*How do you lose track of a billion dollars? Most of us panic if we lose twenty. … The federal government spends $1.2 billion every two hours and 51 minutes. If you take a long lunch, it’s gone.*
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Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure,the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy,its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery..."-- Winston Churchill
Add the two and do you get 'President Number Four?' You decide.
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Meanwhile,Gov. Christie lowers the boom on 'President Number Four!' (See 1 below.)
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What I have been theorizing is now being picked up by others.
'President Number Four' needs to prove he is macho man to overcome his current image of passivity etc.. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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I make no bones about being an avid supporter of Israel. Not that the nation is without fault but I find it interesting that most news reports about the peaceful 'Arab Spring' come increasingly from Jerusalem. Reporters have trouble reporting from Egypt, Syria, Iran where innocent civilians are being slaughtered because of their protests against their autocratic governments.
Yet, this information frequently comes from reporters reporting from the most hated nation in the world - Israel and from its capital - Jerusalem - which is not recognized by any legitimate country. (See 3 below.)
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Are Europe and the Euro goners? (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)NJ Gov. Christie: Obama Has Left US 'Hopeless, Changeless'
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is stumping in Iowa for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, but his punch lines extend beyond Romney’s Republican rivals in the Hawkeye State’s caucuses Tuesday.
“Let’s be real clear: President Barack Obama came out to Iowa three years ago and he talked to you about hope and change,” Christie said during an appearance with Romney in West Des Moines this morning. “Well let me tell you after three years of Obama, we are hopeless and changeless and we need Mitt Romney to bring us back, to bring America back.”
Christie persisted in talking, despite a handful of people in the crowd chanting, “We are the 99 percent” until they were escorted away, according to nj.com.
The New Jersey attack dog left the West Des Moines crowd with a playful jab: “If you don’t do what you’re supposed to do for Mitt Romney on Tuesday, I will be back, Jersey-style, people. I will be back.”
Christie, who considered running for the GOP nomination for a while before finally opting not to and landing in Romney's camp instead, also was scheduled to lobby voters in Cedar Rapids and Dubuque today.
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2)Could Obama Launch ‘October Surprise’ Against Iran?
Recent statements from the Obama administration have led at least one Israeli observer to suspect that the president is preparing for an attack on Iran — and political considerations would dictate an assault in October.
Writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Chemi Shalev notes that on Dec. 16, Obama switched his rhetoric from “a nuclear Iran is unacceptable” to the assertive “we are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”
On Dec. 19, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who had previously warned about the pitfalls of an attack on Iran, declared that the United States “will take whatever steps necessary to deal with” the Iranian nuclear threat.
The next day, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “My biggest worry is that [the Iranians] will miscalculate our resolve.”
Shalev observes that with the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, there is no longer fear that an attack on Iran would endanger U.S. forces there.
And he discloses that people who have heard Obama speak about Iran in closed sessions believe he would order an attack if he is convinced that a nuclear-armed Iran poses a clear danger to America’s national security.
“There can be no doubt — notwithstanding claims by the radical left and the isolationist right — that a nuclear Iran would be an unmitigated disaster for American interests, above and beyond the existential threat to Israel,” Shalev writes.
“The entire Middle East would be destabilized and America’s oil supplies held hostage by a self-confident and bellicose Iran.”
If an American attack on Iran were to take place, timing it close to the November elections would benefit Obama politically, according to Shalev, who declares that “October would be ideal.”
He adds: “That’s the month that Henry Kissinger chose in 1972 to prematurely declare that ‘peace is at hand’ in Vietnam, thus turning Richard Nixon’s certain victory over George McGovern into a landslide; that’s the month that Ronald Reagan feared Jimmy Carter would use in 1980 in order to free the Iran hostages and stop the Republican momentum; and that’s the month that many of Obama’s opponents are already jittery about, fearing the proverbial ‘October Surprise’ that would hand Obama his second term on a platter.”
2a)US sanctions on Iran's central bank. Tehran has called this an act of war
On the last day of 2011, US President Barack Obama Saturday signed into law measures penalizing foreign financial institutions doing business with Iran's central bank, Bank Markazi - the toughest sanctions imposed yet over Iran's development of a nuclear weapon. In recent weeks Tehran has repeatedly warned that it would deem the signing of this measure an act of war and respond with drastic steps including the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian sources report signs that rather than using this leeway to back down, Tehran appears bent on heading for a collision with the United States and its opponents in the Persian Gulf and Middle East.
Just this Saturday, Dec. 31, Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, one of the Revolutionary Guards heads, wrote on the Guards' site: "Discourse about closing the Strait of Hormuz belongs to five years ago. Today's debate in the Islamic Republic of Iran contains new layers and the time has not come to disclose them."
This was published shortly after Iran announced the test firing of ballistic missiles targeting the strategic strait – and then, few hours later, contradicting itself by reporting that the missile test fire would only take place "in the coming days."
Gen. Jazayeri's comment was also made in response to Israel's chief of staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz's, address to high school students in Beersheba Friday, Dec. 30, "A nuclear-armed Iran is a threat to the region and world no less than to Israel. I think that with the appropriate international and Israeli disposition, which I will not spell out here, we can beat that challenge."
The Iranian general likewise declined to elaborate on Tehran's next moves.
After Obama signed the new sanctions, senior US officials stressed the administration intends to move forward with implementing the law in a way that doesn't damage the global economy. "We believe we can do this." They added: "The president will consider his options, but our intent—our absolute intent—is to do it in a timed and phased way."
Earlier Saturday, Iran had managed, by a media trick, to close the Strait of Hormuz for at least five hours without firing a shot.
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3)Will the Animosity against Israelis ever End?
By Michael Curtis
On October 6, 2011 Tzipi Livni, former Israeli foreign minister and leader of the Kadima party, met in London with British foreign secretary William Hague. Her previous attempt to attend a conference in Britain in December 2009 was prevented because an intended arrest warrant was issued by the Westminster magistrates' court. She was to be arrested for her alleged involvement as Israel's foreign minister in Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli response to the incessant shelling from Gaza, between December 27, 2008 and January 18, 2009. The issuing of the warrant was based on the principle of universal jurisdiction which allows the prosecution of war criminals in any country even if the criminal act took place elsewhere.
Although she finally did visit London in October 2011, Livni was almost prevented from entering the UK for a second time. She should have been allowed to enter the UK last October on the basis of a change in British universal jurisdiction law a month earlier. The change requires submission of the warrant to the Director of Public Prosecutions for approval. The Director can deny any request that seems to be political rather than substantive. But even with the alteration in law, a number of lawyers hostile to Israel tried to prevent Livni from making her October visit 2011 visit to the UK. Despite the new law, they still attempted to issue an arrest warrant, arguing that the change in law did not provide protection against arrest and prosecution of an Israeli official. British foreign minister, William Hague, was forced to issue a certificate declaring that she was on a "special mission." The designation of "special mission meant that the visit included diplomatic functions, thus providing immunity from legal action since the courts cannot challenge a diplomatic classification. Hague's action is commendable and Livni attended the conference but the as can be seen from her experience the problem of harassment of Israeli officials and animosity against Israel remains despite the change in the law.
Just to spell out the principle of universal jurisdiction in more detail, it provides for national courts to adjudicate cases against foreigners alleged to have committed crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, and torture, irrespective of where the alleged crimes were committed or the nationality of the accused, or whether the actions had done damage to the citizens or interests in the country of the court. Under the Geneva Conventions Act of 1957, war crimes and other grave offences are subject to universal jurisdiction. Some form of universal jurisdiction is now present in the legal systems of most countries in the world.
The principle seems eminently reasonable on the premise that such crimes are so serious that they should be prosecuted everywhere. It provided the rationale for the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1962. The Israeli court held that the crimes committed by Eichmann, one of the major Nazi figures responsible for the Holocaust, not only bore an international character but also that their widespread harmful effects shook the international community to its very foundation. It held that the state of Israel was therefore entitled to try and to punish him.
The principle seems equally reasonable as embodying the rule of law that perpetrators of serious violations of human rights should not use foreign countries as a haven to escape punishment. Thus, international tribunals, since the Nuremberg trials, have examined actions by individuals in the former Yugoslavia in 1993 and Rwanda in 1994. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 1999, declared that the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished. Effective prosecution would be ensured by action at the national level and by enhancing international cooperation.
Desirable though the use of the principle has been on some occasions, the essential problem is that it has also been abused for political purposes. The chief targets have been Israelis. In 2003, Ariel Sharon, Israeli minister of defense during the civil war in Lebanon when Christian Maronites killed 800 Palestinians in a camp in Beirut, was accused of war crimes in a court in Brussels. Two Israeli military figures, Doron Almog in September 2005 and Moshe Ya'alon in October 2009, could not visit Britain for fear of being charged with war crimes. In September 2009, an arrest of Ehud Barak, then defense minister, was only prevented in Britain because the British Foreign Office said he had diplomatic immunity. Several other Israeli generals or former generals have decided not to visit European countries because of the fear of being arrested for war crimes. Among them were General Yohannan Locker, military secretary to prime minister Netanyahu, and General Aviv Kochavi, head of Israel's Intelligence Corps. While some attempts have also been made to issue warrants against other individuals such as Henry Kissinger and Bo Xilai, Chinese trade minister, most warrants have been against Israelis.
To remedy this abuse of its justice system Britain on September 15, 2011 passed the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act. By British law, in cases of universal jurisdiction, anyone may apply to a magistrate or to the courts for a summons or an arrest warrant of those alleged to have committed war crimes anywhere. The essence of the reform was to establish a procedure under which the Director of Public Prosecutions would be required to consent when an individual or group called for an arrest warrant. He can decline issues of warrants made for political purposes, to cause embarrassment, or when there is such scant evidence that there is no realistic chance of prosecution. The change in British law is intended to ensure that visitors to the country will be protected from malicious and politically motivated arrests, but the legal dilemma is that even with the revision in the law, arrest warrants need less evidence than a case for prosecution. Thus they are being increasingly used for harassment.
Though the intention of the legal change is well meaning, the problem of harassment of Israelis and the depths of animosity towards Israel remains. Two incidents are particularly revealing. The first was the behavior of Baroness (Jenny) Tonge, Liberal Democrat, during the debate on the Police Reform Bill in the House of Lords, in which the Bill passed by only a single vote majority. The second was the publication of a letter in the newspaper, The Guardian, on December 12, 2010.
Lady Tonge, is well known for her anti- Israeli position. In February 2010 she argued that Israel should set up an inquiry to disprove that its medical team sent to help in the disaster in Haiti was trafficking in the organs of earthquake victims. In the 2011 House of Lords debate she argued that the real reason for the change in law was the incident relating to allegations of war crimes against Tzipi Livni in 2009. She attacked the foreign secretary for not having thoroughly examined the evidence against Livni. After being called to order for her remarks she ran out of the chamber. She was officially chastised for disobeying the normal rules of the House of Lords and acting in an inappropriate manner.
The letter in The Guardian, signed by more than 50 people including familiar critics of Israel such as the filmmaker Ken Loach, the playwright Caryl Churchill, and Labour Party members of Parliament, Martin Linton and Jeremy Corbyn, opposed the changes in the Police Reform Bill. The changes, they wrote, would "risk creating a culture of impunity in the minds of those politicians and military leaders who already treat international law with cavalier disregard," and would allow people suspected of war crimes to escape justice. It is not irrelevant that Mr. Linton had warned on March 23, 2010 of the "long tentacles of Israel" interfering in the forthcoming British election, and that Mr. Corbyn was reprimanded for breaching standards of impartiality by his charges against Israel in a television program. Corbyn had always made the absurd allegation that Israel in 2008-9 had used phosphorous bombs against an unarmed and defenseless Palestinian civilian population.
Equally critical of the reform of the law was a conference, entitled "Universal Jurisdiction against Israeli War Criminals" hosted by the Middle East Monitor in London on December 7, 2009. The keynote address was given by John Duggard, former Special Rapporteur to the UN Commission on Human Rights (now the UN Human Rights Council) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. On this occasion he repeated the title of the conference emphasizing the importance of implementing universal jurisdiction against Israeli war criminals. Earlier, as reported by Al Jazeera, Duggard had compared Israel to Apartheid South Africa, stating that "Both regimes were/are characterized by discrimin
These incidents reveal that animosity towards Israel will, for various reasons, probably be manifested for some time, and the reform in British law has not eliminated that animosity. The anti-Israeli lobby is still engaged in the abuse of international law, under the guise of universal jurisdiction, for political expediency and for harassing Israelis. It is making a mockery of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Michael Curtis is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Rutgers University
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4)Europe cannot save the euro, nor save itself from the euro
By Christopher Booker
It is customary at this time to act like two-faced Janus, looking back at the year that has passed while predicting what may happen in the one ahead. However, from what we have seen of the two great political fantasies of our age, it is now much easier to say what is likely not to happen. Each of these acts of make-believe has got so out of hand that a violent collision with reality is inevitable. But those who are in their grip are so locked in denial that it is only safe to predict that nothing will bring them back to earth until that nemesis intervenes.
A first prediction is that it is no longer conceivable that the sad little nonentities who preside over the affairs of the EU will be able to find any rational way out of the hole they have dug for themselves over the euro. Nothing they did in 2011 went anywhere towards saving them and us from the consequences of this folly. There was perhaps a time when they might have rescued their currency by allowing those countries that should never have been allowed to join in the first place to leave – those countries that have exploited its low interest rates to run up debts they can never repay.
But this could not be allowed because the single currency was never designed as an economic venture. It was a wholly hubristic political gesture, the supreme symbol of the real agenda of the “European project” from its foundation: the desire to lock all the nations of Europe indissolubly together in ever closer political union. For any country to leave the euro would be a defeat too great to be countenanced.
As a result they are all now completely boxed in. Even in practical terms, it is too late for such a remedy. A country leaving the euro would find itself in a worse mess than ever. Its regained national currency would be instantly devalued, leaving it even less able to repay debts contracted in euros than it is now. Defaulting banks and defaulting countries would send shockwaves through the entire European economy and spread chaos in every direction.
So all that is left to those in charge of the “project” is to prattle on about the need for “more Europe”, as they belatedly attempt to set up some kind of “fiscal union”: that all-powerful economic government of the eurozone which wiser counsels warned, as much as 30 years ago, was a necessary precondition of launching a single currency – not a half-baked measure to be cobbled together after the damage was done.
The only recourse now is to inflict such deflationary pressures on the debtor countries of southern Europe that their economies are driven to collapse, inflicting social misery on a scale unknown since the Second World War. We can see this already in riot-torn Greece, where hapless families are driven to dump their children on a bankrupt state because they can no longer afford to feed them.
Just how the catastrophe will unfold from here, and what the consequences will be for the future shape of the EU, no one can predict. Even the Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso, has suggested that a collapse of the euro would inevitably call into question the survival of “the Union” itself.
One faint consolation in recent months has been the sight (as broadcast on YouTube) of Nigel Farage, leader of Ukip and of the Freedom and Democracy group in the European Parliament, repeatedly standing up in its front row to rub in the inescapable realities of this disaster only a few feet from those currently responsible for it – Barroso, President Van Rompuy and the leaders of the other political groupings in the parliament. These deflated apparatchiks simply stare ahead, dead-eyed and stony-faced, knowing just how powerless they are in the face of the unfolding tragedy.
We must not forget, however, that, when it comes to nations running up a debt out of control, our own Government is still having to borrow an additional £2.5 billion every week, just to fund its own overspending – which, despite all talk of “cuts”, still races upwards. Any moment now, our own national debt will top the £1 trillion mark, having more than doubled in six years. However damaging a disintegration of the euro may be to our economy in 2012, we also face a crisis we have brought upon ourselves – one for which our Government has no more of a real answer than do the impotent rulers of the eurozone.
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We are left in an equally insoluble mess by the ebbing away of what we can now see was the greatest and most damaging scare-story in history: the belief that the world was threatened with catastrophic warming by human emissions of carbon dioxide.
In the 20 years since the scare was launched, global man-made CO2 emissions have risen by 50 per cent. But at the end of 2011, global temperatures measured by Nasa satellites stood barely a tenth of a degree Celsius higher than their average throughout the 32 years since satellite measurements began – far lower than the projected warming. The computer models on which the scare relied have proved so wrong that it is incomprehensible how they were ever taken seriously.
Hardly surprisingly, in 2011 any attempt to get global agreement on drastic meaures to meet this supposed threat finally expired, as the third mammoth UN conference in as many years fizzled out in Durban. There is no chance that China, India, Brazil, Russia or even the US will agree to a replacement for the failed Kyoto Protocol – not when China alone, with its coal-fired power stations, is increasing its CO2 emissions each year by an amount greater than the UK’s entire annual output.
On all sides, mad schemes dreamed up to meet this imaginary crisis are falling apart. The EU’s carbon trading scheme is collapsing, The dream of solar power is disintegrating, as country after country slashes its subsidies, and firms set up to cash in on the bonanza close in droves (5,000 in Germany alone). Evaporating likewise is the fantasy of “carbon capture and storage” – CO2 from power stations being piped away, at vast expense, and buried in holes in the ground.
More and more, this leaves Britain isolated in a mad little bubble of its own, the only country in the world committed by law to the completely unrealisable goal of cutting CO2 emissions by 80 per cent within 40 years.
On this very day, January 1, the EU is imposing a tax on airline flights which, on top of the Air Passenger Duty, when George Osborne raises it yet again in April, will bring the tax for a British family of four flying to Florida to £344.
Next year, Mr Osborne is to impose a “carbon floor price” of £16 on every ton of CO2 emitted by British industry, when the price of “carbon” under the EU’s emissions trading scheme has collapsed to just £5.40. Not only will Osborne’s tax do serious damage to the competitiveness of British industry, it will add £3 billion a year to the cost of our electricity. This will rise within eight years to £5 billion, which alone will add 25 per cent to all our bills.
Meanwhile, utterly lost in his own green dreamworld, the man supposedly in charge of energy policy, Chris Huhne (below), babbles about chequering thousands of square miles of our countryside and our coastal waters with a further 32,000 crazily expensive and useless windmills. It is a vision so insane that one cannot imagine why men in white coats have not already hauled him off – rather more expeditiously than the Essex police who, we are told, wish to see him prosecuted for perverting the course of justice over an alleged traffic offence.
Even if Huhne’s pipedream could be achieved (it is technically out of the question), he still has not grasped that it would be necessary to pay billions of pounds more to build dozens of grown-up gas-fired power stations, as essential back-up for those still days that render the energy contributions of windmills all too frequently derisory. Something that we can predict with certainty is not going to happen in 2012 is any trace of sanity on these matters entering this absurdly dangerous man’s charmless head.
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