Showing posts with label War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label War. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 05, 2013

Europe, Unemployment and Instability [Friedman]

Guest post by George Friedman, Founder and Chairman, Stratfor Research

The global financial crisis of 2008 has slowly yielded to a global unemployment crisis. This unemployment crisis will, fairly quickly, give way to a political crisis. The crisis involves all three of the major pillars of the global system -- Europe, China and the United States. The level of intensity differs, the political response differs and the relationship to the financial crisis differs. But there is a common element, which is that unemployment is increasingly replacing finance as the central problem of the financial system.

Europe is the focal point of this crisis. Last week Italy held elections, and the party that won the most votes -- with about a quarter of the total -- was a brand-new group called the Five Star Movement that is led by a professional comedian. Two things are of interest about this movement. First, one of its central pillars is the call for defaulting on a part of Italy's debt as the lesser of evils. The second is that Italy, with 11.2 percent unemployment, is far from the worst case of unemployment in the European Union. Nevertheless, Italy is breeding radical parties deeply opposed to the austerity policies currently in place.

The core debate in Europe has been how to solve the sovereign debt crisis and the resulting threat to Europe's banks. The issue was who would bear the burden of stabilizing the system. The argument that won the day, particularly among Europe's elites, was that what Europe needed was austerity, that government spending had to be dramatically restrained so that sovereign debt -- however restructured it might be -- would not default.

One of the consequences of austerity is recession. The economies of many European countries, especially those in the eurozone, are now contracting, since austerity obviously means that less money will be available to purchase goods and services. If the primary goal is to stabilize the financial system, it makes sense. But whether financial stability can remain the primary goal depends on a consensus involving broad sectors of society. When unemployment emerges, that consensus shifts and the focus shifts with it. When unemployment becomes intense, then the entire political system can shift. From my point of view, the Italian election was the first, but expected, tremor.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Crunchy on the Outside, Tender on the Insider

Palo Alto Networks, the very successful "next-generation firewall" vendor, just published its 10th edition of "The Application Usage and Threat Report". Its findings point to a threat landscape moving from outside the firewall to inside.

[Our findings imply] that perimeter security efforts are “crunchy on the outside” effectively stopping some of the threats. Shifting the focus to internal applications, the findings show that security is “tender on the inside”, with 97% of the vulnerability exploit logs found in only 10 applications (out of 1,395 found). Nine of these applications are considered high-value assets; they are internal or infrastructure related applications that are integral to many business functions. This data indicates that the strategy of attacking critical resources from inside the network continues to become the rule and not the exception, and will force enterprises to monitor their internal traffic for threats in addition to the perimeter.


...attackers will ... heavily modify and customize their communications not only to confuse traditional security, but also for more functional purposes. Malware will regularly modify peer-to-peer protocols in order to create their own resilient commandand-control communications. For example, the Zero Access botnet (and its rootkit) is one of the most popular pieces of malware in the wild, and likewise was the leading malware observed in our data. This particular malware uses customized peer-to-peer traffic as well as other customized UDP and TCP traffic for communicating with its command and control infrastructure. This traffic is critically important to the reliability and survivability of the botnet in the wild. The malware, having delivered its payload, is sacrificed and the botnet survives to execute the next phase of the attack.

...However while this traffic works perfectly well from the attacker’s point of view, it does not match any known applications, and was thus classified as being custom or unknown traffic ... The analysis clearly shows that customized or modified traffic is highly correlated with threats. This indicates that proactively controlling or blocking “unknown” traffic could easily provide a powerful and untapped strategy for controlling modern threats.

For large organizations concerned with Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), especially those launched by malevolent nation-states, internal network monitoring appears to be a must-do.


Saturday, February 23, 2013

The Endgame for Currency Debasement: Exter's Pyramid

Where will the global race to debase currencies end? A diagram known as "Exter's Pyramid" offers us a hint:

...Before we delve into why backwardation in gold has some very unique and stark implications, let’s first take a moment to understand exactly what backwardation is.

...Backwardation is the condition where the spot price is higher than the forward price. Backwardation often exists in perishable commodities, right before the harvest. This happens because even though demand is constant throughout the year for a commodity like wheat, the harvest only happens once a year. If you demand delivery right before the harvest, it will be more expensive than taking delivery one month later, after all the grain silos are full. Backwardation is usually a fleeting phenomenon, occurring only when a particular commodity is in short supply and there is great demand for immediate delivery, not in the future.


...[But] gold is a unique commodity in that it is not consumed... it’s hoarded. Estimates of world gold supplies are north of 170,000 tons. So what would backwardation mean in the gold market? ...if and when we see gold in backwardation, it should be considered something like a fire alarm for the system. Something serious is happening. Investors would be rejecting what should be a “risk free” profit opportunity. We would like to suggest two (not mutually exclusive) causes: 1) the threat of counterparty failure and/or 2) loss of confidence in the $US Dollar.

The first implication of gold in backwardation is straightforward and easy to understand. The market is pricing in significant counterparty risk of failure to deliver gold in the future... [We] believe the second implication for gold backwardation is a collapse in confidence in the $US Dollar itself.

...So what would extended or permanent backwardation imply? According to Prof Antal Fekete, “gold going into permanent backwardation means that gold is no longer for sale at any price, whether it is quoted in dollars, yens, euros, or Swiss francs. The situation is exactly the same as is has been for years: gold is not for sale at any price quoted in Zimbabwe currency, however high the quote is. To put it differently, all offers to sell gold are being withdrawn, whether it concerns newly mined gold, scrap gold, bullion or coined gold.”

...For physical gold owners searching for clues to tightness and demand in the physical market, they would be wise to keep a sharp eye on these metrics. It is our belief that this is happening, right now. Money is moving down Exter’s pyramid and while the final denouement may be days, weeks, months or years off, we are certain it would be preferable to be years early as opposed to a day late.

But don't worry, folks. Ben Bernanke's got this.


Thursday, February 21, 2013

Obama says that he can't cut spending by 2%, but just hiked payroll taxes on every American by more than that in January.

It would seem that the federal government can't diet by even 2 percent, but the president just hiked payroll taxes on every American -- the poor, the rich and the middle class -- by that exact amount in January. With new Obamacare taxes (on medical devices, capital gains, and higher health care premiums), the average American has had to tighten their belt by far more than 2 percent.

And what is the president's first priority to cut if the dreaded two percent "sequester" hits?

Barack Obama, who says he cares deeply about jobs, has now caused 800,000 civilian workers for the Pentagon to face as many as 22 days off without pay as a result of sequestration cuts.

That's correct: Obama's first tendency when it comes to cutting government is Defense. Not HUD. Not the EPA. Not the Department of Education or the Interior or the myraid of other paper-pushing agencies. He goes right after the Defense Department.

According to Roll Call, Obama's executive branch wastes more than "$400 billion to $450 billion [which is] lost in improper payments plus duplication".

It's actually more than that if you account for fraud and crime.

But, no, the Defense Department is Obama's target. Not the hundreds of billions in waste, fraud and duplicate spending in the federal government.

His ostensible Defense Secretary, the brilliant Chuck Hagel, wants to unilaterally disarm the United States while China, Russia, and terror states build their atomic arsenals.

And Obama gives -- not sells, gives -- F-16 fighters to the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Egyptian government. Which happens to be the same government that just today refused the U.S. access to a suspect in slaying of a U.S. Ambassador in Benghazi.

Historian Trevor Loudon was right all along: Barack Obama's true goal is to disarm America, to bring it to its knees on the global stage, and to see it humbled.


Wednesday, February 20, 2013

AT LAST: DHS finally getting serious about the "pregnant women and kids with guns" threat

I refer, of course, to the vendor of shooting targets for the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies that has created a line of “non-traditional threat” targets that include pregnant women, children, mothers in playgrounds and elderly Americans. Seriously.

Finally, the DHS will put an end to the epidemic of seven-year olds and pregnant women shooting cops. The company says it's all about, uhm, realism.

The subjects in NMH targets were chosen in order to give officers the experience of dealing with deadly force shooting scenarios with subjects that are not the norm during training. I found while speaking with officers and trainers in the law enforcement community that there is a hesitation on the part of cops when deadly force is required on subjects with atypical age, frailty or condition (one officer explaining that he enlarged photos of his own kids to use as targets so that he would not be caught off guard with such a drastically new experience while on duty).


This hesitation time may be only seconds but that is not acceptable when officers are losing their lives in these same situations.


The goal of NMH is to break that stereotype on the range, regardless of how slim the chances are of encountering a real life scenario that involves a child, pregnant woman, etc. If that initial hesitation time can be cut down due to range experience, the officer and community are better served.

Because over and over again, history is replete with incidents of law enforcement officials being shot at by 7-year old kids and pregnant ladies.

With that as context, please consider the following news reports:

1. The Department of Homeland Security recently acquired 2 billion rounds of ammunition, which represents thousands of rounds per DHS employee.

2. Newly released drone records have revealed extensive military flights inside the U.S.; police departments and federal agencies plan to have as many as 30,000 drones monitoring Americans within the next seven years.

3. When Can the U.S. Kill Americans? The White House Won't Say -- and Won't Even Tell Congress; President Obama's successful efforts to renew and strengthen The Patriot Act under the NDAA means, according to the ACLU, American citizens may be subject to "indefinite military detention without charge or trial... for the first time in American history."

4. The FBI director said in March he'd have to check whether the president can assassinate citizens inside the U.S.. When questioned by Congress regarding a speech by Attorney General Holder, who offered his "legal justification for assassination", FBI Director Mueller was unable to say whether the president could unilaterally decide to assassinate U.S. citizens inside the borders of this country.

5. The DHS has specifically listed Americans who believe in "individual liberty" as potential terrorists. These "right-wing extremists" who insist in fidelity to the Constitution are, according to multiple studies funded by DHS, among the country's most dire terrorist threats. Not Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Ansar al-Islam, Hamas, or Iran's Revolutionary Guards -- together responsible for tens of thousands of murders -- but "violent right-wing extremists" who believe in the principles of the nation's founding.

6. The military recently deployed gunships over Miami, executing training exercises with local police departments. A few days later, similar exercises were conducted in Houston. Last year the military deployed ground forces, armored personnel carriers and tanks on the streets of St. Louis for "training exercises". Military exercises in domestic urban environments of this scale are "unprecedented".

7. Police departments throughout the country are receiving tanks, humvees and drones from the Department of Defense, according to a WLS-TV (Chicago) I-Team investigation. "Short of a weapon of mass destruction, you can get any kind of military gear that's out there," the police chief of Benedectine University told WLS. "We chose firearms and a vehicle." WLS also reported rampant theft of military equipment, including body armor and night-vision goggles issued to the Chicago Police Department.

And now we can add:

8. The purchase of "non-traditional" shooting practice targets by the DHS, which include realistic images of kids, pregnant women and seniors.

You progressives starting to get the picture?


Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Oh, please, Mr. Obama: please save us from the Sequester that you created!

The man who invented the budget sequester now claims it will destroy America. Put simply, if America's had a more dishonest president than #44, I've yet to read about him.

...Obama's out there trying to raise fear on all of this talk about the sequester -- we're talking $85 billion. I want to put this in perspective. The federal budget is $3.5 trillion dollars a year, and we're talking about $85 billion that might be cut, and all of this disaster is gonna happen. Kids are gonna go hungry. Schools are gonna shut down. Bridges and road repair will not happen, and now prisoners are gonna be let go. $85 billion. It is like if you earn a hundred thousand, it's like losing a quarter. It wouldn't matter. Hell, what is the Sandy relief package, $50 billion? So while this is gonna cost us $85 billion, the sequester, $50 billion we're spending here on Sandy relief. Sixty. Pardon me. I was wrong. Sixty billion on disaster relief...

OBAMA: Emergency responders, like the ones who are here today, their ability to help communities respond to and recover from disasters will be degraded. Border Patrol agents will see their hours reduced. FBI agents will be furloughed. Federal prosecutors will have to close cases and let criminals go. Air traffic controllers and airport security will see cutbacks, which means more delays in airports across the country. Thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off. Tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find child care for their kids. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose access to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings. This is not an abstraction. People will lose their jobs. The unemployment rate might tick up again.

...Obama is saying this as a freedom fighter. Obama is on the campaign trail, and he is trying to stop all of this from happening. He is fighting the forces that want you to suffer, and they are the Republicans. They are the conservatives, and they are Fox News and they are me...

...Obama wants you to think that Republicans don't care that tens of thousands of parents would have to scramble to find daycare, 'cause the Republicans don't care that daycare would be shut down. You see, none of this that he predicts here is debatable. In the minds of the low-information voter and in the terms that Obama is offering this, these are not things that might happen. These are what the Republicans want to do every day. These are the things that Obama is fighting to stop.

These are the people that he's fighting to stop. They don't care if your kid or your grandmother doesn't get her flu shot. They don't care if you or anybody else gets cancer screenings. They don't care if you lose your job. They don't care that the unemployment rate might tick back up again. All of this, as far as Obama is concerned, is what will happen every day if they're not stopped! This is not so much tied to the sequester. The sequester is just the most recent opportunity for him to characterize his opposition this way, and he is doing everything he can to stop this.

The fact that this sequester business is only $85 billion -- the fact that none of this would happen, the fact that there's no Republican who wants any of this to happen, the fact that it's other people's idea -- is irrelevant in terms of the people Obama trying to reach. This whole sequester is his idea! In fact, I've revised my thinking. I think he wants the sequester to happen because I think he wants to cut down the US military, in a big way. Most liberals do. Here it's gonna happen automatically. He's not gonna have to do anything but sit around and let it, but he's gonna score some political points along the way.

I believe this assessment is correct. Obama created the sequester. He designed its brutal cuts to the military. And he desperately seeks to eviscerate the military.


MANDIANT REPORT: How Red China Engages in Open Warfare Against America's Critical Industries

Mandiant has published a lengthy, must-read report (PDF) on a Red Chinese cyber-war unit [APT1] that is openly attacking American firms.

One of the primary methods the PLA gains a beachhead inside the target firm is through spear-phishing, which uses a personalized email that entices the victim into clicking on a malicious link.

The Initial Compromise represents the methods intruders use to first penetrate a target organization’s network. As with most other APT groups, spear phishing is APT1’s most commonly used technique. The spear phishing emails contain either a malicious attachment or a hyperlink to a malicious file. The subject line and the text in the email body are usually relevant to the recipient. APT1 also creates webmail accounts using real peoples’ names — names that are familiar to the recipient, such as a colleague, a company executive, an IT department employee, or company counsel — and uses these accounts to send the emails. As a real-world example, this is an email that APT1 sent to Mandiant employees:


At first glance, the email appeared to be from Mandiant’s CEO, Kevin Mandia. However, further scrutiny shows that the email was not sent from a Mandiant email account, but from “kevin.mandia@rocketmail.com”. Rocketmail is a free webmail service. The account “kevin.mandia@rocketmail.com” does not belong to Mr. Mandia. Rather, an APT1 actor likely signed up for the account specifically for this spear phishing event. If anyone had clicked on the link that day (which no one did, thankfully), their computer would have downloaded a malicious ZIP file named “Internal_Discussion_Press_Release_In_Next_Week8.zip”. This file contained a malicious executable that installs a custom APT1 backdoor that we call WEBC2-TABLE.

Although the files that APT1 actors attach or link to spear phishing emails are not always in ZIP format, this is the predominant trend we have observed in the last several years. Below is a sampling of file names that APT1 has used with their malicious ZIP files:

2012ChinaUSAviationSymposium.zip
Employee-Benefit-and-Overhead-Adjustment-Keys.zip
MARKET-COMMENT-Europe-Ends-Sharply-Lower-On-Data-Yields-Jump.zip
Negative_Reports_Of_Turkey.zip
New_Technology_For_FPGA_And_Its_Developing_Trend.zip
North_Korean_launch.zip
Oil-Field-Services-Analysis-And-Outlook.zip
POWER_GEN_2012.zip
Proactive_Investors_One2One_Energy_Investor_Forum.zip
Social-Security-Reform.zip
South_China_Sea_Security_Assessment_Report.zip
Telephonics_Supplier_Manual_v3.zip
The_Latest_Syria_Security_Assessment_Report.zip
Updated_Office_Contact_v1.zip
Updated_Office_Contact_v2.zip
Welfare_Reform_and_Benefits_Development_Plan.zip

The example file names include military, economic, and diplomatic themes, suggesting the wide range of industries that APT1 targets. Some names are also generic (e.g., “updated_office_contact_v1.zip”) and could be used for targets in any industry.


On some occasions, unsuspecting email recipients have replied to the spear phishing messages, believing they were communicating with their acquaintances. In one case a person replied, “I’m not sure if this is legit, so I didn’t open it.” Within 20 minutes, someone in APT1 responded with a terse email back: “It’s legit.”


Bottom line: trust no one.


Friday, February 15, 2013

MOTIVATIONAL POSTER: Presidential Priorities

This:


Anne Sorock observes:

Former Navy Seal Chris Kyle, who was killed at a Texas gun range on February 8, was laid to rest Tuesday at the Texas State Cemetery. On Monday, 7,000 people attended a memorial service in his honor at the Cowboys Stadium.

Many people are saying Kyle was the deadliest sniper in history, and he was known as “the legend” to his friends, and the “Devil of Ramadi” to his (and our) enemies. He was the author of the book, “American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in US Military History.”

Kyle and his family have given so much for our country, as have so many other heroes before them; and yet, President Obama failed to mention him in his State of the Union last night, the same day as his funeral.

Sarah Palin, however, recognized his sacrifice on the morning of the memorial service, which she attended with her husband...

We salute you, Chris Kyle. We salute you and thank you. May God bless you and your family.


Wednesday, February 13, 2013

IRANIAN MILITARY PHOTOSHOPS: They're Not Even Trying Any More

Having been caught Photoshopping missiles, naval vessels, tanks, and everything in between, you'd think Iran's government would have become a bit more careful when disseminating bogus photos.

And you would have thought wrong.

Oh, Iran. Your Qaher 313 stealth fighter jet sure looks intimidating but it will never get off the ground. So why do you insist on tricking everybody into thinking that the beast can fly? Iran's latest transgression is especially hilarious: they've photoshopped the Qaher 313 onto a stock image of Mount Damavand to make it look like it's flying.


Seriously, the stock image that Iran used of magestic Mount Damavand can be found at PickyWallpapers.com. If you brighten up the picture a little bit, it's the SAME EXACT THING. Iran floated the picture with the Qaher 313 superimposed on the mountain to "prove" that the fighter jet could fly.

In that spirit, I offer the following terrifying new Iranian military capabilities, emailed to us by undercover operative Deep Spackle from an undisclosed location in Iran.

His Mullah's Ship (HMS) Jihad of Love, Iran's first nuclear aircraft carrier, embarks on a test voyage in the Strait of Hormuz.

HMS Martyred Teddy Bear, a guided missile cruiser, docks in a special slip at the military port of Bander-e Lengeh.

A squadron of Mahdi-15 Fighter-Bombers flies over Tehran.

High-powered Nuclear Suicide-belt cargo planes carry advanced weapons to a secret location.

A top secret photograph of the much-feared, experimental Ayatollah of Rockenrollah battle tank.

Revolutionary Guards Special Operations Commando Ranger demonstrates the Donkey of Doom Personal Killing Tank.


Sunday, February 10, 2013

Lindsey Graham fetches a pair of pliers and a blowtorch, vows to get all medieval on Chuck Hagel and John Brennan

While I haven't exactly been Lindsey Graham's biggest fan over the last six or so years, I have to give him credit for fighting back against two of the most radical nominees in recent memory.

Lindsey Graham said today that he didn’t want to see Chuck Hagel and John Brennan in office before the Obama administration gave more answers on Benghazi.

“I don’t think we should allow Brennan to go forward for the CIA directorship, Hagel to be confirmed to secretary of defense, until the White House gives us an accounting,” Graham said on Face the Nation. “Did the president ever pick up the phone and call anyone in the Libyan government to help these folks? What did the president do?”

In response to Bob Schieffer’s question about whether he would put a hold on the nominations if he didn’t get answers from the White House, Graham responded, “Yes, I’m going to ask my colleagues, just like they did with John Bolton, Joe Biden said no confirmation without information.”

Given credible reports that Chuck Hagel received funds from a Hamas-linked terror group and John Brennan recently converted to Islam, substantial vetting of this pair is required.


Hat tip: A.C.

Saturday, February 09, 2013

PRIORITIES: Pampers versus Aircraft Carriers

So I was at the pharmacy this afternoon picking up a prescription for my Mom. I happened to spot a large pile of Pampers-brand diapers stacked haphazardly next to one of the pharmacist's work areas.

I jokingly asked the pharmacist, "What are those -- prescription-strength diapers?"

The pharmacist grinned and said, "Yeah, extra-heavy duty."

He went on to explain, "Actually, those are diapers paid for by the government."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"People who say they can't afford diapers can get a prescription written for them. Then the government picks up the tab."

"Are you serious?"

"Yep," he said, shaking his head, "You'd be amazed at what the government's paying for these days."

And then I read this story (hat tip: Mark Levin):

Navy: Lincoln Refueling Delayed, Will Hurt Carrier Readiness


The U.S. Navy will delay the refueling of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) for an unknown period because of the uncertain fiscal environment due to the ongoing legislative struggle, the service told Congress in a Friday message obtained by USNI News.

Lincoln was scheduled to be moved to Huntington Ingalls Industries’ (HII) Newport News Shipyard later this month to begin the 4-year refueling and complex overhaul (RCOH) of the ship.

“This delay is due to uncertainty in the Fiscal Year 2013 appropriations bill, both in the timing and funding level available for the first full year of the contract,” the message said... “CVN-72 will remain at Norfolk Naval Base where the ships force personnel will continue to conduct routine maintenance until sufficient funding is received for the initial execution of the RCOH.”

The move by the navy is the second this week involving funding for carriers. On Wednesday it announced it would delay the deployment of the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) to the Middle East do to the ongoing budget strife bringing the total number of carriers in U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) to one until funding normalizes.

The most fundamental task of the federal government is to protect the United States. And a handful of aircraft carriers are critical to maintaining control of the seas and the trade that is integral to civilization.

But for this president, Pampers -- and any other form of wealth redistribution -- always trumps the military.

And Pampers, for those unfamiliar with the iconic brand, are premium diapers. They're probably among the most expensive diapers you can buy. And those are what the government has decided to give the freeloaders -- many of whom we know for a fact are gaming the system -- when many taxpayers with toddlers struggle to afford any diapers at all.

Money's no object when it comes to wealth redistribution!

And there's nothing to cut, don't ya' know?

The government itself admits that it wastes at least $125 billion in fraud, theft and abuse of the system. In reality, we can surmise it's probably double or triple that amount.

Barack Obama likes to talk about closing loopholes in the tax code. But he never talks about closing the ripoff loopholes that would fund a significant chunk -- if not most -- of the entire defense budget.

This president and his party are setting the stage for the destruction of American society. They are spending and borrowing on a scale that has never been seen before in human history. They are recklessly and wildly redistributing cash, with untold waste, as fast as they can, on everything but protecting the nation. They are monetizing so much debt, so fast, that the risk for out-of-control inflation increases each and every day.

There will be a reckoning, that much is sure, and when it comes the only question is whether the United States will survive as a free nation.


Reports: Chuck Hagel received funds from Hamas terror group; John Brennan is a convert to Islam

Oh, my.

SECDEF Nominee Chuck Hagel Received Funds From 'Friends of Hamas'

Senate sources told Breitbart News exclusively that they have been informed that one of the reasons that President Barack Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, has not turned over requested documents on his sources of foreign funding is that one of the names listed is a group purportedly called “Friends of Hamas.”

Former FBI Agent Confirms CIA Nominee John Brennan a Convert to Islam

Yesterday, a former U.S. Marine and FBI agent confirmed [that] John Brennan did convert to Islam...

“Mr. Brennan did convert to Islam when he served in an official capacity on behalf of the United States in Saudi Arabia.”

But, no: our president simply couldn't be a Muslim. Nor a Muslim sympathizer. Those are just conspiracy theories.

The Senate must block both of these outrageous nominees. Call your Senator now -- the number for the Senate switchboard is (202) 224-3121 -- and insist they block these nominations.


Friday, February 08, 2013

THE ULTIMATE BENGHAZI TIMELINE: What was Barack Obama doing for 8 hours?

During his testimony yesterday before the House Armed Services Committee, Leon Panetta as much as admitted that Barack Obama lied to reporter Kyle Clark of KUSA-TV about the attack on the Libyan Consulate.

Thanks to Panetta's testimony, we now know that President Obama was told immediately of the attack and responded by doing... nothing. He didn't lift a finger to help. Nor did the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

He knew that Ambassador Chris Stevens and other Americans were about to be slaughtered and -- for eight hours, highlighted below -- he didn't call, he didn't inquire, he didn't command, he did nothing!


Sen. Lindsey Graham says that he is "not going to stop [investigating] until the American people know what their commander-in-chief did for eight hours."

The president of the United States talking to the secretary of defense for 15 minutes, never talked to the secretary of state until after the attack was over, never made a phone call saying how close are we to help these people?

...Where is Chris Stevens? What did he do when he was told the ambassador was missing? We’ve had one ambassador killed in the last 30 years? The president of the United States has to account for his leadership here and I intend to hold him accountable. Thus far the White House has delayed, denied, deceived and stonewalled and this has to come to an end...

The secretary of State never once talked to the secretary of Defense. The president of the United States never made one phone call to find out how this operation was going?

Well, Mr. President, what did you do for eight hours? Who did you talk to? What kind of leadership did you exhibit? They made two movies about the Bin Laden raid... but you’ve had no accounting for the Benghazi attack and you’re going to have an accounting. I’m not going to stop until the American people know what their commander-in-chief did for eight hours and thus far, all we know is he had a 15 minute conversation.

This is a cover-up. This scandal is 1000 times worse than Watergate.

Call John Boehner now and demand a full investigation. Be polite, but firm. We want every single person related to the president's dereliction of duty subpoenaed. Every. Single. One.


Thursday, February 07, 2013

WOW: Secular Egyptian Liberals Slam Obama and the entire Democrat Party in Tahrir Square

And by "liberals", I mean classic liberals, not the Marxist-dominated Leftists that have subsumed the lifeless husk of the Democrat Party.

Translation: "Down with the American Democratic Party the ally of Morsi, down with Morsi the infiltrator of America."
President Obama is giving away F-16s to the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Egyptian government, but withholding them from our longtime ally Taiwan.

At the same time, Egypt's "President" Morsi and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmedinejad are in the midst of forming an alliance that will target the "Great Satan" (the U.S.) and "Little Satan" (Israel) as surely as night follows day.

Make it stop, Mr. Wizard. Make it stop.


Hat tip: R.F.

Wednesday, February 06, 2013

Innovative White House Re-branding Efforts Yield Wide Acceptance of Assassination Drones by Progressive Left

The White House has successfully rebranded the drones flying over theaters of war and the United States itself.


The administration has positioned the drones as a "women's rights" issue.

That's right.

The drones are now called "Plan A", and the White House says they simply deliver extremely late-term abortions with surgical precision.

Which makes all of this okay in the eyes of the Democrat-federal leviathan-media complex.


Tuesday, February 05, 2013

WHEN MEN WERE MEN: And Democrats Were Americans

Remember when American legislators actually read and understood the Constitution?

Photo from the May 1940 weapons testing at Fort Belvoir. From left to right, Senator Lundeen (MN, Farmer-Labor) with a Johnson rifle, Rep. Snyder (PA, Democrat) with an M1928A1 Thompson, and Senator Thomas (OK, Democrat) with an M1 Garand.

Yeah, I know. I don't remember that era of patriotic Democrats either.


Monday, February 04, 2013

The Harbingers of Tyranny

Please consider the following news reports:

1. The Department of Homeland Security recently acquired 2 billion rounds of ammunition, which represents thousands of rounds per DHS employee.

2. Newly released drone records have revealed extensive military flights inside the U.S.; police departments and federal agencies plan to have as many as 30,000 drones monitoring Americans within the next seven years.

3. When Can the U.S. Kill Americans? The White House Won't Say -- and Won't Even Tell Congress; President Obama's successful efforts to renew and strengthen The Patriot Act under the NDAA means, according to the ACLU, American citizens may be subject to "indefinite military detention without charge or trial... for the first time in American history."

4. The FBI director said in March he'd have to check whether the president can assassinate citizens inside the U.S.. When questioned by Congress regarding a speech by Attorney General Holder, who offered his "legal justification for assassination", FBI Director Mueller was unable to say whether the president could unilaterally decide to assassinate U.S. citizens inside the borders of this country.

5. The DHS has specifically listed Americans who believe in "individual liberty" as potential terrorists. These "right-wing extremists" who insist in fidelity to the Constitution are, according to multiple studies funded by DHS, among the country's most dire terrorist threats. Not Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Ansar al-Islam, Hamas, or Iran's Revolutionary Guards -- together responsible for tens of thousands of murders -- but "violent right-wing extremists" who believe in the principles of the nation's founding.

6. The military recently deployed gunships over Miami, executing training exercises with local police departments. A few days later, similar exercises were conducted in Houston. Last year the military deployed ground forces, armored personnel carriers and tanks on the streets of St. Louis for "training exercises". Military exercises in domestic urban environments of this scale are "unprecedented".

7. Police departments throughout the country are receiving tanks, humvees and drones from the Department of Defense, according to a WLS-TV (Chicago) I-Team investigation. "Short of a weapon of mass destruction, you can get any kind of military gear that's out there," the police chief of Benedectine University told WLS. "We chose firearms and a vehicle." WLS also reported rampant theft of military equipment, including body armor and night-vision goggles issued to the Chicago Police Department.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Do these data points offer any context into President Obama's promise to create "a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded as our military?"

Conversely, do these news reports offer any insights into the president's efforts to disarm American citizens, a clear violation of the Bill of Rights?

The sources of these news items include such right-wing extremist groups as the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and National Journal. Suffice it to say that even "progressives" appear to be getting antsy with the erosion of individual liberties and the militarization of police forces under this president.

All Americans, regardless of political persuasion, should be extremely concerned with these developments.


Thursday, January 31, 2013

OH, MY: NBC blacks out Hagel's disastrous confirmation hearing

NBC is America's answer to the Soviet Union's Pravda. It serves as an unofficial public relations arm of the Obama administration. It has been caught -- on numerous occasions (e.g., here, here, and here) -- editing video and audio clips to advance the Statist agenda.

And it routinely censors news. Like today, when President Obama's nominee for SECDEF, Chuck Hagel, beclowned himself in a Senate hearing that was, by turns, embarrassing and horrifying.

And how did NBC handle Hagel's denouement?


When the going got tough -- for instance, when Lindsey Graham eviscerated Hagel's "Jewish Lobby" nonsense -- NBC simply blacked out the disastrous performance.

That didn't stop the hemorrhaging; even the progressive kooks are disgusted with what must be the worst confirmation hearing on record. The only way this dim, prejudiced, and terrorist-appreciating hack should get into the Pentagon is with a ticket for one of their guided public tours.


Wednesday, January 30, 2013

SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS LIKE CHUCK HAGEL

Caroline Glick continues to wake up the useful idiots who believe that Barack Obama is a friend of Israel, which remains the last best hope for Western Civilization in the Middle East.

I think it is pretty amazing that AIPAC is keeping mum on the fact that Obama has nominated a Jew hater and Israel basher to serve as the next Defense Secretary. As I've said before, Hagel's appointment is a far greater threat to the US military than it is to Israel. But still, it is pretty obscene that Obama is getting away with appointing this character to serve as the Pentagon chief.

Today, the estimable Adam Kredo at the Washington Free Beacon reported another classic Hagelian anti-Israel slur and libel. Back in 2003 he gave an interview to his hometown paper saying that Israel "keep[s] the Palestinians caged up like animals."


And of course, this is only one of countless examples of Hagel's animus towards the Jewish state and its Jewish supporters in the US... Israel is better off expanding its own defense industries than depending on Hagel for spare parts.

As to the US military, ...the movement to assign women to frontline combat unit is not about advancing women. It is about destroying the US military. The fact that Obama didn't even need for Hagel to enter office before taking his first swipe at the military shows just how grandiose his plans for gutting US military capabilities in his second term are.

To be clear, as a woman who served as an officer in the IDF for 5 and a half years, and worked as an embedded reporter with an all male US infantry unit in Iraq, I have to say that I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with women serving in combat. But the purpose of last week's decision wasn't about permitting women to fight on the battlefield. They already do. It was about social engineering and weakening the esprit d'corps of the US military. As Saul Alinsky taught his followers the goal is never what you say it is. The goal is always the revolution.

Delegitimizing and weakening Israel is only one part of the "revolution." Israel will survive Obama and Hagel and Kerry and Brennan.

But that doesn't mean we and our supporters in the US should keep silent about their hostility just because we know we can't block their appointments. By pointing out their radicalism, we are at a minimum sending out the necessary warning about what their future plans will likely involve. And that is important, because the more they are criticized the weaker they will feel.

As historian Trevor Loudon has proven through exhaustive research, Barack Obama's real goal is to strip the United States military bare. Hagel's appointment simply confirms that ugly reality.


Sunday, January 20, 2013

President Obama to again skip American Legion's Medal of Honor Inaugural Ball, remains only commander-in-chief to do so

Four years ago, Barack Obama became the first president in history to skip the American Legion's Salute to Heroes ball. And this time around, he plans on missing the event again.

For the second time President Barack Obama will not attend an Inaugural event ball held to recognize Medal of Honor recipients.

...Obama was criticized by some four years ago when he became the first President to skip the American Legion’s Salute to Heroes ball since it was first held in 1953.

Also noticeably absent from the planned list of attendees for the Jan. 21 event is former Marine Cpl. Dakota Meyer, one of only three living MoH recipients from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and the only one who will not be present.

“As I understand it, invitations were sent to all living MOH recipients. 25 of them decided to attend our banquet,” Legion spokesman Marty Callaghan said in an email Friday. Meyer, who received the nation’s highest award for valor for going to the rescue of U.S. and Afghan troops caught in an ambush in 2009, could not be reached for comment.

Those scheduled to attend include Salvatore Giunta and Leroy Petry, former Army staff sergeants who, like Meyer, received the Medal for actions in Afghanistan. The Medal of Honor has been awarded seven other times since 2001 – three for actions in Afghanistan and four in Iraq. In all those cases the award was presented posthumously.

Also scheduled to attend the Salute to Heroes ball are World War II veterans Walter Ehlers and Hershel Williams; Korean War vets Thomas Hudner and Ronald Rosser; and 19 Medal of Honor recipients from the Vietnam War: John Baca, Donald Ballard, Gary Beikirch, Patrick Brady, Sammy Davis, Roger Donlon, Harold Fritz, Joe Jackson, Jack Jacobs, Walter Marm, Jr.; Thomas Norris, Robert O’Malley, Robert Patterson, Alfred Rascon, Ronald Ray, Gordon Roberts, James Sprayberry, Kenneth Stumpf and Brian Thacker.

In all, the 25 veterans slated to attend the ball represent about a third of the living Medal of Honor recipients, according to the Legion... The Legion began holding the Salute to Heroes Ball in 1953 as part of the Inauguration Day events surrounding the swearing in of Dwight Eisenhower as the 34th President of the United States.

Every president since then made an appearance at the ball until Obama four years ago.

This president doesn't much care for the American military, as evidenced by his efforts to dismantle it and instead redirect those monies to making the welfare state even more pervasive.



Image: Walter Ehlers and Hershel Williams, 2003, Photo by Mike Yoder/Journal-World Photo.