Monday, October 13, 2008
US Commander: Too Early to Leave Anbar Province
By Kristen Noel
American Forces Press Service
Despite transitioning Anbar province to Iraqi control last month, it’s still too soon for US troops to withdraw from the region, the commander of Multinational Force West said.
“We certainly do provide a sense of security for the locals here in Anbar, as they work things out amongst themselves in the province,” US Marine Maj. Gen. John Kelly said in an Oct. 10 teleconference with bloggers and online journalists.
More than 25,000 US Marines remain in the province, Kelly said, with additional support from the other services bringing the total up to 27,000 US troops in Anbar. They are providing overwatch to the Iraqi security forces, he said, who assumed prime responsibility for the security of the province in last month’s turnover.
“We support [the Iraqis] when they need help,” Kelly said, “but they’ve pretty much got it and are running with the ball.”
The reason US troops cannot withdraw outright, Kelly said, is a lingering threat from al-Qaeda. “Anbar province…used to be the most dangerous province in the country, primarily because of Al-Qaeda.”
The terrorist organization still exists in the province as “very loosely organized” individual cells, he said, but they’re no longer considered an insurgency because they’ve lost the support of the local people.
“So the insurgency is dead,” Kelly said, “but Al-Qaeda still has – like a snake when you cut its head off – has got a little bit of bite and a little bit of venom.”
Another concern, he pointed out, is Al-Qaeda is still an insurgency in other parts of the country including Mosul and Baghdad.
“So, it’s not quite time to withdraw,” he said, “particularly since…Anbar province is part of a country that…has still got quite an insurgency on its hands being pushed back every day.”
US forces need to continue providing a stability presence in the province, Kelly said, to support the security forces until the underlying threats diminish and to help the civil authorities who are still learning their jobs.
“If we were to pull those props out too early,” Kelly said, “that would, I think, be problematic.”
Muslim 'Moderate' Condemns Capitalism
Foreign Confidential....
An extremely influential, so-called moderate Sunni cleric based in supposedly moderate Qatar has urged Muslims across the world to exploit the global financial crisis.
"The collapse of the capitalist system based on usury and paper and not on goods traded on the market is proof that it is in crisis and shows that Islamic economic philosophy is holding up," Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi said Sunday.
The Egyptian-born religious leader, who has long been associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, added: "The Western system has collapsed and we have a complete economic philosophy as well as spiritual strength. All riches are ours... the Islamic nation has all or nearly all the oil and we have an economic philosophy that no one else has," Qaradawi said."
Addressing a conference on conquering Jerusalem, Qaradawi urged Muslims to "profit from the crisis to bring about the triumph of the (Islamic) nation, which holds the spiritual and material resources for victory."
The sixth conference on Jerusalem is being attended by around 300 people representing political parties as well as Muslim and pro-Islamist, anti-israel Christian NGOs, from various countries.
The three-day conclave is staged by Al-Quds (Jerusalem) International Institution, which is outwardly dedicated to the conservation of the holy city and its sacred places.
Participants include Khaled Meshaal, exiled head of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, and Ali Akbar Velayati, a top adviser to Iranian spiritual leader Ali Khamenei.Democrats Push New Party Line On Barack Obama Citizenship Issue: He's a Citizen 'Cause We Say So
China Confidential has learned--from Democratic Party sources--that the new party line on Obama's citizenship is that the candidate's refusal or inability to release an authentic birth certificate does not matter. The issue is irrelevant, Democratic strategists say.
Also irrelevant, according to the Constitution-be-damned Democrats, is the Indonesian school registration certificate submitted by his stepfather, an Indonesian Muslim, Lolo Soetoro, listing Obama's citizenship as Indonesian, his name as Barry Soetoro, and his religion as "Islam" ... in keeping with Islamic religious law, which traces a person's religious identity through the father. Obama's biological father was a non-practicing Muslim from Kenya.
Obama, Democratic insiders assert, is a natural-born US citizen--and therefore Constitutionally qualified to be President of the United States--simply because they their adoring mainstream media say so.
So there.
Stalin would be so proud.Sunday, October 12, 2008
McCain is Wrong About The Mysterious Mr. Obama: He May Not be a Citizen, and His History is Scary
I have to tell you he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as President of the United States.
He's a decent family man...... [a] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. That's what this campaign is all about.
-John McCain
John McCain is both right and wrong about his opponent. Barack Obama certainly seems like a decent family man. But he may not be a citizen of the United States. Seriously. His candidacy could be unconstitutional; his campaign, a monstrous scam. He may not even be a naturalized citizen. Scroll down for the story and accompanying video interview, which the Obama-backing mainstream media is ignoring.
And, contrary to McCain's astonishing assurance to his followers that there is nothing to fear if Obama wins the election, his record of associating with radicals and extremists tells this reporter that Americans have a lot to fear. Click below to watch Obama promising one of the nation's most radical, anti-democratic organizations, ACORN, that he will incorporate their views in his domestic policy agenda.Lawsuit Filed by a Philadelphia Lawyer and Lifelong Democrat Claims Barack Obama Was Born in Kenya
A lawsuit, Berg v. Obama, brought by Philip J. Berg, a Philadelphia attorney, alleges Obama is not eligible to be president.
Instead of producing records proving Obama is a natural born citizen, Obama and the Democratic National Committee have filed a motion seeking a protective order to block production of documents until a motion to dismiss is the law suit is ruled on by the court. Obama and the Democratic National Committee also claim attorney Berg has no standing--has no right--to bring the lawsuit.
What is it that Obama and the Democratic National Committee are trying to hide?
Why not just produce documents that prove Obama's citizenship and make the lawsuit go away?
Click below to watch the video in which Berg makes a convincing case for the legitimacy and importance of his lawsuit. Not only is Obama not a natural-born citizen, according to the complaint; he is not even a naturalized citizen. Another 1929? It Could be Worse
Dateline USA....
Here's why the current financial crisis could be worse than 1929: the US economy is fundamentally unsound. So the recession could turn into a depression with no solution in sight.
The middle class could be permanently pauperized; the working poor, reduced to an underclass at the margins of human existence. Homelessness and starvation could become commonplace.
Remember that it was World War II that pulled the US out of the Great Depression of the 1930s. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, the country was able to tap its idle but still strong productive capacity, retool, and rearm, and go on to win he war. The US was then able to retool again to create the world's strongest economy in the 1950s.
But that productive capacity no longer exists. It has been outsourced and hollowed out; the manufacturing and jobs, shipped abroad, along with massive amounts of capital that could have been deployed at home in productive ways.
Truth be told, it will take another war--this time, for energy independence and energy security--to put the economy on the right track. Not a phony war for phony "alternatives"--but a real war for real energy. Not a push for government mandated and government subsidized "green energy," but a drive for drilling, here and now, because there simply is no alternative in sight to the oil on which our entire civilization runs and will continue to run for the next two decades. Phony alternatives and make-work jobs will make matters worse, and ironically increase rather than decrease our dependence on foreign oil.
The way forward actually lies in the past in terms of getting back to basics--to mining, drilling, and manufacturing--and to effectively incentivising US capital to invest in the US.
That means putting an immediate end to both greedy globalization and green fascism at the expense of industrialization and job creation. The Goring of America must stop.
Like John McCain says, it's time to put country first.Campaign 2008: Censorship Breeds Fear
Dateline USA....
With 23 days to go in the US Presidential campaign, the mood has turned ugly. Anti-Obama racist utterances and violent threats have been heard at McCain-Palin rallies. The trend is dangerous, disgusting--and downright un-American--and Senator McCain, to his credit, is right to oppose it. Even as he lags in the polls, McCain is showing that he has the courage of his convictions to put country first at the risk of alienating some of his own supporters.
The Republican candidate wants to win, alright, but there are limits to his ambition, depths to which he will not stoop. He is an honorable, decent man--nothing like your typical politician.
That said, the issue of Obama's past associations and possible ties is important, especially in a time of war against real enemies who really want to destroy the United States and its strategic ally, Israel. And the issue is not merely one of "character." The word is campaign code and mediaspeak for ideology. Try as he might to hide the fact, the Democratic candidate has a disturbing history of siding with and being helped by individuals whose political ideas are (thankfully) abhorrent to most Americans. Given Obama's mysterious background--the fact that he may be a dual- or triple-citizen, that he denies his Muslim birth (according to Islamic religious law) and Muslim upbringing, and has apparently gone out of his way to hide and downplay his ties to Muslim supremacists and other anti-American radicals--it is only natural that the prospect of his Presidency frightens many voters. It doesn't help matters that Obama's personality cult--which he has shown no signs of discouraging--is unlike anything ever seen in this country's political history.
Obama should have been thoroughly vetted long ago. But the Obama campaign and an adoring mainstream media (except for Fox News) have effectively ruled out--essentially prohibited--probing of the Democrat's background. The censorship and self-censorship--it is even forbidden to utter or publish Obama's Arabic middle name, Hussein--only fuels fears and suspicions on the part of conspiracy-minded Americans that a fix is in-that the country's political establishment and ruling elite have picked Obama as the winner.
Clearly, the left-leaning mainstream media have been derelict in their duty in avoiding legitimate leads and electing not to investigate Obama. More important, editors, reporters, anchors and producers have been complicit in an unprecedented politicization of what nowadays passes for the press. They have directed the debate and controlled and managed the news agenda in order to assure their most favored candidate of a victory next month, if not an outright landslide.
Not since the 1930s have the waters been this uncharted.Saturday, October 11, 2008
Price of Oil Could Fall to $50 a Barrel
Foreign Confidential....
The price of crude oil is heading south, and that's a good thing--contrary to the insane views of no-drill US Democrats and other environmental extremists who want oil prices to remain high in order to justify government mandates and subsidies for unreliable, uneconomical "green energy."
Saudi Arabia, which has the world's largest proven oil reserves, is wisely resisting pressures from OPEC price hawks Iran and Venezuela to cut oil production in order to support and increase prices.
Whereas, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez need $100-a-barrel oil to fund their mad schemes and dreams, the Saudis can live with $60 oil, even $50 if need be. They know that high oil prices have hurt the world economy; as businessmen, the Saudis want to keep their customers alive, not kill or cripple them.
Oil fell $6.94 to $79.65 per barrel Friday at mid-day amid panic-selling of equities across the world's stock markets.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Except for gold, commodities are "a sinking ship." Click here.Farrakhan Proclaims Obama the Messiah
On Rebuilding the American Economy
Dateline USA....
Where is the voice for rebuilding the American economy through re-industrialization?
America's fundamental problem is that the economy is fundamentally unsound. it is hollowed out--a consumer economy that depends on persuading people to buy stuff they don't need with money they don't have.
That's a cruel scam, not an economy.
In other words, stabilizing the markets and solving the unprecedented liquidity crisis is only the first step. Long-term, what is needed is a plan to seriously incentivise American companies to manufacture, mine, and drill in America.
What is needed is a plan to reverse the dash to cash--and bring American capital home.
A nation's strength depends on its productive capacity. Incredibly, America fooled itself into believing that financial instruments, fast food, and films could substitute for factories, oil wells, refineries and power plants.
Who's to blame? Everyone--meaning, Republicans and Democrats. The former raced to the bottom in search of offshore cheap labor; the latter embraced environmental extremism to block industrial growth and expansion. Both parties put Main Street last and Wall Street first by backing globalization.
Neither Presidential candidate seems to get it: the financial crisis is actually a symptom of an economic crisis. In order to solve the crisis, the country will have to reach back ... all the way back ... to the 1950s ... when the American economy was the strongest in the world.
Memo to the McCain campaign: rebuilding--and re-drilling--America should have been your issue. But you blew it. You muzzled your Presidential candidate and tied his hands while giving your Vice Presidential pick some space to speak out against the manmade global warming zealotry that threatens to drive the country into the ground for decades to come. What were you thinking?
POSTSCRIPT: The silver lining in the current crisis for American consumers and homeowners is that sub-$3 gasoline is returning, and the Northeast, with winter approaching, is dodging a bullet in terms of home heating oil and propane prices. Peak oil? It could be a decade before that hoax again rears its ugly head.Friday, October 10, 2008
Panic Selling Spreads Across Asia and Europe
UPDATE: Panic Selling Persists
The cascading crash continued across Asia and Europe today. Panic selling spread despite efforts by central bankers and government officials to calm the markets.
For the first time in memory, analysts are recommending both cash and gold--including physical gold and shares in undervalued gold-producing companies--as the only truly conservative investments.
The good news is that crude oil is falling along with stocks and bonds because of fears of a prolonged global recession or full-blown depression. (Environmental extremists and global warming zealots see lower fuel prices as a bad thing. But that's another story.)
Reuters:Europe and Asia saw panic selling of stocks on Friday, knocking the benchmark world equity index to a 5-year trough, while oil fell to a one-year low as fears grew policymakers are not making enough efforts to contain the financial crisis.
Government bonds in Japan and the euro zone -- usually safer assets which outperform in times of risk aversion -- fell as investors dashed to cash in any assets they have to gain access to capital.
Equity trading in Russia, Iceland, Romania, Ukraine and Indonesia has been halted while nearly half the stocks in Milan are suspended for excessive losses, just hours before finance chiefs from Group of Seven rich nations meet in Washington.
So far, measures from the United States, Britain and other countries to fight the worst financial crisis in 80 years -- even this week's coordinated interest rate cuts -- have failed to calm credit and money markets and quell investor fears.
Click here to continue reading.
The Market Oracle writes:Gold may not have surged as much as some had expected in recent weeks due to massive liquidation in all other markets due to leveraged losses and a flight to cash. This is particularly the case with hedge funds and other traders and speculators with short term horizons.
But gold increasingly resembles a submerged beach ball--a submerged beach ball can only be pushed only so far under water prior to leaping out of the water and this is what will happen to gold prices in the coming weeks when the extremely bullish supply demand fundamentals eventually kick in.US Ready to Capitulate to North Korea?
Reuters reports:North Korea and the United States are near a deal on verifying Pyongyang's claims about its nuclear program that would prompt Washington to soon remove the state from its terrorism blacklist, South Korean media said on Friday.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the Bush administration looks set to provisionally remove the North from the State Department's terrorism blacklist, as early as Friday.
U.S. nuclear envoy Christopher Hill, who went to Pyongyang last week to save a crumbling disarmament deal, reached a fresh verification proposal there that the U.S. administration has finished reviewing, a South Korean news report quoted government sources as saying.
"North Korea's resumption of nuclear disablement and U.S. removal of North Korea from its state terrorism sponsors list can all happen this month," the Chosun Ilbo newspaper quoted a key government official as saying.
The move is aimed at keeping the disarmament-for-aid deal North Korea struck with five regional powers from falling apart, it quoted sources familiar with the deal as saying.
The South Korean daily Dong-a Ilbo reported diplomatic sources as saying the North has agreed to allow nuclear inspectors into the secretive country for incremental checks.
South Korean officials declined to confirm the reports but said Washington and regional powers involved in the disarmament efforts are reviewing the results of Hill's visit to Pyongyang which could potentially lead to the end of the North's terrorism blacklisting.
The disarmament deal appeared to be in peril after Pyongyang, angry at not being removed from the terrorism list, vowed last month to rebuild the aging nuclear plant.
The reports come as North Korea deployed more than 10 missiles on its west coast for what appears to be an imminent launch and barred U.N. monitoring throughout its Yongbyon nuclear complex on Thursday.
On Tuesday, the North fired two short-range missiles into the Yellow Sea in a move seen as consistent with its tendency at times of political tension to display it is ready to take a hard and defiant line.US Ready to Capitulate to Taliban
Dateline USA....
Perfidy is the order of the day.
With the financial crisis apparently worsening by the minute, and the Mysterious Mr. Obama poised to conquer the White House, the battered and beleaguered Bush administration signaled that it is ready to throw in the towel in Afghanistan.
That is exactly what is happening. Having discredited the war against radical Islam with its blunders and stupidity, the Bush administration said Thursday that it was prepared to reconcile with the murderous, medieval Taliban if the Afghan government pursued talks to end the war.
But ... there is some consolation. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Washington would not consider any negotiations with Al Qaeda.
Gates should hang his head in shame--and resign.
John McCain would never--ever--surrender to the Taliban.Thursday, October 09, 2008
McCain Camp Divided Over Obama-Saudi Story
Dateline USA....
China Confidential has learned that the McCain campaign is deeply divided over the explosive issue of how to deal with Barack Hussein Obama's ties to Muslim extremists.
The campaign has unearthed evidence that could conceivably win the election for the Republican candidate, who is trailing his Democratic opponent in the most recent opinion polls.
With just over three weeks remaining before election day, some McCain strategists want to release the politically potent information while there is still time to influence independent and undecided voters. But other strategists seem determined to bury the dirt on Obama for the same reason that President George Bush declared war on "terror" instead of on Radical Islam after 9/11--fear of angering Saudi Arabia because of US dependence on the kingdom's almighty oil and oil-dollars.
[UPDATE: It is increasingly clear that the US is also relying on Saudi Arabia to broker some sort of peace pact between the Afghan government and the Saudis' old ally, the Taliban.]
Petropower and Petrodollars
About 11% of US oil imports come from Saudi Arabia, the dysfunctional, extended family business that gave the world Osama Binladen and nearly all the 9/11 hijackers. Although Saudi Arabia, seven years after 9/11, continues to export Islamist hatred and sponsor construction of pro-Islamist mosques and Islamic centers across the world in order to placate domestic religious fanatics, it has also played a relatively moderate role in OPEC by countering attempts by Iran and Venezuela to politicize the oil-producing cartel.
Saudi Arabia and other oil producing nations hold nearly $180 billion of US Treasury securities; and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and other Bush administration officials are counting on the Saudis to buy more T-bills to help finance the $700 billion Wall Street bailout package.
With the above in mind, administration surrogates have appealed to McCain to avoid "dragging Saudi Arabia and Islam into the mix," according to a campaign source.
The Manchurian/Mansourian Candidate
The Obama-Saudi story recalls The Manchurian Candidate. Click here and here to read Ken Timmerman's two-part series in Newsmax. 
As Timmerman reported, the notorious Dr. Khalid Al-Mansour, a black American convert to Islam who is an adviser to a Saudi prince, apparently befriended Obama when he was an undergraduate student at Columbia University and helped the future Presidential candidate to gain admission to Harvard Law School. Mansour may have also supported Obama financially during and after his student years.
Long known in the black community for his fanatic hatred of Christians and Jews, the Texas-born Mansour briefly advised the Black Panther Party back in the 1960s, when he was known as Donald Warden. His venomous, anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, anti-American videos are widely distributed in black nationalist circles and are available for viewing on YouTube.
He is the author of 24 books and has been a Harvard University guest lecturer. His 1995 book, The Lost Books of Africa Rediscovered, accused the US of plotting genocide against black Americans.
Click here to read Jack Cashill's investigative article, "The Mansourian Candidate."
Cashill speculates that Mansour was the brains and money behind Obama's best selling memoir, Dreams From My Father. The Muslim supremacist may have hired Obama's ghost writer.
The suspected relationship between Obama and Mansour appears to foreshadow Obama's close relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the controversial Black Liberation minister who "spiritually advised" Obama for 20 years until the candidate was pressured into denouncing him after videos of the dashiki-clad pastor's post-9/11 sermon surfaced on YouTube. Only five days after the Islamist mega-attacks--the worst-ever attacks on US soil--Wright blamed and "damned" the US for the atrocities.
The Saudi Prince and His Many Projects
Mansour's Saudi client is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud. Forbes ranks him as the world's 19th richest person, with a net worth of $21 billion.
In 2001, he offered New York City a donation of $10 million towards relief efforts after the 9/11 attacks. The donation was rejected by Mayor Rudy Giuliani because Alwaleed, echoing Reverand Wright's position, suggested that the attacks were an indication that the United States "should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause."
Since 9/11, Alwaleed has donated millions of dollars to Harvard to fund Islamic studies programs. He has also spent over $40 million on an astonishingly audacious indoctrination campaign that aims to teach US public school students world history from a Saudi point of view. His K-12 text books, which are used in all 50 states--but are also banned by many school districts--include the wild claims that Muslims discovered America, and that Jerusalem is "an Arab city." Click here to read the shocking story (which should also help to focus attention on the so-called school reform--i.e. political indoctrination--efforts of former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, in whose home Obama's political career was hatched).
Although Alwaleed has bailed out Citicorp on a couple of occasions--most recently by helping in its recapitalization earlier this year--he has steered clear of coming to the aid of Wall Street during the current financial crisis. Some analysts suspect he is also reluctant to buy more Treasury securities.
POSTSCRIPT: The McCain campaign is also bitterly divided over the issue of permissible use of Obama's Arabic middle name, Hussein, as the Obama-mainstream media thought police have essentially forbidden the practice. It is also forbidden by the Obama campaign and the adoring media to point out that the anointed Candidate of Change was born a Muslim according to Islamic religious law, which traces religious identity through one's father, or that Obama practiced and studied Islam as a child in Indonesia, where his Indonesian stepfather, a practicing Muslim named Lolo Soetoro, registered Obama for school--as Barry Soetoro--listing Obama's religion as Muslim and his citizenship as Indonesian. This reporter could go on and on; the file of forbidden knowledge about the Mysterious Mr. Obama is ever-thickening.
Monday, 13 October 2008
Examiner.com reports that Barack Obama still faces a legal challenge to his Constitutional eligibility to be President of the United States.
Click below and lean forward. But be sure to first grab a vomit bag. You'll need it.
The Stalinist regime's provocations (scroll down) seem to be paying off.
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