(WASHINGTON DC) – As news about Israeli political parties merging dominates headlines, this one is being overlooked. The US House of Representatives Defense Appropriations Subcommittee yesterday approved almost $1 billion for Israel’s anti-missile defense programs.
The expensive systems are called Arrow 3. The American politicians propose spending this exorbitant amount in order to upgrade the current Arrow system, David’s Sling, and Iron Dome.
The names are fancy, unlike the missiles they say they are defending themselves from. The munitions fired from Gaza are al Qassam rockets and they are little more than unguided fireworks.
Israeli and American media portray the ‘rocket attacks from Gaza’ as a serious danger and they claim that the large U.S. tax payer contributions are necessary in order to ‘defend’ Israel. The Gaza rockets have in all time, killed a total of 28 Israeli citizens. Some place the number at 29.
The total appropriation is the highest ever approved for the four programs; it reflects the willingness of the United States to back yet another racist, apartheid government that uses American investments to send Israeli youth to college, and to kill Palestinians; Muslims and Christians, who have few rights under a system that Israel created, offering one set of laws and punishments to Jews, and a different set for all other human beings.
Over 11,000 academics have pledged to boycott Elsevier, the Dutch publishing giant, for profiting off their work and making it unavailable to the general public. Now Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, is about to turn the world of corporate academic publishing on its head, in the same way that his website effectively took down Encyclopedia Britannica.
Elsevier is part of the Anglo-Dutch company Reed Elsevier, which had 2010 revenues of $9.3 billion and annual profits of over $1.67 billion. It publishes over 250,000 articles in some 2,000 journals a year that range from global publications like the Lancet to more specific ones like the Journal of the Egyptian Mathematical Society.
Publishers like Elsevier knew they were onto a good thing because before the arrival of the Internet, there was no other way for researchers to tell their peers about the important work they were doing, or vice versa. Plus getting published in a respectable journal was also the key to keeping academic jobs and getting promotions, so the researchers and professors – like rock musicians and best-selling writers – were leery about giving away their work for free.
“(P)ublishing companies became the de facto gatekeepers to scientific knowledge, restricting who could see the latest ideas rather than allowing ideas to spread as far as possible,” writes Aloke Jha in the Guardian.
A British undercover agent infiltrated al-Qaeda, volunteered to be a suicide bomber and smuggled out the latest version of the deadly underpants bomb, it can be disclosed.
US spy chief James Clapper has ordered an inquiry into leaks to media outlets that exposed how the CIA foiled an al-Qaeda plot using a spy who infiltrated the terror group, officials said Wednesday.
Phi Beta Iota: There are three levels here. First, it is most likely the leak came from the White House, deliberately, and the IC investigation is mostly for show–and to make the subtle point that their investigation cannot cover the White House (if we had a proper national counterintelligence capability and the FBI had integrity, this would not be happening). Second, as we found in Central America and elsewhere, the White House runs its own intelligence and covert action operations without regard to the secret intelligence chain of command, and we have no doubt that John Brennan is playing a double game (pun intended). Third and last, if this is real, and we are inclined to think that it is not, it should be said that the British can be very very good, and the UK has the most target-rich environment on the planet for recruiting penetrations — it also has the most extremist penetrations of legitimate groups. Just as the Soviets nailed every recruited emigree sent back in after WWII, we suspect that the extremists have a better grip on their own community than the Brits do. In terms of evaluating the integrity of the British, we remind one and all that they supported the White House on all the lies about Iraq, and even went so low as to plagarize an unclassified paper from the Moneterey Institute of International Relations (MIIR), a desperate move made necessary in their eyes because they had no secret sources and had no real knowledge. On balance, this smells.
Last week I circulated a piece discusing an eight page advertising special in The Washington Post, paid for by Lockheed-Martin and Boeing (and a credit union). The huge ad commemorated the 100th anniversary of Marine Corps aviation. (My piece with a link to the advertisement is at the end of this message.) In the special advertising sectionthe Marine Corps' Commandant and Deputy Commandant for Aviation, among others, proclaimed that Marine air was wholly focused on supporting “ground troops,” especially while engaged in combat–thereby demonstrating the Marines' warrior ethic and devotion to one of its proudest traditions. Unsurprisingly, the ad also loudly touted Boeing's V-22 and Lockheed's F-35B as the contemporary embodiment of the Marine air tradition.<
David Evans is a retired Marine. He retired as a Lieutenant Colonel, after which he worked as a widely respected journalist for the Chicago Tribune. When I sent him my piece on the Marines' self praise, paid for by Lockheed and Boeing, he immediately responded that the proclamation of a focus only on air support for troops in combat rang hollow. I asked him to write up his concerns; the following 1,500 word analysis was the result. It makes important and informative reading. It exposes the sophistry of the ad's assertions, and it is an excellent explanation of how technology proclaimed to be a leap ahead can in reality be a step backwards–at great additional cost. The discussion of the V-22 and F-35 compared to cheaper, more effective systems–available earlier–is very instructive.
For sheer sophistry, deception and delusion, it is hard to top the status report “100 Years of Marine Corps Aviation” that appeared as an advertising supplement arriving in this former Marine's Washington Post newspaper on 2 May 2012 (located at http://issuu.com/wpcustomcontent/docs/usmc). My view is that Marine aviation is now broken, riven by exploding costs, starkly troubled development programs and, above all, the triumph of technical wants over tactical needs.
The Marine Corps could have had superior flying machines at dramatically less cost to acquire and maintain. There is an old aphorism about “pride goeth before the fall” that certainly applies. The country cannot afford these habits and the junior Marines at the “pointy end” deserve better for tactical support.
The eight-page supplement was dominated by breathless paeans to the Marines' two dominant aircraft modernization programs, the V-22 tilt-rotor, a troop hauler which takes off and lands like a helicopter but flies like a turboprop airliner, and the F-35B, a jet that will similarly be capable of short take-offs and vertical landings but fly to the battlefield at supersonic speed.
Neither machine will deliver on its heady promises.
Contributed by Karen Roche and JT Long of The Gold Report. A “paralyzed” Federal Reserve Bank, in its “final days,” held hostage by Wall Street “robots” trading in markets that are “artificially medicated” are just a few of the bleak observations shared by David Stockman, former Republican U.S. Congressman and director of the Office of Management and Budget. He is also a founding partner of Heartland Industrial Partners and the author of The Triumph of Politics: Why Reagan's Revolution Failed and the soon-to-be released The Great Deformation: How Crony Capitalism Corrupts Free Markets and Democracy.The Gold Report caught up with Stockman for this exclusive interview at the recent Recovery Reality Check conference (5/4/12).
The Gold Report: David, you have talked and written about the effect of government-funded, debt-fueled spending on the stock market. What will be the real impact of quantitative easing?
David Stockman: We are in the last innings of a very bad ball game. We are coping with the crash of a 30-year–long debt super-cycle and the aftermath of an unsustainable bubble.
Quantitative easing is making it worse by facilitating more public-sector borrowing and preventing debt liquidation in the private sector—both erroneous steps in my view. The federal government is not getting its financial house in order. We are on the edge of a crisis in the bond markets. It has already happened in Europe and will be coming to our neighborhood soon.
TGR: What should the role of the Federal Reserve be?
DS: To get out of the way and not act like it is the central monetary planner of a $15 trillion economy. It cannot and should not be done.
The Fed is destroying the capital market by pegging and manipulating the price of money and debt capital. Interest rates signal nothing anymore because they are zero. The yield curve signals nothing anymore because it is totally manipulated by the Fed. The very idea of “Operation Twist” is an abomination.
Capital markets are at the heart of capitalism and they are not working. Savers are being crushed when we desperately need savings. The federal government is borrowing when it is broke. Wall Street is arbitraging the Fed's monetary policy by borrowing overnight money at 10 basis points and investing it in 10-year treasuries at a yield of 200 basis points, capturing the profit and laughing all the way to the bank. The Fed has become a captive of the traders and robots on Wall Street.
TGR: If we are in the final innings of a debt super-cycle, what is the catalyst that will end the game?
DS: I think the likely catalyst is a breakdown of the U.S. government bond market. It is the heart of the fixed income market and, therefore, the world's financial market.
Because of Fed management and interest-rate pegging, the market is artificially medicated. All of the rates and spreads are unreal. The yield curve is not market driven. Supply and demand for savings and investment, future inflation risk discounts by investors—none of these free market forces matter. The price of money is dictated by the Fed, and Wall Street merely attempts to front-run its next move.
As long as the hedge fund traders and fast-money boys believe the Fed can keep everything pegged, we may limp along. The minute they lose confidence, they will unwind their trades.
On the margin, nobody owns the Treasury bond; you rent it. Trillions of treasury paper is funded on repo: You buy $100 million (M) in Treasuries and immediately put them up as collateral for overnight borrowings of $98M. Traders can capture the spread as long as the price of the bond is stable or rising, as it has been for the last year or two. If the bond drops 2%, the spread has been wiped out.
If that happens, the massive repo structures—that is, debt owned by still more debt—will start to unwind and create a panic in the Treasury market. People will realize the emperor is naked.
Living in America is becoming very difficult for anyone with a moral conscience, a sense of justice, or a lick of intelligence. Consider:
We have had a second fake underwear bomb plot, a much more fantastic one than the first hoax. The second underwear bomber was a CIA operative or informant allegedly recruited by al-Qaeda, an organization that US authorities have recently claimed to be defeated, in disarray, and no longer significant.
This defeated and insignificant organization, which lacks any science and technology labs, has invented an “invisible bomb” that is not detected by the porno-scanners. A “senior law enforcement source” told the New York Times that “the scary part” is that “if they buil[t] one, they probably built more.”
For the better part of the last decade, a small cabal of self-anointed counterterrorism experts has been working its way through the U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement communities, trying to convince whoever it could that America’s real terrorist enemy wasn’t al-Qaida — but the Islamic faith itself. In his course, Dooley brought in these anti-Muslim demagogues as guest lecturers. And he took their argument to its final, ugly conclusion.
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I don't know if this is true, but if so, it's insane. Most Islamic scholars agree that most of the so called “jihads” issued by fanatical Islamists aren't legitimate jihads. according to the Quran. But if any group ever invaded the Holy Land—-Mecca or Medina—-that would be a justification for legitimate jihad according to virtually anyone's interpretation of the Quran. In that case it would be the duty of every Muslim in the world to wage war on the invader. If the invader as the U.S., that would mean that every Muslim in the U.S. would then be at war with the U.S.
Imagine if the Saudi regime was toppled and a Saudi version of the Taliban took over. It could well happen. Then the U.S. and the entire world would be in a precarious situation. It would be foolhardy to attack or invade Saudi Arabia, because—-unless Mecca and Medina were not attacked or invaded, I suppose—-it would force all Muslims, around the world, to wage war against America. The idea of going to war with Islam is one of the stupidest ideas ever invented. Muslims live in virtually every country of the world. Every country in the world would erupt in war within its own borders. The consequences would be disastrous. This document, if it's authentic, is the best possible gift to Islamist propagandists, because it justifies their greatest fears and suspicions. If it's true, it's mind boggling that anyone in the military could be that dumb.
No one could ever win a war with the one billion Muslims that are scattered out across the world. It's impossible.
Phi Beta Iota: There is a huge difference between contemplating a war on Islam, and forbidding Islam to undermine one's own homeland. Spain came to the same conclusion about both Islam and Jews, hence the Expulsion Edicts. Both of these religions have deeply subversive aspects and seem to inevitably threaten the integrity of the society, the government, and the private sector of any host nation that permits them to carry on without oversight or restraint. This is one reason we have been stressing religious counterintelligence for over a decade. Catholics, Mormons, Pentecostals, they all have their own agendas, their own ways of conducting espionage and formenting treason, but they are not quite as pernicious. It's time we got a grip on religion as a threat to society and the state.
