UK Paper Gives Obama a ‘F’ for World Leadership

January 28th, 2010

Telegraph.co.uk

By Nile Gardiner

As expected, Barack Obama’s 70 minute State of the Union address focused heavily on the economy and the domestic political agenda. This was hardly surprising in the aftermath of last week’s catastrophic defeat for his party in the Massachusetts special Senate election, where the Republicans scored an historic victory. American voters are turning strongly against the president’s health care reform package as well as his big government vision for the economy, which has contributed to spiraling public debt and mounting unemployment, now standing at over 10 percent.

But the scant attention paid in the State of the Union speech to US leadership was pitiful and frankly rather pathetic. The war in Afghanistan, which will soon involve a hundred thousand American troops, merited barely a paragraph. There was no mention of victory over the enemy, just a reiteration of the president’s pledge to begin a withdrawal in July 2011. Needless to say there was nothing in the speech about the importance of international alliances, and no recognition whatsoever of the sacrifices made by Great Britain and other NATO allies alongside the United States on the battlefields of Afghanistan. For Barack Obama the Special Relationship means nothing, and tonight’s address further confirmed this.
Significantly, the global war against al-Qaeda was hardly mentioned, and there were no measures outlined to enhance US security at a time of mounting threats from Islamist terrorists. Terrorism is a top issue for American voters, but President Obama displayed what can only be described as a stunning indifference towards the defence of the homeland.

The Iranian nuclear threat, likely to be the biggest foreign policy issue of 2010, was given just two lines in the speech, with a half-hearted warning of “growing consequences” for Tehran, with no details given at all. There were no words of support for Iranian protestors who have been murdered, tortured and beaten in large numbers by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s thuggish security forces, and no sign at all that the president cared about their plight. Nor was there any condemnation of the brutality of the Iranian regime, as well as its blatant sponsorship of terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the example of Iran showed, the advance of freedom and liberty across the world in the face of tyranny was not even a footnote in the president’s speech. I cannot think of a US president in modern times who has attached less importance to human rights issues. For the hundreds of millions of people across the world, from Burma to Sudan to Zimbabwe, clamouring to be free of oppression, there was not a shred of hope offered in Barack Obama’s address.

Obama’s world leadership in his first year in office has been weak-kneed and little short of disastrous. He has sacrificed the projection of American power upon the altar of political vanity, with empty speeches and groveling apologies across the world, from Strasbourg to Cairo. He has appeased some of America’s worst enemies, and has extended the hand of friendship to many of the most odious regimes on the face of the earth. Judging by the State of the Union address tonight, we can expect more of the same from an American president who seems determined to lead the world’s greatest power along a path of decline

As expected, Barack Obama’s 70 minute State of the Union address focused heavily on the economy and the domestic political agenda. This was hardly surprising in the aftermath of last week’s catastrophic defeat for his party in the Massachusetts special Senate election, where the Republicans scored an historic victory. American voters are turning strongly against the president’s health care reform package as well as his big government vision for the economy, which has contributed to spiraling public debt and mounting unemployment, now standing at over 10 percent.But the scant attention paid in the State of the Union speech to US leadership was pitiful and frankly rather pathetic. The war in Afghanistan, which will soon involve a hundred thousand American troops, merited barely a paragraph. There was no mention of victory over the enemy, just a reiteration of the president’s pledge to begin a withdrawal in July 2011. Needless to say there was nothing in the speech about the importance of international alliances, and no recognition whatsoever of the sacrifices made by Great Britain and other NATO allies alongside the United States on the battlefields of Afghanistan. For Barack Obama the Special Relationship means nothing, and tonight’s address further confirmed this.Significantly, the global war against al-Qaeda was hardly mentioned, and there were no measures outlined to enhance US security at a time of mounting threats from Islamist terrorists. Terrorism is a top issue for American voters, but President Obama displayed what can only be described as a stunning indifference towards the defence of the homeland.The Iranian nuclear threat, likely to be the biggest foreign policy issue of 2010, was given just two lines in the speech, with a half-hearted warning of “growing consequences” for Tehran, with no details given at all. There were no words of support for Iranian protestors who have been murdered, tortured and beaten in large numbers by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s thuggish security forces, and no sign at all that the president cared about their plight. Nor was there any condemnation of the brutality of the Iranian regime, as well as its blatant sponsorship of terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan.As the example of Iran showed, the advance of freedom and liberty across the world in the face of tyranny was not even a footnote in the president’s speech. I cannot think of a US president in modern times who has attached less importance to human rights issues. For the hundreds of millions of people across the world, from Burma to Sudan to Zimbabwe, clamouring to be free of oppression, there was not a shred of hope offered in Barack Obama’s address.Obama’s world leadership in his first year in office has been weak-kneed and little short of disastrous. He has sacrificed the projection of American power upon the altar of political vanity, with empty speeches and groveling apologies across the world, from Strasbourg to Cairo. He has appeased some of America’s worst enemies, and has extended the hand of friendship to many of the most odious regimes on the face of the earth. Judging by the State of the Union address tonight, we can expect more of the same from an American president who seems determined to lead the world’s greatest power along a path of decline

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Blackwater Could Be Making a Comeback

January 14, 2010

Press TV

An up-for-grabs State Department deal could help the infamous US ’security’ contractor Blackwater stage a comeback as a leading security firm, reports say.

The contractor, which now operates under the name of ‘Xe Services LLC,’ may be awarded a one-billion-dollar contract by the US Department of State to train the Afghan national police force.

“There is a contracting process that is involved here and then the companies who are qualified to do it, to provide those particular services are free to do so,” said State Department spokesman, P J Crowly.

The security firm won notoriety for its killing of more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in September 2007. The firm, led by a prominent Evangelical Christian and suspected of involvement in numerous assassinations and bombings in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, later changed its name to Xe Services LLC.

Although some of its security guards were indicted for the mass murders, US District Judge Ricardo Urbina recently dropped all the charges, censuring the prosecution for ‘mishandling’ the evidence. Ricardo argued that the Blackwater guards were promised total immunity for their actions in Iraq by the US Government and therefore their testimony confirming the killings could not be legally used against them.

Two former Blackwater mercenaries have also been charged with the 2009 murdering of two Afghan civilians in Kabul.

Since the Iraq incident, Blackwater has been shifting to training, aviation and logistics work, according to the Associated Press.

Reports say that the company’s operatives have also been providing logistical support at the US drone bases in Pakistan, used for missile attacks on the war-wrecked country’s border areas. The matter, confirmed by an unnamed CIA official and former Pakistani Intelligence Chief Asad Durani, is set to incite anger inside Pakistan which has reportedly lost hundreds of civilians to the operations.

“Blackwater has been literally getting away with murder for years,” says Edward Spannaus of the US weekly newsmagazine Executive Intelligence Review, quoted by Press TV’s Colin Campbell. “A congressional investigation a couple of years ago found that there were about two hundred incidents in which Blackwater had opened fire in an unjustified manner.”

The State Department decided not to rehire the company after its contract expired in 2009, apparently acknowledging the massive international and domestic backlash against the firm. It, however, has been offered a temporary contract which would last another year until a new contractor is found.

The US military, however, relies heavily on the firms’ assistance on the ground. The Congressional Research Service reports that the contractors comprise of 53 percent of the Pentagon’s workforce in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“People do not realize. When you talk about increasing the troop level by 40,000 in Afghanistan along with that is around 40-50,000 increase in private contractors,” notes Spannaus.

Meanwhile, the prominent leftist news magazine in the US, The Nation reported last month that despite vocal criticisms of Senators Obama and Clinton against the wide use of Blackwater guards by the Bush administration, the current President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are making an even wider use of the now ‘Xe Services LLC’ guards in Afghanistan and Pakistan, by awarding them numerous security contracts.

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Military Deluged in Intelligence From Drones

January 11, 2010

New York Times

By Christopher Drew

As the military rushes to place more spy drones over Afghanistan, the remote-controlled planes are producing so much video intelligence that analysts are finding it more and more difficult to keep up.

Air Force drones collected nearly three times as much video over Afghanistan and Iraq last year as in 2007 — about 24 years’ worth if watched continuously. That volume is expected to multiply in the coming years as drones are added to the fleet and as some start using multiple cameras to shoot in many directions.

A group of young analysts already watches every second of the footage live as it is streamed to Langley Air Force Base here and to other intelligence centers, and they quickly pass warnings about insurgents and roadside bombs to troops in the field.

But military officials also see much potential in using the archives of video collected by the drones for later analysis, like searching for patterns of insurgent activity over time. To date, only a small fraction of the stored video has been retrieved for such intelligence purposes.

Government agencies are still having trouble making sense of the flood of data they collect for intelligence purposes, a point underscored by the 9/11 Commission and, more recently, by President Obama after the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound passenger flight on Christmas Day.

Mindful of those lapses, the Air Force and other military units are trying to prevent an overload of video collected by the drones, and they are turning to the television industry to learn how to quickly share video clips and display a mix of data in ways that make analysis faster and easier.

They are even testing some of the splashier techniques used by broadcasters, like the telestrator that John Madden popularized for scrawling football plays. It could be used to warn troops about a threatening vehicle or to circle a compound that a drone should attack.

“Imagine you are tuning in to a football game without all the graphics,” said Lucius Stone, an executive at Harris Broadcast Communications, a provider of commercial technology that is working with the military. “You don’t know what the score is. You don’t know what the down is. It’s just raw video. And that’s how the guys in the military have been using it.”

The demand for the Predator and Reaper drones has surged since the terror attacks in 2001, and they have become among the most critical weapons for hunting insurgent leaders and protecting allied forces.

The military relies on the video feeds to catch insurgents burying roadside bombs and to find their houses or weapons caches. Most commanders are now reluctant to send a convoy down a road without an armed drone watching over it.

The Army, the Marines and the special forces are also deploying hundreds of smaller surveillance drones. And the C.I.A. uses drones to mount missile strikes against Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan.

Air Force officials, who take the lead in analyzing the video from Iraq and Afghanistan, say they have managed to keep up with the most urgent assignments. And it was clear, on a visit to the analysis center in an old hangar here, that they were often able to correlate the video data with clues in still images and intercepted phone conversations to build a fuller picture of the biggest threats.

But as the Obama administration sends more troops to Afghanistan, the task of monitoring the video will become more challenging.

Instead of carrying just one camera, the Reaper drones, which are newer and larger than the Predators, will soon be able to record video in 10 directions at once. By 2011, that will increase to 30 directions with plans for as many as 65 after that. Even the Air Force’s top intelligence official, Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, says it could soon be “swimming in sensors and drowning in data.”

He said the Air Force would have to funnel many of those feeds directly to ground troops to keep from overwhelming its intelligence centers. He said the Air Force was working more closely with field commanders to identify the most important targets, and it was adding 2,500 analysts to help handle the growing volume of data.

With a new $500 million computer system that is being installed now, the Air Force will be able to start using some of the television techniques and to send out automatic alerts when important information comes in, complete with highlight clips and even text and graphics.

“If automation can provide a cue for our people that would make better use of their time, that would help us significantly,” said Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, the Air Force’s chief of staff.

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Was The Attempt To Blow Up Detroit Bound Plane A False Flag?

January 4, 2010

The Palenstine Telegraph

By Pete Eyre

As we have seen so many times in the past conspiracy theories bounce around the world whenever we hear such dramatically presented stories that emanate out of the US and UK media machine. Many times such stories appear to coincide with a political low in a Presidents or Prime Minister career It is at such times that frequently our illustrious leaders, senior advisors or their intelligence organization concoct a diversionary story to attract our attention away from the real issues. Such tactics are well known around the world and unfortunately in some case this becomes the foundation stones for a full on war. The President or Prime Minister will re ignite patriotism as a means off bringing the sheep under the shepherd’s control.

This is normally associated with a massive media campaign to make mountains out of mole hills. In some case our leaders also hide the reasons for going into action as a means of pushing their own flawed foreign policy or to achieve some well orchestrated takeover of someone else’s natural resources. A couple of examples of such tactics were by The Three Stooges (Bush – Rumsfeld – Cheney) when they launched there false flag media campaign on WMD’s in Iraq. Iraq as we know was planned well in advance and had nothing to do with WMD’s or Saddam Hussein but rather control of their massive oil and gas reserves.

Then we had Israel that wanted to get its hands on the vast offshore Gaza reserves and almost nearly pulled it off……talks with British Gas Failed and Hamas came to power. Even their Chief of Defense admitted that Hamas had to be removed before drilling could commence. However, they launched a media campaign with a strong focus on Hamas rocket (fireworks) attack on Southern Israel. This again was a false flag which resulted in the attack on Gaza. Unfortunately in both of the above cases the sheep managed to find the truth behind their lies and their media campaign was a disaster. One can hear the echo’s of Bush on the flight deck of the carrier when he said “Mission Accomplished” Now we have President Nobel Peace Price finally succumbing to severe criticism from his treasured public.

We all were overwhelmed with so much joy and many people had tears in their eyes….the crowds in Chicago and Washington have never been so large and excitable but the sheep eventually woke up that their shepherd was nothing more than a mannequin that had been well groomed by those same elite group that created the well planned Wall Street/World Financial Market Collapse. This same group of international bankers, ex/current senior political, diplomatic and military leaders, Freemason, Christian and Jewish Zionist are all linked into this fanatical grab/control for the world’s natural resources. They are also behind many of these “False Flag” operations. One very good example is that of the US Navy vessel SS Liberty that was attacked by the Israelis in the offshore Gaza area.

As one would expect when such people organize such a large carefully orchestrated operation things do not always work out. In this case the President of the US wanted the Israelis to make sure that there would be no survivors but it didn’t go to plan. Let’s now return to Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit and look at the headlines that appeared on both sides of the pond. BBC: Detroit airliner incident ‘was failed bomb attack’ NY Times: “Terror Attempt Seen as Man Tries to Ignite Device on Jet” CNN: “Explosive device set off aboard airliner” Sky: Us Probes Al Qaeda Link to Jet Bomb Plot Let me ask the sheep what they think of the shepherd’s account of this incident? White House official says Detroit airline incident was attempted act of terrorism and in the meantime Obama was in Hawaii having a game of golf.

Is it possible that this was orchestrated by senior members of US Government in the shepherd’s absence or did Obama already know? It was also very interesting that the devil or all devils, Dick Cheney reared his ugly head to run his own media campaign on this alledged terrorism attack when he made the following statement to the media: “As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war.

He seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of Sept. 11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war. “He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core Al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gets rid of the words, ‘war on terror,’ we won’t be at war. But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe.

Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency — social transformation — the restructuring of American society. President Obama’s first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war.” It so happens that Cheney is very much part of this elite group that is trying to control the world. He himself is definitely on the most wanted list for War Crimes and yet he still actively plays a major role in the countries politics.

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Recent Terror Attacks May Open Door For Military Action In U.S. Cities

December 28, 2009

NewsWithViews.com

By Jim Kouri

A passenger onboard a flight from the Netherlands to the United States allegedly attempted to blow up the aircraft as it was landing at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, according to a source with the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Within minutes of the news breaking about the attempt, an NYPD detective told NewsWithViews.com that the suspect-passenger claimed to be acting on behalf of al-Qaeda in the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight #253 from Amsterdam-to-Detroit.

The suspect attempted to detonate a device as the plane landed at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, according to the official report. While the details are still sketchy, the NYPD detective said that when passengers observed the suspect attempting to detonate the explosive device, they subdued him and held him for law enforcement. Flight #253 was carrying 278 passengers and no one was seriously injured during the incident.

The White House immediately labeled the incident “an attempted terrorist act.”

Some Obama critics believe the president may attempt this alleged attack as a rationale to increase his power and might within U.S. borders.

For example, when the Obama administration announced that enemy combatants and terrorists will be given Miranda Warnings when they are captured, many Americans wondered how that would improve war fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq or other terrorist havens. However, upon examining this latest directive by President Barack Obama, perhaps there is an ulterior motive for his directive.

Blurring the lines between law enforcement and the military appears to be the goal sought by Obama and the progressives. More federal control of local law enforcement while at the same time cross-training soldiers to perform the police function within the U.S appears to be Obama’s plan., according to the former intelligence officer and NYPD detective.

The decorated detective, Michael Snopes, believes Iraq and Afghanistan may be training for U.S. forces to bring their skills back to the United States.

“Obama won election partly because he promised to bring the American troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Now he’s sending more troops to Afghanistan and Iraq appears to go unnoticed by the news media,” said Snopes.

In a recent report released to the US Congress, analysts assessed what they termed “preparedness tests” between the U.S. military and government agencies at the federal, state and local levels.

U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) exercises to test preparedness to perform its homeland defense and civil support missions. The Government Accountability Office was asked to assess the extent to which NORTHCOM is consistent with Department of Defense guidelines for training and exercise requirement involving interagency partners and states in its exercises.

NORTHCOM’s exercise program is generally consistent with the requirements of DOD’s Joint Training System, but its exercise reporting is inconsistent. Since the command was established in 2002, NORTHCOM has conducted 13 large-scale exercises and generally completed exercise summary reports within the required time frame.

However, those reports did not consistently include certain information, such as areas needing improvement, because NORTHCOM lacks guidance that specifies exercise reports’ content and format, potentially impacting its ability to meet internal standards for planning and execution of joint exercises, and to compare and share exercise results over time with interagency partners and states.

“While the rationale for using the US military domestically had been debated for years, President Barack Obama appears intent on using our military at least until he can create his promised ‘Civilian Security Force’ which he said would be as big and powerful as the military,” said political strategist Mike Baker.

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Dems Plan a Nearly $2 Trillion Debt Limit Hike

December 14, 2009

My Way

By Andrew Taylor

Democrats plan to allow the government’s debt to swell by nearly $2 trillion as part of a bill next week to pay for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The amount pretty much equals the total of a year-end spending spree by lawmakers and is big enough to ensure that Congress doesn’t have to vote again on going further into debt until after the 2010 elections.

The move has anxious moderate Democrats maneuvering to win new deficit-cutting tools as the price for their votes, igniting battles between the House and the Senate and with powerful interest groups on both the right and the left.

The record increase in the so-called debt limit – the legal cap on the amount of money the government can borrow – is likely to be in the neighborhood of $1.8 trillion to $1.9 trillion, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Friday.

That eye-popping figure is making Democrats woozy but is what is needed to make sure they don’t have to vote again before next year’s midterm elections. The government’s total debt has nearly doubled in the past seven years and is expected to exceed the current ceiling of $12.1 trillion before Jan. 1.

Democratic leaders say they will try to raise the ceiling to nearly $14 trillion as part of a $626 billion bill next week to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and other military programs in 2010. The bill doesn’t include the additional $30 billion President Obama is expected to seek early next year to pay for his 30,000-troop buildup in Afghanistan but it might carry an added $50 billion to pay for a six-month extension of unemployment benefits and health care insurance subsidies for the long-term jobless.

The entire strategy, however, is teetering because of brinksmanship involving moderate Senate Democrats who are demanding a bipartisan deficit reduction task force with special powers to recommend spending cuts or tax increases that would be guaranteed House and Senate votes. That idea is a total no-go with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Playing tit for tat, moderate House “Blue Dog” Democrats announced Friday that their votes for any debt limit increase depend on winning a “pay-as-you-go” budget law aimed at ensuring that new tax cuts or new spending programs don’t increase deficits.

Under a pay-as-you-go regime, if offsetting cuts or revenue hikes are not found to pay for new policies, across-the-board spending cuts would hit selected programs such as farm subsidies and Medicare.

Minority Republicans, meanwhile, are refusing to provide any support for raising the debt ceiling.

“Instead of reducing the size of government and controlling spending, Democrats are planning to raise the debt limit by $1.8 trillion, putting American taxpayers in even deeper debt to countries like China,” said Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan.

Vice President Joe Biden, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., Blue Dog leaders and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., were involved in several sets of negotiations Friday in an effort to break the impasse between House and Senate Democrats.

If a deal can’t be found, Democrats might have to move on to Plan B, which would be to have the Senate pass a smaller, $925 billion increase that’s already available to them. That bill passed the House because of a quirky rule that automatically passes debt limit legislation – without an up-or-down vote – when Congress ratifies its annual budget blueprint. That was done last April.

Under the second scenario, the House would adjourn, leaving the Senate no choice but to pass the $925 billion increase in order to avoid a first-ever default on U.S. government obligations.

“We’re going to have to face the moment of truth at some point,” said Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., who is one of about a dozen Senate Democrats pressing for the special deficit task force as the price for voting for an increase in the debt limit.

The debt limit conundrum comes as Congress is wrapping up its annual appropriations bills, including a $1.1 trillion omnibus measure pending in the Senate. A vote to cut off a GOP filibuster of that measure is scheduled for Saturday morning with a final vote likely on Sunday.

The omnibus appropriations bill is opposed by most Republicans. It awards domestic programs and foreign aid considerable funding boosts and also provides money for more than 5,000 home-state pet projects pushed by lawmakers.

The omnibus bill comes on top of an infusion of cash to domestic agencies in February’s economic stimulus bill and a $410 billion measure in March that also bestowed budget increases well above inflation.

The measure survived a test vote Friday that demonstrated it should receive on Saturday the 60 votes needed to overcome the GOP stalling tactics. Three senior Republican members of the Appropriations Committee joined forces with all but three Democrats to keep the measure from effectively being killed.

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Blackwater Participates in Secret CIA Raids Abroad

December 11, 2009

Sphere

By Pamela Hess

Private security guards working for Blackwater USA participated in clandestine CIA raids against suspected insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, The New York Times reported Thursday.

Blackwater’s role points to a much deeper connection between the company and the spy agency than has been previously disclosed and raises concerns over the legalities of involving contractors in the most sensitive operations conducted by the U.S. government.

The “snatch and grab” raids took place regularly between 2004 and 2006, the Times reported, when the insurgency in Iraq was escalating and security throughout the country was deteriorating.

A U.S. official confirmed to The Associated Press that Blackwater provided security and moved around with CIA teams on missions in war zones, but he denied they performed CIA missions. CIA Director Leon Panetta ordered a review several months ago of the company’s contracts to be sure its guards only perform security-related work, the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity becsause he was not authorized to comment publicly.

CIA spokesman George Little said, “This agency, like many others, uses contractors in roles that complement and enhance the skills of our own work force, just as American law permits.”

“Agency staff officers have the decision-making authority and bear responsibility for results,” Little said.

Blackwater, based in Moyock, N.C., changed its corporate name to Xe Services after a series of use-of-force controversies, including a September 2007 shooting in Baghdad by five company security guards that left 17 civilians dead.

The Times also reported that former Blackwater employees said they helped provide security on CIA flights that transported detainees.

Messages seeking comment left with Xe representatives were not immediately returned late Thursday.

The report comes as the House Intelligence Committee is investigating the agency’s hiring of Blackwater to be part of a program to kill or capture al-Qaida leaders. The death squad program had several lives over an eight-year period before it was canceled Panetta in June. The CIA has said the effort yielded no successes.

The CIA has been reducing its reliance on the use of contractors over the past few years.

The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks occurred after a contraction of the CIA in the post-Cold War period and which compelled the agency to hire contractors to rapidly fill its ranks for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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MSNBC Cancelled Jesse Ventura For His Opposition to War in Iraq

December 1, 2009

Prison Planet.com

By Steve Watson

Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura has revealed that he was effectively silenced for three years by MSNBC when the network cancelled his show in 2003 after learning that Ventura opposed the war in Iraq.

Ventura began the MSNBC show, Jesse Ventura’s America, in October 2003.

The show was originally planned to run five nights a week, but MSNBC executives suddenly changed their minds and it was only broadcast once a week, on Saturdays, before being ditched altogether.

The ex-Navy SEAL has now told the LA Times that he was forced out of the network and prevented from appearing on any other cable TV or news shows.

“It was awful. I was basically silenced.” Ventura comments in the interview.

“When I came out of office, I was the hottest commodity out there. There was a bidding war between CNN, Fox and MSNBC to get my services. MSNBC ultimately won. I was being groomed for a five day-a-week TV show by them. Then, all of a sudden, weird phone calls started happening: ‘Is it true Jesse doesn’t support the war in Iraq?’”

“My contract said I couldn’t do any other cable TV or any news shows, and they honored and paid it for the duration of it. So in essence I had my silence purchased. Why do you think you didn’t hear from me for three years? I was under contract. They wouldn’t even use me as a consultant!” Ventura continues.

“When you live in Mexico, your houses all have names. I almost named my house Casa MSNBC because they bought it. I was paid like a professional athlete, and I got very wealthy. For doing nothing.”

Ventura also states that he has a gentleman’s bet that his new show Conspiracy Theory scheduled to air on Tru TV soon, will never see the light of day, a fact he first revealed on the Alex Jones show last week.

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Debt Repayments Coming For U.S. Government

November 23, 2009

New York Times

By Edmund L. Andrews

The United States government is financing its more than trillion-dollar-a-year borrowing with i.o.u.’s on terms that seem too good to be true.

But that happy situation, aided by ultralow interest rates, may not last much longer.

Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed.

Even as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today’s low rates by exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages.

With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher.

In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The potential for rapidly escalating interest payouts is just one of the wrenching challenges facing the United States after decades of living beyond its means.

The surge in borrowing over the last year or two is widely judged to have been a necessary response to the financial crisis and the deep recession, and there is still a raging debate over how aggressively to bring down deficits over the next few years. But there is little doubt that the United States’ long-term budget crisis is becoming too big to postpone.

Americans now have to climb out of two deep holes: as debt-loaded consumers, whose personal wealth sank along with housing and stock prices; and as taxpayers, whose government debt has almost doubled in the last two years alone, just as costs tied to benefits for retiring baby boomers are set to explode.

The competing demands could deepen political battles over the size and role of the government, the trade-offs between taxes and spending, the choices between helping older generations versus younger ones, and the bottom-line questions about who should ultimately shoulder the burden.

“The government is on teaser rates,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates lower deficits. “We’re taking out a huge mortgage right now, but we won’t feel the pain until later.”

So far, the demand for Treasury securities from investors and other governments around the world has remained strong enough to hold down the interest rates that the United States must offer to sell them. Indeed, the government paid less interest on its debt this year than in 2008, even though it added almost $2 trillion in debt.

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Economist Predicts War to Distract from Poor Economy

November 16, 2009

Washington Blog

PhD economist Marc Faber predicts that the U.S. will launch a war to distract people from the bad economy.

China’s largest media outlet – Sohu.com – wrote in October 2008 that the Rand corporation, a leading U.S. military advisor, lobbied the Pentagon for a war to be started with a major foreign power in an attempt to stimulate the American economy:
According to French media, well-known U.S. think tank RAND Corporation … has submitted [to the Pentagon] an evaluation report assessing the wage a war to shift the feasibility of the current economic crisis…

Continued deepening of the U.S. sub-prime mortgage crisis and economic downturn, developed to a certain extent, is likely to trigger a war in order to achieve the purpose of the crisis passed.

(Google’s translation services are crude approximations, but Yihan Dai confirmed the translation of the original).

Is Faber right? Is the Sohu.com report accurate?
I don’t know. For example, I won’t take the Sohu.com claim very seriously until someone can point to the French media source, so that I can assess it’s credibility.
However, “military Keynesianism” – using military spending to stimulate the economy – has been U.S. policy for half a century. And the economist who coined that term said that such a policy always and “inexorably” leads to “an actual war” in order to justify all of the military spending.

Therefore, any studies which disprove the efficacy of war as an economic stimulus -see this and this – are important for balance.
In addition, contrary to popular belief, some writers say that the reason that WWII actually stimulated the U.S. economy was not because of America fighting the war. Specifically, they argue that America’s ramped-up production of armaments for the British before the U.S. entered the war was the thing which stimulated our economy.

To try to sort some of this out, I spoke with a PhD professor of economics with a background in international conflict in July 2008 to find out whether war is really good for the economy.

I asked if conventional wisdom that war is good for the economy is true, especially given that all of the spending on the war in Iraq seems to have weakened America’s economy (or at least, greatly increased its debt).

The economist explained the seeming paradox:
“War always causes recession. Well, if it is a very short war, then it may stimulate the economy in the short-run. But if there is not a quick victory and it drags on, then wars always put the nation waging war into a recession and hurt its economy.”

Given that America has been fighting both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars longer than it fought WWII, the exception obviously doesn’t apply.

Can America go beat up some poorly-armed country to get a quick war?
It is more unlikely than many assume. Given that many believe that the U.S. started the Iraq war based on false pretenses, and that the Iraq war was really about oil (see this, this, this, this and this), I am skeptical that many would buy America’s stated justifications for another war.

Indeed, the Sohu.com article – even if wholly untrue – proves my point.

In addition, even a war against a small, poorly-armed and resource-poor country could be considered a proxy war. In other words, other heavily-armed countries might fight the U.S. through local proxies, dragging the war out for years, just as the U.S. did with Russia in Afghanistan. America today is not the empire it was even 10 years ago, and – as Afghanistan and Iraq show – America no longer has the financial resources to project force and impose its will world-wide.
The bottom line is that anyone advocating for war to help our economy is mistaken.

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