Conservatively Speaking

·       US Anti-Terror Authorities In Another Keystone Cops-like Episode

·       Russian Predicts End of USA in 2010

·       Cable Wars Close Circle

·       Clinton and Dean Darlings of Euro-Socialists

At least the original keystone cops were funny as buffoons but this current Napolitano led boondoggle is not.. All weekend various Obama sycophants have been scampering around saying such absurdities as “there was no single indicator Umar Abdulmutallab was a danger we just failed to connect the dots.”

 

In fact about the only thing this clown did not do was a warning on his forehead.

 

Consider just these damning facts:

 

The Obama White House National Security Council, US intelligence and counter-terror agencies failed to studied al Qaeda’s failed attempt to assassinate Saudi Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, deputy interior minister and commander of the Saudi anti-terror campaign in Yemen five months ago, they should have detected pointers to al Qaeda’s latest terror offensive and its methods.

 

Like the Nigerian bomber Umar Abdulmutallab, the Saudi minister’s would-be assassin, Abdullah Hassan Tali’ al-Asiri (al Qaeda-styled Abu Khair), who did not survive the attack, used explosives hidden in his underwear to fool the prince’s bodyguards. He won an audience with the prince by posing as an informant, the same trick used by the Taliban suicide bomber to penetrate a US base and kill 7 CIA agents and a US soldier last month.

 

This emerging prototype was missed or some worry perhaps suppressed by Muslim influence on Obama during childhood that seems to color and excuse Islamic terrorism is at best mysterious, confusing, and dangerous.

 

For the first time, Saturday, Jan. 2, Obama belatedly and even reluctantly accused al Qaeda of the failed attempt Christmas Day to blow up Delta Flight 253, charging its Yemeni affiliate with arming and directing him to the attack.

 

Obama, who has called a meeting of US security agency chiefs for Tuesday, Jan. 5, cannot expect serious brainstorming because it would be inhibited by a mindset that refuses to refer to the failed mass-murderer as an illegal or enemy combatant or terrorist but only as a “suspect.” Treated like a common or garden criminal, the Nigerian has been committed to an ordinary lock-up. This has given him the opportunity to hire American lawyers, who right away shut his mouth and advised him not to cooperate in answering questions about his accessories and masters.

 

With this invaluable intelligence door closed, Obama has turned to measures for enhancing the security of US air travelers and air traffic bound for US ports and demanded the matching-up of the counter-terror watch and no-fly lists. Abdulmutallab appeared on the first but was left off the second as a result of the failure of US intelligence agencies to share incoming data about his record.

 

Furthermore, should Obama and his advisers decide on retaliation, counter-terror sources are assured by reports from Yemen that al Qaeda’s operatives were no longer hanging around their bases twelve days after the airliner episode; they had packed up and made tracks for fresh hideouts in the northern mountains and Hadhramaut.

 

Os far, no one is asking what happened to the $70 million a year the US has been pouring into Yemen allegedly for counter terrorism.

 

The most definitive act has been closing down the U. S. and UK embassies in Yemen’s capitol city.

 

Since Obama’s Monday, Dec. 23 pledge: “We will not rest until we find all who were involved,” the days slipping by without a US reaction have given al Qaeda the chance to plot more airliner attacks from a safe location.

 

The second breach in US defenses against terrorist attack has deeper roots and derives from the misconceptions about al Qaeda governing US intelligence thinking.

 

Prince Muhammad in Nayef, Saudi Arabia’s top counter-terror executive, escaped with light injuries from Abu Khair’s attempt to kill him at his Jeddah palace on August 27, 2009, thanks mainly to the partial detonation of the explosive materials hidden in his underpants, a glitch repeated in the Nigerian bomber’s attempt.

 

The assassin gained entry to the most heavily fortified and guarded palace in the Red Sea town of Jeddah by convincing Saudi agents in Yemen that he was ready to switch sides - but only if he could discuss terms face to face with Prince Muhammad.

 

They did in fact hold several meetings - not in the palace but out in Najran province on the Yemen border. The data he handed over was solid enough to convince the Saudi prince that he was on the threshold of his government’s biggest breakthrough in its war on al Qaeda.

 

So when Abu Khair offered to bring with him to the Jeddah palace a list of al Qaeda high-ups in Yemen willing to defect to Saudi Arabia, the prince not only agreed to the venue but sent his private jet to pick him up from Najran.

 

Counter-terror sources allow that the government in Riyadh may have kept the details of this plot from the Americans - and not for the first time. Still, CIA and FBI undercover agents in the oil kingdom could have got wind of it from their own contacts.

 

Had it been properly scrutinized and analyzed, there was much valuable input to be gained from the attempt on Prince Muhammad, betraying as it did Al Qaeda methods which were later replicated in the attempted bombing of the Detroit-bound airliner and, again, in the deadly attack on Dec. 30 against the CIA contingent at Forward Operation Base Chapman, in the remote Afghan Khost province.

 

The bomber, who has not been identified yet, not only gained entry with explosives in his possession to the well-guarded US base, but detonated the device while the agents were unarmed and working out in the base gym.

 

How was this accomplished? The bomber had in fact been employed as a CIA informer and was therefore known at the gate and familiar with the routines of Base Chapman. Furthermore, he knew enough to time his attack for the day of the arrival in Kabul of a high-ranking CIA official. There has been no word about this official’s fate.

 

Friday, Jan. 1, the Pakistan Taliban claimed the attack had been carried out by a “turncoat” working for the CIA who had defected in order to kill senior American intelligence agents in revenge for the US drone attacks which killed their operatives inside the Pakistan border.

 

Matching up lists of would-be terrorists may address bureaucratic glitches but it will not cure the fundamental attitudes pervading US intelligence which does not let them get into the minds of al Qaeda plotters enough to second-guess their plans. Because of Obama’s personal proclivities there is scant chance this will change for the better.

 

January is named for the Roman God Janus who guarded heaven’s gates and had two faces one looking forward and one backwards. In 46 B. C. Julius Caesar added one day to it making it then the only month with 31 days. Anglo Saxons called the first month after Winter Solstice “Wolf’s Month” because hungry wolves came into villages looking for food. January is the coldest month with a record low of -80 degrees being recorded in Alaska in 1971. The record low was at Vostok, Antarctica in 1983 at a brisk -121 degrees. 

For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument — that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. — very seriously. Now he’s found an eager audience: Russian state media.

In recent weeks, he’s been interviewed as much as twice a day about his predictions. “It’s a record,” says Prof. Panarin. “But I think the attention is going to grow even stronger.”

Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations.

But it’s his bleak forecast for the U.S. that is music to the ears of the Kremlin, which in recent years has blamed Washington for everything from instability in the Middle East to the global financial crisis. Mr. Panarin’s views also fit neatly with the Kremlin’s narrative that Russia is returning to its rightful place on the world stage after the weakness of the 1990s, when many feared that the country would go economically and politically bankrupt and break into separate territories.

A polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Mr. Panarin insists he does not dislike Americans. But he warns that the outlook for them is dire.

“There’s a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur,” he says. “One could rejoice in that process,” he adds, poker-faced. “But if we’re talking reasonably, it’s not the best scenario — for Russia.” Though Russia would become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S.

Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces — with Alaska reverting to Russian control.

In addition to increasing coverage in state media, which are tightly controlled by the Kremlin, Mr. Panarin’s ideas are now being widely discussed among local experts. He presented his theory at a recent roundtable discussion at the Foreign Ministry. The country’s top international relations school has hosted him as a keynote speaker. During an appearance on the state TV channel Rossiya, the station cut between his comments and TV footage of lines at soup kitchens and crowds of homeless people in the U.S. The professor has also been featured on the Kremlin’s English-language propaganda channel, Russia Today.

Mr. Panarin’s apocalyptic vision “reflects a very pronounced degree of anti-Americanism in Russia today,” says Vladimir Pozner, a prominent TV journalist in Russia. “It’s much stronger than it was in the Soviet Union.”

Mr. Pozner and other Russian commentators and experts on the U.S. dismiss Mr. Panarin’s predictions. “Crazy ideas are not usually discussed by serious people,” says Sergei Rogov, director of the government-run Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies, who thinks Mr. Panarin’s theories don’t hold water.

Mr. Panarin’s résumé includes many years in the Soviet KGB, an experience shared by other top Russian officials. His office, in downtown Moscow, shows his national pride, with pennants on the wall bearing the emblem of the FSB, the KGB’s successor agency. It is also full of statuettes of eagles; a double-headed eagle was the symbol of czarist Russia.

The professor says he began his career in the KGB in 1976. In post-Soviet Russia, he got a doctorate in political science, studied U.S. economics, and worked for FAPSI, then the Russian equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency. He says he did strategy forecasts for then-President Boris Yeltsin, adding that the details are “classified.”

In September 1998, he attended a conference in Linz, Austria, devoted to information warfare, the use of data to get an edge over a rival. It was there, in front of 400 fellow delegates, that he first presented his theory about the collapse of the U.S. in 2010.

“When I pushed the button on my computer and the map of the United States disintegrated, hundreds of people cried out in surprise,” he remembers. He says most in the audience were skeptical. “They didn’t believe me.”

At the end of the presentation, he says many delegates asked him to autograph copies of the map showing a dismembered U.S.

He based the forecast on classified data supplied to him by FAPSI analysts, he says. He predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in.

California will form the nucleus of what he calls “The Californian Republic,” and will be part of China or under Chinese influence. Texas will be the heart of “The Texas Republic,” a cluster of states that will go to Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an “Atlantic America” that may join the European Union. Canada will grab a group of Northern states Prof. Panarin calls “The Central North American Republic.” Hawaii, he suggests, will be a protectorate of Japan or China, and Alaska will be subsumed into Russia.

“It would be reasonable for Russia to lay claim to Alaska; it was part of the Russian Empire for a long time.” A framed satellite image of the Bering Strait that separates Alaska from Russia like a thread hangs from his office wall. “It’s not there for no reason,” he says with a sly grin.

Interest in his forecast revived this fall when he published an article in Izvestia, one of Russia’s biggest national dailies. In it, he reiterated his theory, called U.S. foreign debt “a pyramid scheme,” and predicted China and Russia would usurp Washington’s role as a global financial regulator.

Americans hope President-elect Barack Obama “can work miracles,” he wrote. “But when spring comes, it will be clear that there are no miracles.”

The article prompted a question about the White House’s reaction to Prof. Panarin’s forecast at a December news conference. “I’ll have to decline to comment,” spokeswoman Dana Perino said amid much laughter.

For Prof. Panarin, Ms. Perino’s response was significant. “The way the answer was phrased was an indication that my views are being listened to very carefully,” he says.

The professor says he’s convinced that people are taking his theory more seriously. People like him have forecast similar cataclysms before, he says, and been right. He cites French political scientist Emmanuel Todd. Mr. Todd is famous for having rightly forecast the demise of the Soviet Union — 15 years beforehand. “When he forecast the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1976, people laughed at him,” says Prof. Panarin.

Interrobang or interabang (pronounced /ɪnˈtɛrəbæŋ/), ‽, is a nonstandard English-language punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of the question mark (also called the interrogative point) and the exclamation mark or exclamation point (known in printers’ jargon as the bang). The ligature is a superimposition of those two marks. It was briefly introduced in the 1960s, and even appeared on a few typewriter keyboards before falling out of any favor.

It was proposed for use in A sentence ending with an interrobang asks a question in an excited manner, expresses excitement or disbelief in the form of a question, or asks a rhetorical question.

For example:

• How much did you pay for those shoes‽
• You’re going out with whom‽
• They did what‽

Time Warner Cable and Fox Network agreed to pay Fox’s demand for more money and gets to keep Fox programming avoding a big hole. The two declared a cease fire into the New Year and resolved their dispute soon afterward..

Cable networks started in the late 1940s mostly in small towns and expanded into suburbs in the 1950-60s because rooftop antennae could not pull in a TV signal. Cable has grown to dominate local television markets striking monopolistic contracts with local governments for a healthy piece of the action, assuring cable companies virtually no competition, control of local television programming and little or no check on cable fees that have far outpaced inflation in almost every area. As a consequence “free access” like radio has almost ended replaced by universal pay per view.

Cable providers have spread out into internet access and even telephone service . “Telephone companies” like Verizon are countering by installing fiber optic cables in increasing numbers of communities worldwide. Verizon’s global IP network serves more than 2,700 cities in 159 countries, and its wireless network reaches approximately 289 million Americans putting it at loggerheads with AT&T.

Cable giant Comcast is taking a different approach by buying programming providers once the exclusive preserve of ABC, CBS, and NBC that have been withering since the 1970s.

Verizon has announced plans to fiber optically wire more cities – Santa Barbara, California is one. Verizon says it will offer enhanced, and it says cheaper internet, television, wireless and wired services.

The Fox flap could further thin out cable’s piece of the pie. An August 2009 opinion survey in Santa Barbara found over 79% complaining about high local cable prices and saying local cable provider, Cox Cable, should have its monopoly with the City ended in favor of open competition. The city council, desperate for more and more money to fill the udder where the bureaucracy feeds has so far ignored the public’s wishes.

But, cable companies are also under pressure by regulators and leglislators responding to complaints about censorship and blocking programming – especially sports blackouts – that anger subscribers.

Bringing things full circle  Dish Network and Digital TV satellite dishes are swarming  rooftops nationwide like ticks on a hound just as the once ubiquitous TV antennas did. There is even talk of yet another Obama Czar to really confuse things – hopefully Napolitano won’t be reassigned..

Ohio Bucks Beat the Oregon Ducks in 2010 Rose Bowl- in case you missed it. NAVY won too.

Former U. S. Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean recently said that “cooperation” between European socialists and the U. S. Democratic Party has “intensified significantly” and involves “regular contact” at “Congress, Senate, party and foundation levels.” He added that “efforts have been remarkable from both sides.”    But at a “Global Progress Conference” in October, Obama’s pollster, Joel Benenson, acknowledged that socialized medicine in the U.S. faces a serious obstacle. He said that while Europeans are receptive to the expansion of government in their lives, in America there is an anti-government culture which prevents people from “expecting the State to solve their problems.”

“This explains why Obama will find it difficult to implement the social coverage plans such as a broader health service,” Benenson reportedly said.

The conference was held in Madrid, Spain in early December under the patronage of Spain’s socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, whose pro-homosexual and pro-abortion policies have led to street protests by thousands of supporters of traditional values. Zapatero is also under fire for a jobless rate of nearly 18 percent.

Dean’s comments came in a video address in which he joked that his failure to personally attend the Party of European Socialists (PES) convention, which was advertised as a “carbon neutral congress,” was actually a smart move because he avoided flying and contributing to global warming. “We’ve saved a lot of carbon,” Dean said.

In his comments, Dean called for a “long-term global vision” for the transformation of the global economy and mentioned that disgraced Democratic President Bill Clinton had previously spoken at a meeting of the PES-sponsored Global Progressive Forum. The April 2-3 Global Progressive Forum also featured Robert Borosage of the left-wing group that calls itself the Campaign for America’s Future.

The Global Progressive Forum is also sponsored by the Socialist International, whose U.S. affiliate, the Democratic Socialists of America, includes long-time backers of Obama.

“Free-market globalization alone cannot achieve social justice,” Dean told the PES convention. “What the world needs is a global New Deal.”

He defined this as a “transition to a low-carbon economy” involving “a major transformation in the patterns of production and consumption.” This will include “large-scale investments and mechanisms” to share the costs and the policies, he said. His remarks came on the eve of the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen.

Dean never used the words “world government,” but did declare that “We need a new institutional framework to govern, manage and monitor implementation.”

In order to bring this about, the PES Congress issued a “Call to Action” urging the imposition of a “global financial transaction tax” that would generate hundreds of billions of dollars and “provide funding for long-term public investments, to finance global development and climate change.” That is a variation of the call for massive redistribution of wealth from developed countries as  reparations.

As AIM has disclosed, there is a secret plan by left-wing non-governmental organizations to bring about this global tax over the next several months.

In another PES document, “A New Direction for Progressive Societies,” the group urged a “progressive peace policy” that says “…we fully support the initiative of the Obama administration in favor of global disarmament” and urges the “deepening [of] transatlantic cooperation with the new US administration.”

“It is our profound conviction that we must secure a Global New Deal for a new global order of social justice, equality, sustainable development and democracy,” the document concludes.

Howard Dean’s involvement with the PES is actually an old story as noted in an article published last Spring, “Another group associated with the SI [Socialist International] is the Party of European Socialists (PES), which heard from Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, back in 2006. Dean’s speech is posted on the official Democratic Party website, although the European socialist parties are referred to as ‘progressive.’ Democrats, Dean said, want to be ‘good citizens of the world community.’ He spoke at a session on ‘Global Challenges for Progressive Politics.’”

Following up, in April 2007, PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen reported that European socialists held a meeting “in the Democrats HQ in Washington,” met with officials of the party and Democratic members of Congress, and agreed that “PES activist groups” in various U.S. cities would start working together.

Photos of the trip showed Rasmussen meeting with such figures as Senator Ben Cardin, Senator Bernie Sanders, officials of the Brookings Institution, Howard Dean, and AFL-CIO President John W. Sweeney, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. The Brookings Institution is headed by former Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott, a proponent of world government who was identified in the book Comrade J as having been a pawn of the Russian intelligence service.

The “Global New Deal” was also the theme of the October “Global Progress Conference” in Madrid, Spain, sponsored by the Center for American Progress, the IDEAS Foundation, and the Heinrich Boell Foundation, an affiliate of the German Green Party. A summary of remarks said that the conference was perceived to be the “starting point for a new global progressive alliance.”

The Center for American Progress is a George Soros-funded entity run by former Clinton official John Podesta, who co-chaired the Obama-Biden Transition Project.

Obama pollster Benenson has a website which says that he “was the lead pollster and a senior strategist for Obama during the 2008 election, and he continues in that role today.”

In addition to Obama and various Democratic Party candidates, elected officials, and campaign organizations, his clients have included the AFL-CIO, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Brookings Institution, the Soros Foundation, and the Working Families Party, an ACORN front.

Bureaucrats 2010 Plan REDUX. If it moves, TAX IT. If it keeps moving REGULATE IT. If it stops moving SUBSIDIZE IT.