DHS Ignores Stateside Terrorist Threat

'Muslim Mafia' media blackout

You may have missed this.
Unless you are an avid WND reader, you almost certainly have.
As a result of a daring undercover operation lasting six months, a Muslim Brotherhood front group – one already identified by the U.S. Justice Department as an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator – has been revealed as an active front for jihadist activity.
This group, the Council on American Islamic Relations, still sports a 501(c)3 tax-exemption from the Internal Revenue Service. It still has broad access to the "mainstream" media. And it boasts about lobbying the Congress of the United States, though such activities are strictly limited by its tax-exempt status.
Despite the following well-documented findings of this undercover investigation in which thousands of incriminating internal documents were collected, not one major news agency besides WND has picked up the voluminous stories revealed in "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America":
•CAIR is trying to spring from prison a former headquarters official who trained for jihad with the same Pakistani terrorist group that last year massacred more than 150 people in Mumbai, India.
•CAIR officials are secretly coaching terrorism suspects and witnesses to withhold information from FBI investigators and have successfully obstructed at least one investigation in Maryland.
•CAIR is donating thousands of dollars to the legal defense fund of a Muslim cop killer.
•CAIR's visitor logs show the father of an al-Qaida terrorist visited CAIR director Nihad Awad several months before he was convicted of plotting to assassinate President Bush.
•Curiously, the logs do not register any guests around Sept. 11, 2001 – in fact, the entire month of September is blank.
•CAIR has cultivated Muslim moles inside a Washington-area law enforcement agency, including one who illegally accessed FBI records to tip off a terrorist under investigation and another with ties to Pakistani intelligence.
•A long-time CAIR advisory board member and top fundraiser has preached violent insurrection, including calling on street gangs to lead an "Uzi" jihad in America's cities.
•Another imam whom CAIR frequently books to speak at its events has exhorted Muslims to hijack U.S. military aircraft, including C-130s transporting the elite 82nd Airborne paratroopers out of Fort Bragg – which happens to be part of the district represented by North Carolina state Sen. Larry Shaw, who this year took over the reins of CAIR as its new chairman.
•CAIR is putting books into neighborhood libraries across the country advising men to beat their wives – but only "lightly" – when they disobey them.
•CAIR is lobbying the Justice Department and local law enforcement to exempt Muslim wife-beaters from laws against domestic violence or at least look the other way and let Muslim clerics intervene when Muslims are involved in spousal battery cases – not unlike the one involving the prominent Muslim TV executive who ended up beheading his wife after serial domestic abuse.
•CAIR's library package includes a guide to Islam edited by a radical Muslim cleric who cheered the tragic space shuttle Columbia disaster as a "good omen" for Islam and is now behind bars for inciting anti-U.S. warfare.

•CAIR is running an influence operation against members of key homeland security committees on Capitol Hill and planting Islamist spies in congressional offices.
•During the 2004 presidential campaign, CAIR organized a "task force" of other radical Muslim Brotherhood fronts to hammer out a "Muslim platform" that initially included a draft proposal "supporting Islamic groups including Mr. bin Laden and his associates."
•CAIR last year teamed up with a terror-tied Islamic investment bank to attack publicly traded American firms who refuse to comply with Shariah law by using shareholder resolutions, divestitures and boycotts against them.
•CAIR executives regularly travel to the Middle East to raise cash, and bank transfers show Saudi princes have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to CAIR – even as it claims to receive no foreign support.
•CAIR has purchased an alarming number of parcels of property in downtown Washington, D.C., while shielding them from a holding company.
Now, let me ask you a question: Have you read any of this elsewhere? Have you heard any of this discussed on major talk-radio shows? Have you seen any of this reported on network, cable or local television?
Ask yourself why.
Where is even the so-called alternative media when it comes to exposing the Muslim Mafia? What can you do about this travesty? You can purchase and read "Muslim Mafia."
You can help spread the word about this publishing phenomenon.
You can tell your favorite news, radio and TV shows you expect to see the courageous authors of this book interviewed soon.

Truth About Obamacare

Obamacare: Startling New Revelations Scare Public
by Floyd and Mary Beth Brown
First, we learned that a $500 billion cut in Medicare will dramatically affect the quality and quantity of healthcare available to America's senior citizens. Grandma's access is being slashed to add illegal immigrants and twenty-somethings into the insurance system. However, this revelation pales in relation to what we heard this week.
Here's the latest shock: Average current health insurance premiums with likely triple under Obamacare.
The new data comes from a well regarded, state-by-state study conducted for WellPoint, Inc. The most dramatic premium boosts will hit young people. These are the actual individuals that often opt out of insurance plans now.
Reaction from the Obama White House was swift and harsh. Linda Douglass, Obama's healthcare spokesperson, had the audacity to compare the health insurance firm with tobacco companies. Since the White House refuses to argue the facts, they instead turned to using one of their favorite tactics, which is demonizing any voices of dissent.
The reason for the dramatic insurance premium increases is the result of Obamacare regulations. First cause is the mandate that insurance companies take any customer. Insurance traditionally is an actuarial business that rates different customers based on risk factors. This is the reason a driver aged 19 with two speeding tickets pays more for auto insurance than a customer aged 35 with no speeding tickets. Nineteen-year-olds have more accidents. Therefore they pose more risk.
Traditionally, health insurance companies charged customers with risk factors and chronic illness more than young, healthy 19-year-olds. Obamacare stands the concept of insurance on its head. Since an insurance company will be forced to sell to any sick patient, the incentive to buy insurance when you are healthy decreases. Why not wait until you are sick; get cancer, diabetes or some other severe illness before you buy? To circumvent this problem, Obama is riddling the program with police-state mandates on healthy, younger citizens. Perverted, negative incentives such as threats of large fines and even prison time will hang over young people's heads to force them to join and stay enrolled in Obama's healthcare scheme. Does this sound like America to you?
Democratic leaders in Congress are seeing support slip through their fingers because Americans are learning that they will end up paying more for less-adequate care. The beneficiaries of this plan are still lobbying hard. Big business will likely dump most of their current employee-based plans and pay the less expensive tax. Big unions are facing the reality that they are going to be bankrupted by their generous membership health plans. Many want to dump their responsibilities on the new government option recently revived by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. AARP is salivating at the money they will make selling new, bigger Medicare-gap plans after the current program is gutted.
These powerful lobbies are the driving force for change. Individual family finances will pay the higher costs and see no benefit.
There is still time to kill this wrongheaded plan and replace it with reforms that will truly work. Selling insurance across state lines will increase competition and lower prices. Tort reform that eliminates outrageous judgments in malpractice cases will get lawyers out of medicine; this will result in eliminating billions currently being spent in the name of defensive medicine.
Insurance can work, but the costly mandates and regulations already choking the healthcare system are a big barrier to cutting costs.
Free markets deliver to Americans consumer goods, groceries, veterinary services, and even plastic surgery at affordable prices with little government meddling. Let the free market price and correct the distortions currently in the health care system.
Government has bankrupted Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. Postal Service. Let's not let the politicians destroy the greatest healthcare delivery system in the world.

The Real Obama Revealed

War on Fox News Reveals Obama’s Failings
By Ronald Kessler

If there is anything more bizarre than the decision to award President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, it was his administration’s decision to wage war on Fox News.
The Obama administration has been warning cable networks not to follow up on Fox News stories, which have included an exposé of ACORN and the radical backgrounds of some Obama appointees, and even attempted to exclude Fox from network pool coverage.
In doing so, Obama and his aides revealed in one stroke the most telling weaknesses of his administration:
• Obama is a whiner. At almost every chance he gets, the president whines about the previous administration and how it is responsible for every problem he faces. He neglects to point out that in the examples he cites — as with deficit spending — he has made the problems worse.
• Obama is fixated on spin rather than substance. Why else would he and his aides become so agitated about what a network is reporting? Obama’s decision to outsource drafting of healthcare legislation to Congress shows his lack of interest in performing the basic functions of his job.
• Obama is ineffective. The spectacle of refusing to let Fox participate in a pool filming, then backing down when the other networks objected, shows that Obama is over his head. That same ineffectiveness prompted him to announce the closing of the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay without having any idea where he would send its prisoners.
• Obama has no appreciation for the profit motive and its importance in America’s success. In warning networks not to follow Fox, Obama adviser David Axelrod said, “Mr. [Rupert] Murdoch has a talent for making money, and I understand that their programming is geared toward making money.” Never mind that Obama is making millions in profits from book royalties.
Obama appears blind to the fact that there is a reason Fox, which was started 13 years ago, now has more than three times more viewers between the prized ages of 25 and 54 than either CNN or MSNBC: Fox provides news and commentary that the other networks ignore.
If Obama and his aides actually watched Fox, they would see that its news coverage — as opposed to its commentary programs — really is fair and balanced. When controversial issues are discussed during news programming, guests from opposing sides are invited on.
If Obama understood the importance of the profit motive, he would have reduced taxes to help small businesses so they could expand and hire more workers, instead of throwing money at government programs as part of the stimulus package. By pushing a public option and failing to include incentives to reduce healthcare costs, Obama demonstrates that same lack of appreciation for the profit motive and the entrepreneurial spirit that has made America great.
• Obama is weak. The press ganged up on the Bush administration, but Bush never tried to isolate a news outlet. By showing how thin-skinned he is, Obama reveals his fragility. That is symbolized by his constant need to apologize to the world for imagined failings and by his hand-wringing, while finding time to play golf, about making a decision on his own commander’s request last August for more troops to fight the war in Afghanistan.
• Despite his claims during the campaign that he would bring people together, Obama is the most partisan president in recent memory. As one example, Obama and the Democrats have entirely shut out the Republican leadership from participation in drafting healthcare legislation that will affect one-sixth of the economy.
The White House crusade for fairness works in one direction: against Republicans. Asked by Campbell Brown on CNN if Fox News is biased, Obama aide Valerie Jarrett said Tuesday evening, “Well, of course they’re biased. Of course they are.” But when Brown asked if MSNBC, whose Keith Olbermann recently accused Fox of being filled with racists, is biased, Jarrett did not answer the question.
• Obama and his aides have a blatant disregard for the truth. They openly demonstrated that by saying that Fox is not a news organization, when anyone who has watched the network knows that it is. Criticizing Fox, Obama told NBC that if “media is operating, basically, as a talk radio format, then that’s one thing. And if it’s operating as a news outlet, that’s another.”
In the same breath, despite his aides’ orchestrated attempts to isolate Fox, Obama pretended he is really unconcerned about Fox, saying he is not “losing sleep” over the issue.
Rather than being of no consequence, Obama’s outlandish attempt to muzzle Fox News and discourage others from picking up its stories vividly reveals Obama’s failings—and why he will prove to be a one-term president.

Obama's Transforamtion of America

Obama's Media Control Strategy
By Cliff Kincaid

You may not have noticed that the Obama Administration, in addition to trying to seize control of the health care and energy sectors, is implementing a national "broadband plan" to redefine the media and transform America's system of government. It's designed, they say, to provide "open government and civic engagement." But it looks increasingly like an excuse for the federal government to control the Internet and access to information and even tell us what is truth.

Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute recently explained at a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) "National Broadband Plan Workshop" that it is necessary to have "a common space with shared facts." Armed with $7.2 billion of "stimulus" money, the federal government is going to provide this. It looks like various progressive groups are lining up at the public trough for their share of the loot. They have in mind what the George Soros-funded Free Press calls "an alternative media infrastructure."

If you think we already have that, with public TV and radio, think again. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has received $8 billion in federal tax dollars since it was created in 1967, is not considered radical enough by these folks. The Free Press favors an additional $50 billion "Public Media Trust fund" financed by a tax on home electronic devices. It also wants the federally-funded AmeriCorps to finance jobs for journalists.

A new national broadband plan, combined with the just-announced FCC plan for "net neutrality," or regulating access to the Internet, provides the opportunity for the federal government to define a "new public square" with a "common space with shared facts," as Ornstein put it at the August 6 FCC event. He explained, "It's something that was easier when we had three broadcast channels and virtually everybody in the society tuned into them."

Those were the days, you may remember, when Walter Cronkite claimed "That's the way it is," and many people believed him. We know better now. But Ornstein seems to be pining for the "good old days" when Cronkite and other liberals dominated the dissemination of news and information.

These days we have conservative talk radio, Fox News, and alternatives to the "mainstream" media on the Internet. It is obvious that the Obama Administration and its progressive backers don't appreciate this new state of affairs.

Ornstein contrasted what can be, under federal direction, to what we are witnessing "now on health reform," when so many dissenting voices are being heard. He added, "It becomes much more difficult when you have a cacophonous system with fragmented areas of communication." And that "cacophony and fragmentation" is most apparent on the Internet, he said.

In other words, those naughty conservatives are standing in the way of Obama's health care reform plan.

While the Internet is apparently confusing people with too much information, Ornstein said that the Internet also offers "multiple opportunities" to "develop a public square." He made these remarks at an event presided over by Obama's FCC chairman Julius Genachowski. The assumption of the exercise was that the federal government, under the cover of a national broadband plan, should not only regulate the Internet but provide new media for the public.

Assisting Genachowski is Mark Lloyd, Associate General Counsel and chief diversity officer at the agency. Lloyd used to work at the Benton Foundation, which is assisting this effort and previously issued a report recommending that the Obama Administration "should adopt policies to ensure that all Americans" have the ability to:

• "Know when you need information to help resolve a problem;
• "Know from whom, when, where, and how to seek that needed information;
• "Know how to differentiate between authentic and unauthentic information;
• "Know how to organize information and interpret it correctly once retrieved; and
• "Know how to use the information to solve the problem or make the decision."

The idea of the federal government telling people how to "differentiate between authentic and inauthentic information" is frightening. But this is part of Benton's "Action Plan for America."

Not surprisingly, the Benton home page features a tribute to the late Walter Cronkite from President Obama. Like Ornstein, it longs for the days when the liberal media dominated the news business.

Once Mark Lloyd left the Benton Foundation for the Center for American Progress, the two organizations collaborated on a letter demanding that the FCC require that broadcasters meet "public interest" obligations, provide access to the media by various groups, and "enhance political discourse." All of these measures are designed to give left-wing "progressives" more access to the media.

Now Lloyd is in a position to bring this about through federal regulation.

"What we really need in this country," Lloyd says, "is... a competitive alternative to commercial broadcasting" that would be supported by the public and "fully financed."

It sounds suspiciously like the "new public square" is the "public option" for the media. But so far there seems to be little debate or even discussion over what they have in store for us, and how they have already obtained $7.2 billion for this extreme makeover not only of our media but our system of government.

President Obama's Contempt for American Values

Dismantling America
By Thomas Sowell
October 27, 2009
Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?
Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers-- that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?
Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?
Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?
Does any of this sound like America?
How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.
How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.
We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies. What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brown shirts of dictators than like anything American.
How far the President will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin.
Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to "change the United States of America," the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.
Jeremiah Wright said it with words: "God damn America!" Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people.
Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children.
Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn't know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House?
Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government-- people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America's influence in the world.
Any miscalculation on his part would be in not thinking that others would discover what these stealth appointees were like. Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed for what they are. Fox News is now high on the administration's enemies list.
Nothing so epitomizes President Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year-- each bill more than a thousand pages long-- too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question-- and the biggest question for this generation.

Obama's Speeches and Actions Don't Jive

Obama at Odds With His Own Vision for the World
by Michael Barone
Barack Obama, who found time to go on a 24-hour jaunt to Copenhagen on Oct. 2 to seek the 2016 Olympics games for Chicago, apparently cannot find the time for a 24-hour trip to Berlin on Nov. 9 for a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Well, we all have our priorities, and the president can't be everywhere at once, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will surely represent the United States ably in Berlin.

Still, it seemed an odd decision to me -- until I went back and got the speech that candidate Obama delivered on July 24, 2008, to a crowd of 200,000 in the Tiergarten in Berlin. As I reread the text, it struck me that there would be an embarrassing contrast between what Obama said in Berlin 15 months ago and many of the policies he has been pursuing in his nine months as president.

Some conservatives were irritated that Obama introduced himself at the Tiergarten as "a fellow citizen of the world." But before that, he declared himself "a proud citizen of the United States," and of his 46 paragraphs only one was devoted to an apology for America's misdeeds ("our share of mistakes," "times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions"). Quite a contrast here with the more profuse apologies he has made abroad this year.

In addition, Obama in seven stirring paragraphs recounted America's airlift of food and fuel to Berlin when the Soviets cut off land access in 1948. True, at one point he suggested that the Berlin Wall came down because "there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one." But if that sounds like fuzzy, every-nation-has-the-same-dreams rhetoric, he also spoke of "the bullet holes in the buildings and the somber stones and pillars near the Brandenburg Gate," evidence of Soviet oppression.

These portions of the Tiergarten speech looking to the past could appropriately be repeated, with different phrasing, in a speech commemorating the fall of the Wall. But the portions of the Tiergarten speech looking to the future would pose some problems.

In the Tiergarten, Obama spoke of "the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan" and of the need "to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaida" there. That doesn't mesh very well with his recent reconsideration of the Afghanistan strategy he announced in March and reiterated in August, nor with the White House spin doctors' suggestions that the Taliban and al-Qaida are not necessarily allies any more.

In the Tiergarten, Obama asserted his "resolve to work with Russia when we can, to stand up for our values when we must and to seek a partnership that extends across this whole continent." That doesn't mesh very well with the "reset button" policy toward Russia that looks past its attacks on Georgia and Ukraine and propitiates the Putin regime with unilateral withdrawal of missile defense installations from Poland and the Czech Republic.

In the Tiergarten, Obama said the United States must "stand with Europe in sending a direct message to Iran that it must abandon its nuclear ambitions." But that message, if sent, has evidently not had the intended effect on the mullah regime, which is drawing out negotiations while presumably continuing its nuclear program apace.

"Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran or the voter in Zimbabwe?" Obama asked in the Tiergarten. "Will we give meaning to the words 'never again' in Darfur?"

Well, the Obama administration has toughened up a bit on its negotiator's recommendation we give "cookies and gold stars" to the Sudanese regime that has terrorized Darfur, and our diplomats have tried to help out in Zimbabwe. But we haven't done much of anything for the dissident in Burma, and Obama, while truckling to the mullahs, showed stony indifference to the thousands protesting the stealing of the June 12 elections in Iran.

Last year, Obama told Berliners that we and they are "heirs to a struggle for freedom." This year, his administration has been busy trying to appease dictatorial and authoritarian regimes. So maybe he was wise to skip a return appearance in Berlin. Let Hillary Clinton gloss over the embarrassing contrast between his rhetoric then and his policies now.

Obama's Economics

When Will Inflation Really Hit Us?

Read Terry Coxon’s editorial on the Financial Sense website.


We currently are in what Mr. Coxon identifies as the first stage of inflation. The Fed has pumped enough fiat money into the system to float the entire financial world. And there is much more to come, as the Obama administration’s huge spending bills for economic stimulus, health care, and green regulation pour more trillions of dollars into the stream. The Federal deficit, already far past previous levels, will continue setting dangerous records.

The first-phase inflationary effect is evident in the tremendous rise of the stock market so far this year. Investors have been sitting on the sidelines with tons of money to invest. The stock market surge (most likely a bear market rally) has led them to leap into the market in anticipation of higher corporate earnings.

The stock market historically trades at a price/earnings ratio around 12 to 15. Currently the price/earnings ratio of the S & P 500 is north of 40, which means that, unless corporate earnings soar at an incredible rate, the stock market is much over-priced and due for a sharp correction.

That means also that the stock market surge (the Dow Industrial Index has been flirting with 10,000) is not really an indicator of current economic performance. It’s just a reflection of too much fiat money seeking an outlet.

Quote:

Dropping large chunks of newly created money into the economy leads to price inflation, because the recipients are likely to find themselves overprovisioned with cash. As they try to unload the excess, they bid up the prices of the things they buy, whether it be stocks, shoes, gasoline, silver coins, or granola. The sellers of those things then find themselves cash rich and start doing some buying of their own, and so the wave of excess money and the bidding it inspires propagate through the economy.

The process isn’t instantaneous. It takes time. Just as each player in the economy has a sense of how much of his wealth he wants to hold in the form of money, everyone will move at his own speed to make adjustments when his actual cash holdings seem to be off target.

And the process can seem to stall, especially when fear is growing. When people are worried or otherwise feel a heightened sense of uncertainty, they will gladly hold on to abnormally large amounts of cash – for a while. But when fear abates, as it will when the economy begins to recover from the recession, that temporary demand for extra cash will also fade, and the hot-potato process of trying to pare down cash balances will emerge to do its inflationary work.

But when?

The speed at which the public tries to unload excess cash and the timing of the effects have actually been measured, in the work of the late Milton Friedman and his monetarist colleagues. The method was indirect and roundabout, and so the results, unsurprisingly, were nothing as precise as nailing down the value of a physical constant.

What the monetarists (or the first of them to be equipped with computers) found was that when the growth rate of the money supply rises:

- The initial effect is on the prices of bonds and stocks, an effect that comes within a few months.

- The peak effect on the growth rate of economic activity comes about 18 to 30 months after the pick-up in the growth rate of the money supply.

- The peak effect on the rate of consumer price inflation comes about 12 to 18 months after that, which is to say it comes 30 to 48 months after the peak growth rate in the money supply.

Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America Alive

Insider reveals secrets of North America plot
No 'conspiracy theory,' scheme hatched by CFR was sold to Bush, now Obama

By Jerome R. Corsi

NEW YORK – The integration of the United States with Canada and Mexico, long deemed by many as little more than a fanciful "conspiracy theory," was actually an idea promoted by the Council on Foreign Relations and sold to President Bush as a means of increasing commerce and business interests throughout North America, according to a top Canadian businessman.
Thomas d’Aquino, CEO and president of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives – the Canadian counterpart to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – confirmed in an interview recently published in Canada the accuracy of what WND first reported over three years ago: namely, that the Council on Foreign Relations was the primary mover in establishing the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP.
Published by the Metropolitan Corporate Counsel Oct. 4, the d’Aquino interview verifies that the creation of the SPP was not a "conspiracy theory" but a well-thought-out North American integration plan launched by his organization, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, along with the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States.
According to d'Aquino, President Obama wants to continue North American integration under the renamed North American Leaders Summit, provided the North American Competitiveness Council can be recast to include more environmentalists and union leaders.
In the interview, d'Aquino traced the origin of SPP to his concerns, following the terrorist attacks on 9/11, that "there was a pressing need to keep the border open for commerce while simultaneously addressing the security needs of the United States and North America as a whole."
With this goal in mind, d'Aquino explained that the CCCE by 2003 had "launched an agenda that we called the North American Security and Prosperity Initiative, or NASPI."
As WND reported in July 2007, the term "Security and Prosperity" was first used by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives in a January 23, 2003, report titled "Security and Prosperity: Toward a New Canada-United States Partnership in North America."
Then, in 2003, d'Aquino brought the idea to Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
"I helped convince Richard Haass at the Council on Foreign Relations that we should put together a trilateral task force to look at the future of North America," d'Aquino said. "We recruited John Manley on Canada's side, along with William Weld, former governor of Massachusetts, and Pedro Aspe, the former Mexican economy minister, who had been so influential in promoting NAFTA."
The result was a CFR Task Force on the Future of North America created on Oct. 15, 2004, and chaired by Manley, Weld and Aspe, precisely as d'Aquino had recommended to Haass.
The CFR Task Force on the Future of North America issued an executive summary, titled "Creating a North American Community," that was issued March 14, 2005, just days before the March 23, 2005, trilateral summit at Waco, Texas, in which President George W. Bush, then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and then-Mexican President Vicente Fox declared the Security and Prosperity Partnership on their own authority, without any approval from the U.S. Congress.
The final task force report, titled "Building a North American Community," was issued in March 2005, immediately following the Waco summit. (Read highlights of the controversial 59-page CFR report – including calls for increased financial aid to Mexico, the creation of a security border perimeter around all of North America, a reduction in border security between the U.S. and Mexico, and the creation of a new North American tribunal to settle disputes.)
D'Aquino agrees that the Council on Foreign Relations task force was instrumental to the trilateral summit in Waco during which the SPP's existence was declared, saying in the interview: "The result of all these efforts [by the CFR Task Force on the Future of North America] was that in 2005, Prime Minister Martin, President Bush and President Fox decided to sign what they called the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America – the SPP."
WND has consistently reported that the two reports issued by the CFR Task Force on the Future of North America constituted the "blueprint" for the SPP unveiled at the Waco summit meeting.
The final CFR report included on page xvii a concise statement of purpose: "The Task Force's central recommendation is establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community, the boundaries of which would be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter."
D'Aquino also confirmed, as WND had previously reported, that the North American Competitiveness Council was hand-picked by the Chambers of Commerce in the three countries, without any legislative approval from any of the three nations.
"At their next summit meeting, in 2006, the three leaders invited leading members of the CEO communities in the three countries to provide private-sector input on issues related to competitiveness," he continued. "From that idea, the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) was born, to be composed of 10 frontline CEOs from each of Canada, the United States and Mexico." That plan was implemented.
"We produced 10 of our most senior CEOs while the Americans established an executive committee of 15 representing a broad range of large companies with rotating memberships. The Mexicans produced some heavy-duty people – many names you know well."
As WND reported at the time, the North American Competitiveness Council dominated the third annual SPP summit meeting held in Montebello, Quebec, in Aug. 2007, a fact confirmed by the interview with d'Aquino.
"The first meeting of the NACC with the three leaders took place in Montebello, Quebec, in 2007," d’Aquino acknowledged. "Our Mexican and American counterparts graciously asked us to write the first NACC report. It was very well received, albeit heavily criticized by unions on the left and others as elitist: 'Why did these people have access to the national leaders while everyone else was left out?'"
The NACC continued to advise SPP leaders behind closed doors at the fourth annual SPP summit meeting held in New Orleans, in April 2008, as WND reported and as d'Aquino now confirms: "The second meeting of the NACC with the three leaders took place at their summit in New Orleans in 2008 – we were in the room with the leaders for a full hour and a half."
Whereas Bush was sold on the SPP initiative as a means of enhancing business and commerce in North America, d'Aquino explained, Obama would continue with the SPP only if more environmentalists and union leaders were included in the private advisory group that had consisted entirely of business leaders under the aegis of the NACC.
"When President Obama came to power, he faced a lot of pressure to shelve the SPP and not follow through with the NACC because his advisers were looking for an institution that would also involve environmentalists, union leaders, et al."
D'Aquino argued that the NACC should continue, and, as WND has reported, the Obama administration is continuing the previous administration's pursuit of North American integration.
"But at the North American Leaders Summit in Guadalajara this summer, President Calderon and Prime Minister Harper both told President Obama that the NACC was very useful," d'Aquino said. "In fact, the Canadian NACC group met with our prime minister and his key ministers for an hour and a half on the eve of his departure for the Guadalajara summit. He said that, regardless of whether the NACC continues formally on a trilateral basis, he welcomes our advice on trilateral issues."
WND has regularly reported that the unannounced goal of the SPP was to create a North American Union, similar to the European Union, by advancing the trade integration realized in NAFTA into continental political integration through the creation of some 20 trilateral bureaucratic working groups and the North American Competitiveness Council, composed of 30 North American business
executives hand-picked, 10 each by the Chambers of Commerce of the three countries.
The Obama administration is continuing the SPP initiative under the "rebranded" and "refocused" banner of the less controversially renamed North American Leaders Summit that first met with Obama in Guadalajara, Mexico, last August.

Cass Sunstein Calls For Destruction Of Traditional Marriage

Socializing Society By Eliminating The Family
By Thomas Brewton
Cass Sunstein, Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, proposes to abolish traditional marriage as a state-sponsored institution.

As many feared, same-sex marriage may become the wedge to destroy the religious and political institutions of marriage and family.
Each new day brings to light additions to the torrent of liberal-progressive-socialist attacks upon the basic social and political institutions of Western civilization and its foundation in Judeo-Christian morality. Reducing marriage to no more than issuance of a civil certificate acknowledging the partnering of any two people is exactly what the Soviet Union did. The aim was, and is under Obama’s New New Deal socialism, to break down lingering vestiges of individual moral responsibility and to supplant them with servility under the supposedly classless socialist political state.
Sunstein’s proposal to degrade marriage to a civil license to any two people desiring to become partners is in direct opposition to a principal reason for the state’s sanctioning marriage.
Historically the state was concerned primarily with the welfare of children born from a marriage. Fathers, as well as mothers, were to have responsibility for the welfare and acculturation of their children. The plague of illegitimate births and single-parent families is only a foretaste of what is to come if marriage is abolished as a state-sanctioned institution that gives legal rights to children and parents. The dissolution of marriage is inseparably connected to rampant drug abuse and violent crime to which single-parent children all too frequently fall victim.
Note that sexual promiscuity was made a social norm in the 1960s and 70s by liberal-progressive-socialists like the violent and criminal Weatherman underground. That organization was led by Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, President Obama’s close Chicago friends, supporters, and advisors. Professor Sunstein is merely following in the tracks of Weatherman, which counseled members to arm themselves, bring the Vietnam War home, and bomb police stations, banks, and military installations, while “icing” a few police (aka pigs).
Breaking up the family as the primary social and educational element of society also opens the way for the political state to push parents aside and proselytize young children for the secular religion of socialism. This was the intention of the Hitler Youth organization, which was to bypass traditional religion in the home and teach young people to betray parents who were not fully supportive of Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazis) program.
In a larger context, no political state can endure without stable families,which both produce the children necessary to perpetuate the body politic, and serve as the primary educational institution for all citizens. It was in the home that children traditionally learned the principles of fair play, courtesy and respect for their elders and playmates, and the traditions and customs that foster patriotism and make each political society a distinct and enduring body.

Are Blacks Not Supposed To Vote For Republicans?

Good For The Goose, But Not For The Gander?
by Thomas E. Brewton
May the Federal government control local elections to prevent blacks from voting for Republicans?

The Washington Times reports that the Obama administration has intervened in the town of Kinston, NC, to overturn voters’ decision to adopt a non-partisan system of election. Candidates in local elections were to run for office without listed party affiliations.
The Justice Department ruled that black voters can elect people to represent them only if candidates are identified as members of the Democratic Party. According to the Justice Department, presumably taking its cue from President Obama’s promise to eliminate discord and foster bi-partisan amity, Republicans cannot represent blacks.
Ironically, the wealthy village of Scarsdale, New York, in upscale Westchester County, has for many decades had a non-partisan system of elections for local office. The idea is that candidates should focus on the best interests of the entire village, not upon granting favors to backers of one political party or the other.
Scarsdale is close to being a 100% liberal-progressive-socialist community, as I can attest from living there for 23 years. Anyone questioning the welfare state or Democrat/Socialist Party social-justice initiatives is dismissed as an imbecile or a nut case.

Obama Lied To Get Elected, Surprise, Surprise

If Obama Had Told Us Before His Election
by Phyllis Schlafly

If Barack Obama had campaigned on what he has actually done in his first 300 days in office, would he have been elected? That's the question so many are asking today.
If Obama had told us he would appoint 34 czars, reporting only to himself and not vetted or confirmed in the constitutional way, building a powerful unitary executive branch of government, would he have been elected? What if he had told us that his green jobs czar had been a Communist, that the science czar wrote in a college textbook that compulsory "green abortions" are an acceptable way to control population growth and that the diversity czar has spoken publicly of getting white media executives to "step down" in favor of minorities?
If Obama had told us he would take over the automobile industry faster than any socialist dictator ever nationalized an industry, fire the CEO of General Motors and replace him with a Democratic Party campaign contributor, would Obama have been elected? If Obama had campaigned on closing down thousands of profitable car dealers, nearly all Republicans, would we have believed that this vindictive financial retaliation against those who didn't vote for Obama could happen in America?
If Hugo Chavez, the communist who nationalized most of Venezuela's industries, had said before the election that "Comrade Obama" would nationalize the U.S. automobile industry and Chavez would "end up to his right," would anybody have believed it? If talk shows had warned against such a socialist takeover, would the Obama-loving media have accused them of McCarthyism?
If Obama had told us he would spend $3 billion in a Cash for Clunkers program that would use taxpayers' funds to buy mostly foreign cars and grind up the used American cars traded in to make them unusable, would he have been elected?
If Obama had told us that his stimulus package is a sham because it does not create private-sector jobs (as a tax cut would do), so that the unemployment rate has risen to nearly 10 percent, with 15 million Americans unemployed plus another 11 million underemployed, could he have been elected?
If Obama had told us his Supreme Court pick would be a woman who said repeatedly that a "Latina woman" would make better decisions than "a white male," that his pick for chief State Department lawyer would be a transnationalist who wants to integrate foreign law into law binding on U.S. citizens and that his pick for regulations czar argues that animals are entitled to have lawyers to sue humans in court, would Obama have been elected?
If we had known that Obama would be totally incompetent as commander-in-chief of his chosen war in Afghanistan, and would not speak to the general in the field for 70 days, ignoring his dire report for six weeks, would Obama have been elected?
If Obama had told us he would have the government guarantee 90 percent of all U.S. mortgages, imposing $5 trillion in off-budget debt on U.S. taxpayers who had faithfully made their own mortgage payments, would he have been elected? And what if Obama had told us he would have the taxpayers take over 80 percent of all student loans at a cost of $1 trillion over the next decade?
If Obama had told us that he would make the U.S. government a major shareholder in Citigroup (one of the world's largest banks), would you have believed he could get away with this socialist takeover?
If Obama had admitted that his health care plan would include the same provisions for which he ran negative TV ads against Hillary Clinton (a federal mandate requiring every American to buy health insurance) and against John McCain (a tax on high-cost employer-based plans), would Obama have been elected?
And what if Obama had told us that his federal health plan would pay for all abortions without regard to the Hyde Amendment and provide full health care (including private doctor visits) to immigrants without requiring proof of legal residence?
If Obama had campaigned on increasing federal spending and debt from a multibillion-dollar level to multitrillions, would he have been elected? And what if Obama had told us that his promise to "spread the wealth around" would balloon his first year's budget deficit to $1.6 trillion?
If Obama had told us that his promise to "spread the wealth around" meant wiping out the Republican welfare reform of 1996 and increasing annual welfare spending by 39 percent to almost $1 trillion a year by the end of his first term, would he have been elected?
If Obama had declared during his campaign that his first major speech abroad would be to the Muslim world and that he would proclaim in Muslim Turkey that "one of the great strengths of the United States is ... we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation," would he have been elected?

NEA: Dumbing Down of America

Why Aren't Schools Teaching Our Children Their Rights and Freedoms?
By John W. Whitehead

"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government."-- Thomas Jefferson
According to President Barack Obama, making school days longer and extending the academic school year will increase learning and raise test scores among American children. However, it's not the length of the school year that is the problem so much as the quality of education being imparted to young people, especially when it comes to knowing American history and their rights--what we used to call civics.
Clearly, the public schools are fostering civic ignorance. For example, a recent study of 1000 Oklahoma high school students found that only 3% would be able to pass the U.S. Immigration Services' citizenship exam, while incredibly 93% of those from foreign countries who took the same test passed. Only 28% of Oklahoma students could name the "supreme law of the land" (the Constitution), while even less could identify Thomas Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence. Barely one out of every four students knew that George Washington was the nation's first president. None of the students correctly answered 8 or more of the 10 questions, and 97% scored 50% or less.
This problem is not limited simply to Oklahoma students. It's a national problem. For example, a similar study in Arizona found that only 3.5% of public high school students would be able to pass the citizenship test, a figure not significantly exceeded by the passing rates of charter and private school students, at 7 and 14%, respectively.
A survey of American adults by the American Civic Literacy Program resulted in some equally disheartening findings. Seventy-one percent failed the test. Moreover, having a college education does very little to increase civic knowledge, as demonstrated by the abysmal 32% pass rate of people holding not just a bachelor's degree but some sort of graduate-level degree.
Those who drafted the U.S. Constitution understood that the only way to guarantee that freedom would survive in the new republic was through an informed citizenry--one educated on basic rights and freedoms. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, "I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education." Jefferson also recognized that "[the People] are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
Unfortunately, as the aforementioned surveys indicate, most Americans are constitutionally illiterate, and our young people are not much better. Despite the millions of taxpayer dollars spent on education, our schools do a poor job of teaching the basic freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Indeed, the major emphasis in public education today is on math and science. Yet even in those subjects, American students lag far behind when compared to students in other countries.
We would do well to heed Jefferson's advice on the subject of public education. He believed that pre-university education was to "instruct the mass of our citizens in...their rights, interests, and duties as men and citizens." As for university education, Jefferson said it was "to form the statesmen, legislators and judges on whom public prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend."
Clearly, the ramifications of raising up untold generations of young people who are constitutionally illiterate are serious and far-reaching. These young people will be our future voters and political leaders. By failing to educate them, educators have not only done us a disservice but our nation as well.
So what's the solution?
Instead of forcing children to become part of the machinery of society by an excessive emphasis on math and science in the schools, they should be prepared to experience the beauty of becoming responsible citizens. This will mean teaching them their rights and urging them to exercise their freedoms to the fullest.
Some critics are advocating that students pass the United States citizenship exam in order to graduate from high school. Others recommend that it must be a prerequisite for attending college. I'd go so far as to argue that students should have to pass the citizenship exam before graduating from grade school. In fact, the goal of civic literacy is far from impossible. To pass the examination, one must only correctly answer six out of ten questions. To see how simple the test is, check it out at www.rutherford.org.
The federal bureaucracy lodged in Washington, DC, is out of control. Increasingly, under George W. Bush, the federal government disregarded the Constitution and systematically violated the civil liberties of American citizens on a mass scale. Unfortunately, Barack Obama is continuing a similar pattern.
And whose fault is it? When I was a child going to school, I was taught American history and how radical the so-called Founding Fathers were. I was required to take civics courses and I knew the Bill of Rights. And by the time I had entered college, I was protesting government encroachment of our freedoms and liberties.
I was also taught that if students didn't learn, it's because teachers didn't teach. The unfortunate danger we now face is a government no longer controlled by the people and which no longer feels responsible toward them. This is a problem created by the educational system, but it is one that could be remedied by it as well.

Nightmare Healthcare

This isn't healthcare, it's wealth theft.
Obamacare Invades Your Wallet

This Morning Bell is the first in a five-part week-long series on how Obamacare will affect you.

Throughout his campaign, and even in to the first few months in office, President Barack Obama repeatedly promised the American people that his health care plan would reduce their health insurance premiums by $2,500 a year. It has been a while since President Obama made that promise, and any honest look at the health legislation being considered in Congress explains why.
The Senate Finance Committee bill written by Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) (the Baucus bill) first drives up the cost of health insurance for all Americans and then forces everyone to buy it or face tax penalties or jail time. While the Baucus bill does cap out-of-pocket costs based on a person’s income, the effect on American families is still staggering. According to the Center for Data Analysis, the Baucus bill would:

For individuals making $34,140 (three times the Federal Poverty Level) the Baucus health care proposal could mandate up to $4,097 in annual premiums, a sum which could have been spent on over nine months of food, almost four months of housing or well over a year of utilities.

For a family of four making $69,480 (300% above poverty) the Baucus bill mandates annual health insurance premiums of $8,338, which would be worth the equivalent of over ten months of food, four months of housing or almost two years of utilities.

For individuals earning $45,520(400% above poverty) Baucus mandates $5,462 for health insurance, or over a year of food, four months of rent or a year and a half of utilities.

For families earning $92,640 (400% above poverty) Baucus mandates $11,117 in health premiums, the equivalent of over a year of food, five months of housing or two years of utilities.

And those numbers include the subsidies for health insurance in the Baucus bill. To pay for all this new health care spending, plus the massive expansion of Medicaid, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Baucus bill will collect $4 billion in fines from those who do not purchase insurance, $200 billion taxing health insurance companies with generous health plans, and $25 billion in taxes on employers. Not to mention the billions in cuts to Medicare payments to hospitals which will result in significant cost shifting to consumers.

PricewaterhouseCoopers has done a study on what all these new taxes and regulations will do to Americans health insurance premiums and the results are not pretty. Instead of reducing the average family’s health insurance premiums by $2,500 per year, as President Obama promised, the Baucus bill would actually raise them by $4,000 more than they would have been without reform.

The Baucus bill spends at least $1 trillion, fails to cover all Americans, taxes employers for creating jobs, and inflicts higher out-of-pocket health care costs on all Americans. We can do better.

Illegal Aliens Demand Free Healthcare

La Raza Wants Healthcare for Illegal Aliens
The president of the National Council of La Raza, America's largest Hispanic advocacy organization, said healthcare reform should include "everyone" — including illegal aliens.
Speaking at a press conference in support of President Barack Obama's efforts to overhaul the healthcare system, La Raza President Janet Murguia said:
"From our perspective there's a strong case to be made in this country for us to reform healthcare," and "it ought to include everyone.
"We know that politically it's very difficult right now to take on the issue of undocumenteds [but] there's no reason why we shouldn't be trying to cover as many people as possible, certainly when it comes to undocumented children. Our goal should be to have healthcare for everyone."
Murguia told CNSNews: "In terms of fairness and cost efficiencies, I think it's in the interest of healthcare reform to have access to as many people as possible."
Language inserted in the healthcare reform legislation would make federal health insurance subsidies available only to U.S. citizens and legal residents. But the House and Senate bills do not contain a clear provision for verifying citizenship status.
Rep. Michael Honda, a California Democrat, said undocumented aliens, "if they can afford it, should be able to buy their own private plans. It keeps them out of the emergency room."
Rep. Honda and other Democrats who support his position say that the illegals should be able to buy insurance "even if it comes through a government-established exchange," the Washington Times reported.
But Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican, declared: "If anyone can, with a straight face, advocate that we should provide health insurance for people who broke into our country, broke our laws and for the most part are criminals, I don't know where they ever would draw the line."

The Baucus Healthcare Deceit

A Great Plan—Unless You Need Medical Care, Are Poor, or Have Kids
From a new Heritage paper by Robert Book, Guinevere Nell, and Paul Winfree, some perverse consequences that would follow from the health care overhaul put forward by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.):

• Under the bill’s mandate that individuals must purchase health insurance, many moderate-income workers would be required to purchase the health insurance offered through their employers. As a result, moderate-income workers at firms with high average wages could be forced to buy expensive insurance designed for high-income workers willing to pay for more extensive coverage. Insurance provided by employers is not free to the employee: Ultimately it comes out of the compensation that employers are willing to pay their employees.

• The bill places an excise tax of 35 percent on the amount of any health insurance plan’s price that exceeds $8,000 for individual plans or $21,000 for family plans. While the tax is nominally placed on the insurer, the customer bears the cost in the form of higher prices. Data from the Current Population Survey and the Medicare Expenditure Panel Survey show that more than 570,000 families that pay no income tax or are in the 10 percent income tax bracket would be subject to this punitive 35 percent tax on “excessive” health benefits. In all, 7.2 million households—almost 94 percent of those who would pay the tax—would pay higher taxes on their health insurance than on their income. Some employees could avoid this tax by opting out of their employer’s health insurance and purchasing insurance through state-sponsored health insurance exchanges, but that would trigger an additional cost (see next bullet point).

• The bill places a tax on employers (companies with more than 50 employees) for every employee who gets insurance from a state-sponsored health insurance exchange instead of from the employer. Again, the cost of that tax would ultimately be passed back to the employee in the form of lower wages. But if an employee is earning near the minimum wage, then the employer would be limited in his ability to pass the costs of the tax back to the employee in the form of lower wages. In those situations, the employer might decide to fire the worker because his costs exceed his value to the firm. In effect, the tax for these workers is like an increase in the minimum wage, a policy that hurts those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder the most because it threatens their jobs.

• The structure of the employer tax penalizes firms that hire low-income workers with families to support. The subsidy provided to a worker who purchases insurance through a state health insurance exchange would vary by family income and family size. Workers with lower family incomes or bigger families get a bigger subsidy, and, thus, the employer would have to pay a bigger tax penalty. Hiring a high-income worker with no children to support would incur a lower tax penalty. Businesses would thus be encouraged to skimp on support staff. Again, this is a policy that hurts most those workers who need help the most.

• The bill places a tax on medical devices, places a tax on branded drugs, and increases the thresholds for deducting medical expenses—in effect taxing those who are sick and need health care in order to subsidize health insurance for the healthy.

The Gross Economic Ignorance Of The Democrat Party

Warren Harding and the Forgotten Depression of 1920
by Thomas E. Woods Jr.

It is a cliché that if we do not study the past we are condemned to repeat it.
Almost equally certain, however, is that if there are lessons to be learned from an
historical episode, the political class will draw all the wrong ones—and often deliberately
so. Far from viewing the past as a potential source of wisdom and insight,
political regimes have a habit of employing history as an ideological weapon, to be distorted and manipulated in the service of present-day ambitions. That’s what Winston Churchill meant when he described the history of the Soviet Union as “unpredictable.”
For this reason, we should not be surprised that our political leaders have made
such transparently ideological use of the past in the wake of the financial crisis
that hit the United States in late 2007. According to the endlessly repeated conventional
wisdom, the Great Depression of the 1930s was the result of capitalism run riot, and only the wise interventions of progressive politicians restored prosperity. Many of those who concede that the New Deal programs alone did not succeed in lifting the country out of depression nevertheless go on to suggest that the massive government spending during World War
II is what did it.1 (Even some nominal freemarketeers make the latter claim, which
hands the entire theoretical argument to supporters of fiscal stimulus.) The connection between this version of history and the events of today is obvious enough: once again, it is claimed, wildcat capitalism has created a terrific mess, and once again, only a combination of fiscal and monetary stimulus can save us.
In order to make sure that this version of events sticks, little, if any, public mention is ever made of the depression of 1920–21. And no wonder: that historical experience deflates the ambitions of those who promise us political solutions to the real imbalances at the heart of economic busts. The conventional wisdom holds that in the absence of government
countercyclical policy, whether fiscal or monetary (or both), we cannot expect
economic recovery—at least, not without an intolerably long delay. Yet the very opposite policies were followed during the depression of 1920–21, and recovery was in fact not long in coming.
The economic situation in 1920 was grim. By that year unemployment had jumped from 4 percent to nearly 12 percent, and GNP declined 17 percent. No wonder, then, that Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover—falsely characterized as a supporter of laissez-faire economics— urged President Harding to consider an array of interventions to turn the economy around. Hoover was ignored. Instead of “fiscal stimulus,” Harding cut the government’s budget nearly in half between 1920 and 1922. The rest of Harding’s approach was equally laissezfaire. Tax rates were slashed for all income groups. The national debt was reduced by one-third. The Federal Reserve’s activity, moreover, was hardly noticeable. As one
economic historian puts it, “Despite the severity of the contraction, the Fed did not move to use its powers to turn the money supply around and fight the contraction.”2 By the late summer of 1921, signs of recovery were already visible. The following year, unemployment was back down to 6.7 percent and was only 2.4 percent by 1923.
It is instructive to compare the American response in this period to that of Japan. In 1920, the Japanese government introduced the fundamentals of a planned economy, with the aim of keeping prices artificially high. According to economist Benjamin Anderson, “The great banks,
the concentrated industries, and the government got together, destroyed the freedom
of the markets, arrested the decline in commodity prices, and held the Japanese price level high above the receding world level for seven years. During these years Japan endured chronic industrial stagnation and at the end, in 1927, she had a banking crisis of such severity that many great branch bank systems went down, as well as many industries. It was a stupid policy. In the effort to avert losses on inventory representing one year’s production, Japan lost seven years.”3
The U.S., by contrast, allowed its economy to readjust. “In 1920–21,” writes Anderson, “we took our losses, we readjusted our financial structure, we endured our depression, and in August 1921 we started up again. . . . The rally in business production and employment that started in August 1921 was soundly based on a drastic cleaning up of credit
weakness, a drastic reduction in the costs of production, and on the free play of private enterprise. It was not based on governmental policy designed to make business good.” The federal government did not do what Keynesian economists ever since have urged it to do: run unbalanced budgets and prime the pump through increased expenditures. Rather, there prevailed the old-fashioned view that government should keep spending and taxation low and reduce the public debt.4
Those were the economic themes of Warren Harding’s presidency. Few presidents have been subjected to the degree of outright ridicule that Warren Harding
endured during his lifetime and continues to receive long after his death. But the conventional wisdom about Harding is wrong to the point of absurdity: even the alleged “corruption” of his administration was laughably minor compared to the presidential transgressions we have since
come to take for granted.
In his 1920 speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination, Harding declared: We will attempt intelligent and courageous deflation, and strike at government borrowing which enlarges the evil, and we will attack high cost of government with every energy and facility which attend Republican capacity. We promise that relief which will attend the halting of waste and extravagance, and the renewal of the practice of public economy, not alone because it will relieve tax burdens but because it will be an example to stimulate thrift and economy in private life.
Let us call to all the people for thrift and economy, for denial and sacrifice if need be, for a nationwide drive against extravagance and luxury, to a recommittal to simplicity of living, to that prudent and normal plan of life which is the health of the republic. There hasn’t been a recovery from the waste and abnormalities of war since the story of mankind was first written, except through work and saving, through industry and denial, while needless
spending and heedless extravagance have marked every decay in the history
of nations.
It is hardly necessary to point out that Harding’s counsel—delivered in the context of a speech to a political convention, no less—is the opposite of what the alleged experts urge upon us today. Inflation, increased government spending, and assaults on private savings combined with calls for consumer profligacy: such is the program for “recovery” in the twenty-first
century.
Not surprisingly, many modern economists who have studied the depression of 1920–21 have been unable to explain how the recovery could have been so swift and sweeping even though the federal government and the Federal Reserve refrained from employing any of the
macroeconomic tools—public works spending, government deficits, inflationary monetary policy—that conventional wisdom now recommends as the solution to economic slowdowns. The Keynesian economist Robert A. Gordon admitted that “government policy to moderate the
depression and speed recovery was minimal.
The Federal Reserve authorities were largely passive. . . . Despite the absence of a stimulative government policy, however, recovery was not long delayed.”5 Another economic historian briskly conceded that “the economy rebounded quickly from the 1920–21 depression and entered a period of quite vigorous growth” but chose not to comment further on this development.6 “This was 1921,” writes the condescending Kenneth Weiher, “long before the concept of countercyclical policy was accepted or even understood.” 7 They may not have “understood” countercyclical policy, but recovery came anyway—and quickly.
One of the most perverse treatments of the subject comes at the hands of two historians of the Harding presidency, who urge that without government confiscation of much of the income of the wealthiest Americans, the American economy will never be stable:
The tax cuts, along with the emphasis on repayment of the national debt and reduced federal expenditures, combined to favor the rich. Many economists came to agree that one of the chief causes of the Great Depression of 1929 was the unequal distribution of wealth,
which appeared to accelerate during the 1920s, and which was a result of the return to normalcy. Five percent of the population had more than 33 percent of the nation’s wealth by 1929. This group failed to use its wealth responsibly. . . . Instead, they fueled unhealthy speculation on the stock market as well as uneven economic growth.8
If this absurd attempt at a theory were correct, the world would be in a constant state of depression. There was nothing at all unusual about the pattern of American wealth in the 1920s. Far greater disparities have existed in countless times and places without any resulting disruption. In fact, the Great Depression actually came in the midst of a dramatic upward trend in the share of national income devoted to wages and salaries in the United States—and a downward trend in the share going to interest, dividends, and entrepreneurial income.9 We do not in fact need the violent expropriation of any American in order to achieve prosperity, thank goodness.
It is not enough, however, to demonstrate that prosperity happened to follow upon
the absence of fiscal or monetary stimulus. We need to understand why this outcome is to be expected—in other words, why the restoration of prosperity in the absence of the remedies urged upon us in more recent times was not an inconsequential curiosity
or the result of mere happenstance. First, we need to consider why the market economy is afflicted by the boom-bust cycle in the first place. The British economist Lionel Robbins asked in his 1934 book The Great Depression why there should be a sudden “cluster of error” among entrepreneurs.
Given that the market, via the profit-and-loss system, weeds out the least competent entrepreneurs, why should the relatively more skilled ones that the market has rewarded with profits and control over additional resources suddenly commit grave errors—and all in the same direction?
Could something outside the market economy, rather than anything that inheres in it, account for this phenomenon? Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek both pointed to artificial credit expansion, normally at the hands of a government-established central bank, as the non-market culprit. (Hayek won the Nobel Prize in 1974 for his work on what is known as Austrian
business cycle theory.) When the central bank expands the money supply—for instance, when it buys government securities— it creates the money to do so out of thin air. This money either goes directly to commercial banks or, if the securities were purchased from an investment bank, very quickly makes its way to the commercial banks when the investment banks deposit the Fed’s checks. In the same way that the price of any good tends to decline with an increase in supply, the influx of new money leads to lower interest rates, since the banks have experienced an increase in loanable funds.
The lower interest rates stimulate investment in long-term projects, which are more interest-rate sensitive than shorter-term ones. (Compare the monthly interest paid on a thirty-year mortgage with the interest paid on a two-year mortgage—a tiny drop in interest rates will have a substantial impact on the former but a negligible impact on the latter.) Additional investment in, say, research and development (R&D), which can take many years to
bear fruit, will suddenly seem profitable, whereas it would not have been profitable without the lower financing costs brought about by the lower interest rates.
We describe R&D as belonging to a “higher-order” stage of production than a retail establishment selling hats, for example, since the hats are immediately available to consumers while the commercial results of R&D will not be available for a relatively long time. The closer a stage of production is to the finished consumer good to which it contributes, the lower a
stage we describe it as occupying. On the free market, interest rates coordinate production across time. They ensure that the production structure is configured in a way that conforms to consumer preferences. If consumers want more of existing goods right now, the lower-order stages of production expand. If, on the other hand, they are willing to postpone consumption in the present, interest rates encourage entrepreneurs to use this opportunity to devote factors of production to projects not geared toward satisfying immediate consumer wants, but which, once they come to fruition, will yield a greater supply of consumer
goods in the future.
Had the lower interest rates in our example been the result of voluntary saving by the public instead of central-bank intervention, the relative decrease in consumption spending that is a correlate of such saving would have released resources for use in the higher-order stages of production.
In other words, in the case of genuine saving, demand for consumer goods undergoes a relative decline; people are saving more and spending less than they used to. Consumer-goods industries, in turn, undergo a relative contraction in response to the decrease in demand for consumer goods. Factors of production that these industries once used—trucking services, for instance—are now released for use in more remote stages of the structure of production. Likewise for labor, steel, and other non-specific inputs. When the market’s freely established
structure of interest rates is tampered with, this coordinating function is disrupted.
Increased investment in higher order stages of production is undertaken at a time when demand for consumer goods has not slackened. The time structure of production is distorted such that it no longer corresponds to the time pattern of consumer demand. Consumers are
demanding goods in the present at a time when investment in future production is being disproportionately undertaken.
Thus, when lower interest rates are the result of central bank policy rather than genuine saving, no letup in consumer demand has taken place. (If anything, the lower rates make people even more likely to spend than before.) In this case, resources have not been released for use
in the higher-order stages. The economy instead finds itself in a tug-of-war over resources between the higher- and lower order stages of production. With resources unexpectedly scarce, the resulting rise in costs threatens the profitability of the higher-order projects. The central bank can artificially expand credit still further in order to bolster the higher-order stages’ position in the tug of war, but it merely postpones the inevitable. If the public’s
freely expressed pattern of saving and consumption will not support the diversion of resources to the higher-order stages, but, in fact, pulls those resources back to those firms dealing directly in finished consumer goods, then the central bank is in a war against reality. It will eventually have to decide whether, in order to validate all the higher-order expansion, it is prepared to expand credit at a galloping rate and risk destroying the currency altogether, or whether instead it must slow or abandon its expansion and let the economy adjust itself to real conditions.
It is important to notice that the problem is not a deficiency of consumption spending, as the popular view would have it. If anything, the trouble comes from too much consumption spending, and as a result too little channeling of funds to other kinds of spending—namely, the
expansion of higher-order stages of production that cannot be profitably completed because the necessary resources are being pulled away precisely by the relatively (and unexpectedly) stronger demand for consumer goods. Stimulating consumption spending can only make things worse, by intensifying the strain on the already collapsing profitability of investment in higher-order stages.
Note also that the precipitating factor of the business cycle is not some phenomenon inherent in the free market. It is intervention into the market that brings about the cycle of unsustainable boom and inevitable bust.10 As business-cycle theorist Roger Garrison succinctly puts it, “Savings gets us genuine growth; credit expansion gets us boom and bust.”11
This phenomenon has preceded all of the major booms and busts in American history, including the 2007 bust and the contraction in 1920–21. The years preceding 1920 were characterized by a massive increase in the supply of money via the banking system, with reserve requirements having been halved by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and then with considerable credit expansion by the banks themselves. Total bank deposits more than
doubled between January 1914, when the Fed opened its doors, and January 1920.
Such artificial credit creation sets the boom-bust cycle in motion. The Fed also kept its discount rate (the rate at which it lends directly to banks) low throughout the First World War (1914–18) and for a brief period thereafter. The Fed began to tighten its stance in late 1919. Economist Gene Smiley, author of The American Economy in the Twentieth Century,
observes that “the most common view is that the Fed’s monetary policy was the main determinant of the end of the expansion and inflation and the beginning of the subsequent contraction and severe deflation.”12 Once credit began to tighten, market actors suddenly began to realize that the structure of production had to be rearranged and that lines of production dependent on easy credit had been erroneously begun and needed to be liquidated.
We are now in a position to evaluate such perennially fashionable proposals as “fiscal stimulus” and its various cousins. Think about the condition of the economy following an artificial boom.
It is saddled with imbalances. Too many resources have been employed in higher order
stages of production and too few in lower-order stages. These imbalances must be corrected by entrepreneurs who, enticed by higher rates of profit in the lower-order stages, bid resources away from stages that have expanded too much and allocate them toward lower-order stages where they are more in demand. The absolute freedom of prices and wages to fluctuate is essential to the accomplishment of this task, since wages and prices are indispensable ingredients of entrepreneurial appraisal.
In light of this description of the post boom economy, we can see how unhelpful,
even irrelevant, are efforts at fiscal stimulus. The government’s mere act of spending
money on arbitrarily chosen projects does nothing to rectify the imbalances that led to the crisis. It is not a decline in “spending” per se that has caused the problem. It is the mismatch between the kind of production the capital structure has been misled into undertaking on the one hand, and the pattern of consumer demand, which cannot sustain the structure of production as it is, on the other.
And it is not unfair to refer to the recipient sof fiscal stimulus as arbitrary projects.
Since government lacks a profit-and-loss mechanism and can acquire additional
resources through outright expropriation of the public, it has no way of knowing whether it is actually satisfying consumer demand (if it is concerned about this at all) or whether its use of resources is grotesquely wasteful. Popular rhetoric notwithstanding, government cannot be run
like a business.13
Monetary stimulus is no help either. To the contrary, it only intensifies the problem. In Human Action, Mises compared an economy under the influence of artificial credit expansion to a master builder commissioned to construct a house that (unbeknownst to him) he lacks sufficient bricks to complete. The sooner he discovers his error the better. The longer he
persists in this unsustainable project, the more resources and labor time he will irretrievably squander. Monetary stimulus merely encourages entrepreneurs to continue along their unsustainable production trajectories; it is as if, instead of
alerting the master builder to his error, we merely intoxicated him in order to delay
his discovery of the truth. But such measures make the eventual bust no less inevitable—
merely more painful.
If the Austrian view is correct—and I believe the theoretical and empirical evidence
strongly indicates that it is—then the best approach to recovery would be close to the opposite of these Keynesian strategies. The government budget should be cut, not increased, thereby releasing resources that private actors can use to realign the capital structure. The money supply should not be increased. Bailouts merely freeze entrepreneurial error in place,
instead of allowing the redistribution of resources into the hands of parties better
able to provide for consumer demands in light of entrepreneurs’ new understanding
of real conditions. Emergency lending to troubled firms perpetuates the misallocation
of resources and extends favoritism to firms engaged in unsustainable activities at the expense of sound firms prepared to put those resources to more appropriate use.
This recipe of government austerity is precisely what Harding called for in his1921 inaugural address: We must face the grim necessity, with full knowledge that the task is to be solved, and we must proceed with a full realization that no statute enacted by man can repeal the inexorable laws of nature. Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little. We contemplate the immediate task of putting our public household in order. We need a rigid and yet sane economy, combined with fiscal justice,
and it must be attended by individual prudence and thrift, which are so essential to this trying hour and reassuring for the future. . . . The economic mechanism is intricate and its parts interdependent, and has suffered the shocks and jars incident to abnormal demands, credit inflations, and price upheavals. The normal balances have been impaired, the channels of distribution have been clogged, the relations of labor and management have been strained. We must seek the readjustment with care and the intercollegiate review courage. . . . All the penalties will not be light, nor evenly distributed.
There is no way of making them so. There is no instant step from disorder to order. We must face a condition of grim reality, charge off our losses and start afresh. It is the
oldest lesson of civilization. I would like government to do all it can to mitigate; then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good, our tasks will be
solved. No altered system will work a miracle. Any wild experiment will only add to the confusion. Our best assurance lies in efficient administration
of our proven system.
Harding’s inchoate understanding of what was happening to the economy and why grandiose interventionist plans would only delay recovery is an extreme rarity among twentieth-century American presidents. That he has been the subject of ceaseless ridicule at the hands of historians, to the point that anyone speaking a word in his favor would be dismissed out-of-
hand, speaks volumes about our historians’ capabilities outside of their own discipline.
The experience of 1920–21 reinforces the contention of genuine free-market economists that government intervention is a hindrance to economic recovery. It is not in spite of the absence of fiscal and monetary stimulus that the economy recovered from the 1920–21 depression.
It is because those things were avoided that recovery came. The next time we
are solemnly warned to recall the lessons of history lest our economy deteriorate
still further, we ought to refer to this episode— and observe how hastily our interrogators
try to change the subject.

1 On the fallacy of “wartime prosperity” during
the Second World War, see Robert Higgs,
Depression, War, and Cold War (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2006).
2 Kenneth E. Weiher, America’s Search for Economic
Stability: Monetary and Fiscal Policy
Since 1913 (New York: Twayne, 1992), 35.
3 On Japan, see Benjamin M. Anderson, Economics
and the Public Welfare: A Financial
and Economic History of the United States,
1914–1946 (Indianapolis: Liberty Press,
1979 [1949]), 88–89, 90.
4 Ibid., 92.
5 Robert Aaron Gordon, Economic Instability
and Growth: The American Record (New
York: Harper and Row, 1974), 21–22, cited
in Joseph T. Salerno, “An Austrian Taxonomy
of Defl ation—With Applications to the U.
S.,” Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 6
(Winter 2003): 89.
6 Robert A. Degen, The American Monetary
System: A Concise Survey of Its Evolution Since
1896 (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1987),
41.
7 Weiher, America’s Search for Economic Stability,
36.
8 Eugene P. Trani and David L. Wilson, The
Presidency of Warren G. Harding (Lawrence,
KS: University Press of Kansas, 1977), 72.
9 C. A. Phillips, T. F. McManus, and R. W.
Nelson, Banking and the Business Cycle: A
Study of the Great Depression in the United
States (New York: Macmillan, 1937), 76.
10 The Austrian theory also applies to cases in
which no central bank was present and artifi
cial credit expansion took place by other
means. Government intervention is at fault in
these cases as well. See Jesús Huerta de Soto,
Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles,
trans. Melinda A. Stroup (Auburn, AL: Ludwig
von Mises Institute, 2006).
11 Roger W. Garrison, “The Austrian Theory:
A Summary,” in The Austrian Theory of the
Trade Cycle and Other Essays, comp. Richard
M. Ebeling (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises
Institute, 1996), 99.
12 Gene Smiley, “The U.S. Economy in the
1920s,” EH.Net Encyclopedia, ed. Robert
Whaples, March 26, 2008; http://eh.net/
encyclopedia/article/Smiley.1920s.fi nal.
13 Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1944).

Need A Reason To Dump The RNCC

Scozzafava v. Hoffman

by Erick Erickson
The National Republican Congressional Committee feels so threatened by Republican Doug Hoffman’s campaign, which the NRCC says is going no where, that they have taken to running attack ads against Hoffman. Their accusation? Hoffman is not as conservative as he says he is.
Really?
Okay. For sake of argument, let’s say Hoffman is not as conservative as he claims. That still puts him to the right of the GOP’s establishment picked nominee.
Remember, Hoffman tried to get the GOP nomination, but local party bosses chose Scozzafava instead. The actual Republican voters had no say in the matter.
Now, let’s examine the two candidates and their positions. It seems the NRCC would rather talk about how Hoffman is not as conservative as he says he is instead of trying to claim Dede Scozzafava is anything other than an ACORN endorsed leftist.
Scozzafava :
• Supports the Obama stimulus
• Supports card check
• Supports Cash for Clunkers
• Supports Davis Bacon
• Refuses to sign no tax pledge
• Refuses to sign no pork pledge
• Voted to force all NY state employees to pay union dues
• Voted for higher taxes 190 times
• Voted for a bank bailout
• Has not demonstrated any support for school choice
Hoffman :
• Against the Obama stimulus
• Against card check
• Against Cash for Clunkers
• Against Davis Bacon
• Signed tax pledge
• Signed pork pledge
• Supports school choice
Which of these candidates sounds like the real Republican to you?
Call Pete Sessions and tell him shame on him for supporting an ACORN backed candidate in NY-23. His number is (202) 225-2231. And don’t let his staff tell you it is an NRCC matter. This is a Pete Sessions matter.

The White House Endorses Sodom and Gomorrah

Common Decency Suggests We Should Not Have to Deal With This, But We Must Now Confront A White House Supportive of NAMBLA
by Erick Erickson
When I was a teenager, my friends and I joked about NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association.
Until I was in my twenties, I thought my friends had just made it up. Surely there was no such organization that campaigned to allow open sexual relations between boys and men — a concept that did not just involve statutory rape, but offended the profound decency of a moral public.
Sadly, NAMBLA is very real and today steps right out of the darkest pits of immoral human behavior and straight into the White House. Sean Hannity has been all over this story and we are just now coming to terms with how sick and demented the thinkings and associations of White House Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings are.
To be sure, the left wing Media Matters, which is run by former conservative turned homosexual activist and left-wing icon David Brock, is screaming from the rooftops that Sean Hannity is lying.
Hannity is not lying. Kevin Jennings is a profoundly sick and immoral human being — a proponent of statutory rape, an opponent of the Boy Scouts of America, and a zealous advocate of NAMBLA.
He is Barack Obama’s Safe Schools Czar.
He is a supporter of men who openly and vocally support pedophilia.
Media Matters threw out a few talking points to defend Van Jones. But Media Matters is giving a full throated, aggressive defense of Kevin Jennings. Why? Well, to paraphrase Wonkette, gay is the new black.
Van Jones was just a black guy. With a black President, resources did not need to be brought to bear to defend him. Kevin Jennings, however, is not just a gay man, but a man who believes in the full gay rights agenda, where men and boys can have sexual relationships free of prudish moral people frowning.
Jennings has championed NAMBLA’s causes and lauded a pedophilia advocate.
He even wrote the forward to a book called “Queering Elementary Education.” That’s right, Jennings wrote the forward to a book that, in its own description advocates the aggressive homosexual agenda among elementary school students. From the book: “queering education happens when we look at schooling upside down and view childhood from the inside out.” No irony is intended apparently in that description.
Americans of moral decency should be stunned to know the President of the United States would put in charge of “safe schools,” a man who encourages predatory relationships between young boys and grown men.
Barack Obama has done exactly that. Has he no shame?

Islamization of Europe

Islamization

In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: who lost Europe?'

Here is the speech of Geert Wilders, Chairman, Party for Freedom, the Netherlands, at the Four Seasons, New York, introducing an Alliance of Patriots and announcing the Facing Jihad Conference in Jerusalem.


Dear friends,

Thank you very much for inviting me.

I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe.


First I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe. Then, I will say a few things about Islam. To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem.


The Europe you know is changing.

You have probably seen the landmarks.. But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world. It is the world of the parallel society created by?Muslim mass-migration.

All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighborhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It's the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corners. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighborhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe. These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city.

There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe. With larger congregations than there are in churches. And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: we rule.

Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam, Marseille and Malmo in Sweden.In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighborhoods. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities.

In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims.

Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils.. In once-tolerant Amsterdam gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear 'whore, whore'. Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin.

In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin. The history of the Holocaust can no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity.

In England, Sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Many neighborhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels, because he was drinking during the Ramadan.

Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya, Israel. I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization.

A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live in Europe. San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.

Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate. But there are few signs of that. The Pew Research Center reported that half of French Muslims see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France. One-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks. The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Muslim students are in favor of a worldwide caliphate. Muslims demand what they call 'respect'. And this is how we give them respect. We have Muslim official state holidays.

The Christian-Democratic attorney general is willing to accept Sharia in the Netherlands if there is a Muslim majority. We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey.

Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behavior, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus. I call the perpetrators 'settlers'. Because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies, they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam. Therefore, they are settlers.

Much of this street violence I mentioned is directed exclusively against non-Muslims, forcing many native people to leave their neighborhoods, their cities, their countries. Moreover, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored.

The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behavior is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Ghandi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages - at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza. If it is good for Islam, it is good. If it is bad for Islam, it is bad.

Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion. Sure, it has a god, and a here-after, and 72 virgins. But in its essence Islam is a political ideology.. It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person. Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life. Islam means 'submission'. Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because what it strives for is Sharia. If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies.

Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam 'the most retrograde force in the world', and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Quran. The public has wholeheartedly accepted the Palestinian narrative, and sees Israel as the aggressor. I have lived in this country and visited it dozens of times. I support Israel. First, because it is the Jewish homeland after two thousand years of exile up to and including Auschwitz, second because it is a democracy, and third because Israel is our first line of defense.

This tiny country is situated on the fault line of jihad, frustrating Islam's territorial advance. Israel is facing the front lines of jihad, like Kashmir, Kosovo, the Philippines, Southern Thailand, Darfur in Sudan, Lebanon, and Aceh in Indonesia. Israel is simply in the way. The same way West-Berlin was during the Cold War.

The war against Israel is not a war against Israel. It is a war against the West. It is jihad. Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us. If there would have been no Israel, Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest. Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of the dangers looming.


Many in Europe argue in favor of abandoning Israel in order to address the grievances of our Muslim minorities. But if Israel were, God forbid, to go down, it would not bring any solace to the West It would not mean our Muslim minorities would all of a sudden change their behavior, and accept our values. On the contrary, the end of Israel would give enormous encouragement to the forces of Islam. They would, and rightly so, see the demise of Israel as proof that the West is weak, and doomed. The end of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only the beginning. It would mean the start of the final battle for world domination. If they can get Israel, they can get everything. So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islamization as a 'right-wing extremists' or 'racists'. In my country, the Netherlands, 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Muslims as the number one policy mistake since World War II. And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat. Yet there is a danger greater danger than terrorist attacks, the scenario of America as the last man standing. The lights may go out in Europe faster than you can imagine. An Islamic Europe means a Europe without freedom and democracy, an economic wasteland, an intellectual nightmare, and a loss of military might for America - as its allies will turn into enemies, enemies with atomic bombs. With an Islamic Europe, it would be up to America alone to preserve the heritage of Rome, Athens and Jerusalem.

Dear friends, liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe's children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us.. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.