Fire Hydrant of Freedom

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/us/politics/how-the-mormon-church-shaped-mitt-romney.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1

Romney’s Faith, Silent but Deep
By JODI KANTOR
Published: May 19, 2012
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BELMONT, Mass. — When Mitt Romney embarked on his first political race in 1994, he also slipped into a humble new role in the Mormon congregation he once led. On Sunday mornings, he stood in the sunlit chapel here teaching Bible classes for adults.

Eric Thayer for The New York Times
Leading students through stories about Jesus and the Nephite and Lamanite tribes, who Mormons believe once populated the Americas, and tossing out peanut butter cups as rewards, Mr. Romney always returned to the same question: how could students apply the lessons of Mormon scripture in their daily lives?
Now, as the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Mr. Romney speaks so sparingly about his faith — he and his aides frequently stipulate that he does not impose his beliefs on others — that its influence on him can be difficult to detect.
But dozens of the candidate’s friends, fellow church members and relatives describe a man whose faith is his design for living. The church is by no means his only influence, and its impact cannot be fully untangled from that of his family, which is also steeped in Mormonism.
But being a Latter-day Saint is “at the center of who he really is, if you scrape everything else off,” said Randy Sorensen, who worshiped with Mr. Romney in church.
As a young consultant who arrived at the office before anyone else, Mr. Romney was being “deseret,” a term from the Book of Mormon meaning industrious as a honeybee, and he recruited colleagues and clients with the zeal of the missionary he once was. Mitt and Ann Romney’s marriage is strong because they believe they will live together in an eternal afterlife, relatives and friends say, which motivates them to iron out conflicts.
Mr. Romney’s penchant for rules mirrors that of his church, where he once excommunicated adulterers and sometimes discouraged mothers from working outside the home. He may have many reasons for abhorring debt, wanting to limit federal power, promoting self-reliance and stressing the unique destiny of the United States, but those are all traditionally Mormon traits as well.
Outside the spotlight, Mr. Romney can be demonstrative about his faith: belting out hymns (“What a Friend We Have in Jesus”) while horseback riding, fasting on designated days and finding a Mormon congregation to slip into on Sundays, no matter where he is.
He prays for divine guidance on business decisions and political races, say those who have joined him. Sometimes on the campaign trail, Mr. and Mrs. Romney retreat to a quiet corner, bow their heads, clasp hands and share a brief prayer, said Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican who has traveled with them.
Clayton M. Christensen, a business professor at Harvard and a friend from church, said the question that drove the Sunday school classes — how to apply Mormon gospel in the wider world — also drives Mr. Romney’s life. “He just needs to know what God wants him to do and how he can get it done,” Mr. Christensen said.
Sacred Tenets, Secular Realm
When Mr. Romney’s former Sunday school students listen to him campaign, they sometimes hear echoes of messages he delivered to them years before: beliefs that stem at least in part from his faith, in a way that casual observers may miss. He is not proselytizing but translating, they say — taking powerful ideas and lessons from the church and applying them in another realm.
Just as Ronald Reagan deployed acting skills on the trail and Barack Obama relied on the language of community organizing, Mitt Romney bears the marks of the theology and culture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Mr. Romney declined to be interviewed.)
Mormons have a long tradition of achieving success by sharing secular versions of their tenets, said Matthew Bowman, author of “The Mormon People,” citing Stephen R. Covey’s “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” which he called Latter-day Saint theology repackaged as career advice.
While Mr. Romney has expressed some views at odds with his church’s teachings — in Massachusetts, he supported measures related to alcohol and gambling, both frowned upon by the church — other positions flow directly from his faith, including his objections to abortion and same-sex marriage and his notion of self-sufficiency tempered with generosity. The church, which often requests recipients of charity to perform some sort of labor in return, taught Mr. Romney to believe that “there’s a dignity in work and a dignity in helping those who are in need of help,” his eldest son, Tagg, said in an interview.
Or take Mr. Romney’s frequent tributes to American exceptionalism. “I refuse to believe that America is just another place on the map with a flag,” he said in announcing his bid for the presidency last June. Every presidential candidate highlights patriotism, but Mr. Romney’s is backed by the Mormon belief that the United States was chosen by God to play a special role in history, its Constitution divinely inspired.
(Page 2 of 4)
“He is an unabashed, unapologetic believer that America is the Promised Land,” said Douglas D. Anderson, dean of the business school at Utah State University and a friend, and that leading it is “an obligation and responsibility to God.”
In Mr. Romney’s upbeat promises that he can rouse the economy from its long slump, fellow Mormons hear their faith’s emphasis on resilience and can-do optimism. He believes that people “can learn to be happy and prosperous,” said Philip Barlow, a professor of Mormon history at Utah State who served with him in church. “There is some depth and long tradition behind what can come across in sound bites as thin cheerleading.”
Similarly, he said, Mr. Romney’s squeaky-clean persona — only recently did he stop using words like “golly” in public — can make him seem “too plastic, the Ken side of a Ken and Barbie doll,” Mr. Barlow said.
He and others say that wholesomeness is deeply authentic to Mr. Romney, whose spiritual life revolves around personal rectitude. In Mormonism, salvation depends in part on constantly making oneself purer and therefore more godlike.
In the temple Mr. Romney helped build in Belmont, as in every other, members change from street clothes into all-white garb when they arrive, to emphasize their elevated state. As a church leader, he enforced standards, evaluating members for a “temple recommend,” a gold-and-white pass permitting only the virtuous to enter.
A Man of Rules
Mr. Romney is quick to uphold rules great and small. During primary debates, when his rivals spoke out of turn or exceeded their allotted time, he would sometimes lecture them. When supporters ask Mr. Romney to sign dollar bills or American flags, he refuses and often gives them a little lesson about why doing so is against the law.
Doing things by the book has been a hallmark of his career in public life. When Mr. Romney took over the Salt Lake City Olympics, which were dogged by ethical problems, he cast himself as a heroic reformer. As governor of Massachusetts, he depicted himself as a voice of integrity amid what he called the back-scratchers and ethically dubious lifers of state government.
In church, Mr. Romney frequently spoke about obeying authority, the danger of rationalizing misbehavior and God’s fixed standards. “Most people, if they don’t want to do what God wants them to do, they move what God wants them to do about four feet over,” he once told his congregation, holding out his arms to indicate the distance, Mr. Christensen remembered.
He often urged adherence even to rules that could seem overly harsh. One fellow worshiper, Justin Brown, recalled in an interview that when he was a young man leaving for his mission abroad, Mr. Romney warned him that some parameters would make no sense, but to follow them anyway and trust that they had unseen value.
Church officials say Mr. Romney tried to be sensitive and merciful; when a college student faced serious penalties for having premarital sex, Mr. Romney put him on a kind of probation instead. But he carried out excommunications faithfully. “Mitt was very much by the rules,” said Tony Kimball, who later served as his executive secretary in the church.
Nearly two decades ago, Randy and Janna Sorensen approached Mr. Romney, then a church official, for help: unable to have a baby on their own, they wanted to adopt but could not do so through the church, which did not facilitate adoptions for mothers who worked outside the home.
Devastated, they told Mr. Romney that the rule was unjust and that they needed two incomes to live in Boston. Mr. Romney helped, but not by challenging church authorities. He took a calculator to the Sorensen household budget and showed how with a few sacrifices, Ms. Sorensen could quit her job. Their children are now grown, and Mr. Sorensen said they were so grateful that they had considered naming a child Mitt. (The church has since relaxed its prohibition on adoption for women who work outside the home.)
Among the Belmont Mormons, stories abound of Mr. Romney acting out the values he professed in church. The Romneys left their son Tagg’s wedding reception early to take some of the food to a neighbor being treated for breast cancer.

Page 3 of 4)
But many also see a gap between his religious ideals — in Sunday school, he urged his students to act with the highest standards of kindness and integrity — and his political tactics. The chasm has been hard to reconcile, even though people close to him say he is serious about trying to do so.
Mormonism teaches respect for secular authorities as well as religious ones, but “politics has required him to go against form,” said Richard Bushman, a leading historian of the church who knows Mr. Romney from church.
For example, Mr. Romney had ruled out running personal attack ads against political rivals, those close to him said. When Senator Edward M. Kennedy attacked him as an uncaring capitalist in 1994, using ads that exaggerated Mr. Romney’s role in Bain-related layoffs, Mr. Romney refused to punch back and exploit Mr. Kennedy’s history of womanizing. “Winning is not important enough to put aside my ideals and principles,” Mr. Romney told aides.
But when he ran for governor in 2002, his campaign targeted the husband of his general election opponent, Shannon O’Brien (he had formerly worked as a lobbyist for Enron; the ads linked him to problems at the company that he had nothing to do with.)
Last week, Mr. Romney repudiated efforts to attack President Obama based on his past relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. But earlier this year, he suggested that Mr. Obama wanted to make the United States “a less Christian nation.”
“I have absolutely no idea how he rationalizes it,” Mr. Kimball said of Mr. Romney’s harshest statements and attacks. “It almost seems to be the ends justifying the means.”
Relying on Prayer
Though Mr. Romney almost never discusses it or performs it in public, prayer is a regular and important part of his life, say friends who have joined him. They describe him closing his eyes and addressing God with thees and thous, composing his message to suit the occasion, whether at a church meeting, at a hospital bedside or in a solemn moment with family and friends.
“Prayer is not a rote thing with him,” said Ann N. Madsen, a Bible scholar and a friend. Rather than requesting a specific outcome, he more often asks for strength, wisdom and courage, according to several people who have prayed with him. “Help us see how to navigate this particular problem,” he often asks, according to Dr. Lewis Hassell, who served with Mr. Romney in church.
Former colleagues say they do not recall Mr. Romney praying in the workplace — some say they barely heard the word “God” come from his lips — but he did pray about work from his home.
“I remember literally kneeling down with Mitt at his home and praying about our firm,” Bob Gay, a former Bain colleague and current church official, told Jeff Benedict, author of “The Mormon Way of Doing Business.” “We did that in times of crisis, and we prayed that we’d do right by our people and our investors.”
Mr. Romney also prays before taking action on decisions he has already made, asking for divine reassurance, a feeling that he is “united with the powers above,” Dr. Hassell said. Sometimes Mr. Romney would report that even though he had made a decision on the merits, prayer had changed his mind. “Even though rationally this looks like the thing to do, I just have a feeling we shouldn’t do it,” he would say, according to Grant Bennett, another friend and church leader.
Mr. Romney has also asked for divine sustenance during his political runs. The night before he declared his candidacy for governor, he and his family prayed at home with Gloria White-Hammond and Ray Hammond, friends and pastors of a Boston-area African Methodist Episcopal church.
His earlier failed run for United States Senate had all been part of God’s plan, Mrs. Romney told Ms. White-Hammond around that time. Mr. Romney had lost, but “just because God says for you to do something doesn’t mean the outcome is going to be what you want it to be,” Ms. White-Hammond remembered Mrs. Romney saying.

(Page 4 of 4)
Having a higher purpose is part of what motivates Mr. Romney, many of those close to him say, and gives him the wherewithal to suffer the slings and arrows of political life. Mormons have a “history of persistence and tenacity, a sense of living out a destiny that is connected to earlier generations,” said Mr. Anderson, the business school dean. Mr. Romney is driven by “responsibility to his father and his father’s fathers to use his time and talent and energy and whatever gifts he’s been given by the Lord to try to make a contribution.”
And while voters tend to see Mr. Romney as immensely fortunate, those close to him say that he never forgets he is a member of an oft-derided religious minority. The chapel where Mr. Romney taught Sunday school burned in a case of suspected arson in the 1980s, a still-unsolved crime that church members attribute to prejudice.
As a candidate for governor, Mr. Romney endured crude jokes, made to his face, including about having more than one wife. After his failed 2008 presidential bid, Mr. Romney told Richard Eyre, a friend, that he wished the church could rebrand itself, replacing the name “Mormon” with “Latter-day Christian” to emphasize its belief in Jesus and the New Testament.
His response to prejudice, friends say, has always been to soldier on and to present the best possible example, knowing that others will draw conclusions about the faith based on his behavior. “In his generation, George Romney was the world’s most famous Mormon, and now Mitt is more famous than his dad,” Mr. Anderson said.
Mr. Romney told fellow Mormons at Bain & Company that they had to work harder and perform better because they had a reputation to defend. With a similar motive, Mr. Romney sent volunteer cleaning crews each week to the churches that lent space to the Belmont Mormons after the chapel fire. Confronted with the nasty joke about Mormons during the race for governor, Mr. Romney brushed it off even as his face tensed, recalled Jonathan Spampinato, his former political director.
“Romneys were made to swim upstream,” he has told friends many times.
About a year ago, Mrs. Romney told Ms. White-Hammond that her husband was probably going to run for president again, and that they were both already praying about the race.
Mr. Romney was still a bit reluctant to re-enter the fray, according to Ms. White-Hammond. But she recalled the soon-to-be candidate’s wife saying that the Romneys both “felt it was what God wanted them to do.”

Jew Forever   Sivan 1, 5772 • May 22, 2012
By Sarah Zadok
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We recently moved away from a neighborhood where virtually everyone wears their Judaism on their long sleeves. Black hats; headscarves; yarmulkes of every size, color and texture. Long, flowing skirts; straight, kick-pleated skirts; stockings in the summertime; and, of course, the ever-present tzitzit a-flying. If there is a piece of Jewish regalia that exists, you can find it there.
When the sun sets on Friday evenings in the small city where we used to live, it’s like someone pushed a communal Sabbath button. Presto! The cars disappear, and the streets fill with men and boys in clean white shirts, and women and girls dressed to the nines in their Shabbat finery. There is even a loudspeaker that blasts a very upbeat “Oy, yoy, yoy, yoy, yoy Shabbes!” tune 18 minutes before candle-lighting, just to help get us fired up.
Even from afar, he looked a little scary
It helped a little.
We have moved to a much smaller and more diverse country town in Northern Israel, with Jews of all shapes and sizes. A good portion of the folks here are committed to Shabbat observance, while an equal-sized portion are not. There are no “oy yoy yoy's" on loudspeakers, no instant cessation of cars driving on the streets Friday nights; but there is a very special and authentic Jewish energy that pulses through this place.
That pulse just about smacked me over the head recently, when a holy Jew crossed my path and reminded me that being a Jew goes far beyond what we look like or how we dress.
I was out for a little Shabbat stroll with my kids. We were headed for the park down the hill, and a young, shirtless man was walking towards us. Even from afar, he looked a little scary. He was heavily tattooed, had a large chain swinging from his pocket, and was smoking a cigarette. He walked with a swagger that gave off an “I dare you to pass judgment on me” vibe.
I started to feel just the slightest bit anxious, so I tried my best to channel my inner “We’re all beautiful in G d’s eyes” vibe. As he got closer, I decided I would make eye contact with him and wish him a “Shabbat Shalom.” But before I could, my eight-year-old daughter, a budding reader with a tendency to read anything in bold print aloud, pointed to the man and said, “Jew forever.”
Stunned by her total acceptance and her incredible depth, I said, “That is so beautiful, love.”
“No, it says on his chest, ‘Jew Forever.’”
Oh.
Indeed, this young man had big, bold, capital Gothic letters that spelled the words “Jew Forever” tattooed across his chest. I must have been in information overload when we actually passed each other, because I don’t remember if we exchanged “Shabbat Shalom's or not . . . but something was exchanged, something I won’t be forgetting any time soon.
For the record, tattooing is explicitly forbidden according to Jewish law. If it is possible to put that aside for a moment, I would like to assert that this man’s commitment to his Jewish identity absolutely amazed and inspired me. I wish I’d had the presence of mind to speak to him and ask him for his backstory. I can only imagine what inspired such a wanton expression of Jewish pride. But, as the Baal Shem Tov teaches, we are meant to learn from the things that G d puts in our paths. I learned several things from that tattooed man.
1.   Jews are hardcore.
2.   Being a Jew is way more about who you are than what you look like.
3.   I understood then, in a way that I hadn’t understood before, how deep my commitment needs to run.
This young man had big, bold, capital Gothic letters that spelled the words “Jew Forever” tattooed across his chest
There is an unfortunate word that is part of modern Israeli vernacular. The word is chiloni. (I’m not going to spell it phonetically for you, because I don’t want you to say it.) It’s a word that is intended to describe any Jew who doesn’t adhere to Jewish law, who doesn’t keep Shabbat or kosher, for example.
Now the root of the word is chol, which means “mundane” or “ordinary”—it is a word that is intrinsically juxtaposed with the word kodesh, which means “holy” or “separate.” An example of its use is in the havdalah prayer, which we say at the conclusion of Shabbat: “Baruch atah . . . hamavdil bein kodesh l’chol”—“Blessed [are You, G d,] who separates the holy from the mundane.”
The Jewish people were chosen by G d to be an am kadosh, a holy nation. All Jews, regardless of upbringing or behavior, were given uniquely Jewish souls in order to fulfill that mission. The Alter Rebbe, the first Chabad Rebbe, writes in his Tanya that a Jewish soul is “an actual piece of G d.” There is nothing that a Jew can do to destroy his soul, his actual piece of G d. It is an impossibility.
So to call one’s self, or another Jew, a chiloni is downright blasphemy. Ironically, had this special Jew studied a little Tanya, he would have known that “Jew forever” is already tattooed on his heart.
While there may be folks out there who opt to look at that tattooed Jew with disdain or pity for his blatant disregard for Torah law, I have a feeling that G d sees things from a much wider lens. I think it was precisely his holy Jewish soul that inspired his pectoral declaration. While his medium of choice may be misguided, I imagine that his intention was very well received.
I have a feeling that G d sees things from a much wider lens
We now are preparing to celebrate the holiday of Shavuot, the day the Jewish people received the Torah at Mount Sinai. Our sages explain that while we camped at the foot of the mountain waiting for the big day, we were k’ish echad belev echad, like one man with one heart. We looked different from one another, we chose different words to express ourselves, had different ideas about how to speak with our children and how to cook a steak . . . but we knew who we were: one, big, fat, inseparable family.
This Shavuot, as we prepare to receive the Torah anew, may G d give us the strength to push past the outer layers that threaten to separate us, and allow us to see straight into each other’s core—to the place inside all of us that is all G d, all the time.

Rational People Fear Big Government, Not Big Business
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
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You cannot understand the left if you do not understand that Leftism is a religion. It is not God-based (some Left-wing Christians' and Jews' claims notwithstanding), but otherwise it has every characteristic of a religion. The most blatant of those characteristics is dogma. People who believe in Leftism have as many dogmas as the most fundamentalist Christian.

One of them is material equality as the preeminent moral goal. Another is the villainy of corporations. The bigger the corporation, the greater the villainy. Thus, instead of the devil, the left has Big Pharma, Big Tobacco, Big Oil, the "military-industrial complex," and the like. Meanwhile, Big Labor, Big Trial Lawyers, and, of course, Big Government are leftwing angels. And why is that? Why, to be specific, does the left fear big corporations but not big government? The answer is dogma -- a belief system that transcends reason. No rational person can deny that big governments have caused almost all the great evils of the last century, arguably the bloodiest in history. Who killed the 20-30 million Soviet citizens in the Gulag Archipelago -- big government or big business? Hint: There were no private businesses in the Soviet Union. Who deliberately caused 75 million Chinese to starve to death -- big government or big business? Hint: See previous hint. Did Coca Cola kill five million Ukrainians? Did Big Oil slaughter a quarter of the Cambodian population? Would there have been a Holocaust without the huge Nazi state?

Whatever bad big corporations have done is dwarfed by the monstrous crimes -- the mass enslavement of people, the deprivation of the most basic human rights, not to mention the mass murder and torture and genocide -- committed by big governments.

How can anyone who thinks rationally believe that big corporations rather than big governments pose the greatest threat to humanity? The answer is that it takes a mind distorted by leftist dogma. If there is another explanation, I do not know what it is.

Religious Christians and Jews also have some irrational beliefs, but their irrationality is overwhelmingly confined to theological matters; and these theological irrationalities have no deleterious impact on religious Jews' and Christians' ability to see the world rationally and morally. Few religious Jews or Christians believe that big corporations are in any way analogous to big government in terms of evil done. And the few who do are leftists.

That the Left demonizes "Big Pharma," for instance, is an example of leftwing thinking. America's pharmaceutical companies have saved millions of lives, including millions of leftists' lives. And I do not doubt that in order to increase profits, they have not always played by the rules. But to demonize big pharmaceutical companies while lionizing big government, big labor unions and big trial law firms, is to stand morality on its head.

There is yet another reason to fear big government far more than big corporations. ExxonMobil has no police force, no IRS, no ability to arrest you, no ability to shut you up, and certainly no ability to kill you. ExxonMobil can't knock on your door in the middle of the night and legally take you away. Apple Computer cannot take your money away without your consent, and it runs no prisons. The government does all of these things.

Of course, the left will respond that government also does good and that corporations and capitalists are, by their very nature, "greedy."

To which the rational response is that, of course, government also does good. But so do the vast majority of corporations, private citizens, church groups, and myriad voluntary associations. On the other hand, only big government can do anything approaching the monstrous evils of the last century.

As for greed: Between hunger for money and hunger for power, the latter is incomparably more frightening. It is noteworthy that none of the twentieth century's monsters -- Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao -- were preoccupied with material gain. They loved power much more than money.

And that is why the left is much more frightening than the right. It craves power.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/22/science/american-scientists-fear-losing-edge-in-physics.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120522

as posted on Michael Yon's website:

Statement From Taliban
 

Next > 

The Taliban sent this statement.  There is a great deal of false information here but good to know what they are saying:

Statement of Islamic Emirate regarding the NATO summit in Chicago

According to news reports, NATO is going to hold a diplomatic summit in the city of Chicago from May 20-21 where Afghanistan will be the most important agenda on the table. Therefore the Islamic Emirate, in order to fulfill its historical obligation, wants to declare the below points to the participants of this conference:

1. The invasion of Afghanistan by America and its allies under the banner of ‘war of terror’ was an unjustified and tyrannical action which was only carried out for political and economical gains. Terrorism and ground realities had nothing in common. No Afghan had a hand in military operations in other countries and neither are there any proofs hence the occupation of Afghanistan by America is neither sound legally or logically.

2. As a result of this occupation, the invasive America imposed upon the Afghan Muslim nation a few war criminals that were cast offs, whose hands were red with the blood of innocent humans and who were involved in transgressing against the life, wealth and honor of the ordinary people. The Afghans have been facing torment from their brutality and crimes for the past decade while the invaders have just turn a blind eye to them.

3. The American intelligence networks including the CIA state that members of Al-Qaida have all left Afghanistan and that there are not more than fifty left therefore the military presence of America is not for its own security but a long term strategy for turning our country and the region into its colony. The declaration of the new president of France, Francois Hollande, that all its troops will be removed from Afghanistan at the end of this year is a decision based on realities and a reflection of the opinion of its nation. We call upon all the other NATO member countries to avoid working for the political interests of American officials and answer the call of your own people by immediately removing all your troops from Afghanistan.

4. The invading soldiers in Afghanistan martyr the defenseless children, women, elderly and other people of Afghanistan in their night raids and blind bombardments without having to worry about the consequences. The perpetrators of these violations are all criminals. The claimants of Human Rights must not condone them. Similarly, the occupying forces have created local militias under the title of ‘Arbakis’ who transgress against the life, wealth and honor of ordinary people and martyr innocent Afghans even though they cannot confront the Mujahideen physically. If the invaders want to fund and equip such groups and continue their blind bombardments then the responsibility of civilian losses caused in Afghanistan will rest squarely upon the shoulders of these forces.

5. We want to declare to the whole world the stooge Kabul administration tortures innocent prisoners, extracts false confessions and hands out long term prison sentences. The security apparatus of Kabul regime discriminates and treats them with prejudice. Ending this oppression is the obligation of every human being.

6. The invading forces have destroyed whole villages along with their inhabitants (Tarako Kalacha as example) in Afghanistan with twenty five ton bombs. They have razed entire bazaars with hundreds of shops in Helmand and Uruzgan. They have also uprooted the greenery and orchards in Panjwai and Zhari districts of Kandahar and similarly in Band-e-Sarda of Ghazni province. All this savagery is committed under the slogans of war on terror. Today’s international community which touts tolerance, justice and human rights, how can it justify this savagery in Afghanistan at the hands of these self proclaimed civilized men?

7. In order to brainwash the public and to vilify the Mujahideen of Islamic Emirate, various networks in Afghanistan headed by the invading forces commit some acts such as the destruction and burning of bridges and schools, carrying out explosions amongst civilians, targeting of specific people for vile purposes and others, the Islamic Emirate declares its complete disavowal from them.

8. The occupying American forces have created secret prisons inside all of their airbases in Afghanistan where they keep innocent Afghans and carry out various forms of torture on them which has resulted in the martyrdom of many. Besides this, thousands of innocent Afghans are being held prisoners in Kandahar and Bagram airbases without any charges. These are all people who have no knowledge of the New York incident but are been held captives under its pretext for years and are languishing in unbearable conditions.

9. A survey conducted in April by CBS news and New York Times showed that 69 percent of Americans oppose the war in Afghanistan and want their troops out of Afghanistan. Similarly, the people of nations allied with America have also shown their opposition to the occupation of Afghanistan. So the NATO member countries who claim to be the elected representatives of its people and consider their government the peoples government, by the people, for the people; how will they answer the call of their people in this summit?

10. The Islamic Emirate once again declares that it holds no agenda of harming anyone nor will it let anyone harm other countries from the soil of Afghanistan hence there is no reason for the occupying countries including America to continue the occupation of Afghanistan under the pretext of safeguarding its own security.

11. The occupation of Afghanistan by America through the use of force is a clear violation of a sovereign state which is not justified under any international law. Those Afghans that are fighting against this violation are independence seeking Mujahideen who demand their due rights and putting up resistance to this occupation is their legal right. This armed struggle will only come to an end when the Afghans acquire their independence and a government of their choice. Imposed agreements and international conferences are not the solution to the Afghan quandary. The solution lies in giving the Muslim Afghan nation their complete legitimate and natural right.

12. The Islamic Emirate has left all military and political doors open. It wants to obtain the rights of the Muslim Afghan nation through all possible ways and as a responsible force, is prepared to accept all it announces however the invaders are utilizing a one step forward, two steps backwards tactic. They are conjuring artificial excuses to prolong the occupation of Afghanistan, are wavering in their stance and do not seem to have a clear strategy for a political solution. The Islamic Emirate considers the claims of the invaders of finding a political solution as meaningless until they come out of their fluctuating unstable state.

13. The occupation of Afghanistan by America and its allies is the fundamental problem. If this matter is solved, the Afghans understand each others language and share a common culture therefore they can reach a resolution regarding the country. The foreigners should forgo prolonging and complicating the Afghan issue for their colonialist objectives.

To end, we must reiterate that the Mujahideen of Islamic Emirate will keep proceeding with their ongoing Jihad until it attains its goal. The terrorism and savagery of the invaders and their stooges will not be able to stop it. We call upon the leaders of the NATO member countries to realize the ground realities of Afghanistan and acknowledge the natural rights of the Afghans which are an independent nation and establishment of a government of its own choice. Similarly, they should stop the gross human right violations ongoing in Afghanistan and the desecration of the sanctities of Afghans committed by their troops. But if they still refuse to pay attention to the consequences of their criminal actions, then they will also be erased along with their oppression and terror on this blessed soil just like the previous imperialists and only their stories shall remain.

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

Monday Morning Outlook
________________________________________
The Plow Horse Rolls On To view this article, Click Here
Brian S. Wesbury - Chief Economist
Bob Stein, CFA - Senior Economist
Date: 5/21/2012
Turn on the television, pick up the newspaper, search the Internet and you will find story after story about Greece, JP Morgan, austerity, the labor force, student loans, California, the G-8, or the Facebook IPO. Just about every bit of the coverage is negative. 
Replace that list with Tunisia, Egypt, China, oil prices, foreclosures, deleveraging, and Ireland; or Dubai, tsunami, earthquake, copper, Baltic Freight Index and Portugal…and you get the picture. For three years, the news has been relentlessly bearish.
 
And yet, amid all this, our “plow horse economy” keeps moving forward – through the stumps and rocks and mud. It’s certainly not I’ll Have Another, who, with one more win, can take the Triple Crown – a measure of strength, courage and greatness. But it ain’t headed for the glue factory either.
 
Consumer spending is at a record high (whether measured on a real or nominal basis). Retail sales were up in April for the 21st time in the past 22 months. In terms of consistency, this rivals the 1998-99 streak of 16 straight monthly gains, a period everyone looks back on as a boom. Real (inflation-adjusted) retail sales are up 4% from a year ago. If this is the new normal, let’s have more of it.
 
Private payrolls are up 26 consecutive months, hours of work are rising, and consumers’ financial obligations are the smallest share of income since 1984. No wonder sales of autos and light trucks are up almost 10% from a year ago.         
 
Meanwhile, business investment is soaring. While overall industrial production is up a robust 5.2% from a year ago, the production of business equipment is up a stellar 12%. This is why we believe productivity growth, which has slowed down the past couple of years, is destined to get a second wind.
 
Capacity utilization hit 79.2% in April, equal to the average of the past twenty years. What this means is that firms have an increasing incentive to build out capacity by investing in plant and equipment. At the same time, profits and balance sheet cash are at record highs. In other words, prospects in the business sector look good.
 
And, despite all you hear about banks not lending, commercial and industrial loans are up 13.6% in the past year. The story about banks not lending to companies is getting very stale, the bottom for these loans dates back to late 2010.               
 
And to top it all off, housing is clearly on the mend. Starts are up 30% from a year ago. Every major region of the country shows growth in the past twelve months, for both single-family and multi-family homes. Residential investment (home building) has been a positive factor for real GDP growth in each of the past four quarters and looks poised to do it again in Q2.
 
What we have on our hands is a sustainable, self-reinforcing economic recovery. It could be better. What’s holding it back is bad policy choices coming out of Washington, DC. Government spending is robbing the economy of potential and uncertainty about future taxes and regulation is a wet blanket.
 
Amazingly, the plow horse keeps moving forward. That’s the real news here - unending pessimism being defeated by the American entrepreneurial spirit.     

http://paul.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1976:on-indefinite-detention-the-tyranny-continues&catid=64:2012-texas-straight-talk&Itemid=69

Second post of the day

Here's what Stratfor was saying three years ago-- how does it measure up?
=================


Summary

 
There is no doubt that the Taliban currently have the initiative in Afghanistan, but the movement has a long way to go before it can effect a decisive victory. While the Taliban need not evolve from insurgent group to conventional army to achieve that goal, they must move beyond guerrilla tactics, consolidate their disparate parts and find ways to function as a more coordinated fighting force.



Analysis

The United States is losing in Afghanistan because it is not winning. The Taliban are winning in Afghanistan because they are not losing. This is the reality of insurgent warfare. A local insurgent is more invested in the struggle and is working on a much longer time line than an occupying foreign soldier. Every year that U.S. and NATO commanders do not show progress in Afghanistan, the investment of lives and resources becomes harder to justify at home. Public support erodes. Even without more pressing concerns elsewhere, democracies tend to have short attention spans.

At the present time, defense budgets across the developed world -- like national coffers in general -- are feeling the pinch of the global financial crisis. Meanwhile, the resurgence of Russia's power and influence along its periphery continues apace. The state of the current U.S.-NATO Afghanistan campaign is not simply a matter of eroding public opinion, but also of immense opportunity costs due to mounting economic and geopolitical challenges elsewhere.

This reality plays into the hands of the insurgents. In any guerrilla struggle, the local populace is vulnerable to the violence and very sensitive to subtle shifts in power at the local level. As long as the foreign occupier’s resolve continues to erode (as it almost inevitably does) or is made to appear to erode (by the insurgents), the insurgents maintain the upper hand. If the occupying power is perceived as a temporary reality for the local populace and the insurgents are an enduring reality, then the incentive for the locals -- at the very least -- is to not oppose the insurgents directly enough to incur their wrath when the occupying power leaves. For those who seek to benefit from the largesse and status that cooperation with the occupying power can provide, the enduring fear is the departure of that power before a decisive victory can be made against the insurgents -- or before adequate security can be provided by an indigenous government army.

Let us apply this dynamic to the current situation in Afghanistan. In much of the extremely rugged, rural and sparsely populated country, a sustained presence by the U.S.-NATO and the Taliban alike is not possible. No one is in clear control in most parts of the country. The strength of the tribal power structure was systematically undermined by the communists long before the actual Soviet invasion at the end of 1979. The power structure that remains is nowhere near as strong or as uniform as, say, that of the Sunni tribes in Anbar province in Iraq (one important reason why replicating the Iraq counterinsurgency in Afghanistan is not possible). Indeed, it is difficult to overstate the unique complexity of the ethnic, linguistic and tribal disparities in Afghanistan.

The challenge for each side in the current Afghan war is to become more of a sustained presence than the other. "Holding" territory is not possible in the traditional sense, with so few troops and hard-line insurgent fighters involved, so a village can be "pro-NATO" one day and "pro-Taliban" the next, depending on who happens to be moving through the area. But even village and tribal leaders who do work with the West are extremely hesitant to burn any bridges with the Taliban, lest U.S.-NATO forces withdraw before defeating the insurgents and before developing a sufficient replacement force of Afghan nationals.

Today, the two primary sources of power in Afghanistan are the gun and the Koran -- brute force and religious credibility. The Taliban purport to base their power on both, while the United States and NATO are often derided for wielding only the former -- and clumsily at that. Many Afghans believe that too many innocent civilians have been killed in too many indiscriminate airstrikes.

So it comes as little surprise that popular support for the Taliban is on the rise in more and more parts of Afghanistan, and that this support is becoming increasingly entrenched. For years, U.S. attention has been distracted and military power absorbed in Iraq. Meanwhile, a limited U.S.-NATO presence and a lack of opposition in Afghanistan have allowed various elements of the Taliban to make significant inroads. This resurgence is also due to clandestine support from Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate, as well as proximity to the mountainous and lawless Pakistani border area, which serves as a Taliban sanctuary.

But the Taliban still have not coalesced to the point where they can eject U.S. or NATO forces from Afghanistan. Far from a monolithic movement, the term "Taliban" encompasses everything from the old hard-liners of the pre-9/11 Afghan regime to small groups that adopt the name as a "flag of convenience," be they Islamists devoted to a local cause or criminals wanting to obscure their true objectives. Some Taliban elements in Pakistan are waging their own insurrection against Islamabad. (The multifaceted and often confusing character of the Taliban "movement" actually creates a layer of protection around it. The United States has admitted that it does not have the nuanced understanding of the Taliban’s composition needed to identify potential moderates who can be split off from the hard-liners.)

Any "revolutionary" or insurgent force usually has two enemies: the foreign occupying or indigenous government power it is trying to defeat, and other revolutionary entities with which it is competing. While making inroads against the former, the Taliban have not yet resolved the issue of the latter. It is not so much that various insurgent groups with distinctly different ideologies are in direct competition with each other; the problem for the Taliban, reflecting the rough reality that the country’s mountainous and rugged terrain imposes on its people, is the disparate nature of the movement itself.

In order to precipitate a U.S.-NATO withdrawal in the years ahead, the Taliban must do better in consolidating their power. No doubt they currently have the upper hand, but their strategic and tactical advantages will only go so far. They may be enough to prevent the United States and NATO from winning, but they will not accelerate the time line for a Taliban victory. To do this, the Taliban must move beyond current guerrilla tactics and find ways to function as a more coherent and coordinated fighting force.

The bottom line is that neither side in the struggle in Afghanistan is currently operating at its full potential.

To Grow an Insurgency

The main benefits of waging an insurgency usually boil down to the following: insurgents operate in squad- to platoon-sized elements, have light or nonexistent logistical tails, are largely able to live off the land or the local populace, can support themselves by seizing weapons and ammunition from weak local police and isolated outposts and can disperse and blend into the environment whenever they confront larger and more powerful conventional forces. In Afghanistan, the chief insurgent challenge is that reasonably well-defended U.S.-NATO positions have no problem fending off units of that size. In the evolution of an insurgency, we call this stage-one warfare, and Taliban operations by and large continue to be characterized as such.

In stage-two warfare, insurgents operate in larger formations -- first independent companies of roughly 100 or so fighters, and later battalions of several hundred or more. Although still relatively small and flexible, these units require more in terms of logistics, especially as they begin to employ heavier, more supply-intensive weaponry like crew-served machine guns and mortars, and they are too large to simply disperse the moment contact with the enemy is made. The challenges include not only logistics but also battlefield communications (everything from bugles and whistles to cell phones and secure tactical radios) as the unit becomes too large for a single leader to manage or visually keep track of from one position.

In stage-three warfare, the insurgent force has become, for all practical purposes, a conventional army operating in regiments and divisions (units, say, consisting of 1,000 or more troops). These units are large enough to bring artillery to bear but must be able to provide a steady flow of ammunition. Forces of this size are an immense logistical challenge and, once massed, cannot quickly be dispersed, which makes them vulnerable to superior firepower.

The culmination of this evolution is exemplified by the battle of Dien Bien Phu in a highland valley in northwestern Vietnam in 1954. The Viet Minh, which began as a nationalist guerrilla group fighting the Japanese during World War II, massed multiple divisions and brought artillery to bear against a French military position considered impregnable. The battle lasted two months and saw the French position overrun. More than 2,000 French soldiers were killed, more than twice that many wounded and more than 10,000 captured. The devastating defeat was quickly followed by the French withdrawal from Indochina after an eight-year counterinsurgency.

The Taliban Today

In describing this progression from stage one to stage three, we are not necessarily suggesting that the Taliban will develop into a conventional force, or that a stage-three capability is necessary to win in Afghanistan. Not every insurgency that achieves victory does so by evolving into the kind of national-level conventional resistance made legendary by the Viet Minh.

Indeed, artillery was not necessary to expel the Soviet Red Army from Afghanistan in the 1980s; that force faced and failed to overcome many of the same challenges that have repelled invaders for centuries and confront the United States and NATO today. But in monitoring the progress of the Taliban as a fighting force, it is important to look beyond estimates of "controlled" territory to the way the Taliban fight, command, consolidate and organize disparate groups into a more coherent resistance.

The Taliban first rose to power in the aftermath of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and before 9/11. They were not the ones to kick out the Red Army, however. That was the mujahideen, with the support of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States. The Taliban emerged from the anarchy that followed the fall of Afghanistan’s communist government, also at the hands of the mujahideen, in 1992. In the intra-Islamist civil war that ensued, the Taliban were able to establish security in the southern part of the country, winning over a local Pashtun populace and assorted minorities that had grown weary of war.

This impressed Pakistan, which switched its support from the splintered mujahideen to the Taliban, which appeared to be on a roll. By 1996, the Taliban, also supported by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, were in power in Kabul. Then came 9/11. While the Taliban did, for a time, achieve a kind of stage-two status as a fighting force, they have never had the kind of superpower support the Viet Minh and North Vietnamese received from the Soviet Union during the French and American wars in Vietnam, or that the mujahideen received from the United States during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

But elements of the Taliban continue to enjoy patronage from within the Pakistani army and intelligence apparatus, as well as continued funding from wealthy patrons in the Persian Gulf states. The Pakistani support underscores the most important of resources for an effective insurgency (or counterinsurgency): intelligence. With it, the Taliban can obtain accurate and actionable information on competing insurgent groups in order to build a wider and more concerted campaign. They can also identify targets, adjust tactics and exploit the weaknesses of opposing conventional forces. The Taliban openly tout their ties and support from within the Afghan security forces. (Indeed, a significant portion of the Taliban's weapons and ammunition can be traced back to shipments that were made to the Afghan government and distributed to its police agencies and military units.)

Moreover, while external support of the Taliban may not be as impressive as the support the mujahideen enjoyed in the 1980s, the Karzai government in Afghanistan is far weaker than the communist regime in Kabul that the mujahideen took down. In addition, as a seven-party alliance with significant internal tensions, the mujahideen were even more disjointed than the Taliban. Indeed, the core Taliban today are much more homogeneous than the mujahideen were in the 1980s. The Taliban are the pre-eminent Pashtun power, and the Pashtuns are the single largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. In addition, the leadership of Taliban chief Mullah Omar is unchallenged -- he has no equal who could hope to rise and meaningfully compete for control of the movement.

While the Taliban continue to exist squarely in stage-one combat, the movement is increasingly becoming the established, lasting reality for much of the country’s rural population. For ambitious warlords, joining the Taliban movement offers legitimacy and a local fiefdom with wider recognition. For the remainder of the population, the Taliban are increasingly perceived as the inescapable power that will govern when the United States and NATO begin to draw down.

On the other hand, the Taliban's ability to earn the loyalty of disparate groups, coordinate their actions and command them effectively remains to be seen. Monitoring changes in the way the Taliban communicate -- across the country and across the battlefield -- will say much about their ability to bring power to bear in a coherent, coordinated and conclusive way.


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Read more: Afghanistan: The Nature of the Insurgency | Stratfor

Summary

 
VINCENZO PINTO/AFP/Getty Images

Egyptian presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh (R) at the World Economic Forum on Jan. 27

Egypt's presidential election will be held May 23-24. After several weeks of campaigning, candidate disqualifications, changes in the lineup of competitors and an attempt to suspend the election, two front-runners have emerged in the race. Former Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa is the best hope for the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), while Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh has emerged as the Islamist candidate with the best chance at victory.

The outcome of the election is far from certain, but one implication is clear: The Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which currently dominates the country's parliament, is not likely to control both the legislative and executive branches. Thus, the SCAF will have some room to maneuver in managing the country's tenuous political transition during the drafting of the constitution.



Analysis

The military and the MB are the two principal centers of power in post-Mubarak Egypt. The transition from a single-party to a multi-party system -- triggered by former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's downfall -- centers on the struggle between these two players. Since the MB emerged as the largest bloc in parliament, the presidential election (and the drafting of a new constitution, which is stalled because of a dispute over the composition of the constituent assembly) is important for the SCAF in its struggle to retain power.

From the SCAF's perspective, it is essential that the MB not control both the legislative and executive branches of government. In fact, the SCAF hopes to use the presidency to keep the MB-dominated parliament in check. The council achieved a partial victory when it engineered the disqualification of the MB's star candidate, Khairat el-Shater. The MB replaced el-Shater with a much weaker candidate: Mohammed Mursi, head of the MB’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party. This is why the presidential contest is now a race between Moussa and Aboul Fotouh. The SCAF would score a complete victory if Moussa (who, despite his independent-mindedness, is a product of the Egyptian establishment) becomes president.

The presidency would be an important tool for the SCAF in its efforts to keep an MB-dominated legislature in check, because the president appoints one-third of the upper house of parliament. The parliament has not yet assumed any significant powers, and the SCAF hopes that having its preferred man in the presidency and an executive with sufficient powers under a new constitution will allow it to limit the MB's policymaking authority as the largest bloc in parliament (and thus in the prime minister's position and the Cabinet).

The Candidates
Polls conducted by a state-owned think tank show Moussa in the lead, but several factors could lead Aboul Fotouh to an electoral victory. First, many respect him as a non-partisan national figure, and he is not regarded as a typical Islamist. Aboul Fotouh has attracted a broad range of supporters including liberals, Salafists, Coptic Christians and women, and many MB members likely will vote for him. Furthermore, many liberals and secularists do not want to see the SCAF retain power with Moussa as president.

However, this does not mean Aboul Fotouh will win. Given the state of relations between Aboul Fotouh and the MB, the Islamist vote could be split, especially in the election's first round in which many MB voters likely will vote for Mursi, especially since the MB has carried out an aggressive campaign for its candidate. As a result, Moussa could clear the 50 percent requirement to prevent a second round, which is what the SCAF would prefer. If a second round is triggered, the race likely will be between Moussa and Aboul Fotouh, in which case the Islamist vote likely will consolidate behind Aboul Fotouh and potentially give him a victory.

For Moussa to win, the Islamist split in the first round will be an important factor. Numerous other factors are working in his favor, including support from the SCAF and a large number of business elite, as well as foreign support. He is not as tainted with Mubarak's legacy as some others, such as former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman -- who was disqualified from the election -- and former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq, who remains in the presidential race. Although Moussa served as Mubarak's foreign minister for a decade, his portfolio had almost nothing to do with the internal suppression the regime practiced. It became well known that Moussa was not completely in line with the Mubarak government in 2001, when he left the government to become the secretary-general of the Arab League. This position allowed Moussa to champion pan-Arab issues and the Palestinian cause while building his image as an elder statesman.

From SCAF's point of view, these are good attributes because they want someone with whom they have dealt before to get elected. Of course, Moussa's lack of military background and his independent streak will mean that the military will have to negotiate with him. Moussa will also need to maintain distance from the SCAF if he takes office to avoid the appearance that he follow's the military's every order.

The SCAF's Strong Position
Even if Aboul Fotouh wins the election, it will not pose a major problem for the SCAF. Although the Islamist candidate would push for greater democratization in Egypt, he is far more pragmatic than the MB and is unlikely to make any radical anti-establishment moves. An Aboul Fotouh presidency likely would come with a lot of bargaining and compromises, with a focus on managing the faltering economy -- a key issue for any future president. More important, Aboul Fotouh is a way for the SCAF to keep the Islamists divided, given that he is a rallying point for anti-MB Islamist forces (to both the right and left of the MB on the political spectrum), though he will need to balance between the expectations of Islamists and non-Islamists should he become president.

Whoever wins the presidential election, it will be to the SCAF's advantage (albeit to varying degrees) in its effort to keep the MB's power in check. Although the election likely will occur as scheduled, last-minute disruptions caused by the SCAF issuing a constitutional declaration about presidential powers in relation to parliament are always possible. The SCAF wants to be in a good position to influence the creation of the new constitution, which will be the main event in the political struggle between the military and the civilian political forces in Cairo after the election.


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Read more: Egypt's Election and the Civil-Military Balance of Power | Stratfor

1)  Only in America could politicians talk about the greed of the rich at a $40,000 a plate campaign fundraising event.

2)  Only in America could people claim that the government still discriminates against black Americans when the US elected a black President, we have a black Attorney General, and about 18% of the federal workforce is black, while only 12% of the population is black.

3)  Only in America could we have had the two people most responsible for our tax code, Timothy Geithner, the head of the Treasury Department, and Charles Rangel who once ran the Ways and Means Committee, BOTH turn out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.

4)  Only in America can we have Islamic terrorists deliberately kill innocent people in the name of Allah, and a media react by fretting that Muslims may be harmed by the backlash.

5)  Only in America  would we make people who want to become legal American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of thousands  of dollars for the privilege, while our politicians openly discuss letting anyone who snuck in illegally just become American citizens.

6)  Only in America could the people who believe in balancing the budget and sticking by the country's Constitution be labeled "extremists."

7)  Only in America could you be legally required to present your driver's license to buy alcohol, but not to vote.

  Only in America could people demand the government investigate whether oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gasoline went up, when the return on equity invested in a major US oil company (Marathon Oil) is less than half that of a company making tennis shoes (Nike.)

9)  Only in America could the government collect more tax dollars from the people than any nation in recorded history, yet manage to run over $1 TRILLION in debt last year by spending $7 million PER MINUTE, then complain that it doesn't have nearly enough money.

10)  Only in America could the rich people who pay 86% of all income taxes be accused of not paying "their fair share" by people who don't pay any income taxes at all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/us/obamas-journey-to-reshape-afghanistan-war.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120520

By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: May 19, 2012
It was just one brief exchange about Afghanistan with an aide late in 2009, but it suggests how President Obama’s thinking about what he once called “a war of necessity” began to radically change less than a year after he took up residency in the White House.

Not long before, after a highly contentious debate within a war cabinet that was riddled with leaks, Mr. Obama had reluctantly decided to order a surge of more than 30,000 troops. The aide told Mr. Obama that he believed military leaders had agreed to the tight schedule to begin withdrawing those troops just 18 months later only because they thought they could persuade an inexperienced president to grant more time if they demanded it.

“Well,” Mr. Obama responded that day, “I’m not going to give them more time.”

A year later, when the president and a half-dozen White House aides began to plan for the withdrawal, the generals were cut out entirely. There was no debate, and there were no leaks. And when Mr. Obama joins the leaders of other NATO nations in Chicago on Sunday and Monday, the full extent of how his thinking on Afghanistan has changed will be apparent. He will announce what he has already told the leaders in private: All combat operations led by American forces will cease in summer 2013, when the United States and other NATO forces move to a “support role” whether the Afghan military can secure the country or not.

Mr. Obama concluded in his first year that the Bush-era dream of remaking Afghanistan was a fantasy, and that the far greater threat to the United States was an unstable, nuclear-armed Pakistan. So he narrowed the goals in Afghanistan, and narrowed them again, until he could make the case that America had achieved limited objectives in a war that was, in any traditional sense, unwinnable.

“Just think how big a reversal of approach this was in just two years,” one official involved in the administration debates on Afghanistan said. “We started with what everyone thought was a pragmatic vision but, at its core, was a plan for changing the way Afghanistan is wired. We ended up thinking about how to do as little wiring as possible.”

The lessons Mr. Obama has learned in Afghanistan have been crucial to shaping his presidency. Fatigue and frustration with the war have defined the strategies his administration has adopted to guide how America intervenes in the world’s messiest conflicts. Out of the experience emerged Mr. Obama’s “light footprint” strategy, in which the United States strikes from a distance but does not engage in years-long, enervating occupations. That doctrine shaped the president’s thinking about how to deal with the challenges that followed — Libya, Syria and a nuclear Iran.

In interviews over the past 18 months, Mr. Obama’s top national security aides described the evolution of the president’s views on Afghanistan as a result of three rude discoveries.

Mr. Obama began to question why Americans were dying to prop up a leader, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who was volatile, unreliable and willing to manipulate the ballot box. Faced with an economic crisis at home and a fiscal crisis that Mr. Obama knew would eventually require deep limits on Pentagon spending, he was also shocked, they said, by what the war’s cost would be if the generals’ counterinsurgency plan were left on autopilot — $1 trillion over 10 years. And the more he delved into what it would take to truly change Afghan society, the more he concluded that the task was so overwhelming that it would make little difference whether a large American and NATO force remained for 2 more years, 5 more years or 10 more years.

The remaking of American strategy in Afghanistan began, though no one knew it at the time, in a cramped conference room in Mr. Obama’s transition headquarters in late 2008. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, who had spent the last two years of the Bush administration trying to manage the many trade-offs necessary as the Iraq war consumed troop and intelligence resources needed in Afghanistan, arrived with a PowerPoint presentation.

The first slide that General Lute threw onto the screen caught the eye of Thomas E. Donilon, later President Obama’s national security adviser. “It said we do not have a strategy in Afghanistan that you can articulate or achieve,” Mr. Donilon recalled three years later. “We had been at war for eight years, and no one could explain the strategy.”

So in the first days of his presidency, Mr. Obama asked Bruce O. Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer with deep knowledge of the region, to lead a rapid review. At the time, the president was still speaking in campaign mode. He talked about remaking “an economy that isn’t dominated by illicit drugs” in Afghanistan and a “civilian surge” to match the military effort. But he said little about the Riedel team’s central insight: that Pakistan posed a far greater threat.

Page 2 of 2)

“If we were honest with ourselves, we would call this problem ‘Pak/Af,’ not ‘Af/Pak,’ ” Mr. Riedel said shortly after turning in his report. But the White House would not dare admit that publicly — even that rhetorical reversal would further alienate the Pakistanis.

Mr. Obama agreed with Mr. Riedel, but thought the review did not point clearly enough toward a new strategy. To get it right, the president ordered up a far more thorough process that would involve everyone — military commanders and experts on civilian reconstruction, diplomats who could explore a negotiation with the Taliban, and intelligence officials who could assess which side of the war the Pakistanis were fighting on.

But he also began to reassess whether emerging victorious in Afghanistan was as necessary as he had once proclaimed. Ultimately, Mr. Obama agreed to double the size of the American force while training the Afghan armed forces, but famously insisted that, whether America was winning or losing, the drawdown would begin in just 18 months.

“I think he hated the idea from the beginning,” one of his advisers said of the surge. “He understood why we needed to try, to knock back the Taliban. But the military was ‘all in,’ as they say, and Obama wasn’t.”

The president’s doubts were cemented as the early efforts to take towns like Marja in Helmand Province took months longer than expected. To Mr. Obama and his aides, Marja proved that progress was possible — but not on the kind of timeline that Mr. Obama thought economically or politically affordable.

“Marja looks a lot better than two years ago,” one senior official said at the end of last year. “But how many Marjas do we need to do, and over what time frame?”

The tight group of presidential aides charged with answering questions like that — of redefining the mission — began meeting on weekends at the end of 2010. The group’s informal name said it all: “Afghan Good Enough.”

“We spent the time asking questions like: How much corruption can we live with?” one participant recalled. “Is there another way — a way the Pentagon might not be telling us about — to speed the withdrawal? What’s the least we can spend on training Afghan troops and still get a credible result?”

By early 2011, Mr. Obama had seen enough. He told his staff to arrange a speedy, orderly exit from Afghanistan. This time there would be no announced national security meetings, no debates with the generals. Even Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton were left out until the final six weeks.

The key decisions had essentially been made already when Gen. David H. Petraeus, in his last months as commander in Afghanistan, arrived in Washington with a set of options for the president that called for a slow withdrawal of surge troops. He wanted to keep as many troops as possible in Afghanistan through the next fighting season, with a steep drop to follow. Mr. Obama concluded that the Pentagon had not internalized that the goal was not to defeat the Taliban. He said he “believed that we had a more limited set of objectives that could be accomplished by bringing the military out at a faster clip,” an aide reported.

After a short internal debate, Mr. Gates and Mrs. Clinton came up with a different option: end the surge by September 2012 — after the summer fighting season, but before the election. Mr. Obama concurred. But he was placing an enormous bet: his goals now focus largely on finishing off Al Qaeda and keeping Pakistan’s nuclear weapons from going astray. Left unclear is how America will respond if a Taliban resurgence takes over wide swathes of the country America invaded in 2001 and plans to largely depart 13 years later.

==============

Several questions occur to me.  One of them is this:  If Pakistan is the greater problem, why did Obama just sign an agreement with Karzai agreeing to support him for many more years AND that we would not launch drone strikes etc on Pak from Afg?

Using this thread for time machine issues with Baraq:

http://wayback.archive.org/web/jsp/Interstitial.jsp?seconds=5&date=1088346420000&url=http%3A%2F%2Feastandard.net%2Fheadlines%2Fnews26060403.htm&target=http%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20040627142700%2Feastandard.net%2Fheadlines%2Fnews26060403.htm

Kenyan-born Obama all set for US Senate
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Kenyan-born US Senate hopeful, Barrack Obama  (THIS PHRASE IS WHY THIS PIECE IS BEING POSTED-- I would add that this is an example of the sort of fascinating inconvenient datum that can be vaporized by Big Brother and which we need to keep our own independent evidence of it) appeared set to take over the Illinois Senate seat after his main rival, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race on Friday night amid a furor over lurid sex club allegations.

The allegations that horrified fellow Republicans and caused his once-promising candidacy to implode in four short days have given Obama a clear lead as Republicans struggled to fetch an alternative.

Ryan’s campaign began to crumble on Monday following the release of embarrassing records from his divorce. In the records, his ex-wife, Boston Public actress Jeri Ryan, said her former husband took her to kinky sex clubs in Paris, New York and New Orleans.
  
"It’s clear to me that a vigorous debate on the issues most likely could not take place if I remain in the race," Ryan, 44, said in a statement. "What would take place, rather, is a brutal, scorched-earth campaign – the kind of campaign that has turned off so many voters, the kind of politics I refuse to play."

Although Ryan disputed the allegations, saying he and his wife went to one ‘avant-garde’ club in Paris and left because they felt uncomfortable, lashed out at the media and said it was "truly outrageous" that the Chicago Tribune got a judge (note the Chicago machine tactics here to BO's benefit) to unseal the records.

The Republican choice will become an instant underdog in the campaign for the seat of retiring Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald, since Obama held a wide lead even before the scandal broke.

"I feel for him actually," Obama told a Chicago TV station. "What he’s gone through over the last three days I think is something you wouldn’t wish on anybody."

The Republican state committee must now choose a replacement for Ryan, who had won in the primaries against seven contenders. Its task is complicated by the fact that Obama holds a comfortable lead in the polls and is widely regarded as a rising Democratic star.  (Eventually Alan Keyes was chosen to carpet bag into the district)

The chairwoman of the Illinois Republican Party, Judy Topinka, said at a news conference, after Ryan withdrew, that Republicans would probably take several weeks to settle on a new candidate.

"Obviously, this is a bad week for our party and our state," she said.

As recently as Thursday, spokesmen for the Ryan campaign still insisted that Ryan would remain in the race. Ryan had defended himself saying, "There’s no breaking of any laws. There’s no breaking of any marriage laws. There’s no breaking of the Ten Commandments anywhere."
============

The same material is also produced at http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/05/ap-2004-flashback-kenyan-born-obama-all-set-for-us-senate/ and there are additional comments there-- some of which may contain items of interest as well as the usual internet flotsam.
 

 

I second the point about corporate tax rates and amend the questions in my post to include it.

I second the point about double taxation too and amend my questions to include it.

I'm not sure that I get the logic of why the study was so wrong-- how to achieve the desired levels measurabiilty given the nature of the subject matter-- or trust the source (POTH), but FWIW here it is:

============

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/health/dr-robert-l-spitzer-noted-psychiatrist-apologizes-for-study-on-gay-cure.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120519

PRINCETON, N.J. — The simple fact was that he had done something wrong, and at the end of a long and revolutionary career it didn’t matter how often he’d been right, how powerful he once was, or what it would mean for his legacy.
 
Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry, lay awake at 4 o’clock on a recent morning knowing he had to do the one thing that comes least naturally to him. He pushed himself up and staggered into the dark. His desk seemed impossibly far away; Dr. Spitzer, who turns 80 next week, suffers from Parkinson’s disease and has trouble walking, sitting, even holding his head upright.

The word he sometimes uses to describe these limitations — pathetic — is the same one that for decades he wielded like an ax to strike down dumb ideas, empty theorizing and junk studies.

Now here he was at his computer, ready to recant a study he had done himself, a poorly conceived 2003 investigation that supported the use of so-called reparative therapy to “cure” homosexuality for people strongly motivated to change.
What to say? The issue of gay marriage was rocking national politics yet again. The California State Legislature was debating a bill to ban the therapy outright as being dangerous. A magazine writer who had been through the therapy as a teenager recently visited his house, to explain how miserably disorienting the experience was.
And he would later learn that a World Health Organization report, released on Thursday, calls the therapy “a serious threat to the health and well-being — even the lives — of affected people.”
Dr. Spitzer’s fingers jerked over the keys, unreliably, as if choking on the words. And then it was done: a short letter to be published this month, in the same journal where the original study appeared.
“I believe,” it concludes, “I owe the gay community an apology.”
Disturber of the Peace
The idea to study reparative therapy at all was pure Spitzer, say those who know him, an effort to stick a finger in the eye of an orthodoxy that he himself had helped establish.
In the late 1990s as today, the psychiatric establishment considered the therapy to be a nonstarter. Few therapists thought of homosexuality as a disorder.
It was not always so. Up into the 1970s, the field’s diagnostic manual classified homosexuality as an illness, calling it a “sociopathic personality disturbance.” Many therapists offered treatment, including Freudian analysts who dominated the field at the time.
Advocates for gay people objected furiously, and in 1970, one year after the landmark Stonewall protests to stop police raids at a New York bar, a team of gay rights protesters heckled a meeting of behavioral therapists in New York to discuss the topic. The meeting broke up, but not before a young Columbia University professor sat down with the protesters to hear their case.
“I’ve always been drawn to controversy, and what I was hearing made sense,” said Dr. Spitzer, in an interview at his Princeton home last week. “And I began to think, well, if it is a mental disorder, then what makes it one?”
He compared homosexuality with other conditions defined as disorders, like depression and alcohol dependence, and saw immediately that the latter caused marked distress or impairment, while homosexuality often did not.
He also saw an opportunity to do something about it. Dr. Spitzer was then a junior member of on an American Psychiatric Association committee helping to rewrite the field’s diagnostic manual, and he promptly organized a symposium to discuss the place of homosexuality.
That kicked off a series of bitter debates, pitting Dr. Spitzer against a pair of influential senior psychiatrists who would not budge. In the end, the psychiatric association in 1973 sided with Dr. Spitzer, deciding to drop homosexuality from its manual and replace it with his alternative, “sexual orientation disturbance,” to identify people whose sexual orientation, gay or straight, caused them distress.
The arcane language notwithstanding, homosexuality was no longer a “disorder.” Dr. Spitzer achieved a civil rights breakthrough in record time.
“I wouldn’t say that Robert Spitzer became a household name among the broader gay movement, but the declassification of homosexuality was widely celebrated as a victory,” said Ronald Bayer of the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia. “ ‘Sick No More’ was a headline in some gay newspapers.”

Page 2 of 3)
Partly as a result, Dr. Spitzer took charge of the task of updating the diagnostic manual. Together with a colleague, Dr. Janet Williams, now his wife, he set to work. To an extent that is still not widely appreciated, his thinking about this one issue — homosexuality — drove a broader reconsideration of what mental illness is, of where to draw the line between normal and not.
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The new manual, a 567-page doorstop released in 1980, became an unlikely best seller, here and abroad. It instantly set the standard for future psychiatry manuals, and elevated its principal architect, then nearing 50, to the pinnacle of his field.
He was the keeper of the book, part headmaster, part ambassador, and part ornery cleric, growling over the phone at scientists, journalists, or policy makers he thought were out of order. He took to the role as if born to it, colleagues say, helping to bring order to a historically chaotic corner of science.
But power was its own kind of confinement. Dr. Spitzer could still disturb the peace, all right, but no longer from the flanks, as a rebel. Now he was the establishment. And in the late 1990s, friends say, he remained restless as ever, eager to challenge common assumptions.
That’s when he ran into another group of protesters, at the psychiatric association’s annual meeting in 1999: self-described ex-gays. Like the homosexual protesters in 1973, they too were outraged that psychiatry was denying their experience — and any therapy that might help.
Reparative Therapy
Reparative therapy, sometimes called “sexual reorientation” or “conversion” therapy, is rooted in Freud’s idea that people are born bisexual and can move along a continuum from one end to the other. Some therapists never let go of the theory, and one of Dr. Spitzer’s main rivals in the 1973 debate, Dr. Charles W. Socarides, founded an organization called the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, or Narth, in Southern California, to promote it.
By 1998, Narth had formed alliances with socially conservative advocacy groups and together they began an aggressive campaign, taking out full-page ads in major newspaper trumpeting success stories.
“People with a shared worldview basically came together and created their own set of experts to offer alternative policy views,” said Dr. Jack Drescher, a psychiatrist in New York and co-editor of “Ex-Gay Research: Analyzing the Spitzer Study and Its Relation to Science, Religion, Politics, and Culture.”
To Dr. Spitzer, the scientific question was at least worth asking: What was the effect of the therapy, if any? Previous studies had been biased and inconclusive. “People at the time did say to me, ‘Bob, you’re messing with your career, don’t do it,’ ” Dr. Spitzer said. “But I just didn’t feel vulnerable.”
He recruited 200 men and women, from the centers that were performing the therapy, including Exodus International, based in Florida, and Narth. He interviewed each in depth over the phone, asking about their sexual urges, feelings and behaviors before and after having the therapy, rating the answers on a scale.
He then compared the scores on this questionnaire, before and after therapy. “The majority of participants gave reports of change from a predominantly or exclusively homosexual orientation before therapy to a predominantly or exclusively heterosexual orientation in the past year,” his paper concluded.
The study — presented at a psychiatry meeting in 2001, before publication — immediately created a sensation, and ex-gay groups seized on it as solid evidence for their case. This was Dr. Spitzer, after all, the man who single-handedly removed homosexuality from the manual of mental disorders. No one could accuse him of bias.
But gay leaders accused him of betrayal, and they had their reasons.
The study had serious problems. It was based on what people remembered feeling years before — an often fuzzy record. It included some ex-gay advocates, who were politically active. And it did not test any particular therapy; only half of the participants engaged with a therapist at all, while the others worked with pastoral counselors, or in independent Bible study.
Several colleagues tried to stop the study in its tracks, and urged him not to publish it, Dr. Spitzer said.

Page 3 of 3)
Yet, heavily invested after all the work, he turned to a friend and former collaborator, Dr. Kenneth J. Zucker, psychologist in chief at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto and editor of the Archives of Sexual Behavior, another influential journal.
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“I knew Bob and the quality of his work, and I agreed to publish it,” Dr. Zucker said in an interview last week. The paper did not go through the usual peer-review process, in which unnamed experts critique a manuscript before publication. “But I told him I would do it only if I also published commentaries” of response from other scientists to accompany the study, Dr. Zucker said.
Those commentaries, with a few exceptions, were merciless. One cited the Nuremberg Code of ethics to denounce the study as not only flawed but morally wrong. “We fear the repercussions of this study, including an increase in suffering, prejudice, and discrimination,” concluded a group of 15 researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where Dr. Spitzer was affiliated.
Dr. Spitzer in no way implied in the study that being gay was a choice, or that it was possible for anyone who wanted to change to do so in therapy. But that didn’t stop socially conservative groups from citing the paper in support of just those points, according to Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, a nonprofit group that fights antigay bias.
On one occasion, a politician in Finland held up the study in Parliament to argue against civil unions, according to Dr. Drescher.
“It needs to be said that when this study was misused for political purposes to say that gays should be cured — as it was, many times — Bob responded immediately, to correct misperceptions,” said Dr. Drescher, who is gay.
But Dr. Spitzer could not control how his study was interpreted by everyone, and he could not erase the biggest scientific flaw of them all, roundly attacked in many of the commentaries: Simply asking people whether they have changed is no evidence at all of real change. People lie, to themselves and others. They continually change their stories, to suit their needs and moods.
By almost any measure, in short, the study failed the test of scientific rigor that Dr. Spitzer himself was so instrumental in enforcing for so many years.
“As I read these commentaries, I knew this was a problem, a big problem, and one I couldn’t answer,” Dr. Spitzer said. “How do you know someone has really changed?”
Letting Go
It took 11 years for him to admit it publicly.
At first he clung to the idea that the study was exploratory, an attempt to prompt scientists to think twice about dismissing the therapy outright. Then he took refuge in the position that the study was focused less on the effectiveness of the therapy and more on how people engaging in it described changes in sexual orientation.
“Not a very interesting question,” he said. “But for a long time I thought maybe I wouldn’t have to face the bigger problem, about measuring change.”
After retiring in 2003, he remained active on many fronts, but the reparative study remained a staple of the culture wars and a personal regret that wouldn’t leave him be. The Parkinson’s symptoms have worsened in the past year, exhausting him mentally as well physically, making it still harder to fight back pangs of remorse.
And one day in March, Dr. Spitzer entertained a visitor. Gabriel Arana, a journalist at the magazine The American Prospect, interviewed Dr. Spitzer about the reparative therapy study. This was not just any interview; Mr. Arana went through reparative therapy himself as a teenager, and his therapist had recruited the young man for Dr. Spitzer’s study (Mr. Arana did not participate).
“I asked him about all his critics, and he just came out and said, ‘I think they’re largely correct,’ ” said Mr. Arana, who wrote about his own experience last month. Mr. Arana said that reparative therapy ultimately delayed his self-acceptance as a gay man and induced thoughts of suicide. “But at the time I was recruited for the Spitzer study, I was referred as a success story. I would have said I was making progress.”
That did it. The study that seemed at the time a mere footnote to a large life was growing into a chapter. And it needed a proper ending — a strong correction, directly from its author, not a journalist or colleague.
A draft of the letter has already leaked online and has been reported.
“You know, it’s the only regret I have; the only professional one,” Dr. Spitzer said of the study, near the end of a long interview. “And I think, in the history of psychiatry, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a scientist write a letter saying that the data were all there but were totally misinterpreted. Who admitted that and who apologized to his readers.”
He looked away and back again, his big eyes blurring with emotion. “That’s something, don’t you think?”

"Nakba Day" Fizzles
IPT News
May 18, 2012
http://www.investigativeproject.org/3584/nakba-day-fizzles

 
Upheavals in the Middle East have led to a de-emphasis on Palestinians and their cause against Israel. One symptom of this in recent days was a considerable decrease in participation in the so-called "Nakba" (Catastrophe) Day both in the Middle East and in the West.
Every May 15 (the anniversary of the day after Israel declared independence in 1948) Palestinian ideologues devote the day to mourning the "catastrophe" of the Israel's establishment and blaming it for the plight of millions of Palestinian "refugees."
A Nakba demonstration in midtown Manhattan Tuesday drew less than 35 people. Unfortunately for demonstration organizers, witnesses are more likely to remember an "only in New York moment," when Times Square's "Naked Cowboy" made his way through the small gaggle of demonstrators.
 
A pro-Palestinian advocacy group calling itself Existence is Resistance organized the rally. The group lobbies on behalf of Palestinian hunger strikers it claims are being illegally imprisoned by Israel. One of them is Abdullah Barghouti, a Hamas bomb maker who pleaded guilty to masterminding suicide bombings which killed 66 people and injured more than 500.
While there were instances of Molotov cocktail- and stone-throwing in Israel and the West Bank, this year's Nakba Day was subdued compared to last year, when tens of thousands of Palestinians and their supporters gathered on Israel's borders, and some attempted to cross into the country to assert their purported Right of Return.
Tuesday's demonstrations were limited: mobs didn't breach Israel's borders, and there were no reports of fatalities.
Last year's confrontation was stoked by Syrian operatives in Damascus and Lebanon, who reportedly bused Palestinian refugees to the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese troops and United Nations "peacekeepers" stood by as scores of Palestinians attempted to rush across the border into Israel.
Up to 35 infiltrators "managed to open the gates of the Golan," one triumphant rioter shouted after running through a minefield and crossing into Israeli territory. "They did what all of the Arab armies could not. We can liberate the Golan. We can liberate al-Aqsa. We can liberate Jerusalem. We can liberate Palestine and all of the occupied lands."
"God is great," the crowd responded triumphantly.
Violence also spread to parts of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Rioters at Kalandia refugee camp (located near the West Bank city of Ramallah) used ambulances for cover while throwing rocks at Israeli troops. At least 13 people were killed and hundreds more injured in last year's Nakba riots.
Several factors helped limit the spread of violence this year. Syrian President Bashar Assad – whose regime played a critical role in fomenting last year's violence – is preoccupied with brutalizing its own people in an effort to stay in power. And Israeli security forces, caught off-guard last year, were much better prepared this time.
At this year's demonstrations, the Palestinian Authority embraced the Right of Return – which most Israelis regard as a formula for the destruction of the Jewish state. At a rally in Ramallah, PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad declared: "The right of return is sacred and cannot be compromised."
But the Palestinians' options for continuing their struggle against Israel have been limited by their own internal divisions and failed leadership.
"The back of Palestinian society has been broken by Hamas-Fatah separation," said Palestinian human- rights advocate Bassam Eid. In the West Bank (a region he referred to as "Fatahstan"), the infighting within Fatah is so deep that there was no hope of any coordinated uprising. "There cannot be an intifada (uprising against Israel) so long as we have an intrafada (Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence)," he said.
Writing in Commentary, Jonathan Tobin says the Palestinian focus on the events of 1948 doesn't bode well for the idea of territorial compromise. "For those who claim the Middle East conflict is about borders or Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the prominence given Nakba commemorations ought to be an embarrassment as it highlights something Israel's critics are often at pains to obfuscate. The goal of the Palestinians isn't an independent state alongside Israel. Their goal is to eradicate Israel and replace it with yet another Arab majority country."
Nakba Day should also serve as a reminder that during the past 64 years, the Palestinians have been prevented from assimilating into the Arab populations surrounding Israel. Instead, "they have been kept in poverty by a United Nations agency (UNRWA) supposedly dedicated to their welfare but which is, in fact merely interested in perpetuating their refugee status so they can remain props in the Arab War on Israel, " Tobin adds.
Commemorating Nakba Day is a part of that long term strategy. This year, at least, it didn't seem to work.

Security
U.S. Sovereignty Could Be LOST
Three decades after President Ronald Reagan put the kibosh on a treaty that surrendered U.S. sovereignty to a law enforcement body chosen by the United Nations, the Obama regime and its leftist followers in Congress appear ready to try to ratify the same treaty before Obama is possibly sent packing in November. The Law Of the Sea Treaty (LOST) is allegedly an attempt to protect the world's oceans, which constitute 70 percent of the Earth's surface, from environmental damage, as well as to lessen the oceans' potential as a source of conflict between nations. In reality, however, LOST is nothing more than an attempt at the global redistribution of power and wealth, especially America's and Europe's, via a UN body called the International Seabed Authority, which would be headquartered in Kingston, Jamaica.
The ISA would have the power to regulate the entire world's oceans, including economic activities such as seabed mining, fishing and ocean petroleum exploration. Military activities would also fall under its jurisdiction, with ISA having the authority to tell the U.S. Navy where it could and could not sail. Freedom of the seas has been guaranteed by the U.S. Navy, but under LOST it would be the ISA, whose members would be chosen by the same organization that put such exemplary human rights defenders as Cuba, China and Saudi Arabia on the UN Human Rights Council. Such nations no doubt would soon be on the ISA. LOST even imposes a global tax (a.k.a. "protection") that would be paid directly to ISA by companies seeking to exploit the ocean's resources. LOST is thus a Marxist's dream come true.
While LOST's prospects for ratification seemed dim, the Congressional Quarterly says that "hopes for ratification have been revived." LOST is championed by former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MI), who opposed it while in Congress but is now lobbying for corporate and environmental interests that favor it. Additionally, soon-to-be-former Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) also backs the treaty, increasing the odds that the Obama regime could cram this treaty past the Senate before November. In the name of U.S. sovereignty and freedom of the seas, LOST must be sent back to Davy Jones' locker, just as the Gipper did 30 years ago.

Hours before Congress reopened a contentious debate on terrorist detention policy, a judge in Manhattan on Wednesday night weighed in with her own politically explosive opinion. The decision will be overturned on appeal, but its reasoning needs to be deconstructed so it doesn't do more harm in the meantime.

Ruling in Hedges v. Obama, federal Judge Katherine Forrest struck down a provision of last year's defense authorization act on the arrest, imprisonment and interrogation of terrorists. Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg and several left-wing journalists filed the suit in January, charging that the detention law violates their First Amendment rights. Christopher Hedges, a former New York Times reporter, argued that his contacts with known terrorists overseas could land him in a military brig and thus harm his right to report and publish.

It's almost worth the price of admission to hear the Obama Administration respond that these claims by its journalistic allies are "fanciful, paranoid, or otherwise unreasonable." But that didn't impress Judge Forrest—appointed by President Obama last year—who ruled the law would have a "chilling impact on First Amendment rights."

The case should have been thrown out on lack of standing alone. The detention law is an organizational statute, in which Congress codifies certain powers for the executive branch. Judge Forrest insisted on treating it as a common criminal statute, yet it doesn't proscribe any individual behavior and the journalists haven't been harmed. A journalist has no more standing to block the law than he would have to block Congress from financing the Federal Reserve.

To be named an enemy combatant under the detention statute, you have be engaged in illegal warfare against the United States. More precisely, under the law you have to be "A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces."

Mr. Hedges may loathe America, but he can't be arrested for that unless he joins or abets the other side.

Judge Forrest claimed the law didn't "define precisely what 'direct' or 'substantial' support means." But as a legal and practical matter, the definition has been established by successive post-9/11 Presidents and the courts, particularly at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has repeatedly approved indefinite terrorist detentions.

The legal claim also collapses on grounds of what lawyers call "redressability"—whether the plaintiffs can get relief. Even if the detention statute were tossed out, a genuine enemy combatant can still be detained under either the post-9/11 authorization to use military force or the President's war powers. Judge Forrest says the law violates due process, but even after the various challenges during the Bush years, the Supreme Court has only granted to enemy combatants the right to habeas corpus—a legal hearing.

This ruling would be ignorable as an especially obtuse exercise in judicial activism if not for its timing. The House of Representatives is debating an amendment to the 2013 defense bill that would bar any enemy combatant captured on U.S. soil—even the next Osama bin Laden—from military detention. And its tea party and left-wing proponents seized on Judge Forrest's decision as an argument for their amendment. Let's hope that one bad ruling doesn't lead to bad law that damages U.S. national security.

A version of this article appeared May 18, 2012, on page A12 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Detained and Confused.

https://secure.campaignsolutions.com/theteaparty/donation4w/Default.aspx?initiativekey=ZC8V21MYJY5P

I don't agree with every single point made herein, but I find it thoughtful, and a number of passages to be quite on the mark.

===========================

http://patriotpost.us/alexander/2006/12/29/gender-identity-the-homosexual-agenda-and-the-christian-response/

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and, from more recently, here's this:

Alexander's Essay – May 17, 2012
Obama's Gay Political Play
The "Stupid Female Voter" Strategy
"Marriage is ... in its origin a contract of natural law... It is the parent, and not the child of society; the source of civility and a sort of seminary of the republic." --Justice Joseph Story
 
Gay Days at the White House

There was much gayety among some political constituencies this week.

In advance of his annual proclamation of June as "National Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month," or more accurately, "Gender Confusion Month," Barack Hussein Obama ceremonially announced his support for so-called "gay marriage." I note "ceremonially" because while this purely political announcement had no effect on the legal status of homosexual relationships, it certainly moved the needle to the left in regard to the moral status of such "unions."

This proclamation came on the heels of North Carolina joining 29 other states by resoundingly approving a state constitutional amendment affirming the natural definition of marriage. Obama barely won North Carolina in 2008, and Democrats are holding their national convention there this year as they endeavor to retain that state's electoral votes and pick up some around it. Thus, one would think his announcement was ill-timed, unless there is a larger strategy in the works -- and indeed there is.
So why did Obama really go public with his support for the gay marriage agenda?

Certainly not to win the votes of homosexuals -- Obama already has them kowtowing in reverence, particularly after repealing the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban, and refusing to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act as duly passed by Congress and signed into law in 1996 by none other than Bill Clinton.

Most certainly not to win the votes of his sycophantic socialist cadres -- they will vote for Obama regardless of his position on social issues as long as his political platform is bent on redistributing wealth from income earners and delivering it to his most loyal constituents, those enslaved on the Democrats' government welfare plantation.

The calculus behind Obama's endorsement of "gay marriage" is twofold. First, he genuinely supports and identifies with homosexuals, and they with him -- indeed one in six of Obama's big-money "bundlers" is homosexual. He first signaled his desire to redefine this building block of human civilization back in 1996. But his identification with homosexuals is subordinate to his second motive, a political calculation that he believes will ensure his 2012 re-election -- and that re-election is critical to his macro agenda of "fundamentally transforming the United States of America."

Let's analyze Obama's reasoning on both counts.

Regarding his personal motive for promoting the homosexual agenda, Obama is an archetypal case study of Narcissistic Pathology Disorder, the almost universal underlying pathology of Leftist political leaders. Obama most certainly has a dominant though closeted homosexual predisposition, the ultimate expression of his unmitigated narcissism.

This psychological profile would surprise only those who are blinded, either by their cultish devotion to Obama or their shared pathology.
 
Newsweek Magazine certainly affirmed this diagnosis with its cover this week "outing" Obama's homosexual proclivity. It featured a photo of BO sporting a rainbow halo and the caption, "The First Gay President." In reality, however, there is nothing "gay" about gender disorientation.

Attempting to explain his rationale, Obama said, "[Michelle and I] are both practicing Christians and ... you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it's also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated. ... I was sensitive to the fact that for a lot of people, the word 'marriage' was something that evokes very powerful traditions, religious beliefs and so forth."

He continued, "But I have to tell you ... when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together -- when I think about those soldiers or airmen or Marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf, and yet feel constrained even now that 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' is gone because they're not able to commit themselves in a marriage ... it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married."

Responding to his first rationale, I'd be negligent if I didn't challenge Obama's incredibly narcissistic assertion that "soldiers or airmen or Marines or sailors [are] fighting on my behalf," rather than correctly understanding that they are fighting in accordance with their solemn oaths to "support and defend" our Constitution. Obama, of course, has affirmed the same obligation by oath but has vigorously refused to honor it.

But the core problem with Obama's "golden rule" reasoning is that his "faith" as a "practicing Christian" was mentored by another pathological narcissist, Jeremiah Wright, with whom Obama identifies most closely as "a father figure." Wright inculcated Obama with the "Marxist social gospel of hate, the antithesis of genuine Christianity. Thus, Obama's understanding of Christianity assumes that Jesus was a socialist.

Moreover, as with all narcissists, the faith expression of Wright and Obama is self-centered -- nothing more than a manifestation shaped by their own deity.

Not only is Obama's faith deeply flawed in regard to homosexuality, but many people of authentic Christian upbringing are also confused about this issue. For a brief but comprehensive perspective on how Christians should respond to the notion of "gay marriage," read Gender Identity, The Homosexual Agenda and The Christian Response.

Regarding Obama's second and more important reason for announcing his support for the homosexual marriage agenda, Leftist Sen. Dick Durbin (D-ILL) concluded, "I don't think it was a political calculation. ... I think it was a matter of conscience." Of course, Durbin knows that this was both "a matter of conscience," as outlined previously, and "a political calculation."

The Obama campaign's internal polling numbers are not looking good, especially with the one group of voters who have represented more than half of all votes cast since 1960 -- women. The female vote will determine the victor in the 2012 presidential election.
Though a female majority elected Obama in 2008, the Democrats' gender advantage is declining. In the 2010 midterm elections, for the first time in recent history, a majority of women voted Republican. Given the estimate that women drive more than 60 percent of financial decisions in the home, Obama's dismal approval ratings on issues related to economic recovery may cost him the election. That is, unless he can regain a majority of women voters by diverting their focus to other issues -- especially what he sees as a "winning" issue among women, homosexual advocacy.

Thus, Obama's gay political play, at its core, cynically assumes that a majority of women are too stupid to rise above their emotive compassion for, and identity with, effeminate men -- like Obama. This assumption is the overarching political strategy behind Obama's announcement, and it is confirmed beyond reasonable doubt by Demo-gogue Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who fallaciously insists that "there's no political calculus" behind Obama's gay marriage endorsement.

How important is the "stupid women" strategy to Obama's long-term political objective?
 
The transformation of our nation into a Socialist state is predicated on the success of Obama's effort to destabilize the three pillars of Essential Liberty: Constitutional Liberty, Economic Liberty and Individual Liberty.

The Obama administration has done more to undermine constitutional Liberty than any Leftist since Woodrow Wilson.

The Obama administration has done more to undermine Economic Liberty than any Leftist since Franklin Roosevelt, with a plethora of policies designed to break the back of free enterprise and replace it with Democratic Socialism.

As for the third pillar, Obama knows that the most effective method of undermining Individual Liberty is to erode the integrity of faith and family. To the degree that our nation's faith foundation is undermined, the principle that Liberty is "endowed by our Creator" is enfeebled. To the extent that the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" are abjectly violated by redefining marriage, which in turn upends the basic building block of a free society, the family, the consequence is the decay of individual Liberty.

The notion that marriage and family are the foundation of society is older than Christ's teaching on the subject. In the words of Marcus Tullius Cicero (circa 50 B.C.), "[T]he first principle of society consists in the marriage tie, the next in children, the next in a family within one roof, where everything is in common. This society gives rise to the city, and is, as it were, the nursery of the commonwealth."

The bottom line for Obama and his Leftist cadres: Female voters will determine the outcome of the 2012 presidential election. Beyond all the topical rhetoric about redefining marriage, if Obama is correct in his calculation that a majority of women voters can be distracted from critical issues like Liberty and economy, his gambit on the gay political play will be a winner. Don't take that bet.
Pro Deo et Constitutione — Libertas aut Mors

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis
Mark Alexander
Publisher, The Patriot Post

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/17/The-Vetting-Barack-Obama-Literary-Agent-1991-Born-in-Kenya-Raised-Indonesia-Hawaii

It makes more sense to me to draw a bright line with regard to missiles.

I readily grant that DM feels unrestrained to staying within his areas of competence and often hyperventilates, and acknowledge the possibility that moving his book sales can play a role.

That said, given the quite active Iranian missile development program and its trajectory of rapidly increasing range capabilities, I put little weight on the fact that currently the capabilities are a couple of hundred miles short-- its not like we are getting to inspect what is there and keep it limited to stuff than can't reach us!.

This seems relevant to our discussion:

http://publicpolicyalliance.org/?page_id=38

Legislation > American Laws for American Courts
 

American Laws for American Courts was crafted to protect American citizens’ constitutional rights against the infiltration and incursion of foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines, especially Islamic Shariah Law.

Why American Laws for American Courts?

Some 235 years ago, America’s forefathers gathered in Philadelphia to debate and write a unique document. That single-page document announced the formation of a new country—one that would no longer find itself in the clutches of a foreign power. That document was the Declaration of Independence. Eleven years later, many of those same men gathered again to lay the foundation for how the United States of America was to be governed: The US Constitution, a form of government like no other by the people, of the people and for the people.

For more than two centuries, hundreds of thousands of courageous men and women have given their lives to protect America’s sovereignty and freedom.

American constitutional rights must be preserved in order to preserve unique American values of liberty and freedom. State legislatures have a vital role to play in preserving those constitutional rights and American values of liberty and freedom.

America has unique values of liberty which do not exist in foreign legal systems, particularly Shariah Law. Included among, but not limited to, those values and rights are:

•Freedom of Religion
•Freedom of Speech
•Freedom of the Press
•Due Process
•Right to Privacy
•Right to Keep and Bear Arms
Civil and Criminal Law Serve as the Bedrock for American Values: We are a nation of laws.

Unfortunately, increasingly, foreign laws and legal doctrines, including Shariah law principles, are finding their way into US court cases.

Reviews of state laws provide extensive evidence that foreign laws and legal doctrines are introduced into US state court cases, including, notably, Islamic law known as Shariah, which is used in family courts and other courts in dozens of foreign Muslim-majority nations .

These foreign laws, frequently at odds with U.S. constitutional principles of equal protection and due process, typically enter the American court system through:

•Comity (mutual respect of each country’s legal system)
•Choice of law issues and
•Choice of forum or venue
Granting comity to a foreign judgment is a matter of state law, and most state and federal courts will grant comity unless the recognition of the foreign judgment would violate some important public policy of the state. This doctrine, the “Void as against Public Policy Rule,” has a long and pedigreed history.

Unfortunately, because state legislatures have generally not been explicit about what their public policy is relative to foreign laws, including as an example, Shariah, the courts and the parties litigating in those courts are left to their own devices – first to know what Shariah is, and second, to understand that granting comity to a Shariah judgment may be at odds with  our state and federal constitutional principles in the specific matters at issue.

The goal of the American Laws for American Courts Act is a clear and unequivocal application of what should be the goal of all state courts: No U.S. citizen or resident should be denied the liberties, rights, and privileges guaranteed in our constitutional republic.  American Laws for American Courts is needed especially to protect women and children, identified by international human rights organizations as the primary victims of discriminatory foreign laws.

By promoting American Laws for American Courts, we are preserving individual liberties and freedoms which become eroded by the encroachment of foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines, such as Shariah.

It is imperative that we safeguard our constitutions’ fundamentals, particularly the individual guarantees in the Bill of Rights, the sovereignty of our Nation and its people, and the principles of the rule of law—American laws, not foreign laws.

MODEL LEGISLATION

AN ACT to protect rights and privileges granted under the United States or [State] Constitution.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE [GENERAL ASSEMBLY/LEGISLATURE] OF THE STATE OF [_____]:

The [general assembly/legislature] finds that it shall be the public policy of this state to protect its citizens from the application of foreign laws when the application of a foreign law will result in the violation of a right guaranteed by the constitution of this state or of the United States, including but not limited to due process, freedom of religion, speech, or press, and any right of privacy or marriage as specifically defined by the constitution of this state.

The [general assembly/state legislature] fully recognizes the right to contract freely under the laws of this state, and also recognizes that this right may be reasonably and rationally circumscribed pursuant to the state’s interest to protect and promote rights and privileges granted under the United States or [State] Constitution, including but not limited to due process, freedom of religion, speech, or press, and any right of privacy or marriage as specifically defined by the constitution of this state.

[1] As used in this act, “foreign law, legal code, or system” means any law, legal code, or system of a jurisdiction outside of any state or territory of the United States, including, but not limited to, international organizations and tribunals, and applied by that jurisdiction’s courts, administrative bodies, or other formal or informal tribunals For the purposes of this act, foreign law shall not mean, nor shall it include, any laws of the Native American tribes in this state.

[2] Any court, arbitration, tribunal, or administrative agency ruling or decision shall violate the public policy of this State and be void and unenforceable if the court, arbitration, tribunal, or administrative agency bases its rulings or decisions in in the matter at issue in whole or in part on any law, legal code or system that would not grant the parties affected by the ruling or decision the same fundamental liberties, rights, and privileges granted under the U.S. and [State] Constitutions, including but not limited to due process, freedom of religion, speech, or press, and any right of privacy or marriage as specifically defined by the constitution of this state.

[3] A contract or contractual provision (if capable of segregation) which provides for the choice of a law, legal code or system to govern some or all of the disputes between the parties adjudicated by a court of law or by an arbitration panel arising from the contract mutually agreed upon shall violate the public policy of this State and be void and unenforceable if the law, legal code or system chosen includes or incorporates any substantive or procedural law, as applied to the dispute at issue, that would not grant the parties the same fundamental liberties, rights, and privileges granted under the U.S. and [State] Constitutions, including but not limited to due process, freedom of religion, speech, or press, and any right of privacy or marriage as specifically defined by the constitution of this state.

[4]

1.A. A contract or contractual provision (if capable of segregation) which provides for a jurisdiction for purposes of granting the courts or arbitration panels in personam jurisdiction over the parties to adjudicate any disputes between parties arising from the contract mutually agreed upon shall violate the public policy of this State and be void and unenforceable if the jurisdiction chosen includes any law, legal code or system, as applied to the dispute at issue, that would not grant the parties the same fundamental liberties, rights, and privileges granted under the U.S. and [State] Constitutions, including but not limited to due process, freedom of religion, speech, or press, and any right of privacy or marriage as specifically defined by the constitution of this state.
2.B. If a resident of this state, subject to personal jurisdiction in this state, seeks to maintain litigation, arbitration, agency or similarly binding proceedings in this state and if the courts of this state find that granting a claim of forum non conveniens or a related claim violates or would likely violate the fundamental liberties, rights, and privileges granted under the U.S. and [State] Constitutions of the non-claimant in the foreign forum with respect to the matter in dispute, then it is the public policy of this state that the claim shall be denied.
[5] Without prejudice to any legal right, this act shall not apply to a corporation, partnership, limited liability company, business association, or other legal entity that contracts to subject itself to foreign law in a jurisdiction other than this state or the United States.

[6] This subsection shall not apply to a church, religious corporation, association, or society, with respect to the individuals of a particular religion regarding matters that are purely ecclesiastical, to include, but not be limited to, matters of calling a pastor, excluding members from a church, electing church officers, matters concerning church bylaws, constitution, and doctrinal regulations and the conduct of other routine church business, where 1) the jurisdiction of the church would be final; and 2) the jurisdiction of the courts of this State would be contrary to the First Amendment of the United States and the Constitution of this State. This exemption in no way grants permission for any otherwise unlawful act under the guise of First Amendment protection.

[7] This statute shall not be interpreted by any court to conflict with any federal treaty or other international agreement to which the United States is a party to the extent that such treaty or international agreement preempts or is superior to state law on the matter at issue.

 

American Laws for American Courts has passed into law in the following states:

American and Tennessee Laws for Tennessee Courts

American and Louisiana Laws for Louisiana Courts

American and Arizona Laws for Arizona Courts

"For no other investment do you know what your taxes will be 11 years out."

Not so.  You know that if you don't sell a stock, you won't pay taxes on it.   You know that, barring a change in the law, what the tax rates are on the dividends, the capital gains, etc.

Putting aside the social engineering/capital gains issue, there is still the matter of barriers to exit and entry imposed by broker commissions and other transactional costs, having to move one's family, etc.   Why should people be driven from their homes because property values have changed?!?

The depreciation schedule for a property is set by its book value; following the logic you are using we should be saying that the allowed depreciation deduction for the property should go up when the property's value goes up-- but we don't do that.

Not sure where to put this, so I put it here:
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Terrorism and the Exceptional Individual
May 17, 2012 | 0858 GMT
Stratfor
By Scott Stewart

There has been a lot of chatter in intelligence and academic circles about al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) bombmaker Ibrahim al-Asiri and his value to AQAP. The disclosure last week of a thwarted AQAP plot to attack U.S. airliners using an improved version of an "underwear bomb" used in the December 2009 attempted attack aboard a commercial airplane and the disclosure of the U.S. government's easing of the rules of engagement for unmanned aerial vehicle strikes in Yemen played into these discussions. People are debating how al-Asiri's death would affect the organization. A similar debate undoubtedly will erupt if AQAP leader Nasir al-Wahayshi is captured or killed.   

AQAP has claimed that al-Asiri trained others in bombmaking, and the claim makes sense. Furthermore, other AQAP members have received training in constructing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) while training and fighting in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. This means that al-Asiri is not the only person within the group who can construct an IED. However, he has demonstrated creativity and imagination. His devices consistently have been able to circumvent existing security measures, even if they have not always functioned as intended. We believe this ingenuity and imagination make al-Asiri not merely a bombmaker, but an exceptional bombmaker.

Likewise, al-Wahayshi is one of hundreds -- if not thousands -- of men currently associated with AQAP. He has several deputies and numerous tactical field commanders in various parts of Yemen. Jihadists have had a presence in Yemen for decades, and after the collapse of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, numerous Saudi migrants fleeing the Saudi government augmented this presence. However, al-Wahayshi played a singular role in pulling these disparate jihadist elements together to form a unified and cohesive militant organization that has been involved not only in several transnational terrorist attacks but also in fighting an insurgency that has succeeded in capturing and controlling large areas of territory. He is an exceptional leader.

Individuals like al-Asiri and al-Wahayshi play critical roles in militant groups. History has shown that the loss of exceptional individuals such as these makes a big difference in efforts to defeat such organizations.

Exceptional Individuals

One of Stratfor's core geopolitical tenets is that at the strategic level, geography is critical to shaping the limits of what is possible -- and impossible -- for states and nations to achieve in the long run. Quite simply, historically, the strategic political and economic dynamics created by geography are far more significant than the individual leader or personality, no matter how brilliant. For example, in the U.S. Civil War, Robert E. Lee was a shrewd general with a staff of exceptional military officers. However, geographic and economic reality meant that the North was bound to win the civil war despite the astuteness and abilities of Lee and his staff.

But as the size of an organization and the period of time under consideration shrink, geopolitics is little more than a rough guide. At the tactical level, intelligence takes over from geopolitics, and individuals' abilities become far more important in influencing smaller events and trends within the greater geopolitical flow. This is the level where exceptional military commanders can win battles through courage and brilliance, where exceptional businessmen can revolutionize the way business is done through innovative new products or ways of selling those products and where the exceptional individuals can execute terrorist tradecraft in a way that allows them to kill scores or even hundreds of victims.

Leadership is important in any type of organization, but it is especially important in entrepreneurial organizations, which are fraught with risk and require unique vision, innovation and initiative. For example, hundreds of men founded automobile companies in the early 1900s, but Henry Ford was an exceptional individual because of his vision to make automobiles a widely available mass-produced commodity rather than just a toy for the rich. In computer technology, Steve Jobs was exceptional for his ability to design devices with an aesthetic form that appealed to consumers, and Michael Dell was exceptional for his vision of bypassing traditional sales channels and selling computers directly to customers.   

These same leadership characteristics of vision, daring, innovation and initiative are evident in the exceptional individuals who have excelled in the development and application of terrorist tradecraft. Some examples of exceptional individuals in the terrorism realm are Ali Hassan Salameh, the operations chief of Black September, who not only revolutionized the form that terrorist organizations take by instituting the use of independent, clandestine cells, but also was a visionary in designing theatrical attacks intended for international media consumption. Some have called Palestinian militant leader Abu Ibrahim the "grandfather of all bombmakers" for his innovative IED designs during his time with Black September, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and his own group, the 15 May Organization. Ibrahim was known for creating sophisticated devices that used plastic explosives and a type of electronic timer called an "e-cell" that could be set for an extended delay. Another terrorism innovator was Hezbollah's Imad Mughniyeh, who helped pioneer the use of large suicide truck bombs to attack hardened targets, such as military barracks and embassies.

In the jihadist realm, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is being tried by a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was such an individual. Not only did Mohammed mastermind the 9/11 attacks for al Qaeda in which large hijacked aircraft were transformed into guided missiles, but he also was the operational planner behind the coordinated attacks against two U.S. embassies in August 1998 and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Mohammed's other innovations included the idea to use modular IEDs concealed in baby dolls to attack 10 aircraft in a coordinated attack (Operation Bojinka) and the shoe bomb plot. Mohammed's video beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl in February 2002 started a grisly trend that was followed not only by jihadists in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia but also by combatants in Mexico's drug war.

Leadership

One of the places where exceptional individuals have been most evident in the terrorist realm is in leadership roles. Although on the surface it might seem like a simple task to find a leader for a militant group, in practice, effective militant leaders are hard to come by. This is because militant leadership requires a rather broad skill set. In addition to personal attributes such as ruthlessness, aggressiveness and fearlessness, militant leaders also must be charismatic, intuitive, clever and inspiring. This last attribute is especially important in an organization that seeks to recruit operatives to conduct suicide attacks. Additionally, an effective militant leader must be able to recruit and train operatives, enforce operational security, raise funds, plan operations and methodically execute the plan while avoiding the security forces that are constantly hunting down the militants.

The trajectory of al Qaeda's franchise in Saudi Arabia is a striking illustration of the importance of leadership to a militant organization. Under the leadership of Abdel Aziz al-Muqrin, the Saudi al Qaeda franchise was extremely active in 2003 and 2004. It carried out a number of high-profile attacks inside Saudi Arabia and put everyone there, from the Saudi monarchy to multinational oil companies, in a general state of panic. With bombings, ambushes and beheadings, it seemed as if Saudi Arabia was on its way to becoming the next Iraq. However, after the June 2004 death of al-Muqrin, the organization began floundering. The succession of leaders appointed to replace al-Muqrin lacked his operational savvy, and each one proved ineffective at best. (Saudi security forces quickly killed several of them.) Following the unsuccessful February 2006 attack against the oil facility at Abqaiq, the group atrophied further, succeeding in carrying out only one more attack -- an amateurish small-arms assault in February 2007 against a group of French tourists.

The disorganized remaining jihadists in Saudi Arabia ultimately grew frustrated at their inability to operate on their own. Many of them traveled to places such as Iraq or Pakistan to train and fight. In January 2009, many of the militants who remained in the Arabian Peninsula joined with al Qaeda's franchise in Yemen to form a new group -- AQAP -- under the leadership of al-Wahayshi, the leader of al Qaeda in Yemen who served under Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan before being arrested in Iran. An extradition deal between the Yemeni and Iranian governments returned al-Wahayshi to Yemen in 2003. He subsequently escaped from a high-security prison outside Sanaa in 2006.

Al Qaeda in Yemen's operational capability improved under al-Wahayshi's leadership, and its operational tempo increased (although those operations were not terribly effective). Considering this momentum, it is not surprising that the frustrated members of the all-but-defunct Saudi franchise agreed to swear loyalty to al-Wahayshi and join his new umbrella group, AQAP. The first widely recognized product of this merger was the attempted assassination of Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef on Aug. 28, 2009, using a device designed by al-Asiri and carried by his brother, Abdullah al-Asiri.

As with the Saudi group, the fortunes of other al Qaeda regional franchises have risen or fallen based on the ability of the franchise's leadership. In Indonesia, for example, following the arrests and killings of several top jihadist commanders, the capabilities of the regional jihadist franchise there were deeply degraded. Al Qaeda announced with great fanfare in August 2006 that a splinter of the Egyptian jihadist group Gamaah al-Islamiyah had become al Qaeda's franchise in Egypt, and in November 2007 al Qaeda announced that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group had become a regional franchise. But neither of these franchises ever really began operations. While a great degree of the groups' ineffectiveness could have resulted from the oppressive natures of the Egyptian and Libyan governments -- and those governments' aggressive efforts to control the new al Qaeda franchises -- Stratfor believes the groups' failures also stem in large part from their lack of effective, dynamic leadership. 

Arms Race
Leadership is not the only factor that influences a militant group's ability to carry out terrorist attacks. Groups planning to conduct bombing attacks also require a proficient bombmaker, and an innovative bombmaker like Abu Ibrahim or Hamas' Yahya Ayyash can greatly expand a group's operational reach and effectiveness. This is especially true for groups hoping to conduct attacks in the United States and Europe.

As outlined in last week's Security Weekly, those planning terrorist attacks against aircraft have been in a continual arms race with airline security measures. Every time security is changed to adapt to a particular threat, whether it be 9/11-style hijackings, shoe bombs, liquid bombs or underwear bombs, the terrorist planner must come up with a new attack plan to defeat the enhanced security measures. This is where innovation and imagination become critical. A master bombmaker might be able to show a pupil how to build a simple IED or maybe even something like a shoe bomb. The pupil may even become quite proficient at assembling such devices. But unless the pupil is innovative and imaginative, he will not be able to invent and perfect the next technology needed to stay ahead of security countermeasures.

There is a big difference between a technician and an inventor, and perhaps the best way to illustrate this principle is by drawing a parallel to the music world. A student can learn to play the saxophone, and perhaps even to mimic a jazz recording note for note. But it is quite another thing for that student to develop the ability to improvise a masterful solo like saxophonist John Coltrane could. In music, individuals like Coltrane are rare, and in terrorism, so are exceptional bombmakers -- masters of destruction who can create imaginative and original IEDs capable of defeating security measures.

Following the death of Anwar al-Awlaki, AQAP's English-language preacher, we noted that we did not believe his death would have much operational impact on the group due to his role as the group's English-language ideologue. That argument was based upon the fact that al-Wahayshi, al-Asiri and AQAP operational leader Qasim al-Raymi, who were much more responsible for the group's operations, were still alive. However, if the group were to lose an exceptional individual -- such as its dynamic and effective leader, al-Wahayshi, or its imaginative and creative bombmaker, al-Asiri -- the loss would make a significant difference unless the group could find someone equally capable to replace that individual.


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