Hasta La Vista Kim Baby!

Kim Jung Il’s life: a soliloquy in lunacy and madness.

Often the sages admonish
Oh Death, be not so proud
A tender soul’s last wish
The welfare of others be allowed

Death unkind, strikes indiscriminate
History records with only a wretched few
Death comes not soon enough to elate
The drop of his miserable carcass in its tomb

This could well be a scripted scene from a remake of Orwell’s 1984:

This is a more realistic response.

The world awaits the apparent madness of the heir apparent and the ubiquitous and fawning attention by our State Department to insure adequate supplies for the country and an effortless transition of power from one totalitarian despot to another, like when we aided Kim and his transition of ultimate Nepotism.

From the pen of Hitchens, 2005:

One tries to avoid cliché, and I did my best on a visit to this terrifying country in the year 2000, but George Orwell’s 1984was published at about the time that Kim Il Sung set up his system, and it really is as if he got hold of an early copy of the novel and used it as a blueprint. (“Hmmm … good book. Let’s see if we can make it work.”)

Actually, North Korea is rather worse than Orwell’s dystopia. There would be no way, in the capital city of Pyongyang, to wander off and get lost in the slums, let alone to rent an off-the-record love nest in a room over a shop. Everybody in the city has to be at home and in bed by curfew time, when all the lights go off (if they haven’t already failed). A recent nighttime photograph of the Korean peninsula from outer space shows something that no “free-world” propaganda could invent: a blaze of electric light all over the southern half, stopping exactly at the demilitarized zone and becoming an area of darkness in the north.

Kim, Rest In Hell, you evil bastard!

Lost But Now He Is Found, Poor Drunk Uncle Omar Obama

Corruption and Lies seem to be a tradition in the Obama family.

Every family has a “Black Sheep,” someone who embarrasses the family by getting drunk and in trouble. It’s possible some of us have relatives who are illegal aliens on the public dole and have repeatedly defied deportation orders: thankfully, not many of us fit into that category. However, not many drunk relatives tell arresting officers to call the White House, presumably before they do something stupid.

“Omar” or Onyango Obama is the long lost brother Kenyan half-brother of President Obama’s father. The same Uncle Omar mentioned by Bill Ayers in the best selling autobiography “Dreams From My Father”, the life story of President Obama as portrayed by the unrepentant terrorist, Bill Ayers. Although he was mentioned in the book, our president is wishing his drunken uncle would behave himself or live in the shadows.

Drunk Uncle Omar Obama was driving drunk after leaving the Chicken Bone Saloon and barely missed hitting a squad car. When he was pulled over, he demanded that he be allowed to call the White House in a belligerent manner. The cops didn’t find the drunk name dropper all that impressive; a drunk illegal alien with a long rap sheet had run down and killed a 23 year old Milford, Mass. man, two weeks earlier.

Open-borders and Open Society advocates of George Soros philosophy consider drunken Obamas to be “harmless”. However, drunken Uncle Omar has defied two court orders to leave the country. He also owes thousands in back taxes and has a fraudulent Social Security Card and has evaded authorities for 50 years.

The court policy that allows the drunk criminals like Omar Obama to simply stay in the country is the “voluntary departure” system that allows illegal aliens to evade the police and deportation for years. Omar lost his first deportation hearing in 1989, he lost a second time with the Board of Immigration Appeals in 1992.

Uncle Omar joined the ranks of an estimated 400,000 to 700,000 illegal aliens who give the law a one finger salute and look upon disregarding America’s Immigration Laws as a right or entitlement.

Drunk Uncle Omar will now be represented by the same Ohio law firm that fought the deportation of President Obama’s indigent welfare collecting aunt, Aunt Zeituni Onyango. Zeituni landed in the US in 2000 on a temporary visa and sought asylum in 2004. She was denied asylum and refused to leave. She hid with relatives in public housing for years before winning a second bid to stay in the US, a country she seems to despise.

Both parties play games with the immigration issues to win votes from the ever growing illegal demographic. Yes, illegals seem to be able to vote, have driver licenses, and Social Security numbers. Especially those who are here illegally and are related to our president.

Aunt Zeituni Onyango, Ward Of The State, Perpetual Welfare Recipient, President's Aunt, Former Illegal Alien

President Bush told Immigration and Customs Enforcement to stop deportations until after the 2008 election, when Aunt Zeituni was caught and identified as an Illegal Alien in October of 2008. Thank you former President Bush.

The question remains, how many more of these Obama welfare recipients are we going to be asked to support for the rest of their natural lives in a state of permanent Welfare and Public Housing. Our former inept and clueless President, Jimmy Carter, only had one embarrassing relative, Brother Billy, the one who inspired Billy Beer and became a cultural icon and a standing joke. At least, Billy was humorous; Zeituni and Omar are far from humorous.

We might remember the case of Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, a Palestinian bomb builder by trade; he immigrated to the US illegally (considered legal by Napolitano and Obama) in 1996 through Canada. He claimed political asylum from alleged persecution by Israelis, was released on a $5,000 bond posted by another illegal, then skipped his asylum hearing. His lawyer dropped his asylum claim and a federal judge issued a laughable “voluntary departure order”. Obviously, illegal aliens who enter the country illegally or not interested in leaving the country voluntarily. He later joined a New York City group that was formulating a bombing plot and was arrested after his roommate tipped off local police. And once again we have another example of the DHS being on the ball and defending our country.

“Always remember. Never forget.” Words, just words.

A citizen is rebuffed by a judge for trying to unravel the nefarious facts concerning the president’s dubious Social Security Number.

Unfortunately for the plaintiff, today is not her lucky day.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURTFOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA____________________________________)ORLY TAITZ, ))Plaintiff, ))v. )) Civil Action No. 11-402 (RCL)MICHAEL ASTRUE, )COMMISSIONER OF THE SOCIAL )SECURITY ADMINISTRATION, ))Defendant. )____________________________________)MEMORANDUM OPINION
Before the Court is defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment [21]. Upon considerationof defendant’s motion, plaintiff’s opposition [31], the reply thereto [32], the entire record herein,and the applicable law, the Court will grant summary judgment in defendant’s favor for thereasons set forth below.
I.

BACKGROUND
Ever persistent, plaintiff has once again come before this Court in an effort to uncover“the biggest cover up in the history of this nation.” Pl.’s Opp’n to Mot. for Summ. J. 20 [31]. Shebelieves that the President is using a “fraudulently obtained” social security number and that theSocial Security Administration—among other agencies—is involved in a scheme to “cover[] upsocial security fraud, IRS fraud, elections fraud and possibly treason” committed by thePresident.
Id.
at 5–6, 13. As her numerous filings with the Court demonstrate, plaintiff will stopat nothing to get to the bottom of this alleged conspiracy. Unfortunately for plaintiff, today is nother lucky day.

The USS Stark (FFG 31) burns and lists to port on 18 May 1987, one day after the guided missile frigate was struck by two Iraqi-launched Exocet missiles. The attack killed 37 sailors.

The New Sovereign Investment Fund of Libya or of Colonel Qaddafi, there is no distinction in the money funds of Libya or Qaddafi, invested $1.3 Billion with Goldman Sachs; the bank used the funds on stock options at a variety of international banks and a collection of currency bets. Two years later, the Libyan fund had lost 98% of its value and was worth only $25.1 million.

Officials of Libya’s sovereign wealth fund were upset with Goldman Sachs and accused them of malfeasance; mainly, for making trades without authorization and misrepresenting investment deals.

In July 2008, [Mustafa] Zarti, the fund’s deputy chairman, summoned [Youssef] Kabbaj, Goldman’s North Africa chief, to a meeting with the fund’s legal and compliance staff, according to Libyan Investment Authority emails reviewed by the Journal. One person who attended the meeting says Mr. Zarti was “like a raging bull,” cursing and threatening Mr. Kabbaj and another Goldman employee. Goldman arranged for security to protect the employees until they left Libya the next day, according to people familiar with the matter.

Tip-top Goldman bosses, including CEO Lloyd Blankfein and finance chief David Viniar, scrambled to try to figure out how to fix the relationship with Libya and maintain access to its vast fortune. They also feared that word of the massive loss would spook other sovereign funds, so they offered the nation several ways to recoup the money. The last of the offers was made in a June 2010 meeting. Eight months later, the United States froze some $37 billion in Libyan assets as dictator Muammar Qaddafi turned on his rebelling people. Included in that large amount was what was left of Libya’s investment with Goldman.

In July 2008, [Mustafa] Zarti, the fund’s deputy chairman, summoned [Youssef] Kabbaj, Goldman’s North Africa chief, to a meeting with the fund’s legal and compliance staff, according to Libyan Investment Authority emails reviewed by the Journal. One person who attended the meeting says Mr. Zarti was “like a raging bull,” cursing and threatening Mr. Kabbaj and another Goldman employee. Goldman arranged for security to protect the employees until they left Libya the next day, according to people familiar with the matter.

Being enraged with a favored company of Obama might be dangerous to your position and your health; after all, Obama has the U.S. military and if he keeps his intervention small enough, he doesn’t need congressional approval.

relations between Goldman and Gaddafi became increasingly strained, the Wall Street firm made a total of three separate compensation offers to invest in the group on attractive terms between May and June of 2009, including the deal involving preferred shares. Another proposal would have given the LIA unsecured debt in Goldman, promising a stream of payments that would eventually have repaid the losses.

Over the next two years, discussions on these and a series of other compensation proposals were discussed by LIA and top-level Goldman staff – chairman Lloyd Blankfein, finance head David Viniar and European chief Michael Sherwood. However, they were unable to agree a solution and talks are thought to have eventually petered out last summer.

Now a company that can lose 98% of a 1.3 Billion Dollar investment might be first in line to receive Tarp Funds, thanks to Henry Paulson, Ex-Treasury Secretary. Tim Geitner who is connected to the Federal Reserve, who names Mark Patterson, former lobbyist for Goldman Sachs and the man replacing Geitner at the FED is William Dudley, former chief economist at Goldman Sachs.

Just How Close Are GS And Obama

Goldman offered Libya’s securities-wealth fund an opportunity to invest $3.7 billion in the securities firm, the paper continued, one of six options placed on the table over months of negotiations.

The proposals came at the same time Goldman had taken $5 billion in investments from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in order to pass the Federal Reserve’s “stress test” to determine whether it had to raise additional capital.

The United States is now one of the NATO allies targeting Libya with rockets in an attempt to get Qaddafi, the decades-long despot, out of power and to see a Transitional National Council take his place.

With all the money wizards of GS and the Obama Administration swapping bunks, is it possible that the financial rip off of Qaddafi was about to become an embarrassment?

What better way to get rid of an embarrassment than to take him out with missiles when he threatens his people, while ignoring other despots that are actually killing their people by the thousands, we are talking about an embarrassment of Goldman Sachs for Muhammad’s Sake! Let’s remember GS used their bailout to start making a profit, they have managed to do so well with their wizardry that they can award 28,000 employees a $600,000 bonus. We can’t lament a few rockets that can help keep the reputation of a company like GS pristine and untainted by corruption. It is imperative that we keep things in perspective.

But damn Obama’s luck, the rockets didn’t kill the Desert Fox and the maniacal fanatics of the Muslim Brotherhood didn’t pull him to pieces, now what is happening to the reputation of Goldman Sachs. Qaddafi wants his money back and the wizards of Obama and Goldman Sachs ain’t looking too clever.

Obama’s promise to rid his administration of lobbyists is a standing joke when it comes to Goldman Sachs. Geitner has reportedly chosen a former GS lobbyist Mark Patterson to be his chief of staff. Patterson worked as a registered lobbyist for GS from 2005 to April of 2010.

It’s natural for Geitner, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs to select a Goldman Sachs insider for the number 2 position. At the Treasury, Jerry Rubin of the Clinton administration, was another Goldman Sachs CEO.

The man chosen to replace Geitner at the New York Fed was W. Dudley former Chief Economist for Goldman Sachs.

Goldman Sachs may as well be considered a part of the federal government. They paid Bill Clinton just under $950,000 for speeches between 2004 and 2007. Their Political Action Committee was the fourth largest donor to Clinton’s campaign, just below Citigroup. The Center for Responsive Politics maintains that Goldman’s Political Action Committee invested over a half million to congressional candidates in the 2008 elections, mostly Democrat incumbents. Goldman Sachs employees contributed more than $5,000,000. Obama received over $1,000,000 from GS for the 2008 election.

How quaint of Obama to promise to limit the influence of lobbyists in his administration. Goldman has had a seat at the table since regulations on finance were began to be unlaced during the Clinton years, they were among the first and largest recipients of TARP funding, receiving $10 billion immediately.

In matters of the economy, we can have faith in the intellect of men like Geitner, who according to Bernanke has two main guiding principles: “Life’s about alternatives” and “A plan beats no plan”. Bernanke also has referred to Geitner’s technique to thwart critics, “spray foam on the runway”; meaning, you take steps to limit collateral damage from crashes.

Would Obama be willing to use our military to cover for Goldman Sachs’ incompetence and corruption?

The answer may be hidden within another question, would Obama be willing to use the military to cover for his own incompetence and corruption?

In Sept, 2008, I penned the post, the US Economy: A Perfect Storm of Housing and Lending Events. This overview of how we managed to bring ourselves to the precarious cliff of a failed economy revealed it was not a single issue, but a combination of many events – including political pressure on lenders for homeownership, relaxing of GSE lending criteria, regulation/deregulation, and profit motivation by financial institutions – leading to an out of whack supply vs demand, driving up housing values to unsustainable and dangerous levels.

It never crossed my mind that financial terrorism could be another element to be factored in. So when the WA Times wrote of an unclassified Pentagon report by Kevin D. Freeman, my head perked up. (Read the Scribd version here.)

Since that time, I’ve tried to dissect what many here, and elsewhere, have dismissed as a report they consider simply a distraction from ill thought US fiscal policies and irresponsibility by both Congress and Wall Street alike, and fueled to a frenzy by irresponsible homeowners.

Be assured that the Freeman report does not dismiss irresponsibility for US fiscal policies and events. Rather, he frames his three Phrase hypothesis upon the premise that our self-induced fragile and unsustainable fiscal trajectory, combined with opaque global trading practices, was easily exploited for purposes of financial terrorism. And several out of the norm trading activities – such as an oil spike that wouldn’t traditionally happen, the bear runs at US financial institutions, and the disappearance of a hefty amount of money in the markets in a short time – were enough to raise suspicion.

It can be said that most conspiracy theories contain variations and glimmers of truth. So, to be as analytical as I can, without slinging political arrows, I offer you my thoughts on the first two of three Phases of the Freeman theory of Financial Terrorism as an element in the global 2008 economic crash.

Under normal conditions, an economic actor would seek to maximize returns and would therefore slow any price rise to reduce suspicion and minimize negative impacts on demand. A desire to spike prices may imply other intentions more in line with the oil as a weapon theory.

To summarize, the end goal of Phase 1 was simple… to generate enough excess wealth to launch Phase 2; bear raids on the markets. This starts with the assumption that the spike in oil prices in late 2007 and 2008 were not as a result of the usual supply/demand reasoning, but of speculation. Growth seemed to be leveling, and drilling activity had increased. So in hindsight, without disruption of crude, speculation was a likely explanation for a tripling of prices in a very short time.

Instead of using the more traditional hedge funds to drive up prices, a newer mechanism was flourishing… the Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs).

 “A Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) is a state-owned investment fund composed of financial assets such as stocks, bonds, real estate, or other financial instruments funded by foreign exchange assets. These assets can include: balance of payments surpluses, official foreign currency operations, the proceeds of privatizations, fiscal surpluses, and/or receipts resulting from commodity exports.‖

 “Since 2005, at least 17 sovereign wealth funds have been created. As other countries grow their currency reserves they will seek greater returns. Their growth has also been skyrocketed by rising commodity prices especially oil & gas, especially between the years of 2003 – 2008.

44% of all SWFs are in the Middle East, and 61% of the funding sources for these SWF’s are oil and gas related. These new power brokers have not only the motive to drive up oil prices, they have the means. According to Dr. Gal Luft, Executive Director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security – when testifying before House Committee on Foreign Affairs – they have been pouring billions into Western economies’ hedge funds, private equity funds, real estate and other natural western resources. They were estimated to hold approx $3.5 trillion in western assets at that hearing, and predicted to balloon to $10 to $15 trillion within a decade.

This is an amount equivalent to the entire US GDP.

Contrary to popular political beliefs, oil prices are out of our regulatory control. Instead, they are determined on a global basis, effected through non-transparent trading, and regulated outside the United States borders.

But one US corporation, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), founded by young entrepreneuer, Jeffrey Sprecher in 2000, has been taking the brunt of Congressional Dems blame, with accusations of oil speculation. Sen. Maria Cantwell, along with Maine’s Olympia Snow, had introduced legislation meant to give the CFTC more authority over the juggernaut that ICE has become since it’s creation. Before that, it was a Feinstein/Levin/Snow bill.

ICE was founded as an energy clearing house and online trading market for energy commodies, including partnering with Chicago Climate Exchange (and it’s links to Al Gore, Obama and Goldman Sachs) in 2006. In a letter to Sen. Feinstein, Sprecher protests Congressional charges about transparency, saying “Not only does ICE provide an audit trail but it provides one that cannot be replicated by other parts of the OTC marketplace (voice brokers, bilateral trading parties, etc.).”

But how much transparency is enough, when it comes to financial terrorist attacks? And is it energy clearing houses, such as ICE, that become unwitting (or witting) accomplices for SWFs putting excess revenues into hedge funds that positively speculate on increased oil prices?

Whalid Phares (pg 22 of the Freeman report), like Freeman, attributed much of the economic crisis to political pressure on Wall Street for risky loans, and Wall’s Streets willing participation in the risk. But Phares also sees a potential 3rd player in crisis – radical elements in OPEC nations…. Crumbling the US economic defense in a matter of months.

The thesis argue that combined Salafist-Wahabi and Muslim Brotherhood circles in the Gulf -with consent from the Iranian side on this particular issue, used the escalating pricing of Oil over the past year to push the financial crisis in the US over the cliff. The ‗high point‘ in this analysis is the timing between the skyrocketing of the prices at the pumps and the widening of the real estate crisis. In short the ―Oil-push‖ put the market out of balance hitting back at Wall Street.

~~~

Let‘s not underestimate the power of the Jihadi-oil lobby in America: it has decades of influence and it has long arms into the system, and it has powerful political allies. It knows when Americans are messing up their own system, and it knows very well how to push them over the cliff, into the abyss of economic calamity.

Jihad doesn’t care about economic destabilization in their backyard. And in fact, would welcome such an opportunity, as we witness with the current uprising in the ME countries. A political and economic vacuum translates to a jihad opportunity. How important is oil as a financial weapon to jihad? (excerpts from pgs 23 and 24 of the Freeman report)

―Sheikh Yussuf al Qardawi, Muslim Brotherhood ideologue and mentor of the Qatari-funded channel, spoke openly of Silah al Naft, i.e, ‗the weapon of oil.‘ Indeed, it was called a weapon – as in a warfare situation — and most likely it was used as such.

~~~

For years now, Salafist web sites and al Qaeda spokespersons have loudly called for an ‗oil Jihad against infidel America and its lackeys.‘ Online material is still circulating. But more revealing are the official speeches by Osama Bin Laden and his deputy on the ‗absolute necessity to use that weapon.‘

The second phase appears to have begun in 2008 with a series of bear raids targeting U.S. financial services firms that appeared to be systemically significant.

Motive of the market, for the most part, is profit. And to accomplish that, sometimes it behooves certain market participants to see a decline in stock values. Bear raids short a target stock… i.e. “borrow” shares in the hopes to cover/replace them with a cheaper price than the current rate. So bad news or rumors are spread to get the stock to drop.

Short selling, a similar process, is legit. But a bear raid is a rapid “short selling” process, involving violations of markets rules by using rumors or manipulation of perceived stock value. It is believed that it was such bear raids, conducted by Jesse “The Boy Plunger” Livermore, that lead to the 1929 US crash, and ushered in the creation of the SEC and the “uptick rule”. – the latter which would limit a short seller‘s ability to drive down a stock price simply from continual selling. Ironically, the uptick rule was eliminated by a Dem held Congress back in July 2007 – a year before the crash, and just months before the oil price run up began. Since 2009, debate and a reintroduction of it’s implementation began, but has not resulted in it’s reinstatement.

Not unlike politicians, campaigns and media rumors to negate their appeal, even a healthy business can fail when rumors abound. Such a case was Bear Sterms who failed not from lack of capital, but lack of confidence.

But the bear raid assault has been enhanced in sophistication with other more recent, tools. The success of a raid, using Credit Default Swaps, naked shorting*, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), and option strategies increases considerably, plus affords appeal with the near impossibility in tracing their origins. Lehman Brothers was also the victim of a bear raid using a combination of these financial tools. (pg 27 of the Freeman study). Dr. Susan Trimbath estimated that failed trades from naked short sales could account for 30-70% of the decline in share values for both Bear Stearns and Lehman. Had the uptick rule, or more transparency for short selling been in place, it’s entirely possible that even the troubled accounting of LB may have been revivable within bankruptcy reorganizing.

Naked short selling occurs when shares are sold without first owning them or borrowing them. This practice is basically illegal with a few exceptions created to promote short-term liquidity. Unfortunately, provisions against naked short selling have had lax enforcement by regulatory authorities in recent years, creating a serious vulnerability in our financial markets.

Just as with Phase 1, where it’s obvious that the conditions did not warrant a run up of oil prices, finding out the How’s, Who’s and Why’s of those at the heart of the bear raids is important… however extremely difficult.

Per the Freeman theory, the “how’s” were obvious. Multiple bear raids were successfully conducted against major US financial institutions. After the collapse of LB, the credit market froze, and stocks collapsed. Amazing when you consider that LB’s collapse may have been averted if there were a restraint on the naked short selling. Thus the economic dominoes began to fall, with the chaos surrounding AIG, GS, Morgan Stanley, losses in Norway’s government pension funds and the Reserve Primary Fund falling below $1 a share for the 1st time in 14 years.

“Who” demands examining who benefited from this chaos? According to Freeman, only net short financial stocks, or the entire market in general. Considering what it would take to organize such chaos across such wide spans and participants, one might discount conspiracy from the overall stock market community, working in concert.

Not withstanding the lack of transparency in these type of illegal trades, most of this trading originated from behind the fronts of brokerage firms, hedge funds and client investor pools.

Regardless of the motive, the actors behind the bear raids not only prefer anonymity but most likely planned for it from the beginning. This suggests layer upon layer of secrecy through foreign shell corporations, feeder funds, and numerous other pass-through entities. Historically, hedge funds have disclosed nothing to the government and very little to the public. Even from a tax standpoint, there has been virtually no ability for governments to track investment results back to most clients.

With the increase of “dark pools” and hedge funds comes anonymity in trading…, which is ideal for the laundering and the use of terror funds as an economic weapon.

One scenario could be that a terror group could direct investments to a feeder hedge fund. That feeder fund would locate a Cayman Islands-based hedge fund on their behalf that was predisposed to sell short financial shares. With sufficient new money, the hedge fund would expand their short selling activity (naked and traditional) and trade through dark pools or with sponsored access.

At the same time, the same terror group might invest heavily in credit default swaps of the targeted short sales either directly, through foreign contacts, or hedge funds. This activity, focused initially on Bear Stearns would prove greatly profitable. The same activity refocused on Lehman Brothers could account for a significant portion of the 33 million failed-to-deliver (naked short) shares, providing the trigger for the market and economy to collapse. And, nearly all of it would occur without notice. In fact, the original investor could close out positions basically undetected.

What this means is that terrorists no longer need to fly buildings into heart of the US financial district. With substantial financial backing, and Internet connection from their caves, they need only set up several overseas hedge funds and, acting as a coordinated unit, dump U.S. stocks…all under the financial radar of virtually all countries.

But for those seeking the quintessential smoking gun, it will be impossible to prove jihad groups were behind the financial crash. As Freeman notes, the only reason to suspect financial terrorism at all is the existence of such unusual trading activity in the scope of the historical norm. Therefore, in order to speculate on the “who’s”, it becomes necessary to review the available trading in the stocks of the financial services firms that appeared subjects of bear raids.

Starting on pg 43 of the Freeman study is the mention of a 65 pg report to Congress, various law enforcement agencies and regulators, titled “Red Flags of Market Manipulation Causing a Collapse of the U.S. Economy”. The report was submitted by an anonymous author.

In this anonymous report, is the key point that there were two companies at the heart of this style of trading, and they consistently work in concert. Freeman deliberately withholds the names of these two companies from his study because “…trading data alone is insufficient to consider any accusations against them.”

Likely for this reason, I have not found this document on the Internet… nor do I suspect any of us will. But it would be an interesting FOIA request to put in. In case any of you find that some enterprising investigative journalist has successfully done so, please provide the links in the comments for the rest of us.

But with the breadcrumbs of clues Freeman left, we can deduce who these companies are *not*, based on the data provided for the anonymous author.

These firms became, virtually overnight, the largest traders in the U.S. financial markets. These companies provide a one-stop-shop for trade execution, back office clearing and bookkeeping that cater to hedge funds and small broker dealers. To give perspective, the amount of trading executed by these two firms in October 2008 exceeded the trading of securities firms Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch combined in the NASDAQ market participant reports.

This obviously leaves out the favored political target of Goldman Sachs, who enjoys the current POTUS on the end of their marionette strings. Whoever these firms are, they dwarf these immense US financial institutions.

But for those who may have a better grasp of the players in the global trading world, here are the other clues from “deep keyboard”, as I’ll call this author:

(From the anonymous report directly)

1) The firms have traded trillions of dollars worth of U.S. blue chip companies. They are the number one traders in all financial companies that collapsed or are now financially supported by the U.S. government. Trading by the firms has grown exponentially while the markets have lost trillions of dollars in value.

2) These firms appear to own few or no shares of blue chip companies they are number one traders in. There is no doubt that the magnitude of their trading impacted the marketplace. Since the direction of the market place has been in a severe downward trend, the impact from the firms has been and remains, negative to the marketplace.

~~~

(From Freeman’s summarized addition key findings)

 The two previously small broker dealers mentioned in the report are market makers for every major financial services firm under attack.
 These firms have a combined 76 different symbols under which they act as market maker (by contrast a major firm such as Citigroup has just 6).
 Both firms offer sponsored access.
 Both firms offer access to dark pools.
 From June through September 2008, the two firms appeared to concentrate on Lehman Brothers, trading 1.04 billion shares while the stock price collapsed from $33.83 to $0.21 on 15 September. This pattern seemed to repeat in every other major financial stock.
 The report estimates that the two firms completed as many as 641,000 trades per hour in October 2008 (based on market participation statistics and average trade size from the last available data).
 Total trading volume by month in the financial sector listed for these two firms grew from approximately 350,000 shares (less than 1% of all market participant trading) in September 2006 to approximately 600,000 shares in the sector (about 6% of all market participant trading) in September 2007, to over 8 billion shares in the sector (about 19% of all market participant trading) by September 2008. That‘s an increase of 2.4 million percent in two years.
 While both firms have been around for several decades, their rapid growth began in 2006 for one and 2007 for the other.
 Both firms seem to specialize in the same stocks at the same time, appearing to work in concert.
 Combined, the two firms traded 203 billion shares, mostly concentrated in major financial services companies. This compares to a total of 427 billion shares outstanding of all issues on the New York Stock Exchange.
 The report estimates trading of at least $5 trillion over the 25-month period ending in November 2008.
 The trading appears to represent new money to the marketplace by new participants.
 From July 2008 through September 2008, the two firms ―traded more shares of Fannie and Freddie than were issued‖ even as the share prices were collapsing.
 The firms were also the largest traders of the UltraShort funds as well as the ―financial spider‖ (symbol ―XLF‖) during the reporting period.
 The firms also became the largest traders of energy stocks.
 The two firms did not and do not hold major equity positions on their books

Whoever they are, they had to have sufficient capital to effect $5 trillion in trades in a very short period… whether domestic or foreign. And they used minor league brokers to focus on failed or failing US financial institutions.

This bring us to the “Why’s”…

Their motive comes down to two base choices… financial for profit, or subversive non-economic motives.

Another favorite target would be George Soros. Certainly the Soros Quantum Fund profited by $1.1 billion during this period. But then Soros was also an outspoken voice, warning of the danger of this bear raid activity. Therefore it’s also entirely possible that Soros, an astute businessman if not a likeable character, merely piggybacked wealth on the events out of his control.

Certainly hedge funds profited as well. Add to that, the naked short selling is a favorite of organized crime and the Russian Mafia. In this case, it will have to be a very greased palm for any of the potential mafias involved.

But then, when you consider greed, coupled with the chaos of the markets, you have to wonder if the quick fast profit, and potential destruction of the largest free market economy, is such a wise strategy. Would a manufacturer make a killing on a new invention right out of the gate, then burn down his factory and the potential to make even more?

Which brings me to those with non-economic motives. Barry Ritholtz, the head of research firm FusionIQ, made an interesting observation on his blog, The Big Picture, on Sept 19th, 2008. Ritholtz was discussing the absurdity of banning all short sales.

I have been trying to contextualize this, and I keep coming back to what seemed like a wild theory yesterday that seems a whole lot less wild today. During the day, I had an interesting phone conversation with Joe Besecker of Emerald Asset Management. (We used to do schtick together on Power Lunch, and made for an amusing financial comedy team).

But Joe is a good money manager, a great stock picker, and a thoughtful guy. He raised an intriguing issue: None of the many hedgies he knew were pressing their bets recently. The bear raids on the banks and brokers were NOT a case of piling on by US based hedge funds. And from what he was seeing and hearing about in terms of order flow, the vast majority of the financial short selling the past week or so were being done overseas. It appears that the lion’s share of shorting was coming out of overseas bourses such as London and Dubai.It may not be a coincidence that the financial short selling ban is both here and in London.

Then there is another coincidence: The huge increase in shorting of the financials occurred on the anniversary of 9/11. And on top of that, the same institutions attacked on 9/11/01 were the ones suffering in recent days.

This same financial terrorism theory, plus the date of the economic assault, was noted by Jim Cramer. But in the chaos of the moment, no follow up was done. To pile on to what may not be such a wild theory afterall, add Charles Duelfer and James Rickards in their co-authored NYTs op-ed on Dec 21, 2008, titled Financial Time Bombs.

In their examination of possible suspects, they note that China behaved appropriately during the fiscal crisis, being large holders of US debt. Russia was considered in the bailout of the GSE’s because they are also some of the largest holders of government agency debt. This seems to indicate these two are unlikely perps.

Al Qaeda, on the other hand, has declared that damage to the US economy is it’s 2nd priority, following only mass deaths. To emphasize the jihad focus on the US economy, we need only remember OBL’s words on Dec 21st, 2001.

…hitting the economic structure…is basic for the military power. If their economy is destroyed, they will be busy with their own affairs rather than enslaving the weak peoples. It is very important to concentrate on hitting the US economy through all possible means.”

AQ, acting alone, doesn’t have the financial resources for such an attack. However with their tentacles extending to the cash rich Taliban, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, China and the Arab states, their combined effort may be enough to do the trick. All sects of radical Islam share a common goal – that of replacing “..the ‘slavery’ of the Western international monetary system” with Shariah Compliant Financing (SCF) because it is then subject to Shariah Law.

According to Saudi and Muslim Brotherhood (MB) spiritual leader Hamud bin Uqla al-Shuaibi, “The importance of Financial Jihad [is]…more important…than self-sacrificing.”

There are documented ties between the Shariah Finance Compliance and the widely increased appearance of Sovereign Wealth Funds that have appeared on the scene in the past decade. Which again ties into Phase 1′s driving up the price of oil.

Altho there is no evidence that these SWFs have participated in bear raids, the Shariah-compliant SWF now has the ability to sell short either through SCF-compliant hedge funds or directly via the arboon short sale…. and all without transparency.

Yet none of the above bonding between jihad groups eliminates other likely suspects, such as Venezuela, Iran, Russia and China, as they are also abundant in wealthy SWFs. But, as mentioned above, Russia and China have more financial ties economically that would be negatively affected by a damaged US economy.

But renegade Chinese elements may indeed have their motives, and some of the involvement can be traced back to a Chinese individual, helping to launder money thru multiple global banks, aiding in Iran’s WMD program, presumably obtained from Russian sources. Some of Iran’s largest banks are believed to have played roles in illegal money movement.

Another axis of evil, engaging in illegal money movement has been North Korea, who was ID’d as creating and laundry’ing huge sums of counterfeit money.

The report says North Korea uses front companies and shell companies overseas to facilitate the illicit trafficking in supernotes. The use of fake companies increased after the Treasury Department barred U.S. companies from working with Banco Delta Asia.

To further hide the transactions from international financial authorities, the North Korean party office used a financial front company, set up in China in 2006, to make payments as part of the purchases, the report says. North Korea also set up a front company in the British Virgin Islands in the mid-2000s to take advantage of lax banking regulations and tax laws there, it says, and other branches of the front company were established for financial support activities in China, Russia and Southeast Asia.

However what may possibly be the largest indication that financial terrorism is at work is a 2009 story that was virtually swept under the rug by the MSM. The arrest of two Japanese nationals (or Asian men, as reported elsewhere) in Italy, trying to smuggle $134.5 billion in US Treasury bearer bonds into Switzerland. If they were real, it would constitute the largest financial smuggling operation in history. If fake, the quality of the counterfeiting was such high quality to be almost undistinguishable from the original.

At the time, Seeking Alpha pointed out the many strange inconsistencies in the story. Obvious points were their choice of transportation, where two affluent business men would have stood out like sore thumbs on a train filled with Italian common workers, and why the bearer bonds would have been hidden in a secret cache of an attaché case. If they were real, they could have been transported in a diplomatic pouch, exempt from customs scrutiny.

Another eyebrow raiser was the amount of the bearer bonds. The arrest of the Asian men took place early June of 2009. In March, 2009, US Treasury Department announced that USD $134.5 billion remained in TARP funds…, coincidently the same amount of the counterfeit bearer bonds.

The head scratching moments don’t end there. While doing an article about just how this attempt to smuggle bearer bonds could bring down the US economic, Contrarian Profits also points out who broke the story of this historic smuggling attempt… AsiaNews.it…, an obscure Vatican-sponsored news website.

This story has more holes than a Swiss cheese. We know from experience here at Notes (your co-editor spent two years working as an investigative reporter in his native Ireland) that there is rarely smoke without fire when it comes to news stories. But one aspect of this story still puzzles us… and it’s a part of the story nobody to date has questioned: What was an obscure Vatican-sponsored news outfit doing breaking the largest financial crime story all time?

As far as we can tell, AsiaNews.it broke the story on June 8. Major news services followed on with their own reports much later. Bloomberg, for instance, only got to it yesterday. So how did AsiaNews.it, a website linked to the Ponticial Institute for Foreign Missions and funded by the Vatican scoop the major news agencies on the bond story?

AsiaNews.it’s About Us page freely admits that it is an anti-Communist organ of the Roman Catholic Church, “nobly dedicated to China and her people.” The organization’s missionary zeal is not difficult to detect.

A smuggling operation of this magnitude demands a level of sophistication that is absent in this attempt in every fashion… from the strategic action to the media outlet who exposed it. It was almost as if they wanted to be caught.

Why? As Seeking Alpha notes, there’s no faster way to sabotage and usher in the death of a currency than to raise legitimate questions about its ability to withstand counterfeiting efforts. (as was done by the Nazis in WWII with Operation Bernhard)

Ironically, the Asian business men, arrested, were released. According to the Italian authorities, they were not caught using the fake bonds in the commission of fraud. Status of the bonds as real or counterfeit did not seem to enter the picture for prosecution.

As for the US Treasury, they declared them counterfeit. (linked from Cryptogon’s various updates on the story…)

“The whole thing is a total fraud,” Stephen Meyerhardt, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, said Thursday. “They don’t look anything like real securities, which in any case were never issued in any of those denominations.”

The highest denomination ever issued by the Treasury Department was $10,000, he said. The Italian financial police claimed some of the paper was “Kennedy bonds” from the 1930s, but no such bonds ever existed. And the total of Treasury bearer bonds still outstanding is a mere $105 million; the Treasury has been issuing bonds in electronic form since 1986.

Here’s the rub… the Treasury dept declared their counterfeit status not by in person inspection, but
by photos on the Internet. WTF? They appear to be so real as to fool Italian customs, yet can be so easily dismissed by shooting a photo or two thru cyberspace??

On the contrary, again the Vatican’ news arm, AsiaNew.it, linked above, gives reason to doubt the quick dismissal of authenticity.

One more element in favour of the bond’s authenticity is found in the securities, which in the June 4 statement, the GdF termed “Kennedy Bonds” with photos provided. These photos reveal that the securities under discussion are not bonds but Treasury Notes, because they are securities that can be immediately exchanged for their worth in goods or services and because they are devoid of interest coupons. One side carries a reproduction of the image of the American president, the reverse side that of a spaceship. From confidential, usually well-informed sources, AsiaNews has learned that this type of paper money was issued less than ten years ago (in 1998), although it is difficult to know whether those seized in Chiasso are authentic. But the fact that the release of this particular State Treasury was not completely in the public domain tends to exclude the possibility of counterfeiting. It highly unreasonable to suppose that a forger would reproduce a State Treasury not commonly in circulation and of which there is no public knowledge.

As Freeman notes in his report:

The sheer amount of the bonds takes the activity out of the role of the criminal and into the realm of financial terrorism and/or economic warfare.

Again, more questions than answers INRE motive, and players. But it’s obvious that financial terrorism is not a conspiracy theory to be lightly dismissed.

Coming next…. Phase 3, assault on the US dollar.

The People Of The Stables

The race track is a world within a world. It can be a dangerous place, injuries and death happen all too frequently, but you can make dear friends at the track; especially, if you work on the backside where the horses are stabled. Everyone on the backside can be divided into three groups: those who are addicted to gambling, those who are in love with the equine beast and those for whom the equine is merely a means to provide a job or for a few to make a fortune.

The gamblers are lost souls to be sure and only one out of 500 or maybe a thousand ever builds an estate with winnings; most gamblers funnel the memorable wins they score right back through the betting windows, but those wins become memories enshrined as gambling mythology and the efforts to duplicate those legendary wins become mystical like the search for the Holy Grail. Thus the gambler becomes one of many lost legions of forgotten people who exist solely to keep racing alive.

The horse lovers are in a precarious position; for they know deep inside that racing is one of the hardest sports of all for the equine and that injuries happen all to frequently and death is always waiting. They often choose to ignore the obvious contradictions and spend their time caring the horses and giving them comfort during their often all too short lives. Like concubines for gladiators, they willingly give their love to these superb athletes and move on when necessary. Sadly, these most dedicated of care givers end up hollow shells within a couple of decades, they are often bitter people who are dedicated cynics and view almost all other humans as lesser beings.

Of the people for whom the horse provides an income, a group that includes me, there are those who are born under the right star and make a fortune, but even these with luck and skill must be wary, for even the greatest can stumble and end up ruined and destroyed financially. For every successful jockey, vet, trainer, horseshoer; there are at least twelve or twenty more that are standing around hoping to get that one big break that will launch their career. Most of them will never get that break and of those that do, a large percentage will let that measure of success destroy them as surely as the moth flies into the flame. The temptations are never in short supply for those who enjoy a measure of success and the giving in to temptation helps to soothe the pain from years of rejection.

A Track Character

One of my favorites from the group for whom the race track provides a job was T Red Booker. He was an old man when I met him, a Black Cajun with a bright yellow color to his eyes. We hit it off right away, I suspect it was because of his rural upbringing in the woods of Louisiana and his interest in healing remedies and cooking. He was a groom for one of my big outfits from New Orleans. We talked for hours on cures for hoof rot, puncture wounds, poultices, shivers, fever fighters and then we would talk about our favorite cooking techniques. He liked to hear about my experiments smoking bacon and hams, my recipes for moose nose, elk liver, grizzly heart, and he told me about stuffed quail wrapped in bacon, snapping turtle fries, smoked alligator, and 20 varieties of poke salad.

He wasn’t interested in gambling and he knew he was at the terminal position in his station in life, so he was above all the desperate struggling of the average race tracker. T Red was content to watch the others struggle for their goals; consequently, he was an excellent mentor for me at this stage of my life.

I once asked him if the name T Red meant anything in Cajun or Coonasse as he would say. He said that as a lad that no one could outrun him for any distance between a quarter mile and a mile. He had once raced a famous stakes horse at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans for a quarter mile, even though the jockey was running too close to him in an effort to scare him. In their language the name meant Fast Red. In his younger days, his hair was a reddish color before turning gray, the name stuck. So he had been T Red Booker ever since, one of the few men that could outrun a horse.

Booker and I were like a lot of people I’ve met in the horse world; they were just born in the wrong period of history. They were much more comfortable with horses and all things associated with an earlier time of civilization than they were with mechanical and electronic things of more recent times. We are often left with the feelings that are probably accurate, that we just don’t really fit in with modern society, thus we congregate on race tracks, ranches, and farms. We ride, drive teams, pack, and work on horses to keep a dying culture alive for a few more generations, mainly because there really isn’t anything else that holds our interest. Oh, we are a varied bunch, every shape, size, and color; usually, we are a bit rough around the edges for sophisticated types; some are educated and others have ever been to school; there are friends and there are enemies, but the best among us can size up a horse or a rider within two strides and we all respect a gifted horseman for what he can do.

For several years, I looked for T Red’s outfit to pull into Chicago or Kentucky; we always had a homecoming of sorts and a period to catch up on the news of mutual acquaintances. On one of these occasions, I was sorry to see T Red was on light duty with a terrible limp. I asked him what was wrong and he said he had an ingrown toe nail that was giving him problems.

Unexpected Trouble

The next day, I had to shoe a gelding for T Red’s outfit and T Red was going to hold the horse. I was there about 10 AM and most of the track work was over for the day until the races started after lunch. T Red brought out a comfortable folding lawn chair and sat down while holding the horse. Between the relaxed nature of the two of us the horse was very cooperative.

T Red had an old shoe on his right foot and had cut out the leather around the area of his big toe, the toe was about three times bigger than normal and looked like it was ready to explode. T Red fell asleep with legs out in front of him, so I was real careful not to step on his sore foot while clinching the front shoes.

I was working away and noticed that T Red had dropped the leather lead shank on the ground. The horse was really easy to work with, but he was still a race horse and if he took off it would be trouble for T Red, so I wrapped the leather lead shank around the arm of the lawn chair, just in case, and went back to work.

I couldn’t help myself, I kept looking at that infected big toe; suddenly, just as I was finishing the hind shoes, I had a brilliant idea to help T Red. I lifted one of the horses front legs and brought it out in front of him with his knee locked straight. I aimed the hoof and brand new aluminum shoe with its steel toe grab right over that ingrown toe nail that needed to come off of that toe. I lifted the foot up and down several times to be sure of my aim and let it go. The steel toe grab was right on target with a couple of hundred pounds of force as it landed on the base of that toe nail. Immediately the corruption exploded out of that toe and T Red woke up emitting a loud roar that scared the horse back without picking up his hoof and that ripped the ingrown toe nail from the hoof and the toe was really draining well at this point.

There was one problem, I had forgotten that I had wrapped the lead shank around the chair arm earlier. The horse pulled back until the lead shank tightened, which was about the length of a millisecond and when he felt the weight of T Red in the chair he spun around to the right until he was behind T Red; who was making the situation worse by screaming blood curdling screams while reaching for his foot and then throwing his hands in the air. All of this strange behavior by T Red had the poor horse confused and he took off at a dead run. Thankfully, this made T Red quit screaming and he looked at me with this blank expression as the horse gained speed with the lawn chair and T Red bouncing along beside him. It was amazing how long the chair stayed in the upright position, because that horse was gaining speed with every stride, but when the chair started to tip over backwards, the lead shank came undone and the horse lost his curious load.

No one really understood how the accident happened and I didn’t want to tell them about T Red falling asleep on the job, so everyone figured it was just one of those race track accidents that are bound to happen now and then. T Red’s big toe healed up in a few days and felt better almost immediately. He received a few bumps and bruises when his lawn chair flipped on him, but all things considered, he did pretty well.

There is a lesson to learned from T Red’s complacency. We have a new treaty and we assume that everything will be perfect now; unfortunately, we tend to drift off into slumber while enjoying the security of a treaty that assures us that we will have peace in our time; unfortunately, there are often little irritants that tend to get out of control while we assume that it is safe enough to go to sleep; suddenly, we are bouncing along backwards in a lawn chair at forty miles an hour awaiting the inevitable crash.

Now that Chaves has purchased missiles from Iran, we can ill-afford to lean back in our lawn chair and how long will it be before the little weirdo from North Korea can purchase the long range missiles he needs to pinpoint Hawaii or the West Coast? A treaty with Russia is the least of our worries, it’s the strange little guys who want to make their mark in history that are the real problems and we have very little in the way of plans to prevent them from dropping the race shoe on our big toe.

This START treaty is bad bad bad….for one very important reason. It reduces our ability to defend ourselves.

Ariel Cohen, a Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies at The Heritage Foundation, notes that the Russians have repeatedly stated they have to right to back out of the treaty if the U.S. missile defense systems is deemed a threat to them.

When has it not been a threat?

This constraint on our missile defense system was the main reason this treaty should never have happened:

Washington has agreed to limitations on its ballistic-missile-defense options (something the administration’s representatives vehemently deny); ambiguous language on rail-mobile ballistic missiles; vague limitations on conventional global-strike systems and a significant degradation of the START verification regime from 1991. All these measures limit U.S. defense options not vis-à-vis Russia, but North Korea, China, and in the future, Iran; and provide the Russian Federation’s Strategic Rocket Forces with unfair advantages.

Furthermore, the treaty’s preamble, the Russian unilateral statement on missile defense and remarks by senior Russian officials suggest an attempt by Russia to limit or constrain current and future U.S. missile-defense capabilities by threatening to withdraw from the treaty should the U.S. expand its missile defenses “qualitatively” or “quantitatively.” Apparently, it will be up to Russia to define these quantitative and/or qualitative criteria, forcing U.S. decision-makers to look to Moscow every time a significant missile defense decision has to be made.

And they all fell for it hook line and sinker.

Some background on the naive thinking of Obama and company:

Though President Obama has announced that Russia is no longer the enemy, Russia still considers the U.S. its “principal adversary,” despite the Administration’s attempts to “reset” bilateral relations. U.S. policymakers need to examine Russia’s views on nuclear weapons and understand Russian nuclear doctrine as it is—not as U.S. arms control advocates wish it to be.

The Russian Approach to Nuclear Arms Control

At the signing of the START follow-on treaty, Medvedev reiterated the Russian position that “the treaty can only be viable” if does not “jeopardize the strategic offensive weapons on the Russian side.”[1]Medvedev essentially created a caveat that makes the Russian commitment to the treaty questionable at best, illustrating that Russia and the U.S. perceive nuclear arms control and doctrine very differently.

Though the Soviet Union collapsed 20 years ago, Russian national leaders, generals, and experts are still captive to a deeply suspicious worldview that hearkens back to hundreds of years of Russian imperial policy.

Announcing the modernization of Russian nuclear forces in 2007, then-President Putin illustrated the Russian worldview by linking nuclear modernization to the U.S. war in Iraq: “Russia, thank God, isn’t Iraq [and] has enough strength and power to defend itself and its interests, both on its territory and in other parts of the world.”[2] For many in Russia, the U.S. is still glavny protivnik (principal adversary), and nuclear arms control does not mean any limits on its ability to maintain modern nuclear weapons. Yet Moscow strives to limit U.S. missile defense and strategic conventional capabilities.

As the Russian military doctrine published this spring illustrates, Russian elites view nuclear weapons not only as a way to protect Russia but as strategic tools used to escalate and end local and regional wars. Nor is Russia interested in President Obama’s vision of a world without nuclear weapons. In 2006, Putin emphasized the importance of Russia’s nuclear arsenal: “When looking at today’s international situation … Russia is compelled to realize that nuclear deterrence is a key element in guaranteeing the country’s security.”[3] The product of Soviet and post-Soviet strategy, current Russian policy is aimed at maximizing deterrence and offensive capability at minimal cost.

~~~

The Obama Administration’s arms control strategy to date has been rooted in an outdated 1970s arms control model and the idealism of the 1960s, both of which embrace a “getting to zero” approach of full nuclear disarmament while weakening missile defense in Eastern Europe.

In a world of global proliferation, and in the context of a Russian nuclear strategy premised on nuclear parity and mutually assured destruction, coupled with scaling down of U.S. defensive systems, this approach to arms control is doomed to fail.

While a conflict with Russia is not likely, and hasn’t been likely in decades…a conflict with Iran, China or North Korea is not out of the question. With our missile defense ability greatly diminished, if not completely destroyed, there is now a greater chance of a nuclear war occurring:

The world, meanwhile, will become a more dangerous place. By simultaneously pursuing a strategy of minimalist missile defense and allowing the U.S. nuclear deterrent to atrophy, the president is lowering the bar for other states to become significant actors. As that trend accelerates, there could well be fewer nuclear weapons in the world — because they’ll have been used in nuclear war. “Pursuing a policy of nuclear disarmament in a proliferated setting actually leads to instability,” our research finds. “When confronted with a crisis, countries rely on nuclear weapons more, not less.”

To make matters worse, the White House will likely follow up New START with an even more ambitious arms-control agenda — one that will likely accelerate our journey down this troubling path.

And to make my point, what happened today?

North Korea threatened nuclear war:

Leader Kim Jong-il and his ministers say they are fully prepared to launch a “sacred war”.

They warn that even the smallest intrusion on its territory would bring a devastating response.

Defence chief Kim Yong Chun said the South’s show of strength with tanks and fighter jets near the border was a “grave military provocation” indicating it was planning to invade.

Kim told a national meeting in Pyongyang that the North would not hesitate to push the button.

He said: “To counter the enemy’s intentional drive to push the situation to the brink of war, our revolutionary forces are making preparations to begin a sacred war at any moment necessary based on nuclear deterrent.” North Korea has threatened nuclear attack before but many analysts say it does not have the technology to launch a nuclear weapon.

Many analysts say? The same analysts that said both North Korea and Iran were nowhere close to gaining a nuclear weapon? Those analysts?

Whether they have the ability to launch one yet matters not. They will. Iran will.

Thanks to Obama and some weak kneed cowardly Republicans we are up sh*t creek without a paddle.

Wikileaks has released the next wave of classified material and it has made this country infinitely weaker. No country will want to confide, nor help, the US again knowing that they too could be embarrassed.

Ronald Neumann, who served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007, tells Danger Room he fears the impact of forced candor on U.S. foreign relations. “A man might say things to his wife about his mother-in-law that he would be horrified to hear her repeat to her mother and the doing of which might even put great strain on his marriage,” Neumann says. “That is what a lot of classification is about. I believe it serves the public. There is always an argument for publicizing malfeasance. I do not believe there is one for making more difficult just getting on with the nation’s diplomatic business.”

The excuse given by Wikileaks for releasing the documents? Naive and ignorant:

This document release reveals the contradictions between the US’s public persona and what it says behind closed doors – and shows that if citizens in a democracy want their governments to reflect their wishes, they should ask to see what’s going on behind the scenes.

Allah:

If you take this argument seriously, any confidential communication between government officials should be fair game for leaking so long as it somehow contradicts or questions, however glancingly, state policy. (Hypocrisy!) But of course, they’re not limiting publication to only those documents that undermine official State Department positions; as noted above in the context of Turkey’s foreign minister, a lot of this stuff will simply be bits of intelligence about various international actors and speculation about their motives. Nothing “hypocritical” about it — but mighty embarrassing.

This was done to weaken this country, plain and simple. With a already weak President in office these documents have most certainly caused major harm to this country. I mean think about it. It’s common sense that State Department diplomatic cables would contain some embarrassing facts about different countries and their leaders. Now this country, and Obama, has a much more difficult road ahead:

The President needs his ambassadors to know what he wants; they need to be able to tell him what he can get. So it’s stupid to not be blunt and forthright in private about matters that require a softer public touch.

Think they will be blunt and forthright anymore?

Not gonna happen.

Joe Lieberman:

“Wikileaks’ deliberate disclosure of these diplomatic cables is nothing less than an attack on the national security of the United States, as well as that of dozens of other countries. By disseminating these materials, Wikileaks is putting at risk the lives and the freedom of countless Americans and non-Americans around the world. It is an outrageous, reckless, and despicable action that will undermine the ability of our government and our partners to keep our people safe and to work together to defend our vital interests. Let there be no doubt: the individuals responsible are going to have blood on their hands. I stand in full support of the Obama Administration’s condemnation of Wikileaks for these disclosures. I also urge the Obama Administration — both on its own and in cooperation with other responsible governments around the world — to use all legal means necessary to shut down Wikileaks before it can do more damage by releasing additional cables. Wikileaks’ activities represent a shared threat to collective international security.

“It is also outrageous for Wikileaks and its enablers to hide their conduct behind the ideal of ‘transparency.’ As a democracy, our nation has always believed the American people should have access to as much information as possible. But we have also long recognized that — to keep our country safe — some information must be kept secret. This is a balancing act that the American people themselves ultimately control through our democratically-elected representatives and our institutions. What Wikileaks is doing is to short-circuit this entire democratic process — claiming for itself the exclusive, unilateral, and unchecked power to decide what should and shouldn’t be made public. This is therefore not only an attack on our national security, but an offense against our democracy and the principle of transparency.”

As for the information contained in the documents I’m just going to highlight two, and both deal with North Korea. First, do you recall this speech?

Turns out the man was right:

Secret American intelligence assessments have concluded that Iran has obtained a cache of advanced missiles, based on a Russian design, that are much more powerful than anything Washington has publicly conceded that Tehran has in its arsenal, diplomatic cables show.

Iran obtained 19 of the missiles from North Korea, according to a cable dated Feb. 24 of this year. The cable is a detailed, highly classified account of a meeting between top Russian officials and an American delegation led by Vann H. Van Diepen, an official with the State Department’s nonproliferation division who, as a national intelligence officer several years ago, played a crucial role in the 2007 assessment of Iran’s nuclear capacity

~~~

The missile intelligence also suggests far deeper military — and perhaps nuclear — cooperation between North Korea and Iran than was previously known. At the request of the Obama administration, The New York Times has agreed not to publish the text of the cable.

Hmmmm, things just got much more difficult for Obama to deal with regarding the North Korea situation.

X2

Thinking about an eventual collapse of North Korea: American and South Korean officials have discussed the prospects for a unified Korea, should the North’s economic troubles and political transition lead the state to implode. The South Koreans even considered commercial inducements to China, according to the American ambassador to Seoul. She told Washington in February that South Korean officials believe that the right business deals would “help salve” China’s “concerns about living with a reunified Korea” that is in a “benign alliance” with the United States.

This release just gave North Korea an excuse for all-out war.

As Lieberman said above….blood is definitely on the hands of Julian Assange and his wikileaks.

North Korea assaults South Korea with an artillery barrage; Obama frets over the Six Part Talks and figures we shouldn’t reward bad behavior with money.

National Security Adviser Tom Donilon: He just rose to his current post in October, replacing Jim Jones. Prior to his tenure in the Obama administration, Donilon was chiefly … a Democratic operative. And a lobbyist for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for six years. Aren’t you glad a Fan-Fred lobbyist is advising POTUS on dealing with the wildly unpredictable, violent, and dangerous Kim family in North Korea?

Vice President Biden’s National Security Adviser Tony Blinken: Blinken’s national security resume is arguably a little stronger than Donilon’s, having worked around the national security apparatus a bit more than Donilon has. On the other hand, VP Biden calls Blinken “one of the smartest guys I’ve ever worked with,” (coming from the man who opposed the surge and wanted to divide Iraq into three separate states and leave them for Iran’s pickings, that’s quite a statement!) and he has the unabashed endorsement of violent-fantasy prone rabid left-wing blogger Spencer Ackerman, who calls Blinken an “energetic progressive.” Seriously.

Senior White House Coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Counterterrorism and Arms Control Gary Samore: Among the chief architects of the controversial START treaty, which, according to its opponents like the Heritage Foundation, is tipped to heavily favor the Russians against U.S. interests. Samore also does a good job of misunderstanding the roots of strife in the Middle East. Hint: Arab states attacked tiny and barely armed Israel repeatedly before “arms control” was even a glimmer in Nixon’s eye.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Dr. Susan Rice: Where to start? How about Rwanda. Rice was in the Clinton administration’s State Department when that genocide occurred. She reportedly learned a lesson from that, which was that the U.S. should have intervened. But for some reason that same lesson didn’t apply to Iraq, where the U.S. had actual security interests at stake and from which Saddam Hussein threatened the region and the world. She appears to be one of a long line of “progressives” who advocate for U.S. involvement in international crises in inverse proportion to our national security interests that might be at stake (such thinking elevates Darfur above, say, Iraq). She was John Kerry’s senior foreign policy adviser during his 2004 run for the presidency.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: She boasts an undeserved reputation for international competence; her tenure at State got off to a rocky start with the Russian “reset” faux pas (which was an attempt to placate KGB man Vlad Putin & Co by taking a cheap shot at former President Bush while she was on foreign soil) and has only gotten smoother in direct proportion to her silence. That’s because like her boss, when she does speak, she tends to go around making apologies for the very nation whose interests she is supposed to represent.

We have nothing to fear, President Obama is confident that he can charm and win over our antagonists with campaign speeches and apologies for America’s transgressions in the past. He just needs to recapture the mesmerizing charm and momentum of the 08 election.

If all else fails, we have our Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who not only had Saul Alynsky as a mentor, but was married to a president.

There are three basic ways we can look at this latest incident, we can ignore it and hope it goes away, we can have confidence in our administration, or we can be fearful. It is hard to have confidence in the man shown in the above video. Our best option is to hope we survive the next two years and destroy the Democrat party in the next election, excluding California of course.

America’s presence in the world is being diminished by the president’s flaccid and impotent responses to provocation. Aggressors are emboldened when hostile overtures are met with an outstretched hand and ingenuous threats of sanctions. The US was once a great nation; however, such notions are forgotten by enemies and allies, when our leader’s implied mantra is, ‘we capitulate so that we may exist in peace’.

North Korea attacks South Korea and now Japan is on high alert:

North Korea’s artillery attack on a South Korean island put the Japanese government on high alert, with Prime Minister Naoto Kan ordering his cabinet members to step up information-gathering and prepare for emergencies.

China sends two ships to patrol islands in the East China Sea that are also claimed by Japan, the latest sign of heightened tension between the two nations.

After Mr. Kan gathered his key cabinet ministers for an emergency meeting late Tuesday, Tokyo issued a statement that harshly condemned Pyongyang for its attacks on civilian targets and expressed strong support for South Korea.

Time has more:

At about 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday in Korea, North Korea commenced a fusillade of artillery fire across the disputed maritime border between North and South, attacking an island in what the Koreas call the West Sea. For just over an hour, the North bombarded Yeonpyeong Island, killing two South Korean marines, injuring 16 more marines and injuring at least three civilians. More than 50 homes caught fire because of the bombardment, and residents of the sparsely populated island scrambled for safety in a bomb shelter. The South responded by scrambling F-16s — which did not cross into North Korean airspace, the South Korean Joint Chiefs said — and returning artillery fire, to unknown effect.

The assault — the second in the area in the past year — came in the midst of a nine-day live-fire exercise conducted by South Korean forces in the waters near the so-called Northern Limit Line, the U.N.-mandated maritime border that Pyongyang does not recognize. Late Tuesday, the North explicitly blamed these exercises for its attack: “Despite our repeated warnings, South Korea provoked us by firing artillery shells into our territory,” said a statement from Pyongyang that was carried on the Korean Central News Agency, the North’s primary external propaganda arm. “Our revolutionary forces countered with stern military actions. It is our traditional military countermeasure to punish perpetrator’s fire with a thunderbolt of fire.” The South, for the record, said the exercises were conducted on its side of the so-called NLL.

But the timing, with U.S. special envoy Stephen Bosworth in the region, was probably not coincidental. The skirmish comes less than two weeks after North Korea allowed a prominent American nuclear scientist to see a brand-new facility for the production of highly enriched uranium — one of the two possible source materials for producing a nuclear bomb. Siegfried Hecker, former director of Los Alamos National Labs in the U.S., described the facility, which sits next to the North’s plutonium reactor in Yongbyon, 60 miles north of Pyongyang, as “stunning.” Though the North told Hecker during his 3½-hr. visit that the centrifuges in use there were intended to enrich uranium only to produce electricity, the revelation heightened fears that Pyongyang seeks to develop nuclear weapons with highly enriched uranium.

Heightened fears? Gimme a break. Of course it’s to develop even more nuke’s. The new leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, decided it was the best time to flex his muscles and he did just that.

According to the article the US has no plans to re-engage with the fruitless six-party talks with North Korea, which is good. They wouldn’t do any good with a regime such as North Korea’s. But what could work is a strategy laid out by Charles Krauthammer:

I think we have to completely redirect the policy. It’s not to aim at the leadership in [North] Korea. It’s to aim at the leadership in China. We heard earlier in the show that the Pentagon is considering a request by the South Koreans for tactical American nuclear weapons … We ought to go one step beyond that, to offer South Korea its own nuclear program and to encourage the Japanese to arm themselves if they need to. The way to say it is: All our [Six-Party] negotiations including China — with China — have not succeeded. You’re going to have to arm yourselves and develop a deterrent.

That will get the attention of the Chinese. Up until now the Chinese have played a double game. They have no interest in helping us on the [North Korea] issue. They like having it as a thorn in our side. It’s distracting us as China expands its influence in all of Asia.

What we ought to say is: What they’re worried about is a Japan with nukes or a South Korea with nukes. Let them [the Chinese] imagine that will be the outcome of this double game — and they will begin to act. They control what happens in Pyongyang. All the fuel, all the food comes through China and they could turn it off.

He is so right on target here. Negotiations with NK will produce absolutely nothing except getting our chain yanked. Make their benefactors worry and results may come about quite quickly.

Of course there is one thorn in this plan.

Obama, being a weak liberal, wouldn’t even consider a plan like this. The man was made to have his chain yanked.

A headline from the British newspaper ‘The Economist’ reflects the frustration of the British Socialist with the inevitability of Conservatism replacing the latest Socialist Darling to auger into obscurity and ignominy through incompetence and arrogance.

The Republicans

What’s wrong with America’s right

Too much anger and too few ideas. America needs a better alternative to Barack Obama

At least the Liberal Brit Journalists are able to admit that the Obamanation has been an overwhelming disaster and that a replacement is needed and that time is of the essence: however, admitting that Conservatism is a legitimate alternative is beneath their Leftist ideology. The idea that an antithesis to Obama’s incompetence and Chicago Machine type Corruption is a viable alternative by itself, without campaigns of faux Greek columns and fainting women who perform on cue.

Malice in Wonderland

Mr Obama deserves to be pegged back. This newspaper supported him in 2008 and backed his disappointing-but-necessary health-care plan. But he has done little to fix the deficit, shown a zeal for big government and all too often given the impression that capitalism is something unpleasant he found on the sole of his sneaker. America desperately needs a strong opposition. So it is sad to report that the American right is in a mess: fratricidal, increasingly extreme on many issues and woefully short of ideas, let alone solutions…

The Brits obviously feel we needed to follow their disastrous model for Health Care and insolvency; without mentioning that Obama’s plan is less about ‘care’ and more about the Socialist ideal of ‘Control’. In that respect and that respect alone, Obama’s take over of the Health Care Industry has been an overwhelming success.

“Woefully short of ideas”, it is doubtful whether the Brits actually realize that our Democratic Socialists have control over both legislative branches, the courts, and the executive. Since acquiring complete control, they have managed to shoot themselves in the foot over and over without strong opposition. Perhaps the Brits feel the Socialist wouldn’t be so blatantly obvious if the Conservatives had a stronger presence in Washington; unfortunately, for Socialism, Obama’s mistakes are his alone. Rather than mediating with Republicans and listening to the will of the people, Obama has elected to use the strategy of authoritarian Socialist leaders of history and ignore the precepts of our Republic; consequently, he owns Obama Care and its nuclear fallout and inevitable repeal, he owns his detestable record of capitulation and kowtowing to Muslim dictators and fanatics, he owns his spineless response to the madmen of Iran and North Korea, he owns the disastrous stimulus that accomplished nothing but a staggering deficit that will last for generations, he owns his impotent jobs policy that has failed miserably, he owns the insults and snubbing paid to our traditional allies, he owns his lack of documentation and the inevitable distrust that ensued, he owns the war in Afghanistan and its underfunding, he owns the state of the economy and its semi-toxic prognosis resulting mainly from the lack of confidence that Obama’s Socialism inspires, and he owns the incompetence and dereliction of duty that the gulf oil spill has precipitated.

Yes, Obama is his own opposition, he is in a constant battle with the failure of Socialism and his own incompetence. The Republicans only need to clean house and offer up Conservative principles in the fall; America has had enough of Obama’s Socialism and we don’t need insipid British Socialism; Conservative principles will be like a shining beacon marking a harbor for the American ship of state that is perilously close to the Socialist breakers on stormy economic seas.

To the Socialist Brits we say, we have the answer and it is Conservatism.