I wish I was as optimistic as this writer. The plain fact is that the Fed is already dialing hyper-inflation into our future and it is coming like a freight train.
Congress has to cut spending immediately, massively, and yet using judgement. If the Debt Ceiling is increased, the Fed will just do QE3 because they don't have any choice. They don't have a choice because no one is going to lend them $100 Billion per month because QE2 already poisoned the well. The results of QE2 will create Hyper-Inflation this year and it cannot be stopped. See the Chart below. This is the Commodities Future Index and the first of the 6 month futures from September 2010 are just coming due, so April will start showing this in the month to month inflation numbers, of which we just had a taste in the shocking March numbers.
CRB Index for the last 6 months.. (Future Freepers Sorry, this is a snapshot URL) this post won't make sense a month after the current date.)
This exactly matches the chart presented by Russ Winter at Minyanville.
The last 40 years have nothing to do with the current situation because folks had the good sense to go Ape Sh%$t when Nixon gave up the Gold Standard. What they are doing now.. the BASELESS STANDARD, the NOT EVEN GREEN ANYMORE.. standard.. heck.. it isn't even paper. Just electrons representing lies that our children have to make real by living in bondage.
If the Debt Ceiling is increased, the Fed will do QE3 to keep Treasury auctions from failing. Something immediate and substantial needs to be done, and Congress just punted.
Some say, "If interest rates on Treasuries skyrocket then everyone, including China and Saudi will jump back into dollars with wild abandon." But, more likely, there will be no takers for $100 Billion per month.. but the interest rates may rise anyway.. rather... it is much more likely that QE3 occurs for the same reasons as QE2 but the situation is more desperate.
The problem with that.. is that the US is deep into short term borrowing which means that the Deficit will balloon insanely the minute interest rates begin to rise..
You get into a trap, there is no interest rate high enough that overcomes the real likelihood of loss of the original principle. Equity works because it based on the analysis of the risk vs reward of appreciation or loss of the capital investment. Bond work on the assurance that the capital invested is safe, over a certain level of risk, they are considered junk because they are inherently not safe.
What foreign companies will do is use the fake dollars we have given them to purchase real US assets leaving us in an inflationary spiral and vassals in our own land. They will at some point soon, months, insist that all of our borrowing be done in their currency rather than ours and this is when our goose is cooked.
This is a story as old as Joseph, the Pharaoh and the 7 years of famine. It ended with all of Egypt in Slavery including the Israelites whom only God could save.
What is sick is that Beck warned of this 6 months ago and we just couldn't see it back then.. but now it is obvious.. and yet we are not doing anything to stop it.
There comes a point in every PONZIE scheme where the new members cannot sustain the deal and it all comes tumbling down. Social Security is the Ponzie scheme and we all know it. It has failed we are selling our very lives and putting our children into the fire of slavery and death and oppression. This has to end worse than Greece and Obama and crowd know it and are cheering with the torches in their hands. This is the Clovin-Pevin crisis they have been working for, but we don't have to go there willingly.
In case you have any doubt in your heart..
Chart h/t Doug Ross
Goodbye, AmeriCorps. Hello, FoodStampCorps.
By Michelle Malkin • April 15, 2011 10:14 AM
So much for the new era of fiscal responsibility. The federal government’s dependency drones have been spared the chopping block. After vowing to eliminate funding for President Obama’s bloated $6 billion AmeriCorps social justice army, House Republicans retreated — and will shrink the AmeriCorps budget by a minuscule 6.7 percent.
Yes, across the Internet, the feds are recruiting AmeriCorps VISTA (“Volunteers in Service to America”) workers to apply for jobs as publicists for the welfare state. Their mission: to sign up as many people to federal food stamp rolls as possible. Because, you know, the record-breaking 12 million that have been added since Obama took office is apparently not good enough.
These people are serious and using Cloward-Piven like a Bible and they are on a mission.
First and foremost, people have been lied to and they are not ready for dealing with the reality of this. Beck and Palin see Trump's big mouth as a distraction but people are sick of lies. I am.
It starts here first. We quit lying to ourselves. I saw the charts that I posted here this weekend and they made me sick. The guy at www.endofamerica93.com has seen this for a while.. and unfortunately decided to make this a sales pitch with a 20 minute clouded presentation at the beginning.
The crisis doesn't come from "Bankruptcy" as Hannity keeps saying.. but the loss of "Reserve Currency Status" and the meetings are going on around the world to get this accomplished. I am sure they would like to do this without destroying the value of the dollars they already have.. but QE3 will destroy this value anyway.. so after June 2011, a crisis is assured soon no matter what if the DEBT CEILING IS INCREASED without substantial immediate and draconian cutting and a mechanism to absolutely end the deficit borrowing in 24 months.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Trump on Libya, Iraq: Take the Oil
Tax Nomo Tuesday, April 12, 2011
It's official. I'm starting to develop a man-crush on Donald Trump. He's saying pretty much exactly the kind of stuff I think most conservatives wish the GOP had the balls to say, and he's saying it all over the damn place. He's even saying nice things about Sarah Palin. That's a personal litmus test for me.
If this does turn out to be some kind of a network stunt, then it's a brilliant one. Any debate featuring Donald Trump will be must-see TV.
To the reporter: "I would never ask a stupid question like that."
On politics: "I'm very conservative."
On other candidates: "I'd rather have any of these people than Obama."
On trade: "If it's a bad deal for us, I'm not signing it."
On Libya: "I'm only interested in Libya if we take the oil....Nobody knows who these rebels are"
On China: "China gets its oil from Libya and we get nothing but dead soldiers."
"I would tell China that you'd better shape up or we're going to start taxing you at 25%. We're talking $300 Billion dollars. China has been taking advantage of our leaders for years."
On Iraq: "As soon as we leave Iran is going to go in and take the oil... I would take the oil... I would not want to be the one who told someone whose son or daughter died over there that Iran took the oil and their child died for nothing."
"We will make a fortune. They have $15 Trillion of oil in Iraq. We are not going to hand that oil to Iran."
Best line of all... "We need oil. We don't need China."
Donald Trump will “probably” run as an independent candidate for U.S. President in 2012 if he does not receive the Republican party’s nomination, he told the Wall Street Journal in a video interview on Monday.
“I hate what’s happening to the country,” said Mr. Trump, a real estate tycoon and host of the NBC show “Celebrity Apprentice.” He will not formally make a decision until June, however, when this season of his television show is over. “I can’t run during the airing of that show,” Mr. Trump said, “I’m not allowed to.” But he said he would make an announcement “by June” and his candidacy looks increasingly likely....
It's official. I'm starting to develop a man-crush on Donald Trump. He's saying pretty much exactly the kind of stuff I think most conservatives wish the GOP had the balls to say, and he's saying it all over the damn place. He's even saying nice things about Sarah Palin. That's a personal litmus test for me.
If this does turn out to be some kind of a network stunt, then it's a brilliant one. Any debate featuring Donald Trump will be must-see TV.
To the reporter: "I would never ask a stupid question like that."
On politics: "I'm very conservative."
On other candidates: "I'd rather have any of these people than Obama."
On trade: "If it's a bad deal for us, I'm not signing it."
On Libya: "I'm only interested in Libya if we take the oil....Nobody knows who these rebels are"
On China: "China gets its oil from Libya and we get nothing but dead soldiers."
"I would tell China that you'd better shape up or we're going to start taxing you at 25%. We're talking $300 Billion dollars. China has been taking advantage of our leaders for years."
On Iraq: "As soon as we leave Iran is going to go in and take the oil... I would take the oil... I would not want to be the one who told someone whose son or daughter died over there that Iran took the oil and their child died for nothing."
"We will make a fortune. They have $15 Trillion of oil in Iraq. We are not going to hand that oil to Iran."
Best line of all... "We need oil. We don't need China."
Donald Trump will “probably” run as an independent candidate for U.S. President in 2012 if he does not receive the Republican party’s nomination, he told the Wall Street Journal in a video interview on Monday.
“I hate what’s happening to the country,” said Mr. Trump, a real estate tycoon and host of the NBC show “Celebrity Apprentice.” He will not formally make a decision until June, however, when this season of his television show is over. “I can’t run during the airing of that show,” Mr. Trump said, “I’m not allowed to.” But he said he would make an announcement “by June” and his candidacy looks increasingly likely....
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Tsunami-hit towns forgot warnings from ancestors
By JAY ALABASTER, Associated Press Jay Alabaster, Associated Press – Wed Apr 6, 2:47 pm ET
MIYAKO, Japan – Modern sea walls failed to protect coastal towns from Japan's destructive tsunami last month. But in the hamlet of Aneyoshi, a single centuries-old tablet saved the day.
"High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants," the stone slab reads. "Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point."
It was advice the dozen or so households of Aneyoshi heeded, and their homes emerged unscathed from a disaster that flattened low-lying communities elsewhere and killed thousands along Japan's northeastern shore.
Hundreds of such markers dot the coastline, some more than 600 years old. Collectively they form a crude warning system for Japan, whose long coasts along major fault lines have made it a repeated target of earthquakes and tsunamis over the centuries.
The markers don't all indicate where it's safe to build. Some simply stand — or stood, until they were washed away by the tsunami — as daily reminders of the risk. "If an earthquake comes, beware of tsunamis," reads one. In the bustle of modern life, many forgot.
More than 12,000 people have been confirmed dead and officials fear the number killed could rise to 25,000 from the March 11 disaster. More than 100,000 are still sheltering in schools and other buildings, almost a month later. A few lucky individuals may move into the first completed units of temporary housing this weekend.
Workers at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power complex finally halted a leak of radioactive water into the Pacific on Wednesday, but it may take months to bring the overheating reactors under control.
A natural disaster as large as last month's 9.0 earthquake and tsunami happens perhaps once in a person's lifetime, at most. Tokyo Electric Power Co., the nuclear plant operator, clearly wasn't prepared. Many communities built right to the water's edge, some taking comfort, perhaps, in sea walls built after a deadly but smaller tsunami in 1960.
Many did escape, fleeing immediately after the quake. In some places, it was a matter of minutes. Others who tarried, perished.
"People had this crucial knowledge, but they were busy with their lives and jobs, and many forgot," said Yotaru Hatamura, a scholar who has studied the tablets.
One stone marker warned of the danger in the coastal city of Kesennuma: "Always be prepared for unexpected tsunamis. Choose life over your possessions and valuables."
Tetsuko Takahashi, 70, safe in her hillside house, watched from her front window as others ignored that advice. She saw a ship swept a half-mile (nearly a kilometer) inland, crushing buildings in its path.
"After the earthquake, people went back to their homes to get their valuables and stow their 'tatami' floor mats. They all got caught," she said.
Her family has lived in Kesennuma for generations, but she said those that experienced the most powerful tsunamis died years ago. She can only recall the far weaker one in 1960, generated by an earthquake off Chile.
Earlier generations also left warnings in place names, calling one town "Octopus Grounds" for the sea life washed up by tsunamis and naming temples after the powerful waves, said Fumihiko Imamura, a professor in disaster planning at Tohoku University in Sendai, a tsunami-hit city.
"It takes about three generations for people to forget. Those that experience the disaster themselves pass it to their children and their grandchildren, but then the memory fades," he said.
The tightly knit community of Aneyoshi, where people built homes above the marker, was an exception.
"Everybody here knows about the markers. We studied them in school," said Yuto Kimura, 12, who guided a recent visitor to one near his home. "When the tsunami came, my mom got me from school and then the whole village climbed to higher ground."
Aneyoshi, part of the city of Miyako, has been battered repeatedly by tsunamis, including a huge one in 1896. Isamu Aneishi, 69, said his ancestors moved their family-run inn to higher ground more than 100 years ago.
But his three grandchildren were at an elementary school that sat just 500 feet (150 meters) from the water in Chikei, a larger town down the winding, cliffside road. The school and surrounding buildings are in ruins. The bodies of his grandchildren have not been found.
Farther south, the tsunami washed away a seven-foot (two-meter) tall stone tablet that stood next to a playground in the middle of the city of Natori. Its message was carved in giant Japanese characters: "If an earthquake comes, beware of tsunamis."
That didn't stop some people from leaving work early after the earthquake, some picking up their children at school en route, to check the condition of their homes near the coast.
Many didn't make it out alive. More than 820 bodies have been found in Natori, some stuck in the upper branches of trees after the water receded. Another 1,000 people are still missing.
Hiroshi Kosai grew up in Natori but moved away after high school. His parents, who remained in the family home, died in the disaster.
"I always told my parents it was dangerous here," said the 43-year-old Kosai, as he pointed out the broken foundation where the tablet once stood. "In five years, you'll see houses begin to sprout up here again."
MIYAKO, Japan – Modern sea walls failed to protect coastal towns from Japan's destructive tsunami last month. But in the hamlet of Aneyoshi, a single centuries-old tablet saved the day.
"High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants," the stone slab reads. "Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point."
It was advice the dozen or so households of Aneyoshi heeded, and their homes emerged unscathed from a disaster that flattened low-lying communities elsewhere and killed thousands along Japan's northeastern shore.
Hundreds of such markers dot the coastline, some more than 600 years old. Collectively they form a crude warning system for Japan, whose long coasts along major fault lines have made it a repeated target of earthquakes and tsunamis over the centuries.
The markers don't all indicate where it's safe to build. Some simply stand — or stood, until they were washed away by the tsunami — as daily reminders of the risk. "If an earthquake comes, beware of tsunamis," reads one. In the bustle of modern life, many forgot.
More than 12,000 people have been confirmed dead and officials fear the number killed could rise to 25,000 from the March 11 disaster. More than 100,000 are still sheltering in schools and other buildings, almost a month later. A few lucky individuals may move into the first completed units of temporary housing this weekend.
Workers at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power complex finally halted a leak of radioactive water into the Pacific on Wednesday, but it may take months to bring the overheating reactors under control.
A natural disaster as large as last month's 9.0 earthquake and tsunami happens perhaps once in a person's lifetime, at most. Tokyo Electric Power Co., the nuclear plant operator, clearly wasn't prepared. Many communities built right to the water's edge, some taking comfort, perhaps, in sea walls built after a deadly but smaller tsunami in 1960.
Many did escape, fleeing immediately after the quake. In some places, it was a matter of minutes. Others who tarried, perished.
"People had this crucial knowledge, but they were busy with their lives and jobs, and many forgot," said Yotaru Hatamura, a scholar who has studied the tablets.
One stone marker warned of the danger in the coastal city of Kesennuma: "Always be prepared for unexpected tsunamis. Choose life over your possessions and valuables."
Tetsuko Takahashi, 70, safe in her hillside house, watched from her front window as others ignored that advice. She saw a ship swept a half-mile (nearly a kilometer) inland, crushing buildings in its path.
"After the earthquake, people went back to their homes to get their valuables and stow their 'tatami' floor mats. They all got caught," she said.
Her family has lived in Kesennuma for generations, but she said those that experienced the most powerful tsunamis died years ago. She can only recall the far weaker one in 1960, generated by an earthquake off Chile.
Earlier generations also left warnings in place names, calling one town "Octopus Grounds" for the sea life washed up by tsunamis and naming temples after the powerful waves, said Fumihiko Imamura, a professor in disaster planning at Tohoku University in Sendai, a tsunami-hit city.
"It takes about three generations for people to forget. Those that experience the disaster themselves pass it to their children and their grandchildren, but then the memory fades," he said.
The tightly knit community of Aneyoshi, where people built homes above the marker, was an exception.
"Everybody here knows about the markers. We studied them in school," said Yuto Kimura, 12, who guided a recent visitor to one near his home. "When the tsunami came, my mom got me from school and then the whole village climbed to higher ground."
Aneyoshi, part of the city of Miyako, has been battered repeatedly by tsunamis, including a huge one in 1896. Isamu Aneishi, 69, said his ancestors moved their family-run inn to higher ground more than 100 years ago.
But his three grandchildren were at an elementary school that sat just 500 feet (150 meters) from the water in Chikei, a larger town down the winding, cliffside road. The school and surrounding buildings are in ruins. The bodies of his grandchildren have not been found.
Farther south, the tsunami washed away a seven-foot (two-meter) tall stone tablet that stood next to a playground in the middle of the city of Natori. Its message was carved in giant Japanese characters: "If an earthquake comes, beware of tsunamis."
That didn't stop some people from leaving work early after the earthquake, some picking up their children at school en route, to check the condition of their homes near the coast.
Many didn't make it out alive. More than 820 bodies have been found in Natori, some stuck in the upper branches of trees after the water receded. Another 1,000 people are still missing.
Hiroshi Kosai grew up in Natori but moved away after high school. His parents, who remained in the family home, died in the disaster.
"I always told my parents it was dangerous here," said the 43-year-old Kosai, as he pointed out the broken foundation where the tablet once stood. "In five years, you'll see houses begin to sprout up here again."
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
A Revolting Middle East Policy
Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield ^ | April 5, 2011 | Daniel Greenfield
Posted on Wednesday, April 06, 2011 1:08:02 PM by 6ft2inhighheelshoes
In the last three months we played a role in overthrowing nearly every Middle Eastern government we were allied with-- that wasn't supporting terrorism.
We pushed out Ben Ali in Tunisia, but let the Saudis move tanks into Bahrain. Egypt's Mubarak was a monster who had to go, but Syria's Assad is a reformer. Now Yemen's Saleh who let us hunt terrorists in his country is on our hit list, but the Qatari royal family which is linked to Al-Qaeda and finances Al-Jazeera are our best friends. Gaddafi who cut a deal to give up his nukes got bombed, Iran which is pushing hard for a nuclear bomb has clear skies.
Middle Eastern leaders who support and finance terrorists got a pass, but our own allies in the War on Terror got creamed. Iran, Syria and the Gulf Arab states who are responsible for most of the terrorism against us have nothing to worry about. Saleh and Mubarak who aided the War on Terror got shown the door.
Want good relations with the US? Start funding terrorists and building nukes. That's the only lesson any Middle-Eastern leader can take away from this disaster. The message we have put out there is that the worse they treat us, the better we will treat them. We will tolerate enemies and allies abusing us and plotting to kill us. But allies who actually go out on a limb to support us and act as if they have common interests with us. That we won't put up with. They have to go.
The tally of stupidity in what fanciful pundits called the 'Arab Spring' is almost endless. Not only did we mistake factional protests for democratic change and the will of the people, but we got behind groups and organizations overtly hostile to us and took their side against governments that had actually been friendly to us.
Obama intervened politically in Egypt on behalf of Islamists and Anti-American leftists, bringing down the government of the only major Muslim country in the region that was not actively funding terrorists. A government that not only offered significant help during the War on Terror, but was the only non-Islamist bulwark against Iran. All that is almost certainly gone now.
Bush's bloodless deal with Gaddafi got him out of the nukes and terror business. That too is gone now. The rebels are losing and Gaddafi isn't going to be intimidated by us ever again. The US went in like a lion and out like a lamb. Bush's invasion of Iraq intimidated Gaddafi into giving in. Obama's botched assault on Libya has reassured every thug from Syria to Iran that they have nothing to fear from us.
On any threat level map, North Africa which was reasonably quiet under Bush has just gone dark red. And it won't take much for it to go bright red now. From Tunisia to Libya to Egypt-- the Islamists have gotten a major shot in the arm on the other side of the Mediterranean. Al-Qaeda fighters are swarming within sight of Italy. In a day, Libyan fighters can travel by boat to Italy's Pelagie islands. When Eisenhower wanted to invade Italy from North Africa, he began with the islands as a jumping off point. Muslim 'refugees' have been doing their own version of 'Operation Corkscrew' by using the islands to invade Italy. And once inside Italy they have access to the entire European Union.
The 'revolutions' have targeted North Africa. Half of North Africa has either has either been wholly or partly overthrown. Morocco and Algeria are the sole holdouts. If the Brotherhood takes Egypt then they won't be holding out for long. And then there will be a Caliphate within striking distance of Southern Europe.
But Europe supported all this in the name of democracy and human rights. And European leaders organized a bombing campaign against Gaddafi when he was the only thing keeping half of North Africa from moving to Europe. America, which could have saved Mubarak with a word, instead called for his removal in the name of a protest movement organized by the Muslim Brotherhood and the leftist Kefaya group which had gotten its start protesting against the American overthrow of Saddam.
What country in its right mind backs the overthrow of any ally by an enemy? We do. When Egyptian socialist thug Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, and England and France sent in the troops, we threatened to destroy the British economy unless they withdrew. Our reward for that was that Nasser's Egypt became the chief Soviet spearhead in the region. For the last two decades, our number one foreign policy priority in the Middle East is to force Israel to hand over territory to PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, a graduate of the KGB's Patrice Lumumba University, whose other famous alumnus was Carlos the Jackal.
Carter backed the leftists and Islamists over the Shah of Iran. Then he backed the Islamists over the leftists. That's what turned Iran into the paradise it is today. This time around we backed the leftists and Islamists over Mubarak. Now the leftists are being swallowed up by the Islamists who have been waiting 80 years for this moment.
From the halls of power to the front page, no Egyptian was a bigger enthusiast of the January 25 protests than our own political and cultural leaders. The press was full of posed photographs, glowing descriptions of a people's revolution and denunciations of Mubarak. Activists whose chief political experiencing was retweeting memes got full page interviews. Governments and Soros' pet NGO's got behind Kefaya and Iranian puppet El Baradei. Columnists glowingly portrayed the pathetic El Baradei as the democratic future of Egypt.
Then Mubarak stepped down and the 'heroes' of Tahrir Square got stomped flat by the military and the brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood's successful referendum campaign was an explicit mandate for Islamism over secularism. Protests have been banned, curfews imposed and the army is arresting and humiliating the remaining pro-democracy activists. And El Baradei and Kefaya are playing the only card left in their empty deck. Israel.
El Baradei is vowing war with Israel. Mahmoud Salem, aka Sandmonkey, the favorite Egyptian activist of so many neo-conservative bloggers, is encouraging Egyptians to support El Baradei over Amr Moussa, by tweeting that Amr Moussa is a Yankee-Zionist puppet and El Baradei is the only man Israel is afraid of. There's your liberal Democratic Egypt trotting out xenophobia and warmongering in a futile bid to get ahead of the Muslim Brotherhood. And its campaign slogan sounds a lot like the cries of "Jew, Jew" by the men who beat and raped Lara Logan.
Baradei is the darling of the same pundits and politicians who denounce nationalist Israeli candidates as extremists. Yet no Israeli party runs on a platform of war with Egypt. And there's your fundamental difference, not just between Egypt and Israel, but between the Muslim and non-Muslim world. A clash of civilizations between cultures with radically different moral codes and understanding of the value of human life. Much as Western pundits would like to believe that El Baradei is on their side of this moral equation, he isn't.
Egypt's problem was never Mubarak. It isn't Israel or America or globalism. It was always Egypt. And the problem will go on being Egypt no matter who is at the wheel six months or six years from now. The fundamental problem of the Muslim world is not a lack of democracy. That is only the symptom. Just as our fundamental problem is not Obama. He too is only the symptom.
Changing governments may improve matters, but without altering the underlying dynamic, the big picture will not change. And that dynamic is rooted in the culture. It cannot be changed by elections. Leaders reflect the culture, and even the occasional ruthless leader who imposes change is a product of historic forces at work. Egypt does not have a political problem, it has a cultural problem. And the US does not have a political problem, it has a cultural problem. Problems are reflected in destructive behavior.
Imagine if the Soviet Union had aided in the overthrow of Cuba, East Germany and the rest of the Warsaw Pact. That might have happened if Reagan had been put in charge of the USSR. And putting Obama in charge of America was like putting Reagan in charge of the USSR. But who put Obama in charge of America? For all the Soros money, fraud and the maneuvering behind the scenes-- it took a major cultural shift for that to be possible. The crisis of America can be found in that shift. And that of our revolting Middle East policy.
Posted on Wednesday, April 06, 2011 1:08:02 PM by 6ft2inhighheelshoes
In the last three months we played a role in overthrowing nearly every Middle Eastern government we were allied with-- that wasn't supporting terrorism.
We pushed out Ben Ali in Tunisia, but let the Saudis move tanks into Bahrain. Egypt's Mubarak was a monster who had to go, but Syria's Assad is a reformer. Now Yemen's Saleh who let us hunt terrorists in his country is on our hit list, but the Qatari royal family which is linked to Al-Qaeda and finances Al-Jazeera are our best friends. Gaddafi who cut a deal to give up his nukes got bombed, Iran which is pushing hard for a nuclear bomb has clear skies.
Middle Eastern leaders who support and finance terrorists got a pass, but our own allies in the War on Terror got creamed. Iran, Syria and the Gulf Arab states who are responsible for most of the terrorism against us have nothing to worry about. Saleh and Mubarak who aided the War on Terror got shown the door.
Want good relations with the US? Start funding terrorists and building nukes. That's the only lesson any Middle-Eastern leader can take away from this disaster. The message we have put out there is that the worse they treat us, the better we will treat them. We will tolerate enemies and allies abusing us and plotting to kill us. But allies who actually go out on a limb to support us and act as if they have common interests with us. That we won't put up with. They have to go.
The tally of stupidity in what fanciful pundits called the 'Arab Spring' is almost endless. Not only did we mistake factional protests for democratic change and the will of the people, but we got behind groups and organizations overtly hostile to us and took their side against governments that had actually been friendly to us.
Obama intervened politically in Egypt on behalf of Islamists and Anti-American leftists, bringing down the government of the only major Muslim country in the region that was not actively funding terrorists. A government that not only offered significant help during the War on Terror, but was the only non-Islamist bulwark against Iran. All that is almost certainly gone now.
Bush's bloodless deal with Gaddafi got him out of the nukes and terror business. That too is gone now. The rebels are losing and Gaddafi isn't going to be intimidated by us ever again. The US went in like a lion and out like a lamb. Bush's invasion of Iraq intimidated Gaddafi into giving in. Obama's botched assault on Libya has reassured every thug from Syria to Iran that they have nothing to fear from us.
On any threat level map, North Africa which was reasonably quiet under Bush has just gone dark red. And it won't take much for it to go bright red now. From Tunisia to Libya to Egypt-- the Islamists have gotten a major shot in the arm on the other side of the Mediterranean. Al-Qaeda fighters are swarming within sight of Italy. In a day, Libyan fighters can travel by boat to Italy's Pelagie islands. When Eisenhower wanted to invade Italy from North Africa, he began with the islands as a jumping off point. Muslim 'refugees' have been doing their own version of 'Operation Corkscrew' by using the islands to invade Italy. And once inside Italy they have access to the entire European Union.
The 'revolutions' have targeted North Africa. Half of North Africa has either has either been wholly or partly overthrown. Morocco and Algeria are the sole holdouts. If the Brotherhood takes Egypt then they won't be holding out for long. And then there will be a Caliphate within striking distance of Southern Europe.
But Europe supported all this in the name of democracy and human rights. And European leaders organized a bombing campaign against Gaddafi when he was the only thing keeping half of North Africa from moving to Europe. America, which could have saved Mubarak with a word, instead called for his removal in the name of a protest movement organized by the Muslim Brotherhood and the leftist Kefaya group which had gotten its start protesting against the American overthrow of Saddam.
What country in its right mind backs the overthrow of any ally by an enemy? We do. When Egyptian socialist thug Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, and England and France sent in the troops, we threatened to destroy the British economy unless they withdrew. Our reward for that was that Nasser's Egypt became the chief Soviet spearhead in the region. For the last two decades, our number one foreign policy priority in the Middle East is to force Israel to hand over territory to PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, a graduate of the KGB's Patrice Lumumba University, whose other famous alumnus was Carlos the Jackal.
Carter backed the leftists and Islamists over the Shah of Iran. Then he backed the Islamists over the leftists. That's what turned Iran into the paradise it is today. This time around we backed the leftists and Islamists over Mubarak. Now the leftists are being swallowed up by the Islamists who have been waiting 80 years for this moment.
From the halls of power to the front page, no Egyptian was a bigger enthusiast of the January 25 protests than our own political and cultural leaders. The press was full of posed photographs, glowing descriptions of a people's revolution and denunciations of Mubarak. Activists whose chief political experiencing was retweeting memes got full page interviews. Governments and Soros' pet NGO's got behind Kefaya and Iranian puppet El Baradei. Columnists glowingly portrayed the pathetic El Baradei as the democratic future of Egypt.
Then Mubarak stepped down and the 'heroes' of Tahrir Square got stomped flat by the military and the brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood's successful referendum campaign was an explicit mandate for Islamism over secularism. Protests have been banned, curfews imposed and the army is arresting and humiliating the remaining pro-democracy activists. And El Baradei and Kefaya are playing the only card left in their empty deck. Israel.
El Baradei is vowing war with Israel. Mahmoud Salem, aka Sandmonkey, the favorite Egyptian activist of so many neo-conservative bloggers, is encouraging Egyptians to support El Baradei over Amr Moussa, by tweeting that Amr Moussa is a Yankee-Zionist puppet and El Baradei is the only man Israel is afraid of. There's your liberal Democratic Egypt trotting out xenophobia and warmongering in a futile bid to get ahead of the Muslim Brotherhood. And its campaign slogan sounds a lot like the cries of "Jew, Jew" by the men who beat and raped Lara Logan.
Baradei is the darling of the same pundits and politicians who denounce nationalist Israeli candidates as extremists. Yet no Israeli party runs on a platform of war with Egypt. And there's your fundamental difference, not just between Egypt and Israel, but between the Muslim and non-Muslim world. A clash of civilizations between cultures with radically different moral codes and understanding of the value of human life. Much as Western pundits would like to believe that El Baradei is on their side of this moral equation, he isn't.
Egypt's problem was never Mubarak. It isn't Israel or America or globalism. It was always Egypt. And the problem will go on being Egypt no matter who is at the wheel six months or six years from now. The fundamental problem of the Muslim world is not a lack of democracy. That is only the symptom. Just as our fundamental problem is not Obama. He too is only the symptom.
Changing governments may improve matters, but without altering the underlying dynamic, the big picture will not change. And that dynamic is rooted in the culture. It cannot be changed by elections. Leaders reflect the culture, and even the occasional ruthless leader who imposes change is a product of historic forces at work. Egypt does not have a political problem, it has a cultural problem. And the US does not have a political problem, it has a cultural problem. Problems are reflected in destructive behavior.
Imagine if the Soviet Union had aided in the overthrow of Cuba, East Germany and the rest of the Warsaw Pact. That might have happened if Reagan had been put in charge of the USSR. And putting Obama in charge of America was like putting Reagan in charge of the USSR. But who put Obama in charge of America? For all the Soros money, fraud and the maneuvering behind the scenes-- it took a major cultural shift for that to be possible. The crisis of America can be found in that shift. And that of our revolting Middle East policy.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
We can no longer rely on debt-laden US
THE European welfare state is in extremis. Its death throes are playing out before our eyes in an economic danse macabre of fiscal crises, banking bailouts and savage budget cuts.
From Lisbon to Latvia, governments are slashing public spending and going cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund. And from Athens to Aberdeen, students and trade unionists take to the streets in a sometimes-violent, last-ditch defence of their accustomed privileges.
But the end result of this economic Greek tragedy is pre-ordained by the cold hard calculus of budgetary maths. The European welfare state model that evolved after World War II has proved economically unsustainable: the account is coming due.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the US is afflicted by a similar malady. This year, the US government will borrow 40c out of every budget dollar it spends and will run a mammoth $US1.65 trillion ($1.59 trillion) deficit.
When Washington's current extravagance is piled upon profligacy from years past, this spend-a-thon brings the US's cumulative public debt to a whopping $14.2trillion. That sum represents 96 per cent of the $US14.8trillion gross domestic product of the US. In other words, the US government owes virtually the annual total worth of all goods and services produced by every US firm and individual. And that's not counting another $US6.3 trillion in state and local government debt and pension obligations.
Remarkably, military spending plays a minor role in the US's looming sovereign debt crisis. For all of its image as a free-market bastion, the US has become much more of a welfare state than is perceived. The real culprits in Washington's fiscal woes are government health and social programs.
Federal and state government payments and subsidies constituted fully one-third of all US wages and salaries paid last year. Medicare, the US government healthcare program for senior citizens, consumed 22.5 per cent of GDP that same year. By contrast, US defence spending - including on the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan - constituted less than 5 per cent of GDP.
The grim upshot of this number crunching is that the US is on a fiscally unsustainable trajectory towards national insolvency. These are the wages of the country's long-standing economic sins. There are only two options for Washington to stave off catastrophe: draconian budget cuts or reducing the real value of its debt by debasing the dollar through inflation. Either way, the economic and strategic consequences for the world will be profound.
Last June, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff portrayed the US's debt burden as "the most significant threat to our national security". Former US Treasury secretary and Harvard University president Lawrence Summers asked in 2009: "How long can the world's biggest borrower remain the world's biggest power?" The answer is: not long. We can't know precisely when the US's fiscal day of reckoning will arrive, but when Moody's warned a few months ago that US Treasury bonds were facing a downgrade from AAA status, you can be sure it's coming.
It was Cicero who said money forms the sinews of war. And in straitened economic circumstances, defence spending is usually the first item to go. We see this in Britain, where the Royal Navy has been cut to the bone and beyond. Without carrier air capability in the fleet until 2019 at the earliest, Britannia won't be ruling the waves anytime soon.
With its own debt burden that mandates both fiscal restraint and an inflationary devaluation of the dollar, the US's strategic wings will be clipped as well. The first round of defence cuts came in January, with $US78 billion over five years sliced from the $US680bn level spent by the Pentagon last year.
But that's only a bit of foreplay to the serious business of getting the US's fiscal house in order. It's inevitable more radical cuts to the US defence budget loom. Given that near certainty, it's time for debate about what a militarily diminished US means for Australia.
Since the end of WWII, we've enjoyed the benefits of stability provided by a Pax Americana in the western Pacific. Even during the worst Asian flare-ups of the Cold War - Korea and Vietnam - the international sea lanes upon which Australia depends were never threatened.
As a result, Australia has consistently short-changed its military establishment, getting away this year with spending a paltry 1.8per cent of GDP on defence.
Australia Defence Association head Neil James notes: "There are three generations of Aussies who've grown up under America's protective wing. They've never even had to consider the possibility that one day they might not be able to rely on US strategic supremacy, free of charge".
But with the US well down the road to economic perdition, Australia can no longer rely on the presumption that the US will have our back. It's extremely unlikely that a decade hence we'll see a US navy of 10 carrier battle groups. Currently, projections for a US air force fleet of 2400 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters will almost certainly never fully materialise. Costing more than $US100m a plane, the F-35 is a budget-buster, as are the new Ford-class aircraft carriers that cost $US9bn a pop. To an increasingly cash-strapped US, they will be unaffordable in quantity.
In politics, as in physics, a vacuum will be filled. In global affairs, this applies with redoubled force. For Australia, the $64,000 question is who will step in to the breach of strategic equilibrium triggered by the recession of US power from the western Pacific.
Will a resurgent China expand its strategic footprint by developing a real blue water navy? Will Japan, South Korea, India The Philippines and other Asian countries join in coalition to counterbalance the renascence of the Middle Kingdom? Or will these nations choose a path of "Finlandisation", opting for neutrality and passive accommodation with their giant neighbour?
These are the questions being mooted within Australia's strategic studies community. They form the subtext to the Rudd government's 2009 Defence white paper that called for a massive expansion of the Royal Australian Navy and RAAF.
But there are certainties of which we can still be confident, even within the haze of future Rumsfeldian 'unknown unknowns'. Without the intelligence support and military largesse produced by our close alliance with the world's superpower, we'll have to spend more on our national defence. Much more.
Australian governments of both persuasions will have to fill some of that US-less strategic vacuum with a greatly enhanced Australian Defence Force. On this point, the mainstream of the ALP is in agreement with the Coalition.
According to James, the most restrained estimates predict Canberra's military spending in such a scenario would need to rise by at least 60 per cent. Other strategic analysts say our defence outlay in such circumstances would more than double, or perhaps triple.
Or course, there's a great political irony to all this. In its hatred of all things US, the Left fails to understand that it is the US military umbrella that has enabled Australian governments to spend billions on butter rather than guns. All those schools, hospitals and welfare programs so beloved of progressives are, in essence, being subsidised by the 82nd Airborne.
Retired Major General Jim Molan, former chief of operations for the coalition in Iraq, declared: "America's allies - Australia included - have been freeloading for years and now they'll have to face the burden of their own national defence. And it's about time."
Ted Lapkin is a research fellow at the Institute for Public Affairs
From Lisbon to Latvia, governments are slashing public spending and going cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund. And from Athens to Aberdeen, students and trade unionists take to the streets in a sometimes-violent, last-ditch defence of their accustomed privileges.
But the end result of this economic Greek tragedy is pre-ordained by the cold hard calculus of budgetary maths. The European welfare state model that evolved after World War II has proved economically unsustainable: the account is coming due.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the US is afflicted by a similar malady. This year, the US government will borrow 40c out of every budget dollar it spends and will run a mammoth $US1.65 trillion ($1.59 trillion) deficit.
When Washington's current extravagance is piled upon profligacy from years past, this spend-a-thon brings the US's cumulative public debt to a whopping $14.2trillion. That sum represents 96 per cent of the $US14.8trillion gross domestic product of the US. In other words, the US government owes virtually the annual total worth of all goods and services produced by every US firm and individual. And that's not counting another $US6.3 trillion in state and local government debt and pension obligations.
Remarkably, military spending plays a minor role in the US's looming sovereign debt crisis. For all of its image as a free-market bastion, the US has become much more of a welfare state than is perceived. The real culprits in Washington's fiscal woes are government health and social programs.
Federal and state government payments and subsidies constituted fully one-third of all US wages and salaries paid last year. Medicare, the US government healthcare program for senior citizens, consumed 22.5 per cent of GDP that same year. By contrast, US defence spending - including on the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan - constituted less than 5 per cent of GDP.
The grim upshot of this number crunching is that the US is on a fiscally unsustainable trajectory towards national insolvency. These are the wages of the country's long-standing economic sins. There are only two options for Washington to stave off catastrophe: draconian budget cuts or reducing the real value of its debt by debasing the dollar through inflation. Either way, the economic and strategic consequences for the world will be profound.
Last June, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff portrayed the US's debt burden as "the most significant threat to our national security". Former US Treasury secretary and Harvard University president Lawrence Summers asked in 2009: "How long can the world's biggest borrower remain the world's biggest power?" The answer is: not long. We can't know precisely when the US's fiscal day of reckoning will arrive, but when Moody's warned a few months ago that US Treasury bonds were facing a downgrade from AAA status, you can be sure it's coming.
It was Cicero who said money forms the sinews of war. And in straitened economic circumstances, defence spending is usually the first item to go. We see this in Britain, where the Royal Navy has been cut to the bone and beyond. Without carrier air capability in the fleet until 2019 at the earliest, Britannia won't be ruling the waves anytime soon.
With its own debt burden that mandates both fiscal restraint and an inflationary devaluation of the dollar, the US's strategic wings will be clipped as well. The first round of defence cuts came in January, with $US78 billion over five years sliced from the $US680bn level spent by the Pentagon last year.
But that's only a bit of foreplay to the serious business of getting the US's fiscal house in order. It's inevitable more radical cuts to the US defence budget loom. Given that near certainty, it's time for debate about what a militarily diminished US means for Australia.
Since the end of WWII, we've enjoyed the benefits of stability provided by a Pax Americana in the western Pacific. Even during the worst Asian flare-ups of the Cold War - Korea and Vietnam - the international sea lanes upon which Australia depends were never threatened.
As a result, Australia has consistently short-changed its military establishment, getting away this year with spending a paltry 1.8per cent of GDP on defence.
Australia Defence Association head Neil James notes: "There are three generations of Aussies who've grown up under America's protective wing. They've never even had to consider the possibility that one day they might not be able to rely on US strategic supremacy, free of charge".
But with the US well down the road to economic perdition, Australia can no longer rely on the presumption that the US will have our back. It's extremely unlikely that a decade hence we'll see a US navy of 10 carrier battle groups. Currently, projections for a US air force fleet of 2400 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters will almost certainly never fully materialise. Costing more than $US100m a plane, the F-35 is a budget-buster, as are the new Ford-class aircraft carriers that cost $US9bn a pop. To an increasingly cash-strapped US, they will be unaffordable in quantity.
In politics, as in physics, a vacuum will be filled. In global affairs, this applies with redoubled force. For Australia, the $64,000 question is who will step in to the breach of strategic equilibrium triggered by the recession of US power from the western Pacific.
Will a resurgent China expand its strategic footprint by developing a real blue water navy? Will Japan, South Korea, India The Philippines and other Asian countries join in coalition to counterbalance the renascence of the Middle Kingdom? Or will these nations choose a path of "Finlandisation", opting for neutrality and passive accommodation with their giant neighbour?
These are the questions being mooted within Australia's strategic studies community. They form the subtext to the Rudd government's 2009 Defence white paper that called for a massive expansion of the Royal Australian Navy and RAAF.
But there are certainties of which we can still be confident, even within the haze of future Rumsfeldian 'unknown unknowns'. Without the intelligence support and military largesse produced by our close alliance with the world's superpower, we'll have to spend more on our national defence. Much more.
Australian governments of both persuasions will have to fill some of that US-less strategic vacuum with a greatly enhanced Australian Defence Force. On this point, the mainstream of the ALP is in agreement with the Coalition.
According to James, the most restrained estimates predict Canberra's military spending in such a scenario would need to rise by at least 60 per cent. Other strategic analysts say our defence outlay in such circumstances would more than double, or perhaps triple.
Or course, there's a great political irony to all this. In its hatred of all things US, the Left fails to understand that it is the US military umbrella that has enabled Australian governments to spend billions on butter rather than guns. All those schools, hospitals and welfare programs so beloved of progressives are, in essence, being subsidised by the 82nd Airborne.
Retired Major General Jim Molan, former chief of operations for the coalition in Iraq, declared: "America's allies - Australia included - have been freeloading for years and now they'll have to face the burden of their own national defence. And it's about time."
Ted Lapkin is a research fellow at the Institute for Public Affairs
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