinai wadi near the old copper mines of Ras Sudar.
They looked quite new with no sign of having been in combat.

Our military sources report that, Qatar and the United Arab Republic had supplied these advanced rocket-launchers to assorted Libyan National Transitional Council militias, their accurate fire against designated targets intended to counter the precision of the Libyan army's artillery.But their effectiveness was demonstrated most strikingly after Qaddafi's fall in the Gaza Strip, where they instantly improved the Palestinian extremists' aim against Israeli locations. Most of these rapid-firing missiles were also able to evade Israel's Iron Dome missile interceptors. When the Palestinians reverted to their old weapons, they continued to miss their aim.

The Libyan convoy had to travel some 2,000 kilometers through Egypt to reach the Gaza Strip, raising questions about how it had failed to arouse the notice of local security units. Western sources discovered that the Egyptian Islamic Brotherhood had made all the necessary arrangements for the Libyan Brotherhood mercenaries' long trek to Gaza under its protection, and more are on the way.

Furthermore, large sums of money would have been available to smooth their passage and that of the new Grads. Our intelligence sources report that Hamas and Hizballah arms purchasing missions worked out of Benghazi and Tripoli for seven months, buying hardware from rebel militias for hard cash. After Tripoli fell in late August, they split up between the two cities and are still snapping up black market arms sold by NTC militias.

HTML5: A Look Behind the Technology Changing the Web

A year and a half after Steve Jobs endorsed it in an unusual essay, a set of programming techniques called HTML5 is rapidly winning over the Web.

The technology allows Internet browsers to display jazzed-up images and effects that react to users' actions, delivering game-like interactivity without installing additional software. Developers can use HTML5 to get their creations on a variety of smartphones, tablets and PCs without tailoring apps for specific hardware or the online stores that have become gatekeepers to mobile commerce.

HTML5

That promise—and the lure of Apple Inc. devices in particular—is sweeping aside alternative technologies. In the latest development, Adobe Systems Inc. said Wednesday it will pull back on pushing the rival Flash format opposed by Mr. Jobs for mobile devices.

"HTML5 is a major step forward," declares venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who helped invent the first successful browser, Netscape, in the 1990s.

Another Silicon Valley investor, Roger McNamee, predicts the technology will let artists, media companies and advertisers differentiate their Web offerings in ways that weren't practical before. "HTML5 is going to put power back in the hands of creative people," he says.

Many companies are placing bets. Amazon.com Inc. used HTML5 for a Web-based app called Kindle Cloud Reader that sidesteps Apple rules for selling content on its iPhone and iPads.

"Angry Birds" creator Rovio Entertainment Ltd. developed an HMTL5 version that lobs avian projectiles at enemy pigs with no need for an app. Pandora Media Inc. used the technology to overhaul its popular Internet radio website, which launches more quickly and helps users more easily track others' listening patterns. Publications including Playboy and Sports Illustrated used HTML5 to let online readers boost the size of photos and rapidly flip through them.

The trend has been fueled by Apple, Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.—rivals that more often disagree about technology choices—by building HTML5 support into their latest Web browsers. So have the Mozilla Foundation, maker of Firefox, and Opera Software ASA.

Some 34% of the 100 most popular websites used HTML5 in the quarter ended in September, according to binvisions.com, a blog that tracks Web technologies. Resume searches by hiring managers looking for HTML5 expertise more than doubled between the first quarter and the third quarter, according the tech job site Dice.com.

The excitement has spread despite the fact that HTML5 is missing some key features. Many users, moreover, won't notice striking differences from websites that use Flash.

But Flash, a dominant Web technology before the advent of smartphones, relies on downloaded add-ins to browsers called plug-ins. Mr. Jobs withheld support for the approach in iPhones and iPads, and railed against it his April 2010 essay "Thoughts on Flash."

HTML
Bloomberg News

Pandora Media shifted to HTML5 from Adobe's Flash so its Internet-radio website loads more quickly.

Besides citing technical concerns with Flash, Mr. Jobs argued Apple couldn't allow itself to become dependent on Adobe for such critical technology. As a result, on Apple's mobile devices, websites that rely on Flash display black boxes where videos or graphics should appear.

Adobe rejected Mr. Jobs's arguments, but hedged its bets by developing programming tools that support HTML5 as well as Flash. On Wednesday, it said it would no longer develop new versions of Flash for mobile browsers.

Google has continued to support Flash in the browser delivered with its Android software. But developers want to create Web apps that work both with Android and iOS, Apple's mobile operating system, says Danny Winokur, Adobe's general manager for interactive development.

"If you want to be delivering a Web experience around multiple devices, you have to be doing it in HTML5," he says.

HTML5 takes its name from hypertext markup language, the standard commands used to create Web pages. But the term is a catchall for multiple techniques to handle elements like typography, graphics and video, creating an app-like experience.

"When you show people HTML5 applications, they say that doesn't feel at all like a website," says Dean Hachamovitch, the corporate vice president in charge of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.

The technology is equally important for companies to play snazzy-looking ads in mobile apps, says James Lamberti, a vice president at InMobi Mobile Insights, which places ads on mobile devices. He says that major advertisers using its services swelled to 250 in September from 62 in January. "If they are doing rich-media ads, they are doing HTML5."

Then there are Flash-based games that haven't been available on the iPhone and iPad, such as popular titles from Zynga Inc., that work with Facebook Inc's social network. The San Francisco company recently announced three HTML5-based games that work on the Apple devices, exploiting a new Facebook mobile app platform that supports the technology.

Interest from game developers was apparent last week at New Game 2011, a technical conference in San Francisco. Though HTML5 games don't match the graphics and fast action of PC and console games, attendees noted, free social games on the Web are attracting users.

"The real thing you are competing for now is not dollars but the users' time," says Richard Hilleman, chief creative director for game maker Electronic Arts Inc. "So I need to be everywhere they are, and on all the devices that they have."

A shift to HTML5 games that work on many devices, in theory at least, could reduce one of Apple's advantages—the thousands of apps that work only with its hardware specifically.

Cadir Lee, Zynga's chief technology officer, predicts companies will keep tailoring apps for hit devices like Apple's for some time. Yet he thinks HTML5 could eventually evolve to be an even broader technology movement, like that created with websites that could display almost any content. "There is another wave of that revolution that is coming," Mr. Lee says.

Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Peace Through Victory

By now, Israel, at the urging and bullying of the world, has tried pretty much every conceivable idea and option for achieving tranquility and reconciliation with the Hamas, except for one. Israel removed its army and civilian population from the Gaza Strip. In what amounted to the first ethnic self-cleansing in history, Israel evicted the entire Jewish presence in Gaza. The entire area was turned over to the Palestinians, lock, stock, barrel, and Jew-free.

The result is of course known. The Hamas immediately converted all of Gaza into a large rocket launch pad and a base for initiating terrorist attacks against Israel. It kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and held him incommunicado, refusing medical treatment to him, even though his arm was filled with shrapnel. Israel in response provided free electricity and water to the Gazans and sent civilian supplies into Gaza. Israel never made any serious efforts to stop the massive tunnel smuggling into Gaza from Egypt, even when it was clear that the main item being smuggled was weapons. These smuggled weapons include bomb materials and sophisticated rockets that can now reach Tel Aviv. Israel responded to the endless rocket attacks against its own civilians by turning the other cheek. Only after 8000 rocket strikes did it launch the half-hearted symbolic retaliation in the “Cast Lead” campaign, withdrawing quickly after it was launched.

There is only one strategy for dealing with the Hamas that Israel has never attempted. That untried strategy is victory. Israel has never seriously attempted to achieve peace and tranquility with the Gaza Palestinians by means of victory. This is somewhat strange, since it is hard to think of any other war that did not end in peace only after victory. Instead, the world keeps demanding that Israel respond to Hamas provocation with an endless series of one-sided “goodwill measures.” Never mind that the only invariable effect of such Israeli “goodwill measures” has been to trigger more Hamas terrorism. The only “peace settlement” the Hamas is interested in is one in which Israelis volunteer to allow themselves to be placed in Hamas-run extermination camps for Jews.

Victory in the case of the war with the Gaza terrorists would mean annihilating the Hamas. Interestingly, there is an increasing chorus of voices inside Israel now calling for peace through victory. One of these is General Dan Halutz, the controversial erstwhile chief of staff of the Israeli army. A few days ago a Hamas rocket was fired into Israel and struck a school building. In response, Halutz called for a “mortal blow” to be dealt to the Hamas’ civilian and “military” leadership. Then, in a radio interview, Halutz said, “We must bring back our deterrence vis-à-vis Gaza. It has not existed for even one moment since Operation Cast Lead and to this day.” He has been joined by other Israeli leaders. The finance minister, Yuval Steinitz (who is a philosophy professor at my own university when he is not busy in public life), recently called on Israel to topple the Hamas “regime” in Gaza if the terror continues.

The terrorist aggression by the Hamas has been carried on nonstop ever since it seized power in Gaza. Most acts of Hamas barbarism do not even get reported in the world media, for which dogs biting and shooting rockets at postmen are passé. Hamas rockets land in Israeli civilian areas almost every day. Hamas leaders continue to call openly for Israel’s obliteration and for the annihilation of Jews. All this is surprising only for those who have no understanding of what the Hamas really is. Anyone who has read the brochure on the Hamas being distributed by the David Horowitz Freedom Center will know otherwise.

It has become vogue in many circles to represent Middle East savagery as part of some sort of “War of Civilizations.” It is not. In fact, the Middle East is simply a war by barbarism against all civilization. It is also considered chic to represent the Middle East conflict as a “cycle of violence,” and as something fundamentally symmetrical between Arab terrorists and Israeli soldiers. It is not.

The entire world has convinced itself that violence and terrorism in the Middle East are the results of Israeli “occupation” over Arabs. They are wrong. If there is one thing that has become glaringly obvious in the past two decades it is that the main cause of terrorist violence in the Middle East is the removal of Israeli occupation over Arabs. The Gaza violence was not caused by Israeli occupation but by its removal. The Hezbollah violence and threats from Lebanon were not caused by Israeli “occupation” of Southern Lebanon but rather by its removal.

Part of the world’s problem in understanding such things about the Middle East is that most people have no idea how small Israel really is. Without the West Bank, Israel is at its waist about as wide as the length of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. All of the West Bank is smaller than the Everglades. The Arab world insists territory controlled from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf is insufficient for its appetites, but promises that if only Israel agrees to place its neck in a strategic hangman’s noose by turning over the West Bank to the PLO/Hamas, then peace will prevail. And if Israel refuses to place its neck in such an Arab noose voluntarily, then this shows that Israeli aggression is what is behind the violence.

The caterwauling against Israel’s decision to shoot back occasionally at the terrorists is coming from those claiming that Israel was erected on “Palestinian lands.” This is like claiming that Alaska sits on Russian lands. The Arabs briefly controlled Palestine militarily, as the Russians briefly owned Alaska. The Jews and not the Arabs are analogous to the native Eskimos. Israeli settlements are about as “illegal” as are Eskimo villages in Alaska. There has never ever in history been a Palestinian state, and there is no such thing as a Palestinian people, any more than there is a separate Rhode Islander people. The fact of the matter is that the West Bank and Gaza are hardly “Palestinian lands.”

Even if anyone thinks the Palestinians might have had some legitimate claim to statehood or sovereignty, the Palestinians forfeited any such right they might have had due to the past century of Palestinian atrocities and terror. Just like the Sudeten Germans lost their claim to any sort of self-determination. True, Israeli governments have nevertheless naively and foolishly offered to allow the Palestinians to exercise control over these territories in exchange for peace. But Israel got war and mass murder of its civilians in exchange, not peace, so the foolhardy Oslo “peace process” deals are now off and should never have been implemented. Proposals to “liberate” the West Bank and end Israeli “occupation” there are nothing more than demands that Israel allow Gazan barbarism and terrorism to be replicated and cloned in the West Bank, with Israeli citizens subsequently bathed in countless thousands of rockets.

The only real way to suppress the carnage is for Israel to re-occupy Gaza and the West Bank in full, implement open-ended military control there and a long-term program of Denazification (based in part on the Allied programs at the end of World War II). Israel needs to expel the terrorists and destroy their infrastructure. It needs to get serious about shooting terrorists. Everything else is wishful thinking and delusion.

Palestinian “suffering”? If the Palestinians are unhappy with Israeli anti-terror policies, retaliations, checkpoints and military incursions, let them stop the terror and desist from murdering Israelis, or let them move to any of the 22 Arab states. As long as they persist in the violence, any “suffering” by Palestinians is, much like the suffering of Germans and Japanese during World War II, their own fault. The solution is certainly not for Israel to stop resisting the terror, to stop fighting back, nor for Israel to desist from trying to protect its citizens.

The endless post-Oslo Middle East violence and terror was triggered because Israel indicated that it was on the run, exhausted, unwilling to fight, afraid to resist, and ready to capitulate. It will end only when Israel returns to its determination to end the terror through military victory and force of arms. The same United States that has understood that there is only a military option for dealing with terror in Iraq and Afghanistan must back up such a return by Israel to pre-Oslo sanity.

There are no non-military solutions to the problems of terrorism.

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Meet Libya’s New Islamist Boss

In this week’s issue of The Australian, Sheikh Hamza Abu Fas, Libya’s new Minister for Religious Affairs, gave Westerners a taste of the “free and democratic” that NATO had been fighting for.

The law that allowed a first wife to veto marriage to a second wife will be overturned. “The woman is not equal to the man in the body,” explained Sheikh Hamza. Thieves will have their hands chopped off: “If this happens it will only happen once because other people will not want it to happen again and will not commit theft,” said the good Sheikh.

Islamic banking will be the only kind of banking in Libya. “In the future, we hope all banks will be Islamic,” Sheikh Hamza said. “The Islamic bank is best for all people. All Europeans and Australian people will realize the best solution for banks is Islamic banks.”

While the Australian article is careful to refer to Sheikh Hamza Abu Fas as a professor rather than a sheikh and emphasizes his title as “Minister for Religious Affairs,” he is actually a closer counterpart to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood leader Yusuf Al-Qaradawi. His role is to promote Islamist rule, not to blandly manage religious affairs.

In his message to the “People of Libya” on September 18th, 2011, Sheikh Hamza was already at it, writing, “It is known that the Libyan people, all Muslims are eager to apply the law of Islam, of which they were deprived of by the tyrant [Kaddafi], who even tried hard to discredit the law.”

How extreme a figure is Sheikh Hamza? In Feb 2010, he participated in a symposium on “Revisionist Studies of the Concepts of Jihad, Verification, and Judgment of People” held under the auspices of Sheikh Salman bin Fahd al-Awda, secretary of the International Union for Muslim Scholars, Qaradawi’s organization, and a member of the European Council for Fatwa, another Qaradawi group.

Sheikh Hamza has participated in sessions of the European Council for Fatwa and in Muslim World League events. The Muslim World League is another Muslim Brotherhood group for the promotion of Sharia and is funded by Saudi Arabia.

Al-Awda is a Wahhabi revivalist who had been considered too extreme even by Saudi standards and was arrested and incarcerated during the nineties for extremist activities. He was reportedly one of the figures who inspired Osama Bin-Laden to take up arms and has figured in Gitmo reports as encouraging detainees to seek out terrorist training camps.

Also present at the symposium were leaders of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which is the local affiliate of Al-Qaeda. As well as Sheikh Osama Salabi, the Brotherhood’s man in Benghazi, who also plays a leading role in Sharia finance. The Islamic banks that Sheikh Hamza is talking up will mean money for the local Brotherhood power brokers giving them a permanent power base.

“Revisionist Studies of the Concepts of Jihad, Verification, and Judgment of People” was supposed to be the LIFG’s means of reconciling with Kaddafi and transitioning to political activism over violent terrorism. While Western diplomats celebrated it as a victory for moderate Islam, it was actually the LIFG being guided by leading Brotherhood figures to follow the Muslim Brotherhood’s path of moving from violent terrorism to a popular front overthrow of the government.

The Brotherhood in Egypt managed to overthrow Mubarak, and the LIFG did the same in Libya, backed by American and European military intervention. Had the Brotherhood or LIFG tried to go it alone, they never would have received Western backing, but by forming coalitions with more liberal figures they secured Western support for their revolutions.

“Revisionist Studies of the Concepts of Jihad, Verification, and Judgment of People,” which Sheikh Hamza enthusiastically endorsed, was not quite what the West thought it was. It was a theocratic document that affirmed the supremacy of Sharia and of Islamic scholars as the proper interpreters of Sharia. The LIFG appeared to suspend its local conflict with Kaddafi, but it did not suspend the global conflict with the West– and two years later it provided the warm bodies for the revolt against Kaddafi.

Kaddafi and the West were tricked into a Muslim Brotherhood ploy that offered up a “kinder, gentler Jihad,” freed hundreds of LIFG terrorists from prison and put the movement on a path to seizing power through a coalition revolt. The same strategy behind successful Arab Spring revolts in Tunisia and Egypt.

The appointment of Sheikh Hamza is the opening round of the Islamization of Libya. Hamza enjoys the confidence of the LIFG and of many of the old Kaddafi associates who are still running the country. That makes him the ideal intermediary for fully Islamizing Libya without setting off too many alarm bells.

Laws on the status of women are an easy target, being unpopular with Muslim men, particularly tribal leaders who ignore them anyway. Islamic corporal punishments will spread terror under the guise of Sharia, serving the same function that they did after the Iranian revolution. And Islamic banks will build up the wealth of Brotherhood members to give them the privileged position that they enjoy in Egypt and throughout much of the Middle East.

Sheikh Hamza’s bland title of Minister of Religious Affairs belies his real power in a state where religious law is the law of the land. Libyan Islamists understand that the United States is already wary of the presence of the LIFG and that Western support and money is crucial to getting the country back on its feet again. Like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, they are willing to be the power behind the throne so long as the throne is built on Islamic law.

“Gaddafi could change laws at whim, cherry-picking elements of sharia law. Professor Fas’s new role will include ensuring schools teach a ‘correct interpretation’ of sharia law.” The Australian’s article absurdly treats this as a positive development. What this actually means is that Sheikh Hamza Abu Fas will ensure that schools teach the interpretation of Islamic law approved of by the Islamists and he has already begun cracking the whip.

The supremacy of Islamic law means that those who interpret it also control the society that follows it. With Hamza in the driver’s seat, the future of Libya belongs to the Islamists.

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UK expects Israeli attack on Iran next month with US logistical support

A senior Foreign Office official says British government ministers have been told to expect Israeli military action in the wake of the UN watchdog report "as early as Christmas or very early in the new year," the London Daily Mail reported Thursday, Nov. 10. The ministers were told that Israel would strike Iran's nuclear sites "sooner rather than later" – with "logistical support" from the US.

According to the British paper, which has good military and intelligence ties in London, President Barack Obama would "have to support the Israelis or risk losing Jewish-American support in the next presidential election." The bigger concern is that once Iran is nuclear-armed, it will be impossible to stop Saudi Arabia and Turkey from developing their own weapons to even out the balance of nuclear terror in the Middle East.

debkafile's military sources add that Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has told Obama more than once this year, "If Iran gets nuclear arms, Turkey will get nuclear arms."

The Daily Mail goes on to report that in recent weeks, British Ministry of Defense sources confirmed that contingency plans had been drawn up in the event that the UK decided to support military action.
debkafile refers to an earlier report that the British chief of staff, Gen. Sir David Richards, paid a secret visit to Israel on Nov. 2, followed the next day by the arrival in London of the Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak for talks with British defense and military heads.
The reference to US logistical support is explained by our military sources as pointing to the Libyan model of military intervention whereby France, Britain and Italy spearheaded the action against the Qaddafi regime while the United States from "a back seat" laid on satellite and aerial intelligence and placed at their disposal its logistical supply network, including the in-flight refueling of bombers and ordnance.
Transposing this model to an offensive against Iran, Israel's air and naval forces would front the attack on Iran with logistical and intelligence backup from the United States, while leading NATO powers France, Britain, Germany, Holland and Italy would participate directly or indirectly in the Israeli operation.
Since this attack would almost certainly bring forth reprisals from Tehran and its allies, Syria, Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas and Jihad Islami, it would almost certainly expand into a wider Middle East conflict, thus also broadening US and West European military intervention.

Prospects are fading for the alternative to military action - tough new sanctions able to choke Iran's financial operations and oil exports after the nuclear agency confirmed its surreptitious attainment of a nuclear weapon capability.

Wednesday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov promised visiting Iranian official Ali Baqeri that "Any additional sanctions against Iran will be seen… as an instrument for regime change in Tehran. That approach is unacceptable to us and the Russian side does not intend to consider such proposals."

China will certainly go along with Russia on this.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first response to the IAEA report was to attack its credibility and declare that Iran would continue its nuclear program regardless of its findings.

The Real Scandal By Thomas Sowell

| The real scandal in the accusations against Herman Cain is the corruption of the law, the media and politics.

Let's start with the law. Some people may think the fact that the National Restaurant Association reportedly paid $45,000 to settle a claim made by one of its employees against Mr. Cain is incriminating.

Most of us are not going to part with 45 grand without some serious reason. But that is very different from the situation of an organization in the present legal climate.

The figure $45,000 struck a chord with me because, some years ago, my wife — who is an attorney — was fervently congratulated when her client had to pay "only" $45,000 in a jury award when the plaintiff was demanding a million dollars, in a case that was as frivolous a lawsuit as you could find.

The person who was suing was a drunk driver, whose car went out of control and slammed into a tree. After the sheriff's deputies arrested her, she sued them on dubious charges, and the sheriff's department was glad it had to pay "only" $45,000.




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The department was painfully aware of the uncertainty about what ruinous costs a jury might impose on the deputies.

The real scandal goes far beyond the case of Herman Cain and his accusers. The real scandal is that the law allows people to impose heavy costs on others at little or no cost to themselves. That is a perfect setting for legalized extortion.

The fact that neither judges nor juries always stick to the letter of the law means that people who have zero basis for a lawsuit, under the law as written, can still create enough uncertainty to extract money from people who cannot afford the risk of going to trial.

As for a $45,000 settlement, that is what an organization would pay to settle a nuisance lawsuit — if they are lucky.

If we had a legal system where judges threw frivolous cases out of court, instead of letting them go to trial, that would put a damper on legalized extortion.

If those who bring charges that do not stand up in court had to pay the other party for their legal fees — and should have to pay for their time as well — these games could not go on.

It turns out that the women making televised charges against Herman Cain have past histories that do not inspire confidence, including in at least one case a history of making similar complaints against others.

Another woman who has come forward tells of Herman Cain asking her, at some conference, to see if she could locate some woman in the audience who had asked him a question, so that he could take her to dinner. This apparently struck her as suspicious.

This too reminded me of something I knew about personally. Many years ago, I was at a conference where a woman made some very insightful comments, and I took her to lunch to continue the discussion.

It so happens she was a nun. Contrary to cynics, there is more than one reason for a man to take a woman to lunch or dinner.

The same mainstream media whose responses to proven charges against Bill Clinton was, "Let's move on," is not about to move on from unproven charges against Herman Cain.

What role does race play in all this?

It is probably not racism, as such, that motivates these attacks on Herman Cain. The motivation is far more likely to be politics, but politics makes a prominent black conservative like Clarence Thomas or Herman Cain far more dangerous to the Democrats than an equally prominent white conservative.

The 90 percent black vote for Democrats is like money in the bank on election day. A prominent black conservative who offers an alternative view of the world is a serious danger politically, because if that alternative view has the net effect of reducing the black vote for Democrats just to 75 percent, the Democrats are in big trouble at election time.

In this political context, merely defeating a black conservative at the polls or at confirmation hearings is not enough. He must be destroyed as an influence in the future — and character assassination is the most obvious way to do it.