The International Monetary Fund has warned of "worrisome parallels" between the current global crisis and the Great Depression, despite the unprecedented steps already taken by central banks and governments worldwide. This recession is likely to be "unusually long and severe, and the recovery sluggish," said the Fund, releasing two advance chapters from its World Economic Outlook. However, it warned there is a risk that it could spiral down into a full-blown slump unless further action is taken to stop "feedback effects" gathering force. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF, said millions of people risk being pushed back into poverty as the economic storm ravages the most vulnerable countries. "The human consequences could be absolutely devastating. This is a truly global crisis, and nobody is escaping," he said. "The free-fall in the global economy may be starting to abate, with a recovery emerging in 2010, but this depends crucially on the right policies being adopted today." Mr Strauss-Kahn called for a urgent action to "cleanse banks" of toxic assets and for further fiscal stimulus beyond the 2pc of global GDP already agreed. The snag is that high-debt countries may have hit the limits already. "The impact becomes negative for debt levels that exceed 60pc of GDP," said the Fund. While no countries were named, this would raise questions about Japan, Germany, France, Italy and ultimately Britain and the US after their bank rescues. The IMF said the US is at the epicentre of this crisis just as it was in the Depression, setting the two episodes apart from normal downturns. However, the risks are greater this time. "While the credit boom in the 1920s was largely specific to the US, the boom during 2004-2007 was global, with increased leverage and risk-taking in advanced economies and many emerging economies. Levels of integration are now much higher than during the inter-war period, so US financial shocks have a larger impact," it said. The IMF said the global financial system is still under acute stress, with output tumbling and inflation falling towards zero in key nations. "The risks of debt deflation have increased," it said. Abrupt halts in capital flows can have "dire consequences" for emerging economies, it said. Eastern Europe has already suffered the effects, with a 17.6pc fall in industrial production in February. The region is highly vulnerable to the credit crunch since it owes more than 50pc of its GDP to Western banks. Synchronised world recessions striking all major regions are "historically rare" events, the Fund said. They last one and a half times as long typical downturns, and are followed by painfully slow recoveries. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/5166956/IMF-warns-over-parallels-to-Great-Depression.html
Schakowsky: Tea parties "despicable"
The Hill Briefing Room April 16, 2009 Eric Zimmermann
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) blasted "tea party" protests yesterday, labeling the activities "despicable" and shameful."
"The ‘tea parties’ being held today by groups of right-wing activists, and fueled by FOX News Channel, are an effort to mislead the public about the Obama economic plan that cuts taxes for 95 percent of Americans and creates 3.5 million jobs," Schakowsky said in a statement.
"It’s despicable that right-wing Republicans would attempt to cheapen a significant, honorable moment of American history with a shameful political stunt. Not a single American household or business will be taxed at a higher rate this year. Made to look like a grassroots uprising, this is an Obama bashing party promoted by corporate interests, as well as Republican lobbyists and politicians.” This is the strongest language to date opposing the protesters, which, according to some estimates, topped 250,000 across the country.http://www.aipnews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=3885&posts=1
Actually it was over a million across the country
1 million attend tea parties in 50 states'Obama has awakened a sleeping giant'
...Tax Day Tea Party national event coordinator Amy Kremer told WND she has confirmed that more than 850 parties took place. She has at least 100 more reports in her e-mail inbox that have not been posted.
...The largest protests occurred in Atlanta
, Ga., with 15,000 participants. As many as 10,000 protesters participating in Sacramento, Calif., and Overland Park, Kan., according to data compiled by Americans for Tax Reform on more than 207 tea parties.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=95230
A shot in the dark: Solving Somali piracy April 17, 2009 - 12:39am
J.J. Green, WTOP Radio
WASHINGTON - The U.S. military operation that stymied Somali pirates' attempt to bargain for freedom using a merchant marine in the dead of night lifted the veil off of a new reality.
With the expansive 1.1 million square miles of Gulf of Aden and the Somali coast as their office, there's no real way to stop them short of hunting them down and killing them.
The U.S. military recognizes what it's up against.
"On the continent itself, in all our consultation with our partners... all recognized this is a significant problem that needs to be resolved and dealt with and made to go away," says Vice-Admiral Bob Moeller, deputy to the commander for military operations at the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM).
And eventually, AFRICOM may join the fight.
"Conceivably, at some point in the future," Moeller says. "It is our responsibility to deal with it, assuming that it becomes a U.S. government policy decision that one way or another we would be involved in it."
But future encounters with the pirates may not be as easy as the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips appeared.
Despite the fact that three Navy Seals killed three pirates with one shot each while coping with the rolling waters of the Indian Ocean in the dark of night from a considerable distance, their task was "very simple," says Fred Burton, vice president of counter terrorism at Strategic Forecasting.
"You have a U.S. flagged carrier, U.S. victims, extra territorial violations of U.S. law that gives us the authority to go in and resolve this issue. It's very clean and very clear cut," Burton says.
But, Burton adds, "if you take this crew and make them a multi-national crew, there is no doubt that this would be still going on."
The U.S., according to Burton, would struggle with solving an international situation -- much the same as it struggled to become aware of the situation on the ground in Somalia in 1998.
"From an intelligence perspective, we've been struggling with collection efforts since the East African Embassy bombings," Burton says.
That was 11 years ago, and Burton says the United States' failure to gather enough intelligence is self-inflicted.
"To be blunt, this one of the areas that we've neglected for years for a host of different reasons," Burton says.
Among those reasons are the "lack of bandwidth, lack of resources, coupled with other global military commitments," Burton says.
With al Qaida's home-grown terrorist ideology catching fire in Somalia, experts say the virtually-lawless nation crawls with militias and terrorists eager to carve out their own territories.
The pirates, obviously, rule the water. But there are concerns about connections between them and the other, land-based actors.
Some in the intelligence community don't see it.
"No not really," says a U.S. counter-terrorism official, who requested anonymity.
The official says the terrorists - like the al Shabab terrorist organization -are too busy.
"Al Shabab has new recruits coming in and they have to train them. They also face some pretty significant resistance from groups inside Somalia. The pirates are driven by interest in money. Think of pirate activity in Somalia as gang activity elsewhere. We see very little nexus to terrorism. But we can't can't rule out the possibility that some of the pirates have come in to contact al Qaida or al Shabab," U.S. counter-terrorism official says.
Whether they are connected or not, the consensus of military and intelligence officials recognize the solution is not a water-based one.
"It is widely recognized that ultimately, the solution to the challenge of piracy as it emanates from the shore is to address the challenges ashore that lead to these young men being inclined to take up pirate activities as opposed to having something else productive to do," Moeller says.
An unnamed U.S. military source who has served in that region agreed, saying whatever approach is taken has to be managed correctly because "dealing with them can suck us in really fast if events go down badly."
The comment was a clear reference to the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, when American soldiers were killed and some dragged through the streets.
"We're way ahead in the game now when it comes to awareness and capability. Conventional things like satellite imagery, aerial reconnaissance of pirate bases along shore," the military source says.
The source adds there are some more "exotic tools" ready to be exploited.
"Use your imagination," the source says. "If you're looking to understand what's going on, telephonic observation in the cell phone spectrum can get you a long way. In addition, there are over-head assets, air breathing and non-air breathing."
A big advantage for any U.S. effort to reel in piracy, according to the source, is to utilize on-land, terrorist-targeted intelligence gathering operations already in place, which the source says "could pick up collateral intel from the pirates as well."
Helping to solve the piracy problem is just one of many on Moeller's plate at AFRICOM.
"It is certainly a very, very complex situation," Moeller says.
Although ready for a fight, AFRICOM was not set up for that purpose, Moeller says.
The goal was to prevent conflicts.
"That is still the intent," Moeller says. "At the top of our list was working with our partner nations on building their capacity such that we could work with them to help them set the conditions for security and stability in their respective countries on a regional basis."
Without question, the piracy problem - which has ballooned from two in January and February to 15 in just the last month - is a clear threat to security throughout the region.
That, in addition to the killing of at least one hostage and threats to kill any Americans that can be found on the high-seas, has taken the problem to a new level.
http://wtop.com/?nid=778&sid=1651792
Return to the Constitution, We’ve had enough of big government
How to save America
By Henry Lamb Sunday, April 19, 2009
There is only one way to save this great nation: by returning to the principles of freedom set forth in the U.S. Constitution. This week, hundreds of thousands of people expressed their frustration with government-gone-wild by gathering in more than 300 cities across the nation in modern-day “Tea Parties.” That is T-E-A - as in Taxed Enough Already – parties. The common theme among all these people is – “we’ve had enough of big government!”
The U.S. Constitution limits the power of government, but government has consistently ignored those limitations. The only way to reverse the trend of ever-expanding government is to return to the Constitution.
All the energy on display this week cannot simply fade away. It must be channeled into a constructive focus that will make a difference. One way to help restore the U.S. Constitution is to require that every new legislative proposal specify the chapter and verse of the Constitution that authorizes the proposal. If every Congressman had to specify exactly where the Constitution authorizes his proposed legislation, there would be much less legislation proposed.
Arizona Representative John Shadegg has been trying to get Congress to enact such a law since 1994. Every Congress since 1994 has killed the bill in committee.
If all this Tea Party energy were focused on getting every Congressman to co-sponsor Representative Shadegg’s bill, Judicial Committee Chairman John Conyers could not kill the bill. He would be forced to allow the bill to go to the House floor for a recorded vote.
Co-sponsorship of this bill -
A constituent of Tennessee Representative John Tanner called his elected official with a request that Representative Tanner co-sponsor HR450, and to confirm by e-mail that he would co-sponsor the bill or explain why he would not. To be sure the Congressman got the message, the constituent sent the same question via e-mail through an e-mail form on the Congressman’s web site.
The reply from the Congressman thanked the constituent for the letter and offered the usual mealy-mouthed reply that the Congressman would keep the constituent’s concerns in mind if the bill came to a vote.
The constituent tried to reply to the Congressman’s e-mail, but the Congressman’s system blocked all replies. Another phone call to the Congressman’s office produced a staffer who said the Congressman would “probably not” co-sponsor the bill, and that he would not explain why.
Hundreds of people around the country had a similar experience with their congressman. This kind of arrogant indifference to the wishes of the people who pay the salaries of these representatives is what brought the throngs of people into the streets this week. Finally, there may be enough outrage growing to really make a difference.
What better litmus test could there be? If a congressman is not willing to support the Constitution that he swore an oath to defend, he or she has no business in Washington. Every congressman who refuses to co-sponsor HR450 – or provide an acceptable, written reason why not – should be identified and made a target for replacement.
What a great campaign issue for another candidate who can campaign on the fact that, for example, John Tanner refuses to support the U.S. Constitution by refusing to co-sponsor the Enumerated Powers Act, and furthermore, he refuses to explain why he will not.
It is high time to get rid of all these Democrats and Republicans who care so little about the Constitution – and their constituents – that they routinely allow the Enumerated Powers Act to die in committee year after year.
Now is the time to find out where your congressman stands on this issue. Now is the time to be finding an alternative candidate. In less than a year, incumbents will be sending out their fund-raising literature and making their token appearances back in the district. If they will not co-sponsor the Enumerated Powers Act, show up at their meetings carrying signs for their opponent.
The energy generated by the Tea Parties this week cannot be allowed to dissipate. The Tea Parties were just the first round of a world championship fight. The second-round should be flooding Washington with multiple requests for every Congressman to co-sponsor the Enumerated Powers Act. The third round should be identifying those Congressmen who will not support the Constitution by co-sponsoring and voting for the Enumerated Powers Act, and targeting them for replacement. The fourth round should be finding a viable alternative candidate – as quickly as possible. And the fifth round is to begin now to build support for the new candidate throughout the district.
The sixth round, of course, begins the rest of the fight, by replacing the bums who won’t support the Constitution with new legislators who will. Election time will be here before you know it; now is the time to start saving America by returning to our roots – the U.S Constitution
http://frc4u.org/phpbb/index.php?topic=957.0;topicseen
The Looming Threat of a Nuclear Iran - By Bob Feferman
Following the election of Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister of Israel, we have seen a growing trend belittling the concerns of Netanyahu over the threat of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons. These commentators contend that Iran is not really a serious threat to Israel or to world peace, and what really drives Iranian foreign policy is self-interest and survival rather than any evil intenions. This assertion flies in the face of reality and ignores basic historical facts. Armed with nuclear weapons, Iran would make the Middle East a much more dangerous part of the world. Israel has every right to be concerned, and so should all of us who value freedom.
The premise that Iran's key motivating factor is survival ignores the events of the past 30 years. Look at the list of Iranian sponsored terror attacks over this period, and you'll understand that these events had nothing to do with the "survival" of the Iranian regime. Indeed, the Islamic Republic of Iran has a much more sinister agenda in mind.
Iran's sponsorship of terror began in the 1980's. The government of Iran was responsible for masterminding the 1983 attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon that killed 241 Americans who were sent there on a peacekeeping mission. Those Marines were certainly no threat to the new Islamic Republic of Iran.
No one can claim that U.S. foreign policy during the Clinton era was a threat to anyone, yet Iranian sponsored terror actually increased during this period. In 1996, Iran was responsible for the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Dahran, Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. airmen who were supporting the U.N. mandated "no-fly zones" over Iraq. Few Americans know that it was also during this period that Iran reached out to the new terrorist on the block- Osama Bin-Laden.
A little-known report titled "Iran's Proxy War Against America" authored by researcher Thomas Joscelyn should be required reading for those who truly want to understand the Iranian threat. In this eye-opening report, Joscelyn uses open sources, such as the government's 9/11 Commission Repott, to document Iran's assistance to Al-Qaeda both directly and indirectly through Hezb'allah. Joscelyn presents clear evidence of Iranian support for Al-Qaeda in preparing the devastating 1998 attacks on two American embassies in Africa. All of this leads to evidence of Iranian logistical support for Al-Qaeda in the attacks on September 11th, 2001.
In his book, Countdown to Crisis, author Kenneth Timmerman provides credible evidence that Iranian leaders were directly involved in assisting the Al-Qaeda leadership in carrying out the attacks on the United States on 9/11/01. According to Timmerman, this assistance was coordinated through a visit by the son of Osama Bin Laden four months before the attacks. In this visit, Bin-Laden met privately with the top leadership of the government of Iran for several hours. In the aftermath of the attacks, the United States government's 9/11 Commission verified that 10 of the 19 hijackers came out of Afghanistan and passed through Iran on their way to the attacks. There can be no doubt that this cooperation was the result of the Bin-Laden visit.
The removal of both Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan eliminated serious threats to the survival of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Yet, since the American overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, Iran has been directly responsible for the deaths of American soldiers in those countries. General David Petraeus said that Iran "has been responsible for providing the weapons, the training, the funding and in some cases the directions for operations that have killed U.S. soldiers".
Although Israel has never threatened the destruction of Iran, the government of Iran threatens to destroy Israel on a regular basis. Indeed, it is Iran's obsession with the destruction of Israel that has brought it to become the chief sponsor of terror organizations like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad who are dedicated to Israel's destruction.
Since 2000, Hamas has carried out dozens of suicide bombing attacks and launched thousands of rockets against Israeli civilians. Without Iranian sponsorship, Hamas would be out of business thus eliminating the threat of Hamas from Gaza that precipitated the recent Israeli military operation.
The governments of Iran and Syria, co-sponsors of the Lebanese terror organization Hezbollah, were directly responsible for supplying Hezbollah with the 4,000 rockets that were fired on civilians in northern Israel during the summer of 2006 that killed 43 people and wounded hundreds. Following the war, Iran worked to restock Hezbollah's supply of rockets, arming the terror organization to beyond pre-war levels, in direct violation of U.N. Security Council resolution 1701. Hezbollah also has a global reach that goes far beyond the Middle East and stands ready to serve Iran.
In 2006, following a lengthy investigation, Argentina formally accused the government of Iran for its responsibility in masterminding the 1994 attack on the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people. Hezbollah carried out the attack on behalf of the government of Iran. Specifically named in the accusation were former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani and seven others.
None of these atrocities can be justified for any reason, and they certainly have nothing to do with the "survival" of the government of Iran. There is, however, a much more sinister goal for Iranian sponsored terror: exporting its revolution.
The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said, "Our nation's most important mission is to introduce the Islamic Revolution to the whole of mankind". It is no coincidence that the task of exporting terror is assigned to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The Qods Force branch of the IRGC has been designated as a terrorist supporting organization by the U.S. government subject to additional sanctions for its support of Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.
An Iran armed with nuclear weapons would use its nuclear umbrella for its terror proxies to bully and intimidate the oil-rich Middle East into submission. If a nuclear-armed Iran told its neighbors to raise the price of oil in order to bleed the west, they would certainly comply with the words, "Yes, Ayatollah".
Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute of Stanford, wrote about the nervous atmosphere in the oil-rich Persian Gulf following his recent trip to the region. In an article titled "Downwind from Iran", he wrote that Kuwait and Dubai "...both view Iran as a destabilizing expansionist power seeking regional hegemony in the Gulf, preeminence in the greater Middle East, and leadership in the worldwide Islamic revolution".
Since the goal of Iran is exporting the Islamic revolution through its sponsorship of terror, things will only get worse if we allow the world's leading state sponsor of terror to acquire the ultimate weapon of terror. We ignore this threat at our own peril.
http://frc4u.org/phpbb/index.php?topic=953.0;topicseen
I voted for Alan Keys when he ran for the Senate of Maryland. He did not have a chance, but i don't necessarily vote for who can win, i'm responsible to someone else one day and always keep that in the back of my mind, when i vote.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Fifth Column Conservatives
Webster's online dictionary defines the phrase >"fifth column" as "a group of secret sympathizers of an enemy that engage in espionage or sabotage within defense lines or in national borders."
This phrase has been much on my mind of late as I consider the bloodless coup d'état that is currently underway in the United States. In speech and deed the Obama faction has displayed its intention to overthrow the Constitution of the United States. The faction's claim to presidential power rests on an overt act of contempt for the authority of the U.S. Constitution (Obama's refusal to submit for scrutiny (as John McCain did) proper evidence that he satisfies the Constitution's eligibility requirements for the Presidency.) The destruction of the private sector economy is well under way; along with denial of the effective basis for anything like private property (the term means nothing if the government can at will and without due process of law dictate its disposition. No due process, as required by the 5th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, will be involved in the exercise of the Treasury Secretary's discretionary authority to hire, fire, set salaries, etc. in any business enterprise with a government funded credit line.) The Obama faction's majority in the Congress has asserted a patently unconstitutional power to dole out voting privileges in the legislative branch of the U.S. government without regard to the Constitution's language restricting such voting privileges to states, or voting districts within them. They aim to take steps that infringe the right to keep and bear arms explicitly protected by the Constitution's second amendment and that implicitly removes the freedom from governmental coercion in matters of religious conscience explicitly protected by the first amendment (for instance, by to participate in the pagan practice of child sacrifice disguised as a medical procedure). Obama apparently has no problem with legal appointees who advocate the absurd view that Islamic sharia law can be implemented in the United States despite its grotesque inconsistency with Constitutional provisions that forbid cruel and unusual punishment and that demand equal protection of the law for all persons (without, for example, the against females routinely found and practiced under sharia law.)
Faced with all this evidence that regime change is the goal of the Obama faction, conservatives whose understanding of the term includes support for our constitutional republic have been bucking the tide of slack-jawed adulation promoted by the Obama faction's media claque. We have been hard at work trying to awaken people to the fact that there's nothing "business as usual" about the Obama faction's challenge to American freedom. It is nothing short of a politically implemented insurgency. Here and there it's meeting pockets of resistance on particular issues, with words and arguments mostly oblivious to its general significance. Not much further down the road (after the Census has been rigged and enough illegals added to the voters' rolls to swing any election), the political liberty for which so many Americans risked and gave their lives will be gone. I live in hope that as the true nature of their goal becomes obvious to more and more people, even some of those gulled by phony charisma and false claims of historic significance will realize that the loss of their participation in America's historically unique exercise of democratic, republican self-government is too much of a price to pay for guilt about racism. I live in hope that they didn't mean for their votes to end government of, by and for the people.
As it turns out the greatest threat to the effort to dispel complacency before it's too late doesn't come from the Obama faction. They have moved with alacrity to implement their agenda. Like a brake impaired double truck trailer hurtling down a steep incline, their excessive speed stirs up a gust hefty enough to shake the unwary from their stupor, provided no one explains it away as a harmless passing breeze. But stamped with a phony imprimatur of "conservatism" are doing just that. At first people like this resisted the idea that we should call Obama a socialist, as I did during my campaign against him in Illinois in 2004. Now they themselves admit his socialism, but claim that it's a benign variety, well known in Western Europe to have caused no more than a mild epidemic of productivity-stifling bureaucracy, with no jackboots in sight. The smug epithets and ridicule once reserved for anyone who wouldn't call a socialist a "liberal" is now heaped upon anyone who calls Obamacytes by their right names. They are advocates of cult-of-personality fueled submission to pervasive government control (complete with Hitler Jugend style reeducation of the young as uniformed "mandatory volunteers" programmed for loyal subservience to "the leaders" will). But the Devil take anyone who identifies them by the labels historically associated with the strikingly similar Nazi, Fascist, Stalin- and Maoist models of totalitarian socialism that wrecked havoc in the twentieth century. Obamacytes could sing the praises of Che Guevara to the tune of the waving Mao's little Red Book in the air in time to the music and these so-called conservatives would chide the 'hotheads, birthers and fringe loonies' who dared to notice the obvious. I suppose we must wait until they have consolidated their power and are emboldened to eliminate their opposition before we act on the hard lessons of all too recent history.
The best way to handle the threat from such totalitarians is to make sure they never reach that point. But the 5th column conservatives seem bent on making sure no one is moved to united political action to thwart the coup before it's too late. What's their motive? Well, the definition of a 5th columnist assumes they nurture a secret allegiance to the enemy's objectives. I believe that the most reliable outward sign of that allegiance appears in relation to the controversies that strike at the moral foundations of liberty, where these false flag conservatives can pretend to question the political relevance of the issues involved. Of course, as such military theorists as Sun Tzu and Clausewitz understood, the ultimate aim of all action in war is to destroy the moral cohesion of the enemy. In violent warfare, that usually comes as an after effect of the successful application of physical force. In politics, it comes first.
What do you think are the most reliable markers of 5th column conservatives? I've asked fellow users of Twitter to share their flashes of insight on this. Why don't you join us? While you're at it, leave a bit of your wisdom in the comments section here. One way or another it may help to open some eyes.
http://loyaltoliberty.blogspot.com/2009/04/fifth-column-conservatives.html
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