The most beautiful 9/11 salute ever...the Budwiser classic commercial only run once...
forever in our hearts...
Friday, September 12, 2014
ISIS is hoping to carry out major attacks on the West that could wreak major havoc—and they could do it from anywhere in the world. Islamic State militants are planning the creation of a 'cyber caliphate' protected by their own encryption software - from behind which they will launch massive hacking attacks on the U.S. and the West.
Both Islamic State and Al Qaeda claim to be actively recruiting skilled hackers in a bid to create a team of jihadist computer experts capable of causing devastating cyber disruptions to Western institutions. […]
Large numbers of Islamic State fighters are young, highly educated Westerners who are fighting the holy war with sophisticated backgrounds and training with digital technology.
Militants' use of Twitter and Facebook allows them to target an entire new generation of young possible recruits, while the beheading videos of James Foley and Steven Sotloff were created using skilled video and audio editing techniques.
They are now boasting it is only a matter of time before their plan becomes a reality.“They are forward-thinking and are experimenting with hacking,” Steve Stalinsky of the Middle East Media Research Institute, told the Daily Mail. “In the future, the jihadists’ cyber army’s activities will become a daily reality.”
U.S. government organizations, energy companies, transportation systems, and banks are among the likely targets.
"Twentieth-century technology," writes economic historian
Joel Mokyr in the Manhattan Institute's excellent City Journal, "was
primarily about 'large' things."Large in physical size, that is. Mokyr's examples include the diesel engine and the gas turbine, shipping containers, communications satellites launched by giant rockets, oil-drilling platforms, massive power stations, giant steel mills and huge airplanes.
Most are familiar sights today, but if we try to see them with the eyes of someone in 1914, they are awe-inspiring. This summer, I drove past the ruins of Henry Ford's Highland Park plant, the largest manufacturing plant in the world when it opened in 1910. There, Ford set up the first auto assembly line and in 1914, the same year Europe went to war, started paying his workers $5 a day.
Three years later, the year the United States entered what was called the Great War, Ford started building the even larger Rouge plant in Dearborn, covering 960 acres -- one-and-a-half square miles -- with 100 miles of internal railroad track. More than 100,000 men worked there daily at its peak. A drive around the perimeter of the Rouge plant puts five miles on your odometer.
To the men and women of 1914, these plants, like the giant steel factories along Cleveland's Cuyahoga River and Pittsburgh's Monongahela, must have been breathtaking. Most people then grew up on farms where the highest structure around was a church steeple.
Breathtaking too was the audacity of the entrepreneurs and capitalists who raised the money and designed these behemoths and many others.
Consider what immigrants, many on ocean liners among the largest ever built, saw as they entered New York Harbor in 1914. Giant ships sailing past the Statue of Liberty toward the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan, the offices of John D. Rockefeller at 26 Broadway and J.P. Morgan at 23 Wall Street, and behind them the gleaming new 60-story Gothic Woolworth Building, the tallest building in the world when it was completed in 1913 and until the Chrysler Building rose in 1930.
"Large" technology tended to encourage large bureaucracies and large government. You needed bureaucratic organization and centralized control to manage those 100,000 workers at the Rouge and, eventually, big unions as well. In 1913 and 1914 Congress created the Federal Reserve and the Federal Trade Commission and passed the Clayton Antitrust Act. It seemed natural when so much wealth was so visibly accumulated that government and labor unions should have some countervailing power.
Large technology also meant large armies -- and enormous casualties in war. Some 116,000 Americans died in World War I, far more than the less than 10,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Other nations' (approximate) death tolls were much higher: 800,000 British, 1.3 million French, 1.8 million Germans, 1.3 million Austro-Hungarians and 2 million Russians. On July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 19,000 British soldiers died and 41,000 were wounded.
These figures are orders of magnitude larger than the death tolls in recent wars. And so are the sizes of militaries. Military historian Robert Scales recently noted how General George Patton's mechanized war doctrine, waged with enormous forces, culminated in the march to Baghdad in 2003.
Enemies adapted, however, and Patton's mass armies have been replaced by special operations forces, pioneered by General Stanley McChrystal -- "small units of superbly selected, educated, led and bonded soldiers."
Civilian technology, Joel Mokyr notes, has also gone "small" -- nanotechnology, genetic engineering, custom-engineered materials, "mass customization" through 3-D printing. If the Rouge plant looming over Dearborn was the iconic symbol of the industrial age, the iconic symbol of our information age is the smartphone in your pocket.
"Large" technology requires the standardization of masses of people, centralized command-and-control, conformity to social norms. Massive work forces and massive armies cannot operate optimally otherwise.
"Small" technology enables individuals to make personal choices, fashion their world to their own dimensions, deploy their own talents and pursue their interests in ways of their own choosing. Standardization yields to customization.
President Obama doesn't seem to get this. He sees history as a story of progress from minimal government to ever-larger government. He's only sorry that he hasn't taken us farther on that track.
But history doesn't proceed in a straight line; it moves around. "Large" technology made big government seem necessary in 1914. "Small" technology requires something different, something more adaptive today.
‘Vetted Moderate’ Free Syrian Army Commander Admits Alliance with ISIS
Pamela Geller / Jihad WatchPhoto: The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) linked Commander Muhajireen Kavkaz wa Sham inside a USAID tent.
Confirming what I have been reporting over the past two years — the “moderates” are the jihadists. The Islamic State is fighting with weapons Obama supplied to these “moderates.”
Obama’s new initiative (announced last night) is actually old. It failed then. It will fail now.
This is what the D.C. foreign policy establishment has reduced itself to when it comes to Syria — cozying up to al-Qaeda (or Iran and Assad) in the name of “countering violent extremism,” namely ISIS, and entertaining each other with cocktail party talk of “moderate wings” of al-Qaeda. As my colleague Stephen Coughlin observes, our bipartisan foreign policy establishment has created a bizarre language about Iraq and Afghanistan to avoid the stark reality that we lost both wars. This is the state American foreign policy finds itself in on the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaeda.
PJ Media, By Patrick Poole, September 10, 2014:
As President Obama laid out his “strategy” last night for dealing with ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and as bipartisan leadership in Congress push to approve as much as $4 billion to arm the Syrian “rebels,” it should be noted that the keystone to his anti-Assad policy — the “vetted moderate” Free Syrian Army (FSA) — is now admitting that they, too, are working with the Islamic State.
This confirms our reporting...
Kerry: U.S. not at war with Islamic State
The
Islamic State is certainly at war with the U.S. But the U.S. is doing
its level best to minimize that war. The Obama Administration’s luck in
that regard, unfortunately, is unlikely to hold indefinitely. But Kerry
has other priorities: after all, Jesus wants us to go to war against global warming.“Kerry: U.S. not at war with ISIS,” by Elise Labott, Laura Smith-Spark and Ray Sanchez, CNN, September 11, 2014 (thanks to Jerk Chicken):
(CNN) — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday would not say the United States is at war with ISIS, telling CNN in an interview that the administration’s strategy includes “many different things that one doesn’t think of normally in context of war.”
“What we are doing is engaging in a very significant counter-terrorism operation,” Kerry told CNN’s Elise Labott in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. “It’s going to go on for some period of time. If somebody wants to think about it as being a war with ISIL, they can do so, but the fact is it’s a major counterterrorism operation that will have many different moving parts.”
Kicking off meetings with leaders from key Arab countries in Saudi Arabia to enlist regional support for a global coalition to defeat ISIS, Kerry defended the administration’s insistence that the 2001 authority to go after al Qaeda and affiliates applies to ISIS even if the two groups have publicly split from each other. He insisted that the group’s origin as an al Qaeda affiliate is enough to consider them connected.
“This group is and has been al Qaeda,” Kerry said. “By trying to change its name, it doesn’t change who it is, what it does.”
Asked how much of the interpretation lets Congress get away from a vote on going after ISIS — a scenario lawmakers would like to avoid in an election year — Kerry responded “none.”
Kerry said there is a distinction between ISIS and terror groups operating in Somalia and Yemen.
“ISIL is an animal unto itself,” he told CNN. “And it is significantly such a threat because of the foreign fighters that are attracted to it — which you don’t see in Somalia … similarly in Yemen. It is promising to do things externally as those other groups are not. And thirdly, most importantly, it’s attracting a significant coalition to go and destroy it.
Kerry said the opposition battling the Assad regime in Syria has been outgunned and outmanned but the administration believes that equation can change “if they receive proper training, if there are recruits that come in, and if it grows over a period of time.”
The regime’s legitimacy could never be restored, Kerry said.
“It is going to be our policy to separate Assad, who is mostly in the western part of Syria, in a certain corridor from the eastern part of Syria, which he doesn’t control,” Kerry said. “ISIL controls that part. So it is clearly … not a very difficult task to target ISIL.”…
Leading Keynesian Economist Uses The ‘D’ Word
THINKSTOCK
Most Keynesian economists do not want to admit that we are in another depression. They find the word painful.
They find it painful because it contradicts the idea that Keynesian economic ideas have ended depressions forever. It also contradicts the idea that the massive and continuing Keynesian stimulus applied by world governments since 2008 has worked. For this and other reasons, euphemisms such as the Great Recession have been embraced not only by Keynesian economists, but by their allies in government and in the mainstream press.
I argued that we were in a depression in a January article and again in April. Now Brad DeLong, one of the most prestigious Keynesians, a professor at Berkeley and former deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton, says that he agrees. It really is a depression.
DeLong doesn’t blame Keynesianism; that would be too much to expect. But he does call the thing by its right name, which is a major departure from the usual Keynesian style.
These are, after all, the people who call the government creating money out of thin air “quantitative easing,” “bond buying” and the like, all of which are parroted by the press. When John Maynard Keynes did this, he was often being impish, as when he called newly created money “green cheese,” echoing the old nursery nonsense that “the moon is made of green cheese.” His acolytes have adopted the style of dissimulation, but without the slightest trace of a sense of humor.
Although we are in a depression, it is not a depression for everyone, as is by now well known. Even so, the full hit on the middle class and the poor relative to the affluent is not adequately understood. Consider these figures from Larry Lindsey, who served George W. Bush as chief economist at the beginning of the first term, only to be booted from the White House for too much truth telling:
U.S. Household Net Worth 2007-2013
- Top 1 percent up 1.9 percent
- Next 9 percent up 3.4 percent
- Next 15 percent down 0.5 percent
- Next 25 percent down 16.7 percent
- Bottom 50 percent down 44.2 percent
Yahoo Faced $250,000-Day Fine for Not Giving US User Data
In small victory for Yahoo’s legal challenges to U.S. surveillance practices, a court today permitted the company to release 1,500 pages of documents that shed light on the scope and force of the government’s data-collection methods.
The company and competitors including Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. have been trying to protect their reputations following revelations that began in June 2013 by former government contractor Edward Snowden that the National Security Agency had access to information about the Internet use of the companies’ customers.
Yahoo first challenged the NSA requests in court in 2007-2008.
“The released documents underscore how we had to fight every step of the way to challenge the U.S. government’s surveillance efforts,” Ron Bell, general counsel for the Sunnyvale, California-based company, said in a blog posting.
The case stemmed from amendments to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to let the government demand user information from online services.
Yahoo was the only company that refused to comply and fought the requests. The 2007-2008 challenge and an appeal failed and the court ordered the company to give the government the data it was seeking. The company complied and did not pay the $250,000-a-day fine.
The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret court that oversee government surveillance requests, decided to declassify the documents, Yahoo said.
“We refused to comply with what we viewed as unconstitutional and overbroad surveillance and challenged the U.S. government’s authority,” Bell said.
Portions of the documents remain sealed and classified.
\
Op-ed:
A Repackaging of Failed Policies
By: Diane Sori
“I want the American people to understand how this effort will be
different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve
American combat troops fighting on foreign soil."
- Barack HUSSEIN Obama proposed strategy plan for dealing with ISIS
On the eve of the 13th anniversary of September 11th, Barack HUSSEIN Obama addressed the nation regarding a serious threat to America...regarding yet another threat by those out to kill us all. Trying to reverse course because of public opinion...because of his continuing to fall poll numbers...this man once again tip-toed around what must be the total and complete destruction of the terrorist group known as ISIS.
Like Bill Clinton did in regards to al-Qaeda before him, Obama's lack of fortitude and determination leads one to rightfully believe that he will pass what will be the continuing ISIS problem onto the next president. And starting his bloviations by saying "Let's make this clear, ISIL is NOT islamic as NO religion condones the killing of innocents," Obama has lied yet again to the American people for he damn well knows that ISIS adheres to the strict tenets of islam as laid down in the qur'an...including the many tenets that call for any and all infidels to either convert to their brand of islam or die. And these words also show that this president is NOT serious in what he said about America's quest being to "degrade and destroy" ISIS, for how can you destroy an enemy if you do NOT recognize that enemy for what they are...terrorists who commit their acts of terror in the name of islam...commit their acts of terror in the name of allah.
And to continuously call ISIS 'ISIL' again gives a nod to his brethren...to the Levant that denies Israel's existence for these opening words spoken...for Obama calling them ISIL...cut to the core of a man who is NOT only a true muslim sympathizer...if NOT an outright muslim himself...for his trying to convince 'We the People' that ISIS is NOT islamic...is NOT islamic as they yell "allahu akbar" while cutting off the heads of both those who do believe along with those who do NOT believe...speaks between the lines the true intentions of a man who still thinks ISIS is 'manageable problem' and NO more.
"Degrade and then destroy"..."America is safer than before"..."we must remain vigilant as threats emerge"...yet NEVER saying the words we will do whatever it takes to defeat ISIS...only putting a band-aid on the problem to counter the criticism lobbed at him by both sides of the aisle. And as more placating words spewed from his mouth, the man who leads from behind ignored the fact that ISIS poses a threat NOT only to the Middle East but beyond that region as well. While saying that NO direct threats to date have been made against the U.S., Barack HUSSEIN Obama deliberately ignored the fact that ISIS is most likely already here having come through our still unsecured borders...already here as they lay low waiting for their call to jihad.
And as he continued speaking in placating words that showed he had NO
fire in his belly for this fight at all...Obama spoke that the U.S. will meet terrorist
threats with "strength and resolve"...but pray tell what strength is
Obama speaking of as ISIS is actually stronger now than it was before as
they march east to the Indian sub-continent...as they march west to
north Africa as well. And with Obama's words that air strikes will be
our prime method of dealing with ISIS...which translates into his continuing to
use unmanned drones and small teams of special operations forces...this
abomination of a commander-in-chief clearly dishonored the memory of all
the American lives lost by saying, "we cannot do for Iraq what they
must do for themselves," for how can they do for themselves when he and
he alone lost the peace after George W. Bush had won the war.
Talking that America will lead "a broad coalition" against ISIL...nine nations (GWB had 37 in his coalition) does NOT a 'broad coalition' make for NONE of those nine nations has said what their contribution will be beyond merely saying that ISIS must be stopped. In fact, both Britain and Germany have already said what they will NOT do...as in they will NOT take part in the bombing of Syria...believing it to be a pretense for what is actually the bombing of Bashir al-Assad's secular government.
So what type of coalition does Obama really have...he really has NONE...and to say that we and the basically non-existent coalition will take immediate action against Syria if a threat to America is made is just empty threats as this man once put red lines in the sand against Syria and did NOTHING when those red lines were crossed.
And the Four-Point Plan he laid out is NOTHING but the usual same old
limited air strikes repackaged to force ill-trained and ill-equipped
Iraqi forces to go on the offense alone. And when you add in that Obama
wants to aid and equip the Syrian rebels...as in the Free Syrian
Army...you just know this man is NOT on America's side for the Free
Syrian Army gave birth to ISIS and continues to partially fund them to
this day.
And Obama's drawing on 'supposed' counter terrorism capabilities...capabilities that were so wrong so many times before...and with his planning to cut off funding and stem the flow of terror fighters in and out of the region without saying how exactly that will be done...means the humanitarian aid we provide to those in ISIS' cross hairs will amount to money thrown away as ISIS grows stronger with each passing day...increases in strength because Obama's strategy is really NO strategy at all. And his sending Iraq a mere 475 additional troops to help train Iraqi forces (150 will be assigned to the advise-and-assist mission; 125 will help conduct the ISR flights; and the remaining 200 will be assigned to headquarters command in Baghdad and Irbil), all amounts to his basically doing NOTHING for Obama quickly added that America will NOT get into another ground war in Iraq.
Will NOT get into another ground war in Iraq he said when almost every
American military expert says 'boots on the ground' is exactly what's
needed if ISIS is to be permanently taken out. But the problem is that
with American military power on the decline because of what former VP
Dick Cheney calls Obama's "irrational" budget
cuts...'boots on the ground' is NOT a place Obama wants to go as his
image of 'ending' America's wars is more important to him than 'winning'
America's wars.
And the bottom line is that Barack HUSSEIN Obama's calling for what amounts to NO more than 'limited engagements plus' shows that he does NOT really want to take ISIS out for the fact is that if he truly wanted to rid the world of the evil that is ISIS he would 'carpet bomb' them until they were NO more...as in "...hit them in their sanctuaries, staging areas, command centers, and lines of communication wherever we find them," as Dick Cheney so rightfully said. And to that I add when the bombing is done then send in ground troops to clean up the rest..
And as Obama will go it alone with or without Congressional approval he has said...the man who puffed himself up on national television by saying that America is safer than ever before due to 'his' targeted successes in both Yemen and Somalia...successes that are anything but...shows that this newly announced strategy...like all his strategies before...is doomed to fail...doomed to fail just like his Arab Spring fiasco that has in reality led to this all.
A Repackaging of Failed Policies
By: Diane Sori
“I want the American people to understand how this effort will be
different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve
American combat troops fighting on foreign soil."- Barack HUSSEIN Obama proposed strategy plan for dealing with ISIS
On the eve of the 13th anniversary of September 11th, Barack HUSSEIN Obama addressed the nation regarding a serious threat to America...regarding yet another threat by those out to kill us all. Trying to reverse course because of public opinion...because of his continuing to fall poll numbers...this man once again tip-toed around what must be the total and complete destruction of the terrorist group known as ISIS.
Like Bill Clinton did in regards to al-Qaeda before him, Obama's lack of fortitude and determination leads one to rightfully believe that he will pass what will be the continuing ISIS problem onto the next president. And starting his bloviations by saying "Let's make this clear, ISIL is NOT islamic as NO religion condones the killing of innocents," Obama has lied yet again to the American people for he damn well knows that ISIS adheres to the strict tenets of islam as laid down in the qur'an...including the many tenets that call for any and all infidels to either convert to their brand of islam or die. And these words also show that this president is NOT serious in what he said about America's quest being to "degrade and destroy" ISIS, for how can you destroy an enemy if you do NOT recognize that enemy for what they are...terrorists who commit their acts of terror in the name of islam...commit their acts of terror in the name of allah.
Click on link below to see Obama say ISIS is NOT islamic:
And to continuously call ISIS 'ISIL' again gives a nod to his brethren...to the Levant that denies Israel's existence for these opening words spoken...for Obama calling them ISIL...cut to the core of a man who is NOT only a true muslim sympathizer...if NOT an outright muslim himself...for his trying to convince 'We the People' that ISIS is NOT islamic...is NOT islamic as they yell "allahu akbar" while cutting off the heads of both those who do believe along with those who do NOT believe...speaks between the lines the true intentions of a man who still thinks ISIS is 'manageable problem' and NO more.
"Degrade and then destroy"..."America is safer than before"..."we must remain vigilant as threats emerge"...yet NEVER saying the words we will do whatever it takes to defeat ISIS...only putting a band-aid on the problem to counter the criticism lobbed at him by both sides of the aisle. And as more placating words spewed from his mouth, the man who leads from behind ignored the fact that ISIS poses a threat NOT only to the Middle East but beyond that region as well. While saying that NO direct threats to date have been made against the U.S., Barack HUSSEIN Obama deliberately ignored the fact that ISIS is most likely already here having come through our still unsecured borders...already here as they lay low waiting for their call to jihad.
Talking that America will lead "a broad coalition" against ISIL...nine nations (GWB had 37 in his coalition) does NOT a 'broad coalition' make for NONE of those nine nations has said what their contribution will be beyond merely saying that ISIS must be stopped. In fact, both Britain and Germany have already said what they will NOT do...as in they will NOT take part in the bombing of Syria...believing it to be a pretense for what is actually the bombing of Bashir al-Assad's secular government.
So what type of coalition does Obama really have...he really has NONE...and to say that we and the basically non-existent coalition will take immediate action against Syria if a threat to America is made is just empty threats as this man once put red lines in the sand against Syria and did NOTHING when those red lines were crossed.
Click on link below to see Obama's NO strategy 'strategy':
And Obama's drawing on 'supposed' counter terrorism capabilities...capabilities that were so wrong so many times before...and with his planning to cut off funding and stem the flow of terror fighters in and out of the region without saying how exactly that will be done...means the humanitarian aid we provide to those in ISIS' cross hairs will amount to money thrown away as ISIS grows stronger with each passing day...increases in strength because Obama's strategy is really NO strategy at all. And his sending Iraq a mere 475 additional troops to help train Iraqi forces (150 will be assigned to the advise-and-assist mission; 125 will help conduct the ISR flights; and the remaining 200 will be assigned to headquarters command in Baghdad and Irbil), all amounts to his basically doing NOTHING for Obama quickly added that America will NOT get into another ground war in Iraq.
Will NOT get into another ground war in Iraq he said when almost every
American military expert says 'boots on the ground' is exactly what's
needed if ISIS is to be permanently taken out. But the problem is that
with American military power on the decline because of what former VP
Dick Cheney calls Obama's "irrational" budget
cuts...'boots on the ground' is NOT a place Obama wants to go as his
image of 'ending' America's wars is more important to him than 'winning'
America's wars.And the bottom line is that Barack HUSSEIN Obama's calling for what amounts to NO more than 'limited engagements plus' shows that he does NOT really want to take ISIS out for the fact is that if he truly wanted to rid the world of the evil that is ISIS he would 'carpet bomb' them until they were NO more...as in "...hit them in their sanctuaries, staging areas, command centers, and lines of communication wherever we find them," as Dick Cheney so rightfully said. And to that I add when the bombing is done then send in ground troops to clean up the rest..
And as Obama will go it alone with or without Congressional approval he has said...the man who puffed himself up on national television by saying that America is safer than ever before due to 'his' targeted successes in both Yemen and Somalia...successes that are anything but...shows that this newly announced strategy...like all his strategies before...is doomed to fail...doomed to fail just like his Arab Spring fiasco that has in reality led to this all.
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