HOW THE WEST WAS LOST: PART FOURTEEN

And Now For A World Government

by Gideon Rachman

For: The Financial Times

Published: December 8 2008

I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US. I have never seen black helicopters hovering in the sky above Montana. But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible.

A “world government” would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.

So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might.

First, it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a “global war on terror”.

Second, it could be done. The transport and communications revolutions have shrunk the world so that, as Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent Australian historian, has written: “For the first time in human history, world government of some sort is now possible.” Mr Blainey foresees an attempt to form a world government at some point in the next two centuries, which is an unusually long time horizon for the average newspaper column.

But – the third point – a change in the political atmosphere suggests that “global governance” could come much sooner than that. The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty.

Barack Obama, America’s president-in-waiting, does not share the Bush administration’s disdain for international agreements and treaties. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, he argued that: “When the world’s sole superpower willingly restrains its power and abides by internationally agreed-upon standards of conduct, it sends a message that these are rules worth following.” The importance that Mr Obama attaches to the UN is shown by the fact that he has appointed Susan Rice, one of his closest aides, as America’s ambassador to the UN, and given her a seat in the cabinet.

A taste of the ideas doing the rounds in Obama circles is offered by a recent report from the Managing Global Insecurity project, whose small US advisory group includes John Podesta, the man heading Mr Obama’s transition team and Strobe Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institution, from which Ms Rice has just emerged.

The MGI report argues for the creation of a UN high commissioner for counter-terrorist activity, a legally binding climate-change agreement negotiated under the auspices of the UN and the creation of a 50,000-strong UN peacekeeping force. Once countries had pledged troops to this reserve army, the UN would have first call upon them.

These are the kind of ideas that get people reaching for their rifles in America’s talk-radio heartland. Aware of the political sensitivity of its ideas, the MGI report opts for soothing language. It emphasises the need for American leadership and uses the term, “responsible sovereignty” – when calling for international co-operation – rather than the more radical-sounding phrase favoured in Europe, “shared sovereignty”. It also talks about “global governance” rather than world government.

But some European thinkers think that they recognise what is going on. Jacques Attali, an adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, argues that: “Global governance is just a euphemism for global government.” As far as he is concerned, some form of global government cannot come too soon. Mr Attali believes that the “core of the international financial crisis is that we have global financial markets and no global rule of law”.

So, it seems, everything is in place. For the first time since homo sapiens began to doodle on cave walls, there is an argument, an opportunity and a means to make serious steps towards a world government.

But let us not get carried away. While it seems feasible that some sort of world government might emerge over the next century, any push for “global governance” in the here and now will be a painful, slow process.

There are good and bad reasons for this. The bad reason is a lack of will and determination on the part of national, political leaders who – while they might like to talk about “a planet in peril” – are ultimately still much more focused on their next election, at home.

But this “problem” also hints at a more welcome reason why making progress on global governance will be slow sledding. Even in the EU – the heartland of law-based international government – the idea remains unpopular. The EU has suffered a series of humiliating defeats in referendums, when plans for “ever closer union” have been referred to the voters. In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic.

The world’s most pressing political problems may indeed be international in nature, but the average citizen’s political identity remains stubbornly local. Until somebody cracks this problem, that plan for world government may have to stay locked away in a safe at the UN.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

[I wish I shared Mr. Rachman's apparent breezy confidence in the stubborn strength of "the average citizen's political identity". However, given that the "average citizen" is a dumbed down dunce with no clue about real politik (witness the recent US elections) and no guns with which to mount even the most half-hearted defense of his freedoms, my outlook is a bit more pessimistic. Unless the American voter gets an education about the true nature of "the republic for which it stands" and hangs the professional political class for treason, then the day will indeed come when The Blue Helmets will patrol our streets enforcing curfews and arresting dissenters. At least, he gets this much right: "In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic." Truer words have never been spoken! However, I'm not altogether sure if he thinks that's a good thing or a bad thing. And notwithstanding Mr. Rachman's smarmy comments about "black helicopters" and "America's talk radio heartland" the truth is that those on the so-called "far right" have been sounding this alarm for years. What a shame the Gideon Rachman's of the world have just now awakened to breathe in the musty smell of the New World Order coffee. Check please! -Martel]

WAR OF THE WORLDS - PART SEVEN

The Truth About Bosnia
by Leslie Lebl

The nomination of Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State brings back memories of the time when Bosnia represented the primary foreign policy success of her husband's administration. The United States and its NATO partners saved a Muslim minority from genocide at the hands of the Serbs; kept the country from being divided up between Serbia and Croatia; and established peace after several years of a bloody war.

Thirteen years later, the landscape looks a little different. The recent apprehension of indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic raised hopes that Bosnia was on the verge of societal reconciliation. While the apprehension was a step forward, such reconciliation is unlikely as long as another, long-festering problem remains unaddressed: the ever-growing influence of radical Islam in Bosnia. For years this trend has been an open secret; while perceptive observers have reported on it, most of Western government, media and academe have averted their eyes from the threat.

That is not the case for regional journalist Christopher Deliso, whose The Coming Balkan Caliphate traces the spread of radical Islam throughout the Balkans, a process greatly stimulated by the Bosnian war. Nor does it apply to Naval War College professor John Schindler, author of Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa'ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad.

Both authors argue that Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic misled the West, presenting himself, his party and his government as secularized and devoted to a multiethnic democracy, when in fact he was intent on establishing an Islamic state. Not only did their policies and actions ensure continued resistance from Serbs, Croats and non-radical Muslims, but they made Bosnia the ‘missing link' in Al Qaeda's trajectory. And the United States, through its decisive role in support of Izetbegovic, boosted the cause of global jihad.

Schindler and Deliso agree on their portrayal of Izetbegovic. Perceived by most Western observers as the embattled leader of victimized, multiethnic Bosnia, Izetbegovic in fact had a lifetime of well-established Islamist credentials. Just before World War II, he founded a Muslim youth society modeled on the Muslim Brotherhood, with the goal of creating an Islamic state in Europe. During the war, he served as a recruiter for the infamous SS Handzar Division, known for killing and looting unarmed Serbs.

Izetbegovic subsequently authored the Islamic Declaration which, along with his attempt to establish ties with the Islamist Khomeini government, landed him in jail for five years in the 1980s. The Declaration does not appear to have been translated in English in its entirety and as a result few Americans have read it. Here are some excerpts:

"...the Islamic order has two fundamental premises: an Islamic society and Islamic authority. The former is the essence, and the latter the form of an Islamic order. An Islamic society without Islamic power is incomplete and weak; Islamic power without an Islamic society is either a utopia or violence.

A Muslim generally does not exist as an individual. If he wishes to live and survive as a Muslim, he must create an environment, a community, an order. He must change the world or be changed himself.

There can be no peace or coexistence between the ‘Islamic faith' and non-Islamic societies and political institutions...Islam clearly excludes the right and possibility of activity of any strange ideology on its own turf.

... the Islamic movement should and must start taking over the power as soon as it is morally and numerically strong enough to not only overthrow the existing non-Islamic, but also to build up a new Islamic authority..."

Reading this, one would never guess that Bosnia was a secular, Westernized province in Yugoslavia in which the Muslims formed a minority. As Bosnian political analyst Nebojsa Malic puts it, according to Deliso, "Izetbegovic's vision of Bosnia was not a multi-ethnic democracy, but a multi-caste hierarchy of the kind that existed under the Ottoman Empire, the memories of which were still fresh at his birth in 1925."

Under the Ottoman Empire, non-Muslims lived a subordinate, precarious existence. They could practice their faith in private and were ‘tolerated' by the sovereign as long as they submitted to Ottoman power, never mentioned the Koran or the Prophet, and never criticized Islam. They did not, however enjoy same rights as Muslims and, if they broke the rules, lost the sovereign's protection and put their lives at risk.

The Croats and Serbs knew their Ottoman history as well as the Muslims and read the danger signals accurately. In addition, there were other reasons to suspect Izetbegovic's motives, in particular his repeated efforts to establish ties to the radical Islamic regimes in Libya and Iran as well as with more traditional Muslim countries like Turkey.

Schindler provides a useful summary of Izetbegovic's actions before and after the 1992 declaration of Bosnian independence. These included trips in 1991 to Libya, Turkey and Iran. In Turkey, Izetbegovic asked that Bosnia be admitted to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a Saudi-backed forum which includes all Muslim countries - an obvious measure of his contempt for Bosnia's multi-ethnicity. In Iran, he asked Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani for help if hostilities broke out. The reported response: "As of now, the state budget of Iran will be projected as if Iran had two million more inhabitants than it currently has."

In November of that year, Izetbegovic's new political party, the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), at its first party congress purged the top leadership of non-Islamists. Several weeks later, the Young Muslims emerged from the shadows to hold their first-ever congress; some of their guests of honor were SDA leaders.

These facts help to explain, if not to excuse, the subsequent actions of Bosnian Serbs and Croats. Schindler notes that, in May 1991, Bosnian Serb leader and future indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic challenged Izetbegovic to "renounce his Islamic Declaration in public and declare that he will not establish an Islamic state in an independent Bosnia and Herzegovina." That never happened.

Meanwhile, Izetbegovic was building a dense network of ties to countries like Iran and to Islamic charities, mosques and ‘humanitarian' organizations that funneled funds, arms and materiel to the Muslims during the war. At home, in the second half of 1991 the SDA set up its own military force, the Patriotic League, trained and equipped by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Envisioned as a 30,000 man force, the League was never particularly effective, and was eventually combined with other units of the predominantly Muslim Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The SDA's efforts to set up its own intelligence service had more success. The Muslim Intelligence Service, or MOS, was set up in Vienna in 1991 with a primary goal, according to Schindler, "to ensure the dominance of Izetbegovic's inner circle of Islamists." That it did, with the help of the large sums of money moving through various Islamic networks, until the United States demanded that it be closed down after Dayton. Shortly thereafter it was re-created under another name.

Deliso and Schindler recount the mixed signals of Izetbegovic, and note that he excelled in telling each audience what it wanted to hear. What they do not say is that, in so doing, Izetbegovic was following in the well-developed tradition of takiyya, in which a Muslim is allowed to lie to infidels if it protects Muslims or helps to spread Islam. From that perspective, what Izetbegovic did was honorable - unfortunately, the West fell into the trap.

Western analysts and politicians worried during the war that, by its secret collusion to help Iran supply arms to the Muslims, the United States had allowed one of its mortal enemies to gain a foothold in Bosnia. Certainly, Izetbegovic felt much closer to the Iranians and their ‘pure' Islamist revolution than he did to the Saudis, who did not practice what they preached. More than a decade later, the Iranians retain a considerable presence in Bosnia but keep a low profile. More visible, and well-described in these books, are organizations linked to the Saudis and the Gulf States.

The war in Bosnia soon became the prime recruiting tool for global jihad. Ed Husain describes in The Islamist how he, like many others, was radicalized by graphic videos of horror inflicted on the Bosnian Muslims. Indeed, the war in Bosnia came at a fortuitous juncture. Many jihadis had fought in Afghanistan. When the war against the Soviets ended in 1992, their choices in Afghanistan were poor. Staying there risked embroiling them in internecine, Muslim-on-Muslim conflicts; not only was this not jihad as they saw it, but they were outsiders. Some went home, but others couldn't because of legal charges or the risk of repression. For many of those who could re-enter it, civilian life was boring and meaningless. Bosnia as the next front in global jihad was irresistible.

Schindler presents considerable evidence to support his contention that Al Qaeda, including Bin Laden himself, "played the dominant role in getting the international component of the Bosnian jihad off the ground in 1992." This includes the personal engagement of Bin Laden. He was residing in Sudan at the time but apparently traveled to Bosnia and was, at one point, sighted in Izetbegovic's antechamber by two Western journalists (although it seems unlikely that Izetbegovic would have kept such an important contact waiting).

Schindler also traces the SDA's ties, especially those of close Izetbegovic associate Hasan Cengic, to the various Islamic charities and ‘humanitarian' organizations active in Bosnia. Before and during the war, Cengic served on the board of directors of the Third World Relief Agency, an organization with links to both the Saudi government and Al Qaeda that served as a conduit for funds and jihadis entering Bosnia.

Deliso, like most other observers, assembles much of this data, but does not connect the jihadis directly to Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda. He does, however, trace other Al Qaeda connections that spread throughout the Balkans but were particularly noticeable in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia.

While Al Qaeda provided much of the leadership, the foot soldiers of the jihad came from many countries and groups. The Egyptian Islamic Group and Algeria's Armed Islamic Group (GIS) supplied the largest contingents, although Hezbollah was also present, as were Muslim youth and some converts from Europe.

The jihadis had their first armed engagement in fall 1992. Thus, by June1993, when the Saudis asked Clinton to take the lead in providing military assistance to Bosnia, the links to Islamist groups and jihadi fighters were already in place. U.S officials were not responsible for these developments but can be criticized for either ignoring or underestimating them.

Initially, jihadi contributions were minimal, but by the end of the war they had become feared assault troops. Their experiences in Bosnia gave them a new set of war-fighting skills, much as appears to have happened in Iraq ten years later. Jihadi savagery served more than just military purposes, however. Such actions as decapitations of non-Muslims were understood by all the participants as a return to Ottoman times and to classical Islam.

The end of the war by no means meant the end of Islamist influence in Bosnia. Despite efforts by the U.S. government to dislodge them, after the Dayton Accords and again after 9/11, some jihadis remained in country, often marrying Bosnian girls or being granted Bosnian passports by the Izetbegovic government. Shortly after 9/11, NATO forces raided the offices of the Saudi High Commission in Sarajevo, thwarting a terrorist attack on the U.S. and British embassies. A number of individuals were arrested and subsequently deported for alleged terrorist activity. Meanwhile, representatives of Islamic charities and other organizations continued to Islamicize Bosnia, and to use it as a point of entry into Europe. Sadly, as Deliso and Schindler note, U.S. efforts after September 11 to shut down these organizations failed.

For many years observers believed that the Islamists would make little headway there. Indeed, in a 2006 poll, over 70% of Bosnian Federation TV viewers said they believed Saudi fundamentalism was a threat to Muslims and to Bosnia. However, the fact that the majority of Bosnian Muslims oppose it does not mean that radical Islam has not made significant inroads there.

Deliso describes the efforts of the Bosnian religious establishment, starting in 2006, to combat Wahhabism, but sees them as ineffectual in opposing the well-funded Saudi challenge. Schindler's assessment is equally pessimistic, based on such indicators as the participation of the Islamic Community of Bosnia in the 2006 protests against the Danish cartoons, as well as the re-opening of sharia (Islamic law) courts, which had been closed down in 1946.

Nor are the present-day links to the jihadi past restricted to Bosnia. Both authors cite the numerous links between Bosnia and all kinds of terrorist acts: the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993; the GIS attacks in France in the mid-1990s; the attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington; or the Madrid train bombings of 2004.

The links are not just personal; e.g., someone who fought in Bosnia later carries out a terrorist act in Europe. Rather, the links included planning, organization, and exploitation of networks set up during the war. As Deliso points out, the first suicide bombing in Europe, in 1995 in Rijeka, was organized and prepared in Bosnia. Indeed, the attempted attack on the 2005 funeral of Pope John Paul II was hatched in the Bosnian village of Gornja Maoca.

In 2007, Bosnia was described as one of Al Qaeda's transit points, where sympathizers help to hide agents and provide financial support or false documents. In May 2008, Bosnian TV reported allegations that Izetbegovic insider Hasan Cengic had personally signed a money transfer connected to the 9/11 attacks.

Both authors use numerous sources to detail these links; Schindler in particular refers to documentation and testimony from court cases. Neither is breaking new ground in telling the story of Bosnia's role in the global jihad. That is what makes it even more astounding that so little of this material has filtered into public perceptions of Bosnia and its role in global jihad.

So just who was responsible for the arrival of jihad in Bosnia? Deliso states that the jihadis would never have reached Bosnia in the first place had it not been for the Clinton administration's determination to defeat the Bosnian Serbs at all costs. Although accurate as far as it goes, that accusation ignores the numerous initiatives undertaken before the war's start by Alija Izetbegovic, as well as the powerful forces behind establishing a new front for the global jihad after the Soviets left Afghanistan. That said, there is no doubt that, when the United States finally did intervene, its actions promoted the spread of jihad. The question is why this obvious fact is buried so deep.

[Doesn't globalist politics make the strangest bedfellows? Ever wondered how it could be that just a few short years ago we were in solidarity with the jihadists in Eastern Europe and Afghanistan, supplying them with the vigilant protection of "peacekeepers" on the ground, not to mention the specialized military training and indeed the very weapons they would in turn use against our own troops? And now we're locked in a global life and death struggle with those very same forces! What insanity is this? How is it that Russian troops once fought the Islamic radicals in their own backyard tooth and nail, yet now they come to their aid in Georgia...and that against their own people? Inconsistency, thy name be globalist foreign policy! Indeed, it is not unreasonable to say that we created Al Queda. Arming your own enemies? The fast track to cultural suicide. - Martel]

QUARANTINED FOR POLITICAL INCORRECTNESS

Belgian Far Right Leader: I Am One Of Israel's Staunchest Defenders

by Cnaan Liphshiz for Haaretz

At Belgium's request, the European Parliament is expected next month to lift the immunity of one of its members, a former leader of the rightist Vlaams Belang party, exposing him to racism charges. Describing himself as a victim of blatant persecution, Frank Vanhecke told Haaretz the decision could spell his "political death."

In the interview, Vanhecke countered claims that Vlaams Belang is anti-Semitic, calling them "unjust and untrue," pointing to his record of cooperation with Antwerp's Jewish community and standing up for Israel in the European Parliament.

Vlaams Belang is an anti-immigration party in the Flemish Community of Belgium that advocates the independence of Flanders and separation from the French-speaking population.

Although it's one of the country's largest parties, and the second largest political party in Flanders, it is kept out of government by the Cordon Sanitaire, a pact between all other Belgian parties to refrain from joining a coalition with Vlaams Belang.

Belgian justice minister and Deputy Prime Minister Jo Vandeurzen asked the European Parliament in April to lift Vanhecke's immunity so that Vanhecke can be prosecuted for a short article which appeared in 2005 a local party brochure, that linked an act of vandalism at a Christian cemetery to the Muslim minority in Sint-Niklaas, a city in the Flemish province of East Flanders.

Although Vanhecke was not the author, as Vlaams Belang president at that time - and consequently the publisher - he was legally responsible for all party publications. Vanhecke claims he had no knowledge of the 130-word article prior to publication.

Police apprehended the vandals, but Belgian law prohibits disclosing their identity because they were underage. Vlaams Belang says this prevents the party from proving that the youths were indeed Muslim immigrants. The author, whose identity is known, is not being prosecuted.

If convicted under Belgian anti-racism legislation, Vanhecke could lose his seat in the European Parliament as well as his right to be active in politics. Last Monday, the European Parliament?s Committee on Legal Affairs voted to lift Vanhecke's immunity, leaving the final vote for a plenary session in December. Commentators following the case say the December vote is a mere formality on the way to lifting Vanhecke's immunity.

"The Belgian government is persecuting me because I'm a member of a party which calls for Flemish independence," MEP Frank Vanhecke told Haaretz last week. In Vlaams Belang's official reaction to the Monday vote, the party said that "Belgium really is a banana republic."

Guido Naets, a Belgian ex-journalist and former spokesman of the European Parliament, asked the Legal Affairs Committee to turn down the Belgian request on the grounds of a conflict of interest on Brussel's part.

Naets also pointed out that Vlaams Belang is a Flemish-secessionist party which aims for the independence of Flanders from Belgium. He declared that this, and not racism, is the real reason for an attempt to ban Vanhecke from the coming European elections.

"In the almost 30 years that I have known Vanhecke [...] I have never been able to catch him out on any form of racism whatsoever," Naets said. "Vanhecke will be prosecuted because he is a symbol for a party that wants to abolish Belgium."

Before it became Vlaams Belang in 2004, the party was called Vlaams Blok. It changed its name and adjusted its platform after Belgium's supreme court declared it was a racist movement, effectively banning it from the political establishment.

During the interview, Vanhecke, 49, said he was aware that many Jews view Vlaams Belang antisemitic. "It's a form of automation, where we are immediately classified as antisemitic despite the facts on the ground."

Noting Vlaams Belang's "excellent contacts" with the Antwerp Jewish community, Vanhecke went on to say that the "misconception" owes in part to a "grave error" on the part of some Flemish secessionists who sided with the Nazis in the 1940s "only as a misguided and naïve attempt to achieve independence."

Another relevant issue is "the unacceptable behavior of a few weeds" who associate themselves with the party, Vanhecke said. With a hint of frustration in his voice, Vanhecke adds: "They say I'm antisemitic when the truth is I am one of Israel's staunchest defenders in the European Parliament. I invite you to read my queries to the European Parliament concerning its unjust treatment of Israel, and about the support the same parliament is giving to Palestinian murderers."

Vanhecke went on to say he thinks of himself as "a defender of Israel and of the Jewish people," adding: "Israel stands for the spirit that we stand for; liberty and self-determination."


[The smug political correctness of the socialist elite in Brussels truly knows no limits. This, my dear readers, is the true face of liberal "social democracy" in the leftist la-la-land we know as Europe. Mr. Vanhecke is a true patriot. And yet, the inner circle of Belgian political power treats him as a leper. Quite literally. Indeed, the phrase 'Cordon Sanitaire' is transliterated 'Sanitary Line'...meaning that Mr. Vanhecke (and presumably anyone else who believes as he does) is quarantined, lest his "deadly filth" pollute the pristine environment of the European Parliament. Talk about political correctness with teeth!? The forces of cultural suicide have assumed total control in Europe and soon Belgium will be swallowed up by the next wave of Pan Arab immigration. Hey! Freedom loving Belgians! Last one out bring the flag! Is this the future of American political discourse as well? It is indeed unless those who love freedom get their heads out of their collective rear ends and reclaim the culture. Otherwise, prepare to receive the exact same treatment at the hands of America's neo-Marxist socialistas. Now that they have control of The White House and both branches of The Legislature, l'm taking bets how long bi-partisanship lasts. Any takers? -Martel]

MONEY...IT'S A CRIME...

The World Tires of Dollar Hegemony

by Paul Craig Roberts

What explains the paradox of the dollar’s sharp rise in value against other currencies (except the Japanese yen) despite disproportionate US exposure to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression? The answer does not lie in improved fundamentals for the US economy or better prospects for the dollar to retain its reserve currency role.

The rise in the dollar’s exchange value is due to two factors.

One factor is the traditional flight to the reserve currency that results from panic. People are simply doing what they have always done. Pam Martens predicted correctly that panic demand for US Treasury bills would boost the US dollar.

The other factor is the unwinding of the carry trade. The carry trade originated in extremely low Japanese interest rates. Investors and speculators borrowed Japanese yen at an interest rate of one-half of one percent, converted the yen to other currencies, and purchased debt instruments from other countries that pay much higher interest rates. In effect, they were getting practically free funds from Japan to lend to others paying higher interest.

The financial crisis has reversed this process. The toxic American derivatives were marketed worldwide by Wall Street. They have endangered the balance sheets and solvency of financial institutions throughout the world, including national governments, such as Iceland and Hungary. Banks and governments that invested in the troubled American financial instruments found their own debt instruments in jeopardy.

Those who used yen loans to purchase, for example, debt instruments from European banks or Icelandic bonds, faced potentially catastrophic losses. Investors and speculators sold their higher-yielding financial instruments in a scramble for dollars and yen in order to pay off their Japanese loans. This drove up the values of the yen and the US dollar, the reserve currency that can be used to repay debts, and drove down the values of other currencies.

The dollar’s rise is temporary, and its prospects are bleak. The US trade deficit will lessen due to less consumer spending during recession, but it will remain the largest in the world and one that the US cannot close by exporting more. The way the US trade deficit is financed is by foreigners acquiring more dollar assets, with which their portfolios are already heavily weighted.

The US government’s budget deficit is large and growing, adding hundreds of billions of dollars more to an already large national debt. As investors flee equities into US government bills, the market for US Treasuries will temporarily depend less on foreign governments. Nevertheless, the burden on foreigners and on world savings of having to finance American consumption, the US government’s wars and military budget, and the US financial bailout is increasingly resented.

This resentment, combined with the harm done to America’s reputation by the financial crisis, has led to numerous calls for a new financial order in which the US plays a substantially lesser role. "Overcoming the financial crisis" are code words for the rest of the world’s intent to overthrow US financial hegemony.

Brazil, Russia, India and China have formed a new group (BRIC) to coordinate their interests at the November financial summit in Washington, D.C.

On October 28, RIA Novosti reported that Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin suggested to China that the two countries use their own currencies in their bilateral trade, thus avoiding the use of the dollar. China’s prime Minister Wen Jiabao replied that strengthening bilateral relations is strategic.

Europe has also served notice that it intends to exert a new leadership role. Four members of the Group of Seven industrial nations, France, Britain, Germany and Italy, used the financial crisis to call for sweeping reforms of the world financial system. Jose Manual Barroso, president of the European Commission, said that a new world financial system is possible only "if Europe has a leadership role."

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said that the "economic egoism" of America’s "unipolar vision of the world" is a "dead-end policy."

China’s massive foreign exchange reserves and its strong position in manufacturing have given China the leadership role in Asia. The deputy prime minister of Thailand recently designated the Chinese yuan as "the rightful and anointed convertible currency of the world."

Normally, the Chinese are very circumspect in what they say, but on October 24 Reuters reported that the People’s Daily, the official government newspaper, in a front-page commentary accused the US of plundering "global wealth by exploiting the dollar’s dominance." To correct this unacceptable situation, the commentary called for Asian and European countries to "banish the US dollar from their direct trade relations, relying only on their own currencies." And this step, said the commentary, is merely a starting step in overthrowing dollar dominance.

The Chinese are expressing other thoughts that would get the attention of a less deluded and arrogant American government. Zhou Jiangong, editor of the online publication, ChinaStakes.com, recently asked: "Why should China help the US to issue debt without end in the belief that the national credit of the US can expand without limit?"

Zhou Jiangong’s solution to American excesses is for China to take over Wall Street.

China has the money to do it, and the prudent Chinese would do a better job than the crowd of thieves who have destroyed America’s financial reputation while exploiting the world in pursuit of multi- million dollar bonuses.

THIS JUST IN FROM ELECTION CENTRAL!

How Many Non-Citizen Voters? Enough to Make a Difference! October 13, 2008 by David Simcox The Impact Of Non-Citizen Voting On American Elections The approaching 2008 general elections underscore concern that the growing access of non-citizens to the ballot box could distort the outcome. Groups arguing for easier access to the polls deny there is a problem at all, seeing restrictive registration and identification rules as anti-democratic and even racist. They dismiss non-citizen voting as rare, not criminal in intent or concerted, and more harmful than beneficial to non-citizens. Yet anecdotal evidence persists and grows that non-citizens are registering and voting in significant numbers. A common and increasing indicator is the number of persons selected for jury duty from the voter rolls who beg off because they are not citizens. The 1993 "Motor-Voter" legislation accelerated the trend: it provided registration virtually by default, with affirmation of citizenship left to an honor system. The risk of detection of this fraud has waned with the increasing use of absentee and mail-in voting, which precludes personal inspection at the polls by election officials. Anecdotal evidence tells us only that illegal voting happens around the country, not how much. But there is overlooked data that define, if not the exact number of alien voters, at least the order of magnitude and extent of the practice. The explosive growth of the Latino electorate in south Florida after "Motor-Voter" resulted in a registration rate among Miami-Dade county's putatively voting-eligible population some 30 percentage points higher than the national registration rate for Hispanics, suggesting a heavy presence of ineligibles on the voter rolls. A Public Policy Institute of California survey in 2007 found 31 percent of the state's immigrant population was registered. This fraction, however, would be a population larger than the state's naturalized citizens shown by surveys to be registered. Some 300,000 to 450,000 registrations of non-citizens would be needed to bring total registrations up to 31 percent. Also in California, a poll by a Los Angeles university think tank in 2007 found that 12 percent of non-citizen respondents acknowledged being registered, implying 155,000 ineligible voters in Los Angeles County. Assuming the 12 percent registration rate applied to the nation's adult non-citizens, there would be 2.3 million ineligible aliens on U.S. voting rolls. An examination of voter registration rates in immigrant-rich congressional districts and counties in California, Texas, Florida, and New York show high numbers of registered voters disproportionate to their vote-eligible populations. In several districts and jurisdictions the number of registrants even exceeded the total number of eligible voters. Intense political mobilization and registration drives by ethnic groups in preparation for the 2008 elections-some of them aggrieved by tightened immigration policy-may well further enlarge the alien electorate. An estimated two to two and a half million ineligible voters may seem insignificant in an overall electorate that could reach 130 million in 2008. But in three presidential elections since 1960, the principal contenders have been separated by margins far less than two million. The concentration of those non-citizen votes in just a few states disproportionately increases their leverage in state and local contests and in the Electoral College. Can U.S. residents who are prohibited from voting, but vote anyway, affect the political future of the country or its political subdivisions? If you believe the word of open suffrage nonprofit organizations1 and think tanks,2 such as those whose challenge to Indiana's voter identification (ID) laws was rejected by the Supreme Court in 2008,3 the number of non-citizens who vote is negligible. Dismissing the lax voter registration process ushered in by the 1993 Motor-Voter law, those advocates argue that non-citizens have nothing to gain and a lot to lose by illegal voting, such as loss or delay of naturalization or, if illegal aliens, detection and deportation. Those claiming the number of proven cases of fraud is inconsequential often cite a Department of Justice (DOJ) five-year campaign begun in 2002 in which only 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted. These are cases in which DOJ was involved. The scoffers often ignore the sizable number of cases investigated at the state level, including those handled quietly and without criminal penalties in administrative processes. Statements of various U.S. Attorneys involved invoke a permissive legal doctrine that discourages prosecution of non-citizen voting fraud, such as absence of "concerted effort to tilt elections," little evidence of "widespread, organized fraud," "mistakes or misunderstandings by immigrants, not fraud," and no indications of "conspiracy." Apparently, citizens must tolerate the spreading access of ineligible voters to the ballot boxes as long as it is "disorganized, not concerted, lacking criminal intent, and non-conspiratorial." Some cases since 1995 in which community and ethnic nonprofit groups have been caught registering non-citizens, such as Hermandad Nacional Mexicana, DemocraciaUSA, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform (ACORN), are, according to these arguments, just the result of honest mistakes or confusion among the non-citizen registrants themselves about the citizenship requirement or their own status. Some of these non-compliant groups have been beneficiaries of federal grants. But Americans favoring more, not less, ballot security remain convinced that non-citizen voters in 1996 provided the narrow winning margin in Democrat Loretta Sanchez's upset of long-time incumbent Republican Bob Dornan in California's 47th Congression-al district (Orange County). They believe that the incident was not isolated and that it presaged a growing threat to good government in general and the Republican party in particular. Few accept the official 1997 finding of a California grand jury that the 624 proven votes by ineligible aliens-out of more than 4,000 claimed by Dornan's attorneys-would not have altered the outcome. Those arguing for added safeguards against ineligible voters have provided abundant anecdotal cases of non-citizen registration and voting, but few macro-statistics showing national or regional dimensions of the practice. Much of the evidence tends to be circumstantial. For example, U.S. Census data show that 41 percent of Hispanics and 33 percent of Asians are non-citizens. Yet a national survey of reasons for not voting showed 13.8 percent of Hispanics and 13.1 percent of Asians gave "ineligibility" as their reason for not registering. How much of the gap can be attributed to the unfamiliarity of newcomers with the terms and regulations? Cases numbering in the hundreds have surfaced in which non-citizen registered voters have admitted non-citizenship to escape a summons to jury duty. But such scattered cases are little help in projecting overall numbers for the nation or its major political subdivisions. The lack of data is not surprising. It is not something busy voter registrars in high immigration states want to examine carefully. To do so risks the hostility of open suffrage and ethnic political advocates who impute racism or oppression of the poor to rigorous voting rules. The former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)-now the Citizenship and Immigration Service (CIS)-has shown distaste for being drawn into investigations, alleging lack of useful data to prove non-citizenship. In another example of reliance on the honor system, the current naturalization application form used by CIS, the N-400, asks applicants if they have registered or voted in a U.S. election. CIS so far has declined to disclose the number answering "yes." Any such a number would have questionable validity, given the possible complications for the applicant who admits having voted. But indicators of significant registration of non-citizens continue to pop up. The current vast voter registration campaigns of Hispanic and Asian ethnic interests since Congress's 2006 rejection of mass amnesty may force local registrars to increase their rubber-stamping of applications, producing new legions of non-citizens to try to vote in 2008.

WAR OF THE WORLDS - PART SIX

U.S. Intel: Iran Plans Nuclear Strike on U.S.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008 9:00 AM

by Kenneth R. Timmerman

Iran has carried out missile tests for what could be a plan for a nuclear strike on the United States, the head of a national security panel has warned.

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee and in remarks to a private conference on missile defense over the weekend hosted by the Claremont Institute, Dr. William Graham warned that the U.S. intelligence community “doesn’t have a story” to explain the recent Iranian tests.

One group of tests that troubled Graham, the former White House science adviser under President Ronald Reagan, were successful efforts to launch a Scud missile from a platform in the Caspian Sea.

“They’ve got [test] ranges in Iran which are more than long enough to handle Scud launches and even Shahab-3 launches,” Dr. Graham said. “Why would they be launching from the surface of the Caspian Sea? They obviously have not explained that to us.”

Another troubling group of tests involved Shahab-3 launches where the Iranians "detonated the warhead near apogee, not over the target area where the thing would eventually land, but at altitude,” Graham said. “Why would they do that?”

Graham chairs the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, a blue-ribbon panel established by Congress in 2001.

The commission examined the Iranian tests “and without too much effort connected the dots,” even though the U.S. intelligence community previously had failed to do so, Graham said.

“The only plausible explanation we can find is that the Iranians are figuring out how to launch a missile from a ship and get it up to altitude and then detonate it,” he said. “And that’s exactly what you would do if you had a nuclear weapon on a Scud or a Shahab-3 or other missile, and you wanted to explode it over the United States.”

The commission warned in a report issued in April that the United States was at risk of a sneak nuclear attack by a rogue nation or a terrorist group designed to take out our nation’s critical infrastructure.

"If even a crude nuclear weapon were detonated anywhere between 40 kilometers to 400 kilometers above the earth, in a split-second it would generate an electro-magnetic pulse [EMP] that would cripple military and civilian communications, power, transportation, water, food, and other infrastructure," the report warned.

While not causing immediate civilian casualties, the near-term impact on U.S. society would dwarf the damage of a direct nuclear strike on a U.S. city.

“The first indication [of such an attack] would be that the power would go out, and some, but not all, the telecommunications would go out. We would not physically feel anything in our bodies,” Graham said.

As electric power, water and gas delivery systems failed, there would be “truly massive traffic jams,” Graham added, since modern automobiles and signaling systems all depend on sophisticated electronics that would be disabled by the EMP wave.

“So you would be walking. You wouldn’t be driving at that point,” Graham said. “And it wouldn’t do any good to call the maintenance or repair people because they wouldn’t be able to get there, even if you could get through to them.”

The food distribution system also would grind to a halt as cold-storage warehouses stockpiling perishables went offline. Even warehouses equipped with backup diesel generators would fail, because “we wouldn’t be able to pump the fuel into the trucks and get the trucks to the warehouses,” Graham said.

The United States “would quickly revert to an early 19th century type of country.” except that we would have 10 times as many people with ten times fewer resources, he said.

“Most of the things we depend upon would be gone, and we would literally be depending on our own assets and those we could reach by walking to them,” Graham said.

America would begin to resemble the 2002 TV series, “Jeremiah,” which depicts a world bereft of law, infrastructure, and memory.

In the TV series, an unspecified virus wipes out the entire adult population of the planet. In an EMP attack, the casualties would be caused by our almost total dependence on technology for everything from food and water, to hospital care.

Within a week or two of the attack, people would start dying, Graham says.

“People in hospitals would be dying faster than that, because they depend on power to stay alive. But then it would go to water, food, civil authority, emergency services. And we would end up with a country with many, many people not surviving the event.”

Asked just how many Americans would die if Iran were to launch the EMP attack it appears to be preparing, Graham gave a chilling reply.

“You have to go back into the 1800s to look at the size of population” that could survive in a nation deprived of mechanized agriculture, transportation, power, water, and communication.

“I’d have to say that 70 to 90 percent of the population would not be sustainable after this kind of attack,” he said.

America would be reduced to a core of around 30 million people — about the number that existed in the decades after America’s independence from Great Britain.

The modern electronic economy would shut down, and America would most likely revert to “an earlier economy based on barter,” the EMP commission’s report on Critical National Infrastructure concluded earlier this year.

In his recent congressional testimony, Graham revealed that Iranian military journals, translated by the CIA at his commission’s request, “explicitly discuss a nuclear EMP attack that would gravely harm the United States.”

Furthermore, if Iran launched its attack from a cargo ship plying the commercial sea lanes off the East coast — a scenario that appears to have been tested during the Caspian Sea tests — U.S. investigators might never determine who was behind the attack. Because of the limits of nuclear forensic technology, it could take months. And to disguise their traces, the Iranians could simply decide to sink the ship that had been used to launch it, Graham said.

Several participants in last weekend’s conference in Dearborn, Mich., hosted by the conservative Claremont Institute argued that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was thinking about an EMP attack when he opined that “a world without America is conceivable.”

In May 2007, then Undersecretary of State John Rood told Congress that the U.S. intelligence community estimates that Iran could develop an ICBM capable of hitting the continental United States by 2015.

But Iran could put a Scud missile on board a cargo ship and launch from the commercial sea lanes off America’s coasts well before then.

The only thing Iran is lacking for an effective EMP attack is a nuclear warhead, and no one knows with any certainty when that will occur. The latest U.S. intelligence estimate states that Iran could acquire the fissile material for a nuclear weapon as early as 2009, or as late as 2015, or possibly later.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld first detailed the “Scud-in-a-bucket” threat during a briefing in Huntsville, Ala., on Aug. 18, 2004.

While not explicitly naming Iran, Rumsfeld revealed that “one of the nations in the Middle East had launched a ballistic missile from a cargo vessel. They had taken a short-range, probably Scud missile, put it on a transporter-erector launcher, lowered it in, taken the vessel out into the water, peeled back the top, erected it, fired it, lowered it, and covered it up. And the ship that they used was using a radar and electronic equipment that was no different than 50, 60, 100 other ships operating in the immediate area.”

Iran’s first test of a ship-launched Scud missile occurred in spring 1998, and was mentioned several months later in veiled terms by the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, a blue-ribbon panel also known as the Rumsfeld Commission.

I was the first reporter to mention the Iran sea-launched missile test in an article appearing in the Washington Times in May 1999.

Intelligence reports on the launch were “well known to the White House but have not been disseminated to the appropriate congressional committees,” I wrote. Such a missile “could be used in a devastating stealth attack against the United States or Israel for which the United States has no known or planned defense.”

Few experts believe that Iran can be deterred from launching such an attack by the threat of massive retaliation against Iran. They point to a December 2001 statement by former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, who mulled the possibility of Israeli retaliation after an Iranian nuclear strike.

“The use of an atomic bomb against Israel would destroy Israel completely, while [the same] against the Islamic only would cause damages. Such a scenario is not inconceivable,” Rafsanjani said at the time.

Rep. Trent Franks, R, Ariz., plans to introduce legislation next week that would require the Pentagon to lay the groundwork for an eventual military strike against Iran, to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and EMP capability.

“An EMP attack on America would send us back to the horse and buggy era — without the horse and buggy,” he told the Claremont Institute conference on Saturday. “If you’re a terrorist, this is your ultimate goal, your ultimate asymmetric weapon.”

Noting Iran’s recent sea-launched and mid-flight warhead detonation tests, Rep. Franks concluded, “They could do it — either directly or anonymously by putting some freighter out there on the ocean.”

The only possible deterrent against Iran is the prospect of failure, Dr. Graham and other experts agreed. And the only way the United States could credibly threaten an Iranian missile strike would be to deploy effective national missile defenses.

“It’s well known that people don’t go on a diet until they’ve had a heart attack,” said Claremont Institute president Brian T. Kennedy. “And we as a nation are having a heart attack” when it comes to the threat of an EMP attack from Iran.

“As of today, we have no defense against such an attack. We need space-based missile defenses to protect against an EMP attack,” he told Newsmax.

Rep. Franks said he remains surprised at how partisan the subject of space-based missile defenses remain. “Nuclear missiles don’t discriminate on party lines when they land,” he said.

Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, a long-standing champion of missile defense, told the Claremont conference on Friday that Sen. Obama has opposed missile defense tooth and nail and as president would cut funding for these programs dramatically.

“Senator Obama has been quoted as saying, ‘I don’t agree with a missile defense system,’ and that we can cut $10 billion of the research out — never mind, as I say, that the entire budget is $9.6 billion, or $9.3 billion,” Kyl said.

Like Franks, Kyl believes that the only way to eventually deter Iran from launching an EMP attack on the United States is to deploy robust missile defense systems, including space-based interceptors.

The United States “needs a missile defense that is so strong, in all the different phases we need to defend against . . . that countries will decide it’s not worth coming up against us,” Kyl said.

“That’s one of the things that defeated the Soviet Union. That’s one of the ways we can deal with these rogue states . . . and also the way that we can keep countries that are not enemies today, but are potential enemies, from developing capabilities to challenge us. “

© 2008 Newsmax.

HOW THE WEST WAS LOST - PART TWELVE

Christians Accused Of Hate Crime

by Chad Groening - 6/5/2008 10:00:00 AM

One of the nation's leading Islamic critics says he is not surprised that two Christian evangelists were recently threatened with arrest for committing the "hate crime" of handing out gospel tracts in a predominately Muslim area of Birmingham, England.

Arthur Cunningham, 48, and Joseph Abraham, 65, are both American but have lived in the United Kingdom for many years. They have launched legal action against the West Midlands Police, claiming an officer infringed on their right to profess their religion.

In February, the two men say they were told by a police community support officer that they were in a Muslim area and were, therefore, not allowed to spread their Christian message. They also were told they were committing a hate crime by telling the youths to leave Islam. The ministers also say the officer told them, "You have been warned. If you come back here and get beaten up, well you have been warned."

Robert Spencer is the Director of Jihad Watch, a project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He believes this was a de facto imposition of Islamic law in Britain.

"Obviously English law has no restrictions on Christian evangelization or Christian proselytization of any kind. But Islamic law forbids Christians to proselytize, especially among Muslims. So this is a de facto imposition of Islamic law in Britain," Spencer contends.

Spencer says this is all part of the Islamic supremacy movement which very few westerners really understand. "Islamic supremacism is the impulse to impose Islamic law over non-Muslims. Since we're only concentrating as a society and in terms of law enforcement on terrorism, we are not resisting in any way the non-violent initiatives. And that means they'll just continue to advance," Spencer explains.

As a result, Spencer thinks it is more likely that the two evangelists will be punished and not the police officer.