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Saturday, October 31, 2015

Message from Clock Boy

Muslim ‘Clock Boy,’ Ahmed Mohammad, has a Daylight savings message to make sure you don’t forget to set your ‘bombs’ back by an hour. 


Egyptian Television: Burn the Jews

(John Hinderaker)

MEMRI translates this edifying colloquy between “Dr.” Muhammad Khaled, Egyptian television host, and his guest, Islamic History Professor Yusri Ahmad Zidan. Professor Zidan helpfully explains that throughout history, the “solution” to the Jewish “problem” has been to burn them. Hey, the Crusaders and the Nazis both did it! (Wait, I thought the Crusaders were supposed to be bad…) This kind of incitement to mass murder is commonplace in the Islamic world. It also passes for higher education, which, if you think about it, explains a lot:

  

Read More Here

Untangling America from the American Empire

Untangling America from the American Empire

The Status Quo would have us believe that America and its Empire are one entity. This is handy for those with Imperial designs but it is false: America could be untangled from its Empire, and many of us believe it is essential that America untangles itself from its Imperial structures and ideologies.

What I call The Imperial Project was cobbled together in the aftermath of World War II, when the Soviet Union and America posed an existential threat to each other’s ideologies and systems.It may be hard to believe, but the U.S. did not have a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or other espionage/intelligence gathering agency prior to World War II.

America had no spy agency and no Black Operations/Special Forces capabilities. The National Security State as we know it today did not exist.

Though the Deep State has long been an essential feature of the American power structure, the post-war Deep State extended its reach globally in ways that the pre-war Deep State could not.

I have covered the Deep State for many years:

Surplus Repression and the Self-Defeating Deep State (May 26, 2015)

Is the Deep State Fracturing into Disunity?(March 14, 2014)

The Dollar and the Deep State (February 24, 2014)

Many people naively think all that’s needed to end the Imperial Project is close America’s overseas military installations and end the endless wars of choice.While the eradication of the neo-conservative Imperial agenda would be a welcome first step, it would only be a first step, as I explained in You Can’t Separate Empire, the State, Financialization and Crony Capitalism.

To untangle America from its Imperial Project, we also need to end financialization and crony-state-capitalism, both of which are key features of the Imperial Project. what better way is there to extend influence than exporting inflation and offering limitless credit in U.S. dollars?

What better way to skim the profits from trade than importing materials and goods and exporting fiat currency?

Those calling for an end of the Empire don’t seem to realize that the federal state’s vast entitlement programs are ultimately funded by the Empire: not directly, but indirectly via its ability to foist trillions of dollars of debt on the world economy.

The believers that hot wars are all there is to the Imperial Project fall silent when their share of the swag might be threatened. Unsurprisingly, we want the financial benefits of Empire but recoil at the entanglements of Empire.

Imperial Rome offers a useful template for what happens when the domestic populace gets dependent on Imperial wealth: the notion of sacrifice for the nation goes out the window and bread and circuses become the sole source of state legitimacy.

Needless to say, collapse follows these developments like night follows day.

For America to come home and untangle itself from the Imperial Project, it will have to do more than not meddle in everyone else’s affairs; it will have to learn to live within its means–what it earns from producing goods and services, not what it skims from global financialization.

Untangling America from the American Empire was originally published on Washington's Blog

Death of Common Sense

 "An Obituary printed in the London Times.....Absolutely Brilliant!!"


Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:
 
- Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
- Why the early bird gets the worm;
- Life isn't always fair;
- And maybe it was my fault. 


Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge). 


His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition. 


Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.
It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion. 


Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.


Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement. 

 

Common Sense was preceded in death, 
-by his parents, Truth and Trust,
-by his wife, Discretion,
-by his daughter, Responsibility,
-and by his son, Reason.
 
He is survived by his 6 stepbrothers;
- I Know My Rights
- I Want It Now
- Someone Else Is To Blame
- I'm A Victim
- Pay me for Doing Nothing 

- Black Lives Matter


Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.

Editorial: The Ferguson effect

Editorial: The Ferguson effect

By Herald Staff11 hours ago

In two speeches just days apart, the head of the FBI indicated in no uncertain terms that he buys into the so-called Ferguson effect theory - that the fact that cops on the beat are haunted by the growing number of investigations and protests over police shootings in minority communities may well be linked to an uptick in violence in those communities.

James Comey told the International Association of Chiefs of Police annual convention that "part of the explanation" for a recent spike in crime "is a chill wind blowing through American law enforcement over the last year."

"That wind is surely changing behavior," Comey said. "Part of that behavior change is to be welcomed, as we continue to have important discussions about police conduct and de-escalation and the use of deadly force. Those are essential discussions, and law enforcement will get better as a result.

"But we can't lose sight of the fact that there really are bad people standing on the street with guns. The young men dying on street corners all across this country are not committing suicide or being shot by the cops. They are being killed, police chiefs tell me, by other young men with guns."

Sure, the availability of drugs and the light sentences for drug-related crimes he cited as other contributing factors. But the kind of police restraint that some communities are demanding can't help but make some officers rethink the way they do their jobs.

In an earlier speech at Chicago Law School, Comey raised exactly that question:

"In today's YouTube world, are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime? Are officers answering 911 calls but avoiding the informal contact that keeps bad guys from standing around, especially with guns?"

Boston has been more fortunate than most major cities in large part because police have been proactive in reaching out to minority community leaders before potentially volatile incidents escalate. What Comey referred to as the ever-widening "arcs" that separate the "Black Lives Matter" crowd from the "Police Lives Matter" folks aren't quite so unbridgeable here.

What we can all learn from the director's speech, however, is that making sure those "arcs" don't grow wider is important - and it's everybody's job.

Republicans beating Clinton, Dems in Wall Street donations

Republicans beating Clinton, Dems in Wall Street donations
By Jonathan Swan and Harper Neidig - 10-31-15 06:00 AM EDT

Hillary Clinton — who used lavish donations from New York’s financial district to fund her career as a U.S. senator — is struggling to reclaim the advantage she once held over Republicans.  

Instead, Wall Street donors are favoring Republicans over Democrats in the 2016 campaign — a reversal from the last time Clinton ran for president when she and then-Sen. Barack Obama out-raised their GOP rivals with the financial sector’s cash. 

In fact, despite lagging in the polls, performing poorly in debates and being nowhere near as sure a bet as Clinton is for his party’s nomination, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) has so far taken more than five times as much Wall Street money as Clinton into his campaign and super-PAC. 

Bush has already raised more than $30 million from Wall Street, according to an analysis of the latest Federal Election Commission data by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics done for The Hill, which looked at donations from a range of firms in the commercial banking, securities, and investments industries.  

Clinton, on the other hand, has received just $5.9 million from Wall Street into her campaign and super-PAC, less than half of that raised by Tea Party conservative Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who received $12.5 million, most of which came from hedge fund magnate Robert Mercer. 

Clinton has raised only slightly more financial sector money than struggling Republican candidate Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.), who has taken in $5.2 million.  

Wall Street donors began moving away from Democrats during Obama’s first term. After charming hedge fund managers and investment bankers during his campaign of “hope and change,” Obama, once in office, quickly angered these same supporters when he passed the Dodd-Frank regulations on the financial industry. 

Their frustration was exacerbated when, in an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes, the president said he did not run for office to help out “a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.” 

One donor who supported Obama in 2008 but backed Romney in 2012 is New York financier Anthony Scaramucci, currently a Bush fundraiser. 

"I support[ed] Senator Obama because of our law school connection and I thought he would be more moderate. Nothing more," said Scaramucci, describing himself as a "lifelong Republican." 

Asked whether he thought Obama's "fat cat" comment had any influence on Wall Street donors leaving the president for Romney, Scaramucci replied, "That was one of the reasons, and also the anti-business rhetoric." 

When Obama first ran, Wall Street donors spent nearly double on the Democratic presidential candidate as they did on his rival, Arizona Sen. John McCain.  

Yet by the end of the 2012 campaign, Wall Street donors had given $64.3 million to Mitt Romney and $19.3 million to the same man they had poured money into just four years before and who was running as the sitting president.  

Such a drastic switch of support is historically remarkable. CRP's analysis shows that campaign contributions from the financial sector have historically been fairly evenly divided between parties, though with a slight bias toward Republicans.  

Embodying that Wall Street cash migration is hedge fund billionaire Daniel Loeb who, after giving Obama's campaign the maximum $2,300 contribution in 2008, switched his support to Romney in 2012. Loeb, who ultimately spent more than $130,000 opposing Obama last election, has not yet given to any presidential candidate this cycle, according to FEC records.  

Showing his frustration with Obama during the president’s first term, Loeb reportedly wrote in a letter to his investors: “So long as our leaders tell us that we must trust them to regulate and redistribute our way back to prosperity, we will not break out of this economic quagmire.” 

Through a spokeswoman, Loeb declined to comment for this article. 

A number of Wall Street donors who supported Obama in 2008 and switched to Romney in 2012 told The Hill they would not return to Democrats this election.  

In a phone interview, one such donor said that in 2008, he got "swept up" by the enthusiasm of electing the first African-American president and by Obama's promise to transcend partisanship. Now he feels burned by Obama.  

"I know a lot of us will not be going back [to Democrats]," the donor said, speaking on condition of anonymity so as not to draw unwanted attention to his bank. 

Yet despite Obama's relative unpopularity with Wall Street, Clinton could not entirely blame the sitting president for being so far being behind Bush with financial sector cash. 

The Democratic Party has moved sharply against Wall Street and toward economic populism since Clinton last ran for president. Her rival Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is thrilling the party's base by using the same bank-bashing rhetoric that has made Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren the party's liberal hero. 

A Sanders stump speech typically involves a call to “break up” the big banks, a proposal to fund free college education by putting “a tax on Wall Street speculation” and a tirade against a “billionaire class” that he blames for America’s social and economic malaise.  

While Clinton has not gone so far as Sanders in attacking Wall Street, the fact that she felt obliged to defend the very concept of capitalism during the last Democratic debate suggests how far leftward the party has swung from her husband's centrist administration. 

An example of Wall Street’s switch in party allegiance can be found by examining the donation records of executives at Goldman Sachs.  

In 2008, Goldman Sachs employees overwhelmingly supported Democrats in general, and Obama in particular. By the end of the campaign Obama had received $1 million from the firm’s employees compared with $231,000 for McCain. 

But in 2012, Goldman Sachs staff — who were portrayed largely by Democrats as pariahs during the financial crisis and whose CEO Lloyd Blankfein was publicly castigated in a Democrat-led senate hearing — swung their financial support behind the Republican candidate for president. Romney ended up receiving $1 million from the firm, more than five times as much as Goldman Sachs staff gave to Obama over the course of the election.  

Clinton has long enjoyed friendly relations with Goldman Sachs. The investment bank’s employees are her second most generous company donors over the course of her political career, according to CRP's analysis.  

Yet so far in 2016, the firm’s employees have donated just $67,000 to Clinton's campaign. Bush’s campaign has already received $198,000 from Goldman Sachs.  

A spokesman for Goldman Sachs declined to comment on the donation patterns of the company’s employees. 

One of Bush’s biggest donors, who works in finance, says it is no secret that Wall Street would prefer Clinton to Obama. 

“Ninety percent of Wall Street hates Obama,” the donor said in a phone interview. “Actually, I shouldn't say 90 percent, that's a bit harsh. What I mean is they know they'd be better off with Hillary.”   

So far, though, that has not been evident.

GOP Media Takedown: A Recipe for Victory

Friday, October 30, 2015

Vets appalled at 'Muslim Brotherhood float'

Vets appalled at 'Muslim Brotherhood float'

Muslim influence in America is on the rise. Above, a public street is closed for Friday prayers in Paris, France

Oklahoma’s Muslim community is breaking new ground.

For the first time, they will have a float in the Veterans Day Parade in downtown Tulsa, and a local newspaper reports that not all parade participants are happy about it. Namely, U.S. military veterans.

“It’s something we have been wanting to do for years,” Adam Soltani, executive director of the Oklahoma Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the Tulsa World.

Soltani said the float is sponsored by CAIR-Oklahoma but will “represent the Oklahoma Muslim community, which is a very diverse community of people from all walks of life, immigrants, indigenous people.”

Like in most states, the vast majority of Muslims in Oklahoma are immigrants, not “indigenous people,” say those who follow the U.S. immigration and refugee trends.

Because of the U.S. refugee resettlement program, the Muslim communities are no longer concentrated just in large cities like New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Chicago. These communities are increasingly being “seeded” by the U.S. State Department in smaller communities in middle America such as Twin Falls, Idaho; Dodge City, Kansas; Spartanburg, South Carolina; Bowling Green, Kentucky; and Tulsa, Oklahoma.

According to U.S. government databases, 2,483 refugees from Muslim countries have been sent from United Nations camps directly to Oklahoma since January 2002, the earliest date for which data is available online. This also does not include any Muslim immigrants who have entered the U.S. on work or student visas, which likely would encompass several thousand more at major Oklahoma universities.

CAIR does its best to project an image of American Muslims being well integrated and loyal Americans.

“We support all veterans, and we support our country, so I don’t see why anyone should have any concerns about CAIR being involved (in the Veterans Day parade),” Soltani told the World.

“We are an American Muslim organization, and American Muslims support their government, support their country and definitely support our troops who are working to defend our constitutional rights and our freedoms,” he added.

Soltani said many U.S. Muslims have served in the armed forces and that two veterans are on the CAIR-Oklahoma board.

Veterans push back

But Larry Williamson, a member of the Tulsa 912 Project, a conservative organization, told the World it is “atrocious” to ask veterans to “march alongside people who represent our enemies in a current war.”

“I believe all American entrants who the parade is intended to honor should be made aware as soon as possible that they are being asked to share their honor with the Muslim Brotherhood, sworn enemy of the United States and our ally Israel and an enemy in our current war on the Islamic jihad in which American soldiers are fighting and dying,” he said in a letter to the Tulsa World.

Making matters worse for Williamson, he told the World his Tulsa 912 Project float is scheduled to be in line right next to the CAIR float in the parade.

“I’m not a spokesman for Tulsa 912, but I won’t march alongside the Muslim Brotherhood,” he told the newspaper.

Williams refers to CAIR as the “Muslim Brotherhood” because of documents filed in court records from the Holy Land Foundation trial naming CAIR as a Brotherhood front group.

The ‘Muslim Mafia’

Williamson told the World the FBI has identified CAIR as an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. CAIR has consistently stated it has no connections with any terrorist groups yet the United Arab Emirates and other Arab countries have included it on their terrorist watchlist and banned its members from entering their nations.

As WND has reported, 14 former CAIR officials have been investigated or charged in cases involving terrorist activity.

See WND’s Rogue’s Gallery of terror-tied CAIR officials.

As former FBI agent Mike Rolf acknowledges in his book, “Muslim Mafia,” “CAIR has had a number of people in positions of power within the organization that have been directly connected to terrorism and have either been prosecuted or thrown out of the country.”

According to another FBI veteran familiar with recent and ongoing cases involving CAIR officials, “Their offices have been a turnstile for terrorists and their supporters.”

Patsy Varnell, vice president of the Tulsa Veterans Day Parade Association, confirmed to the World that CAIR-Oklahoma’s application to be in the parade has been approved.

“The parade is nonreligious,” she said.

“We feel that we are exercising the rights established by the Constitution of freedom of speech, and this group has the right to participate. We do not want any problems, but we have to be fair to everybody,” Varnell said.

Ronda Vuillemont-Smith, president and founder of the Tulsa 912 Project, said the group is not asking that CAIR be removed from the parade but that parade organizers “be honest and open and let people know that they are in.”

“My concern is that the parade committee was trying to keep this information out of the public eye,” she said.