Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Iran threatens to strike US and NATO assets in Turkey


Turkey is reportedly ready to send troops into Syria to set up a buffer-zone to protect Syrian protesters. Several thousand Syrians have fled into southern Turkey fearing a military assault by President Assad's murdering armed forces, but Turkey now fears that number to increase exponentially. Syria's military has moved into a village near the border with Turkey causing more Syrians to flee the violence. The death toll of Syrian protesters is climbing near the 2,000 mark, which Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has finally condemned. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has expressed his concerns about Turkish intervention in a meeting with Iranian Ayatollah Khamenei, which prompted the Iranian Ayatollah to warn Turkey not to provide any territory to NATO, otherwise it would strike U.S. and NATO targets on Turkish soil.


Iranian warships and submarines have been deployed in the Red Sea and are said to be tracking the movements of United States aircraft carriers. Currently, the USS Enterprise and USS George H. W Bush are patrolling the the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The United States Navy has a huge concentration of naval missile interceptor assets in the area, and the Los Angeles-class USS Bremerton nuclear-powered attack submarine off Bahrain opposite Iran. In early June, the United States Navy deployed the USS Bataan amphibian air carrier strike vessel opposite Syria's Mediterranean coast with 2,000 marines, 6 war planes, 15 attack helicopters, including new V-22 Ospreys, and 27 choppers for landing forces aboard.


To make matters worse, Lebanon braces for the U.N. probe into the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which is reportedly going to be released within days. If this report names members of Hezbollah and the Syrain regime, new violence could break out in Lebanon. I think it's reasonable to assume that if hostilities break out between Turkey/U.S. and Iran, Israel will be drawn into the conflict. Iran will do all they can (including war) to keep Assad propped up, because Syria is their most important ally in the region. Iran's Great Prophet Mohammad War Games VI, which was launched June 27, should be seen as a warning to Turkey, U.S. and Israeli leaders.


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Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Obama wants credit for cleaning up ‘big mess’??


President Obama told supporters at a fundraiser in Miami on Monday night that he deserves credit for cleaning up the mess he inherited. The new talking point of the this administration is that Obama has created 2 million new jobs. Let's assume for a minute they are right and then let's examine the new jobs. The quality of the jobs the U.S. is creating right now in terms of pay, benefits, hours, and skills leaves a lot to be desired. Half of last month's new jobs came from a single employer — McDonald's. 90% of the new jobs created in the private sector since Obama's immaculation have been created by temporary job agencies.


According to Rightpundits.com, a new study by Ohio State economists, Timothy Conley and Bill Dupor, concludes that the Barack Obama Stimulus program from 2009 may have saved 450,000 state and local government jobs, but destroyed one million private sector jobs in the process. Known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the program was promised to stem the rising unemployment rate following the financial crash. The Obama administration trotted out endless officials from the White House saying that the nearly $1 Trillion dollars in Federal stimulus would keep the unemployment rate below 8%. Not only did the rate exceed 10%, combined with the long-term unemployed and under-employed, about one in four adult, working-age Americans either have no job or are barely working just to make ends meet.


Most of the stimulus money went into propping up state and local school systems, as well as help propping up state Medicare outlays. Less than 10% went for building highways, bridges, etc, those much talked about shovel-ready infrastructure. The ARRA was promised to “save or create” some 2 to 3 Million jobs. But according to this latest study, the number is much lower, around 443,000 government jobs, most being just temporary jobs at that. The counter-effect of the ARRA stimulus program was the loss of some 772,000 HELP service jobs. HELP standing for Health, Education, Leisure and Professional. In the area of Goods-producing, the loss was 362,000 jobs. In other words, the Obama stimulus was an utter failure, as others and myself have been saying all along. The economy is still mired in uncertainty and volatility. Today′s housing news on new home starts shows a major decline in the past year of around 25%. The housing sector has always been the bell-ringer for the entire consumer market.


The new study published by the Ohio State economists cuts through the talking points and exposes the real numbers. The number of unemployed Americans at present is 13.9 million and the unemployment rate is a misleading 9.1 percent. The Labor Department's statistics don't include the underemployed and those who have stopped looking for work. This alternative measure creates a much higher number and it hovers around 16%-17%. You want credit for these numbers Mr. President?? I will give you all the credit you deserve, your policies didn't create this financial mess, but they have made it worse. It is your policies sir that are driving our economy into a double-dip recession. If Obama's true record is exposed, he should lose his re-election bid by 10 points.


IN A RELATED ARTICLE BY CNSNEWS.COM--READ THIS. 1.9 Million Fewer Americans Have Jobs Today Than When Obama Signed Stimulus

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Friday, June 10, 2011

The death of NATO


The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 as a combined military force to stem the Communist tide in Europe. The first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, famously stated the organization's goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down" and for next 40 years that goal was pretty much attained. In 1966, France being France, President Charles de Gaulle pulled France out of NATO's military command and relied on it's own nuclear deterrent to protect them against the Soviet threat. During the decades long Cold War, NATO successfully kept the Soviets and the Warsaw Pact from invading the democratic nations of Europe. In the early 80's, President Ronald Reagan made the controversial decision to place GLCM cruise missiles and the Pershing II missiles in Europe to counter the Warsaw Pact's nuclear capabilities. The first cracks in European support for NATO began to emerge and it wasn't until the USSR shot down a Korean airliner in 1983 did it galvanize support for the missile deployment.

The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 removed the de facto main adversary of NATO and this was the beginning of the end for NATO. The end of the Cold War caused a strategic re-evaluation of NATO's military purpose, nature and tasks. In practice this ended up entailing a gradual (and still ongoing) expansion of NATO to Eastern Europe, much to the chagrin to the former Soviet Union. The first military operation carried out by NATO was the bombing of Bosnia and Herzegovina in August of 1995 to undermine the Bosnian Serb Army. This operation was considered successful in regards to a military fighting unit, as it involved 400 NATO aircraft and 5,000 personnel from 15 nations. The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 marked the second major combat operation in its history and again was considered successful by military standards.

In 2001, the United States and the United Kingdom attacked the Taliban led government in Afghanistan to root out the al-Qaeda terrorist network. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was established by the UN Security Council at the end of December 2001 to secure Kabul and the surrounding areas. NATO assumed control of ISAF in 2003 and the ISAF initially included troops from 42 countries. The military roles and quality of NATO troops has been controversial during this conflict. NATO member states have what is called "national caveats", which is a restriction that NATO members place on the use of their forces in combat. These caveats have created opportunities for the insurgents in parts of Afghanistan, while also causing friction within NATO between those nations willing to send their soldiers to the dangerous parts of the country (to fight), and those not willing to do so.

During the Libyan uprising against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi by rebel forces, NATO was once again called upon to take military action against a non-European threat. NATO began enforcing UN resolution 1973 in March of 2011, which calls for a ceasefire, and authorizes military action to protect civilians from Gaddaf'si troops. Divisions within the alliance have surfaced because only eight of twenty-eight member states have actually participated in combat operations. France and Britain have taken the lead role in combat operations, while the United States military continues to fade into the background. NATO has become weak politically and militarily and it really cannot be seen as a cohesive fighting force any longer. Europe has been underfunding its defense capabilities for more than a decade and their political leadership are becoming more like Neville Chamberlain every day. NATO has a long-standing self-obligation for all members to spend at least 2% of their gross national product (GNP) on defense. Currently, only five of 28 members fulfill that obligation and this trend is expected to continue.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates stated today (June 10th 2011) that NATO faces a "dim, if not dismal" future. Secretary Gates went on to say, "The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress -- and in the American body politic writ large -- to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense." Without US funding, NATO is finished as a fighting force. There are three budgets within NATO: one civil and two military. Each NATO member country pays an amount into the budgets based on an agreed cost-sharing formula. The United States contributed about $470 million directly to NATO to support its three commonly funded budgets in 1997. In 2010, for the first time in its 60-year history, NATO was operating in the red with a $700 million deficit. Because of a lack of will and funding, the mightiest military alliance in the history of the world will be no more. Rest in peace NATO!

****ITALY BREAKS RANK WITH NATO***** READ STORY HERE

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