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I asked one of my more learned friends of long standing and fellow memo reader for his thoughts regarding the upcoming election and this is how he responded.
My friend was a practicing attorney, is currently an administrative academician and has a variety of well placed contacts.
"My take is that both candidates have huge hurdles to overcome.
Romney was beat up pretty badly in the primaries. He showed staying power and resiliency - also commitment and ability to go the distance with energy. But he has a way to go to establish his credibility when it comes to his underlying principles. I had always thought of him as a moderate that could work both sides of the aisle well and pragmatically, but he may owe too much to the right wing of his party to persuade the mainstream electorate -or at least the growing independent voters - of this.
As for Obama, I believe he has been strengthened during the primary season, but it is not easy to see how he can overcome the effect of the economy on this election. I do not see the economy growing stronger over the next half year. If the election were held today, I believe he would win. But an incumbent tends to win or lose on the basis of the unemployment rate, health of the economy, and trend lines in economic indicators, which are likely to weaken.
I don't guess that this is a very original prognostication, but these seem to me to be the big factors, not the social issues and not foreign policy, on which many of those on the right give Obama credit, notwithstanding his less than firm position on Israel and Iran. I do not think that family issues or race will play as big an issue as others do, mostly because both men have strong families and Obama now has a record to run on, for better or for worse.
Interestingly, my take is that both men have an issue of aloofness from the electorate, and I do not think Romney compares unfavorably in this area. Obama has a soaring rhetorical capacity, but Romney has a better touch with his more direct, common speech - notwithstanding his notorious reputation for not being able to connect with 'everyman'.
Neither man is prone to making mistakes, so I doubt the selection of VPs will make a huge difference, and there is less likelihood that we will be distracted by gaffs, errors, and major embarrassments, however strongly pro or con any may feel about the fundamental differences between the two men. Nor do I think money will be the deciding factor as both will command obscenely large war chests (which between them alone could solve a number of the nation's financial wows, if only we had a much shorter campaign cycle and the will to spend our personal funds on alternative priorities.
Oh yes, I should add that I think it will make a big difference which of the two can bring out his party's base. Both are vulnerable right now, neither being as inspirational as the party die-hards would wish, but at this time I would give Obama the edge there. Over time, I'd be more cautious in this prediction as Republicans have historically been the the more successful in closing ranks around their candidate. Whether that would still hold true today, Who Knows?!"
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Julia the composite woman!
Amazing how Liberals can stereotype and get away with it because they are a special and protected species!
Yes candidate Warren, all Indians have high cheek bones just like all Jews have big noses and all black women have large buttocks kind of thing. Warren got away with it because she immediately accused her opponent of taking legal advantage of an existing Obama law which he states he is willing to eliminate.
Liberals can be hypocritical and the press and media look the other way. Oh well, bias is a virus that pollutes our nation just as much as ragweed is the cause of allergic reactions.(See 2 below.)
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Friday's market action suggests concerns caused by economic and political uncertainty and a less than coherent foreign policy have finally begun to weigh on investor sentiment.
It has been evident for a while we are in a less than auspicious recovery mode. Employment is improving but not at a rate that bodes well for a rapid recovery in consumerism. Housing is bottoming but still far too many homeowners are under water and the banking system has much more recognition work ahead.
Iran presses forward with its nuclear development and Netanyahu is calling for new elections, perhaps to strengthen his hand should he choose to attack Iran. Syria continues to kill its citizens and more recently some of its students.
China and the U.S. continue to work through a relationship that is contentious but necessary and will be for the foreseeable. The U.N. proceeds down the 'yellow' brick road of ineffective appeasement.
Lies abound polluting the very air we breathe as politicians gear up for telling their version of the truth.
Nothing meaningful in a legislative sense is likely during the silly season preceding the election but then nothing meaningful is likely after the election either because politicians are basically incapable of doing what needs to be done, ie visiting pain. Europe is tanking after having flirted with austerity and pain and seems on the verge of reverting to policies that bankrupted them in the first place.
Until the market sorts out these various conflicting forces, 'The Supremes' decide the constitutionality of 'Obamascare' and The Fed decides whether it will resort to more stimuli (QE3 - 4 etc) the markets should continue to roll with the punch and, for the moment, pursue a downward course testing various technical underpinnings.
My thinking is, remain on the sidelines until the air clears, We must work through the necessity of de-leveraging and that means more notches in the ' patience belt ' particularly in view of the fact we have decided to take on more water (debt) in order to float our sinking ship!
But then what do I know after 52 years trying to figure out what investor's think! (See 3, 3a and an edited version of 3b below.)
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France's election will be revealing and could point the way. Does the West still have what it takes to return to sanity - political and financial? (See 4 below.)
Can we learn anything from it? (See 4a below.)
Can we learn anything from it? (See 4a below.)
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Iran readies! Obama establishes another commission! (See 5 and 5a below.)
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Is Obama finally getting vetted? If so, will voters learn anything that will give them insight and possibly change their view? Stay tuned. (See 6 below.)
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Twenty "Only In America's" from a friend and fellow memo reader who, obviously, is fed up with the hypocrisy of Liberals etc.
As President Lothario once said: 'I feel your pain!' (See 7 below.)
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Is Obama finally getting vetted? If so, will voters learn anything that will give them insight and possibly change their view? Stay tuned. (See 6 below.)
---
Twenty "Only In America's" from a friend and fellow memo reader who, obviously, is fed up with the hypocrisy of Liberals etc.
As President Lothario once said: 'I feel your pain!' (See 7 below.)
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1)Johns�Hopkins Update�
This is an extremely good article.
Everyone should read it.
AFTER YEARS OF TELLING PEOPLE CHEMOTHERAPY IS THE ONLY WAY TO TRY ('TRY', BEING THE KEY WORD) TO ELIMINATE CANCER,�JOHNS�HOPKINS IS FINALLY STARTING TO TELL YOU�THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE WAY
Cancer Update from Johns Hopkins :
1.�Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer�
Cells do not show up in the standard tests until they have
Multiplied to a few billion. When doctors tell cancer patients
That there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after�
Treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the
Cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable
Size.
2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in a�
person's lifetime.
3.�When the person's immune system�is strong the cancer�
Cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and
Forming tumors.
4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has
Nutritional deficiencies. These could be due to genetic,
But also to�environmental,�food�and lifestyle factors.
5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies,�changing
Diet�to eat more adequately and healthy, 4-5 times/day
And by including supplements will strengthen the immune system.
6. Chemotherapy�involves poisoning�the rapidly-growing
Cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells
In the bone marrow, gastrointestinal tract etc., and can�
Cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs etc.
7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells�also�burns, scars�
And damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.
8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often
Reduce tumor size.
However prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more tumor destruction.
9. When the body has too much toxic burden from
Chemotherapy and radiation the immune system is either
Compromised or destroyed, hence the person can succumb
To various kinds of infections and complications.
10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to
Mutate and become resistant and difficult to destroy.
Surgery can also cause cancer cells to spread to other sites.
11. An effective way to battle cancer is to starve the cancer
Cells by not feeding it with the foods it needs to multiply.�
*CANCER CELLS FEED ON:�
A. Sugar substitutes like�NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, etc. Are made
With Aspartame and it is harmful. A better natural substitute
Would be Manuka honey or molasses, but only in very small
Amounts.�Table salt�has a chemical added to make it white in
Color Better alternative is Bragg's aminos or�sea salt.
B.�Milk�causes the body to produce mucus, especially in the
Gastro-intestinal tract.�Cancer feeds on mucus. By cutting off milk and substituting with unsweetened soy milk cancer cells are being starved.
C. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment.�A meat-based
Diet�is acidic�and it is best to eat fish, and a little other meat,
Like chicken. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.
D. A diet made of�80%�fresh vegetables and juice, whole
Grains, seeds, nuts and a little fruits help put the body into
An�alkaline environment. About 20% can be from cooked
Food including beans. Fresh vegetable juices provide live
Enzymes that are easily absorbed and reach down to
Cellular levels within 15 minutes to nourish and enhance
Growth of healthy cells. To obtain live enzymes for building
Healthy cells try and drink fresh vegetable juice (most
Vegetables including bean sprouts) and eat some raw
Vegetables 2 or 3 times a day.�Enzymes are destroyed�at
Temperatures of 104 degrees F (40 degrees C)..
E. Avoid�coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high
Caffeine�Green tea�is a better alternative and has cancer
Fighting properties. Water-best to drink purified water, or
Filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in tap
Water. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it.�
12.�Meat protein�is difficult to digest and requires a lot of
Digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the
Intestines becomes putrefied and leads to more toxic buildup.
13. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering. By
Refraining from or eating less meat it frees more enzymes
to attack the protein walls of cancer cells and allows the
body's killer cells to destroy the cancer cells.
14.�Some supplements�build up the immune system
(IP6, Flor-ssence, Essiac, anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals,
EFAs etc.) to enable the bodies own killer cells to destroy
cancer cells..�Other supplements�like vitamin E are known
to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body's
normal method of disposing of damaged, unwanted, or
unneeded cells.
15. Cancer is a disease of the�mind, body,�and spirit.
A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer warrior
be a survivor.�Anger, un-forgiveness and bitterness�put
the body into a stressful and acidic environment. Learn to
have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life.
16. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated
environment.�Exercising daily, and�deep breathing�help to
get more oxygen down to the cellular level. Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy cancer cells.
1.�No plastic containers�in micro.�
2.�No water bottles�in freezer.�
3.�No plastic wrap�in microwave..�
Johns Hopkins has recently sent this out in its newsletters. This information is being circulated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as well. Dioxin chemicals cause cancer, especially breast cancer.�Dioxins are highly poisonous�to the cells of our bodies. Don't freeze your plastic bottles with water in them as this releases dioxins from the plastic. Recently, Dr Edward Fujimoto, Wellness Program Manager at Castle Hospital , was on a TV program to explain this health hazard. He talked about dioxins and how bad they are for us. He said that we should not be heating our food in the microwave using plastic containers. This especially applies to foods that contain fat. He said that the combination of fat, high heat, and plastics releases dioxin into the food and ultimately into the cells of the body. Instead, he recommends using glass, such as Corning Ware, Pyrex or ceramic containers for heating food. You get the same results, only without the dioxin. So such things as TV dinners, instant ramen and soups, etc., should be removed from the container and heated in something else. Paper isn't bad but you don't know what is in the paper. It's just safer to use tempered glass, Corning Ware, etc. He reminded us that a while ago some of the fast food restaurants moved away from the foam containers to paper The dioxin problem is one of the reasons.
Also, he pointed out that�plastic wrap, such as Saran, is just as dangerous when placed over foods to be cooked in the microwave. As the food is nuked, the high heat causes poisonous toxins to actually melt out of the plastic wrap and drip into the food. Cover food with a paper towel instead.
1a)Cancer Update Email -- It's a Hoax!
Another hoax email that has been circulating since 2004 regarding plastic containers, bottles, wrap claiming that heat releases dioxins which cause cancer also was not published by Johns Hopkins. More information from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Mythbusters: Please help curb the spread of this hoax by sending a link to this page to individuals that forward you this email.
The gist of this viral email is that cancer therapies of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy do not work against the disease and people should instead choose a variety of dietary strategies.
Traditional therapies, such as surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, work. The evidence is the millions of cancer survivors in the United States today who are alive because of these therapies. We recognize that treatments don’t work in every patient, or sometimes work for awhile and then stop working, and there are some cancers that are more difficult to cure than others. These problems are the focus of ongoing cancer research.
We’ll go through each statement in the email hoax and provide real responses from Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center experts.
There is no single or standard test for cancer. There are ways to screen for certain cancers with tests such as colonoscopy for colon cancer, mammography for breast cancer, PSA for prostate cancer, and the Pap smear for cervical cancer, and these tests can detect cancers in a very early and curable stage. For many cancers, there currently are no screening tests, and they are diagnosed when they begin to cause symptoms.
Diaz and other Kimmel Cancer Center researchers are working on new tests that detect abnormal DNA shed by cancer cells into blood and body fluids and have the ability to find cancers before they cause any symptoms. Approaches like this could lead to a broad-based screening test for cancer.
Tests like these also are being used to detect cancer recurrences and malignant cells left behind following surgery, and can find cancers that are not detectable under the microscope or in x-rays.
Other researchers are studying cancer stem cells. They are stealth cells that make up just a tiny fraction of a tumor. While small in number, investigators believe they may be the cells that drive certain cancers and lead to cancer recurrence. Therapies that target these cells are now being tested in clinical trials.
A team of our breast cancer researchers has developed a method that could make it possible to detect breast cancer from the DNA contained in a single drop of blood.
But, while evasive cancer cells are a challenge and the focus of ongoing research, it does not mean, as the email contends, that all patients, even those treated successfully for cancer, have cancers-in-waiting—undetectable but still there. People are treated and completely cured of cancer everyday.
Surgery is the first line of treatment for many types of cancer. It does not cause cancer to spread. Cancers spread to other tissues and organs as a tumor progresses and cancer cells break away from the original tumor and travel through the bloodstream to other body sites.
While there is such a thing as tumors that produce mucus, the mucus made by a tumor does not result from drinking milk. And, eating less meat, while a good choice for cancer prevention, does not free up enzymes to attack cancer cells, explains cancer prevention and control expert Elizabeth Platz.
Moderation is key, says Platz. As part of a balanced diet, sugar, salt, milk, coffee, tea, meat, and chocolate—the foods the “Update” calls into question—are all safe choices, she says. The real concern with many of these, particularly sugar, is that it adds calories to a diet and can lead to obesity, and obesity is a major risk factor for cancer. A balanced nutritious diet, healthy weight, physical activity, and avoiding alcoholic drinks may prevent as many as 1/3 of all cancers. Platz recommends eating at least five servings of fruits and vegetables per day and limiting red and processed meats, like hot dogs.
Several Johns Hopkins experts participated in the World Cancer Research Fund - American Institute for Cancer Research report Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer: A Global Perspective, published in November 2007, which is considered by cancer prevention experts to be an authoritative source of information on diet, physical activity and cancer. Their recommendations for cancer prevention and for good health in general are:
How stress, faith, and other factors influence this is largely unknown. We would like people to be happy, loving, and stress free, simply because it is a nice way to live and can contribute to an overall feeling of well being, says Platz. There is no evidence, however, that a person prevents or causes cancer based on his or her state of mind.
Still, we understand that a cancer diagnosis can make patients and families feel stressed and anxious, and these are not pleasant feelings. So, we offer extensive patient and family services, including a cancer counseling center, pain and palliative care program, chaplain services and a meditation chapel, an image recovery center, and the Art of Healing art and music program.
On its Web site, the American Cancer Society includes the following statement about oxygen therapy, “Available scientific evidence does not support claims that putting oxygen-releasing chemicals into a person's body is effective in treating cancer. It may even be dangerous. There have been reports of patient deaths from this method.” Read more
.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Martin Luther King dreamed of a day when men would be judged not on the color of their skin but on the content of their great-great-great-grandmother’s wedding license application. And now it’s here!
Have you dated a composite woman? They're America's hottest new demographic. As with all the really cool stuff, Barack Obama was doing it years before the rest of us. In "Dreams from My Father," the world's all-time most-unread bestseller, he spills the inside dope on his composite white girlfriend:
"When we got back to the car she started crying. She couldn't be black, she said. She would if she could, but she couldn't. She could only be herself, and wasn't that enough..."
Then there's "Elizabeth," a 62-year-old Democratic Senate candidate from Massachusetts. Like Barack's white girlfriend, she couldn't be black. She would if she could, but she couldn't. But she could be a composite – a white woman and an Indian woman, all mixed up in one! Not Indian in the sense of Ashton Kutcher putting on brownface makeup and a fake-Indian accent in his amusing new commercial for the hip lo-fat snack Popchips. But Indian in the sense of checking the "Are you Native American?" box on the Association of American Law Schools form, which Elizabeth Warren did for much of her adult life. According to her, she's part Cherokee and part Delaware. Not in the Joe Biden sense, I hasten to add, but Delaware in the sense of the Indian tribe named in honor of the home state of Big F—kin' Chief Dances With Plugs.
How does she know she's a Cherokee maiden? Well, she cites her grandfather's "high cheekbones," and says the Indian stuff is part of her family "lore." Which was evidently good enough for Harvard Lore School when they were looking to rack up a few affirmative-action credits. The former Obama Special Advisor to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and former Chairperson of the Congressional Oversight Panel now says that "I listed myself in the directory in the hopes that it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group, something that might happen with people who are like I am," and certainly not for personal career advancement or anything like that. Like everyone else, she was shocked, shocked to discover that, as The Boston Herald reported, "Harvard Law School officials listed Warren as Native American in the '90s, when the school was under fierce fire for their faculty's lack of diversity."
So did the University of Texas, and the University of Pennsylvania. With the impertinent jackanapes of the press querying the bona fides of Harvard Lore School's first Native American female professor, the Warren campaign got to work and eventually turned up a great-great-great-grandmother designated as Cherokee in the online transcription of a marriage application of 1894.
Alas, the actual original marriage license does not list Great-Great-Great-Gran'ma as Cherokee, but let's cut Elizabeth Fauxcahontas Crockagawea Warren some slack here. She couldn't be black. She would if she could, but she couldn't. But she could be 1/32nd Cherokee, and maybe get invited to a luncheon with others of her kind – "people who are like I am," 31/32nds white – and they can all sit around celebrating their diversity together. She is a testament to America's melting pot, composite pot, composting pot, whatever.
Just in case you're having difficulty keeping up with all these Composite-Americans, George Zimmerman, the son of a Peruvian mestiza, is the embodiment of endemic white racism and the reincarnation of Bull Connor, but Elizabeth Warren, the great-great-great-granddaughter of someone who might possibly have been listed as Cherokee on an application for a marriage license, is a heartwarming testimony to how minorities are shattering the glass ceiling in Harvard Yard. George Zimmerman, redneck; Elizabeth Warren, redskin. Under the Third Reich's Nuremberg Laws, Ms. Warren would have been classified as Aryan and Mr. Zimmerman as non-Aryan. Now it's the other way round. Progress!
Coincidentally, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission last week issued an "Enforcement Guidance" limiting the rights of employers to take into account the criminal convictions and arrest records of job applicants because of the "disparate impact" the consideration of such matters might have on minorities. That's great news, isn't it? So Harvard Law School can't ask Elizabeth Warren if she's ever held up a liquor store because, if they did, the faculty might be even less Cherokee than it is.
But, if conservatives are simply born that way, shouldn't they be covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission?
Aw, don't waste your time. Elizabeth Warren will be ahead of you checking the "right-wing madman" box on the grounds that she gets her high cheekbones and minimal facial hair from Genghis Khan. And "Julia" will be saying she was born conservative but thanks to Obama's new Headcase Start program was able to get ideological reassignment surgery. And Barack's imaginary girlfriend will be telling him that she'd be left if she could, but she's right so she can't, but she'd love to be left. So he left her.
STATEMENT: EMAIL HOAX REGARDING CANCER
Information falsely attributed to Johns Hopkins called, "CANCER UPDATE FROM JOHN HOPKINS" describes properties of cancer cells and suggests ways of preventing cancer. Johns Hopkins did not publish the information, which often is an email attachment, nor do we endorse its contents. The email also contains an incorrect spelling of our institution as "John" Hopkins; whereas, the correct spelling is "Johns" Hopkins. For more information about cancer, please read the information on our web site or visit the National Cancer Institute's web site at www.cancer.gov. Please help combat the spread of thishoax by letting others know of this statement.Another hoax email that has been circulating since 2004 regarding plastic containers, bottles, wrap claiming that heat releases dioxins which cause cancer also was not published by Johns Hopkins. More information from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Mythbusters: Please help curb the spread of this hoax by sending a link to this page to individuals that forward you this email.
The Truth about the "Cancer Update" Email
It has become such a problem, that the National Cancer Institute, American Cancer Society, and individual cancer centers like the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have posted warnings on their Web sites. Emails offering easy remedies for avoiding and curing cancer are the latest Web-influenced trend. To gain credibility, the anonymous authors falsely attribute their work to respected research institutions like Johns Hopkins. This is the case with the so-called “Cancer Update from Johns Hopkins.”The gist of this viral email is that cancer therapies of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy do not work against the disease and people should instead choose a variety of dietary strategies.
Traditional therapies, such as surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, work. The evidence is the millions of cancer survivors in the United States today who are alive because of these therapies. We recognize that treatments don’t work in every patient, or sometimes work for awhile and then stop working, and there are some cancers that are more difficult to cure than others. These problems are the focus of ongoing cancer research.
We’ll go through each statement in the email hoax and provide real responses from Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center experts.
Email hoax contentions #1 and 2: Everyone Has Cancer Cells
Cancer is a genetic disease resulting from a variety of mutations and alterations either inherited from our parents or, more commonly, acquired over time due to environmental exposures and behaviors, such as smoking and poor diet. These alterations turn off important cell growth regulators allowing cells to continually divide unchecked, explains Luis Diaz, a clinician-scientist in Ludwig Center for Cancer Genetics. This type of cell is called a malignant or cancer cell. Among the trillions of cells in the human body, inevitably everyone has some abnormal or atypical cells that possess some of the characteristics of cancer cells, most resolve themselves and never result in cancer, says Diaz.There is no single or standard test for cancer. There are ways to screen for certain cancers with tests such as colonoscopy for colon cancer, mammography for breast cancer, PSA for prostate cancer, and the Pap smear for cervical cancer, and these tests can detect cancers in a very early and curable stage. For many cancers, there currently are no screening tests, and they are diagnosed when they begin to cause symptoms.
Diaz and other Kimmel Cancer Center researchers are working on new tests that detect abnormal DNA shed by cancer cells into blood and body fluids and have the ability to find cancers before they cause any symptoms. Approaches like this could lead to a broad-based screening test for cancer.
Tests like these also are being used to detect cancer recurrences and malignant cells left behind following surgery, and can find cancers that are not detectable under the microscope or in x-rays.
Other researchers are studying cancer stem cells. They are stealth cells that make up just a tiny fraction of a tumor. While small in number, investigators believe they may be the cells that drive certain cancers and lead to cancer recurrence. Therapies that target these cells are now being tested in clinical trials.
A team of our breast cancer researchers has developed a method that could make it possible to detect breast cancer from the DNA contained in a single drop of blood.
But, while evasive cancer cells are a challenge and the focus of ongoing research, it does not mean, as the email contends, that all patients, even those treated successfully for cancer, have cancers-in-waiting—undetectable but still there. People are treated and completely cured of cancer everyday.
Email hoax contention #3: A Strong Immune System Destroys Cancer
When it comes to cancer and the immune system, it is not a matter of strong or weak as the fictional report contends, but rather an issue of recognition. "The immune system simply does not recognize cancer. In its complexity, the cancer cell has learned to disguise itself to the immune system as a normal, healthy cell. Cells infected with viruses or bacteria send out danger signals setting the immune system in action. But cancer cells do not, explains Elizabeth Jaffee, co-director of cancer immunology and leading expert on cancer and the immune system." By deciphering the methods cancer cells use to make them invisible to the immune system, Jaffee and team have developed cancer vaccines that have successfully triggered immune reactions against prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, leukemia, and multiple myeloma.Email hoax contention #4 and #5: Cancer is caused by Nutritional Deficiencies and Supplements Will Correct Them
Dietary habits and lifestyle choices, such as smoking, contribute to the development of many human cancers, says Kimmel Cancer Center director William Nelson. Our experts recommend a balanced diet (see response #11) as a way of reducing cancer risk. In terms of supplements, Nelson points out that while they may help mediate vitamin deficiencies, taking doses above what the body needs provides no added benefit.Email hoax contentions #6, 7, 8, 9, and 10: Chemotherapy and Radiation Therapy Harms Normal Cells. Surgery Causes Cancer to Spread
Chemotherapy and radiation therapy kills cancer cells with remarkable selectivity, says Nelson. There are some temporary and reversible side effects common to cancer therapies, including hair loss and low blood counts. Limiting and managing these side effects is an integral part of treatment.Surgery is the first line of treatment for many types of cancer. It does not cause cancer to spread. Cancers spread to other tissues and organs as a tumor progresses and cancer cells break away from the original tumor and travel through the bloodstream to other body sites.
Email hoax contentions #11, 12, 13, and 14: Cancers Feed on Certain Foods
The premise is that cancer cells feed on certain foods, and if a person refrains from eating these foods, the cancer will die. According to our experts, a poor diet and obesity associated with a poor diet is a risk factor for the development of cancer. However, there is no evidence that certain foods alter the environment of an existing cancer, at the cellular level, and cause it to either die or grow.While there is such a thing as tumors that produce mucus, the mucus made by a tumor does not result from drinking milk. And, eating less meat, while a good choice for cancer prevention, does not free up enzymes to attack cancer cells, explains cancer prevention and control expert Elizabeth Platz.
Moderation is key, says Platz. As part of a balanced diet, sugar, salt, milk, coffee, tea, meat, and chocolate—the foods the “Update” calls into question—are all safe choices, she says. The real concern with many of these, particularly sugar, is that it adds calories to a diet and can lead to obesity, and obesity is a major risk factor for cancer. A balanced nutritious diet, healthy weight, physical activity, and avoiding alcoholic drinks may prevent as many as 1/3 of all cancers. Platz recommends eating at least five servings of fruits and vegetables per day and limiting red and processed meats, like hot dogs.
Several Johns Hopkins experts participated in the World Cancer Research Fund - American Institute for Cancer Research report Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer: A Global Perspective, published in November 2007, which is considered by cancer prevention experts to be an authoritative source of information on diet, physical activity and cancer. Their recommendations for cancer prevention and for good health in general are:
- Be as lean as possible without becoming underweight.
- Be physically active for at least 30 minutes every day.
- Avoid sugary drinks. Limit consumption of energy-dense foods (particularly processed foods high in added sugar, or low in fiber, or high in fat).
- Eat more of a variety of vegetables, fruits, whole grains and legumes such as beans.
- Limit consumption of red meats (such as beef, pork and lamb) and avoid processed meats.
- If consumed at all, limit alcoholic drinks to 2 for men and 1 for women a day.
- Limit consumption of salty foods and foods processed with salt (sodium).
- Don't use supplements to protect against cancer.
Email hoax contention #15: Cancer is a Disease of Mind, Body, and Spirit
Cancer is a disease caused by genetic alterations. Many times, these alterations occur through our own behaviors—cigarette smoking, a poor and unbalanced diet, virus exposures, and sunburns, says cancer prevention and control expert John Groopman.How stress, faith, and other factors influence this is largely unknown. We would like people to be happy, loving, and stress free, simply because it is a nice way to live and can contribute to an overall feeling of well being, says Platz. There is no evidence, however, that a person prevents or causes cancer based on his or her state of mind.
Still, we understand that a cancer diagnosis can make patients and families feel stressed and anxious, and these are not pleasant feelings. So, we offer extensive patient and family services, including a cancer counseling center, pain and palliative care program, chaplain services and a meditation chapel, an image recovery center, and the Art of Healing art and music program.
Email hoax contention #16: Oxygen Kills Cancer Cells
Platz recommends regular exercise as a part of any healthy lifestyle, but says there is no evidence that breathing deeply or receiving oxygen therapy prevents cancer.On its Web site, the American Cancer Society includes the following statement about oxygen therapy, “Available scientific evidence does not support claims that putting oxygen-releasing chemicals into a person's body is effective in treating cancer. It may even be dangerous. There have been reports of patient deaths from this method.” Read more
2) Mark Steyn: Fauxcahontas and the melting pot
Martin Luther King dreamed of a day when men would be judged not on the color of their skin but on the content of their great-great-great-grandmother’s wedding license application. And now it’s here!
Have you dated a composite woman? They're America's hottest new demographic. As with all the really cool stuff, Barack Obama was doing it years before the rest of us. In "Dreams from My Father," the world's all-time most-unread bestseller, he spills the inside dope on his composite white girlfriend:
"When we got back to the car she started crying. She couldn't be black, she said. She would if she could, but she couldn't. She could only be herself, and wasn't that enough..."
But being yourself is never going to be enough in the new composite America. Last week, in an election campaign ad, Barack revealed his latest composite girlfriend – "Julia." She's worse than the old New York girlfriend. She can't even be herself. In fact, she can't be anything without massive assistance from Barack every step of the way, from his "Head Start" program at age 3 through to his Social Security benefits at the age of 67. Everything good in her life she owes to him. When she writes her memoir, it will be thanks to a subvention from the Federal Publishing Assistance Program for Chronically Dependent Women but you'll love it:Sweet Dreams From My Sugar Daddy. She's what the lawyers would call "non composite mentis." She's not competent to do a single thing for herself – and, from Barack's point of view, that's exactly what he's looking for in a woman, if only for a one-night stand on a Tuesday in early November.
Then there's "Elizabeth," a 62-year-old Democratic Senate candidate from Massachusetts. Like Barack's white girlfriend, she couldn't be black. She would if she could, but she couldn't. But she could be a composite – a white woman and an Indian woman, all mixed up in one! Not Indian in the sense of Ashton Kutcher putting on brownface makeup and a fake-Indian accent in his amusing new commercial for the hip lo-fat snack Popchips. But Indian in the sense of checking the "Are you Native American?" box on the Association of American Law Schools form, which Elizabeth Warren did for much of her adult life. According to her, she's part Cherokee and part Delaware. Not in the Joe Biden sense, I hasten to add, but Delaware in the sense of the Indian tribe named in honor of the home state of Big F—kin' Chief Dances With Plugs.
How does she know she's a Cherokee maiden? Well, she cites her grandfather's "high cheekbones," and says the Indian stuff is part of her family "lore." Which was evidently good enough for Harvard Lore School when they were looking to rack up a few affirmative-action credits. The former Obama Special Advisor to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and former Chairperson of the Congressional Oversight Panel now says that "I listed myself in the directory in the hopes that it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group, something that might happen with people who are like I am," and certainly not for personal career advancement or anything like that. Like everyone else, she was shocked, shocked to discover that, as The Boston Herald reported, "Harvard Law School officials listed Warren as Native American in the '90s, when the school was under fierce fire for their faculty's lack of diversity."
So did the University of Texas, and the University of Pennsylvania. With the impertinent jackanapes of the press querying the bona fides of Harvard Lore School's first Native American female professor, the Warren campaign got to work and eventually turned up a great-great-great-grandmother designated as Cherokee in the online transcription of a marriage application of 1894.
Hallelujah! In the old racist America, we had quadroons and octoroons. But in the new post-racial America, we have – hang on, let me get out my calculator – duoettrigintaroons! Martin Luther King dreamed of a day when men would be judged not on the color of their skin but on the content of their great-great-great-grandmother's wedding license application. And now it's here! You can read all about it in Elizabeth Warren's memoir of her struggles to come to terms with her racial identity,Dreams From My Great-Great-Great-Grandmother.
Alas, the actual original marriage license does not list Great-Great-Great-Gran'ma as Cherokee, but let's cut Elizabeth Fauxcahontas Crockagawea Warren some slack here. She couldn't be black. She would if she could, but she couldn't. But she could be 1/32nd Cherokee, and maybe get invited to a luncheon with others of her kind – "people who are like I am," 31/32nds white – and they can all sit around celebrating their diversity together. She is a testament to America's melting pot, composite pot, composting pot, whatever.
Just in case you're having difficulty keeping up with all these Composite-Americans, George Zimmerman, the son of a Peruvian mestiza, is the embodiment of endemic white racism and the reincarnation of Bull Connor, but Elizabeth Warren, the great-great-great-granddaughter of someone who might possibly have been listed as Cherokee on an application for a marriage license, is a heartwarming testimony to how minorities are shattering the glass ceiling in Harvard Yard. George Zimmerman, redneck; Elizabeth Warren, redskin. Under the Third Reich's Nuremberg Laws, Ms. Warren would have been classified as Aryan and Mr. Zimmerman as non-Aryan. Now it's the other way round. Progress!
Coincidentally, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission last week issued an "Enforcement Guidance" limiting the rights of employers to take into account the criminal convictions and arrest records of job applicants because of the "disparate impact" the consideration of such matters might have on minorities. That's great news, isn't it? So Harvard Law School can't ask Elizabeth Warren if she's ever held up a liquor store because, if they did, the faculty might be even less Cherokee than it is.
My colleague Jonah Goldberg wrote the other day about Chris Mooney, author of "The Republican Brain," and other scientific chaps who argue that conservatives suffer from a genetic cognitive impairment that causes us to favor small government. In other words, we're born stupid. So, thanks to gene sequencing, we now know why conservatives aren't as smart as, say, Pete Stark, the nigh-on-half-a-century Democrat congressman who believes that Solyndra, which is based in his district, is an automobile manufacturer: "I wish I had a big enough expense allowance to get one of those new 'S's' that Solyndra's going to make down there, the electric car," he told The San Francisco Chronicle this week. "My 10-year-old is after me. He no longer wants a Porsche. He wants Dad to have an 'S' sedan." Pete sounds so out of it, you have to wonder if maybe he's 1/32nd Republican on his great-great-great-grandmother's side.
But, if conservatives are simply born that way, shouldn't they be covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission?
Aw, don't waste your time. Elizabeth Warren will be ahead of you checking the "right-wing madman" box on the grounds that she gets her high cheekbones and minimal facial hair from Genghis Khan. And "Julia" will be saying she was born conservative but thanks to Obama's new Headcase Start program was able to get ideological reassignment surgery. And Barack's imaginary girlfriend will be telling him that she'd be left if she could, but she's right so she can't, but she'd love to be left. So he left her.
Good thing the smart guys are running the joint.
©MARK STEYN
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3)The 2013 Fiscal Cliff Could Crush Stocks
Well, that was all the market needed to hear in order to rally. You see, investors know things are still rough. But if they get “more rough,” then the Fed will step in and help out the markets by printing money.
If the economy doesn’t get worse, then of course stocks would be OK in that scenario, too. So either way, it was the Fed’s way of trying to encourage stock buying going into the November election.
You see, if they can just get investors to keep things propped up on their own without stepping in, they’d prefer that route. But if they have to make good on their word and print money, they’ll do that, too.
So when all of this was revealed, the U.S. dollar broke its eight-month uptrend line. In fact, even over the last couple of months, the U.S. Dollar Index has been forming a triangular sideways consolidation. Let’s take a look at it below. (Article continues below chart.)
Click on chart to enlarge.
Of course, the Fed’s potential for QE3 was news enough to break this triangular pattern and send the dollar lower.
I believe the Fed wants to reflate assets like stocks. But what they’ll end up doing is causing more inflation more than anything. That’s bad news for the average consumer, but it’s good news for you and I that know how to play the Fed’s game.
You see, if the Fed prints more money, that’s going to send the dollar lower, and it’s going to send people heading toward “hard currencies” like gold and high yielding commodity-currencies like the Aussie dollar.
Both of these will be huge beneficiaries as the Fed sends along the next wave of inflation. Also, the Aussie dollar’s interest rate of 4.25 percent goes a long way toward fending off inflation, too.
So with gold you’re going to have some solid appreciation as the dollar falls and the next round of QE gets under way. But with the Aussie dollar, you’ll gain appreciation and interest. Both will do well in fighting off inflation’s effect upon your wealth.
Therefore the thing to do is not what “should” be done but what the Fed is “going” to do. They’re going to print money even though they shouldn’t. Therefore, you’ve got to play by the rules of that game and buy what benefits from money printing and inflation and shun what doesn’t.
The dollar will get undermined during this period, and assets that benefit from the rise of inflation like gold and the Aussie dollar will come out on top.
About the Author: Sean Hyman
Sean Hyman is a member of the Moneynews Financial Brain Trust.
Do the math on dividend taxes. Yields lower, stock prices lower—maybe by 30%.
By DONALD L. LUSKIN
Why doesn't the stock market, that most sensitive of economic barometers, seem to care that the U.S. economy faces a "fiscal cliff" at year-end? On Dec. 31, trillions of dollars in tax cuts will expire, trillions more in new tax hikes under ObamaCare will kick in, and a trillion in automatic spending cuts will begin. Yet stock prices are the highest in four years.
Maybe with the date still far away, the fiscal cliff just doesn't seem real. It's certainly being treated that way on both sides of the political divide. On the left, economists claim with a straight face that even huge tax hikes don't matter—a top tax rate as high as 70%, they claim, would have no chilling effects on top earners' incentives. On the right, they just as solemnly claim even a small rise in the top rate for high earners from today's 35% to the 39.6% scheduled for after year-end will bring about economic ruin.
So perhaps the stock market has been lulled into thinking these issues are merely abstract matters of theory to be hashed out by economists on both sides. What's the big deal, so long as Apple beats consensus earnings expectations again next quarter?
The big deal is that one key element at stake here is not a matter of theory at all—it's simple arithmetic. And it leads to the simple yet alarming conclusion that unless current law is amended before year-end, the stock market has to fall by at least 30%.
Corbis
It's all about how dividends are taxed—and the reality that we are facing the biggest single hike in dividend tax rates in history.
The market sets the price of a dividend-paying stock so that it will pay the after-tax yield required to attract capital. When the tax rate on dividends goes up, the after-tax yield necessarily goes down—to restore the after-tax yield to its required level, the stock price has to fall.
Please bear with us through an explanation that involves a little arithmetic. If you are an investor, this is important.
Consider a stock trading at $100 that pays a $10 dividend every year. Under current law, an investor pays a 15% tax on that dividend, so he gets to keep 85% of it, or $8.50. So the after-tax yield on that stock is 8.5%.
After year-end, under current law, the top dividend tax rate will rise to 43.4% from 15%. That's not only because the temporary low 15% rate granted under the 2001 Bush tax cuts will revert to the prior rate of 39.6%. In addition, a provision of ObamaCare slaps a 3.8% surtax on all forms of investment income, including dividends—the resulting total is 43.4%.
So on Jan. 1, an investor won't keep $8.50 of that dividend—he'll pay a 43.4% tax and keep only $5.66. Suddenly, a stock that yielded him 8.5% now yields only 5.66%.
If 8.5% was the after-tax yield that investors demanded in order to allocate their capital to that particular company, then 5.66% will not be sufficient. That company's stock price will have to fall until it once again offers an 8.5% after-tax yield.
Precisely, the stock price has to fall by the percentage difference between $8.50 and $5.66. It will therefore fall to $66.60 from $100—that's 33.4%. And it's also a good first approximation of how much the overall stock market will fall when dividend taxes rise to 43.4% from 15%.
This 33.4% figure is only an approximation, because investors such as pension funds don't pay taxes on dividends. About a quarter of all dividends are earned by individuals taxed at the top rate. Who's to say that these high-earning individuals aren't the so-called marginal investors who set stock prices?
And perhaps it's unfair to implicitly assume here that stock prices are determined entirely by dividend yields. But who's to say they are not? Even companies that pay no dividends may well be priced by markets in the expectation that dividends will be paid in the future.
To be sure, we can quibble about the exact amount—but not the direction. It's pretty much axiomatic: after-tax yields lower, stock prices lower.
All the same logic would apply to the increase in capital gains tax rates scheduled for year-end. With the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the advent of the ObamaCare surcharge, the top capital gains rate will rise to 23.8% from 15%.
The arithmetic for how much stocks will drop as a result is more complicated, because capital gains taxes are only paid when assets are eventually sold. But the effect on stock prices is the same—it's down.
The same logic also applies here to bonds, because at year-end the top tax rate on interest income will rise to 43.4% from 35%. According to our simple arithmetic, if the yield on a 10-year Treasury is 2% today, it would rise to 2.3% with next year's tax rates. That's a whole new version of the Laffer Curve, one in which higher taxes drive higher government debt service costs.
So just by the numbers, the fiscal cliff matters. Investors are wrong to blithely assume that the boys in Washington will somehow do the right thing and it will all work out in the end.
All these tax issues will have to get negotiated in the lame duck session of Congress after what is likely to be an unusually bitter election season. And it's highly likely that an increase in the statutory debt ceiling will have to be negotiated at the same time, in order to avoid a Treasury default—investors would be wise to remember what a near-death experience that was last August.
If there's a bargaining failure and the scheduled tax hikes on dividends aren't stopped, we'll be sorry we're spending so much political energy now debating about the "1%" and their supposed privileges. It's the 30% down in the stock market we ought be worrying about.
Mr. Luskin is chief investment officer at Trend Macrolytics LLC.
3a)The Next Bout of Inflation Just Began!
By Sean Hyman
Last Wednesday, the market got the confirmation of the backstop that it needed when the Fed announced the interest rate and then stated that if the economy got bad enough, they’d be willing to do QE3.
Well, that was all the market needed to hear in order to rally. You see, investors know things are still rough. But if they get “more rough,” then the Fed will step in and help out the markets by printing money.
If the economy doesn’t get worse, then of course stocks would be OK in that scenario, too. So either way, it was the Fed’s way of trying to encourage stock buying going into the November election.
You see, if they can just get investors to keep things propped up on their own without stepping in, they’d prefer that route. But if they have to make good on their word and print money, they’ll do that, too.
So when all of this was revealed, the U.S. dollar broke its eight-month uptrend line. In fact, even over the last couple of months, the U.S. Dollar Index has been forming a triangular sideways consolidation. Let’s take a look at it below. (Article continues below chart.)
Click on chart to enlarge.
Of course, the Fed’s potential for QE3 was news enough to break this triangular pattern and send the dollar lower.
I believe the Fed wants to reflate assets like stocks. But what they’ll end up doing is causing more inflation more than anything. That’s bad news for the average consumer, but it’s good news for you and I that know how to play the Fed’s game.
You see, if the Fed prints more money, that’s going to send the dollar lower, and it’s going to send people heading toward “hard currencies” like gold and high yielding commodity-currencies like the Aussie dollar.
So with gold you’re going to have some solid appreciation as the dollar falls and the next round of QE gets under way. But with the Aussie dollar, you’ll gain appreciation and interest. Both will do well in fighting off inflation’s effect upon your wealth.
Therefore the thing to do is not what “should” be done but what the Fed is “going” to do. They’re going to print money even though they shouldn’t. Therefore, you’ve got to play by the rules of that game and buy what benefits from money printing and inflation and shun what doesn’t.
The dollar will get undermined during this period, and assets that benefit from the rise of inflation like gold and the Aussie dollar will come out on top.
About the Author: Sean Hyman
Sean Hyman is a member of the Moneynews Financial Brain Trust.
3b)A Graphic Presentation
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/french_elections_virtue_the_debt_and_the_jewish_question.html#ixzz1u1TyRCHb
4a)What lessons should the U.S. draw from Europe’s debacle?
“The right argues we have to cut deficits now, or we’ll be like Greece,” says Tom Gallagher, a principal at the Scowcroft Group. “The left argues we can’t cut deficits now, or we’ll be like Europe.”
So, who’s right? Well, which entity do you think is more comparable to the United States? Greece? Europe? Neither?
I come down somewhere between “Europe” and “neither,” but it’s worth going through each contestant in turn.
Greece is a country of 11 million people. Geographically, it’s about the size of Louisiana. It doesn’t control its own currency, and its government spent years lying about its fiscal condition. After it joined the euro area in 2001, Greece went from paying about 7 percent interest on a 10-year bond to a bit more than 3 percent because investors assumed that its debt was backed by Germany and the European Central Bank. This encouraged profligacy (which led to the dishonesty) in Athens.
The assumption turned out to be wrong. When investors figured that out, they turned on Greece. Hard. With easy money no longer masking its problems, Greece’s economy was exposed for the mess it is. The World Economic Forum ranks it as the 90th most competitive country in the world, between Lebanon and El Salvador.
The United States, by contrast, is a country of 313 million. It controls its own currency, which is also the global reserve currency. The U.S. Treasury bond is the safest of safe assets. Even after a lengthy financial crisis, the World Economic Forum ranks the United States as the fifth most competitive economy in the world, and it’s bigger than the first four combined. Whatever the United States is, it’s not Greece.
Euro area’s flaws
So perhaps it’s Europe? Or at least the euro area? After all, the euro area is also big and controls its own currency. Likewise, the euro area was once considered a safe bet.
But the euro area is also a fledgling institution facing an existential crisis. No one knows whether it will be around in its current form in 10 more years — or even 10 more months. Its central bank seems more committed to forcing member countries to cut their deficits and reform their labor markets than to preserving the currency union itself.
The crisis has also exposed deep flaws in the basic structure of the alliance. The member countries increasingly despise and mistrust one another. Critical players in the drama — France and Greece — are on the verge of electing new governments that promise to radically renegotiate the terms of euro-area compacts. Meanwhile, Germany and the European Central Bank seem determined to impose a moralistic, debt-focused narrative on a crisis that’s better understood as a problem of capital flows and growth.
The United States has its problems. Although we can borrow for next to nothing and unemployment remains above 8 percent, U.S. leaders often seem more focused on debt than growth. The political system is increasingly gridlocked and dysfunctional. One of our two major parties is engulfed in a civil war driven by an insurgency that wants to radically redefine government functions, preferring, for instance, to default on the national debt rather than increase tax revenue or borrow more.
It’s a pretty safe bet, though, that the country itself will still be around, in much the same form, in a decade. Where the euro area’s lack of policy consensus threatens to tear the currency union apart — a threat markets take seriously — the United States poses no similar risk of suicide (which the markets know, too).
A better analogy is found in Britain. Like the United States, Britain has been around awhile, and it isn’t going anywhere soon. Like the United States, Britain has established institutions — the Bank of England was founded in 1694 — that have been tested before.
But unlike the United States, Britain responded to the financial crisis with a quick turn toward austerity, imposed through tax increases and spending cuts, rather than Keynesian stimulus. As a result, Britain is falling into a double-dip recession, even underperforming its rate of recovery during the Great Depression. What’s more, with the economy sinking, austerity measures aren’t producing the desired fiscal balance. Economic health depends on the nation’s debt-to-GDP ratio: When gross domestic product falls, as is happening in Britain, debt must fall even further and faster to make up the difference.
The smaller, more open British economy is also more buffeted by events in the euro area than the United States is. But as Gallagher, of the Scowcroft Group, says: “You never get perfect comparisons. You’re always approximating. The 1930s in the U.S. and the 1990s in Japan aren’t perfect examples either, but we use them to draw lessons.”
Remain calm
What lessons should we draw? Don’t be like Greece — that’s the easy one. The more important lesson of the euro area is that a successful currency union should also be a fiscal and political union. The United States has little to learn on that score. As for Britain, well, it’s more about relearning a lesson that some in our country seem to have forgotten: Austerity does not create growth, and it’s not something you want to try prematurely.
In a recent paper, economists Ugo Panizza and Andrea Presbitero analyzed the evidence that high levels of debt hinder a nation’s economic performance. They failed to find proof of a causal link. What did seem clear, they wrote, is that high debt can reduce growth “because high debt leads to panic and contractionary policies.” That’s essentially what’s happened in Britain. We would be wise not to let it happen here.
By John Mauldin
The US employment numbers came out this morning, and they were disappointing. But disappointing does not begin to describe the situation I read about today in Europe...
And now for some "nugget hunting."
April Employment
A few hours after the employment numbers are released, I always get a rather thorough analysis from Philippa Dunne & Doug Henwood of The Liscio Report (www.theliscioreport.com). Philippa gave me permission to share this with you just this once. While it may be more detail than you are used to, it will help give you a perspective on how much data is actually tracked. I think Philippa and Doug are some of the best at analyzing employment, and their regular reports are a must-read for me. They call the "labor department" in every state and track what is going on at a very deep level, and also follow tax receipts and flows. (Funds and managers who need detailed analysis like this can contact them for a look at their recent work and decide if you should subscribe.) And now to this morning's report:
Though it's likely there are lingering weather influences on this month's disappointing employment report, as there will be in coming months, it appears that the trend is also slowing. That conclusion is bolstered by the decline in our withholding survey, which we believe to be less weather-sensitive than the BLS numbers, and weakness in our survey was not limited to states sensitive to this year's unusual weather.
* April's headline gain of 115,000 was the weakest initial print since last October's 80,000 (now revised up to 112,000). It's considerably below the 146,000 average for the second half of 2011, before the acceleration earlier this year. Looking just at the private sector would make those comparisons a little better, but not much. Manufacturing added 16,000, almost all in durables; retail added 29,000, mostly in general merchandise (largely reversing the losses of the previous two months); professional and business services added 62,000, a third of it from temp firms; education and health added 23,000, well below its recent averages (with health care alone adding just 19,000, at the 20th percentile of gains since 1990); leisure and hospitality, 12,000 (more than accounted for by accommodation and food services, up 27,000). Finance was up just 1,000, and mining and logging were unchanged (low natural gas prices seem to have put an end to the fracking boom).
In the loss column: construction, off 2,000, with nonres leading the way down; transportation and warehousing, off 17,000, mostly from ground transportation; information, off 2,000; and government, off 15,000, almost all of it from local government education (where losses have averaged 8,000 a month for the last year). Almost 70% of job gains came from bars and restaurants, temp firms, and retail, which do not seem the strongest foundations for long-term growth.
* March's gain was revised up by 34,000, and February's by 19,000. Revisions have been fairly strongly upward over the last few months, prompting some talk - but they're actually not as great, in percentage terms, as they were in 1993 and 2005, which were at roughly comparable spots in the recovery/expansion. More than a third of the March revision came from retail, and concentrated in general merchandise; those areas seemed strangely weak last month, so the revisions seem to be righting a wrong rather than uncovering hidden strength.
* With the exception of the six-month measure, diffusion indexes all fell. The general pattern was to reverse the acceleration we saw in the indexes in the first months of the year, suggesting that while the job market is still growing, it's lost some breadth along with momentum.
* The household survey was weaker than its establishment counterpart.
Total employment fell by 169,000 - or 495,000 when adjusted to match the payroll concept. (The yearly gain in the adjusted household measure, 1.5%, has nearly come back into line with the payroll gain, 1.4%, after three months of strong outperformance. This is a reminder not to take these departures too seriously, unless they're sustained for more than a few months.) The employment/population ratio fell 0.1 to 58.4%, 1.0 point below where it was when the recession ended, and where it was in September 1983. There was substantial labor force withdrawal in April, with the participation rate falling by 0.2 point, 2.1 points below where it was when the recession ended.
* The longer-term picture of labor force withdrawal is kind of shocking. Total household employment is down by 4.4 million since the Great Recession began in December 2007, and the number of unemployed is up by 4.9 million. The civilian population is up 9.6 million - but the labor force is up just 447,000. The number classed as not in the labor force is up by 9.2 million - and those not in the labor force and wanting a job is up 1.7 million. In other words, just 5% of the increase in the adult population over the last 4 1/3 years has found its way into employment; the other 95% are not in the labor force.
* The unemployment rate fell by 0.1 point to 8.1%, its lowest level in more than three years. The number of unemployed fell by 173,000 - but the labor force shrank by almost the same amount, 169,000.
Without the labor force shrinkage, the unemployment rate probably would have been unchanged. Within the unemployed, the number of job losers fell - but so did the number of re-entrants and voluntary leavers, suggesting that the increased confidence we saw through those indicators in recent months may be dissipating. With the quit rate down, and the long-term unemployed dropping out of the labor force, the mid-ranges of unemployment duration (from 5-26 weeks) saw an increase, as the extreme short- and long-term durations fell.
* Average hourly earnings for all workers were up just a penny, which rounds to unchanged in percentage terms. Over the year, hourly earnings are up just 1.8%. Since the all-worker only begins in 2006, we have to use the production worker series for longer-term comparisons.
Except for two brief periods in 1986 and 2006, recent annual gains in nominal wages are the lowest since the series began in 1964. [JFM note: this growth in earnings is considerably lower than inflation and given the rise in fuel and other ordinary expenses (like food) the wage earner is getting hammered,]
* The workweek was unchanged at 34.5 hours, with an 0.1 hour rise in manufacturing offsetting an 0.1 hour fall in services. Aggregate hours were up just 0.1%. Aggregate payrolls - the product of aggregate hours and average hourly earnings - were up 0.3% for the month, and 4.1% for the year. That yearly gain is the weakest since January 2011.
So, a disappointment, if not a crushing one. But the job market is still in a deep hole. At April's rate of job gains, it would take well over three years to return to December 2007's employment level, without adjusting for population growth; at the average rate of the last six months, it would take about two years. Earnings are weak, and the strongest sectors aren't those of which economic miracles are spun. QE3 looks like more of a possibility than it did a few days ago.
(End of excerpt from The Liscio Report)
A Graphic Review of the Strategic Investment Conference
Now let's look at a few charts that caught my eye, out of the several hundred we saw (quite the graphic experience) at my conference. This first one is from David Rosenberg, who was in classic form. I get to be with him again Monday morning in Chicago, where we are on a panel together at the International CFA Conference. This puts a 27-year perspective on how poorly wage growth is doing.
Next we have a chart shared with us by Niall Ferguson, showing how the US and Japan (and to some extent Germany) have seen their share of world GDP fall relative to China and India. He argued (as did several speakers) that the relative growth in the world is moving from Europe, Japan, and the US to the emerging markets. This is estimated data through 2016 from the IMF.
The following chart is also from Niall and shows gross government debt-to-GDP. This may be difficult if you are not looking in color, but the US (when all debt is counted) does not look all that much better than some of the problem countries in Europe.
And while I was checking email between speakers, I opened Greg Weldon's latest note, where he looks at European unemployment. Greg is my favorite slicer and dicer of data. What caught my eye was not just the horrific condition of unemployment among Spanish youth, but the data which followed about unemployment among youth across a wide range of European countries. This is the stuff from which civil unrest springs in hot summers. (www.weldononlime.com)
"We are monitoring the BROAD rise in Youth Unemployment Rates, across the EU (this March, versus March of last year):
--- Bulgaria ... 32.8% ... up from 26.7%
--- Portugal ... 36.1% ... up from 27.6%
--- Denmark ...15.1% ... up from 13.7%
--- Ireland ... 30.3% ... up from 28.7%
--- Cyprus ... 28.8% ... up from 18.8%
--- Hungary ... 28.8% ... up from 25.4%
--- Netherlands 9.3% ... up from 6.9%
--- Poland ... 26.7% ... up from 25.7%
--- Slovenia ...16.5% ... up from 16.3%
--- Bulgaria ... 32.8% ... up from 26.7%
--- Portugal ... 36.1% ... up from 27.6%
--- Denmark ...15.1% ... up from 13.7%
--- Ireland ... 30.3% ... up from 28.7%
--- Cyprus ... 28.8% ... up from 18.8%
--- Hungary ... 28.8% ... up from 25.4%
--- Netherlands 9.3% ... up from 6.9%
--- Poland ... 26.7% ... up from 25.7%
--- Slovenia ...16.5% ... up from 16.3%
"The Summer of 2012 could easily become the Summer of Social Dissent in the EU..."
Jeffrey Gundlach of Doubleline spoke Friday morning and really impressed me with the breadth of his presentation. This slide has a LOT of implications.
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4)French elections: Virtue, the Debt, and the Jewish Question
By Nidra Poller
The French presidential elections, initially presented by pollsters and commentators as a pushover for the Socialist contender François Hollande, turns out to be a cliff-hanger.[i] The best comparison with the United States might well be the 1948 Dewey- Truman match. On the eve of the final round, pollsters admit that the gap between the two candidates is gradually narrowing. My prediction is a photo finish, with less than one point of difference. This is the most important presidential election in France since the end of World War 2. The outcome is not only crucial for France but for the free world. I think this is the most clear cut opportunity for a European nation to stand up and confront the wave of conquest unleashed in 1973. There has been some speculation about how this would happen: mass incarceration and deportation of Muslims, civil war, craven surrender... Now, in the European country with the largest Muslim population, the question is going to be treated democratically; not by revolution, not by tribal warfare, but by the exercise of hard won freedom through institutions created and developed over the centuries. French citizens, acutely aware of the high stakes, are riveted on a campaign that has become increasingly articulate and well-defined. It is impossible in the space of this brief article to give a detailed account of issues and events, particularly to an English-speaking readership that has received rather sketchy superficial information. (I will remedy that with an in-depth essay soon.)
The Left tried to focus the campaign on economic issues, which could only fall to the disadvantage of President Sarkozy who had been unable to fulfill his promise to implement extensive structural reforms that would release the untapped potential for growth and significantly reduce the unemployment that has plagued France for the past thirty years. But voters, fortunately, have had their say. While it would be false to claim that the score of Front National candidate Marine Le Pen, who came in third, has no economic component it is impossible to ignore the burning issue that sent so many votes her way: Islam. Nicolas Sarkozy cannot win the second and final round without attracting a significant percentage of the Front National vote. François Hollande, who counts on reaping the total far Left vote, will gladly take in the economically disgruntled who "mistakenly" went for FN but will grant them nothing in exchange. Now, on the eve of the final round, polls are still predicting victory for François Hollande. One issue could make the difference:
Immigration, actually a code word for Islam and/or Islamization, is not a new issue. François Mitterand, the only Socialist president (1981-95) of the 5th République, admitted there might be a "seuil de tolérance" [threshold of tolerance] beyond which immigrants would be rejected. He was confident that a generous policy of regularization of illegals combined with the salutary effects of education, public housing, employment and voting rights would ensure their integration. Close to thirty years later François Hollande is making the same promise. Mitterand, in his baroque manner, engineered the formation of SOS Racisme (Harlem Désir, the first president of the anti-racist movement, is now N° 2 in the Socialist party apparatus) while at the same time underhandedly heightening visibility for the Front National to divide and conquer the Right.
Hollande, like Mitterand in his day, cannot win without the support of the "gauche plurielle" (euphemism for the far Left). France has the most vigorous, retrograde, unashamed, grotesque, far Left contingent of any Western European country. In a broad sweep from the Front de Gauche--an alliance of the Communist Party with newer, fresher versions of same-to the NPA (New Anti-capitalist Party) and including the Green coalition, these parties advocate preposterous economic policies entwined with militant Palestinianism, virulent anti-Zionism, and exuberant Islamophilia. The revolutionary Jean-Luc Mélenchon (Front de Gauche), expected to be the third man, the kingmaker, attracted tens of thousands of fans to his Chavez-style rallies, culminating in a rally on the beach in Marseille with a battle cry for the Maghreb (he was born in Tangiers). Europe is not Christian, he proclaimed, it is diversity. Mélenchon promised a 100% tax bracket for income above 30,000 euros per month, regularization of all illegal immigrants, and a cornucopia of goodies picked from the pockets of the rich. Nathalie Arthaud of Lutte Ouvrière would imprison bosses who don't impose male-female parity. Philippe Poutou (NPA) would prohibit companies from firing workers.
These are a few examples of the policies promoted during the first round campaign, where all ten contenders--nine of them opposed to Nicolas Sarkozy--were given equal time in the media. Why is it considered perfectly normal for François Hollande to scoop up the voters of the far Left-a total of 21.4%-- but outrageous for Nicolas Sarkozy to try to harvest enough Front National votes to win the election? Why? Because Islam has been placed on the positive side of the scale of virtue. This is the European Condition at the dawn of the 21st Century. The failure to correctly designate the "something" that threatens to destroy European civilization causes turmoil, distress, and confusion. If Islam is a religion, if Muslims are victims of discrimination, if immigration from the Arab-Muslim world is exactly like previous waves of immigration, then individuals, groups, or political parties opposed to Islam are simply bad. And "bad" for Europeans means the nationalist, fascist, xenophobic far Right of the good old Nazi days. (Geert Wilders, who has nothing in common with those values or methods, is systematically labeled a far-Right xenophobe... because he combats Islam.)
Fortunately, but tragically, reality clarified the issue. The truth about the Islamic motivation of Mohamed Merah, who executed French soldiers, Jewish children, and a young rabbi in Toulouse and Montauban in mid-March burst into the presidential campaign.[ii] The fact that the mujahid, who resembled, at least outwardly, hundreds of thousands of second and third generation Muslim "youths" creating endless problems for themselves and for French society, could chase down an eight-year old Jewish girl, catch her, grab her by the hair and shoot her point blank in the head, was utterly horrifying.
The Sarkozy government immediately drafted measures that will criminalize preaching and training for jihad, advocating genocide, aiding and abetting terrorists. Members of the recently banned Salafist organization Forsane Alizza were arrested and jailed awaiting trial. Six Islamic firebrands invited to speak at the annual Convention of the UOIF (French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood) were denied visas and President Sarkozy publicly regretted the impossibility of refusing entry to Tarek Ramadan because he travels on a Swiss passport. Refraining from the usual honey-coated reports on the UOIF Convention, the media described Ramadan's speech as violent, virulent, and offensive.
Far from any spirit of resignation, French Jewish voices are speaking clearly and boldly. There are calls for increased police protection as a short term measure and demands to curb the evil at its roots in media incitement to Jew hatred via anti-Zionism. The SPJC (Service de Protection de la Communauté Juive) is recruiting security personnel for Jewish schools, charitable institutions are raising money to pay for them. When Richard Prasquier, the president of the CRIF, expressed concerns of some Jewish citizens that the far Left, essential for Hollande's victory, would influence the policies of his government[iii] he was accused of mixing religion with politics. Sammy Ghozlan, president of the BNVCA (National Office for Vigilance against anti-Semitism), tireless defender of the safety of Jews and indomitable opponent of the BDS movement, has consistently noted the greater incidence of anti-Semitic violence in municipalities governed by communists, with peaks after demonstrations, exhibitions, and anti-Israel rallies.
Meanwhile on the Left, the BDS organizers of the Bienvenu en Palestine Flytilla solicited moral support from the presidential candidates. Centrist François Bayrou, who considers himself the epitome of Virtue, deemed the enterprise worthy and reputable. Nathalie Arthaud (Lutte Ouvrière) declared that Gaza is an "open-air [sic] concentration camp. Green candidate Eva Joly enthusiastically seconded the motion (a member of her campaign committee, Julien Bayou, had participated in the Gaza Flotilla). A few weeks after Jewish children were brutally murdered at the Ozar Hatorah school, the Socialist mayor of Angoulême refused to cancel an apologetic photo exhibition simply named "Hamas."
Mélenchon had sworn he would kick the hell out of the Front National. Voters decided otherwise. Now Marine Le Pen is promising to smash Sarkozy's UMP and take the lead of the recomposed Right. This is unlikely. The FN is a mixed bag with too much volume and not enough political brain. There is no governing principle that can maintain the alliance between a whacko Pujadiste economic policy, hardcore resentment, persistent anti-Semitism, petty ambitions and a loose mass of disappointed conservatives who can't forgive Sarkozy for not doing nearly enough to slash immigration, impose law and order, and resist Islamization. Now the Left accuses Nicolas Sarkozy of veering sharp right in a desperate attempt to woo back those FN votes. They know full well that all of these questions were debated last year in a series of Conventions by which the UMP developed its platform[iv] because they held protest meetings at the time. UMP chief Jean-François Copé said then that the Front National raises the right questions but give the wrong answers... or no answers at all.
During the two weeks of the second round campaign, the debate has intensified day by day. Two radically different approaches to the question of Islam are proposed. François Hollande defends the open-arms humanitarianist, inclusive approach advocated by Mitterand in his time. For Nicolas Sarkozy, a strong national identity is the bulwark against submission to Islam. During the three-hour face to face with Hollande, Sarkozy said it is irresponsible to give voting rights to immigrants at a time of extreme tensions and determined radicalization of these populations. His rival, scandalized, asked if he was associating "immigrant" with Islam. Sarkozy replied: you would have to be deliberately blind not to recognize the fact that the overwhelming majority of immigrants are from Muslim countries in North or sub-Saharan Africa.
The choice on Sunday May 6th is not between two men but between two mutually exclusive visions of the future or, more exactly, the survival of France as a nation. If ever the proverbial Jewish vote would make sense, this is the moment. French Jews would not be afraid to be recognized as Jews, wouldn't fear for their lives, the safety of their children, their very future in France if "immigration" did not import Islamic Jew hatred. The Socialist party, which claims to stand for the vivre ensemble [living together] and accuses President Sarkozy of catering to a neo-fascist Front National, cuddles up to the anti-Zionist Left that sees no evil in the population that spawned Mohamed Merah. The point is not to accuse all Muslims of being jihad killers nor to pretend that there is no connection between Islam and jihad, but to ask how the French nation can resist conquest and avoid collaboration.
[i] Official results 1st round : François Hollande-28.63%; Nicolas Sarkozy-27.18; Marine Le Pen-17.90; Jean-Luc Mélenchon-11.11 ; François Bayrou-9,13 : Eva Joly-2.31, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan- 1.79 ; Philippe Poutou-1.15 ; Nathalie Arthaud-0.58 ; Jacques Cheminade-0.25
[ii] http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/toulouse_la_rose_in_the_shadow_of_death.html
[iii] http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/jews-to-face-new-challenges-in-post-elections-france-1.426488 and http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/french-jewish-leader-in-hot-water-over-apparent-endorsement-of-sarkozy-1.427180
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/french_elections_virtue_the_debt_and_the_jewish_question.html#ixzz1u1TyRCHb
4a)What lessons should the U.S. draw from Europe’s debacle?
By Ezra Klein,
Europe is a mess. But it’s a peculiar mess that both the left and the right think validates everything they’ve been saying about what we should — and shouldn’t — do here in the United States.“The right argues we have to cut deficits now, or we’ll be like Greece,” says Tom Gallagher, a principal at the Scowcroft Group. “The left argues we can’t cut deficits now, or we’ll be like Europe.”
So, who’s right? Well, which entity do you think is more comparable to the United States? Greece? Europe? Neither?
I come down somewhere between “Europe” and “neither,” but it’s worth going through each contestant in turn.
Greece is a country of 11 million people. Geographically, it’s about the size of Louisiana. It doesn’t control its own currency, and its government spent years lying about its fiscal condition. After it joined the euro area in 2001, Greece went from paying about 7 percent interest on a 10-year bond to a bit more than 3 percent because investors assumed that its debt was backed by Germany and the European Central Bank. This encouraged profligacy (which led to the dishonesty) in Athens.
The assumption turned out to be wrong. When investors figured that out, they turned on Greece. Hard. With easy money no longer masking its problems, Greece’s economy was exposed for the mess it is. The World Economic Forum ranks it as the 90th most competitive country in the world, between Lebanon and El Salvador.
The United States, by contrast, is a country of 313 million. It controls its own currency, which is also the global reserve currency. The U.S. Treasury bond is the safest of safe assets. Even after a lengthy financial crisis, the World Economic Forum ranks the United States as the fifth most competitive economy in the world, and it’s bigger than the first four combined. Whatever the United States is, it’s not Greece.
Euro area’s flaws
So perhaps it’s Europe? Or at least the euro area? After all, the euro area is also big and controls its own currency. Likewise, the euro area was once considered a safe bet.
But the euro area is also a fledgling institution facing an existential crisis. No one knows whether it will be around in its current form in 10 more years — or even 10 more months. Its central bank seems more committed to forcing member countries to cut their deficits and reform their labor markets than to preserving the currency union itself.
The crisis has also exposed deep flaws in the basic structure of the alliance. The member countries increasingly despise and mistrust one another. Critical players in the drama — France and Greece — are on the verge of electing new governments that promise to radically renegotiate the terms of euro-area compacts. Meanwhile, Germany and the European Central Bank seem determined to impose a moralistic, debt-focused narrative on a crisis that’s better understood as a problem of capital flows and growth.
The United States has its problems. Although we can borrow for next to nothing and unemployment remains above 8 percent, U.S. leaders often seem more focused on debt than growth. The political system is increasingly gridlocked and dysfunctional. One of our two major parties is engulfed in a civil war driven by an insurgency that wants to radically redefine government functions, preferring, for instance, to default on the national debt rather than increase tax revenue or borrow more.
It’s a pretty safe bet, though, that the country itself will still be around, in much the same form, in a decade. Where the euro area’s lack of policy consensus threatens to tear the currency union apart — a threat markets take seriously — the United States poses no similar risk of suicide (which the markets know, too).
A better analogy is found in Britain. Like the United States, Britain has been around awhile, and it isn’t going anywhere soon. Like the United States, Britain has established institutions — the Bank of England was founded in 1694 — that have been tested before.
But unlike the United States, Britain responded to the financial crisis with a quick turn toward austerity, imposed through tax increases and spending cuts, rather than Keynesian stimulus. As a result, Britain is falling into a double-dip recession, even underperforming its rate of recovery during the Great Depression. What’s more, with the economy sinking, austerity measures aren’t producing the desired fiscal balance. Economic health depends on the nation’s debt-to-GDP ratio: When gross domestic product falls, as is happening in Britain, debt must fall even further and faster to make up the difference.
The smaller, more open British economy is also more buffeted by events in the euro area than the United States is. But as Gallagher, of the Scowcroft Group, says: “You never get perfect comparisons. You’re always approximating. The 1930s in the U.S. and the 1990s in Japan aren’t perfect examples either, but we use them to draw lessons.”
Remain calm
What lessons should we draw? Don’t be like Greece — that’s the easy one. The more important lesson of the euro area is that a successful currency union should also be a fiscal and political union. The United States has little to learn on that score. As for Britain, well, it’s more about relearning a lesson that some in our country seem to have forgotten: Austerity does not create growth, and it’s not something you want to try prematurely.
In a recent paper, economists Ugo Panizza and Andrea Presbitero analyzed the evidence that high levels of debt hinder a nation’s economic performance. They failed to find proof of a causal link. What did seem clear, they wrote, is that high debt can reduce growth “because high debt leads to panic and contractionary policies.” That’s essentially what’s happened in Britain. We would be wise not to let it happen here.
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5)
Iran readies secret salt desert bunkers for clandestine nuclear facilities
5a)
6
North Korean nuclear-capable BM-25 missiles sold to Iran
When International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Yukiya Amano declared Friday, May 4, that “Parchin (the suspected site of nuclear-related explosion tests) is the priority and we start with that,” he may have missed the boat. As he spoke, Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak said it was possible that Iran was already putting in place the infrastructure for building a nuclear bomb in 60 days.
Military sources disclose Iran had by the end of 2009 early 2012 completed the construction of a new chain of underground facilities deep inside the Dasht e-Kavir (Great Salt Desert) - all linked together by huge tunnels.
Nevertheless, Tehran keeps on putting off nuclear watchdog inspections at Parchin for three reasons:
1. To carry on squeezing concessions from the US in private talks between the Obama administration and Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as from the Six Powers at their formal negotiations. Iran has won permission to enriching uranium up to 5 percent purity and is after approval for the 20 percent which is close to weapon grade.
2. The Iranians can’t be sure they have scrubbed out every last trace of the nuclear explosives and detonators tested at the Parchin military base – even after clearing away the evidence and relocating the facility in the salt desert wastelands.
Asked to define the activities he wanted inspected in Parchin, Amano said: “We do not have people there so we cannot tell what these activities are.” While the IAEA may want hard physical evidence collected by its inspectors, US and Israeli intelligence have long possessed solid information on the illicit activities in Parchin collected by the nuclear-sensitive instruments carried by their military satellites.
3. To guarantee the IAEA inspection at Parchin will be the last and there will no further demands for visits to any more suspect sites.
Tehran cannot tell exactly what data on additional facilities has reached US or Israeli intelligence and at what moment they may pull their discoveries out of their sleeves with fresh demands. Iran is therefore bargaining for a line to be drawn at Parchin to close any future road for good so that it can carry on nuclear work at the new Great Salt Desert locations safe from discovery.
Iranian sources report American negotiators in their private exchanges have thrown out hints about limiting IAEA inspections. But Tehran is holding out for a more solid commitment from the US and Europe to halt all demands for IAEA visits and for the Six Powers to veto inspections at any new nuclear locations Israel may expose.
This was what Ali Asqar Soltaniyeh, Iranian ambassador to the IAEA Vienna headquarters, was driving at when he stipulated Friday that that talks with the six powers must be limited to negotiations on “a modality and framework to resolve outstanding issues and remove ambiguities.”
To arrest the perilous slide toward letting Iran off the hook, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sent his National Security Advisers Yaacov Amidror to the capitals of four of the six powers, Moscow, Berlin, London and Paris last week. His mission was to persuade their governments not to allow international inspections to stop at Parchin but to keep Iran’s nuclear activities under tight supervision.
Netanyahu has used his own contacts in Washington for warnings of what was afoot.
This week, the House Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces passed a resolution requiring the Pentagon Missile Defense Agency to have an operational plan ready by 2015 for posting a missile shield on America’s east coast to protect New York, Washington and Boston against Iranian missile attack. $100 million was earmarked for this purpose.
Washington sources note that this step opened the way for a drive by the Obama administration to have any deal the Six Powers may reach with Iran cover Iran’s clandestine underground Salt Desert nuclear locations.
One of the biggest is managed by the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, manufacturers of the ballistic missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads. US intelligence discovered in November 2010 that North Korea had transferred to Iran 19 nuclear-capable BM-25 ballistic missiles with a range of 2,500 kilometers.
On April 13, a dozen Shahid Hemmat missile experts attended the test fire of the North Korean long-range, three-stage Unha-2 missile. That test failed but the North Koreans and Iranians are pressing on together with work to extend the range of those missiles to America.
However, like the Netanyahu government, Washington is under constant assault by vocal lobbies opposed to a preemptive attack on Iran. They open fire on any suggestion that such an attack is on the cards, and pounced on the congressional resolution as a scheme for torpedoing US-Iranian diplomacy.
Israeli leaders battling Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon therefore find themselves fighting to keep their military option from being snatched off the table by antagonists at home.
Tehran is cannily exploiting the diplomatic track to get rid of international inspections after Parchin and so gain the freedom to proceed with building a nuclear arsenal in the Salt Desert far from the world’s sight.
The Israeli ex-security chiefs and former politicians are focusing on preventing an Israeli attack to pre-empt a nuclear Iran. They know exactly what is at stake but are so eager to topple Netanyahu and Barak that they are more than ready to pay the price of letting Iran get away with acquiring a nuclear bomb.
Military sources disclose Iran had by the end of 2009 early 2012 completed the construction of a new chain of underground facilities deep inside the Dasht e-Kavir (Great Salt Desert) - all linked together by huge tunnels.
Nevertheless, Tehran keeps on putting off nuclear watchdog inspections at Parchin for three reasons:
1. To carry on squeezing concessions from the US in private talks between the Obama administration and Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as from the Six Powers at their formal negotiations. Iran has won permission to enriching uranium up to 5 percent purity and is after approval for the 20 percent which is close to weapon grade.
2. The Iranians can’t be sure they have scrubbed out every last trace of the nuclear explosives and detonators tested at the Parchin military base – even after clearing away the evidence and relocating the facility in the salt desert wastelands.
Asked to define the activities he wanted inspected in Parchin, Amano said: “We do not have people there so we cannot tell what these activities are.” While the IAEA may want hard physical evidence collected by its inspectors, US and Israeli intelligence have long possessed solid information on the illicit activities in Parchin collected by the nuclear-sensitive instruments carried by their military satellites.
3. To guarantee the IAEA inspection at Parchin will be the last and there will no further demands for visits to any more suspect sites.
Tehran cannot tell exactly what data on additional facilities has reached US or Israeli intelligence and at what moment they may pull their discoveries out of their sleeves with fresh demands. Iran is therefore bargaining for a line to be drawn at Parchin to close any future road for good so that it can carry on nuclear work at the new Great Salt Desert locations safe from discovery.
Iranian sources report American negotiators in their private exchanges have thrown out hints about limiting IAEA inspections. But Tehran is holding out for a more solid commitment from the US and Europe to halt all demands for IAEA visits and for the Six Powers to veto inspections at any new nuclear locations Israel may expose.
This was what Ali Asqar Soltaniyeh, Iranian ambassador to the IAEA Vienna headquarters, was driving at when he stipulated Friday that that talks with the six powers must be limited to negotiations on “a modality and framework to resolve outstanding issues and remove ambiguities.”
To arrest the perilous slide toward letting Iran off the hook, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sent his National Security Advisers Yaacov Amidror to the capitals of four of the six powers, Moscow, Berlin, London and Paris last week. His mission was to persuade their governments not to allow international inspections to stop at Parchin but to keep Iran’s nuclear activities under tight supervision.
Netanyahu has used his own contacts in Washington for warnings of what was afoot.
This week, the House Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces passed a resolution requiring the Pentagon Missile Defense Agency to have an operational plan ready by 2015 for posting a missile shield on America’s east coast to protect New York, Washington and Boston against Iranian missile attack. $100 million was earmarked for this purpose.
Washington sources note that this step opened the way for a drive by the Obama administration to have any deal the Six Powers may reach with Iran cover Iran’s clandestine underground Salt Desert nuclear locations.
One of the biggest is managed by the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, manufacturers of the ballistic missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads. US intelligence discovered in November 2010 that North Korea had transferred to Iran 19 nuclear-capable BM-25 ballistic missiles with a range of 2,500 kilometers.
On April 13, a dozen Shahid Hemmat missile experts attended the test fire of the North Korean long-range, three-stage Unha-2 missile. That test failed but the North Koreans and Iranians are pressing on together with work to extend the range of those missiles to America.
However, like the Netanyahu government, Washington is under constant assault by vocal lobbies opposed to a preemptive attack on Iran. They open fire on any suggestion that such an attack is on the cards, and pounced on the congressional resolution as a scheme for torpedoing US-Iranian diplomacy.
Israeli leaders battling Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon therefore find themselves fighting to keep their military option from being snatched off the table by antagonists at home.
Tehran is cannily exploiting the diplomatic track to get rid of international inspections after Parchin and so gain the freedom to proceed with building a nuclear arsenal in the Salt Desert far from the world’s sight.
The Israeli ex-security chiefs and former politicians are focusing on preventing an Israeli attack to pre-empt a nuclear Iran. They know exactly what is at stake but are so eager to topple Netanyahu and Barak that they are more than ready to pay the price of letting Iran get away with acquiring a nuclear bomb.
5a)
'Israeli strike on Iran would inevitably draw in the US'
Photo: Rauf Mohseni/Reuters
WASHINGTON -- A former senior Pentagon official said Saturday that now is not an opportune time for an Israeli strike on Iran, and that any such strike would inevitably draw in the United States.
Colin Kahl, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East until December, said that any Israeli strike that prompted an Iranian retaliation would affect the United States
"Even if it's just retaliation against Israel, the Americans will be in it from the beginning," he said, since the US would provide assistance to Israeli defense and because Iran would see an Israeli attack as inseparable from an American attack.
Kahl assessed that the Iranian response would be far-reaching and include rocket attacks on American embassies in the region, using area allies and proxies and threatening the functioning of the Strait of Hormuz.
"No one should delude themselves that ... the prospect of America getting dragged into this is minor. It's not," he warned.
Kahl also laid out conditions that he felt should be in place before any country undertook a strike on Iran: that other options such as diplomacy and sanctions have run their course; that Iran had clearly decided to move toward nuclear weaponization; that the military action could seriously degrade Tehran's capabilities; that an international coalition could be maintained after a strike.
"One reason I've been so critical about the Israelis taking action against Iran's nuclear program is that at this moment they don't satisfy any of those four criteria," he said.
Kahl argued that the the diplomatic process should be given more time and contended it wasn't clear Iran was moving toward nuclear weaponization. And he warned that anyone opposed to containing Iran should be particularly wary of military action.
"A military strike does not end the Iranian nuclear program," he said. "If military action is done the wrong way, military action would be the prelude to the need to contain a nuclear-armed Iran."
But Amos Yadlin, a former director of IDF intelligence attending the conference, questioned the wisdom of waiting too long before contemplating military action.
"Going from 'it's too early' to 'it's too late' is a very fine line," he cautioned.
Yadlin described Iran as already nuclear but not yet weaponized, and said Tehran wanted to make the timeframe for a nuclear weapon breakout ability very short.
"Those who are not willing to contain Iran today, when they don't have a nuclear weapon, how can they contain it when they have nuclear weapons?" he asked.
Yadlin stressed that it was important to preserve the possibility of military action to pressure Iran and give teeth to sanctions and diplomacy -- a point made as well by Kahl.
But Yadlin suggested that despite statements from American officials about keeping the military option on the table, mixed messages were neutralizing their impact.
"The music the whole world is hearing is that this is not really a good option," he said.
And he asserted that ultimately the consequences of military action outweigh the costs of doing nothing.
"A nuclear Iran is much more dangerous than attacking Iran," Yadlin concluded.
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6)Stanley
Why it matters that Obama dated a composite and ate a dog
6
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