The Pentagon’s Willful Blindness

The Pentagon’s Willful Blindness

By Andrew Bostom

The Pentagon’s bowdlerized “analysis” of the jihad-inspired mass murder committed by a pious Muslim officer at Fort Hood is a disgrace. The willful blindness toward the essence of jihad will harm our troops.

I recently attended a briefing (an early iteration of the discussion contents are available here, entitled “To Our Great Detriment“) which elucidated in irrefragable detail the Pentagon’s willful capitulation to the dictates of Islamically-correct interpretations of jihad by various Muslim Brotherhood “consultants” to the Department of Defense (DOD). While the DOD adopts the absurdly apologetic interpretation of jihad at its most “aggressive” as a bloodless missionary “striving” to promote the Religion of Peace — negating the living legacy of jihad as a genocidal war doctrine, in practice as well as in theory — the Pentagon’s Muslim Brotherhood advisers, true to the authentic doctrines of jihad as an endless war of propaganda and deceit, continue to espouse jihad war to their Muslim constituencies.

The result of this stunningly corrosive process has been the willful subversion of U.S. DOD policy to the ultimate goals of both cultural and violent jihad: Islamization. More immediately, the warped, criminally negligent “rules of engagement” this DOD subversion has engendered are imposed upon our troops actually battling armed jihadism. This puts their lives in danger unnecessarily and for precisely the wrong “cause” — alternative forms of Islamization, such as supporting Sharia-compliant regimes irrevocably hostile to Western ideals and goals in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The dangerous absurdity of DOD subversion — and its cruel, destructive impact on our troops — is self-evident in this report and accompanying commentary by Diana West:

This wasn’t supposed to happen there. According to a ‘counterinsurgency’ plan (COIN), anti-US, anti-infidel violence just wasn’t supposed to erupt in Garmsir, Afghanistan, of all places. But it did. And at least eight Afghans died in this Helmand Province district in rioting this week inspired by rumors that U.S. troops had roughed up a Koran.  Somewhere between ‘one thousand’ (UPI) and ‘several thousand’ (The New York Times) Afghans converged on the central bazaar in response to these rumors. ‘The Taliban were provoking the people,’ an Afghan police official told the Times. ‘The Taliban were telling the people, ‘This is jihad; you should sacrifice yourselves.’

Jihad? What’s jihad? Among see-no-Islam Western policymakers, Islamic war doctrine is a cipher, a taboo, so policy is made in ignorance. But thousands of uneducated Afghans knew exactly what the Taliban meant. And what’s more, they acted on it.  It was ‘like watching the movie Blackhawk Down,’ a Marine master sergeant told UPI, except ‘I was in it. My gunner kept yelling he had definite targets, people shooting at us but he couldn’t fire back because there were unarmed people around them.’

The contemporary willful ignorance — and subversion — of our DOD contrasts starkly with the studious and intellectually honest approach to jihad taken by C. Snouck Hurgronje. A professor and Dutch colonial official, Snouck Hurgronje was also a pioneering and prolific Western scholar of Islam.

He visited Arabia (1884-85), including a stop at Mecca, while serving as a lecturer at the University of Leiden (1880-89). Hurgronje’s two-volume classic work Mekka (1888-89) describes the history of the city and expounds upon Islam’s origins and the traditions and rituals of the earliest Islamic communities. Translated into English as Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th Century (1931), the second volume includes many details of daily life in an Islamic culture and also discusses the Indonesian Muslim colony at Mecca.

From 1890 to 1906, Snouck Hurgronje was professor of Arabic at Batavia, Java. He also served as an adviser to the Dutch Colonial Government for Arabian Affairs, and in 1891 he was sent for a year to Sumatra to study the Acheh uprising — the subject of his two-volume De Atjèhers (1893-94; published in English translation in 1906 as The Achehnese), his ethnographic account of the people of northern Sumatra and a standard reference work.

Snouck Hurgronje remained a colonial adviser until 1933, but he returned in 1906 to the Netherlands, where he was professor of Arabic and Islamic institutions at the University of Leiden until his death in 1936. An explorer, scholar, politician, and jurist, Hurgronje wrote extensively on a range of Islamic topics and also served as a visiting professor in Egypt (1911) and the United States (1914).

Although deeply respectful of Islamic religious life, as an authoritative scholar of Islamic doctrine and history and a Dutch colonial official, Hurgronje vigorously opposed Islamic jihadism. He stated plainly that all teaching with regard to the orthodox, mainstream Islamic institution of jihad war and the establishment of a caliphate should be prohibited in Muslim schools. But perhaps most importantly, Hurgronje’s “prescription” was based on a meticulously researched, clear-eyed, and unfettered understanding of Islamic doctrine, history, and culture.

The travesty of today’s subverted DOD policies toward jihad — embraced and embodied by General Stanley McChrystal — are highlighted by the comparing of McChrystal’s and Hurgronje’s words.

Sounding eerily like an erstwhile “Commander of the Faithful,” McChrystal’s uninformed, jihad-abetting dawah maintains that “flagrant contravention of the principles of the Koran” includes, for example, “The Taliban tell them [Afghan Muslims] the Koran says they have to fight the Crusaders and they [Afghan Muslims] believe them.”

Contrast McChrystal’s bizarre, distressingly apologetic notions with Hurgronje’s insights gleaned from decades of studying Islam, including years of fieldwork in Indonesia researching and writing his seminal, The Acehnese, an analysis of a jihad-inspired Muslim “insurgency.” Hurgronje made these general observations regarding the doctrine of jihad war from his Mohammedanism (New York, 1916, p. 59):

…yet another duty was most emphatically impressed on the Faithful; jihad, i.e., readiness to sacrifice life and possessions for the defense of Islam, understood, since the conquest of Mecca in 630, as the extension by force of arms of the authority of the Muslim state, first over the whole of Arabia, and soon after Muhammad’s death over the whole world, so far as Allah granted His hosts for the victory.

In The Acehnese, Hurgronje concluded,

…most Muslims are absolutely ignorant of the details of the doctrine of jihad.  But so long as not one single Muslim teacher of consideration dreams of regarding these laws of the middle ages as abrogated, while a great proportion of the people exhibit the strongest inclination to restore the conditions which prevailed some centuries ago, so long does it remain impossible, however anxious we may be to do so, to omit the jihad from our calculations when forming a judgment on the relation of Islam to other religions.

…rules of Mohammedan [Islamic] law which control the relations of the ‘faithful’ to the ‘unbelievers’ can only be characterized as humane…if we start on the supposition… that kafirs [non-Muslims infidels] are the inferiors of Muslims in this world. That law declares it to be permissible in some cases, in others commendable and even obligatory, to slay infidels, or to kidnap or enslave them. Many ways are left open to the Muslim of cheating individual kafirs or an infidel government without sinning against God. Under the Mohammedan law religious liberty is intolerable as involving the coexistence of truth with falsehood, and of the service of the true God with paganism.

Our military leadership — epitomized by gullible, triumphantly ignorant men such as McChrystal — must abandon its self-destructive, Muslim Brotherhood-nurtured “understanding” of Islam and rediscover the wisdom and experiences of honest Western scholars such as C. Snouck Hurgronje.

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You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet

You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet

By Christopher Chantrill

Isn’t it great to have a Republican senator from Massachusetts? It’s also good to have the First Amendment reaffirmed by the United States Supreme Court — even if our liberal friends are shocked and appalled at the notion of corporations sticking up for themselves.

As delicious as last week’s good news was for conservatives, You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet. We do not mean that every week will bring new conservative successes. Not at all. It is just that every month will bring fresh anguish for President Obama and his supporters.

There’s the sinking spell in the equity markets last week. It might be from worrying about the president’s anti-banker populism. Or more likely, it is telling us that we are not out of the woods yet on the economy. I suspect disappointing news on fourth-quarter GDP on January 29.

Indeed, it’s pretty clear after 2009, the year the locusts ate, that President Obama and his liberal supporters are facing an annus horribilis. And they know it. Here’s Jon Jeter of The Root telling his readers to be afraid, very afraid.  He sees “a perfect, gathering storm of economics, politics and tribalism[.]“

Trilbalism? I’m afraid so. Racism is rearing its ugly head again. Jeter quotes Andrea Mitchell, who sees anger out there — the worst since the days of George Wallace. And guess who will be taking the part of George Wallace this time around: Sarah Palin.

Palin is the latest in a long line of demagogues -from post-Reconstruction governors in the Deep South to Father Coughlin in the ’30s, from Reagan to Lou Dobbs-who’ve emerged to redeem, or reclaim, the land from Northern carpetbaggers and uppity Negroes.

It still takes me by surprise when the liberals reaches for the racist redneck line. Yet it makes complete sense. If you are writing the narrative of a progressive vanguard leading the world into a highly evolved future, then your story needs an antagonist. The redneck, racist truck-driver with a rifle in the back window fits the part to a T.

Presumably President Obama is trying to preempt the right-wing racists by getting the first dagger into the backs of the bankers. After all, it was the bankers who sent the Okies to California.

Here’s my prediction.  The president’s banker gambit will fall as flat as his stimulus plan, his cap-and-trade bill, and his ObamaCare fiasco. But that will be the least of his problems.  There will be continuing high unemployment right through 2010, which I predicted a couple of weeks ago. There’s the housing market that still hasn’t turned. There’s the huge monetary stimulus that must be unwound. There’s the budget crisis in the states. There is the tax increase coming in 2011 when the Bush tax cuts expire. Oh, and did I mention the budget deficit and runaway federal spending, or everyone’s favorite, Fannie and Freddie?

It is becoming more and more clear that neither Obama nor Axelrod nor Emanuel really understands ordinary, suburban, private-sector, Joe the Plumber America. Urban America they know. But not suburban Massachusetts.

Scott Brown’s victory last week, writes Bill Kristol, demonstrated the potential of an “enlightened, good-natured, constructive populism.” Notice also how the new Brownian motion slices through the “enlightened progressives vs. benighted reactionaries” narrative of liberal Jon Jeter.

Jeter’s liberal way is the pre-modern way, a hierarchical moral order, with the educated elite guiding the unevolved peasants. The conservative way is the Modern Moral Order, as Charles Taylor describes it in A Secular Age:

The basic normative principle is, indeed, that the members of society serve each other’s needs, help each other, in short, behave like the rational and sociable creatures that they are … In other words, the basic point of the new normative order [is] the mutual respect and mutual service of the individuals who make up society.

This all comes straight from John Locke. So a president who wants health care organized in a single administrative bureaucratic program is missing the basic Lockean point. He is proposing a new version of the old medieval hierarchical structure, where kings ruled by divine right. Only now, liberals want to rule by educated right.

The president has a problem, as Mark Steyn points out: “[Obama ran for president] as something he’s not, and never has been: a post-partisan, centrist, transformative healer[.]“

After a year of the president reverting to type as a partisan, left-liberal wheeler-dealer, the American people have declared in three elections so far that they didn’t vote for that. They wanted someone who would stop the bickering and grow the economy.

So what does Obama do now? The way he’s going, there may not be a Democratic Party by the end of his term in 2013.

As I said, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Christopher Chantrill is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. See his roadtothemiddleclass.com and usgovernmentspending.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Blaming Whitey

Blaming Whitey

By Robin of Berkeley

Why white is beautiful too.

In the early ’90s, my most P.C. friend boasted about attending an anti-racism workshop. Although the event was called “Healing Racism,” I silently dubbed it “Blaming Whitey.”

As she described it, whites and blacks faced each other on opposite sides of the room. Whites guiltily told tales of being racially insensitive, and blacks berated them. Then blacks recounted stories of racism while whites bowed their heads in shame and apologized.

My friend pronounced the day as healing. I thought it sounded sadomasochistic.

I chalked it up to “only in Berkeley.” But over the years I’ve heard of more and more such happenings.

In states both blue and red, incoming college freshmen must attend social justice seminars during orientation. As though 18-year-olds don’t feel crappy enough about body fat and pimples, now they have to recoil at the color of their skin.

The targeted audiences for these blaming and shaming sessions are getting younger, which is predictable. Every cult from the Moonies to the Left recruits from the malleable young.

Even kindergartners are being groomed to be the littlest of community organizers. One of my twenty-something clients cried herself to sleep in second grade after her teacher graphically detailed the conditions of slave ships. While this lovely young person never harmed a flea, somehow she became responsible for genocide.

Blacks in this country have been subjected to true horror in the past. This terrible fact of life cannot be changed.

Punishment is not possible for the evildoers; they are long dead. But that doesn’t stop Obama and the Left from exploiting grudges and grievances for their own agenda.

Whipping up racial antagonism harms us all, but it especially harms the youth. Hopeful, eager black children can turn angry and demoralized from constant reminders of bigotry. White kids may start believing that their race is evil.

Fostering friction benefits the Left’s goal of redistribution. To achieve socialism, they need whites under their thumb. The Left’s modus operandi: Crush white people’s spirits. (The Left excels at this — they’ve been trampling on blacks’ self-confidence for decades.)

By convincing whites of guilt by association, the Left can induce them to act against their own best interests. Sheepish whites will give up first-class health care and sacrifice Granny for reasons of “justice.” Or they’ll embrace illegal aliens, even if this means a degraded standard of living.

Brainwashed Americans will even risk their own safety and excuse crime. (“It’s not my mugger’s fault.  He’s a victim of white privilege.”) They’ll offer up their own children to hostile public schools for the utopian vision of multiculturalism.

They’ll do anything, in fact, to get that scarlet letter “R” (Racist) off their backs. Most disturbingly, guilty whites will support a president who obviously despises them.

Think I’m exaggerating about Obama?  Just witness his contempt on any given day, whether he’s demeaning Middle America, or Sen. Scott Brown’s truck, or the Cambridge Police.

And behold Obama’s friends: Eric Holder, who is revolted by our nation of cowards, and Michelle Obama, whose enraged speeches, caught on tape, can make your skin crawl.

For possibly the first time in our history, we have leaders who can’t stand most of the people who elected them. And Obama and his crew are working overtime to get whites to detest themselves too.

On the one hand, I understand the hatred and desire for revenge.

Our country’s history is different from most others’. Germany exterminated millions of Jews — but few Jews now live there. The Khmer Rouge massacred much of its population — but those killed were other Cambodians.

In the U.S., blacks coexist with whites, a race that once enslaved them. And the media, schools, and the government take every opportunity to pick at this racial wound.

So I recognize where this antipathy comes from — the shame of slavery and segregation. However — and I’m sorry if this sounds harsh — Obama and friends need to get over it. They need to start living in the world circa 2010.

You see, I am not one of those shrinks who encourage clients to rage for years about their rotten parents. And I don’t believe that bad childhoods exonerate bad behavior. Simply put, people remain in bondage when they allow the past to become their identity today.

The social justice campaign against white America is itself unjust. No matter how great someone’s suffering, retaliating against the innocent is inexcusable.

White privilege seminars are a forum for propaganda, a way to bully and browbeat. They are the elitist version of the New Black Panthers and their billy clubs.

As a psychotherapist, I see the damage done to young people: There’s Shannon, a teen, who had a full-blown panic attack when a teacher fulminated against “white supremacy.”

And then there’s Lara, a Midwestern girl who has had her sense of self-worth decimated since arriving in Berkeley for college. Once confident and secure, Lara now takes antidepressants.

Last week, Lara said to me the following: “When I first came here, I had no idea of all the terrible things white people have done. I’ve come to hate white people. I hate myself. Sometimes I fantasize about killing myself so there would be one fewer white person.”

This is what it’s come to.

I said the following back to Lara:

“Your life matters. You have a right to be here, no matter what anyone tells you. You are a precious gift to the world. Don’t let anyone ever convince you otherwise.”

And the same words apply to every one of us:

To blacks rendered permanent victims;

And whites tarred as racists;

To the old being cast out;

And men viewed as obsolete;

To women being sexually degraded;

And those of faith being jeered at:

“Your lives matter. You have a right to be here. You are a precious gift to the world. Don’t let anyone ever convince you otherwise.”

A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a psychotherapist and recovering liberal in Berkeley. To protect client confidentiality, names and identifying information have been altered.

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51 year old brutally beat in racially motivated attack.

51 year old brutally beat in racially motivated attack.

A wolfpack of young black thugs attacked a 51 year old white male who was jogging. Their only motivation appears to be a desire to commit violence against a white person.

This the type of story that would receive major media attention if the races were reversed. Since it is one of the tens of thousands of violent interracial crimes committed against white people every year, it is a non-story to the “mainstream media.”

PITTSBURG — A 51-year-old Pittsburg man was punched and hit with a glass bottle Saturday morning while jogging on the Delta DeAnza Trail.

East Bay Regional Parks Lt. Dave Dubowy said the victim was jogging at about 11:20 a.m. when he neared a group of three men playing with a dog near the trail. As he passed the men one man punched the victim in the head, sending him to his knees. As the victim tried to get up, another man hit him in the back of the head with a glass bottle, Dubowy said. The victim suffered a 2-inch cut to his head but was able to get away from the area and call police. He never lost consciousness and refused medical treatment. The suspects did not steal anything from him.

Police were unable to find the suspects. They are described as three black men in their early 20s. One suspect was wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt with white lettering and jeans, had beaded hair and a cleanshaven face. Another suspect was wearing a dark gray sweatshirt and matching sweatpants and had short hair. The third suspect was wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt, black pants and had short hair.

Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call East Bay Regional Parks police at 510-881-1833.

No one wants to risk their life just to watch the World Cup.

Captain Obvious: No one wants to risk their life just to watch the World Cup.

The much glorified 2010 South African World Cup has turned into a total disaster as thugs prey on tourists near the venue. Promises by the government to clean up crime have been a total failure and FIFA has now cut their fan predictions in half.

FIFA originally predicted that 1 million foreign fans would travel to South Africa for the world cup. Today they cut their estimate down to 450,000.

US 82nd Airborne shocked by ingratitude of Haitians. Forced to use free food as an incentive for the Haitians to behave.

US 82nd Airborne shocked by ingratitude of Haitians. Forced to use free food as an incentive for the Haitians to behave.

Nothing like this even remotely happened in the area of Southeast Asia hit by the tsunami, and that was a much bigger disaster which hit mostly third world areas. In Haiti heavily armed troops with tanks are now being used to distribute food and water due to the violence that erupts whenever free stuff is given out.

The problem of Haitians beating each other has gotten so bad that the 82nd Army has been forced to withhold food as punishment for “bad behavior” in one camp.

Officers of the 82nd airborne say they are shocked by the ingratitude of the Haitians. Some have smashed UN issued high energy biscuits and used their free bottles of water to pelt US soldiers. All while demanding better handouts. (By the way, in Haiti, eating dirt is common.)

Read More.

More Underhanded Democrat Tactics and the US Dollar Losing its Clout

January 29, 2010

More Underhanded Democrat Tactics

by Jeff Davis

What do Democrats do when the economy continues to fail under their watch? Simple. They lie. We’ve all heard liberal news pundits endlessly repeating the claim that “we’re in a recovery” even though Sam’s Club just laid off 11,200 Americans, 7.2 million Americans lost their jobs in 2009, retail sales dropped 6.2 percent for 2009 and we just had the worst Christmas sales in over 50 years.

In this case, some Democrats seem to have been “seeding” newspapers around the country with phony letters to the editor. However, they don’t appear to have sufficient imagination to use a different name for each different town, where the letter appears.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports: “Ellie Light sure gets around. In recent weeks, Light has published virtually identical Letters to the Editor in support of President Barack Obama in more than a dozen newspapers.Every letter claimed a different residence for Light that happened to be in the newspaper’s circulation area. ‘It’s time for Americans to realize that governing is hard work, and that a president can’t just wave a magic wand and fix everything,’ said a letter from alleged Philadelphian Ellie Light, that was published in the Jan. 19 edition of The Philadelphia Daily News. A letter from Light in the Jan. 20 edition of the San Francisco Examiner concluded with an identical sentence, but with an address for Light all the way across the country in Daly City, California. President Barack Obama has both detractors and fans. A curious number of his fans are named Ellie Light.Variations of Light’s letter ran in Ohio’s Mansfield News Journal on Jan. 13, with Light claiming an address in Mansfield; in New Mexico’s Ruidoso News on Jan. 12, claiming an address in Three Rivers; in South Carolina’s The Sun News on Jan. 18, claiming an address in Myrtle Beach; and in the Daily News Leader of Staunton, Virginia on Jan. 15, claiming an address in Waynesboro. Her publications list includes other papers in Ohio, West Virginia, Maine, Michigan, Iowa, Pennsylvania and California, all claiming separate addresses. Light – who e-mailed an identical missive to this reporter on Jan. 16 without listing a hometown – would not answer e-mailed questions about the address discrepancies in newspapers that ran her letter, or her identity, although she did say she wasn’t a former co-worker of this reporter’s who had a similar name.”

January 28, 2010

US Dollar Losing its Clout

Filed under:

Other currencies are beginning to replace dollar.

by Ian Mosley

The London Financial Times reports: “Russia’s central bank announced on Wednesday that it had started buying Canadian dollars and securities in a bid to diversify its foreign exchange reserves. Analysts said the move could be a sign of increased diversification of emerging market central bank assets away from the dollar and into investments denominated in other commodity-linked currencies, such as the Australian dollar. Adam Cole at RBC Capital Markets said if taken in isolation, Russia’s announcement that it was buying Canadian dollars was not significant, but if it was part of a broader trend, then it was an important step…Although not officially confirmed, traders said that other emerging market central banks, including some in Asia which hold large foreign exchange reserves, have also been active in the foreign exchange market in recent weeks buying both Canadian dollars and Australian dollars.”

Up until very recently, the value of everything in the world was measured in U.S. dollars. The greenback was seen as the ultimate medium of exchange because it was considered to be the most stable of all currencies. Who could foresee the mighty United States of America going bankrupt or suffering runaway inflation?

Iran and other major oil-producing nations are spearheading a drive to change the basic currency of the world’s petroleum markets to euros. For them it’s just a common sense business decision since they don’t want the price per barrel constantly devalued by inflation. There were rumors that Saddam Hussein wanted to switch the price per barrel of oil to euros and that this was a contributing reason for going to war with Iraq. (We all know that “Weapons of Mass Destruction” was just a lame excuse for the war.)

One article about OPEC notes: “On November 19, 2007, global oil prices reacted strongly as OPEC members spoke openly about potentially converting their cash reserves to the euro and away from the US dollar… After the introduction of the euro, pre-invasion Iraq decided it wanted to be paid for its oil in euros instead of US dollars causing OPEC to consider changing its oil exchange currency to euros, although after Iraq’s invasion, the interim government reversed this policy, and the subsequent Iraq governments stuck to the US dollar.[26] Member states Iran[27] and Venezuela[28] have undergone similar shifts from the dollar to the Euro.” Funny how the Bush regime was on the verge of declaring war on every nation that wanted to switch the price of oil to euros.

January 27, 2010

200,000 Haitian Illegals to Get “Protected Status”

by Jeff Davis

The Miami Herald reports: “The Obama administration is preparing to handle applications from as many as 200,000 undocumented Haitian immigrants who want to live and work legally in the United States under a new immigration program unveiled last week in the aftermath of Haiti’s destructive earthquake. The federal government will begin accepting Temporary Protected Status (TPS) applications on Thursday, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas, whose agency will process the paperwork.”

Shortly after the earthquake it was announced that we would not be deporting 200,000 Haitians who were here illegally in order not to worsen the situation in Haiti. It’s starting to look like Obama may want to use the earthquake as an excuse to Amnesty these illegals without any review of whether the US is better off with or without them. Why were we allowing 200,000 Haitian illegals to stay in the US up until now? Why do we tolerate 20 to 30 million illegal aliens, prminarily from the Third World, who create a crippling strain on public school and emergency rooms?

The article goes on: “The TPS designation is reserved for selected undocumented migrants (the correct term is ‘illegal alien’) from countries disrupted by natural disasters, armed conflicts or other emergencies. Those Haitians approved will be allowed to stay in the United States for 18 months and be issued work permits to find jobs. To be approved, Haitian immigrants must submit proof of Haitian citizenship and must show they were in the United States before Jan. 12 — the day the devastating earthquake struck Haiti.”

The earthquake itself only lasted less than a minute. If Haiti had copied building codes from California, they could have survived a 7.0 earthquake with few if any casualties. Every White nation on the planet appears to have sent emergency aid, but apparently this is not enough. Haiti expects us to absorb some of their over-population.

The Real Story From Haiti

The Real Story From Haiti

[From an American sergeant.]

To All,

I just returned from Haiti with XXXXX. We flew in at 3 AM Sunday to the scene of such incredible destruction on one side, and enormous ineptitude and criminal neglect on the other.

Port au Prince is in ruins. The rest of the country is fairly intact. Our team was a rescue team and we carried special equipment that locates people buried under the rubble. There are easily 200,000 dead, the city smells like a charnel house. The bloody UN was there for 5 years doing apparently nothing but wasting US taxpayers’ money. The ones I ran into were either incompetents or outright anti-American. Most are French or French speakers, worthless every damn one of them.

While 1800 rescuers were ready, willing, and able to leave the airport and go do our jobs, the UN and USAID ( another organization full of little OBamites and communists that openly speak against Americans.) These two organizations exemplared their parochialism by:

USAID, when in control of all inbound flights, had food and water flights stacked up all the way to Miami, yet allowed Geraldo Rivera, Anderson Cooper and a host of other left wing news puppies to land.

Pulled all the security off the rescue teams so that Bill Clinton and his wife could have the grand tour, whilst we sat unable to get to people trapped in the rubble.

Stacked enough food and water for the relief over at the side of the airfield then put a guard on it while we dehydrated and wouldn’t release a drop of it to the rescuers.

No shower facilities to decontaminate after digging or moving corpses all day, except for the FEMA teams who brought their own shower and decon equipment, as well as air conditioned tents.

No latrine facilities, less digging a hole if you set up a shitter everyone was trying to use it. I watched a 25 year old Obamite with the USAID shrieking hysterically, berate a full bird colonel in the air force, because he countermanded her orders, whilst trying to unscrew the air pattern. ” You don’t know what your president wants! The military isn’t in charge here, we are!”

If any of you are thinking of giving money to the Haitian relief, or to the UN, don’t waste your money. It will only go to further the goals of the French and the liberal left. If we are a fair and even society, why is it that only white couples are adopting Haitian orphans? Where the hell is that vocal minority that is always screaming about the injustice of American society? Bad place, bad situation, but a perfect look at the new world order in action. New Orleans magnified a thousand times.

Haiti doesn’t need democracy, what Haiti needs is Papa Doc. That’s not just my opinion , that is what virtually every Haitian we talked with said. The French who run the UN treat us the same as when we were a colony, at least Papa Doc ran the country.

Oh, and as a last slap in the face the last four of us had to take US Airways home from Phoenix. They slapped me with a 590 dollar baggage charge for the four of us. The girl at the counter was almost in tears because she couldn’t give us a discount or she would lose her job. Pass that on to the flying public.

The Coolest Profession on Earth – Next Generation Agriculture

The Coolest Profession on Earth – Next Generation Agriculture

Next Generation Agriculture

The coolest profession on earth

When people think of farming, they typically conjure up images of a tractor cresting a hill billowing large plumes of exhaust into the air. However, recent news of a system for channeling tractor exhaust into the dirt, so carbon fumes are plowed into the soil eliminating the need for fertilizer, has been gaining significant attention. The win-win arrangement of turning a known pollutant into a soil enriching additive, combined with the prospects for significantly lower operating costs from the elimination of fertilizer has many farmers buzzing. The technique, developed by Canadian, Gary Lewis of Bio Agtive, is currently in trials at 100 farms around the world.

Stories such as this are happening with ever greater frequency as the slow process of farming adapts to the fast world of communications, and ideas that used to take years to ferment, now begin to snowball within days, even hours. The stage is being set for an unprecedented new generation of farming driven by ever greater levels of precision, relevancy, and control, the likes of which will transition the once primitive profession, typified by long grueling hours in the sun, into a hotbed for techno-geek agrarians packing handhelds and data readers trained to monitor far more than markets, yields, costs, and moisture content.

As with all industries, there are many micro-forces driving the changes ahead. But viewing them through the lens of these three progressing trend lines helps us grasp the interwoven nature of these sometimes competing drivers.

Trend Line #1 – Precision

We have witnessed the transition from corn sold by the bushel, to corn sold by the kernel. Bags are now being shipped in units of 80,000 kernels with approximately 24,000 to 30,000 kernels planted per acre depending upon soil and moisture variables.

A typical ear of corn holds 800 kernels. Since one kernel of seed will grow into a stalk with more than one ear on it, the yield per kernel can be as high as 1 to 3,200 or more.

Accurate GPS systems enable farmers to plant far more consistent crops with steering-assist features on tractors to navigated near-perfect patterns in the fields, and planters automatically shutting off seeding tubes if any overlap occurs.

Spraying systems for herbicides and pesticides also employ GPS trackers that cause the shut-down of individual spray nozzles to maintain optimum consistency.

Emerging tech companies such as the Denver-based Moedus and their LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) scanners with accuracy to 1 mm, have the potential to not only radically improve GPS accuracy, but also add 3D imaging characteristics to the data.

With this level of precision already existing, it becomes inconceivable to most that we may be striving for even greater precision. However, borrowing a term from my Oxymoron Dictionary, not only will we be pushy for greater accuracy, the stage is being set for “explosive precision.”

Smart Dust:  The idea of smart dust was introduced by Kristofer S. J. Pister at the University of California in 2001. Smartdust has been conceptualized as an RF powered network of tiny wireless micro-electromechanical systems including sensors, robots, or other devices, installed with wireless communications, that can detect anything from light, to temperature, to vibrations, to chemical composition, etc.

With the same equipment used to sow seeds, smart dust will be “planted” into the soil to begin the monitoring process. Farms that are imbedded with smart dust will essentially be glowing with real-time information.

Beyond the notion of simply monitoring a piece of land, smart dust will become the interface to the soil. Scientists are now studying the use of magnetism at the nanoscale to monitor and control biological activity, at the cellular and even the single-molecule level. By emitting everything from magnetic fields, to sound waves, to signal frequencies, farmers will begin to experiment with micro-controls to alter plant characteristics, ward off pests, and enhance crop production.

Higher protein levels needed? Just dial it in.

Problem with borers or weevils? Just adjust the frequency to chase them off.

First generation smart dust will be quite expensive and each particle will be carefully tracked. But a few innovation cycles later, the price will plummet, and over time their use will become ubiquitous.

Trend Line #2 – Relevancy

Can better food create better people? Will a better food supply lead to healthier, stronger, better thinking people?

These are exactly the type of questions driving the relevancy issue. How can we make the food we eat sync up with our own unique metabolism? In short, how do we make food more relevant?

Consider a model that already exists – in the human-food interface. Metabolism is a term used to describe the various chemical reactions that take place in every cell of the body. Every metabolism is different. With our rapidly improving ability to read and monitor a person’s metabolic reaction to the food eaten will cause the agriculture industry to evolve with great precision around the tiny niche demands of consumers.

Smart Foods: Over time the food industry will create feedback loops and demand signals similar to human metabolism. Science will create real-time reactive sensors in our bodies that can read everything from the fluctuation of brainwaves, to micro changes in heartbeats, to gastro-digestive processes, to variations of skin perspiration rates. This constant monitoring of hundreds if not thousands of bodily nuances will translate into healthier food choices and, more importantly, choices tailored specifically to an individual’s needs. Sensors will be designed to interface with a hyper-segmented supply chain to meet the needs of a hyper-individualized consumer.

To put this into perspective, a typical home in 2030 will have a personal monitoring system that generates a grocery list based on the anticipated needs and stated desires of each person living there. Food orders will be placed either automatically or with as much control as the person desires. The order will go to the local food supplier, who will be in constant communication with regional suppliers, and they will be in constant communication with the food producers.

The entire demand-driven supply chain will be wired to the needs of the end user.

Much like the seemingly endless iterations of coffee at Starbucks, food from restaurants and fast food outlets will come in over a million variations. Customers will be able to order a 13.2 percent fat cheeseburger with 2.7 grams of potassium and 3.6 grams of calcium, coupled with a hint of almond and banana flavoring, on a sesame seed bun with exactly 47 sesame seeds on it.

This may seem like a ridiculous level of specificity. But in an automated society, the process will become seamless and invisible to the end user. It will be commonplace for a person to simply order their particular cheeseburger. Medium for me, please – with only one dill pickle, no lettuce and a tomato.

Farmers will become expert at producing “jacked-in” food stocks with countless variations, managed through computerized processes designed to manipulate the end results. Controls will be exercised along a broad spectrum from environmental conditions such as light, water, and oxygen levels in the air to genetic manipulation according to approved safety guidelines.

The regulatory system for insuring ultra-safe food supplies will be constantly monitored through automated data feeds at each step of the supply chain.

By 2030, a farm or ranch will adopt technologies that leave today’s operations far behind. Pushing the envelope even farther, the ultra high tech farms of the future will generate exotic half-plant, half-animal vegetation as well as crystalline plants, air plants, and generic non-species plants designed for post-harvest flavor and nutrient infusions.

Trend Line #3 – Control

Every business is more easily managed with better control of the variables. Farming is an industry with far too many variables to yield consistent results.

First, the weather variable. It is extremely rare to hear a farmer say, “I had the perfect amount of rain this year.” It’s either too hot, too dry, too wet, too cold, too windy, lightning, tornados, hail, or something else.

Second is the pest variable. Everything from birds, to insects, to army worms, to moths, to gophers, to other unimaginable little critters raising havoc on a crop.

Beyond that are soil variables (mineral composition), climate variables (length of growing season), and distance variables (shipping costs to processors, distributors, and consumers).

Farmers are constantly searching for better ways to gain control of the hundreds of variables that currently exist.

Silo Farming:  The precision we use to monitor consumer demand, coupled with the increasing need to control variables, will begin the transition to ultra-precise farming operations in highly controlled environments. Today’s surface farming is both imprecise and subject to extreme external influences, making it less than ideal to supply the consumer marketplace of the future.

Since traditional greenhouses are expensive to build and inefficient to operate, farming in the future will go vertical.

Several experimental vertical farming projects like Dr. Dickson Despommier’s at Columbia University are in various conceptual and experimental stages of implementation. However, most designs are far too expensive to compete economically with existing ag operations.

The concept of vertical farming that I envision, has been framed around the idea of creating both below-surface and above-surface silos serving as vertical greenhouses for the production of food. These cylindrical shaped silos with either layered or honeycomb lined walls filled with rich top soil have the ability to convert a small surface area on land into a much larger surface area on the walls of the silos.

The entire production area in these silos will be managed with a robotic arm that travels up and down a central shaft performing all necessary tasks of planting, weeding, watering, harvesting, and post-harvest cleanup.

The central vertical shaft will double as both an optical shaft through which sunlight will be channeled to provide natural illumination for optimal plant growth as well as the primary rail for the robotic arm. Sunshine will be collected via a solar concentrator from the above-ground portion of the silo.

Special hybrid crops will be created for these confined space environments. Short-stalk corn, personal sized fruits and vegetables, and fragile seed crops are but a few of the ag options coming for silo farms.

With water generated from an ongoing evaporation system that extracts moisture from the air, and external wind generators for power, these self-contained farming silos can be constructed in desolate climates, deserts, on rocky ground, and some of the most unforgiving places on the planet. This, coupled with the fact that it creates a year around farming operation on greatly expanded surface area, has the ability to increase the earth’s ability to produce food by a thousand fold.

As we monitor the trend lines of precision, relevance, and control, the future starts to come into focus. Next generation farming operations will create unprecedented new levels of opportunity, making future agribusiness professionals some of the most highly skilled people on earth, and the envy of the executive class.

Farming is about to become the coolest profession on earth.

About

Thomas Frey is the Executive Director and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute and currently Google’s top-rated futurist speaker.

Because of his work inspiring inventors and other revolutionary thinkers, the Boulder Daily Camera has referred to him as the “Father of Invention”.  The Denver Post and Seattle Post Intelligencer have referred to him as the “Dean of Futurists”.

Before launching the DaVinci Institute, Tom spent 15 years at IBM as an engineer and designer where he received over 270 awards, more than any other IBM engineer.  He is also a past member of the Triple Nine Society (High I.Q. society over 99.9 percentile).

Thomas can be reached at dr2tom@davinciinstitute.com or 303-666-4133

Future agribusiness professionals will be some of the most highly
skilled people on earth, and the envy of the executive class

When people think of farming, they typically conjure up images of a tractor cresting a hill billowing large plumes of exhaust into the air. However, recent news of a system for channeling tractor exhaust into the dirt, so carbon fumes are plowed into the soil eliminating the need for fertilizer, has been gaining significant attention. The win-win arrangement of turning a known pollutant into a soil enriching additive, combined with the prospects for significantly lower operating costs from the elimination of fertilizer has many farmers buzzing. The technique, developed by Canadian, Gary Lewis of Bio Agtive, is currently in trials at 100 farms around the world.

Stories such as this are happening with ever greater frequency as the slow process of farming adapts to the fast world of communications, and ideas that used to take years to ferment, now begin to snowball within days, even hours. The stage is being set for an unprecedented new generation of farming driven by ever greater levels of precision, relevancy, and control, the likes of which will transition the once primitive profession, typified by long grueling hours in the sun, into a hotbed for techno-geek agrarians packing handhelds and data readers trained to monitor far more than markets, yields, costs, and moisture content.

As with all industries, there are many micro-forces driving the changes ahead. But viewing them through the lens of these three progressing trend lines helps us grasp the interwoven nature of these sometimes competing drivers.

Trend Line #1 – Precision

We have witnessed the transition from corn sold by the bushel, to corn sold by the kernel. Bags are now being shipped in units of 80,000 kernels with approximately 24,000 to 30,000 kernels planted per acre depending upon soil and moisture variables.

A typical ear of corn holds 800 kernels. Since one kernel of seed will grow into a stalk with more than one ear on it, the yield per kernel can be as high as 1 to 3,200 or more.

Accurate GPS systems enable farmers to plant far more consistent crops with steering-assist features on tractors to navigated near-perfect patterns in the fields, and planters automatically shutting off seeding tubes if any overlap occurs.

Spraying systems for herbicides and pesticides also employ GPS trackers that cause the shut-down of individual spray nozzles to maintain optimum consistency.

Emerging tech companies such as the Denver-based Moedus and their LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) scanners with accuracy to 1 mm, have the potential to not only radically improve GPS accuracy, but also add 3D imaging characteristics to the data.

With this level of precision already existing, it becomes inconceivable to most that we may be striving for even greater precision. However, borrowing a term from my Oxymoron Dictionary, not only will we be pushy for greater accuracy, the stage is being set for “explosive precision.”

Smart Dust: The idea of smart dust was introduced by Kristofer S. J. Pister at the University of California in 2001. Smartdust has been conceptualized as an RF powered network of tiny wireless micro-electromechanical systems including sensors, robots, or other devices, installed with wireless communications, that can detect anything from light, to temperature, to vibrations, to chemical composition, etc.

With the same equipment used to sow seeds, smart dust will be “planted” into the soil to begin the monitoring process. Farms that are imbedded with smart dust will essentially be glowing with real-time information.

Existing moisture sensors

Beyond the notion of simply monitoring a piece of land, smart dust will become the interface to the soil. Scientists are now studying the use of magnetism at the nanoscale to monitor and control biological activity, at the cellular and even the single-molecule level. By emitting everything from magnetic fields, to sound waves, to signal frequencies, farmers will begin to experiment with micro-controls to alter plant characteristics, ward off pests, and enhance crop production.

Higher protein levels needed? Just dial it in.

Problem with borers or weevils? Just adjust the frequency to chase them off.

First generation smart dust will be quite expensive and each particle will be carefully tracked. But a few innovation cycles later, the price will plummet, and over time their use will become ubiquitous.

Trend Line #2 – Relevancy

Can better food create better people? Will a better food supply lead to healthier, stronger, better thinking people?

These are exactly the type of questions driving the relevancy issue. How can we make the food we eat sync up with our own unique metabolism? In short, how do we make food more relevant?

Consider a model that already exists – in the human-food interface. Metabolism is a term used to describe the various chemical reactions that take place in every cell of the body. Every metabolism is different. With our rapidly improving ability to read and monitor a person’s metabolic reaction to the food eaten will cause the agriculture industry to evolve with great precision around the tiny niche demands of consumers.

Bright future ahead for smart foods

Smart Foods: Over time the food industry will create feedback loops and demand signals similar to human metabolism. Science will create real-time reactive sensors in our bodies that can read everything from the fluctuation of brainwaves, to micro changes in heartbeats, to gastro-digestive processes, to variations of skin perspiration rates. This constant monitoring of hundreds if not thousands of bodily nuances will translate into healthier food choices and, more importantly, choices tailored specifically to an individual’s needs. Sensors will be designed to interface with a hyper-segmented supply chain to meet the needs of a hyper-individualized consumer.

To put this into perspective, a typical home in 2030 will have a personal monitoring system that generates a grocery list based on the anticipated needs and stated desires of each person living there. Food orders will be placed either automatically or with as much control as the person desires. The order will go to the local food supplier, who will be in constant communication with regional suppliers, and they will be in constant communication with the food producers.

The entire demand-driven supply chain will be wired to the needs of the end user.

Much like the seemingly endless iterations of coffee at Starbucks, food from restaurants and fast food outlets will come in over a million variations. Customers will be able to order a 13.2 percent fat cheeseburger with 2.7 grams of potassium and 3.6 grams of calcium, coupled with a hint of almond and banana flavoring, on a sesame seed bun with exactly 47 sesame seeds on it.

This may seem like a ridiculous level of specificity. But in an automated society, the process will become seamless and invisible to the end user. It will be commonplace for a person to simply order their particular cheeseburger. Medium for me, please – with only one dill pickle, no lettuce and a tomato.

Farmers will become expert at producing “jacked-in” food stocks with countless variations, managed through computerized processes designed to manipulate the end results. Controls will be exercised along a broad spectrum from environmental conditions such as light, water, and oxygen levels in the air to genetic manipulation according to approved safety guidelines.

The regulatory system for insuring ultra-safe food supplies will be constantly monitored through automated data feeds at each step of the supply chain.

By 2030, a farm or ranch will adopt technologies that leave today’s operations far behind. Pushing the envelope even farther, the ultra high tech farms of the future will generate exotic half-plant, half-animal vegetation as well as crystalline plants, air plants, and generic non-species plants designed for post-harvest flavor and nutrient infusions.

Trend Line #3 – Control

Every business is more easily managed with better control of the variables. Farming is an industry with far too many variables to yield consistent results.

First, the weather variable. It is extremely rare to hear a farmer say, “I had the perfect amount of rain this year.” It’s either too hot, too dry, too wet, too cold, too windy, lightning, tornados, hail, or something else.

Second is the pest variable. Everything from birds, to insects, to army worms, to moths, to gophers, to other unimaginable little critters raising havoc on a crop.

Beyond that are soil variables (mineral composition), climate variables (length of growing season), and distance variables (shipping costs to processors, distributors, and consumers).

Farmers are constantly searching for better ways to gain control of the hundreds of variables that currently exist.

Going underground

Silo Farming: The precision we use to monitor consumer demand, coupled with the increasing need to control variables, will begin the transition to ultra-precise farming operations in highly controlled environments. Today’s surface farming is both imprecise and subject to extreme external influences, making it less than ideal to supply the consumer marketplace of the future.

Since traditional greenhouses are expensive to build and inefficient to operate, farming in the future will go vertical.

Several experimental vertical farming projects like Dr. Dickson Despommier’s at Columbia University are in various conceptual and experimental stages of implementation. However, most designs are far too expensive to compete economically with existing ag operations.

The concept of vertical farming that I envision, has been framed around the idea of creating both below-surface and above-surface silos serving as vertical greenhouses for the production of food. These cylindrical shaped silos with either layered or honeycomb lined walls filled with rich top soil have the ability to convert a small surface area on land into a much larger surface area on the walls of the silos.

Urban agriculture concept

The entire production area in these silos will be managed with a robotic arm that travels up and down a central shaft performing all necessary tasks of planting, weeding, watering, harvesting, and post-harvest cleanup.

The central vertical shaft will double as both an optical shaft through which sunlight will be channeled to provide natural illumination for optimal plant growth as well as the primary rail for the robotic arm. Sunshine will be collected via a solar concentrator from the above-ground portion of the silo.

Hybrid corn created for silo farming

Special hybrid crops will be created for these confined space environments. Short-stalk corn, personal sized fruits and vegetables, and fragile seed crops are but a few of the ag options coming for silo farms.

With water generated from an ongoing evaporation system that extracts moisture from the air, and external wind generators for power, these self-contained farming silos can be constructed in desolate climates, deserts, on rocky ground, and some of the most unforgiving places on the planet. This, coupled with the fact that it creates a year around farming operation on greatly expanded surface area, has the ability to increase the earth’s ability to produce food by a thousand fold.

As we monitor the trend lines of precision, relevance, and control, the future starts to come into focus. Next generation farming operations will create unprecedented new levels of opportunity, making future agribusiness professionals some of the most highly skilled people on earth, and the envy of the executive class.

Farming is about to become the coolest profession on earth.

About

Thomas Frey is the Executive Director and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute and currently Google’s top-rated futurist speaker.

Because of his work inspiring inventors and other revolutionary thinkers, the Boulder Daily Camera has referred to him as the “Father of Invention”.  The Denver Post and Seattle Post Intelligencer have referred to him as the “Dean of Futurists”.

Before launching the DaVinci Institute, Tom spent 15 years at IBM as an engineer and designer where he received over 270 awards, more than any other IBM engineer.  He is also a past member of the Triple Nine Society (High I.Q. society over 99.9 percentile).

Thomas can be reached at dr2tom (at) davinciinstitute.com or 303-666-4133

Trends to Watch in 2010 – The Turing Test for Avatars

Trends to Watch in 2010 – The Turing Test for Avatars

Turing Test for Avatars

The recently released James Cameron thriller “Avatar” has set an entirely new standard for moviemaking, and in the process has given us a visualization of what the evolution of the avatar may lead to.

The term “avatar” was first coin by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash. The translation for avatar is ‘a form of self’- a virtual clone that has long meant nothing more than an intangible visualization. However, in the movie Avatar the envelope of understanding has been pushed far beyond the virtual world into a life-breathing physically-interactive being.

The power behind the movie is in its portrayal of the future. Much like DaVinci’s portrayal of human flight 400 years before the time of the Wright Brothers, the images became a visual goal, a rallying cry if you will, for a future yet to come. In Avatar, audiences become fully immersed in this exciting new vision of the future, and in doing so, begin to mentally plan for the technology that will take us there.

But, as much as we’d like to ratchet forward in time and move to that new level of sophistication, the movie glosses over many of the key technological stepping stones along the way.

An avatar today exists as little more than a cartoonish representation of ourselves, sent as our personal emissary to experience online, virtual worlds. Think of today’s avatars as the Model T version on a pathway that will eventually lead to flying cars. With each new generation of the avatar, they will become more life-like, growing in realism, pressing the limits of autonomy as we become more and more reliant on them for experiencing the world.

Eventually we will pass the Turing Test for Avatars.

In 1950, computer visionary Alan Turing proposed we would reach a time where a person entering a room with a human and a computer placed behind separate curtains would find it impossible to distinguish which was which through mere conversation. This idea of “passing the Turing Test has long served as a benchmark for bestowing humanoid qualities on a computer.

Raising the stakes even further, the Turing Test for Avatars will be a realism test with multiple stages of accomplishment.

• Stage One – An avatar become indistinguishable from a human on a two dimensional screen. Our visual and auditory senses will make it impossible to differentiate.

• Stage Two – Avatars will only live in the computer world for a short time longer. It is only a matter of time before they emerge from the computer and appear as visual beings, walking around among us. The Stage Two Turing Test for Avatars will yield a tree dimensional representation that is impossible to distinguish without touching.

• Stage Three – Once an avatar goes through the radical metamorphosis from an image that we see on a screen to a three dimensional being that joins us for dinner, carries on conversations with our friends, and serves as a stand-in for us at meetings, we will see work start on an even more realistic avatar, one that we can touch. The long held ideas of humanoid robots, and more recently cloned humans, will be superseded by organic avatars with human mannerism and capabilities so lifelike that they become indistinguishable from real humans.

The avatar of the future will become an extension of ourselves. The pain that we feel is the same pain that they feel, and vice versa. Like symbiotic twins separated only by a dimension or two, we are destined to become one with our avatars.

One key issue that will arise will be the autonomy with which our avatars can operate. How much freedom should an avatar have?

While some might envision the avatars to be the perfect clone of ourselves, the reality will be much different as frictions develop between us and the autonomous avatars that represent us. Men will find their girlfriends are more attracted to their avatars than to themselves, even having affairs with them. Avatars will eventually get their own apartments and start buying things for themselves. Some may even go off the deep end and start stealing money, even taking on insane addictions and diseases that only avatars can experience.

A series of self-help books will emerge that discuss “how we can improve our relationship with our avatars”, “how to keep our avatars from reproducing without our consent”, and “how to breed avatars for fun and profit”.

Only after going through all these technological evolutions will we get to the state of avatars portrayed in the James Cameron movie. We have a long ways to go.

PREDICTION:

• Within the next five years a series of prize competitions will emerge based on the Turing Test for Avatars

OPPORTUNITIES:

Great opportunities lie in our ability to create storylines, images, movies, and other visualizations of each of the intermediate steps leading up to stage three avatars.

Along with each new generation of avatar will come an exponential growth spurt of innovation surrounding the tools, games, and other forms of technology spawned by the avatar economies.

The recently released James Cameron thriller Avatar has set an entirely new standard for moviemaking, and in the process has given us a visualization of what the evolution of the avatar may lead to.

The term “avatar” in the context of a digital computer-self was first coin by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash. Before that, the concept of avatar within Hinduism was associated with Vishnu, the preserver or sustainer aspect of God within the Hindu Trinity. The translation for avatar is ‘a form of self’- a virtual clone that has long meant nothing more than an intangible visualization. However, in the movie Avatar the envelope of understanding has been pushed far beyond the virtual world into a life-breathing physically-interactive being.

The power behind the movie is in its portrayal of the future. Much like DaVinci’s portrayal of human flight 400 years before the time of the Wright Brothers, the images became a visual goal, a rallying cry if you will, for a future yet to come. In Avatar, audiences become fully immersed in this exciting new vision of the future, and in doing so, begin to mentally plan for the technology that will take us there.

But, as much as we’d like to ratchet forward in time and move to that new level of sophistication, the movie glosses over many of the key technological stepping stones along the way.

An avatar today exists as little more than a cartoonish representation of ourselves, sent as our personal emissary to experience online, virtual worlds. Think of today’s avatars as the Model T version on a pathway that will eventually lead to flying cars. With each new generation of the avatar, they will become more life-like, growing in realism, pressing the limits of autonomy as we become more and more reliant on them for experiencing the world.

Alan Turing

Eventually we will pass the Turing Test for Avatars.

In 1950, computer visionary Alan Turing proposed we would reach a time where a person entering a room with a human and a computer placed behind separate curtains would find it impossible to distinguish which was which through mere conversation. This idea of “passing the Turing Test has long served as a benchmark for bestowing humanoid qualities on a computer.

Raising the stakes even further, the Turing Test for Avatars will be a realism test with multiple stages of accomplishment.

• Stage One – An avatar become indistinguishable from a human on a two dimensional screen. Our visual and auditory senses will make it impossible to differentiate.
• Stage Two – Avatars will only live in the computer world for a short time longer. It is only a matter of time before they emerge from the computer and appear as visual beings, walking around among us. The Stage Two Turing Test for Avatars will yield a tree dimensional representation that is impossible to distinguish without touching.
• Stage Three – Once an avatar goes through the radical metamorphosis from an image that we see on a screen to a three dimensional being that joins us for dinner, carries on conversations with our friends, and serves as a stand-in for us at meetings, we will see work start on an even more realistic avatar, one that we can touch. The long held ideas of humanoid robots, and more recently cloned humans, will be superseded by organic avatars with human mannerism and capabilities so lifelike that they become indistinguishable from real humans.

The avatar of the future will become an extension of ourselves. The pain that we feel is the same pain that they feel, and vice versa. Like symbiotic twins separated only by a dimension or two, we are destined to become one with our avatars.

One key issue that will arise will be the autonomy with which our avatars can operate. How much freedom should an avatar have?

While some might envision the avatars to be the perfect clone of ourselves, the reality will be much different as frictions develop between us and the autonomous avatars that represent us. Men will find their girlfriends are more attracted to their avatars than to themselves, even having affairs with them. Avatars will eventually get their own apartments and start buying things for themselves. Some may even go off the deep end and start stealing money, even taking on insane addictions and diseases that only avatars can experience.

A series of self-help books will emerge that discuss “how we can improve our relationship with our avatars”, “how to keep our avatars from reproducing without our consent”, and “how to breed avatars for fun and profit”.

Only after going through all these technological evolutions will we get to the state of avatars portrayed in the James Cameron movie. We have a long ways to go.

PREDICTION:

• Within the next five years a series of prize competitions will emerge based on the Turing Test for Avatars

OPPORTUNITIES:

Great opportunities lie in our ability to create storylines, images, movies, and other visualizations of each of the intermediate steps leading up to stage three avatars.

Along with each new generation of avatar will come an exponential growth spurt of innovation surrounding the tools, games, and other forms of technology spawned by the avatar economies.

By Futurist Thomas Frey

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The 1932-33 Genocide in Ukraine – The real holocaust

The 1932-33 Genocide in Ukraine – The real holocaust

Jewish Communists Starved Nine Million Christians.
The People Behind The Famine
Stalin
Molotov
Kaganovitch
Yagoda

Where Did It Happen?
Stalin’s Famine raged through the Ukraine, and the lower Volga River region in 1932-33. This resulted in the death of between 7 to 10 million people, mainly Ukrainians
Why Did Stalin Kill The People?
The Ukrainian people told the Moscow Jewish communists they wouldn’t give them their land, and in fact wanted independence from Russia. The Kremlin used the famine as a political weapon to destroy Ukrainian aspirations for independence
Who Did They Kill?
They killed Ukrainian farmers, villagers, intelligentsia, and anyone that could unite and lead the people.
A wave of persecutions of thousands of Ukrainian intellectuals, writers, and leaders took place. Plots for liberating the Ukraine were discovered, not only in the smallest villages, but even in the top ranks of the Ukrainian Communist Party itself.
Eighty percent of Ukrainian intellectuals were shot.
Mass Murder
The Jewish NKVD secret police took the crops and livestock, and were shooting up to 10,000 Ukranians a day. During the bitter winter of 1932-33, 25,000 Ukrainians per day were being shot or died of starvation and cold. Cannibalism became common
How Did They Do It?
In 1932, the Communists installed a quota, that essentially took all of the peasantry’s grain, and stored it in grain elevators. Communists used military troops and NKVD secret police units to collect the grain.
Next, they instigated an internal passport system, and the peasants could not travel in search of food. The grain was stored in elevators, guarded by the NKVD, while Ukrainians were starving in the immediate area.
What Did America Say?
The New York Times’ reporter Walter Duranty, British writers Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and French Prime Minister Edouard Herriot, toured Ukraine, denied reports of genocide, and applauded what they called Soviet “agrarian reform.”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was well aware of the genocide, but closed his eyes, even to the point of blocking aid groups from going to the Ukraine. Roosevelt always referred to Stalin as “Uncle Joe”.

http://jta.org/news/article/2009/06/15/1005888/jewish-group-objects-to-holodomor-lawsuit

Jewish group objects to ‘Great Famine’ case
June 15, 2009

KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) — A Jewish group in Ukraine is objecting to a criminal case brought over the “Great Famine” committed in the 1930s.

The nation’s security service is pressing the case against a list of former Soviet officials accused of committing the Holodomor, which caused the deaths of millions in Ukraine in 1932-33. Most of the names on the list were Jewish.

Ukrainian lawmaker Aleksandr Feldman, leader of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, said last week that it was “a farce” to press the case.

“All organizers of the Great Famine are dead,” he said.

Last July, the Ukrainian Security Service released a list of high-ranking Soviet state and Communist Party officials — as well as officials from NKVD, the police force of Soviet Russia — that essentially blamed Jews and Latvians responsible for perpetrating and executing the famine because most of the names on the list were Jewish.

The Ukrainian Jewish Committee called on the secret service to revise the list, which incited interethnic hatred, in order to clear up the “inaccuracy.”

Feldman believes there is a danger that the “Holodomor Affair” materials are being used for political purposes.

In late May, security service head Valentin Nalivaychenko claimed at a meeting with representatives of the World Congress of Ukrainians that “Ukraine has collected enough evidence to bring a criminal case regarding the famine, which was artificially created by the Bolshevik regime and caused mass death of citizens.”

Through the World Congress of Ukrainians, Nalivaychenko turned to leading foreign lawyers with a request to help find out the circumstances connected with preparing and committing the genocide.

[edit] Scope and duration
The famine affected the Ukrainian SSR as well as the Moldavian ASSR (a part of the Ukrainian S.S.R. at the time) between 1932 and 1933. However, not every part suffered from the Holodomor for the whole period; the greatest number of victims was recorded in the spring of 1933.

The first reports of mass malnutrition and deaths from starvation emerged from 2 urban area of Uman – by the time Vinnytsya and Kiev oblasts dated by beginning of January 1933. By mid-January 1933 there were reports about mass “difficulties” with food in urban areas that had been undersupplied through the rationing system and deaths from starvation among people who were withdrawn from rationing supply according to Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine Decree December 1932. By the beginning of February 1933, according to received reports from local authorities and Ukrainian GPU, the most affected area was listed as Dnipropetrovsk Oblast which also suffered from epidemics of typhus and malaria. Odessa and Kiev oblasts were second and third respectively. By mid-March, most reports originated from Kiev Oblast.

By mid-April 1933, the Kharkiv Oblast reached the top of the most affected list, while Kiev, Dnipropetrovsk, Odessa, Vinnytsya, Donetsk oblasts and Moldavian SSR followed it. Last reports about mass deaths from starvation dated mid-May through the beginning of June 1933 originated from raions in Kiev and Kharkiv oblasts. The “less affected” list noted the Chernihiv Oblast and northern parts of Kiev and Vinnytsya oblasts. According to the Central Committee of the CP(b) of Ukraine Decree as of February 8 1933, no hunger cases should have remained untreated, and all local authorities were directly obliged to submit reports about numbers suffering from hunger, the reasons for hunger, number of deaths from hunger, food aid provided from local sources and centrally provided food aid required. Parallel reporting and food assistance were managed by the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR. Many regional reports and most of the central summary reports are available from present-day central and regional Ukrainian archives.[27] There is documentary evidence of widespread cannibalism during the Holodomor.[28] The Soviet regime of the time even printed posters declaring: “To eat your own children is a barbarian act.”[29]

Denial of the famine by Soviet authorities, including President Mikhail Kalinin and Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, was immediate and continued into the 1980s. The Soviet party line was echoed at the time of the famine by some prominent Western journalists, including Walter Duranty and Louis Fischer. The denial of the famine was a highly successful and well orchestrated disinformation campaign by the Soviet government [58][59][60]. Stalin “had achieved the impossible: he had silenced all the talk of hunger… Millions were dying, but the nation hymned the praises of collectivization”, said historian and writer Edvard Radzinsky[60]. That was the first major instance of Soviet authorities adopting Hitler’s Big Lie propaganda technique to sway world opinion, to be followed by similar campaigns over the Moscow Trials and denial of the Gulag labor camp system, according to Robert Conquest [38]

On November 10, 2003 at the United Nations twenty-five countries including Russia, Ukraine and United States signed a joint statement on the seventieth anniversary of the Holodomor with the following preamble:

In the former Soviet Union millions of men, women and children fell victims to the cruel actions and policies of the totalitarian regime. The Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine (Holodomor), which took from 7 million to 10 million innocent lives and became a national tragedy for the Ukrainian people. In this regard we note activities in observance of the seventieth anniversary of this Famine, in particular organized by the Government of Ukraine.

Honouring the seventieth anniversary of the Ukrainian tragedy, we also commemorate the memory of millions of Russians, Kazakhs and representatives of other nationalities who died of starvation in the Volga River region, Northern Caucasus, Kazakhstan and in other parts of the former Soviet Union, as a result of civil war and forced collectivization, leaving deep scars in the consciousness of future generations.[21]

JEWISH INTELLECTUALS AKA, “COMMUNISTS” STARVED TO DEATH MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WHILE THEY TRIED TO FULFILL LENINS’ DREAM BY COLLECTIVIZATION – CHAIRMAN MAO OF CHINA KILLED UNTOLD MILLIONS OF CHINESE TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH A UTOPIAN STATE WHERE THE SURVIVAL OF THE STATE MUST BE ASSURED NO MATTER WHAT THE COSTS IN HUMAN LIFE.

Israeli intellectuals still experiment with collectivism;
[edit] Ideology of the kibbutz movement
First Aliyah immigrants were largely religious, but those of the Second Aliyah were mainly secular. A Jewish work ethic thus replaced religious practice. Berl Katznelson, a Labor Zionist leader articulated this when he said “Everywhere the Jewish laborer goes, the divine presence goes with him.”.[12]

In addition to redeeming the Jewish nation through work, there was also an element of redeeming Eretz Yisrael – Palestine – in the kibbutz ideology. In the contemporary Yiddish anti-Zionist literature that was circulating around Eastern Europe, Palestine was mocked as dos gepeigerte land, “the country that had died.” Kibbutz members found immense gratification in bringing the land back to life by planting trees, draining swamps, and countless other hard-graft activities to make the land (invariably wetlands) productive. In soliciting donations, kibbutzim and other Zionist settlement activities presented themselves as “making the desert bloom.”

Most kibbutzim were founded upon disputed land. Like most other Jewish agricultural communities, kibbutzim were founded in three relatively small, flat, low-lying regions of the country, the upper Jordan Valley, the Jezreel Valley and the Sharon coastal plain. The land was marshy and highly fertile, but available for purchase because it was infested with malaria and thus unproductive. Most early kibbutzniks, including David ben Gurion himself, suffered from malaria. In areas of higher elevation without standing water, where mosquitos could not breed—such as the area now called the West Bank—there were few if any kibbutzim.

Members of a kibbutz, or kibbutzniks, like other participants in the Zionist movement, had not considered the possibility of conflict between Jews and Arabs over Palestine. Mainstream Zionists predicted the Arab population would be grateful for the economic benefits that the Jews would bring. The left wing of the kibbutz movement believed that the enemies of the Arab peasants were Arab landowners (called effendis), not fellow Jewish farmers. By the late 1930s as the struggle against world fascism and for a political refuge for persecuted Jews began, kibbutzniks began to assume a military role in the New Yishuv.

The first kibbutzniks hoped to be more than plain farmers in Palestine. They even hoped for more than a Jewish homeland there: they wanted to create a new type of society where all would be equal and free from exploitation. The early kibbutzniks wanted to be both free from working for others and from the guilt of exploiting hired work. Thus was born the idea that Jews would band together, holding their property in common, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

Kibbutz members were not classic Marxists though their system partially resembled Communism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels both shared a disdain for conventional formulations of the nation-state. Leninists were hostile to Zionism, but nevertheles the two main kibbutz leaders, Tabenkin and Yaari commenced in the late 1930s pushing their movements leftward to reverence of Stalin’s dictatorship in order to save their leaderships. They succeeded in 1948, established Mapam party that adored the Soviet Union when supported the establishment of Israeli state, although most Kibbutz Artzi members opposed Yaari’s move. Soon Stalin became hostile to Israel as it served Soviet diplomatic and military interests in the Arab world. This caused major crises and mass exit in both Kibbutz Meuchad and Kibbutz Artzi kibbutzim, especially after the 1953 Doctors’ Plot in Moscow and the Prague showcase Trials. But even after Nikita Khrushchev’s 1956 denouncement of Stalinism in the “secret speech,” the two leaders suppressed young leaders and the many members who rejected communism, since it served their rule.[13] However, to this day many kibbutzim remain strongholds of left-wing Israeli politics.

Although kibbutzniks practiced a form of communism themselves, they did not believe that it could work for everyone; for example, the Kibbutz political parties never called for the abolition of private property. Kibbutzniks saw their kibbutzim as collective enterprises within a free market system. Kibbutzim also practise active democracy in organisation: periodic elections are held for Kibbutz functions as well as an active participation in national elections.

Kibbutzim were not the only contemporary communal enterprises: pre-war Palestine also saw the development of communal villages called moshavim (singular moshav). In a moshav, marketing and major farm purchases would be done collectively, but personal lives were entirely private. Although much less famous than kibbutzim, moshavim became more numerous and popular than kibbutzim after the establishment of Israel in 1948.

Kibbutz residents tend to vote left of center. In 2009, most votes from kibbutzim went to Kadima, Labor, and Meretz

ISRAELI’s devoted to preservation of the State of Israel at any cost have displaced the indigenous peoples of Palestine, event to the point where it may be called extermination- THE SETTLEMENTS ARE RELIGIOUSLY JUSTIFIED!

Palestinians argue that the policy of settlements constitutes an effort to pre-empt or even sabotage a peace treaty that includes Palestinian sovereignty, and claim that the settlements are built on land that belongs to Palestinians.[40][41]

Israelis supportive of settlement respond that they are religiously justified in owning the land. Furthermore, the Israel Foreign Ministry asserts that some settlements are legitimate, as they took shape when there was no operative diplomatic arrangement, and thus they did not violate any agreement.[42][43][44] Based on this, they assert the following specific reasons for accepting settlements as legitimate:

Prior to the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, the eruption of the First Intifada in the late eighties, down to the signing of the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty in 1994, Israeli governments on the left and right argued that the settlements were of strategic and tactical importance. The location of the settlements was primarily chosen based on the threat of an attack by the bordering hostile countries of Jordan, Syria, and Egypt and possible routes of advance into Israeli population areas[citation needed].These settlements were originally thought of as contributing to the peace and security of the state of Israel at a time when peace treaties had not been signed. Some supporters of the settlements still cite these reasons.[45][46][47][48][49][50]
Many religious Jews assert the biblical Jewish connection to the areas in dispute, arguing that their claim to build is equal to the biblical Jewish connection to the other areas in Israel.
The international consensus on the illegality of Israeli settlements
According to the BBC, the “overwhelming view” of the international community is that the settlements are illegal based upon Article 49 of the Geneva Convention.[65]

The consensus view is largely based on UN Security council resolutions, including resolutions 446, 452, 465, 471 and 476 which find the settlements to be illegal.[66] In Resolution 465 the settlements are even described as a “flagrant violation”. Separately also the legal arm of the UN, the International Court of Justice, has found the settlements to be illegal under international law.[67]

International human rights groups Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem have denounced the settlements as illegal.[68][69][70]

The European Union considers the settlements to be illegal.[71] The reconvened Conference of the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions declared in 2001 that the settlements are illegal.[72]

The United Nations General Assembly has passed several resolutions denouncing all settlements in the occupied territories as illegal. Below is a summary of voting records concerning such resolutions from 2006-2008

Amnesty International argues that Israel’s settlement policy is not only illegal, but is discriminatory and a violation of Palestinian human rights:

‘As well as violating international humanitarian law per se, the implementation of Israel’s settlement policy in the Occupied Territories violates fundamental human rights provisions, including the prohibition of discrimination. The seizure and appropriations of land for Israeli settlements, bypass roads and related infrastructure and discriminatory allocation of other vital resources, including water, have had a devastating impact on the fundamental rights of the local Palestinian population, including their rights to an adequate standard of living, housing, health, education, and work, and freedom of movement within the Occupied Territories.”[68]

The Israeli human rights centre B’Tselem and other sources have indicated that the road blocks scattered inside the West Bank between Palestinian cities and villages which are designed to “protect the settlers” from Arab snipers firing on Israeli drivers, as well as Arab ambushes of Israelis, have had a significant impact on freedom of movement. While the road blocks are also said to protect Israelis within Israel, according to B’Tselem, the (siege) “imprisons entire populations within their communities or in a small geographic area and limits their access to other parts of the West Bank.”[130][131][132]

In Hebron, where 500-600 settlers live among 167,000 Palestinians, B’Tselem argues that there have been “grave violations” of Palestinian human rights because of the “presence of the settlers within the city.” The organization cites regular incidents of “almost daily physical violence and property damage by settlers in the city”, curfews and restrictions of movement that are “among the harshest in the Occupied Territories”, and violence and by Israeli border policemen and the IDF against Palestinians who live in the city’s H2 sector.[133][134][135]

Human Rights Watch reports on physical violence against Palestinians by settlers, including, “frequent[ly] stoning and shooting at Palestinian cars. In many cases, settlers abuse Palestinians in front of Israeli soldiers or police with little interference from the authorities.”[136]

B’Tselem also documents settler actions against Palestinians that include “blocking roadways, so as to impede Palestinian life and commerce. The settlers also shoot solar panels on roofs of buildings, torch automobiles, shatter windowpanes and windshields, destroy crops, uproot trees, abuse merchants and owners of stalls in the market. Some of these actions are intended to force Palestinians to leave their homes and farmland, and thereby enable the settlers to gain control of them.”[137]

According to B’Tselem, more than fifty percent of the land of the West Bank has been expropriated from Palestinian owners “mainly to establish settlements and create reserves of land for the future expansion of the settlements”. While the seized lands mainly benefit the settlements, the Palestinian public is prohibited from using them in any way.[138] According to Meron Benvenisti,

‘the entire “settlement enterprise” has become a commercial real estate project, which conscripts Zionist rhetoric for profit’.[139]

A series of modern roads have been established by Israel throughout the West Bank which bypass Palestinian areas, some of which are closed to vehicles with Palestinian license-plates in varying degrees, can fluctuate based on arbitrary Israeli security concerns: some roads (mostly leading into Israel) are closed to all Palestinian traffic; many roads are closed to private traffic but allow public and commercial transportation; some roads are fully open to all Palestinian traffic and are shared completely with Israeli motorists. At the same time, Palestinian areas and roads are closed to vehicles with Israeli license-plates, though these roads are often of poorer quality, are less upkept and new roads are rarely built by Palestinians. Israel argues that such a system is needed for security reasons because of many incidents in which Israelis who entered Palestinians areas were endangered or killed, and that the restrictions generally reduce tension between the two populations. B’Tselem has described this system as nevertheless ‘discriminatory’: “Rather than use the main roads between the cities, most of the population is forced to use long and winding alternate routes. The regime has forced most Palestinians to leave their cars at home and travel by public transportation, in part because private cars are not allowed to cross some of the checkpoints.” B’Tselem lists the effects of this separate roads regime, including: Wasted (additional) time to reach destinations, tardiness or inability to reach destinations, exhaustion, increased cost of travel, and increased wear and tear on vehicles resulting from travel on worn down or dirt roads.[140]

The recent construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier routed inside the green line to encompass a variety of settlements has also been cited as an infirengement on Palestinian human and land rights. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that 10% of the West Bank will fall on the Israeli side of the barrier.[141][142]

Report: Al-Qaeda aims to hit U.S. with WMDs

Report: Al-Qaeda aims to hit U.S. with WMDs

Huge attack is top strategic goal, not ‘empty rhetoric,’ ex-CIA official says

By Joby Warrick

updated 11:31 p.m. PT, Mon., Jan. 25, 2010//

When al-Qaeda’s No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called off a planned chemical attack on New York’s subway system in 2003, he offered a chilling explanation: The plot to unleash poison gas on New Yorkers was being dropped for “something better,” Zawahiri said in a message intercepted by U.S. eavesdroppers.

The meaning of Zawahiri’s cryptic threat remains unclear more than six years later, but a new report warns that al-Qaeda has not abandoned its goal of attacking the United States with a chemical, biological or even nuclear weapon.

The report, by a former senior CIA official who led the agency’s hunt for weapons of mass destruction, portrays al-Qaeda’s leaders as determined and patient, willing to wait for years to acquire the kind of weapons that could inflict widespread casualties.

---

The former official, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, draws on his knowledge of classified case files to argue that al-Qaeda has been far more sophisticated in its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction than is commonly believed, pursuing parallel paths to acquiring weapons and forging alliances with groups that can offer resources and expertise.

“If Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants had been interested in . . . small-scale attacks, there is little doubt they could have done so now,” Mowatt-Larssen writes in a report released Monday by the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Deadly strains of anthrax
The report comes as a panel on weapons of mass destruction appointed by Congress prepares to release a new assessment of the federal government’s preparedness for such an attack. The review by the bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism is particularly critical of the Obama administration’s actions so far in hardening the country’s defenses against bioterrorism, according to two former government officials who have seen drafts of the report.

The commission’s initial report in December 2008 warned that a terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction was likely by 2013.

Mowatt-Larssen, a 23-year CIA veteran, led the agency’s internal task force on al-Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and later was named director of intelligence and counterintelligence for the Energy Department. His report warns that bin Laden’s threat to attack the West with weapons of mass destruction is not “empty rhetoric” but a top strategic goal for an organization that seeks the economic ruin of the United States and its allies to hasten the overthrow of pro-Western governments in the Islamic world.

He cites patterns in al-Qaeda’s 15-year pursuit of weapons of mass destruction that reflect a deliberateness and sophistication in assembling the needed expertise and equipment. He describes how Zawahiri hired two scientists — a Pakistani microbiologist sympathetic to al-Qaeda and a Malaysian army captain trained in the United States — to work separately on efforts to build a biological weapons lab and acquire deadly strains of anthrax bacteria. Al-Qaeda achieved both goals before September 2001 but apparently had not successfully weaponized the anthrax spores when the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan forced the scientists to flee, Mowatt-Larssen said.

“This was far from run-of-the-mill terrorism,” he said in an interview. “The program was highly compartmentalized, at the highest level of the organization. It was methodical, and it was professional.”

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‘Not just trying to scare people’
Mowatt-Larssen said he has seen no evidence linking al-Qaeda’s program with the anthrax attacks on U.S. politicians and news outlets in 2001. Zawahiri’s plan was aimed at mass casualties and “not just trying to scare people with a few letters,” he said.

Evidence from al-Qaeda documents and interrogations suggests that terrorists leaders had settled on anthrax as the weapon of choice and believed that the tools for a major biological attack were within their grasp, the former CIA official said. Al-Qaeda remained interested in nuclear weapons as well but understood that the odds of success were much longer.

“They realized they needed a lucky break,” Mowatt-Larssen said. “That meant buying or stealing fissile material or acquiring a stolen bomb.”

Bush administration officials feared that bin Laden was close to obtaining nuclear weapons in 2003 after U.S. spies picked up a cryptic message by a Saudi affiliate of al-Qaeda referring to plans to obtain three stolen Russian nuclear devices. The intercepts prompted the U.S. and Saudi governments to go on alert and later led to an aggressive Saudi crackdown that resulted in the arrest or killing of dozens of suspected al-Qaeda associates.

After that, terrorists’ chatter about a possible nuclear acquisition halted abruptly, but U.S. officials were never certain whether the plot was dismantled or simply pushed deeper underground.

“The crackdown was so successful,” Mowatt-Larssen said, “that intelligence about the program basically dried up.”

LIBERALS ARE BACKWARD THINKERS ON RACE

LIBERALS ARE BACKWARD THINKERS ON RACE

Since it is Black History Month I guess a blog entry on race would be appropriate. I have always wondered why liberals are considered to be progressives when it comes to race and conservatives are considered backward thinkers.

Consider this:

Liberals support the separate but equal Black History Month.

Liberals support institutional racism with Equal Opportunity programs and quotas.

Liberals support segregation through all-black colleges, black television, black magazines, Congressional Black Caucus, etc.

Liberals use the term African-Americans. Weren’t blacks called Africans when they first got here? Then “Coloreds,” “Niggers,” “Negroes,” etc. Let’s stop with the name-calling. We are all Americans.

Liberals love to relive our past shame of slavery. Are they fond of that era?

Liberals use the terms Uncle Toms and house niggers to refer to conservative blacks.

Liberals love to stereotype the southerners as racists when the south has been a mixed race community for a long time and the liberals live in gated white communities.

Liberals support political gerrymandering based on race. This helps keep them folks in their own neighborhoods

Liberals do not believe that the black man can be self-reliant.

Liberals support abortion, which is more common in the black community.

Liberals are fond of racism. I honestly think that deep down inside they believe that minorities are inferior. But the biggest reason is that the liberals want racism and need racism to exist in this country and are the biggest perpetuators of racism in this country. If the flames of racism of not stoked in this country, the white liberals will lose their political power and the black liberals will lose their livelihood.

Conservatives are the group that is working to minimize racism in this country. First, because it is wrong, and second, it is a way to eliminate some of the political power of the liberals.

Locust: I can agree with most of what is written here.

The Bad Guys Are Getting Desperate… As A Patriot You Must Know… How To Hide Your Guns!

The Bad Guys Are Getting Desperate…
As A Patriot You Must Know…

How To
Hide Your Guns!

“Former Special Forces Officer Shares His Guerrilla Secrets For Hiding Your Guns From Criminals And Other Predators” http://www.hideyourguns.com/

DATE: 10-25-09
Metairie, Louisiana

I guess you could say it was truly the worst of times and Tuesday, August 30, 2005 is a date I will never forget.  That date may not mean anything to you, but for those of us on the Gulf Coast we’ll never forget it since it was the day after Katrina hit.  It was also the day my home just outside of New Orleans was looted by a gang of thugs taking advantage of a state of virtual lawlessness.

In the period after Katrina hit, many homes were abandoned and the few homeowners who remained were rendered defenseless when state law enforcement descended upon our neighborhoods removing as many firearms as possible.

“My Neighborhood Was Safe Until They Took Our Guns Away!”

“First the cops arrived and took all their weapons, then the gangs arrived and stole everything else that wasn’t chained down.”

They said that they were confiscating every privately owned firearm so that there wouldn’t be criminals taking advantage of the crisis.  Of course, like all government policies, this one was ass-backwards. They should have recruited all the military vets like myself and a few of my neighbors, armed us to the teeth, and said, “Shoot any rioters on sight”.

But they didn’t.  Instead they went door to door searching for firearms and disarming any families who had guns.  My neighbors and I were prepared, or so we thought, for anything. But one of my friends up the street (a former Marine) wasn’t prepared when an arrogant local cop demanded the .45 he had holstered on his hip.  The fact that he had a carry permit, was in his own home, and served his country in combat for over two decades, mattered little.

That Cocky Young Cop Grinned At Him As He Handed His Gun Over.

Of course, it was much worse for most other folks.  First the cops arrived and took all their weapons, and then the gangs arrived and stole everything else that wasn’t chained down. Basically we were all living in a state of anxious fear. And even though I had a backup plan, I could have never planned for what happened next.

You see, one afternoon while my wife and kids were gone (handing out food at our church), I received a knock at the door.  When I opened the door a crack to see who was there, my whole world turned upside down. Suddenly the door came crashing in on me as the security chain snapped like it was plastic.

Face To Face With Three Vicious Punks!

I was instantly face to face with three vicious looking punks and one of them had a gun aimed at my head. The other two had baseball bats. Even with all my Special Forces training, I was caught off guard and I’m ashamed to say that after an initial scuffle, I was beaten pretty badly.

When I finally came to my senses and got on my feet, I noticed the house was ransacked and most anything of value was gone. I was physically devastated from the attack and a fresh feeling of anguish came over me as I realized they took everything. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think this could happen, especially to me. After all, just a few years ago, I was running some pretty freaky Special Forces missions.

But it did happen. I ended up being hospitalized for a broken wrist and yet was extremely thankful my family was not at the house when all this came down. And, I had an additional reason to be thankful. It was my little secret and no one else knew…

“As gun prices go through the roof, gun thieves have stepped up their efforts to steal any and every gun they can get their hands on.”

My Real Cache Of Guns Remained Untouched!

As those punks left my house that day they must have been feeling that they had cleaned me out completely. But even with a broken wrist I got the last laugh. Here’s why: I had a secret cache of weapons hidden deep inside my house, where no thugs or even a sophisticated criminal would ever think to look.

I knew that hidden safely away in my house was my real gun collection, the one worth thousands of dollars and including muzzle loaders from the War Between the States and a few guns my grandfather gave me when I was young. The truth is, even if they had known where to look, they wouldn’t have gotten them.

I Decided Right Then And There To Tell Everyone I Could The
True Story Of How I Kept My Guns Safe During A Very Uncertain Time.

It’s been years since this all happened, but to tell you the truth, I have never been the same after the confrontation with those three punks.  All I can say is that it spooked me forever. And it seems like this event made me alert to how ruthless criminals can be when they are desperate and searching for guns like hungry wolves.