Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Why Israel will rule the new Middle East
By ARTHUR HERMAN, FOXNEWS.COM—
If you still think the future of Israel looks bleak, think again.
A few months ago it looked like the Jewish state might not survive until 2013. Rockets were raining down from Gaza; revolution was about to install one Islamicist government in Egypt, and another was poised to take over in Syria. Iran was threatening to finish what Hitler’s Holocaust started, with an atomic bomb. The Obama administration seemed unwilling to stop that happening– while Israel’s only alternative to nuclear annihilation was a preemptive strike that was bound to start a major shooting war in the Middle East.
Now, however, Israel’s future may be brighter than ever.
Iran remains the neighborhood’s unpredictable mad dog, although its nuclear bark is still far worse than its bite. But Israel itself is set to dominate the region like never before. Thanks to the industrial technological miracle known as fracking, Israel is about to become the new energy Mecca of the Middle East, and there’s very little its Arab neighbors can do to stop it.
Indeed, instead of plotting Israel’s destruction, its Arab neighbors could find themselves courting Tel Aviv’s favor the way the United States and Europe courted OPEC in the 1970′s and 1980′s.
What’s tilting the region’s dynamics toward Israel?
For one thing, the Arab Spring has spawned a chaos and instability in every country it’s touched, that’s going to grind on for years to come. A new report warns that Egypt is on the verge of collapse; Israel’s old adversary Syria, already is. Both are also very likely headed toward economic ruin–as has already happened to Israel’s other foe, Hamas in Gaza, and could hit Iran next.
Israel is going to be the famous “still point in a turning world”–a world turning in on itself, with little or no energy to spend confronting the Jewish state. And here’s where fracking comes in.
Hydraulic fracking is, of course, the technology that uses a high-pressure mixture of water, sand, and chemicals to crack open deep deposits of shale oil and natural gas. It’s single-handedly revived our domestic energy industry–to the point where by 2020 we’ll be the world’s biggest oil producer.
What many people don’t know is that the land of Israel holds almost 250 billion barrels of oil shale reserves (that’s according to the World Petroleum Council). That’s almost equal to Saudi Arabia’s 260 billion barrels–and as conventional oil sources there and in the Persian Gulf gets harder to extract (it already’s happening) and the cost goes up, Israel will be the new energy frontier of the region.
It’s already happening. The fracking-savvy Canadians have joined an Israeli energy technology fund, to help companies like Israeli Energy Initiatives begin production of oil shale in reserve-rich areas like the Valley of Elah near Jerusalem; the Russians have signed a deal to help open up the vast natural gas reserves discovered in 2008 and 2009 off Israel’s coast–some 16 trillion cubic feet worth.
Right now production is still tiny, but as fracking technology continues to advance Israel could soon move beyond its declared goal of energy independence, and become a major oil exporting country–including to oil-poor neighbors like Egypt and Syria and Lebanon.
The implications are nothing less than staggering.
Instead of an embattled and isolated outpost of Western democracy, Israel would look like the Middle East’s new economic colossus.
Instead of shunning Israel for fear of offending oil-rich Arab states, Western Europeans could find themselves beating a path to Israel’s oil shale fields–and rethinking who they want as their ally in the region, and who they don’t.
That includes the United States. Fracking is changing the world’s economic map; it’s about to change the Middle East. It’s time policy-makers caught up with reality, and realized that our relationship with Israel may be our most important bond to that region’s future.
Historian Arthur Herman is the author of the just released “Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II” (Random House May 2012) and the Pulitzer Prize finalist book “Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age” (Bantam, 2008).
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
19 Signs That America Is Being Systematically Transformed Into A Giant Surveillance Grid
Source: http://endoftheamericandream.com/
You are being watched. The control freaks that hold power in the United States have become absolutely obsessed with surveillance. They are constantly attempting to convince the American people that we are all "safer" when virtually everything that we do is watched, monitored, tracked and recorded. Our country is being systematically transformed into a giant surveillance grid far more comprehensive than anything George Orwell ever dreamed of. If you still believe that there is such a thing as "privacy" in this day and age, you are being delusional. Every single piece of electronic communication is monitored and stored. In fact, they know that you are reading this article right now. But even if you got rid of all of your electronic devices, you would still be constantly monitored. As you will read about below, a rapidly growing nationwide network of facial recognition cameras, "pre-crime" surveillance devices, voice recorders, mobile backscatter vans, aerial drones and automated license plate readers are constantly feeding data about us back to the government. In addition, private companies involved in "data mining" are gathering literally trillions upon trillions of data points about individual Americans each year. So there is no escape from this surveillance grid. In fact, it has become just about impossible to keep it from growing. The surveillance grid is expanding in thousands of different ways, so even if you stopped one form of surveillance you would hardly make a dent in the astounding growth of this system. What we desperately need is a fundamental cultural awakening to the importance of liberty, freedom and privacy. Without such an awakening, the United States (along with the rest of the planet) is going to head into a world that will make "1984" by George Orwell look like a cheery story about a Sunday picnic.
The following are 19 signs that America is being systematically transformed into a giant surveillance grid....
#1 New Software That Will Store And Analyze Millions Of Our Voices
Did you know that there is software that can positively identify you using your voice in just a matter of seconds?
Law enforcement authorities all over the U.S. are very eager to begin using new Russian software that will enable them to store and analyze millions of voices....
Unmanned aerial drones have been used with great success by the U.S. military overseas, and now the U.S. government is promoting their use to local law enforcement authorities all over America.
The following is from a recent GAO report....
So the goal is to eventually have thousands of these drones spying on all of us.
In the years ahead, our skies will likely be filled with these things. Many of them are incredibly quiet and can gather information about you from far above. In fact, one could be directly over your home right now and you may never even know it.
In fact, the U.S. government is already using some of these unmanned drones to quietly spy on farmers in Nebraska and Iowa according to a recent article by Kurt Nimmo....
A new scanner that has just been developed can scan your body, your clothes and your luggage from 164 feet away.
According to Gizmodo, these very creepy scanners will soon be used at airports and border crossings all over America....
These days, the invasion of our privacy begins just after birth.
Did you know that the DNA of almost every newborn baby in the United States is systematically collected and stored in databases? Unfortunately, most new parents don't even realize what medical personnel are doing when this takes place....
Hopefully you understand by now that nothing you do on the Internet will ever be private again.
According to a recent article by Susanne Posel, Twitter is being used as a law enforcement tool more than it ever has been before....
If you want to have no privacy whatsoever, own a cell phone and carry it around with you constantly.
Your cell phone is constantly tracking everywhere that you go and it is constantly making a record of everything that you do with it.
For example, did you know that authorities are using cell phones to record the identities of people that attend street protests?
The following is what one private investigator recently told a stunned audience....
RFID microchips are increasingly becoming a part of our every day lives. In fact, some school districts are now using them to track school attendance. Just check out what is happening in one school district down in Texas....
Would you want a surveillance camera watching you in the restroom?
Don't laugh - this is actually happening in some places. The following is from a recent Natural News article....
According to the Washington Post, the federal government is now actually using advanced spyware to closely monitor the behavior of some government employees while they are at work....
Virtually every single electronic communication in the world (including all phone calls, all faxes, and all emails) is intercepted and recorded by an international surveillance network run by the NSA and several other large international intelligence agencies.
For a long time this was an "open secret" that everyone kind of knew about but that nobody ever did anything about.
Fortunately, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is now fighting back, and they have three former NSA employees on their side....
#11 Pre-Crime Surveillance Technology
Did you think that "pre-crime" was just something for science fiction movies?
Unfortunately, that is no longer the case. A company known as BRS Labs has developed "pre-crime surveillance cameras" that they claim can identify potential terrorists and criminals even before they strike.
Yes, this sounds like a bunch of nonsense, but some law enforcement authorities are taking this quite seriously. In fact, dozens of these "pre-crime surveillance cameras" are being put up at major transportation hubs all over San Francisco....
Do you think that you can get away from the TSA scanners by simply refusing to fly and by avoiding all U.S. airports?
Don't be so sure.
In fact, law enforcement authorities all over the country will soon be driving around in unmarked vans looking inside your cars and even under your clothes using the same backscatter technology currently being used by the TSA at U.S. airports....
In a previous article, I discussed a Washington Post article that detailed how automated license plate readers are now being used to track the movements of a vehicle from the time that it enters Washington D.C. to the time that it leaves....
Private companies are almost more eager to invade your privacy than the government is.
In fact, there are a whole bunch of very large corporations that are making a fortune by gathering every shred of information about you that they possibly can and selling that information for profit. It is called "data mining", and it is an industry that has absolutely exploded in recent years.
One of the largest data mining companies is known as Acxiom. That firm has actually compiled information on more than 190 million people in the United States alone....
Most Americans do not realize this, but the use of facial recognition technology has absolutely exploded in recent years.
For example, did you know that there are now 32 states that use some type of facial recognition technology for DMV photos?
That is why they give you such strict instructions when you get your DMV photo taken. They want your photo to be able to work with the database.
But the government is not the only one using creepy facial recognition technology. The following is from a recent article by Naomi Wolf....
But what law enforcement authorities like even better than facial recognition technology is DNA testing.
The following is from a recent article by Ellen Messmer....
It was recently announced that the FBI is spending a billion dollars to develop a "Next Generation Identification System" that will combine the most advanced biometric identification technologies to create a database superior to anything that law enforcement in the United States has ever had before....
Local law enforcement agencies around the country are also spending big bucks to upgrade their surveillance capabilities. The new "Domain Awareness System" that the NYPD just put in was described in a recent article by Neal Ungerleider....
#19 Trapwire
Did you know that a huge network of incredibly advanced spy cameras is currently being installed nationwide?
Yes, I know that it sounds like something off of a television show, but this is actually true. It is called "Trapwire", and I described this emerging system in one of my recent articles....
The frightening thing is that there is a large percentage of the American people that are aware of many of these things, but they are convinced that these technologies are actually making society "better" and "safer".
We desperately need to wake up America while there is still time. Please share this article with your family, your friends and your social media contacts on the Internet.
If we can get enough people to wake up, perhaps there is still enough time to turn this country in a different direction.
Will the final chapters of our history be a complete and total nightmare or will the final chapters of our history be the greatest chapters of all?
The choice, America, is up to you.
You are being watched. The control freaks that hold power in the United States have become absolutely obsessed with surveillance. They are constantly attempting to convince the American people that we are all "safer" when virtually everything that we do is watched, monitored, tracked and recorded. Our country is being systematically transformed into a giant surveillance grid far more comprehensive than anything George Orwell ever dreamed of. If you still believe that there is such a thing as "privacy" in this day and age, you are being delusional. Every single piece of electronic communication is monitored and stored. In fact, they know that you are reading this article right now. But even if you got rid of all of your electronic devices, you would still be constantly monitored. As you will read about below, a rapidly growing nationwide network of facial recognition cameras, "pre-crime" surveillance devices, voice recorders, mobile backscatter vans, aerial drones and automated license plate readers are constantly feeding data about us back to the government. In addition, private companies involved in "data mining" are gathering literally trillions upon trillions of data points about individual Americans each year. So there is no escape from this surveillance grid. In fact, it has become just about impossible to keep it from growing. The surveillance grid is expanding in thousands of different ways, so even if you stopped one form of surveillance you would hardly make a dent in the astounding growth of this system. What we desperately need is a fundamental cultural awakening to the importance of liberty, freedom and privacy. Without such an awakening, the United States (along with the rest of the planet) is going to head into a world that will make "1984" by George Orwell look like a cheery story about a Sunday picnic.
The following are 19 signs that America is being systematically transformed into a giant surveillance grid....
#1 New Software That Will Store And Analyze Millions Of Our Voices
Did you know that there is software that can positively identify you using your voice in just a matter of seconds?
Law enforcement authorities all over the U.S. are very eager to begin using new Russian software that will enable them to store and analyze millions of voices....
'Voice Grid Nation' is a system that uses advanced algorithms to match identities to voices. Brought to the US by Russia's Speech Technology Center, it claims to be capable of allowing police, federal agencies and other law enforcement personnel to build up a huge database containing up to several million voices.#2 Unmanned Aerial Drones Will Be Used Inside The U.S. To Spy On You
When authorities intercept a call they've deemed 'hinky', the recording is entered into the VoiceGrid program, which (probably) buzzes and whirrs and spits out a match. In five seconds, the program can scan through 10,000 voices, and it only needs 3 seconds for speech analysis. All that, combined with 100 simultaneous searches and the storage capacity of 2 million samples, gives SpeechPro, as the company is known in the US, the right to claim a 90% success rate.
Unmanned aerial drones have been used with great success by the U.S. military overseas, and now the U.S. government is promoting their use to local law enforcement authorities all over America.
The following is from a recent GAO report....
"Domestically, state and local law enforcement entities represent the greatest potential users of small UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] in the near term because they can offer a simple and cost effective solution for airborne law enforcement activities"That report also discussed how there are 146 different models of these drones made by 69 different companies throughout the United States....
"According to an industry trade group, local law enforcement can potentially choose from about 146 different types of small UAS being manufactured by about 69 different companies in the U.S."Since our overseas wars are slowing down, somebody has got to keep these drone companies in business.
So the goal is to eventually have thousands of these drones spying on all of us.
In the years ahead, our skies will likely be filled with these things. Many of them are incredibly quiet and can gather information about you from far above. In fact, one could be directly over your home right now and you may never even know it.
In fact, the U.S. government is already using some of these unmanned drones to quietly spy on farmers in Nebraska and Iowa according to a recent article by Kurt Nimmo....
Obama's Environmental Protection Agency is using aerial drones to spy on farmers in Nebraska and Iowa. The surveillance came under scrutiny last week when Nebraska's congressional delegation sent a joint letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.#3 High Tech Government Scanners That Can Secretly Scan You From 164 Feet Away
On Friday, EPA officialdom in "Region 7" responded to the letter.
"Courts, including the Supreme Court, have found similar types of flights to be legal (for example to take aerial photographs of a chemical manufacturing facility) and EPA would use such flights in appropriate instances to protect people and the environment from violations of the Clean Water Act," the agency said in response to the letter.
A new scanner that has just been developed can scan your body, your clothes and your luggage from 164 feet away.
According to Gizmodo, these very creepy scanners will soon be used at airports and border crossings all over America....
Within the next year or two, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will instantly know everything about your body, clothes, and luggage with a new laser-based molecular scanner fired from 164 feet (50 meters) away. From traces of drugs or gun powder on your clothes to what you had for breakfast to the adrenaline level in your body-agents will be able to get any information they want without even touching you.#4 The DNA Of Newborn Babies Born All Over The United States Is Systematically Collected
And without you knowing it.
The technology is so incredibly effective that, in November 2011, its inventors were subcontracted by In-Q-Tel to work with the US Department of Homeland Security. In-Q-Tel is a company founded "in February 1999 by a group of private citizens at the request of the Director of the CIA and with the support of the U.S. Congress." According to In-Q-Tel, they are the bridge between the Agency and new technology companies.
Their plan is to install this molecular-level scanning in airports and border crossings all across the United States.
These days, the invasion of our privacy begins just after birth.
Did you know that the DNA of almost every newborn baby in the United States is systematically collected and stored in databases? Unfortunately, most new parents don't even realize what medical personnel are doing when this takes place....
The DNA of virtually every newborn in the United States is collected and tested soon after birth. There are some good reasons for this testing, but it also raises serious privacy concerns that parents should know about.#5 Twitter Is Being Used To Monitor You
States require hospitals to screen newborns for certain genetic and other disorders. Many states view the testing as so important they do not require medical personnel to get parents' express permission before carrying it out. To collect the DNA sample, medical personnel prick the newborn's heel and place a few drops of blood on a card. There is one question that new parents rarely ask: What happens to the blood spots after the testing is done? This is where newborn screening becomes problematic.
Hopefully you understand by now that nothing you do on the Internet will ever be private again.
According to a recent article by Susanne Posel, Twitter is being used as a law enforcement tool more than it ever has been before....
Twitter has released a report confirming that the US government leads the world in requesting information on their citizens. The Transparency Report shows the US government has made requests that are infringing on American privacy rights. Twitter states that "we've received more government requests in the first half of 2012, as outlined in this initial dataset, than in the entirety of 2011."#6 Your Cell Phone Is Spying On You
If you want to have no privacy whatsoever, own a cell phone and carry it around with you constantly.
Your cell phone is constantly tracking everywhere that you go and it is constantly making a record of everything that you do with it.
For example, did you know that authorities are using cell phones to record the identities of people that attend street protests?
The following is what one private investigator recently told a stunned audience....
One of the biggest changes is the ability to track your physical location. I'm sorry I came in at the end of the previous talk. I heard them talk about surveying cell phones with a drone, in a wide area -- this is something that is done routinely now. I can tell you that everybody that attended an Occupy Wall Street protest, and didn't turn their cell phone off, or put it -- and sometimes even if they did -- the identity of that cell phone has been logged, and everybody who was at that demonstration, whether they were arrested, not arrested, whether their photos were ID'd, whether an informant pointed them out, it's known they were there anyway. This is routine.At this point, law enforcement authorities are requesting information from cell phone companies about individual Americans over a million times a year as a recent Wired article detailed....
Mobile carriers responded to a staggering 1.3 million law enforcement requests last year for subscriber information, including text messages and phone location data, according to data provided to Congress.#7 Students Are Increasingly Being Tracked By RFID Microchips
RFID microchips are increasingly becoming a part of our every day lives. In fact, some school districts are now using them to track school attendance. Just check out what is happening in one school district down in Texas....
Northside Independent School District plans to track students next year on two of its campuses using technology implanted in their student identification cards in a trial that could eventually include all 112 of its schools and all of its nearly 100,000 students.#8 Spy Cams In Hospitals To Monitor Handwashing
District officials said the Radio Frequency Identification System (RFID) tags would improve safety by allowing them to locate students - and count them more accurately at the beginning of the school day to help offset cuts in state funding, which is partly based on attendance.
Would you want a surveillance camera watching you in the restroom?
Don't laugh - this is actually happening in some places. The following is from a recent Natural News article....
Here goes the last great American sanctuary from intrusion- bathrooms with spy cams. Going to the bathroom has now been monitored in a hospital in NY where sensors were placed on the doors to identify workers entering and exiting and cameras placed to view sinks to insure proper hand hygiene.#9 Spyware That Monitors The Behavior Of Government Workers
According to the Washington Post, the federal government is now actually using advanced spyware to closely monitor the behavior of some government employees while they are at work....
When the Food and Drug Administration started spying on a group of agency scientists, it installed monitoring software on their laptop computers to capture their communications.#10 The NSA Warrantless Surveillance Programs
The software, sold by SpectorSoft of Vero Beach, Fla., could do more than vacuum up the scientists' e-mails as they complained to lawmakers and others about medical devices they thought were dangerous. It could be programmed to intercept a tweet or Facebook post. It could snap screen shots of their computers. It could even track an employee's keystrokes, retrieve files from hard drives or search for keywords.
Virtually every single electronic communication in the world (including all phone calls, all faxes, and all emails) is intercepted and recorded by an international surveillance network run by the NSA and several other large international intelligence agencies.
For a long time this was an "open secret" that everyone kind of knew about but that nobody ever did anything about.
Fortunately, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is now fighting back, and they have three former NSA employees on their side....
Three whistleblowers – all former employees of the National Security Agency (NSA) – have come forward to give evidence in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) lawsuit against the government's illegal mass surveillance program, Jewel v. NSA.According to one of the whistleblowers, the NSA "has the capability to do individualized searches, similar to Google, for particular electronic communications in real time through such criteria as target addresses, locations, countries and phone numbers, as well as watch-listed names, keywords, and phrases in email."
In a motion filed today, the three former intelligence analysts confirm that the NSA has, or is in the process of obtaining, the capability to seize and store most electronic communications passing through its U.S. intercept centers, such as the "secret room" at the AT&T facility in San Francisco first disclosed by retired AT&T technician Mark Klein in early 2006.
"For years, government lawyers have been arguing that our case is too secret for the courts to consider, despite the mounting confirmation of widespread mass illegal surveillance of ordinary people," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "Now we have three former NSA officials confirming the basic facts. Neither the Constitution nor federal law allow the government to collect massive amounts of communications and data of innocent Americans and fish around in it in case it might find something interesting. This kind of power is too easily abused. We're extremely pleased that more whistleblowers have come forward to help end this massive spying program."
#11 Pre-Crime Surveillance Technology
Did you think that "pre-crime" was just something for science fiction movies?
Unfortunately, that is no longer the case. A company known as BRS Labs has developed "pre-crime surveillance cameras" that they claim can identify potential terrorists and criminals even before they strike.
Yes, this sounds like a bunch of nonsense, but some law enforcement authorities are taking this quite seriously. In fact, dozens of these "pre-crime surveillance cameras" are being put up at major transportation hubs all over San Francisco....
In its latest project BRS Labs is to install its devices on the transport system in San Francisco, which includes buses, trams and subways.#12 Mobile Backscatter Vans
The company says will put them in 12 stations with up to 22 cameras in each, bringing the total number to 288.
The cameras will be able to track up to 150 people at a time in real time and will gradually build up a 'memory' of suspicious behaviour to work out what is suspicious.
Do you think that you can get away from the TSA scanners by simply refusing to fly and by avoiding all U.S. airports?
Don't be so sure.
In fact, law enforcement authorities all over the country will soon be driving around in unmarked vans looking inside your cars and even under your clothes using the same backscatter technology currently being used by the TSA at U.S. airports....
American cops are set to join the US military in deploying American Science & Engineering's Z Backscatter Vans, or mobile backscatter radiation x-rays. These are what TSA officials call "the amazing radioactive genital viewer," now seen in airports around America, ionizing the private parts of children, the elderly, and you (yes you).#13 Automated License Plate Readers
These pornoscannerwagons will look like regular anonymous vans, and will cruise America's streets, indiscriminately peering through the cars (and clothes) of anyone in range of its mighty isotope-cannon. But don't worry, it's not a violation of privacy. As AS&E's vice president of marketing Joe Reiss sez, "From a privacy standpoint, I'm hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be."
In a previous article, I discussed a Washington Post article that detailed how automated license plate readers are now being used to track the movements of a vehicle from the time that it enters Washington D.C. to the time that it leaves....
More than 250 cameras in the District and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago.#14 Data Mining
With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.
Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile, the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will include all the approaches into the District.
Private companies are almost more eager to invade your privacy than the government is.
In fact, there are a whole bunch of very large corporations that are making a fortune by gathering every shred of information about you that they possibly can and selling that information for profit. It is called "data mining", and it is an industry that has absolutely exploded in recent years.
One of the largest data mining companies is known as Acxiom. That firm has actually compiled information on more than 190 million people in the United States alone....
The company fits into a category called database marketing. It started in 1969 as an outfit called Demographics Inc., using phone books and other notably low-tech tools, as well as one computer, to amass information on voters and consumers for direct marketing. Almost 40 years later, Acxiom has detailed entries for more than 190 million people and 126 million households in the U.S., and about 500 million active consumers worldwide. More than 23,000 servers in Conway, just north of Little Rock, collect and analyze more than 50 trillion data 'transactions' a year.#15 The Growing Use Of Facial Recognition Technology
Most Americans do not realize this, but the use of facial recognition technology has absolutely exploded in recent years.
For example, did you know that there are now 32 states that use some type of facial recognition technology for DMV photos?
That is why they give you such strict instructions when you get your DMV photo taken. They want your photo to be able to work with the database.
But the government is not the only one using creepy facial recognition technology. The following is from a recent article by Naomi Wolf....
A software engineer in my Facebook community wrote recently about his outrage that when he visited Disneyland, and went on a ride, the theme park offered him the photo of himself and his girlfriend to buy – with his credit card information already linked to it. He noted that he had never entered his name or information into anything at the theme park, or indicated that he wanted a photo, or alerted the humans at the ride to who he and his girlfriend were – so, he said, based on his professional experience, the system had to be using facial recognition technology. He had never signed an agreement allowing them to do so, and he declared that this use was illegal. He also claimed that Disney had recently shared data from facial-recognition technology with the United States military.#16 Rapid DNA Testing
Yes, I know: it sounds like a paranoid rant.
Except that it turned out to be true. News21, supported by the Carnegie and Knight foundations, reports that Disney sites are indeed controlled by face-recognition technology, that the military is interested in the technology, and that the face-recognition contractor, Identix, has contracts with the US government – for technology that identifies individuals in a crowd.
But what law enforcement authorities like even better than facial recognition technology is DNA testing.
The following is from a recent article by Ellen Messmer....
It's been the FBI's dream for years -- to do near-instant DNA analysis using mobile equipment in the field -- and now "Rapid DNA" gear is finally here.#17 The FBI's Next Generation Identification System
The idea is that you simply drop into the system a cotton swab with a person's saliva, for example, and the "Rapid DNA" machine spits out the type of DNA data that's needed to pin down identity. Now that such equipment exists, the FBI is pushing to get it into the hands of law enforcement agencies as soon as possible.
It was recently announced that the FBI is spending a billion dollars to develop a "Next Generation Identification System" that will combine the most advanced biometric identification technologies to create a database superior to anything that law enforcement in the United States has ever had before....
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun rolling out its new $1 billion biometric Next Generation Identification (NGI) system. In essence, NGI is a nationwide database of mugshots, iris scans, DNA records, voice samples, and other biometrics, that will help the FBI identify and catch criminals - but it is how this biometric data is captured, through a nationwide network of cameras and photo databases, that is raising the eyebrows of privacy advocates.#18 The NYPD's Domain Awareness System
Until now, the FBI relied on IAFIS, a national fingerprint database that has long been due an overhaul. Over the last few months, the FBI has been pilot testing a facial recognition system - and soon, detectives will also be able to search the system for other biometrics such as DNA records and iris scans.
Local law enforcement agencies around the country are also spending big bucks to upgrade their surveillance capabilities. The new "Domain Awareness System" that the NYPD just put in was described in a recent article by Neal Ungerleider....
The New York Police Department is embracing online surveillance in a wide-eyed way. Representatives from Microsoft and the NYPD announced the launch of their new Domain Awareness System (DAS) at a lower Manhattan press conference today. Using DAS, police are able to monitor thousands of CCTV cameras around the five boroughs, scan license plates, find out the kind of radiation cars are emitting, and extrapolate info on criminal and terrorism suspects from dozens of criminal databases ... all in near-real time.But don't think that you are getting off the hook if you don't live in New York City. The truth is that Microsoft has big plans for putting in these kinds of systems nationwide.
#19 Trapwire
Did you know that a huge network of incredibly advanced spy cameras is currently being installed nationwide?
Yes, I know that it sounds like something off of a television show, but this is actually true. It is called "Trapwire", and I described this emerging system in one of my recent articles....
"You are being watched. The government has a secret system - a machine - that spies on you every hour of every day." That is how each episode of "Person of Interest" on CBS begins. Most Americans that have watched the show just assume that such a surveillance network is completely fictional and that the government would never watch us like that. Sadly, most Americans are wrong. Shocking new details have emerged this week which prove that a creepy nationwide network of spy cameras is being rolled out across the United States. Reportedly, these new spy cameras are "more accurate than modern facial recognition technology", and every few seconds they send back data from cities and major landmarks all over the United States to a centralized processing center where it is analyzed. The authorities believe that the world has become such a dangerous place that the only way to keep us all safe is to watch what everyone does all the time. But the truth is that instead of "saving America", all of these repressive surveillance technologies are slowly killing our liberties and our freedoms. America is being transformed into an Orwellian prison camp right in front of our eyes, and very few people are even objecting to it.An RT article was one of the first news sources to reveal some of the shocking details about this new program....
Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology - and have installed it across the US under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.So after reading all of the information above, is there anyone out there that still doubts that America is being transformed into a giant surveillance grid?
Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence. It's part of a program called TrapWire and it's the brainchild of the Abraxas, a Northern Virginia company staffed with elite from America's intelligence community. The employee roster at Arbaxas reads like a who's who of agents once with the Pentagon, CIA and other government entities according to their public LinkedIn profiles, and the corporation's ties are assumed to go deeper than even documented.
The frightening thing is that there is a large percentage of the American people that are aware of many of these things, but they are convinced that these technologies are actually making society "better" and "safer".
We desperately need to wake up America while there is still time. Please share this article with your family, your friends and your social media contacts on the Internet.
If we can get enough people to wake up, perhaps there is still enough time to turn this country in a different direction.
Will the final chapters of our history be a complete and total nightmare or will the final chapters of our history be the greatest chapters of all?
The choice, America, is up to you.
Monday, September 17, 2012
Armada of international naval power massing in the Gulf as Israel prepares an Iran strike
An armada of US and British naval power is massing in the Persian Gulf in the belief that Israel is considering a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons programme.
The Strait of Hormuz is only 21 miles wide at its narrowest point
10:00PM BST 15 Sep 2012
2724 Comments
Cruisers, aircraft carriers and minesweepers from 25 nations are converging on
the strategically important Strait of Hormuz in an unprecedented show of
force as Israel and Iran move towards the brink of war.
Western leaders are convinced that Iran will retaliate to any attack by
attempting to mine or blockade the shipping lane through which passes around
18 million barrels of oil every day, approximately 35 per cent of the
world’s oil traded by sea.
A blockade would have a catastrophic effect on the fragile economies of
Britain, Europe the United States and Japan, all of which rely heavily on
oil and gas supplies from the Gulf.
The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most congested international
waterways. It is only 21 miles wide at its narrowest point and is bordered
by the Iranian coast to the north and the Oman to the south.
In preparation for any pre-emptive or retaliatory action by Iran, warships
from more than 25 countries, including the United States, Britain, France,
Saudi Arabia and the UAE, will today begin an annual 12-day exercise.
The war games are the largest ever undertaken in the region.
They will practise tactics in how to breach an Iranian blockade of the strait and the force will also undertake counter-mining drills.
The multi-national naval force in the Gulf includes three US Nimitz class carrier groups, each of which has more aircraft than the entire complement of the Iranian air force.
The carriers are supported by at least 12 battleships, including ballistic missile cruisers, frigates, destroyers and assault ships carrying thousand of US Marines and special forces.
The British component consists of four British minesweepers and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Cardigan Bay, a logistics vessel. HMS Diamond, a brand-new £1billion Type 45 destroyer, one of the most powerful ships in the British fleet, will also be operating in the region.
In addition, commanders will also simulate destroying Iranian combat jets, ships and coastal missile batteries.
In the event of war, the main threat to the multi-national force will come from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps navy, which is expected to adopt an “access-denial” strategy in the wake of an attack, by directly targeting US warships, attacking merchant shipping and mining vital maritime chokepoints in the Persian Gulf.
Defence sources say that although Iran’s capability may not be technologically sophisticated, it could deliver a series of lethal blows against British and US ships using mini-subs, fast attack boats, mines and shore-based anti-ship missile batteries.
Next month, Iran will stage massive military manoeuvres of its own, to show that it is prepared to defend its nuclear installations against the threat of aerial bombardment.
The exercise is being showcased as the biggest air defence war game in the Islamic Republic’s history, and will be its most visible response yet to the prospect of an Israeli military strike.
Using surface-to-air missiles, unmanned drones and state-of-the-art radar, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and air force will combine to test the defences of 3,600 sensitive locations throughout the country, including oil refineries and uranium enrichment facilities.
Brigadier General Farzad Esmaili, commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya air defence base, told a conference this month that the manoeuvres would “identify vulnerabilities, try out new tactics and practise old ones”.
At the same time as the Western manoeuvres in the Gulf, the British Response Task Forces Group — which includes the carrier HMS Illustrious, equipped with Apache attack helicopters, along with the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle - will be conducting a naval exercise in the eastern Mediterranean. The task force could easily be diverted to the Gulf region via the Suez Canal within a week of being ordered to do so.
The main naval exercise comes as President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, today to discuss the Iranian crisis.
Many within the Obama administration believe that Israel will launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities before the US presidential elections, an act which would signal the failure of one of Washington’s key foreign policy objectives.
Both Downing Street and Washington hope that the show of force will demonstrate to Iran that Nato and the West will not allow President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian leader, to develop a nuclear armoury or close Hormuz.
Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, reportedly met the Israeli prime minister and Ehud Barak, his defence secretary, two weeks ago in an attempt to avert military action against Iran.
But just last week Mr Netanyahu signalled that time for a negotiated settlement was running out when he said: “The world tells Israel 'Wait, there’s still time.’ And I say, 'Wait for what? Wait until when?’
“Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.”
The crisis hinges on Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme, which Israel believes is designed to build an atomic weapon. Tehran has long argued that the programme is for civil use only and says it has no plans to an build a nuclear bomb, but that claim has been disputed by the West, with even the head of MI6 stating that the Islamic Republic is on course to develop atomic weapons by 2014.
The Strait of Hormuz has long been disputed territory, with the Iranians claiming control of the region and the entire Persian Gulf.
Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps recently boasted that “any plots of enemies” would be foiled and a heavy price exacted, adding: “We determine the rules of military conflict in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.”
But Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, warned that Iranian attempts to exercise control over the Strait of Hormuz could be met with force.
He said: “The Iranians need to understand that the United States and the international community are going to hold them directly responsible for any disruption of shipping in that region — by Iran or, for that matter, by its surrogates.”
Mr Panetta said that the United States was “fully prepared for all contingencies” and added: “We’ve invested in capabilities to ensure that the Iranian attempt to close down shipping in the Gulf is something that we are going to be able to defeat if they make that decision.”
That announcement was supported by Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, who added: “We are determined to work as part of the international community effort to ensure freedom of passage in the international waters of the Strait of Hormuz.”
One defence source told The Sunday Telegraph last night: “If it came to war, there would be carnage. The Iranian casualties would be huge but they would be able to inflict severe blows against the US and British.
“The Iranian Republican Guard are well versed in asymmetrical warfare and would use swarm attacks to sink or seriously damage ships. This is a conflict nobody wants, but the rhetoric from Israel is unrelenting.”
They will practise tactics in how to breach an Iranian blockade of the strait and the force will also undertake counter-mining drills.
The multi-national naval force in the Gulf includes three US Nimitz class carrier groups, each of which has more aircraft than the entire complement of the Iranian air force.
The carriers are supported by at least 12 battleships, including ballistic missile cruisers, frigates, destroyers and assault ships carrying thousand of US Marines and special forces.
The British component consists of four British minesweepers and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Cardigan Bay, a logistics vessel. HMS Diamond, a brand-new £1billion Type 45 destroyer, one of the most powerful ships in the British fleet, will also be operating in the region.
In addition, commanders will also simulate destroying Iranian combat jets, ships and coastal missile batteries.
In the event of war, the main threat to the multi-national force will come from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps navy, which is expected to adopt an “access-denial” strategy in the wake of an attack, by directly targeting US warships, attacking merchant shipping and mining vital maritime chokepoints in the Persian Gulf.
Defence sources say that although Iran’s capability may not be technologically sophisticated, it could deliver a series of lethal blows against British and US ships using mini-subs, fast attack boats, mines and shore-based anti-ship missile batteries.
Next month, Iran will stage massive military manoeuvres of its own, to show that it is prepared to defend its nuclear installations against the threat of aerial bombardment.
The exercise is being showcased as the biggest air defence war game in the Islamic Republic’s history, and will be its most visible response yet to the prospect of an Israeli military strike.
Using surface-to-air missiles, unmanned drones and state-of-the-art radar, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and air force will combine to test the defences of 3,600 sensitive locations throughout the country, including oil refineries and uranium enrichment facilities.
Brigadier General Farzad Esmaili, commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya air defence base, told a conference this month that the manoeuvres would “identify vulnerabilities, try out new tactics and practise old ones”.
At the same time as the Western manoeuvres in the Gulf, the British Response Task Forces Group — which includes the carrier HMS Illustrious, equipped with Apache attack helicopters, along with the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle - will be conducting a naval exercise in the eastern Mediterranean. The task force could easily be diverted to the Gulf region via the Suez Canal within a week of being ordered to do so.
The main naval exercise comes as President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, today to discuss the Iranian crisis.
Many within the Obama administration believe that Israel will launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities before the US presidential elections, an act which would signal the failure of one of Washington’s key foreign policy objectives.
Both Downing Street and Washington hope that the show of force will demonstrate to Iran that Nato and the West will not allow President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian leader, to develop a nuclear armoury or close Hormuz.
Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, reportedly met the Israeli prime minister and Ehud Barak, his defence secretary, two weeks ago in an attempt to avert military action against Iran.
But just last week Mr Netanyahu signalled that time for a negotiated settlement was running out when he said: “The world tells Israel 'Wait, there’s still time.’ And I say, 'Wait for what? Wait until when?’
“Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.”
The crisis hinges on Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme, which Israel believes is designed to build an atomic weapon. Tehran has long argued that the programme is for civil use only and says it has no plans to an build a nuclear bomb, but that claim has been disputed by the West, with even the head of MI6 stating that the Islamic Republic is on course to develop atomic weapons by 2014.
The Strait of Hormuz has long been disputed territory, with the Iranians claiming control of the region and the entire Persian Gulf.
Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps recently boasted that “any plots of enemies” would be foiled and a heavy price exacted, adding: “We determine the rules of military conflict in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.”
But Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, warned that Iranian attempts to exercise control over the Strait of Hormuz could be met with force.
He said: “The Iranians need to understand that the United States and the international community are going to hold them directly responsible for any disruption of shipping in that region — by Iran or, for that matter, by its surrogates.”
Mr Panetta said that the United States was “fully prepared for all contingencies” and added: “We’ve invested in capabilities to ensure that the Iranian attempt to close down shipping in the Gulf is something that we are going to be able to defeat if they make that decision.”
That announcement was supported by Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, who added: “We are determined to work as part of the international community effort to ensure freedom of passage in the international waters of the Strait of Hormuz.”
One defence source told The Sunday Telegraph last night: “If it came to war, there would be carnage. The Iranian casualties would be huge but they would be able to inflict severe blows against the US and British.
“The Iranian Republican Guard are well versed in asymmetrical warfare and would use swarm attacks to sink or seriously damage ships. This is a conflict nobody wants, but the rhetoric from Israel is unrelenting.”
Friday, September 7, 2012
USA World May Not Survive ‘Death Spiral’
Richard Duncan, formerly of the World Bank and chief economist at
Blackhorse Asset Mgmt., says America’s $16 trillion federal debt has
escalated into a “death spiral,” as he told CNBC.
Since the recession, noted economists including Laurence Kotlikoff, a former member of President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, have come to similar conclusions.
Kotlikoff estimates the true fiscal gap is $211 trillion when unfunded entitlements like Social Security and Medicare are included.
A team of scientists, economists, and geopolitical analysts believes they have proof that the threat is indeed real—and the danger imminent.
One member of this team, Chris Martenson, a pathologist and former VP of a Fortune 300 company, explains their findings:
“We found an identical pattern in our debt, total credit market, and money supply that guarantees they’re going to fail. This pattern is nearly the same as in any pyramid scheme, one that escalates exponentially fast before it collapses. Governments around the globe are chiefly responsible.
Dr. Kent Moors, an adviser to 16 world governments on energy issues as well as a member of two U.S. State Department task forces on energy also voiced concerns over what he and his colleagues uncovered.
“It’s a pattern that’s hard to see unless you understand the way a catastrophe like this gains traction,” Dr. Moors says. “At first, it’s almost impossible to perceive. Everything looks fine, just like in every pyramid scheme. Yet the insidious growth of the virus keeps doubling in size, over and over again—in shorter and shorter periods of time—until it hits unsustainable levels. And it collapses the system.”
Martenson points to the U.S. total credit market debt as an example of this unnerving pattern.
“For 30 years—from the 1940s through the 1970s—our total credit market debt was moderate and entirely reasonable,” he says. “But then in seven years, from 1970 to 1977, it quickly doubled. And then it doubled again in seven more years. Then five years to double a third time. And then it doubled two more times after that.
“Where we were sitting at a total credit market debt that was 158% larger than our GDP in the early 1940s... By 2011 that figure was 357%.”
Dr. Moors warns this type of unsustainable road to collapse can be seen today in our energy, food and water production. All are tightly connected and contributing to the economic disaster that lies directly ahead.
-moneymorning.com, 29 August 2012
We publish excerpts from this report, which carries some weight due to the position of recognized economists. But, we must add, these experts presented their study for the purpose of selling their own supposedly surefire answer.
One thing is crystal clear; the world as we know it cannot function without going deeper into debt. Even after the crash in 2008, banks continue to lend money that in reality doesn’t exist. Thus, many ask, what is the end thereof? Our answer is strictly biblical; it will not change, but lead to the ultimate catastrophe when the entire global economic-financial system will collapse. The Bible calls this deeper-into-debt financial system, fornication, sorcery, and deception. The collapse is yet to come—it’s called the Great Tribulation, not caused by war or bloodshed, but by the implosion of the global financial economic system, “And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more” (Revelation 18:11).
(For more on this subject, read Global Financial Apocalypse Prophesied, Item 1068.)
(4475)
Since the recession, noted economists including Laurence Kotlikoff, a former member of President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, have come to similar conclusions.
Kotlikoff estimates the true fiscal gap is $211 trillion when unfunded entitlements like Social Security and Medicare are included.
A team of scientists, economists, and geopolitical analysts believes they have proof that the threat is indeed real—and the danger imminent.
One member of this team, Chris Martenson, a pathologist and former VP of a Fortune 300 company, explains their findings:
“We found an identical pattern in our debt, total credit market, and money supply that guarantees they’re going to fail. This pattern is nearly the same as in any pyramid scheme, one that escalates exponentially fast before it collapses. Governments around the globe are chiefly responsible.
Dr. Kent Moors, an adviser to 16 world governments on energy issues as well as a member of two U.S. State Department task forces on energy also voiced concerns over what he and his colleagues uncovered.
“It’s a pattern that’s hard to see unless you understand the way a catastrophe like this gains traction,” Dr. Moors says. “At first, it’s almost impossible to perceive. Everything looks fine, just like in every pyramid scheme. Yet the insidious growth of the virus keeps doubling in size, over and over again—in shorter and shorter periods of time—until it hits unsustainable levels. And it collapses the system.”
Martenson points to the U.S. total credit market debt as an example of this unnerving pattern.
“For 30 years—from the 1940s through the 1970s—our total credit market debt was moderate and entirely reasonable,” he says. “But then in seven years, from 1970 to 1977, it quickly doubled. And then it doubled again in seven more years. Then five years to double a third time. And then it doubled two more times after that.
“Where we were sitting at a total credit market debt that was 158% larger than our GDP in the early 1940s... By 2011 that figure was 357%.”
Dr. Moors warns this type of unsustainable road to collapse can be seen today in our energy, food and water production. All are tightly connected and contributing to the economic disaster that lies directly ahead.
-moneymorning.com, 29 August 2012
We publish excerpts from this report, which carries some weight due to the position of recognized economists. But, we must add, these experts presented their study for the purpose of selling their own supposedly surefire answer.
One thing is crystal clear; the world as we know it cannot function without going deeper into debt. Even after the crash in 2008, banks continue to lend money that in reality doesn’t exist. Thus, many ask, what is the end thereof? Our answer is strictly biblical; it will not change, but lead to the ultimate catastrophe when the entire global economic-financial system will collapse. The Bible calls this deeper-into-debt financial system, fornication, sorcery, and deception. The collapse is yet to come—it’s called the Great Tribulation, not caused by war or bloodshed, but by the implosion of the global financial economic system, “And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more” (Revelation 18:11).
(For more on this subject, read Global Financial Apocalypse Prophesied, Item 1068.)
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Friday, July 20, 2012
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak said:
Israel will not tolerate continuing terrorist attacks from the Sinai
Peninsula.…Now that the [Egyptian] election is over and a victor has
been declared,…"We will not accept our citizens’ way of life being
harmed and we will not tolerate citizens getting hit from Sinai and
terror...."We have an obligation to our citizens in the Gaza periphery,
who are showing determination and strength...“[Israel] respects the
democratic process in Egypt [but we have] expectations that Cairo would
honor the 1979 peace treaty with Israel…"The IDF will continue to take
action against terrorists, We will not accept rocket fire on the South.”God says: “I will stir up Egyptian against Egyptian--brother will fight against brother, neighbor against neighbor, city against city, kingdom against kingdom. The Egyptians will lose heart, and I will bring their plans to nothing; they will consult the idols and the spirits of the dead, the mediums and the spiritists. Iwill hand the Egyptians over to the power of a cruel master and a fierce king will rule over them,” declares the Lord, the Yahweh Almighty. … “So Yahweh will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge Yahweh.” (Isaiah 19:2-4, 21)
The Jerusalem Connection says: With the Muslim Brotherhood in charge in Egypt it does not bode well for the region – including Egypt and Israel, at least for the immediate future. Long term the view is more encouraging. Isaiah 19 concludes, "in that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria.The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.” So what can we conclude? It’s going to get a lot worse for the region, including Israel, before it get’s better. But when that which is “better” comes, it will be the best because Yahweh will be in charge.
Who lost Egipt?
BY BRET STEPHENS, WSJ—
Egypt is lost.
Don’t console yourself with the belief that the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in the country’s first free presidential election is merely symbolic, since the army still has the guns: The examples of revolutionary Iran and present-day Turkey show how easily the conscripts can be bought, the noncoms wooed and the officers purged.
Don’t console yourself with the idea that now the Islamists will have to prove themselves capable of governing the country. The Brotherhood is the most successful social organization in the Arab world. Its leaders are politically skillful, economically literate and strategically patient. Its beliefs resonate with poor, rich and middle class alike. And it can always use the army as a scapegoat should the economy fail to improve.
Don’t console yourself with the expectation that the Brotherhood will play by the democratic rules that brought it to power. “Democracy is like a streetcar,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s Islamist prime minister, observed long ago. “When you come to your stop you get off.” Any party that rules street and square makes its own “democratic” rules.
Don’t console yourself, finally, with hope that Egypt will remain a responsible, status quo player on the international scene. By degrees, Egypt under the Brotherhood will seek to arm Hamas and remilitarize the Sinai. By degrees, it will seek to extract concessions from the U.S. as the price of its good behavior. By degrees, it will make radical alliances in the Middle East and beyond.
Who lost Egypt?
The Egyptians, obviously. This was their moment, opportunity, choice. They chose—albeit by a narrow margin—a party that offers Islamic stultification as the solution to every political and personal problem. By the time they come to regret their choice, they won’t be in a position to change it.
But there are other players in this debacle, too.
First, the Obama administration. “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable,” said Hillary Clinton as protesters began descending on Tahrir Square in January 2011. President Obama didn’t help matters by calling instantly for Mr. Mubarak’s removal—thereby demonstrating how foolish it can be to be an ally of the U.S.—after doing nothing in the previous two years to pressure Mr. Mubarak to relinquish power while he still had a chance.
As a result, the U.S. has no credibility with Egyptians, secular or religious, and just 19% of Egyptians approve of Mr. Obama’s leadership, according to Gallup. So much for the Cairo Speech.
Next, the Bush administration.
“Naturally, here in Egypt as in the U.S., there is freedom of speech, so it is possible for anyone to complain about any personal or social problem. If there is a problem, there are legal ways to deal with it, whether here or in the U.S.”
This bit of sycophancy was uttered in March 2006 by Frank Ricciardone, then U.S. ambassador in Cairo, just as the Mubarak government had imprisoned Ayman Nour, its only challenger in the 2005 election. How did an administration so committed to putting its freedom agenda at the heart of its foreign policy allow its ambassador to make these remarks? And what did it suggest to Egyptians about the sincerity of Mr. Bush’s freedom agenda? The questions are self-answering.
Third, the liberal abdicators.
That’s a catch-all term for anyone who believes the result of any free election is ipso facto legitimate and that the world’s responsibility toward Egyptians’ democracy is to preserve a studied neutrality about their political choices. But a democratic election that yields a totalitarian result isn’t “legitimate,” except in the most cramped sense of the word. In reality, it’s a double-barreled catastrophe: a stain on democracy’s good name and a recipe for turbocharged political extremism.
Yet the deeper liberal abdication is the abdication of the idea that freedom is more than simply an end in itself. If you believe that any use of freedom is a legitimate use of freedom—that Larry Flynt inhabits the same moral plane as, say, Vaclav Havel—then what you have mainly succeeded in doing is destroying the attractiveness of freedom to a large segment of the world. It’s the “empty concept of freedom,” says Amr Bargisi of the Cairo-based Egyptian Union for Liberal Youth, that has given Islamists the philosophical and political edge over Egypt’s struggling liberals.
“When Islamists argue for a society that, for example, is free of pornography, you can’t respond by saying that pornographers should have absolute liberty to do what they want,” Mr. Bargisi says. “You will have to offer some good reason for people to have absolute freedom of expression, even when it produces bad side effects.”
What is to be done?
In 1979, the U.S. lost Iran as an ally but formalized an alliance with Egypt. Perhaps we might get lucky should the Assad regime fall to Syrians better disposed to the U.S., not that we’re giving the Syrian people much cause to like us. But that could change if the U.S. is seen as the instrument and guardian of their liberation.
We could also spell out to the new Egyptian government our terms for maintaining financial support and diplomatic favor. The Egyptian economy is in enough distress that the new government could be pliant. But that window won’t be open for very long, and the effects of such pressure aren’t likely to be long-lived.
So prepare for an Egypt that likes us about as much as Nasser’s did and behaves accordingly. It’s going to be a long and ugly haul. And it’s just beginning.
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