'later 'gator
gone fishing - c
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
"We've gotta get Wilson... and tell him to SELL!"
I told you they'd nationalize banks!
Congratulations, U.S. taxpayers, you are about to become the biggest shareholder in one of the country’s premier financial institutions, Citigroup. Today the Treasury Department took a 36 percent stake in Citigroup bank and will get a majority of board seats.
As the nation frets over which other banks might see similar action, spooked investors are fleeing the stock market into safe-haven government bonds.
"It's not good for shareholders, the news this morning, and that is driving bond prices higher," said Thomas di Galoma, head of U.S. Treasury trading at Jefferies & Co. in New York.
"What does that do to the rest of the market place as it relates to the other, what I consider, zombie banks out there? Will they have to come in and take over another couple? The stock holders basically have what I consider worthless stock at this point." -- source
~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~
Banks Cede Control to Governments
[A somewhat dry analysis of what just happened but, nails it.]
~ ~ ~
Trading Places - Final Exchange Scene
The Duke brothers tried to steal the crop report. But Billy-Ray and Lewis, after having been quite ill-used by the Dukes, get the real report and give the Dukes a fake.
The Dukes send their trader to the commodities floor with instructions to buy like crazy. Their fake report shows a tough winter, and so they're betting the price will go way up after the "official" release of the report. The trader starts buying and others see the Dukes trying to corner the market, so they start buying. This drives the price up.
At just the right time, Billy-Ray and Lewis "sell" futures contracts for orange juice. They sell like crazy. They're selling contracts for orange juice they don't even own and can't deliver. (Basically short selling - in commodities all you have to do is be able to deliver at the date in the contract). Their selling drives the price down a bit. It also pads their trading account with a ton of cash.
The secretary of agriculture announces that the winter did not affect the crop, so the pit full of traders freaks out! There's not going to be price pressure, so they're all holding OJ contracts that are seriously overpriced. A mad selling frenzy ensues, driving the price way down.
Again at a point timed for maximum effect, Lewis and Billy-Ray Valentine announce that they'll "buy em" -- they buy back the OJ contracts at a much lower price than they sold them for earlier, netting them a huge profit. They also refuse to sell to the Duke's trader, freezing him out.
The Duke's get a margin call and go bust and our heroes make a lot of scratch. Of course, in real life, trading curbs and circuit breakers would prevent either side of this play, but it is educational and funny to watch.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Mmmm... pork!
Mmmm... pork!
All right, hang onto your seat for this one! Today the House passed a $410 billion spending bill for the rest of the fiscal year, which runs seven months through September. Now, this is separate from the $787 billion stimulus bill. But here is the kicker. Tucked into this new bill, earmarks -- and lots of them.
Now, here's some of the gems -- $59 million for Pacific salmon research, $1.76 million dollars for a honeybee lab in Texas, $400,000 to train teachers how to stop kids from bullying each other and $200,000 for removing tattoos from gang members.
British army is fighting British jihadists in Afghanistan
Top Army officers reveal surge in attacks by radicalised Britons
By Kim Sengupta, The Independent
British soldiers are engaged in "a surreal mini civil war" with growing numbers of home-grown jihadists who have traveled to Afghanistan to support the Taliban, senior Army officers have told The Independent.
Interceptions of Taliban communications have shown that British jihadists – some "speaking with West Midlands accents" – are active in Helmand and other parts of southern Afghanistan, according to briefing papers prepared by an official security agency.
The document states that the numbers of young British Muslims, "seemingly committed jihadists", traveling abroad to commit extremist violence has been rising, with Pakistan and Somalia the most frequent destinations.
MI5 has estimated that up to 4,000 British Muslims had traveled to Pakistan and, before the fall of the Taliban, to Afghanistan for military training. The main concern until now has been about the parts some of them had played in terrorist plots in the UK. Now there are signs that they are mounting missions against British and Western targets abroad. "We are now involved in a kind of surreal mini-British civil war a few thousand miles away," said one Army officer.
Al-Qaeda jihadi with a British accent. Story at The Jawa Report.
Somalia is also becoming a destination for British Muslims of Somali extraction who have started fighting alongside al-Qa'ida-backed Islamist forces. A 21-year-old Briton of Somali extraction, who had been brought up in Ealing, west London, recently blew himself up in the town of Baidoa, killing 20 people. The head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, has raised the worrying issue of British citizens being indoctrinated in Somalia, and Michael Hayden, the outgoing head of the CIA, warned that the conflict in the Horn of Africa had "catalysed" expatriate Somalis in the West.
But it is in Afghanistan that British forces are now directly facing fellow Britons on the other side. RAF Nimrod aircraft flying over Afghanistan at up to 40,000ft have been picking up Taliban electronic "chatter" in which voices can be heard in West Midlands and Yorkshire accents. Worryingly for the military, this has increased in the past few months, with communications picked up by both ground and air surveillance, showing the presence of more British voices in the Taliban front line.
The men involved are said to try to hide their British connections but sometimes "fall back" into speaking English. One senior military source said: "We have been hearing a lot more Punjabi, Urdu and Kashmiri Urdu rather than just Pashtu, so there appears to be more men from other parts of Pakistan fighting with the Taliban than just the Pashtuns who have tribal allegiances with the Afghan Pashtuns. It is this second group, the Urdu, Punjabi speakers etc, who fall back into English in, for example, Brummie accents. You get the impression that they have been told not to talk in English but sometimes simply can't help it."
Some of the British Muslims had originally trained in Pakistan to commit attacks in Kashmir. But security sources say the rising threat of Indian retribution, especially after the Mumbai attacks, had led to the Pakistani government curbing the activities of the Kashmiri separatist groups, so the fighters are being switched to Afghanistan. The numbers involved in Afghanistan, the intelligence document shows, are relatively few, dozens rather than hundreds, but the pattern of involvement is described as a cause for concern.
Last week, during a visit to Helmand, the Foreign Secretary, David Milliband, was shown Taliban explosive devices containing British-made electronic components. An explosives officer said the devices had either been sent from Britain, or brought over to the country. They ranged from remote-control units used to fly model airplanes to advanced components which could detonates bombs at a range of more than a mile.
Evidence of British Muslims fighting inside Afghanistan and training in insurgent camps in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas has been provided to the UK authorities by the Americans. The US has significantly stepped up its surveillance inside Pakistan as part of a more aggressive policy including cross-border raids by unmanned Predator aircraft.
The Americans are said to have raised the issue of the Pakistan connection, complaining that the UK is not doing enough to curb radical Muslims. The US pointed out that this threatens their own security because UK passport holders can get into the US under the visa waiver program. The Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, the chairman of the Commons' sub-committee on anti-terrorism, which has been examining the activities of British Muslim extremists, said: "We know the problem we have with UK-based jihadists. We also know that a number of them have been arrested trying to leave the country. With the UK intelligence services at full stretch, it is not surprising some of these jihadists had ended up in Afghanistan."
Brigadier Ed Butler, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said British Muslims were fighting his forces. "There are British passport holders who live in the UK who are being found in places such as Kandahar," he said. "There is a link between Kandahar and urban conurbations in the UK. This is something the military understands but the British public does not."
Robert Emerson, a security analyst who has worked in South Asia, said: "There is ample evidence that British Muslims had trained in camps in Pakistan. What is emerging now is a picture of them being more active in Afghanistan, either providing support and logistics or in active service. The numbers are not particularly large, but it is worrying."
Jonathan Evans, of MI5, said the number of extremists wanting to travel to Iraq had "tailed off significantly" as Britain begins the draw down of its troops in the country. But there was "traffic" into Pakistan and Afghanistan. "What happens in Afghanistan is extremely important because what happens there has a direct impact on domestic security in the UK," he said. "Pre-2001, they were able to establish terrorist facilities and to draw hardened extremists and vulnerable recruits to indoctrinate and teach techniques. If the Taliban is able to establish control over significant areas, there is a real danger that such facilities will be re-established."
Last week, as Barack Obama ordered 17,000 extra US troops into Afghanistan, a confidential NATO report revealed that more than 30 per cent of the population believed the government of President Hamid Karzai had lost control of the areas in which they live and much of that has slipped back into Taliban control.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Pentagon Tester Lacks 'High Confidence' in U.S. Missile Defense
The Pentagon’s weapons tester says he doesn’t have “high confidence” that the Boeing Co.-managed U.S. missile defense would be effective against even a rudimentary North Korean missile.
Testing against the possible trajectories and altitudes of a North Korean missile has been limited and hasn’t generated enough data to run the thousands of computer simulations needed to predict performance, Charles McQueary wrote in his annual report to Congress.
“Additional test data collected under realistic conditions is necessary to increase confidence,” he wrote.
North Korea is preparing to test a long-range missile, possibly within two weeks, according to a U.S. intelligence official. The Stalinist state today announced plans to launch a satellite; South Korea’s defense minister said the regime may instead be preparing a long-range missile test.
The U.S. is concerned about the potential for North Korea to develop missiles capable of reaching Alaska or even the western coast of the American mainland. -- more
The Long Arm of the Lawless
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart, Stratfor
Last week we discussed the impact that crime, and specifically kidnapping, has been having on Mexican citizens and foreigners visiting or living in Mexico. We pointed out that there is almost no area of Mexico immune from the crime and violence. As if on cue, on the night of Feb. 21 a group of heavily armed men threw two grenades at a police building in Zihuatanejo, Guerrero state, wounding at least five people. Zihuatanejo is a normally quiet beach resort just north of Acapulco; the attack has caused the town’s entire police force to go on strike. (Police strikes, or threats of strikes, are not uncommon in Mexico.)
Mexican police have regularly been targeted by drug cartels, with police officials even having been forced to seek safety in the United States, but such incidents have occurred most frequently in areas of high cartel activity like Veracruz state or Palomas. The Zihuatanejo incident is proof of the pervasiveness of violence in Mexico, and demonstrates the impact that such violence quickly can have on an area generally considered safe.
Significantly, the impact of violent Mexican criminals stretches far beyond Mexico itself. In recent weeks, Mexican criminals have been involved in killings in Argentina, Peru and Guatemala, and Mexican criminals have been arrested as far away as Italy and Spain. Their impact — and the extreme violence they embrace — is therefore not limited to Mexico or even just to Latin America. For some years now, STRATFOR has discussed the threat that Mexican cartel violence could spread to the United States, and we have chronicled the spread of such violence to the U.S.-Mexican border and beyond.
Traditionally, Mexican drug-trafficking organizations had focused largely on the transfer of narcotics through Mexico. Once the South American cartels encountered serious problems bringing narcotics directly into the United States, they began to focus more on transporting the narcotics to Mexico. From that point, the Mexican cartels transported them north and then handed them off to U.S. street gangs and other organizations, which handled much of the narcotics distribution inside the United States. In recent years, however, these Mexican groups have grown in power and have begun to take greater control of the entire narcotics-trafficking supply chain.
With greater control comes greater profitability as the percentages demanded by middlemen are cut out. The Mexican cartels have worked to have a greater presence in Central and South America, and now import from South America into Mexico an increasing percentage of the products they sell. They are also diversifying their routes and have gone global; they now even traffic their wares to Europe. At the same time, Mexican drug-trafficking organizations also have increased their distribution operations inside the United States to expand their profits even further. As these Mexican organizations continue to spread beyond the border areas, their profits and power will extend even further — and they will bring their culture of violence to new areas.
Burned in Phoenix
The spillover of violence from Mexico began some time ago in border towns like Laredo and El Paso in Texas, where merchants and wealthy families face extortion and kidnapping threats from Mexican gangs, and where drug dealers who refuse to pay “taxes” to Mexican cartel bosses are gunned down. But now, the threat posed by Mexican criminals is beginning to spread north from the U.S.-Mexican border. One location that has felt this expanding threat most acutely is Phoenix, some 185 miles north of the border. Some sensational cases have highlighted the increased threat in Phoenix, such as a June 2008 armed assault in which a group of heavily armed cartel gunmen dressed like a Phoenix Police Department tactical team fired more than 100 rounds into a residence during the targeted killing of a Jamaican drug dealer who had double-crossed a Mexican cartel. We have also observed cartel-related violence in places like Dallas and Austin, Texas. But Phoenix has been the hardest hit.
Narcotics smuggling and drug-related assassinations are not the only thing the Mexican criminals have brought to Phoenix. Other criminal gangs have been heavily involved in human smuggling, arms smuggling, money laundering and other crimes. Due to the confluence of these Mexican criminal gangs, Phoenix has now become the kidnapping-for-ransom capital of the United States. According to a Phoenix Police Department source, the department received 368 kidnapping reports last year. As we discussed last week, kidnapping is a highly underreported crime in places such as Mexico, making it very difficult to measure accurately. Based upon experience with kidnapping statistics in other parts of the world — specifically Latin America — it would not be unreasonable to assume that there were at least as many unreported kidnappings in Phoenix as there are reported kidnappings.
At present, the kidnapping environment in the United States is very different from that of Mexico, Guatemala or Colombia. In those countries, kidnapping runs rampant and has become a well-developed industry with a substantial established infrastructure. Police corruption and incompetence ensures that kidnappers are rarely caught or successfully prosecuted.
A variety of motives can lie behind kidnappings. In the United States, crime statistics demonstrate that motives such as sexual exploitation, custody disputes and short-term kidnapping for robbery have far surpassed the number of reported kidnappings conducted for ransom. In places like Mexico, kidnapping for ransom is much more common.
The FBI handles kidnapping investigations in the United States. It has developed highly sophisticated teams of agents and resources to devote to investigating this type of crime. Local police departments are also far more proficient and professional in the United States than in Mexico. Because of the advanced capabilities of law enforcement in the United States, the overwhelming majority of criminals involved in kidnapping-for-ransom cases reported to police — between 95 percent and 98 percent — are caught and convicted. There are also stiff federal penalties for kidnapping. Because of this, kidnapping for ransom has become a relatively rare crime in the United States.
Most kidnapping for ransom that does happen in the United States occurs within immigrant communities. In these cases, the perpetrators and victims belong to the same immigrant group (e.g., Chinese Triad gangs kidnapping the families of Chinese businesspeople, or Haitian criminals kidnapping Haitian immigrants) — which is what is happening in Phoenix. The vast majority of the 368 known kidnapping victims in Phoenix are Mexican and Central American immigrants who are being victimized by Mexican or Mexican-American criminals.
The problem in Phoenix involves two main types of kidnapping. One is the abduction of drug dealers or their children, the other is the abduction of illegal aliens.
Drug-related kidnappings often are not strict kidnappings for ransom per se. Instead, they are intended to force the drug dealer to repay a debt to the drug trafficking organization that ordered the kidnapping.
Nondrug-related kidnappings are very different from traditional kidnappings in Mexico or the United States, in which a high-value target is abducted and held for a large ransom. Instead, some of the gangs operating in Phoenix are basing their business model on volume, and are willing to hold a large number of victims for a much smaller individual pay out. Reports have emerged of kidnapping gangs in Phoenix carjacking entire vans full of illegal immigrants away from the coyote smuggling them into the United States. The kidnappers then transport the illegal immigrants to a safe house, where they are held captive in squalid conditions — and often tortured or sexually assaulted with a family member listening in on the phone — to coerce the victims’ family members in the United States or Mexico to pay the ransom for their release. There are also reports of the gangs picking up vehicles full of victims at day labor sites and then transporting them to the kidnapping safe house rather than to the purported work site.
Drug-related kidnappings are less frequent than the nondrug-related abduction of illegal immigrants, but in both types of abductions, the victims are not likely to seek police assistance due to their immigration status or their involvement in illegal activity. This strongly suggests the kidnapping problem greatly exceeds the number of cases reported to police.
Implications for the United States
The kidnapping gangs in Phoenix that target illegal immigrants have found their chosen crime to be lucrative and relatively risk-free. If the flow of illegal immigrants had continued at high levels, there is very little doubt the kidnappers’ operations would have continued as they have for the past few years. The current economic downturn, however, means the flow of illegal immigrants has begun to slow — and by some accounts has even begun to reverse. (Reports suggest many Mexicans are returning home after being unable to find jobs in the United States.)
This reduction in the pool of targets means that we might be fast approaching a point where these groups, which have become accustomed to kidnapping as a source of easy money — and their primary source of income — might be forced to change their method of operating to make a living. While some might pursue other types of criminal activity, some might well decide to diversify their pool of victims. Watching for this shift in targeting is of critical importance. Were some of these gangs to begin targeting U.S. citizens rather than just criminals or illegal immigrants, a tremendous panic would ensue, along with demands to catch the perpetrators.
Such a shift would bring a huge amount of law enforcement pressure onto the kidnapping gangs, to include the FBI. While the FBI is fairly hard-pressed for resources given its heavy counterterrorism, foreign counterintelligence and white-collar crime caseload, it almost certainly would be able to reassign the resources needed to respond to such kidnappings in the face of publicity and a public outcry. Such a law enforcement effort could neutralize these gangs fairly quickly, but probably not quickly enough to prevent any victims from being abducted or harmed.
Since criminal groups are not comprised of fools alone, at least some of these groups will realize that targeting soccer moms will bring an avalanche of law enforcement attention upon them. Therefore, it is very likely that if kidnapping targets become harder to find in Phoenix — or if the law enforcement environment becomes too hostile due to the growing realization of this problem — then the groups may shift geography rather than targeting criteria. In such a scenario, professional kidnapping gangs from Phoenix might migrate to other locations with large communities of Latin American illegal immigrants to victimize. Some of these locations could be relatively close to the Mexican border like Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, San Diego or Los Angeles, though they could also include locations farther inland like Chicago, Atlanta, New York, or even the communities around meat and poultry packing plants in the Midwest and mid-Atlantic states. Such a migration of ethnic criminals would not be unprecedented: Chinese Triad groups from New York for some time have traveled elsewhere on the East Coast, like Atlanta, to engage in extortion and kidnapping against Chinese businessmen there.
The issue of Mexican drug-traffic organizations kidnapping in the United States merits careful attention, especially since criminal gangs in other areas of the country could start imitating the tactics of the Phoenix gangs.
Depeche Mode - Wrong
Depeche Mode - Wrong (HQ) << working link
I was marching to the wrong drum with the wrong scum,
Pissing out the wrong energy,
Using all the wrong lines and the wrong signs,
With the wrong intensity,
I was on the wrong page of the wrong book,
With the wrong rendition of the wrong hook,
Made the wrong move, every wrong night,
With the wrong tune played ‘til it sounded right.
~
Dedicated to both camps...
Iran and US are rivals, not partners
By Amir Taheri, for Gulf News
Until a few weeks ago, advocates of dialogue with the Islamic Republic of Iran claimed that this was the only way to prevent the mullahs from doing mischief. Now, the tune seems to be changing. The "dialogue" is now presented not only as a means of preventing mischief but also as a way of persuading the mullahs to do good.
According to this new argument, the mullahs could join the "right side" in the name of "common interests".
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton started the chorus by insisting that Iran had a role to play in promoting regional peace. Richard Holbrooke, the US presidential envoy to southwest Asia, followed by musing about the contribution that Iran could make to stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan.
Those statements triggered a torrent of speculation about the Islamic Republic's role in helping the US achieve its objectives in the Middle East. This led to some rather comical suggestions such as the one, advanced by some "experts", that the US use a newly completed road that connects Afghanistan to the open seas via Iran.
Click to enlarge map
The road, we are told, could replace the current logistical route passing through Pakistan that the US has used since 2001. The Pakistan route has been under attack from the Taliban, especially in the strategic Khyber Pass. The decision by Kyrgyzstan to close a US air base near Bishkek further complicates the task of supplying NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Thus, the Iranian route appears as an attractive alternative.
Still, there remains the fact that the Iranian route is vulnerable to attacks by Baloch rebels. More importantly, perhaps, could anyone imagine the US depending on the mullahs for the task of supplying its troops in Afghanistan?
The claim that Iran and the US could become the best of buddies is based on the belief that they have shared interests in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Both US and Iran wish to see Afghanistan and Iraq stabilized, Holbrooke tells us.
Neither Washington nor Tehran would want to see the Taliban return to power in Kabul. The Americans do not want the Taliban because they had sheltered the terrorists who brought about the 9/11 attacks. Tehran does not want the Taliban because they represent the most vicious form of sectarian bigotry aimed against Iran's brand of Islam. A similar argument could be made about Iraq.
The US does not want the remnants of the Baath to return to power in Baghdad to prepare for revenge. The mullahs share that desire because they know that such a regime could become their worst enemy. The problem with that analysis, however, is that it assumes too much and ignores a great deal.
True, Iran and the US have an interest in stability in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, each wants its own brand of stability.
The US wants Afghanistan and Iraq to achieve stability through democratization, closer ties to the West, and faster inclusion in the international system. Iran regards that kind of stability as a threat. It dreads the prospect of becoming a theocratic tyranny sandwiched between two democracies to its east and west.
Tehran's theocrats want their own political siblings to stabilize Afghanistan and Iraq as part of what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls "the Islamic bloc" in a war of civilizations.
In other words, in Afghanistan as in Iraq, Washington and Tehran may appear to want the same thing while in reality they want the exact opposite. The Islamic Republic and the US work with different constituencies in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The US is trying to build a new elite in Afghanistan based on the emerging urban middle classes and the ethnic Tajik community that accounts for about 32 per cent of the population.
Iran, on the other hand, has forged special relations with the Hazara Shiites and ethnic Uzbeks while bribing some Pushtun groups to encourage opposition to the American presence.
While Kabul and much of northern Afghanistan could be regarded as an American influence zone, most provinces in the west and northwest of the country are under Iranian influence. These are areas that, under British pressure, Iran ceded to the then newly created Afghan state in the Treaty of Paris (1856).
In Iraq, the US is depending on the Kurds, a good chunk of Arab Shiites, and at least a third of the Arab Sunnis to build a secular democracy. Tehran, on the other hand, depends on Islamists, both among the Arabs and the Kurds, to advance its interests.
Far from being potential partners in Afghanistan and Iraq, as Holbrooke and others seem to think, Iran and the US are rivals, to say the least. To be sure, this need not exclude dialogue or even an accord between Iran and the United States.
However, such a dialogue and any eventual accord would repeat the Yalta experience under which the United States and Britain allowed the Soviet Union to carve its zone of influence in eastern and central Europe.
At that time, too, the Western powers and the former Soviet Union shared common interests in Europe, most especially in making sure that the Nazis and their allies did not return to power in any form. Both wanted stability in Europe. But the Europe that Stalin wanted was quite different from the Europe that Roosevelt and Churchill hoped for.
Over the past 66 years there have been countless debates about whether or not the Western powers should have allowed Stalin to carve an empire in Europe.
Many believe that the Treaty of Yalta was a betrayal by the Western democracies of the eastern and central European nations. Others argue that Roosevelt and Churchill had no choice because they could not have persuaded their people to support a new war to prevent Stalin from acquiring an empire. In other words, the surrender in Yalta was dictated by historic necessity.
The question for those who urge a new Yalta, this time with Iran, is whether or not capitulating to the mullahs is a similar necessity.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Macropinna microstoma
A deep-sea fish with a transparent head and tubular eyes
Today there's a new addition to the "real life is stranger than fiction" category. Check out the fish Macropinna microstoma. It has tubular eyes and a see-through head.
The common name for the fish is "barreleyes." Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute investigators recently figured out why this species has such an unusual head. Its eyes can actually rotate within its "skull," so the transparency allows the wary swimmer to keep a literal eye on happenings above it, as well as to the sides and directly in front.
Using video cameras, MBARI researchers Bruce Robison and Kim Reisenbichler revealed the fish's eye movements. When remotely operated vehicles approached the fish, its eyes glowed a vivid green shade in the bright lights of the ROVs. Usually the fish were just hanging out motionless under the deep waters offshore California's central coast. -- source
Macropinna microstoma photos at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Got Ramen?
In America Ramen Costs 25 Cents
In Zimbabwe Ramen Costs 9,364,194.25 Dollars
Years of poor agricultural production, widespread corruption and failed government policies have damaged the nation, which has one of the world's highest inflation rates, estimated at 89.7 sextillion percent. -- Zimbabwe Currency Converter
~ ~ ~
In January 2008 the U.S. money supply stood at $7.3 trillion.
As of January 2009 the money supply now stands at $8.2 trillion.
This means the Federal Reserve has created nearly $1 trillion new dollars out of thin air, in the space of just one year. -- source
~ ~ ~
"Would you like a side of hyper-inflation with your job loss and reduced fat retirement?"
That is the question our government would be asking you if they were your waiter. While I was doing this morning's mortgage market update, that thought came to mind as a great way to sarcastically explain the government's actions thus far.
With job losses mounting, the government claims they need to force through another stimulus package which creates more jobs, government jobs that is. And they did exactly that, well not exactly as the amount of jobs they actually will create versus what they claim will not equal each other, and it will be inversely proportional to how much the cost is. In simpler terms, they won't create the promised amount of jobs and it will ultimately cost more than what they said. Also, history shows that growing the government is exactly opposite of what the government should be doing, at least in a capitalistic society. Maybe the dessert selection will be socialism?
I don't think there are many out there that didn't have money in the markets in one form or another, 401(k)s, IRAs, etc. With real estate prices already tanked, stocks and even bonds crashing (or about to), virtually everyone approaching retirement right now is facing a new reality. That reality is that they will be forced to work a lot longer than they expected. Those of us whom have more time on our hands, well, chances are you are freaking out about your losses right now, but you will recover in the long run, again based on history.
Don't think history repeats itself? Look again.
If we look back at the Great Depression, you can see we are pointed likely towards an even greater one. Why? Last time, our currency was based on gold. Now, it is merely paper currency and Bernanke has already stated that he will run the printing presses, debasing the dollar, creating inflation (even hyper-inflation if need be) in an effort to jumpstart the economy. Looking back to the Great Depression, FDR brought on the New Deals, a move that prolonged the depression, not fixing it as has been proven. Bernanke has scholared himself in the Great Depression, and I believe he thinks the New Deals were what brought the America out the other side, wrongful thinking, but also the same thoughts no doubt that Barack Obama and his congressional buddies have.
Since Bernanke knows that in a paper-based economy he can run the printing presses without limit, there literally is no end to the amount our government can, and will, spend. The end run, again based on history is that when the economy does finally return, and it will, we will realize exactly what the true cost of those government bailouts is, inflation, if not hyper-inflation, and don't expect the CPI (Consumer Price Index), PPI (producer Price Index), or even the PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures Index) to show it, at least not until it is too late. In fact, we may already be seeing inflation reentering the picture, despite the recent data, at least based on the fact that money supply is climbing rapidly.
What does it all mean for mortgage rates, and even the real estate market? People will always need to buy homes, but with rising rates, they may not qualify for a large enough amount to sustain rising real estate prices. If this all unfolds as it may, we may very well see rising mortgage rates and real estate prices remaining steady for a long time, with no real appreciation since people will not be able to afford higher priced homes. Hopefully I am wrong, but it is a reality we may very well face and must be prepared for. -- source
Got Ramen?
Monday, February 23, 2009
China Rethinks Its Stimulus Plan
Internal Divisions and the Chinese Stimulus Plan
By Rodger Baker and Jennifer Richmond, Stratfor
Due in large part to fears of dire consequences if nothing were done to tackle the economic crisis, China rushed through a 4 trillion yuan (US$586 billion) economic stimulus package in November 2008. The plan cobbled together existing and new initiatives focused on massive infrastructure development projects (designed, among other things, to soak up surplus steel, cement and labor capacity), tax cuts, green energy programs, and rural development.
Ever since the package was passed in November, Beijing has recited the mantra of the need to shift China’s economy from its heavy dependence on exports to one more driven by domestic consumption. But now that the sense of immediate crisis has passed, the stimulus policies are being rethought — and in an unusual development for China, they are being vigorously debated in the Chinese media.
Debating the Stimulus Package
In a country where media restrictions are tightening and private commentary on government officials and actions in blogs and online forums is being curtailed, it is quite remarkable that major Chinese newspaper editorials are taking the lead in questioning aspects of the stimulus package.
The question of stimulating rural consumption versus focusing the stimulus on the more economically active coastal regions has been the subject of particularly fierce debate. Some editorials have argued that encouraging rural consumption at a time of higher unemployment is building a bigger problem for the future. This argument maintains that rural laborers — particularly migrant workers — earn only a small amount of money, and that while having them spend their meager savings now might keep gross domestic product up in the short term, it will drain the laborers’ reserves and create a bigger social problem down the road. Others argue that the migrant and rural populations are underdeveloped and incapable of sustained spending, and that pumping stimulus yuan into the countryside is a misallocation of money that could be better spent supporting the urban middle class, in theory creating jobs through increased middle-class consumption of services.
The lack of restrictions on these types of discussions suggests that the debate is occurring with government approval, in a reflection of debates within the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the government itself. Despite debate in the Chinese press, Beijing continues to present a unified public face on the handling of the economic crisis, regardless of internal factional debates. Maintaining Party control remains the primary goal of Party officials; even if they disagree over policies, they recognize the importance of showing that the Party remains in charge.
But, as the dueling editorial pages reveal, the Party is not unified in its assessment of the economic crisis or the recovery program. The show of unity masks a power struggle raging between competing interests within the Party. In many ways, this is not a new struggle; there are always officials jockeying for power for themselves and for their protégés. But the depth of the economic crisis in China and the rising fears of social unrest — not only from the migrant laborers, but also from militants or separatists in Tibet and Xinjiang and from “hostile forces” like the Falun Gong, pro-Democracy advocates and foreign intelligence services — have added urgency to long-standing debates over economic and social policies.
In China, decision-making falls to the president and the premier, currently Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao respectively. They do not wield the power of past leaders like Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping, however, and instead are much more reliant on balancing competing interests than on dictating policy.
Party and Government Factions
Hu and Wen face numerous factions among the Chinese elite. Many officials are considered parts of several different factional affiliations based on age, background, education or family heritage. Boiled down, the struggle over the stimulus plan pits two competing views of the core of the Chinese economy. One sees economic strength and social stability centered on China’s massive rural population, while another sees China’s strength and future in the coastal urban areas, in manufacturing and global trade.
Heirs apparent … Xi Jinping, left, and Li Keqiang.
Two key figures in the Standing Committee of the Politburo (the center of political power in China), Vice President Xi Jinping and Vice Premier Li Keqiang, highlight this struggle. These two are considered the core of the fifth-generation leadership, and have been tapped to succeed Hu and Wen as China’s next leaders. They also represent radically different backgrounds.
Li is a protege of Hu and rose from the China Youth League, where Hu has built a strong support base. Li represents a newer generation of Chinese leaders, educated in economics and trained in less-developed provinces. (Li held key positions in Henan and Liaoning provinces.) Xi, on the other hand, is a “princeling.” The son of a former vice premier, he trained as an engineer and served primarily in the coastal export-oriented areas, including Hebei, Fujian and Zhejiang provinces and Shanghai.
In a way, Li and Xi represent different proposals for China’s economic recovery and future. Li is a stronger supporter of the recentralization of economic control sought by Hu, a weakening of the regional economic power bases, and a focus on consolidating Chinese industry in a centrally planned manner while spending government money on rural development and urbanization of China’s interior. Xi represents the view followed by former President Jiang Zemin and descended from the policies of Deng. Under that view, economic activity and growth should be encouraged and largely freed from central direction, and if the coastal provinces grow first and faster, that is just fine; eventually the money, technology and employment will move inland.
Inland vs. the Coast
In many ways, these two views reflect long-standing economic arguments in China — namely, the constant struggle to balance the coastal trade-based economy and the interior agriculture-dominated economy. The former is smaller but wealthier, with stronger ties abroad — and therefore more political power to lobby for preferential treatment. The latter is much larger, but more isolated from the international community — and in Chinese history, frequently the source of instability and revolt in times of stress. These tensions have contributed to the decline of dynasties in centuries past, opening the space for foreign interference in Chinese internal politics. China’s leaders are well aware of the constant stresses between rural and coastal China, but maintaining a balance has been an ongoing struggle.
Throughout Chinese history, there is a repeating pattern of dynastic rise and decline. Dynasties start strong and powerful, usually through conquest. They then consolidate power and exert strong control from the center. But due to the sheer size of China’s territory and population, maintaining central control requires the steady expansion of a bureaucracy that spreads from the center through the various administrative divisions down to the local villages. Over time, the bureaucracy itself begins to usurp power, as its serves as the collector of taxes, distributor of government funds and local arbiter of policy and rights. And as the bureaucracy grows stronger, the center weakens.
Regional differences in population, tax base and economic models start to fragment the bureaucracy, leading to economic (and at times military) fiefdoms. This triggers a strong response from the center as it tries to regain control. Following a period of instability, which often involves foreign interference and/or intervention, a new center is formed, once again exerting strong centralized authority.
This cycle played out in the mid-1600s, as the Ming Dynasty fell into decline and the Manchus (who took on the moniker Qing) swept in to create a new centralized authority. It played out again as the Qing Dynasty declined in the latter half of the 1800s and ultimately was replaced — after an extended period of instability — by the CPC in 1949, ushering in another period of strong centralized control. Once again, a more powerful regional bureaucracy is testing that centralized control.
The economic reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping at the end of the 1970s led to a three-decade decline of central authority, as economic decision-making and power devolved to the regional and local leadership and the export-oriented coastal provinces became the center of economic activity and power in China. Attempts by the central government to regain some authority over the direction of coastal authorities were repeatedly ignored (or worse), but so long as there was growth in China and relative social stability, this was tolerated.
With Hu’s rise to power, however, there was a new push from the center to rein in the worst of excesses by the coastal leaders and business interests and refocus attention on China’s rural population, which was growing increasingly disenfranchised due to the widening urban-rural economic gap. In 2007 and early 2008, Hu finally gained traction with his economic policies. The Chinese government subsequently sought to slow an overheating economy while focusing on the consolidation of industry and the establishment of “superministries” at the center to coordinate economic activity. It also intended to put inland rural interests on par with — if not above — coastal urban interests. When the superministries were formed in 2008, however, it became apparent that Hu was not omnipotent. Resistance to his plans was abundantly evident, illustrating the power of the entrenched bureaucratic interests.
Economic Crisis and the Stimulus Plan
The economic program of recentralization and the attempt to slow the overheating economy came to a screeching halt in July 2008, as skyrocketing commodity prices fueled inflation and strained government budgets. The first victim was China’s yuan policy. The steady, relatively predictable appreciation of the yuan came to a stop. Its value stagnated, and there is now pressure for a slight depreciation to encourage exports. But as Beijing began shaping its economic stimulus package, it became clear that the program would be a mix of policies, representing differing factions seeking to secure their own interests in the recovery plan.
The emerging program, then, revealed conflicting interests and policies. Money and incentives were offered to feed the low-skill export industry (located primarily in the southeastern coastal provinces) as well as to encourage a shift in production from the coast to the interior. A drive was initiated to reduce redundancies, particularly in heavy industries, and at the same time funding was increased to keep those often-bloated industrial sectors afloat. Overall, the stimulus represents a collection of competing initiatives, reflecting the differences among the factions. Entrenched princelings simply want to keep money moving and employment levels up in anticipation of a resurgence in global consumption and the revitalization of the export-based economic growth path. Meanwhile, the rural faction seeks to accelerate economic restructuring, reduce dependence on the export-oriented coastal provinces, and move economic activity and attention to the vastly underdeveloped interior.
Higher unemployment among the rural labor force is “proving” each faction’s case. To the princelings, it shows the importance of the export sector in maintaining social stability and economic growth. To the rural faction, it emphasizes the dangers of overreliance on a thin coastal strip of cheap, low-skill labor and a widening wealth gap.
Fighting it Out in the Media
With conflicting paths now running in tandem, competing Party officials are seeking traction and support for their programs without showing division within the core Party apparatus by turning to a traditional method: the media and editorials. During the Cultural Revolution, which itself was a violent debate about the fundamental economic policies of the People’s Republic of China, the Party core appeared united, despite major divisions. The debate played out not in the halls of the National People’s Congress or in press statements, but instead in big-character posters plastered around Beijing and other cities, promoting competing policies and criticizing others.
In modern China, big posters are a thing of the past, replaced by newspaper editorials. While the Party center appears united in this time of economic crisis, the divisions are seen more acutely in the competing editorials published in state and local newspapers and on influential blogs and Web discussion forums. It is here that the depth of competition and debate so well hidden among the members of the Politburo can be seen, and it is here that it becomes clear the Chinese are no more united in their policy approach than the leaders of more democratic countries, where policy debates are more public.
The current political crisis has certainly not reached the levels of the Cultural Revolution, and China no longer has a Mao — or even a Deng — to serve as a single pole around which to wage factional struggles. The current leadership is much more attuned to the need to cooperate and compromise — and even Mao’s methods would often include opportunities for “wayward” officials to come around and cooperate with Mao’s plans. But a recognition of the need to cooperate, and an agreement that the first priority is maintenance of the Party as the sole core of Chinese power (followed closely by the need to maintain social stability to ensure the primary goal), doesn’t guarantee that things can’t get out of control.
The sudden halt to various economic initiatives in July 2008 showed just how critical the emerging crisis was. If commodity prices had not started slacking off a month later, the political crisis in Beijing might have gotten much more intense. Despite competition, the various factions want the Party to remain in power as the sole authority, but their disagreements on how to do this become much clearer during a crisis. Currently, it is the question of China’s migrant labor force and the potential for social unrest that is both keeping the Party center united and causing the most confrontation over the best-path policies to be pursued. If the economic stimulus package fails to do its job, or if external factors leave China lagging and social problems rising, the internal party fighting could once again grow intense.
At present, there is a sense among China’s leaders that this crisis is manageable. If their attitude once again shifts to abject fear, the question may be less about how to compromise on economic strategy than how to stop a competing faction from bringing ruin to Party and country through ill-thought-out policies. Compromise is acceptable when it means the survival of the Party, but if one faction views the actions of another as fundamentally detrimental to the authority and strength of the Party, then a more active and decisive struggle becomes the ideal choice. After all, it is better to remove a gangrenous limb than to allow the infection to spread and kill the whole organism.
That crisis is not now upon China’s leaders, but things nearly reached that level last summer. There were numerous rumors from Beijing that Wen, who is responsible for China’s economic policies, was going to be sacked — an extreme move given his popularity with the common Chinese. This was staved off or delayed by the fortuitous timing of the rest of the global economic contraction, which brought commodity prices down. For now, China’s leaders will continue issuing competing and occasionally contradictory policies, and just as vigorously debating them through the nation’s editorials. The government is struggling with resolving the current economic crisis, as well as with the fundamental question of just what a new Chinese economy will look like. And that question goes deeper than money: It goes to the very role of the CPC in China’s system.
Riding the Rails
RIDING THE RAILS: Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression
At the height of the Great Depression, two hundred and fifty thousand teenage hoboes were roaming America. Some left home because they felt they were a burden to their families; some fled homes shattered by the shame of unemployment and poverty. Some left because it seemed a great adventure. With the blessing of parents or as runaways, they hit the road and went in search of a better life.
Public perceptions of the road kids differed. There were people who saw the American pioneer spirit embodied in the young wanderers. There were others who feared them as the vanguard of an American rabble potentially as dangerous as the young Fascists then on the march in Germany.
By summer 1932, the "roving boy" had become a fixture on the American landscape. The occasional girl was sighted too, mostly passing unrecognized in male garb. Girls especially never took the decision to hit the road lightly, for they knew they were stepping into a world filled with danger. It was the same for young African-Americans, for whom the beckoning rails could be doubly perilous should they lead into towns where the color of their skin would make them outcasts.
Thomas Minehan, author of Boy and Girl Tramps of America, estimated that 10 per cent of those he met were girls. They traveled in pairs, sometimes with a boy-friend, and not infrequently with a tribe of 10 or 12 boys. Minehan described "Kay," who was 15: "Her black eyes, fair hair, and pale cheeks are girlish and delicate. Cinders, wind and frost have irritated but not toughened that tender skin. Sickly and suffering from chronic under-nourishment, she appears to subsist almost entirely upon her finger nails which she gnaws habitually."
Eighty-five per cent of the white youths said they were seeking work; for the African-Americans the percentage was even higher at 98 per cent. Fifty percent of the African-Americans had been unemployed for two years or longer.
A 1935 survey of 20,000 transients conducted by Herman Schubert at Buffalo, New York, was one of the rare studies to enumerate African-American youths. Sociologist Schubert interviewed 2,308 whites and 662 African-Americans in the 15-to-24 age group. The young African-Americans had been on the road longer than the whites, the median age of wandering for the former about six months as compared with three months for the latter.
Are they bums? Not unless one wants to classify a goodly section of the remainder of the country's population as such," Schubert concluded.
It was a thrill to ride the top of a boxcar running across the Great Plains or to catch the blinds of a famous flyer like The Twentieth Century Limited. It was also a ride accompanied by constant danger that could turn deadly in an instant.
The Interstate Commerce Commission's annual reports show that during the years 1929 to 1939, 24,647 trespassers were killed and 27,171 injured on railroad property. Since railroad agents placed the percentage of minors at one third, there can be no doubt that thousands of young nomads met a gruesome fate on the rails.
Hospitals treated transients only if they were seriously ill. They suffered diseases due to exposure, lack of cleanliness, vermin, contagion or infection. Ill-clad and undernourished, sometimes days would go by without food. "I was hungry all the time. Dreadfully hungry," remembered John Fawcett. "I'd never been hungry before. I went two or three days without anything to eat. In a short time on the road, I lost 15 to 20 pounds. Your hunger hurts physically."
In summer, boys followed the harvests in the West. A young hobo might start with the hay harvest in California and the Rocky Mountain states in early summer. Later on there was corn and wheat in the Mid-West; and in the early fall, hops, berries and fruits in the Pacific North-West. Winter could be spent in the cotton fields of Texas and the South-West. In early spring, a harvester might drift into Southern California for the vegetable and citrus crops.
Before the close of his first month in office, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an act creating the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC.) Unemployed and unmarried men between the ages of 18 and 25 were eligible to enroll. They were to be paid $30 a month, of which $25 was to be sent directly to their needy and dependent families. So urgent and volatile did the administration view the youth crisis that the first camp was set up on April 17, 1933 — just 12 days after the CCC was officially inaugurated. By early July, 250,000 young men were settled in 1,468 forest and park camps.
"As there's no single answer to why boys leave home, there's no single answer to what will keep them there after —and if — they go back," said one case worker. "But if I had to make such an answer it would be jobs. Just that. Honest-to-goodness jobs that would let a fellow feel that he's a man, running his own life."
Those jobs would only come when the Great Depression ended as the country prepared for war. In 1942, even as the CCC camps were winding down, thousands of "Depression Doughboys," who had served in FDR's "Tree Army," were on their way to Europe and Africa. As trains carrying troops and material crossed the country day and night, the occasional rider was still glimpsed in a boxcar door or sitting on the catwalk. It was the end of the last hobo era. The boys and girls who rode the rails had gone to war.
Boxcar Boy
Riding the rails was a rite of passage for a generation of young people and profoundly shaped the rest of their lives. Self-reliance, compassion, frugality, a love of freedom and country are at the heart of the lessons they learned. Their memories are a mixture of nostalgia and pain; their late musings still tinged with the fear of going broke again. At journey's end, the resiliency of these survivors is a testament to the indomitable strength of the human spirit.
Read actual letters from boxcar boys and girls of the Great Depression
Oh where, oh where has my Afghan gun gone?
A trainee from the 1st Battalion of the Afghan National Army gets his AK47 cleared by a U.S. Army Special Forces Soldier at a firing range after squad live fire training excercises in Kabul, Afghanistan, on July 14, 2002. The purpose of this training is to establish the core of the new Afghan National Army, which will foster a safe, secure and stable environment in Afghanistan and help to prevent the re-emergence of terrorist forces. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Bethann Hunt)
As part of international efforts to train and equip the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police, collectively referred to as the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), the U.S. has been responsible for procuring and distributing about 380,000 small arms and light weapons. These include grenade launchers, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mortars, pistols, rifles, and shotguns. The Department of Defense and 21 donor nations report the value of these weapons at over $223 million.
Given the unstable security conditions in Afghanistan, lapses in accounting for these weapons is significant.
Types and Quantities of U.S.-Procured Weapons Shipped to Afghanistan (December 2004-June 2008).
Enter the United States Government Accountability Office and a new report that reveals sloppy inventory records for an estimated 87,000 weapons—or about 36 percent—of the 242,000 weapons that the United States procured and shipped to Afghanistan from December 2004 through June 2008.
Serial numbers were not recorded for about 46,000 of these weapons, and for an estimated 41,000 weapons with recorded serial numbers, no records were maintained of their location or disposition. Furthermore, no reliable records were maintained for any of the weapons obtained from international donors from June 2002 through June 2008, which totaled about 135,000 weapons.
Lapses in accountability occurred throughout the supply chain. For example, during the transportation of U.S.-procured weapons into Afghanistan, no serial numbers were provided to verify receipt. Additionally, after receiving weapons in Kabul, no record was made of their serial numbers nor were routine physical inventories conducted at the central depots where the weapons were stored.
Also, monitoring the end use of sensitive night vision devices was not begun until about 15 months after issuing them to Afghan National Army units.
The GAO's conclusion? Units in Afghanistan cannot fully safeguard and account for weapons and weapons provided to ANSF are at serious risk of theft or loss.
Now that just doesn't add up! This is much more serious than a coat room attendant misplacing one's purse (with gun.) Losing track of this amount of firepower is closer to aiding the enemy in misplacing the coat attendant! Pitiful.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
The Run Upon the Bankers
"The Hand-Writing Upon the Wall" (1803) by James Gillray (1756–1815)-- Napoleon, Josephine, French soldiers and women seated at feast with dishes "Bank of England," "St. James," "Tower of London," and "Roast Beef of old England." Napoleon looks in horror at hand of Jehovah pointing to words in sky: "Mene mene, tekel upharsin."
"The Run Upon the Bankers"
The bold encroachers on the deep Gain by degrees huge tracts of land, Till Neptune, with one general sweep, Turns all again to barren strand.
The multitude's capricious pranks Are said to represent the seas, Breaking the bankers and the banks, Resume their own whene'er they please.
Money, the life-blood of the nation, Corrupts and stagnates in the veins, Unless a proper circulation Its motion and its heat maintains.
Because 'tis lordly not to pay, Quakers and aldermen in state, Like peers, have levees every day Of duns attending at their gate.
We want our money on the nail; The banker's ruin'd if he pays: They seem to act an ancient tale; The birds are met to strip the jays.
"Riches," the wisest monarch sings, "Make pinions for themselves to fly;" They fly like bats on parchment wings, And geese their silver plumes supply.
No money left for squandering heirs! Bills turn the lenders into debtors: The wish of Nero now is theirs, "That they had never known their letters."
Conceive the works of midnight hags, Tormenting fools behind their backs: Thus bankers, o'er their bills and bags, Sit squeezing images of wax.
Conceive the whole enchantment broke; The witches left in open air, With power no more than other folk, Exposed with all their magic ware.
So powerful are a banker's bills, Where creditors demand their due; They break up counters, doors, and tills, And leave the empty chests in view.
Thus when an earthquake lets in light Upon the god of gold and hell, Unable to endure the sight, He hides within his darkest cell.
As when a conjurer takes a lease From Satan for a term of years, The tenant's in a dismal case, Whene'er the bloody bond appears.
A baited banker thus desponds, From his own hand foresees his fall, They have his soul, who have his bonds; 'Tis like the writing on the wall.
How will the caitiff wretch be scared, When first he finds himself awake At the last trumpet, unprepared, And all his grand account to make!
For in that universal call, Few bankers will to heaven be mounters; They'll cry, "Ye shops, upon us fall! Conceal and cover us, ye counters!"
When other hands the scales shall hold, And they, in men's and angels' sight Produced with all their bills and gold, "Weigh'd in the balance and found light!"
By Jonathan Swift, 1720.
MENSA Test: Smart arse!
Puzzle: What do the letters mean?
Example: "24 H in a D" = "24 Hours in a Day".
According to MENSA, if you get 23 of these, you are a "genius".
Only 2 MENSA members achieved full marks.
See how well you do.
MENSA Test (Excel spreadsheet or here)
| 1 | 26 L of the A |
| 2 | 7 D of the W |
| 3 | 7 W of the W |
| 4 | 12 S of the Z |
| 5 | 66 B of the B |
| 6 | 52 C in a P (WJs) |
| 7 | 13 S in the USF |
| 8 | 18 H on a G C |
| 9 | 39 B of the O T |
| 10 | 5 T on a F |
| 11 | 90 D in a R A |
| 12 | 3 B M (S H T R) |
| 13 | 32 is the T in D F at which W F |
| 14 | 15 P in a R T |
| 15 | 3 W on a T |
| 16 | 100 C in a R |
| 17 | 11 P in a F (S) T |
| 18 | 12 M in a Y |
| 19 | 13=UFS |
| 20 | 8 T on a O |
| 21 | 29 D in F in a L Y |
| 22 | 27 B in the N T |
| 23 | 365 D in a Y |
| 24 | 13 L in a B D |
| 25 | 52 W in a Y |
| 26 | 9 L of a C |
| 27 | 60 M in a H |
| 28 | 23 P of C in the H B |
| 29 | 64 S on a C B |
| 30 | 9 P in S A |
| 31 | 6 B to an O in C |
| 32 | 1000 Y in a M |
| 33 | 15 M on a D M C |
MENSA Test Answers (Excel spreadsheet or see first comment below)
The Flying Lizards - Money
Think Andrew Zimmern goes here? You betcha.
~ ~ ~
The Flying Lizards - Money <<-- working link
The best things in life are free
But you can give them to the birds and bees
I want money
(That's what I want)
That's what I want
You love gives me such a thrill
But your love won't pay my bills
I want money
(That's what I want)
That's what I want
Money don't get everything it's true
But what it don't get I can't use
I want money
(That's what I want)
That's what I want
I want money
I want lots of money
In fact I want so much money
Give me your money
Just give me money
Glenn Beck: War Room
Like most talk radio hosts, I think Glenn Beck, well, talks too much. Regardless, I was glued to his television show last night because his panelists, when they got a word in, offered really interesting commentary. Topic? War gaming unthinkable scenarios. Granted, some will find this program "over the top, creepy alarmist stuff during a financial crisis." Perhaps a little. But, I ask you to consider where we could be if a major epidemic or terrorist attack (millions dead) were to occur today. IMHO, worth a watch. - c
Glenn Beck's War room discusses the possibilities of the un-thinkable "economic 911" and where we could be by the year 2014.
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In case you had a doubt... "fighter".
Fear and anger grip economy
Bencheley Gun Powder Tea -- from the First Colony Coffee & Tea Company of Norfolk, VA.
[From a major newspaper today:]
Lunching with a longtime Atlanta banker turned consultant and the conversation turns toward guns.
His family gave each other guns for Christmas.
Just in case.
If things turn a lot worse, and they have to flee, they know where to rendezvous out of state.
[Wow.]
Last week, after creating fear and loathing with a stimulus bill that would choke a planet, the government came forth with its mortgage modification plan.
Aimed at helping those in foreclosure, facing foreclosure or underwater with a mortgage, the plan was quickly attacked.
CNBC, the business news cable network, became the focus of the resistance Thursday when its reporter Rick Santelli spontaneously lashed out at the mortgage plan. Reporting from the Chicago Board of Trade, Santelli’s outburst was greeted by applause from the trading floor. Caught up in the moment, he proposed a Chicago Tea Party this summer. His rant led the Drudge Report and was the No. 1 video on YouTube.
It was right out of the movie “Network” and its now classic, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”
The Chicago Tea Party has the makings of a mega event, as millions of fearful and angry people converge on the shores of Lake Michigan.
By Thomas Oliver, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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Rick Santelli and the "Rant of the Year"
"'The government is promoting bad behavior," Santelli said of President Obama's $75 billion initiative to refinance mortgages.
"I have an idea," he said on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange floor. "How about this, new President and new administration, why don't you put up a Web site to have people vote on the Internet ... to see if we really want to subsidize the losers' mortgages? Or would we like to at least buy cars and buy houses in foreclosure and give them to people who might have a chance to actually prosper down the road... reward people who could carry the water instead of drink the water.'"
Rick Santelli responds to White House criticism about his Chicago rant.
~ ~ ~
In the above followup rant to his now famous "Chicago Tea Party", Rick Santelli mentioned "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" as his favorite movie. It also happens to be the favorite of another modern revolutionary -- Sarah Palin. Hope you enjoy.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - full movie
A naive man is appointed to fill a vacancy in the US Senate. His plans promptly collide with political corruption, but he doesn't back down.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Can you name this building?
How many photos will it take to figure out?
These are photos of the
Cook County Correctional Center
Chicago , Illinois
Shocker. Those crooked politicians in Chi-Town really look after their buddies...
Update: The preceding images do not, in fact, show the Cook County Correctional Center in Chicago [just a matter of time], but rather the recently-built Justice and Detention Center in Leoben, Austria, designed by architect Josef Hohensinn.
Drat! Fooled by another Urban Legend!
h/t: CaptainAmerica1
~ ~ ~
Just in case you ever get work confused with prison, remember:
@ PRISON
You spend most of your time in a 10X10 cell
@ WORK
You spend most of your time in a 6X6 cubicle
@ PRISON
You get three fully paid for meals a day
@ WORK
You get a break for one meal, and you have to pay for it
@ PRISON
For good behavior, you get time off
@ WORK
For good behavior, you get more work
@ PRISON
The guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you
@ WORK
You must carry a security card and open all the doors yourself
@ PRISON
You can watch TV and play games
@ WORK
You could get fired for watching TV and playing games
@ PRISON
You get your own toilet
@ WORK
You have to share the toilet with people who pee on the seat
@ PRISON
They allow your family and friends to visit
@ WORK
You aren't even supposed to speak to your family
@ PRISON
You must deal with sadistic wardens
@ WORK
They are called 'managers'
@ PRISON
All expenses are paid by the taxpayers with no work required on your part
@ WORK
You must pay all your expenses to go to work, and they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners
@ PRISON
You spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get out
@ WORK
You spend most of your time wanting to get out and go inside bars
Friday, February 20, 2009
"Sovereign" bank failure possible
Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who predicted the global credit crisis, said a government-backed bank "may crack" as officials try to bail out their financial systems.
"The process of socializing the private losses from this crisis has already moved many of the liabilities of the private sector onto the books of the sovereign," Roubini wrote on his website today. "At some point a sovereign bank may crack, in which case the ability of the governments to credibly commit to act as a backstop for the financial system -- including deposit guarantees -- could come unglued."
Roubini didn't identify any sovereign bank that might run into difficulty.
[Hint: The latest data on Q4 2008 GDP growth (at an annual rate) around the world are even worse than the first estimate for the US (-3.8%): -6.0% for the Eurozone; -8% for Germany; -12% for Japan; -16% for Singapore; -20% for Korea.]
"The global economy is now literally in free fall as the contraction of consumption, capital spending, residential investment, production employment, exports and imports is accelerating rather than decelerating," Roubini said.
The protracted downturn Roubini warned of can only be prevented by "a strong, aggressive, coherent and credible combination of monetary easing (traditional and unorthodox), fiscal stimulus, proper clean-up of the financial system and reduction of the debt burden of insolvent private agents (households and non-financial companies)," he said. -- source
~ ~ ~
Today, the U.S. national debt is equal to about 75 percent of our GDP. The national debt-to-GDP ratio — a standard way economists measure the burden of national debts — is now higher than what it was in 1943, after the New Deal programs of the 1930s and the beginning of World War II. The current fiscal year's deficit plus the "stimulus" plan increases the ratio to 84 percent. The cost of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's recently announced Financial Stability Plan plus our deficits will put us over 100 percent in as little as a year. -- source
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Do you trust your bank and the FDIC?
Find out if your bank has "opted-out" of the FDIC's Transaction Account Guarantee Program
The TAG program guarantees full deposit coverage of non interest-bearing transaction accounts, regardless of the dollar amount and is in addition to, and separate from, the standard FDIC insurance that was temporarily increased to $250,000 per depositor. Both FDIC limits will be in effect through December 31, 2009.
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Thursday, February 19, 2009
It’s tough getting old
An 85-year-old man was asked by his doctor for a sperm count as part of his physical exam.
The doctor gave the man a jar and said, "Take this jar home and bring back a semen sample tomorrow."
The next day the 85-year-old man reappeared at the doctor's office and gave him the jar, which was as clean and empty as on the previous day.
The doctor asked what happened and the man explained, "Well, doc, it's like this — first I tried with my right hand, but nothing. Then I tried with my left hand, but still nothing.
"Then I asked my wife for help. She tried with her right hand, then with her left, still nothing. She tried with her mouth, first with the teeth in, then with her teeth out, still nothing.
"We even called up Arlene, the lady next door and she tried too, first with both hands, then an armpit, and she even tried squeezin' it between her knees, but still nothing."
The doctor was shocked! "You asked your neighbor?"
The old man replied, "Yep, none of us could get the jar open."
Drones!
Moscow hosts UAV exhibition
The UVS-TECH 2009 Unmanned Multipurpose Vehicle Systems International Forum and Exhibition displayed drones at Moscow's Expocenter January 27-29.
The exhibition featured mainly airplane and helicopter-type unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned balloon systems, as well as unmanned ground, underwater and surface systems, plus steering, orientation, control, surveillance, navigation and data processing systems.
Forty three Russian companies took part in the exhibition.
Six Russian companies, including ENICS Kazan, Vega Moscow, the Moscow-based Kulon Research Institute, Rybinsk-based Luch Design Bureau, Ryazan State Instrument-Making Plant and the Moscow-based Avionika research and production complex exhibited their defense-related products.
Over 160 companies from 25 countries took part in the exhibition.
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[Taking odds the Iranians got a little help.]
Iran develops spy drone capable of reaching Israel
Iranian scientists have developed an unmanned aerial vehicle capable of reaching Israel, an Iranian news agency said on Wednesday, citing a senior military official.
Deputy Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi made the announcement on Tuesday and described the development as "an important achievement," the Fars news agency reported.
"However, we cannot disclose the details of this project at present," the official said.
The reported range of 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) would make it possible for the Iranian drone to reach Israel.
Iran launched a domestic arms development program after a U.S. weapons embargo was imposed during its 1980-88 war with Iraq. Since 1992, Iran has reportedly produced its own Saeqeh and Azarakhsh jet fighters, stealth-capable Ghadir submarine, missile boats, torpedoes, tanks and armored carrier vehicles.
Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said on January 27 that Iran had achieved self-sufficiency in manufacturing combat missiles of various modifications.
He added that Iran would continue to build up its defense capability to ensure regional stability and security.
"Our greater defense power is no threat to other countries," he said. "Iran only needs a system to deter and repulse possible external aggression against it."
Both Israel and the United States have refused to rule out the possibility of military action against Tehran over its failure to obey international nuclear non-proliferation demands.
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Israel's Suicide UAV - IAI Herod
h/t: Patriot Room
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Robot Aircraft Carrier Drone on FutureWeapons (Part 1 of 2)
This is a clip from FutureWeapons documenting the Northrop Grumman X-47B UCAS (Unmanned Combat Air System). Recent advances in robotics, sensors and artificial intelligence are used to engineer a drone aircraft that can perform naval missions and land on aircraft carriers autonomously. To develop this system, virtual prototyping and simulations are linked to actual aircraft control system hardware so engineers are able to monitor how the computer will operate the aircraft. This will ensure that the robot will perform as expected before it is built.
Robot Aircraft Carrier Drone on FutureWeapons (Part 2 of 2)
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Tired and Cold
Dog Tired
Researchers say getting enough sleep may help protect people from getting a cold. They base this on a study in which they measured duration and quality of sleep over two weeks in 153 volunteers and then exposed each to a virus that causes the cold.
Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University:
"People who usually slept less than 7 hours were about 3 times more likely to get a cold than people who slept 8 hours or more a night."
The researchers say people who could get to sleep quickly and who did not wake up during the night were less likely to get a cold.
And they say it’s another sign that adequate sleep supports the body’s immune system.
The study in Archives of Internal Medicine was supported by the National Institutes of Health. Learn more at hhs.gov.
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Jihad In Europe
Lawrence Fishburne as a Barbary Pirate?
No, just a real radical Muslim cleric, Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri addressing the sixth annual rally for Islam in Trafalgar Square, London, Aug. 25, 2002. Abu Hamza allegedly lost his hands in a nitroglycerin accident, in an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Photo by Ian Waldie, Reuters.
Europe Jihadist Push Goes Underground
"A lot of open activities that used to go on at mosques are now taking place in private flats and apartments, as mosques themselves become more vigilant and clamp down," said Peter Neumann, a political scientist at Kings College, London and author of "Joining al-Qaeda: Jihadist Recruitment in Europe," a report on radicalisation in Europe.
"It's been driven underground. It's much more difficult for people like Abu Hamza to be operating out in the open, although it doesn't mean they have gone away," Neumann said.
"Mosques in Spain continue to be frequented by extremists, but potential recruits are now invited to private study group sessions as soon as a promising relationship has been established," he told Reuters.
The report found few radicals were recruited solely on the Internet, but the act of participating in a jihadist web forum facilitated recruitment by allowing participants to experience the sensation of being part of a global movement.
The Islamic Movement
Recommended reading: The Time Traveler
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Mexico: The Third War
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart, Stratfor
Mexico has pretty much always been a rough-and-tumble place. In recent years, however, the security environment has deteriorated rapidly, and parts of the country have become incredibly violent. It is now common to see military weaponry such as fragmentation grenades and assault rifles used almost daily in attacks.
In fact, just last week we noted two separate strings of grenade attacks directed against police in Durango and Michoacan states. In the Michoacan incident, police in Uruapan and Lazaro Cardenas were targeted by three grenade attacks during a 12-hour period. Then on Feb. 17, a major firefight occurred just across the border from the United States in Reynosa, when Mexican authorities attempted to apprehend several armed men seen riding in a vehicle. The men fled to a nearby residence and engaged the pursuing police with gunfire, hand grenades and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). After the incident, in which five cartel gunmen were killed and several gunmen, cops, soldiers and civilians were wounded, authorities recovered a 60 mm mortar, five RPG rounds and two fragmentation grenades.
Make no mistake, considering the military weapons now being used in Mexico and the number of deaths involved, the country is in the middle of a war. In fact, there are actually three concurrent wars being waged in Mexico involving the Mexican drug cartels. The first is the battle being waged among the various Mexican drug cartels seeking control over lucrative smuggling corridors, called plazas. One such battleground is Ciudad Juarez, which provides access to the Interstate 10, Interstate 20 and Interstate 25 corridors inside the United States. The second battle is being fought between the various cartels and the Mexican government forces who are seeking to interrupt smuggling operations, curb violence and bring the cartel members to justice.
Then there is a third war being waged in Mexico, though because of its nature it is a bit more subdued. It does not get the same degree of international media attention generated by the running gun battles and grenade and RPG attacks. However, it is no less real, and in many ways it is more dangerous to innocent civilians (as well as foreign tourists and business travelers) than the pitched battles between the cartels and the Mexican government. This third war is the war being waged on the Mexican population by criminals who may or may not be involved with the cartels. Unlike the other battles, where cartel members or government forces are the primary targets and civilians are only killed as collateral damage, on this battlefront, civilians are squarely in the crosshairs.
The Criminal Front
There are many different shapes and sizes of criminal gangs in Mexico. While many of them are in some way related to the drug cartels, others have various types of connections to law enforcement — indeed, some criminal groups are composed of active and retired cops. These various types of criminal gangs target civilians in a number of ways, including, robbery, burglary, carjacking, extortion, fraud and counterfeiting. But of all the crimes committed by these gangs, perhaps the one that creates the most widespread psychological and emotional damage is kidnapping, which also is one of the most underreported crimes. There is no accurate figure for the number of kidnappings that occur in Mexico each year. All of the data regarding kidnapping is based on partial crime statistics and anecdotal accounts and, in the end, can produce only best-guess estimates. Despite this lack of hard data, however, there is little doubt — based even on the low end of these estimates — that Mexico has become the kidnapping capital of the world.
One of the difficult things about studying kidnapping in Mexico is that the crime not only is widespread, affecting almost every corner of the country, but also is executed by a wide range of actors who possess varying levels of professionalism — and very different motives. At one end of the spectrum are the high-end kidnapping gangs that abduct high-net-worth individuals and demand ransoms in the millions of dollars. Such groups employ teams of operatives who carry out specialized tasks such as collecting intelligence, conducting surveillance, snatching the target, negotiating with the victim’s family and establishing and guarding the safe houses.
At the other end of the spectrum are gangs that roam the streets and randomly kidnap targets of opportunity. These gangs are generally less professional than the high-end gangs and often will hold a victim for only a short time. In many instances, these groups hold the victim just long enough to use the victim’s ATM card to drain his or her checking account, or to receive a small ransom of perhaps several hundred or a few thousand dollars from the family. This type of opportunistic kidnapping is often referred to as an “express kidnapping”. Sometimes express kidnapping victims are held in the trunk of a car for the duration of their ordeal, which can sometimes last for days if the victim has a large amount in a checking account and a small daily ATM withdrawal limit. Other times, if an express kidnapping gang discovers it has grabbed a high-value target by accident, the gang will hold the victim longer and demand a much higher ransom. Occasionally, these express kidnapping groups will even “sell” a high-value victim to a more professional kidnapping gang.
Between these extremes there is a wide range of groups that fall somewhere in the middle. These are the groups that might target a bank vice president or branch manager rather than the bank’s CEO, or that might kidnap the owner of a restaurant or other small business rather than a wealthy industrialist. The presence of such a broad spectrum of kidnapping groups ensures that almost no segment of the population is immune from the kidnapping threat. In recent years, the sheer magnitude of the threat in Mexico and the fear it generates has led to a crime called virtual kidnapping. In a virtual kidnapping, the victim is not really kidnapped. Instead, the criminals seek to convince a target’s family that a kidnapping has occurred, and then use threats and psychological pressure to force the family to pay a quick ransom. Although virtual kidnapping has been around for several years, unwitting families continue to fall for the scam, which is a source of easy money. Some virtual kidnappings have even been conducted by criminals using telephones inside prisons.
As noted above, the motives for kidnapping vary. Many of the kidnappings that occur in Mexico are not conducted for ransom. Often the drug cartels will kidnap members of rival gangs or government officials in order to torture and execute them. This torture is conducted to extract information, intimidate rivals and, apparently in some cases, just to have a little fun. The bodies of such victims are frequently found beheaded or otherwise mutilated. Other times, cartel gunmen will kidnap drug dealers who are tardy in payments or who refuse to pay the “tax” required to operate in the cartel’s area of control.
Of course, cartel gunmen do not kidnap only their rivals or cops. As the cartel wars have heated up, and as drug revenues have dropped due to interference from rival cartels or the government, many cartels have resorted to kidnapping for ransom to supplement their cash flow. Perhaps the most widely known group that is engaging in this is the Arellano Felix Organization (AFO), also known as the Tijuana Cartel. The AFO has been reduced to a shadow of its former self, its smuggling operations dramatically impacted by the efforts of the U.S. and Mexican governments, as well as by attacks from other cartels and from an internal power struggle. Because of a steep decrease in smuggling revenues, the group has turned to kidnapping and extortion in order to raise the funds necessary to keep itself alive and to return to prominence as a smuggling organization.
In the Line of Fire
There is very little chance the Mexican government will be able to establish integrity in its law enforcement agencies, or bring law and order to large portions of the country, any time soon. Official corruption and ineptitude are endemic in Mexico, which means that Mexican citizens and visiting foreigners will have to face the threat of kidnapping for the foreseeable future. We believe that for civilians and visiting foreigners, the threat of kidnapping exceeds the threat of being hit by a stray bullet from a cartel firefight. Indeed, things are deteriorating so badly that even professional kidnapping negotiators, once seen as the key to a guaranteed payout, are now being kidnapped themselves. In an even more incredible twist of irony, anti-kidnapping authorities are being abducted and executed.
This environment — and the concerns it has sparked — has provided huge financial opportunities for the private security industry in Mexico. Armored car sales have gone through the roof, as have the number of uniformed guards and executive protection personnel. In fact, the demand for personnel is so acute that security companies are scrambling to find candidates. Such a scramble presents a host of obvious problems, ranging from lack of qualifications to insufficient vetting. In addition to old-fashioned security services, new security-technology companies are also cashing in on the environment of fear, but even high-tech tracking devices can have significant drawbacks and shortcomings.
For many people, armored cars and armed bodyguards can provide a false sense of security, and technology can become a deadly crutch that promotes complacency and actually increases vulnerability. Physical security measures are not enough. The presence of armed bodyguards — or armed guards combined with armored vehicles — does not provide absolute security. This is especially true in Mexico, where large teams of gunmen regularly conduct crimes using military ordnance. Frankly, there are very few executive protection details in the world that have the training and armament to withstand an assault by dozens of attackers armed with assault rifles and RPGs. Private security guards are frequently overwhelmed by Mexican criminals and either killed or forced to flee for their own safety. As we noted in May 2008 after the assassination of Edgar Millan Gomez, acting head of the Mexican Federal Police and the highest-ranking federal cop in Mexico, physical security measures must be supplemented by situational awareness, countersurveillance and protective intelligence.
Criminals look for and exploit vulnerabilities. Their chances for success increase greatly if they are allowed to conduct surveillance at will and are given the opportunity to thoroughly assess the protective security program. We have seen several cases in Mexico in which the criminals even chose to attack despite security measures. In such cases, criminals attack with adequate resources to overcome existing security. For example, if there are protective agents, the attackers will plan to neutralize them first. If there is an armored vehicle, they will find ways to defeat the armor or grab the target when he or she is outside the vehicle. Because of this, criminals must not be allowed to conduct surveillance at will.
Like many crimes, kidnapping is a process. There are certain steps that must be taken to conduct a kidnapping and certain times during the process when those executing it are vulnerable to detection. While these steps may be condensed and accomplished quite quickly in an ad hoc express kidnapping, they are nonetheless followed. In fact, because of the particular steps involved in conducting a kidnapping, the process is not unlike that followed to execute a terrorist attack. The common steps are target selection, planning, deployment, attack, escape and exploitation.
Like the perpetrators of a terrorist attack, those conducting a kidnapping are most vulnerable to detection when they are conducting surveillance — before they are ready to deploy and conduct their attack. As we’ve noted several times in past analyses, one of the secrets of countersurveillance is that most criminals are not very good at conducting surveillance. The primary reason they succeed is that no one is looking for them.
Of course, kidnappers are also very obvious once they launch their attack, pull their weapons and perhaps even begin to shoot. By this time, however, it might very well be too late to escape their attack. They will have selected their attack site and employed the forces they believe they need to complete the operation. While the kidnappers could botch their operation and the target could escape unscathed, it is simply not practical to pin one’s hopes on that possibility. It is clearly better to spot the kidnappers early and avoid their trap before it is sprung and the guns come out.
We have seen many instances of people in Mexico with armed security being kidnapped, and we believe we will likely see more cases of this in the coming months. This trend is due not only to the presence of highly armed and aggressive criminals and the low quality of some security personnel, but also to people placing their trust solely in reactive physical security. Ignoring the very real value of critical, proactive measures such as situational awareness, countersurveillance and protective intelligence can be a fatal mistake.
A Drive Through Telluride, Colorado
Drive through Downtown Telluride, Colorado
This video drives you from the airport through downtown Telluride, Colorado. At the end of the video is where the famous Black Bear Road begins, next to Bridal Veil Falls and the Power Station.
Music: "Hey there Delilah" from The Plain White Ts.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
"Worst Is Yet to Come:" Americans' Standard of Living Permanently Changed
"Sad Masks" by Lidia Simeonova
There's no question the American consumer is hurting in the face of a burst housing bubble, financial market meltdown and rising unemployment.
But "the worst is yet to come," according to Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, who believes American's standard of living is undergoing a "permanent change" - and not for the better as a result of:
- An $8 trillion negative wealth effect from declining home values.
- A $10 trillion negative wealth effect from weakened capital markets.
- A $14 trillion consumer debt load amid "exploding unemployment", leading to "exploding bankruptcies."
"The average American used to be able to borrow to buy a home, send their kids to a good school [and] buy a car," Davidowitz says. "A lot of that is gone."
Going forward, the veteran retail industry consultant foresees higher savings rate and people trading down in both the goods and services they buy - as well as their aspirations.
The end of rampant consumerism is ultimately a good thing, he says, but the unraveling of an economy built on debt-fueled spending will be painful for years to come.
By Aaron Task
Secession Crisis
Many of us today are fed up with the FED, the "spendulus" and the debt it will place on us and future generations. Equally, if not more disturbing for others, is the liberal erosion of our right to bear arms for self-defense.
It's not too surprising then to hear that legislation is being proposed to abolish the FED and to establish state sovereignty. But, to what end? Is the U.S. headed toward another secessionist movement? Perhaps we can gaze into the future by reexamining the primary reasons why our forefathers chose the secessionist route in the past...
The first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, known collectively as the Bill of Rights, were adopted as a single unit two years after ratification of the Constitution. Dissatisfaction with guarantees of freedom listed in the Constitution led the founding fathers to enumerate personal rights as well as limitations on the federal government in these first 10 amendments. The Magna Carta, the English bill of rights, Virginia's 1776 Declaration of Rights, and the colonial struggle against tyranny provided inspiration and direction for the Bill of Rights.
The 10th Amendment states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." This amendment was the basis of the doctrine of states' rights that became the ante-bellum rallying cry of the Southern states, which sought to restrict the ever-growing powers of the federal government. The principle of states' rights and state sovereignty eventually led the Southern states to secede from the central government that they believed had failed to honor the covenant that had originally bound the states together.
Click to enlarge map.
The nullification crisis of the 1830s was a dispute over Northern-inspired tariffs that benefited Northern interests and were detrimental to Southern interests. [rings the spendulus bell] The legal basis for the Southern call for nullification of the tariff laws was firmly rooted in states'-rights principles. Northern proposals to abolish or restrict slavery escalated the regional differences in the country and rallied the Southern states firmly behind the doctrine of states' rights and the sovereignty of the individual states. Southerners viewed the Constitution as a contractual agreement that was invalidated because its conditions had been breached. The Confederacy that was subsequently formed by the seceded states was patterned on the doctrine of states' rights. That doctrine, ironically, played a large role in the destruction of the country that it had caused to be created.
Excerpt from: States' Rights: "Powers Reserved To The States"
Whether or not America remains the United States might again rest on the individual states' willingness to guarantee our freedoms and to resist the federal government's power grab.
Monday, February 16, 2009
If you've got it, use it
CrossFit EOD - Workout area at the EOD shop on FOB Loyalty, Iraq.
CrossFit athletes prove "it" can be just about anything.
The CrossFit workout program is designed for universal scalability making it the perfect application for any committed individual regardless of experience. CrossFit uses the same routines for elderly individuals with heart disease and cage fighters one month out from televised bouts. Load and intensity is scaled; not programs.
The needs of Olympic athletes and our grandparents differ by degree not kind. Terrorist hunters, skiers, mountain bike riders and housewives have found their best fitness from the same regimen -- CrossFit - Forging Elite Fitness
Greg Shugarts, CrossFit Gravity Janes
13th Marine Expeditionary Unit
Travis Graves, Primal Fitness, Flatirons - Boulder, CO
Laura Taylor, CrossFit Palm Bay
Reading, Writing and Things that Tick
What on earth is being taught in Kuwaiti universities these days?
In America, threaten the life of the U.S. President -- go to jail.
In, Kuwait, threaten the life of the U.S. President -- get air time on Al-Jazeera TV.
That's just what happened to Kuwaiti Professor Abdallah Al-Nafisi and here's what he said:
"Four pounds of anthrax – in a suitcase this big – carried by a fighter through tunnels from Mexico into the U.S., are guaranteed to kill 330,000 Americans within a single hour, if it is properly spread in population centers there.
"What a horrifying idea. 9/11 will be small change in comparison. Am I right? There is no need for airplanes, conspiracies, timings, and so on.
"One person, with the courage to carry four pounds of anthrax, will go to the White House lawn, and will spread this 'confetti' all over them, and then will do these cries of joy. It will turn into a real 'celebration.'" -- MEMRI
The "teachings" of Professor Abdallah Al-Nafisi continue in the full video on LiveLeak.
Questions remain. Do all Kuwaiti universities offer a degree in terrorism? What exactly is the going pay rate for taking out 330,000 people? [Virgins are so last year.] Could this scenario actually happen tomorrow?
I'm bringing sexy back!
Besides putting up the billboard seen below, Pine Ridge Church in Graham, North Carolina has mailed 25,000 post cards to local residents.
Sermons in the series have titles such as "Broke Ain't Sexy," which deals with money management, and "Who's Your Daddy?" for a talk about marriage and parenting. -- Times-News
Now I know it's true - sex sells.
Huskies help Marines lead the way in Afghanistan
The Husky tactical support vehicle. Photos by Lance Cpl. Monty Burton, Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Afghanistan (Released)
By Lance Cpl. Monty Burton, Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Afghanistan
Marines are employing a unique piece of equipment that’s helping lower the threat of improvised explosive devices in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
Operation Gateway III, which involved the clearing of southern Afghanistan’s IED-laden Route 515, marked the first time the Route Clearance Platoon of 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment (Reinforced), used the Husky tactical support vehicle in combat operations.
The Husky, equipped with an Interim Vehicle Mounted Mine Detector to detect hidden metallic explosives, is similar in construction to the mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle, also known as the MRAP, with a V-shaped undercarriage to direct the blast away from the vehicle and protect its driver. Its single-operator cockpit is fitted with armored steel, ballistic windows and an on-board automatic fire extinguisher. The vehicle detects IEDs with its IVMMD, which employs both metal detection and ground penetrating radar sensors to find the deadly IEDs.
Cpl. Michael Higuchi (left) helps Lance Cpl. Jason Mueske (right), engineers with Route Clearance Platoon, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment (Reinforced), work on a Husky tactical support vehicle, Camp Barber, Afghanistan.
“This is a very safe vehicle,” said Andrew Jorgensen, the lead field service representative of the Husky. “There have been a lot of safety upgrades to ensure the operator is well protected. I have known operators to have had an explosive detonate underneath this vehicle, and then 15 minutes later they are outside taking pictures with the vehicle.”
First Lt. Samuel Murray, the Route Clearance Plt. commander, said his Marines feel very secure in the Husky.
“This is an overall better vehicle than previous models,” Murray said. “If a mine were to detonate underneath the vehicle, I am sure the operator would come out of it just fine.”
During Operation Gateway III, the upgraded Huskies proved to be effective after encountering pressure-plate IEDs that detonated beneath the vehicles. Reports confirmed that the vehicles sustained mostly minimal damage that did not require outside assistance to repair and no injuries were reported. In most cases, the vehicles were back on the road in less than two hours.
Semper Fi!
Sunday, February 15, 2009
決闘の 三味線 (Dueling Shamisen)
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Devil Playing Shamisen; Otsu-e (Japanese Folk Painting); Edo Period, 18th Century
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Go ahead. Try it yourself. The shamisen is easy. ;P
Play a Virtual Shamisen
The Boy With the U.S. Census, 1911
"Where the Workers Came From" -- Family of German immigrants, passing through Ellis Island on their way to the Middle West. (Courtesy of U.S. Immigration Station, Ellis Island.)
The Boy With the U.S. Census, by Francis Rolt-Wheeler
With Thirty-eight Illustrations, principally from Bureaus of the United States Government
November, 1911
Preface:
Life in America to-day is adventurous and thrilling to the core. Border warfare of the most primitive type still is waged in mountain fastnesses, the darkest pages in the annals of crime now are being written, piracy has but changed its scene of operations from the sea to the land, smugglers ply a busy trade, and from their factory prisons a hundred thousand children cry aloud for rescue. The flame of Crusade sweeps over the land and the call for volunteers is abroad.
In hazardous scout duty into these fields of danger the Census Bureau leads. The Census is the sword that shatters secrecy, the key that opens trebly-guarded doors; the Enumerator is vested with the Nation's greatest right—the Right To Know—and on his findings all battle-lines depend. "When through Atlantic and Pacific gateways, Slavic, Italic, and Mongol hordes threaten the persistence of an American America, his is the task to show the absorption of widely diverse peoples, to chronicle the advances of civilization, or point the perils of illiterate and alien-tongue communities. To show how this great Census work is done, to reveal the mysteries its figures half-disclose, to point the paths to heroism in the United States to-day, and to bind closer the kinship between all peoples of the earth who have become "Americans" is the aim and purpose of THE AUTHOR.
Read the entire book online at Project Gutenberg.
"Work for Americans" -- Where skill and nerve and endurance are required is where the true American is found. (Brown Bros.)
Things Only a True Southerner Knows
"Southern Porch" by Thecanyon4me
There are certain things that only Southerners know or appreciate about the South. Northerners can try to understand, but mostly, they don't even know WHAT they don't understand. Some of these "jokes" go around and around the internet and back and forth through email. I don't know WHO wrote this...but I do know that it just had to be a real, true Southerner:
I LOVE Being Southern...
•Only a Southerner knows the difference between a hissie fit and a conniption fit, and that you don't "HAVE" them, you "PITCH" them.
•Only a Southerner knows how many fish, collard greens, turnip greens, peas, beans, etc., make up "a mess."
•Only a Southerner can show or point out to you the general direction of "yonder."
•Only a Southerner knows exactly how long "directly" is -- as in: "Going to town, be back directly."
•Even Southern babies know that "Gimme some sugar" is not a request for the white, granular sweet substance that sits in a pretty little bowl in the middle of the table.
•All Southerners know exactly when "by and by" is. They might not use the term, but they know the concept well.
•Only a Southerner knows instinctively that the best gesture of solace for a neighbor who's got trouble is a plate of hot fried chicken and a big bowl of cold potato salad. If the neighbor's trouble is a real crisis, they also know to add a large banana puddin'!
•Only Southerners grow up knowing the difference between "right near" and "a right far piece." They also know that "just down the road" can be 1 mile or 20.
•Only a Southerner, both knows and understands, the difference between a redneck, a good ol' boy, and po' white trash.
•No true Southerner would ever assume that the car with the flashing turn signal is actually going to make a turn.
•A Southerner knows that "fixin" can be used as a noun, a verb, or an adverb.
•Only Southerners make friends while standing in lines. We don't do "queues," we do "lines"; and when we're "in line," we talk to everybody!
•Put 100 Southerners in a room and half of them will discover they're related, even if only by marriage.
•Southerners never refer to one person as "y'all."
•Southerners know grits come from corn and how to eat them.
•Every Southerner knows tomatoes with eggs, bacon, grits, and coffee are perfectly wonderful; that red eye gravy is also a breakfast food; and that fried green tomatoes are not a breakfast food.
•When you hear someone say, "Well, I caught myself lookin'," you know you are in the presence of a genuine Southerner!
•Only true Southerners say "sweet tea" and "sweet milk." Sweet tea indicates the need for sugar and lots of it --- we do not like our tea unsweetened. "Sweet milk" means you don't want buttermilk.
•And a true Southerner knows you don't scream obscenities at little old ladies who drive 30 MPH on the freeway. You just say, "Bless her heart" and go your own way.
•To those of you who're still a little embarrassed by your Southerness: Take two
•And to those of you who are still having a hard time understanding all this Southern stuff, bless your hearts, I hear they are fixin' to have classes on Southernness as a second language!
•And for those that are not from the South but have lived here for a long time, y'all need a sign to hang on y'alls front porch that reads "I ain't from the South but I got here as fast as I could."
•Bless your hearts, y'all have a blessed day.
-- Anonymous
Saturday, February 14, 2009
The Incomparable Levon Helm as Mr. Rate
Mark Wahlberg has the title role in the sniper thriller, Shooter. He gets to be the hero, and as Bobby Lee Swagger, he has most of the zingiest lines.
Until, that is, his character -- a sniper framed in an assassination attempt -- shows up to collect some wisdom from an old man of the mountains, a Tennessee assassination expert. He's played to Southern-fried perfection by Levon Helm. And Helm flat out steals his scene.
Bob Lee Swagger: Suppose I was looking for man who could make a 2,200 yard cold bore shot. Who's alive that could do that?
Mr. Rate: Seems I heard about a shot like that being made not too long ago. Said the guy's name was Bob Lee Swagger. Never met the man, so I wouldn't know.
Bob Lee Swagger: Yeah, they said that alright.
Mr. Rate: They also said that artificial sweeteners were safe, WMDs were in Iraq and Anna Nicole married for love.
Mr. Rate: It woulda been a bad job to take though.
Nick Memphis: How come?
Mr. Rate: Whoever took that shot's probably dead now. That's how a conspiracy works. Them boys on the Grassy Knoll they were dead within three hours, buried in the damned desert, unmarked graves out past Terlingua.
Nick Memphis: You know this for a fact?
Mr. Rate: Still got the shovel.
Helm has lent his instant credibility to just a few movies over the years -- Coal Miner's Daughter, The Right Stuff and Feeling Minnesota, among them. Filmmakers seek out his distinct Southerness.
"They sure aren't hiring me for my looks, 'cuz I ain't gettin' any prettier," Helm says with a laugh from his home in Woodstock, N.Y.
He's 68, now. The voice is a post-throat-cancer rasp, a cancer that almost silenced the man who is most famous as a singing drummer with the legendary rock group, The Band, in the 1960s and '70s. But he's singing and acting again, which is good news for music and film fans.
"I don't know what it is about the Old South, and conspiracy buffs, but something about the accent works for the character," Helm says of Mr. Rate in Shooter. He says that as the country has lost its regional accents, performers such as himself grow rarer and rarer.
"It used to be that the accent made it into the music, with Detroit and Memphis and Philadelphia, even, having their own sounds," he says. "It made the country richer, I think."
By Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel
Levon Helm as Mr. Rate in Shooter
"World ain't what it seems is it, Gunny? You keep that in mind. The moment you think you got it figured, you're wrong."
Marines drink the blood of their enemies
Photo by Apichart Weerawong, AP.
Mmmm. Tastes like chicken.
U.S. Marines queue up to taste the blood of a cobra during during a jungle survival training at the 2009 Cobra Gold military exercise in Chonburi province, southeastern Thailand Saturday, Feb. 14, 2009.
Exercise Cobra Gold is a two-week annual joint training exercise scheduled this year from Feb. 4-17 in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
The Royal Thai Army, Navy, and Marines as well as U.S. Army Pacific (USARPAC) with support from U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet (PACFLT), U.S. Marine Forces Pacific (MARFORPAC), U.S. Air Force Pacific (PACAF) and contingencies from the militaries of Indonesia, Japan, and Singapore will participate in the exercise that has been conducted since 1981.
Exercise Cobra Gold 2009 is the latest in a continuing series of exercises designed to promote regional peace and security, and will consist of a computer-simulated command post exercise, field training and live fire exercises, as well as humanitarian and civic assistance projects.
See more photos at Cobra Gold's photostream on Flickr.
Cobra Gold Jungle Survival Training
Happy Valentine's Day to all of the men and women in the U.S armed forces. ;) - c
Iran: The Blair Nuke Project
In 1994, three film students travel into the woods to investigate the legend that is the Blair Witch. While the students were never seen again, their video footage turned up a year later. [I sense an odd parallel with Iran's take on the current U.S. intelligence threat assessment.]
~
In the annual threat assessment to Congress on Thursday, U.S. intelligence director Dennis Blair blazed a new trail when he said, "I can say at this point that Iran is clearly developing all the components of a deliverable nuclear weapons program -- fissionable material, nuclear weaponizing capability and the means to deliver it."
Obama's nominee to serve as CIA director, Leon E. Panetta, also left little doubt about his view last week when he testified on Capitol Hill. "From all the information I've seen," Panetta said, "I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability." -- LA Times
Regardless, it appears that the Tehran Times, Iran's national newspaper, is lost in the woods -- or, at least, lost in translation.
U.S. intelligence reconfirms that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, the new U.S. intelligence director Dennis Blair said in an annual threat assessment to Congress on Thursday.
Sloppy reporting or Iran's wishful thinking?
Whatever the reason, please, someone bring a reputable interpreter to Iran when the U.S. begins to negotiate. The stakes have never been higher. Neither side can afford an unnecessary witch hunt.
Friday, February 13, 2009
The Fed's Hockey Stick Chart
Inconvenient Debt - Glenn Beck
“Look at this hockey stick…. Here’s where we were in September last year, but then the Treasury decided we need to start printing more money. This hockey stick should take your breath away. This is devaluing our money…. We have pumped all this money in and devalued our money. How is it not going to be worthless? This has never ever been done by anybody ever before.”
AMBNS, St. Louis Adjusted Monetary Base
The "Monetary Base" chart is a kind of snapshot that reveals just how much money has been created by the Federal Reserve in recent months. As of now, this money remains largely in Federal Reserve banks as deposits by commercial banks. We won't feel the inflationary effects of this new money until the commercial banks begin loaning it out and creating even larger increases in the money supply through the multiplying effects of fractional reserve banking.
Bottom line, the Fed's hockey stick chart reveals a huge (over $800 billion) and rapid buildup of our nation's money supply during the closing months of 2008, which threatens us with future rapid losses in the buying power of the dollar. -- more
~ ~ ~
Sorry, George.
[Adds t.p. to grocery list -- while I can still afford it.]
To help visualize how screwed the dollar is the effects of rapid or hyperinflation, look at the World's Most Worthless Money.
Beware the Dangerous Valentine Virus
In usual the-West-is-the-Great-Satan rhetoric, Sudan's Clerics Council has called on young people not to celebrate Valentine's Day, calling it a Western holiday that has a corruptive influence. -- via MEMRI
[Yadda, yadda. These dudes need a new tune... Wait! What's this?]
Egyptian Cleric Hazem Shuman Warns Muslim Youth: Valentine's Day More Dangerous than AIDS, Ebola, and Cholera
[Now they're cooking with Pam!]
In a speech, Egyptian cleric Hazem Shuman called on Muslim youth to "confront [the] Valentine virus," saying that while "everything red will become more expensive" [lol] for the holiday, "one red thing will become cheaper: the blood of Muslims. All this is the result of the sins committed by Muslim youth."
[O.K., you're loosing us there, Bub. Better turn up the laugh meter...]
He warned, "In a few days time, a very dangerous virus will attack the body of the nation. What virus? Is it AIDS? No, something more dangerous. Something more dangerous than Ebola, which dissolves the human body, more dangerous than cholera, which killed half of Europe a few centuries ago... I have come tonight to warn all boys and girls about an extremely dangerous virus, which is about to attack the hearts of the nation’s youth, and to destroy our relations with God. We must confront this Valentine virus!"
[Valentine virus? LOL These clerics should do SNL. Virus. I wonder if it hurts...]
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Madeira: The Drink of Patriots
Glass and bottle of Madeira wine from Vinhos Justino Henriques. Colheita 1996 "Fine rich" (Malvasia)
By Beppi Crosaiol, Globe and Mail
Madeira was an important wine in the history of the United States of America.
The go-to tipple of the founding fathers, it was used to toast George Washington's inauguration and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration's author, hoarded the stuff. The U.S. warship Constitution was christened with Madeira, not Champagne. John Hancock, the patriot famous for an exuberantly large signature on the Declaration, was a Madeira importer.
Just as noteworthy, the wine directly helped sow the seeds of political change. Ever heard of the Boston Madeira Party?
Years before the more famous tea tax protest of 1773 in Boston harbor, Madeira became its own cause célèbre in the same bay. The British motherland had imposed a tax on the popular beverage, partly in an effort to drive Americans to more expensive port. Mr. Hancock, a wealthy merchant, was arrested on charges of smuggling, and his sloop Liberty was seized in Boston waters. The crackdown prompted a riot against the customs house, effecting Mr. Hancock's release and setting the trigger for the subsequent tea party.
How did the wine come to be so vital to the fledgling republic? Politics. A trade war between England and France led to a British blockade on goods from Europe to the English colonies. The wine of Madeira, a pit stop on the Atlantic sailing route to Africa, Asia and the New World, was exempted. For a while, it was the only non-contraband wine in the United States, the so-called Drink of Patriots. By 1800, a quarter of Madeira's production ended up in New England.
The Portuguese archipelago's remote location 650 kilometers off the African coast also has much to do with the wine's invention. Grape nerds like to insist that soil, vineyard orientation and weather - a combination the French call terroir - give each wine its particular essence. With Madeira, the sea until recently has been more critical than land.
In the 1600s, wine from Madeira was so insipid it had to be fortified with brandy to make it palatable and stable on long sea voyages. Sailors doing business with India gradually came to realize the stuff tasted better on the return trip. That's because the cargo had spent the voyage essentially "cooking" and oxidizing as it pitched and rolled in barrels below deck.
The wine had become bruised, its sugar slightly caramelized, producing a burnt, toffee-like flavour. As the liquid expanded and contracted, the leached oak imparted a luscious texture and vanilla-spice quality. And the fatal flaw of regular wine - oxidation from too much exposure to air - became a virtue in Madeira, imparting a tangy quality akin to sherry.
If you think of cheese as intentionally spoiled milk, think of Madeira as carefully spoiled wine. Coincidentally, cheese and Madeira are stellar partners.
The wine continued to be made at sea for a long time, serving double duty as ballast on vessels bound for the southern hemisphere. Today, the ships have given way to artificially heated warehouses. Cheap Madeira is finished in tanks fitted with steam pipes, while the better stuff is warmed more gradually in casks stored in solar-heated warehouses.
Because Madeira is in effect embalmed wine, it can't go bad the way other wines do. It's the Dick Clark of drink, able to last forever.
Jugs from the late 1770s have been opened to positive reviews in recent years, including some belonging to Thomas Jefferson. The same cannot be said of even the finest red Bordeaux, which, contrary to auctioneers' propaganda and the perverse palates of old-school wine critics, cannot be anything but swill after 200 years in bottle.
Not to make too much of this point, but one might call Madeira the perfect recession wine. Open a bottle and finish it at your leisure - over the course of days, weeks, months or even years; it won't spoil.
Generally less sweet and not as heavy as port, and usually with more invigorating acidity, Madeira also can deliver intriguing notes of citrus peel, molasses, nuts, smoke, old church wood, toffee, dried fruit and herbs.
There are four styles, all named after the grape used to make them. In order of increasing sweetness, they are dry sercial, smoky verdelho, rich but tangy bual and velvety sweet malmsey.
Like other fortified wines, Madeira tends to go best either before or after dinner. Lighter, drier Madeira, especially sercial, is nice as an aperitif. I like it well chilled to accentuate the acidity. Sweeter styles are often served later in the evening, but can also work as aperitifs when poured over the rocks with a twist of lemon.
Besides cheese, Madeira goes nicely with apple pie. You can't get much more American than that.
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Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Terror Alert: Thursday, Feb. 12
Retribution for Mughniyah: A Dish Served Cold?
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart, Stratfor
Feb. 12 will mark the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Imad Mughniyah, one of Hezbollah’s top military commanders. The anniversary certainly will be met with rejoicing in Tel Aviv and Washington — in addition to all the Israelis he killed, Mughniyah also had a significant amount of American blood on his hands. But the date will be met with anger and renewed cries for revenge from Hezbollah’s militants, many of whom were recruited, trained or inspired by Mughniyah.
Because of Hezbollah’s history of conducting retaliatory attacks after the assassination of its leaders, and the frequent and very vocal calls for retribution for the Mughniyah assassination, many observers (including Stratfor) have been waiting for Hezbollah to exact its revenge. While the attack has not yet happened, threats continue. For example, in a Jan. 29 news conference, Hezbollah General Secretary Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah left no doubt about the group’s intention. “The Israelis live in fear of our revenge,” he said. “The decision to respond to the killing is still on. We decide the time and the place.”
Initially, given the force of the anger and outcry over the assassination, we anticipated that the strike would come soon after the 30-day mourning period for Mughniyah had passed. Clearly, that did not happen. Now a year has passed since the killing, but the anger and outcry have not died down. Indeed, as reflected by Nasrallah’s recent statement, the leadership of Hezbollah remains under a considerable amount of internal pressure to retaliate. Because any retaliation would likely be tempered by concerns over provoking a full-on Israeli attack against Hezbollah infrastructure (similar to the attack in the summer of 2006), any Hezbollah strike would be conducted in a manner that could provide some degree of plausible deniability.
It is important to remember that Hezbollah retains a considerable capacity to conduct terrorist attacks abroad should it choose to do so. In fact, we believe that, due to its high degree of training, vast experience and close ties to the Iranian government, Hezbollah retains a more proficient and dangerous terrorism capability than al Qaeda.
Repeated calls for revenge and Hezbollah’s capabilities have combined to ensure that the Israeli government maintains a high state of awareness. Even though a year has passed, Israelis, too, are waiting for the other shoe to drop. On Feb. 1, Elkana Harnof of the Counterterrorism Bureau in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office told The Jerusalem Post that, “Based on our information, we believe the organization is planning one large revenge attack close to the anniversary of [Mughniyah’s] death.” Harnof added, “All we can say publicly is that [Hezbollah] has gone to enormous effort to prepare various kinds of terror attacks, and the big one is likely going to take place soon.” Like Stratfor, the Israelis also believe that the attack will be directed against Israeli or Jewish targets outside of Israel.
Imad Mughniyah, 45, died in this car bombing in Damascus.
Busy Bodies
There are a number of indications that Hezbollah has not been idle in the year since Mughniyah’s death. First, there has been a good deal of preoperational activity by Hezbollah militants in several countries, including the United States. This activity has included surveillance and other intelligence-gathering for targeting purposes. At one point last fall, the activity was so intense inside the United States that law enforcement officials believed a strike was imminent — but it never came. Additionally, there are credible reports that Hezbollah plots to strike Israeli targets in Azerbaijan and the Netherlands have been thwarted. (Although, from information we have received, it does not appear that either of these plots was at an advanced stage of the attack cycle.)
We have no reason to doubt the reports of Hezbollah preoperational activity. It is simply what they do and what they are. Even though the group has not conducted a successful attack overseas since 1994, it does maintain a robust network of operatives who stay busily engaged in operational activities. While many of these operatives are involved primarily in financial and logistical activities, we believe it is worth noting that Hezbollah has never conducted or attempted an attack in a country where it did not have such a support network in place. They use these networks to assist their militant activities in a number of ways, but perhaps the most significant way is in the conduct of preoperational surveillance.
Hezbollah, a creature of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, also has a long history of receiving aid from Iranian embassies in its overseas operations, including its terrorist strikes. Almost inevitably, Hezbollah’s overseas attack plans are found to have murky links of some sort to the Iranian embassy in the country where the attack was to occur, and to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers stationed there.
Hezbollah utilizes an “off the shelf” method of planning its terrorist attacks. This is very similar to the way major national military commands operate, where they make contingency war plans against potential adversaries in advance and then work to keep those plans updated. This style of sophisticated, advance planning provides Hezbollah’s senior decision makers with a wide array of tactical options, and allows them to assess a number of attack plans in various parts of the world and quickly select and update a particular attack plan when they make the decision to launch it. When they do decide to pull the trigger, they can strike hard and fast.
This type of planning requires a great deal of intelligence-gathering, not only to produce the initial plans but also to keep them updated. Because it requires a lot of collection activity, this effort likely accounts for much of the operational activity that has been observed over the past year in the United States and elsewhere. These ongoing surveillance operations are not just useful for planning purposes, but they are also good for sowing confusion, creating distractions and causing complacency. If Hezbollah operatives have been seen periodically conducting surveillance around a facility and no attack has followed that activity, over time it becomes very easy for security personnel to write off all such activity as harmless — even when it might not be this time.
Mughniyah and cohorts. ['Snakes on a Plane'?]
Not Crying Wolf
There are some who argue that the lack of an attack by Hezbollah since the Mughniyah assassination, combined with the fact that the group has not used its terrorist capability to conduct an attack for many years, signifies that Hezbollah has abandoned its terrorist ways and instead focused on developing its conventional warfare capability.
We do not buy this argument. First, it ignores the existence and purpose of Hezbollah’s Unit 1800, which, among other things, recruits Palestinians for anti-Israeli terror operations inside Israel and the occupied territories. Second, if Hezbollah had abandoned its terrorist arm, there would be no need for the preoperational planning activity noted previously, and in our opinion, reports of such surveillance activity are too frequent and too widespread to be discounted as false sightings. Granted, such activities do cause jitters and have some effectiveness as a psychological warfare tool, but we do not believe that those limited benefits justify the time and effort being put into Hezbollah’s intelligence-collection program. There is also that pesky problem of explaining the thwarted attack plots in Azerbaijan and the Netherlands. Because of this, we do not believe that the U.S. and Israeli governments (among others) are crying wolf when they provide warnings of pending Hezbollah attacks.
We continue to believe that if there is an attack by Hezbollah, it will likely come in a country where there is an existing Hezbollah support apparatus and an Iranian embassy. (Although, in a confined geographic area, operations could be supported in a third country that lacked one or both of those elements.) We also believe that such an attack is more likely in a country where there is ready access to weapons or explosives, and where there are poor law enforcement and intelligence capabilities. We wrote an analysis discussing this in some detail during the 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. In that piece, we provided a matrix of the places we believed were most likely to be the site of a Hezbollah attack against Israeli targets, and one of the important criteria we considered was the presence of both an Iranian embassy and a local Hezbollah support network. When we discuss these two elements, it is important to note that in past attacks, the attackers were brought in from the outside in order to provide plausible deniability — but they did receive important support and guidance from the network and embassy.
Since we wrote that analysis in July 2006, there has been a significant increase in Iranian influence in parts of Latin America, including Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, and Hezbollah has not been far behind. In addition to claims by the U.S. Treasury Department that Venezuelan nationals and organizations are supporting Hezbollah financially, there have been persistent rumors of Hezbollah militants and IRGC officers conducting training at camps in the Venezuelan jungles.
These reports are especially noteworthy when combined with a recent rise in anti-Semitism in Venezuela and an outright hostility toward Jews demonstrated by pro-Chavez militia groups. A pro-Chavez militia is believed to have been involved in the vandalism of the main synagogue in Caracas on the night of Jan. 30-31, 2009. We are among many who don’t buy the government’s official explanation that the vandalism was motivated by robbery. To us, the fact that the intruders remained in the building for several hours, made the effort to scrawl anti-Israeli graffiti inside the building and stole databases containing personal information on congregational members seems very unusual for a simple burglary. Our suspicion is magnified by the extensive anti-Semitic statements made on the Web sites of some of the pro-Chavez militia leaders. All of this raises serious concerns that the Venezuelan government could turn a blind eye to Hezbollah efforts to conduct an attack on Israeli or Jewish interests in that country.
There are many who believe that the anti-Semitic attitudes of the Argentine government in the early 1990s helped embolden Mughniyah and his followers to attack Israeli and Jewish targets there. The anti-Semitic environment in Venezuela today is even more overt and hostile than it was in Argentina.
Hezbollah supporters march behind the coffin of Imad Mughniyeh, left, the group's former security chief, during his funeral procession below posters of Hezbollah's assassinated leaders in south Beirut, Lebanon.
In keeping with Hezbollah’s history, if an attack is launched, we anticipate that it will have to be fairly spectacular, given the fact that Mughniyah was very important to Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors — although the attack must not be so spectacular as to cause a full-on Israeli attack in Lebanon. Hezbollah can weather a few airstrikes, but it does not want to provoke an extended conflict — especially as Hezbollah’s political leadership is extremely focused on doing well in the upcoming elections in Lebanon.
Given Hezbollah’s proclivity toward using a hidden hand, we suspect the attack will be conducted by a stealthy and ambiguous cell or cells that will likely have no direct connection to the organization. For example, in July 1994, the group used Palestinian operatives to conduct attacks against the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish nongovernmental organization office in London. Also, as we have seen in prior attacks, if a hardened target such as an Israeli embassy or VIP is not vulnerable, a secondary soft target might be selected. The July 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association in Buenos Aires is a prime example of this type of attack. It should serve as a warning to Jewish community centers and other non-Israeli government targets everywhere that even non-Israeli Jewish targets are considered fair game.
Man Charged with 'Unregistered Ammunition'
64-year-old Alfred Brock's cheese must have slipped off of his cracker -- but, he may not be the only one who's nuts.
Police arrested [the Winnfield, Louisiana man] near the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday after he drove up to one of the building's barricades with a rifle in his vehicle and told officers that he had a delivery for President Obama...
[Brock] was charged with possession of an unregistered firearm and unregistered ammunition. -- CNN
Unregistered ammo? Now that's crazy!
And Alfred Brock is not alone... -- AP
What's going on in D.C.?
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Men at Work - Land Down Under
Photo by me.
Travelling in a fried-out combie
On a hippie trail, head full of zombie
I met a strange lady, she made me nervous
She took me in and gave me breakfast
And she said,
Do you come from a land down under?
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.
Buying bread from a man in brussels
He was six foot four and full of muscles
I said, do you speak-a my language?
He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich
And he said,
I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.
Lying in a den in bombay
With a slack jaw, and not much to say
I said to the man, are you trying to tempt me
Because I come from the land of plenty?
And he said,
Oh! Do you come from a land down under? (oh yeah yeah)
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Economy for Dummies
h/t: posterous
“We will launch an unprecedented effort to eliminate unwise and unnecessary spending.” -- Barack Obama (campaign pledge.)
Congress Fiddles With $800 Billion 'Spendulus' Package
"We can't do it. We're gonna be in the Hudson." -- Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger, pilot of US Airways Flight 1549 that crashed into the Hudson River on January 15.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Buck Pond
Click photo to enlarge.
Photos by Hugh Morton at Grandfather Mountain, NC.
Puzzle: How many bucks are pictured?
Monkeys Talk About Religion
For starstruck. Alas sir, I cannot fence. ;) - c
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Americans remain divided and confused over the issue of evolution, a study on the eve of Charles Darwin's 200th birthday has found.
A review of data by the Pew Research Center finds that for the past 20 years Americans have remained divided about the origins of life on Earth. The review concludes that about 40 to 50 percent of the public accepts a biblical creationist account of the formation of life.
However, the study said that an August 2005 Gallup poll found that 58 percent of "the public said that creationism was definitely or probably true as an explanation for the origin and development of life, but about the same number also said the same about evolution. Since creationism and evolution are incompatible as explanations, some portion of the public is clearly confused about the meaning of the terms."
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Bring on the Darwin Awards!
Saluting the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it...
The Marc of World War I
Trenches on the Western Front - The badly shelled main road to Bapaume through Pozieres, showing a communication trench and broken trees.
The longest battle and one of the most devastating in World War I, the Battle of Verdun resulted in at least half a million wounded and more than a quarter of a million battlefield deaths. One of those lost was Franz Marc.
Horse in Landscape (Pferd in Landschaft), 1910
Franz Marc (February 8, 1880 – March 4, 1916) was one of the principal painters and printmakers of the German Expressionist movement.
Deer in Forest II (Reh im Wald II), 1912
Most of Marc's mature work portrays animals, usually in natural settings. His work is characterized by bright primary color, an almost cubist portrayal of animals, stark simplicity and a profound sense of emotion, which garnered notice in influential circles even in his own time.
Fate of the Animals, 1913
His best known painting is probably Tierschicksale (also known as Animal Destinies or Fate of the Animals) completed in 1913, which hangs in the Kunstmuseum Basel.
The Sheep (Das Schaf), 1913-14
Marc's name was on a list of notable artists to be withdrawn from combat in World War I. Before the orders were carried out, he was struck in the head and killed instantly by a shell splinter during the Battle of Verdun (1916).
Fighting Forms (Kämpfende Formen), 1914
Some of my favorite paintings by Marc can be viewed at this Franz Marc Gallery.
Why I hate Dimocrats
[warning: strong language]
Why do I hate Dimocrats so much? Let me list some of the reasons.
I hate Dimocrats because they have been taken over by the left wing socialist blame American first crowd.
I hate Dimocrats because they idolize Ted Swimmer Kennedy, an old alcohlic bloviating blowhard murderer. Why do you people in Taxachusetts keep electing this asshole?
I hate Dimocrats because they lionize Robert Sheets Byrd who was once a member of the KKK. Had he not been a Dimocrat when he used the word nigger on national television there would have been an outcry for him to resign.
I hate Dimocrats because they defended a lying, serial sexual harrassing bastard like Bill Clinton. The same people who went after Clarence Thomas for talking dirty excused Clinton for his sexual misconduct. Can you say double standard?
I hate Dimocrats because they hate the military. They can't get enough of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo.
I hate Dimocrats because of Dick Turban Durbin. See above.
I hate Dimocrats because they support the fake feminist Hillary Rodent Clinton.
I hate Dimocrats for what they have done to the public education system in this country.
I hate Dimocrats for supporting bilingual education which is actually an impediment to learning and assimilation. Ditto for Ebonics.
I hate Dimocrats for multiculturism.
I hate Dimocrats for what they have done to the black family. Thanks to Lyndon Johnson's Great Fucking Society, the illegitimacy rate for blacks is close to 80%. Their social programs have created a black underclass mired in poverty and dependent upon the gummint. If the KKK had tried to destroy blacks they could not have done a better job than the Great Fucking Society.
I hate Dimocrats because they castigated Lawrence Summers for daring to suggest that there are actual genetic differences between men and women while at the same time condoned hate speech from Ward "little Eichmanns" Churchill.
I hate Dimocrats because they are against the Second Amendment. I don't want an assault weapon to shoot Bambi. I want it to protect myself.
I hate Dimocrats because they lionize Michael Moore.
I hate Dimocrats for Jimmy Carter.
I hate Dimocrats because they support infanticide partial birth abortion.
I hate Dimocrats because they are more concerned with regaining power than with the defense of this country.
I hate Dimocrats because they want to raise my taxes.
I hate Dimocrats for giving us Cynthia McKinney.
I hate Dimocrats because they give legitimacy to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, a couple of RWPP's (Race Warlord Poverty Pimps), who have become rich while supporting policies to keep blacks poor and dependent upon gummint.
I should hate Dimocrats for giving us Howard Dean, but he is just so farking funny that I should thank them. He just blamed the Supreme Court decision on eminent domain on the Republicans when it was the liberals on the Supreme Court who are at fault.
I hate Dimocrats because the same dipshits who kept saying during the Clinton scandals that we should "just move on" are the same people who keep bringing up slavery©. Ain't it time we just move on from that? It was over 140 years ago. Get the fuck over it! I'm sick of it!
I hate Dimocrats for Jane Fonda.
I hate Dimocrats for John Flipper Kerry. By the way Flipper, when are you gonna release all of your records like you promised to do on Meet the Press? Lying sack of shit!
The Dimocrats used to have some honorable members of their party. Maybe they still do but they're few and far between. They have been taken over by the left wing. These are the people who want the rest of the world to love us. They believe if we just give the terrorists what they want we can all gather around a fire and sing Kumbaya and they will leave us alone. They cannot get it through their thick skulls that the terrorists hate the West and all it represents. They hate Hollywood. All the liberal movie stars would be lined up and killed by stoning because to the Islamic nutjobs they are all adulterers.
These "progressives" want policies that make them feel good, not policies that actually work. Good intentions. That's all that matter. Let's shield our children from failure by not keeping score in games. Let's not use red ink to correct tests. Let's build up their self esteem.
The real world does not give a flying fuck about self esteem. In the real world good intentions do not matter. Only results do.
I hate Dimocrats because they do not live in the real world.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Ted Nugent: If guns cause crime, all mine are defective
"I don't like repeat offenders. I like dead." -- Ted Nugent
Ted Nugent is Visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past
Ebenezer Scrooge should take a life lesson from our ever-endearing NRA member, The Nuge.
Bill "Gun Ban" Clinton is Back in the Saddle
No Surprises Here: Former President Clinton Advocates New Gun and Magazine Ban
With President Barack Obama stating that his "urban agenda" includes reimposing the former federal ban on "assault weapons" and "large" magazines, it's out-of-date to refer to that law as it was known at the time--the Clinton Gun Ban.
On second thought, maybe not just yet.
In January, speaking at a meeting of the anti-gun U.S. Conference of Mayors, former president Bill Clinton took credit for the old ban, praised the Brady Campaign for continuing to lobby Congress for a new ban, and suggested that the mood in Washington might be more favorable toward a ban now than it had been during the last eight years.
Here's what Mr. Clinton had to say:
"[W]e will not go forward anymore, I don't think, with the kind of politics of division and destruction that drug us down for too long. That's essentially what is different, and what creates this great moment of opportunity . . . . to have conversations with people, instead of screaming matches, over things like what former Mayor [now Brady Campaign president Paul] Helmke works on so much—over what is the best way to keep the American people safe. Nobody wants to repeal the Second Amendment, and nobody wants to keep you out of the deer woods, but wouldn't it be nice if your children didn't have to worry about being mowed down by an assault weapon when they turn the corner?"
After the mayors' reflexive applause receded, Clinton continued, this time speaking more broadly than in reference to gun control alone. "[W]e're now in a position to begin again," he said. "It's not a leftward movement. It's a forward, communitarian movement." Communitarianism is a movement that considers individualism an impediment to society uniformly adopting values the movement considers appropriate, including authoritarian gun control. For example, the Communitarian Network platform states "there is little sense in gun registration. What we need to significantly enhance public safety is domestic disarmament of the kind that exists in practically all democracies."
Mr. Clinton did not treat the mayors to a longwinded explanation of the communitarian ideal, nor did he explain that the Brady Campaign no longer advocates merely the reimposition of the Clinton-era ban. Instead, like the Violence Policy Center and Legal Community Against Violence, Brady advocates a much broader federal ban, such as California's or the one proposed by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), which would ban guns made to comply with the 1994 ban (by omitting one or more attachments, such as a flash suppressor), all semi-automatic shotguns, the Ruger Mini-14, the .30 Carbine, the M1 Garand, and other categories of guns and gun parts not affected by the 1994 ban.
Mr. Clinton also praised President Obama's selection of Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State, a position in which Mrs. Clinton could lend support to international efforts to impose gun prohibitions domestically.
It's going to be an interesting four years, to say the least. -- NRA
Iran's Last Dance
Andy Samberg sings a love song to Ahmadinejad on SNL.
By Oliver Guitta, Middle East Times.
This coming week, for an umpteenth time the P-5 plus one – the U.N. permanent five members plus Germany - will meet to talk about Iran and try to adopt a common position. It will be the first time the U.S. Barack Obama administration will take part in the discussions. With an affirmed will of breaking from the precedent administration, the Obama team has a lot at stake. At this point, with Iran inching so much closer to acquiring a nuclear weapon, the next few weeks might be the last chance for a diplomatic solution.
Obama's opening to the Tehran regime has been received quite coldly. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad replied by demanding apologies for the crimes the United States has allegedly committed. He also asked for the U.S. withdrawal from both Iraq and Afghanistan. But that is not all, when it comes to the core issue of Iran's military nuclear program, Aliakbar Javanfekr, a senior aide to Ahmadinejad, stated that Iran had no intention of stopping it.
"Hey, Macarena!"
That sounds pretty definitive. A non-starter, really. Interestingly, the White House muscled up its tone when it warned Iran that military action is still one of the options on the table. But at the same time the very dovish German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier reiterated his view that only diplomacy should be used, therefore removing a large stick from the negotiating table. Indeed, if Iran thinks there will be no major repercussions for defying the international community, then what incentive has Iran to stop? -- more
Khamenei, Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad - "Ghamnahme"
[Please, make them stop! ;)]
Friday, February 6, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Science Project: The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie
Ingredients:
1. 532.35 cm3 gluten
2. 4.9 cm3 NaHCO3
3. 4.9 cm3 refined halite
4. 236.6 cm3 partially hydrogenated tallow triglyceride
5. 177.45 cm3 crystalline C12H22O11
6. 177.45 cm3 unrefined C12H22O11
7. 4.9 cm3 methyl ether of protocatechuic aldehyde
8. Two calcium carbonate-encapsulated avian albumen-coated protein
9. 473.2 cm3 theobroma cacao
10. 236.6 cm3 de-encapsulated legume meats (sieve size #10)
To a 2-L jacketed round reactor vessel (reactor #1) with an overall heat-transfer coefficient of about 100 Btu/F-ft2-hr add one, two, and three with constant
agitation.
In a second 2-L reactor vessel with a radial flow impeller operating at 100 rpm add four, five, six, and seven until the mixture is homogeneous.
To reactor #2 add eight followed by three equal portions of the homogeneous mixture in reactor #1.
Additionally, add nine and ten slowly with constant agitation. Care must be taken at this point in the reaction to control any temperature rise that may be the result of an exothermic reaction.
Using a screw extrude attached to a #4 nodulizer place the mixture piece-meal on a 316SS sheet (300 x 600 mm). Heat in a 460 K oven for a period of time that is in agreement with Frank and Johnston’s first order rate expression (see JACOS, 21, 55), or until golden brown.
Once the reaction is complete, place the sheet on a 25-degree C heat- transfer table allowing the product to come to equilibrium.
Mmmmm, good!
[h/t: Cynical-C]
Parallels With the Great Depression
By Charles Scaliger for The New American
What began early last year as a "credit crunch" and an "economic downturn" is now being characterized as a "long, severe recession." Once upon a time, such a crisis was known as a "depression" before Americans became squeamish about such stark language.
As with our reluctant semantic retreat from "credit crunch" to "recession," the reality of another Great Depression will probably not be acknowledged until years after the fact. But America and the rest of the modern world, by doggedly pursuing the same mistaken policies of the 1920s and '30s, have made a full-blown depression — lasting years, not months, and featuring catastrophic failures in entire economic sectors along with chronic double-digit unemployment and monetary malaise — all but inevitable. In fact, the parallels between the run-up to the Great Depression and today's economic havoc are stunning.
The Roaring '20s, '80s, and '90s
By 1929, the United States — and most of the rest of the industrial world — had been on a nine-year joy ride known as the "Roaring Twenties." It was an age of unparalleled new technology — the heyday of the silent film era and the Model T Ford, and the beginning of radio and commercial air service, among many other modern marvels. The first American generation to consecrate itself to mass entertainment came of age in the Twenties. It was the first recognizably modern decade, and the future, to the flappers, barnstormers, and other bons vivants that characterized the age, looked very bright indeed. Accordingly, it was also an age of bold enterprises — of the beginning of mass production and of skyscraper construction. For the first time ever, Americans had enough extra money to turn sports into a lucrative industry. From the vantage point of the mid-Twenties, the party was never going to end.
Like the Roaring Twenties, the long boom from approximately 1982 to 2000 was characterized by boundless optimism and an explosion of new technology. New forms of mass entertainment — MTV, cable television, video games, and the Internet — proliferated, turning the United States of America into the world's entertainment capital. Men with big ideas — the leveraged-buyout moguls of the '80s and the high-tech wizards of the '90s chief among them — had no trouble finding capital to leverage their grandiose ambitions. Like the Twenties, the last two decades of the 20th century were a time of larger-than-life colossi like Donald Trump, Warren Buffett, and numerous flamboyant entertainers, from rock stars and hectomillionaire athletes to the instant celebrities of reality TV and American Idol. Risk and chutzpah were everywhere rewarded and nowhere penalized, or so it seemed. Old-school caution and frugality were cast to the wind; the world belonged to the extravagant, the glitzy, and the fully leveraged.
But behind these two parallel utopias, separated by more than six decades, lay a common reality that none but a very few astute, well-connected, or economically well-schooled were able to perceive: an artificial economic expansion created by the issuance of vast amounts of paper money. The great episodes of monetary expansion of the '20s, '80s, and '90s resulted from the magic of central banking — in America's case, of the Federal Reserve's ability to create new debt by lowering interest rates far below any rational market pricing. This resulted in years of easy credit, abundant borrowing, and an illusion of far greater prosperity and growth rates than actually existed. The result was cultural and societal no less than economic: because so few Americans, then or more recently, understood how the banking and Federal Reserve System works, the illusion of unnatural prosperity encouraged waste, leisure, and the notion of American invincibility.
In both cases, the party came to a calamitous end. But despite what we assume nowadays, few in the late fall of 1929 — even after the storied stock market meltdown — imagined that more than a decade of economic hardship lay ahead. Indeed, had the federal government, and the Federal Reserve in particular, allowed the crisis to run its course, the American economy during the 1930s would have been far different, probably recovering after a severe recession at the beginning of the decade helped restore sanity to the markets.
Disastrous Intervention
Unfortunately, the Hoover administration chose to intervene in the markets to an unprecedented degree. In 1931, when the banking crisis was in full swing, President Hoover set up the short-lived and ineffective National Credit Corporation (NCC). This government agency aimed to induce banks to pool $500 million to help save failing financial institutions. Not surprisingly, banks, anxious to survive individually, were reluctant to participate. The NCC was only able to raise $150 million, and the program was soon terminated and replaced with the much more ambitious — and intrusive — Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC).
The RFC was not altogether a novelty. It was patterned after the War Finance Corporation (WFC), a government bailout fund set up to allow the government to shore up banks and other financial interests during the First World War. After the end of the war, the WFC, rather than being decommissioned, was transformed into a source of government loans for export industries and the farming sector, in which capacity it operated until the mid-'20s under the energetic leadership of one Eugene Meyer.
Meyer, whom Hoover made governor of the Federal Reserve Board in 1930, was appointed chairman of the new RFC in 1932. According to economist Murray Rothbard, "The RFC could make loans to banks and financial institutions of all types. The theory was that, ensured of freedom from failing, the timid banks would be emboldened to lend massively to business and industry, the money supply would rise, and prosperity would return." Additionally, the RFC was authorized to lend money to railroads, as these were deemed a critical industry in the day, too big and too pivotal to be allowed to fail. To achieve these ends, it was given $500 million outright, and authorized to issue up to $1.5 billion in additional securities — government debt, in other words.
The RFC was an abysmal failure, though not for want of trying. Under Meyer the new vehicle for bank and railroad bailouts doled out money right and left, only to see the bank and railroad failures continue apace. Hundreds of millions of dollars poured down various RFC rat holes were lost forever by hopelessly insolvent institutions whose only remaining aim was to service their debts and provide soft landings for major investors. The promised loosening of credit never took place, and commercial lending all but disappeared. The RFC, in a word, was a huge waste of taxpayer dollars at a time when America could ill afford such coerced largesse.
In our day, Congress allowed itself to be stampeded by President Bush, Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson, and a throng of special interests into passing the now-infamous $700 billion bailout bill that created the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
With its emphasis on bank and financial bailouts, as well as more recent forays into Big Three automotive handouts (today's "too-big-to-fail" transportation sector, precisely analogous to railroads in the early 20th century), TARP is eerily similar to Hoover's RFC. From the results so far, TARP is having no more success than its predecessor organization in rescuing the financial and automotive sectors. At the time of this writing, with the full extent of the original subprime meltdown still unfolding, attention is shifting to banks' exposure to the shaky commercial real-estate and so-called Alt-A mortgage market. On the day of President Obama's inauguration, financial stocks swooned, with money-center and regional banks alike caught in the downdraft. The balance of 2009 will likely see many more bank failures, some of the magnitude of Washington Mutual or greater, while of the Big Three automakers, only Ford appears to have some chance of surviving independently. The still-growing financial storm is likely to take a terrible toll, and the $700 billion from TARP will be wasted just like the RFC's misspent millions.
Scapegoating the Free Market
During the Great Depression, as in our day, politicians and the news media blamed the crisis not on government malfeasance but on a failure of the free markets. This false conceit was responsible for a revolution in the relationship between the federal government and the private sector, transforming America from a free-market system into the largely managed economy that we have today.
One of the first steps taken by President Hoover to regulate the activity of the markets was to compel the New York Stock Exchange to curb the practice of short selling. Short selling, whereby an investor borrows securities for immediate resale at a high price, expecting to repurchase them at a lower price, return them to the lender, and pocket the difference, has long been held up as a scapegoat during financial downturns dating all the way back to the 17th-century Dutch tulip market mania. Short selling, however, is merely a way of making money when the market is down, the inverse of purchasing securities in the expectation of profiting from a rise in value. Unlike a straightforward stock purchase, short selling can be a very risky enterprise. Imprudent short selling has ruined many an investor, and the inherent risks associated with the practice act as powerful disincentives. At the same time, short selling acts as a natural counterpoise for the irrational exuberance of the herd that sometimes tends to propel stock valuations to unrealistic highs.
Nevertheless, Wall Street short sellers in the '30s bore the brunt of Hoover's wrath. Later, during the FDR administration, the newly created Securities and Exchange Commission formalized restrictions on short selling in the so-called uptick rule, which from 1938 until July of 2007 imposed a lower limit relative to previous sale prices on the prices of shares sold short. In this way, the ability of selling short to blunt unwarranted rises in stock prices was severely curtailed.
Not long after the repeal of the Depression-era "uptick rule," the stock market began to fall from its dizzying mid-decade gains. Unsurprisingly, the Bush administration on July 15, 2008, imposed restrictions on selling short shares in Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and 17 investment banks, in a desperate bid to keep these institutions' inflated share prices from falling still further. The ban was subsequently lifted, although a similar ban in the UK remained in force until mid-January. However, if the stock market malaise continues into the Obama administration, as it is likely to do, expect restrictions and even an outright ban on short selling (a truly calamitous step) to be foisted on already exhausted investors and financial markets.
The Roosevelt administration that followed President Hoover further compounded the economic crisis that had become a depression by effectively nationalizing the entire economy. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 imposed a welter of new federal regulations on banks and the rest of the financial sector, mandating among other things an artificial separation of commercial and investment banking. The Securities Act, passed the same year, created the overweening Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), an entity that, like the rest of FDR's New Deal, had no constitutional legitimacy whatsoever and inflicted immense regulatory damage on the securities markets.
In our day, with a decades-old precedent for federal control over banking and finance, further federal controls likely to be imposed by Congress and the Obama administration will meet little principled resistance and, like the original New Deal, will only serve to further hamper the workings of the free market.
International Currency Crisis
The Great Depression, like the current crisis, was an international phenomenon. Bank failures, unemployment, and other economic problems took their toll across the entire industrial world. This was because central banks overseas did the same thing the American Federal Reserve did during the Roaring Twenties — printed money. They did this in a desperate attempt to rescue the ailing pound sterling, at that time the world's de facto international currency. Britain had gone off the gold standard with the rest of the belligerent nations in World War I, and had printed vast sums of pounds to finance the war effort. After the war, however, rather than accept the consequences in the form of a depreciated pound, Britain insisted on instituting a gold-exchange standard with other industrialized countries, with the pound valued at pre-war par. This meant that, although a true gold standard had been abandoned, foreign investors, banks, and government could still redeem pounds sterling in gold.
But if the artificially high valuation in gold were upheld, the precious metal would leave British shores as foreigners rushed to redeem overvalued pounds — unless other central banks could be persuaded to cooperate by debasing their own currencies in tandem with the pound.
The Americans proved particularly cooperative in this regard, thanks to the chummy relationship between Montagu Norman, the governor of the Bank of England, and Benjamin Strong, the head of the New York Federal Reserve and de facto boss of the entire Federal Reserve System. All through the '20s, Strong, at the behest of Norman, who traveled frequently to New York to cement the relationship, kept the Fed pumping new dollars into the economy, with most Americans oblivious to the fact that the artificial economic boom thereby created was a consequence of Benjamin Strong's desire to please the British banking establishment. When the bust hit, therefore, all of the major currencies had been massively inflated and their respective economies succumbed to the inevitable downturn.
The pound sterling, that supposedly indispensable currency, continued to be touted as unassailable, with Norman and the rest of the British financial nomenklatura promising that Britain would never default on her obligations to redeem the pound in gold. Yet in late 1931, after repeated assurances to the French, Dutch, and other large holders of pounds in reserve, the British government did precisely that, touching off an unprecedented international monetary crisis. In the havoc that followed, Britain and most of the rest of Europe went off even the gold-exchange standard, adopting for the first time an international fiat money regime (money not backed by a precious metal). The United States retained a gold standard, but, under FDR, that too was abandoned, although the dollar remained on an international gold-exchange standard until the Nixon administration.
The international currency crisis that accompanied the collapse of the gold standard in the early '30s prompted calls to "fix" the international currency markets by creating an international financial authority to restore order. The one concrete step in this direction was the establishment, in 1930 and at the behest of Montagu Norman, of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, a sort of bank for central bankers. Yet the BIS could neither forestall the abandonment of the gold standard (if such were ever its objective) nor mitigate the monetary chaos that followed.
The next attempt at an international financial order came in summer of 1933 with the World Economic Conference in London, convoked under the authority of the League of Nations. The purpose of the conference, to set up some kind of international stabilizing mechanism for the world's beleaguered currencies, was hampered from the start by widely divergent opinions among the participating nations as to the proper course to follow. France, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland, for example, doggedly clung to the gold standard, while America, enamored of the new doctrine of monetarism (that is, of pursuing inflationary policies to keep the economic pump primed), had no use for what it viewed as outmoded restraints. The conference accomplished little except to prefigure the creation of the first true global financial regime at Bretton Woods little more than a decade later.
In our time, the dollar has replaced the pound as the world's currency. No longer restrained by the inhibiting factor of a precious-metal standard, the American government has for decades been willing to print dollars almost without limit, and the rest of the world has been willing to accept them on trust. However, the Federal Reserve has for many years collaborated closely with the world's other major central banks, coordinating its inflationary policies to ensure that everybody else (or at least those responsible for the so-called "hard currencies") is inflating in tandem with the United States.
And once again, when the inflationary chickens came home to roost, the crisis was and is international. The deluge of easy money worldwide has brought about an avalanche of bankruptcies and a burgeoning global recession. Other governments worldwide are pursuing feckless bailouts and other interventionist policies similar to those of our own government, with similarly negative results.
Parallel Problems and Pressures
And just like in the '30s, pressure is building for a new international financial regime — for the same political and financial elites who created the problems to try to solve them. This time around, the inaugural conference was held not in London but in Washington, at the behest of the UN and other modern global authorities rather than the old League of Nations. And as in 1933, the participants in the recent international economic conference expect their efforts to culminate in a Bretton Woods-like revolution in international finance.
In sum, very little has changed in 70 years except the names of the actors. Given how closely events in 2008-2009 have tracked those of 1929-1933, it appears increasingly probable that the consequences of those actions — a lengthy, debilitating depression — will be the same as well.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
asea
Photo by JPC Photography. Click image to enlarge.
David Gilmour - Red Sky At Night
Dave Gilmour, the voice and the guitar of Pink Floyd, at the Royal Albert Hall, in London. Beautiful. Live.
Obama and the Treatment of Terrorist Suspects
By Fred Burton and Ben West, Stratfor
U.S. President Barack Obama signed an executive order Feb. 1 approving the continued use of renditions by the CIA. The order seems to go against Obama’s campaign promises to improve the image of the United States abroad, as renditions under the Bush administration had drawn criticism worldwide, especially from members of the European Union. The executive order does not necessarily mean that renditions and other tactics for dealing with terrorist suspects will proceed unchanged, however.
Obama came into office promising changes in the way the United States combats terrorism. One of these changes was a new emphasis on legal processes and a shift away from controversial methods of treating terrorist suspects, like rendition, harsh interrogation techniques and secret prisons. The Obama administration can and will roll back some of these tactics, as demonstrated by the president’s Jan. 22 order to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. But some will continue.
Renditions and the Legal Process
Renditions are a powerful tool for counterterrorism operations. They involve agents moving into a foreign country to execute a warrant. Once the fugitive is located, agents track, seize and transport him out of the country for interrogations, or to stand trial, as in the cases of Lebanese hijacker Fawaz Younis, CIA shooter Mir Amal Kanzi, 1993 World Trade Center bombers Abdel Basit (aka Ramzi Yousef) and Mahmud Abouhalima, and even Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (aka Carlos the Jackal).
Some of the individuals targeted for renditions have warrants out for their arrest, but are taking refuge in countries that either lack the law enforcement capability to capture them or cannot arrest and extradite them for political reasons. By contrast, the renditions where there is no indictment or warrant and where the suspect is transported to a secret prison for interrogation and detention without a public trial are far more controversial. Renditions of either kind virtually always occur with the knowledge of the host country, and usually with the host government’s express consent. (Few countries wish to shelter suspected terrorist masterminds.)
Renditions thus involve legal questions as much as they do diplomatic questions. Before renditions can be carried out, the Washington bureaucracy kicks into full swing. The U.S. State Department must consider the diplomatic ramifications. The ambassador in the host country must consider his or her position and judge the response of his or her contacts in the host country government. The U.S. Justice Department must also sign on. Finally, the agency in charge of actually nabbing the suspect must be willing to work within any restrictions imposed by any one of the many individuals who must approve the operation.
Even when the government ultimately deems a rendition operation legal, numerous factors can still stymie the effort (not least of which is that by the time all the necessary approvals have been obtained, the window of opportunity to nab the suspect might have closed). So while Obama’s executive order in theory permits renditions, it is only one part of the whole process; the appropriate members of Obama’s administration must also be on board.
Many members of the Obama administration also served in the Clinton administration, which was widely seen as considering all legal ramifications of potential renditions before taking any action. As a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, new Attorney General Eric Holder enjoyed a reputation for deliberating on renditions to the point of inaction — effectively vetoing such operations.
While an appearance of greater attention to the law might come as a relief to many, actors in the field do not have the luxury of endless deliberation and total consensus — they have a narrow window of opportunity in which to act on perishable intelligence. Assuming that Obama’s administration acts with deliberation and pursues consensus building (as he himself has emphasized, and has demonstrated in the bipartisan nature of his Cabinet selections), the legality of renditions might become moot if they are not agreed upon in a timely manner. There is a fine line to walk between efficiency and legality in this field, with extremes on either side being detrimental to national security.
By their very nature, renditions are ad hoc and rarely fit into a nice, clean process, something that explains their controversial nature. They frequently occur in countries allied to the United States, meaning the practice falls outside the scope of war. And renditions resulting in suspects’ standing trial are far less controversial than those involving secret prisons, harsh interrogation tactics and reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations — tactics disfavored by the Obama administration.
Alternatives to Rendition
Apprehending suspects in foreign countries does not always involve controversial tactics. U.S. counterterrorism officials also use tactics abroad that are not forbidden under U.S. law, though they might be illegal if used within the United States (and could well be illegal in the country where U.S. agents employ them). In general, such tactics remain constant as administrations change. These tactics include surveillance of foreign targets, ruse operations and economic incentives and punishments to encourage cooperation in counterterrorism efforts.
Ruse operations, a less controversial way to apprehend fugitives than renditions, involve deception, obviating the need to jump through the bureaucratic hoops required for renditions. Ruse operations involve luring suspects to a location where U.S. agents can apprehend them legally. This involves persuading targets to venture into international waters, for example, or even to travel to the United States, where U.S. agents lie in wait.
While such tactics avoid the legal complexities surrounding renditions, they are extremely difficult to carry out. Suspects worth chasing around the world typically are not overly gullible, and know where it is safe to travel. So while there is no reason to believe that ruse operations will cease anytime soon, successful ones are few and far between.
Sometimes killing a terrorist target is both more efficient and less legally complex than renditions or ruse operations. Tactical strikes, such as the unmanned aerial vehicle-launched missile strikes against suspected al Qaeda targets in Pakistan, both remove a suspected terrorist target and avoid drawn-out legal processes. Like its predecessor, the Obama administration apparently sees striking at al Qaeda targets along the Pakistani-Afghan border as acceptable within the scope of the ongoing war in Afghanistan, despite Pakistani protests. The latest such U.S. strike came Jan. 23, just three days after Obama took office. Given the administration’s presumed hesitation based on legal reservations and an unwillingness to expand warfare beyond the Afghan theater, this tactic is unlikely to pop up in other areas of the world without a serious threat escalation.
Secret Prisons and Interrogation Issues
Obama on Jan. 22 also ordered the CIA to close its secret prisons around the world that hold detainees without adhering to U.S. legal standards. Because fewer than 100 detainees were held in these prisons, however, this is a minor point.
A different executive order also issued Jan. 22 applied the interrogation guidelines outlined in the U.S. military field handbook and the Geneva Conventions to the CIA. Obama and Holder also have made it clear that the new administration views waterboarding as torture and thus illegal, settling the debate on the matter.
Still, it is only a matter of time before new techniques used by interrogators in the field will face questions of legality and morality. No national leader can micromanage at the field level. Even though the Justice Department and senior White House officials in the Bush administration signed secret findings authorizing the CIA to conduct waterboarding in specific cases, tactical, field-level topics do not stick around at the level of national policy for very long.
With secret prisons on the way out, more restrictions on how agents act in the field and an expected decline in renditions, a greater U.S. reliance on third countries to carry out rendition operations is possible. During the Clinton and Bush administrations, countries like Egypt and Jordan were known to cooperate with U.S. agencies in detaining and interrogating prisoners.
Critics claimed that relying on third countries exploited a loophole that allowed the United States to see that unsavory acts were committed without directly carrying them out. Obama’s emphasis on using diplomacy to improve the U.S. image in the world suggests that his administration will turn to other countries for counterterrorism assistance instead of operating unilaterally. Obama already has asked for other countries to help out more in Afghanistan (specifically European countries). Obama might also tap third countries like Portugal, Switzerland or Germany to take in detainees leaving Guantanamo who are not sent back to home countries like Yemen and Saudi Arabia after the facility’s closure. Working with these countries to ensure safe delivery of the detainees out of U.S. custody will remove a lightning rod for criticism of the United States in the Muslim world.
Delegating counterterrorism responsibilities to other countries allows the United States to avoid the legal complexities inherent in renditions, secret prisons and harsh interrogation. But ultimately, increased reliance on other countries with different interests can enhance the overall complexity of missions. It is also important to remember that the United States possesses one of the most capable counterterrorism forces in the world, and that other countries simply cannot carry out the same missions that the United States does. This is not to say that pursuing U.S. interests abroad does not call for diplomacy (which is one of the administration’s main tools to fight terror), but that seeking international approval and establishing legal cover does reduce efficiency and restrain U.S. capabilities. Finding the balance between fighting terror efficiently and remaining within legal boundaries will be a key challenge for the Obama administration.
136 UFOs Violated U.S. Restricted Airspace
No, they weren't little green men in flying saucers but, any one of them could have been "terrorists on a plane" with their sights on the next U.S. target.
A startling report from the Government Accountability Office states that there were about 3,400 reported violations of restricted U.S. airspace in the three years immediately following 9/11 (from September 12, 2001, to December 31, 2004.)
Though the report was quick to point out most of the illegal fly-overs were committed by general aviation pilots, it seemed to downplay the amount of incidents where the plane was not identified, graphing the percentage of occurrences (4%) rather than reporting an actual figure.
Simple math reveals that total to be 136 incidents where the FAA could not identify the plane executing the restricted fly-over.
According to FAA, here's how restricted fly-overs are handled:
FAA controllers are to advise the pilots to change their course or altitude if they are on a course toward prohibited or restricted airspace without authorization, or if they are circling or loitering over a sensitive area. Sensitive areas include airspace over dams, nuclear and electrical power plants, chemical storage sites, the location of the President, or military facilities.
If a violation is imminent or underway, responding agencies have only limited time in which to decide what actions to take. Nonetheless, the agencies need sufficient time to try to determine the pilot’s intent and, if necessary, to order, scramble, and launch DOD or DHS aircraft to intercept the violator.
That's not very comforting and neither is the GAO's conclusion: The possibility remains that terrorists might deliberately enter restricted airspace to observe the government’s response or to carry out an attack.
President Bush was surely tested. Obama most certainly will be too.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Screening Quiz
Do you excessively wash, clean, or groom?
Ever caught yourself checking light switches, water faucets, the stove, door locks, or the emergency brake?
Find out if you might need to see a mental health professional for diagnosis and treatment of OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) -- or other disorders such as adult ADD, depression or schizophrenia.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Screening Quiz
~ ~ ~
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Alice in Chains - Rooster (Vietnam Veterans Tribute Edition)
Alice in Chains - Rooster (Vietnam Veterans Tribute Edition)
Ain't found a way to kill me yet
Eyes burn with stinging sweat
Seems every path leads me to nowhere
Wife and kids household pet
Army green was no safe bet
The bullets scream to me from somewhere
Here they come to snuff the rooster
Yeah here come the rooster, yeah
You know he ain't gonna die
No, no, no, ya know he ain't gonna die
Walkin' tall machine gun man
They spit on me in my home land
Gloria sent me pictures of my boy
Got my pills 'gainst mosquito death
My buddy's breathin' his dyin' breath
Oh God please won't you help me make it through
Here they come to snuff the rooster
Yeah here come the rooster, yeah
You know he ain't gonna die
No, no, no ya know he ain't gonna die
~ ~ ~
Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Remembrances, poems, photos, letters, and citations honoring those named on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, DC.
The Thomas Jefferson Workout
Charcoal drawing by Saint-Mémin
In a letter to Peter Carr dated August 19, 1785, Thomas Jefferson writes:
... consider what hours you have free from the school and the exercises of the school. Give about two of them, every day, to exercise; for health must not be sacrificed to learning. A strong body makes the mind strong.
As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body, and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks.
Never think of taking a book with you. The object of walking is to relax the mind. You should therefore not permit yourself even to think while you walk; but divert your attention by the objects surrounding you.
Sculpture by Donald De Lue
Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far. The Europeans value themselves on having subdued the horse to the uses of man; but doubt whether we have not lost more than we have gained, by the use of this animal. No one has occasioned so much, the degeneracy of the human body. An Indian goes on foot nearly as far in a day, for a long journey, as an enfeebled white does on his horse; and he will tire the best horses.
There is no habit you will value so much as that of walking far without fatigue. I would advise you to take your exercise in the afternoon: not because it is the best time for exercise, for certainly it is not; but because it is the best time to spare from your studies; and habit will soon reconcile it to health, and render it nearly as useful as if you gave to that the more precious hours of the day.
A little walk of half an hour, in the morning, when you first rise, is advisable also. It shakes off sleep, and produces other good effects in the animal economy. Rise at a fixed and an early hour, and go to bed at a fixed and early hour also. Sitting up late at night is injurious to the health, and not useful to the mind. -- source
[Puts on running shoes and heads out of the door... with my gun. ;) ]
Original art with brush pens by Chris Samnee
Monday, February 2, 2009
America's Top Cop on the 1st and 2nd
First Amendment
Eric Holder: I Would Restrict the First Amendment on the Internet
Second Amendment
Eric Holder: After Heller, Restrictions on Gun Ownership Could Still be Legal
During Holder's confirmation hearing, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) questioned Holder's stance on a Supreme Court ruling in June that affirmed the right to have weapons in the home for self-defense.
"I understand that the Supreme Court has spoken," Holder said, adding that he thought restrictions on gun ownership could still be legal. -- source
Terror Top 10
Iran, North Korea and Al Qaeda are still top concerns for the intelligence community, but Iraq is out of the top 10 list of national security threats facing the U.S. this year, says the outgoing CIA chief.
Iran, North Korea and Al Qaeda are still in, but Iraq is out of the list of top 10 national security threats the United States is likely to face in the coming year.
As Leon Panetta faces a Senate confirmation hearing this week to be the next CIA director, outgoing CIA Director Michael Hayden says several regions and disputes could create serious headaches for the intelligence community in 2009.
Hayden, a Pittsburgh native, put together his list on the way back from a recent Steelers game. It will not be formally presented to his successor, but it does represent the top issues Hayden anticipates will be faced in 2009.
"This is an informal list that I kind of jotted down, what are the things I would fret about over the next 12 months," he told FOX News in the second of two interviews about the nation's greatest security challenges.
"I don't want to get in the business of suggesting ways to threaten the well-being of the planet, but frankly that is what we are in the business of thinking about every day here with our analytic workforce."
Hayden said top of the list is still Al Qaeda, which has been working on expanding its associations with other groups around the world. Hayden said this development is particularly troubling because groups like Lashkar-i-Tayyiba, which was responsible for the attacks in Mumbai last November, start to think outside their region and focus on the United States and elsewhere.
"There was a migration in Lashkar-i-Tayyiba thinking over the past six, 12, 18 months, in which they began to identify the United States and Israel as much as being the main enemy as they have historically identified India. That is a troubling development. And now suggests that this migration of Lashkar-i-Tayyiba to a merge point (with Al Qaeda) is probably taking place," he said, noting that the CIA could not confirm with confidence that Americans were specifically targeted during the Mumbai attack.
"As Al Qaeda has become more franchised -- whether it is in Yemen or Somalia or in North Africa -- you've got other people working, and if these truly are franchises, these aren't people who accept fully ... operational plans from Al Qaeda central. And therefore you might see a greater variety of approaches, a greater variety of threats, based upon the thinking of each of these local groups," Hayden warned.
Hayden said he didn't include Iraq in the top 10 because things are looking up in that country, which just held peaceful, provincial elections this weekend.
"Iraq is there. And if I did this two or three years ago, it would have been up there right under Al Qaeda. And I don't mean we don't have to worry about it. And I don't mean that we don't need to be careful as to how we draw down coalition forces. But when I look at what is going on there, there are a fair number of positive trend lines that have to continue to be nurtured. But they are positive trend lines," he said.
"I don't mean to ignore it. I don't mean to suggest that this is something in which you can turn off the lights. What I mean to suggest is, this is a success. This is something different than it was a year or two ago," Hayden continued.
Below is Hayden's top 10 list gathered from the two interviews, with warnings and explanations for his concerns.
1. Al Qaeda: "It is the organization that has the capacity to most threaten the physical safety of America and Americans. So it remains job No. 1. And we have talked about some successes and so on, but it is resilient, and therefore we have to continue to keep an eye on Al Qaeda," he said.
2. Violence in Mexico: "Our good friend and neighbor Mexico had this horrible surge in violence that may cause -- in fact has caused -- us to talk with our Mexican friends, in more meaningful and deeper ways, to discover ways that we can cooperate against what we now view to be, and has always been, a common problem. ...
"What you've got is President Calderon, very heroically, taking on drug cartels that I think everyone agrees threaten certainly the well-being of the Mexican people and the Mexican state, and taking them on in a very, very progressive way. Now, it is not quite the same thing as Colombia, where you had a politically motivated movement, the FARC, merging with narcotics organizations. Here it is largely in the business of crime but the effects could be just as dangerous, certainly to the well-being of the Mexican people."
3. Iran's nuclear program: "I included Iran, in terms of as they move forward in their own decision-making process, as they continue to churn out LEU, low enriched uranium, they do it at great cost, diplomatically and economically with regard to sanctions. They seem to be doing it with a purpose. As that quantity of that stockpile grows, you would think that at some point in that process, they are going to have to make a decision as to what it is they are going to do with it. So that is something we have to keep a close eye on as well."
4. Europe and the War on Terror: Hayden said he believes that real substantive issues separate the U.S. and Europe in executing the War on Terror. He said "growing daylight" separates the allies and it's not a question of "personalities."
5. Instability caused by the low price of oil: "The price of oil is another thing that is not quite a crisis, but it is destabilizing," he said. "As oil goes under about $40 a barrel, it probably doesn't have a big impact in Russia, which has a large (economy) and frankly invested pretty wisely. I'm not sure that it doesn't have more of an impact in Iran and in Venezuela. When (global) oil is about $40 a barrel, t