The clowns and villains who run America have accomplished something really epic: they have vanquished meaning. Nobody knows what anything means anymore. Anything goes now. All bets are off. (HT: James Howard Kuntsler) Given Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s eager determination to right all wrongs in America and extend the shining light of equality from coast to coast; and to all 57 states in between, I eagerly await the frabjous day when Jon Corzine does his perp-walk in the dingy, orange pajamas. I’ve been informed that Godot is running a few minutes late this morning and he would appreciate it if I just remained patient. Kuntsler addresses the issue less sardonically below. Is there still an Attorney General in this country? Will somebody please follow Eric Holder down a hallway and see if he leaves a trail of sawdust on the floor…. And by the way, what is the US Federal Reserve doing handing out billions of dollars to the Royal Bank of Scotland? Was Scotland admitted to the Union by stealth, too? Or did Jamie Dimon just buy it as a birthday present for Barack Obama, who likes golf. But then again, why pick on poor Jon Corzine. He was a good Progressive in the US Senate and as Governor of New Jersey. As a professional politician, he spent his entire career spending the money of others as if it flopped out of his rectum and could fertilize the turf. People reelected him as a public official several times as he behaved precisely the same way he would later with MF Global. Now that he does the exact same thing in the private sector, we suddenly get our shorts all wadded up? And it’s not as if our public officials in DC are any different than Barack Obama’s Wall Street Guy, Corzine. Our illustrious VP, Huey “The Kingfish” Biden recently visited Athens to discuss the recent string of Corzine Events afflicting the national governments of Southern European countries. Biden said: “This man represents the Treasury department. He’s brought hundreds of millions of dollars.”…. Asked what his message to Europe was, Biden said: “Hang in there. Funny guy that scrappy, Scranton Joe! We should have sent him to Somalia in 1993. I can imagine it now. “This man represents the Peace Corps. He’s brought a big sack of rye bread and turkey. Hang in there and avoid the war lords, and he’ll make you one heck of a Rueben Sandwich!” Corzine is a convenient symbol for whom I’ve expressed a certain level of condign execration. Yet without we the people, Corzine would be in charge of a Hoboken Bucket-Shop. Millions of voters, expressing their own personal preference for ungodly corruption that pays them a short-term stipend, have elevated this man to a great pinnacle of power, influence and access to other people’s spare investment funds. As the great and wise JRR Tolkien famously wrote: “Evil oft Evil mars.” Jon Corzine could accidentally serve a positive purpose. Spengler offered the following back-handed praise to fraud-miester Bernie Madoff awhile back. I am Bernard Madoff. Well, not really. But I wish I were. Few Americans have done more to punish stupidity, pretension and complacency than Madoff, whose apparent US$50 billion swindle calls to mind the caper by Mephistopheles in the second part of Goethe’s Faust. The fictional devil persuaded the emperor to issue paper money against buried treasured yet to be discovered. The only thing Mephistopheles and Faust screwed up is their failure to refer to this action as a counter-cyclical economic stimulus package. Had they done that, our modern commentaries would indubitably express an even greater sympathy for the devil. And yet there is always the chance that we could finally learn our lesson and extend it without loss of generality to the charlatans who our nation sends to Congress and The White House. We were offered condign warning by a personage of no lesser stature than Pope Bendict XVI what would happen if people like Bernie Madoff, Jon Corzine, Spencer Bacchus, Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama were given the reins of power over the economic conditions of others. Back when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, he wrote the following. It is becoming an increasingly obvious fact of economic history that the development of economic systems which concentrate on the common good depends on a determinate ethical system, which in turn can be born and sustained only by strong religious convictions. Conversely, it has also become obvious that the decline of such discipline can actually cause the laws of the market to collapse. So execrate Jon Corzine. Burn him as your scapegoat. Toast a few wieners over his carcass while he fries. But remember who handed him the keys. Remember who gave him the position and the influence that he used to steal $1.2Bn with an air of brazen and utter contempt for his victims. And when you vote in 2012, remember who he worked for and think twice before you trust any other Democrat more than you would trust Jon Corzine.
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So Why Really Care That Jon Corzine Spent The Money Of Others?
Britain’s apparent determination not only to commit national suicide but to drag as much as possible of the developing world down with it, gathers pace with the latest largesse to be showered on various Third World regimes. These recipients of Britain’s generosity are not simply corrupt — Indonesia has been notoriously corrupt, but though the local generals have pocketed a percentage of the aid money which they have received, projects have been built, and living standards have risen. The recipients of British aid, however, include not just corrupt dictatorships, but blood-soaked tyrannies whose rulers not only make no serious effort at development, but probably have no concept of it. That it will buy Britain any good will is a pipe dream, and that it will result on any positive improvement in the recipient countries’ living conditions or democratic institutions is probably even less likely . The planned jump in aid has been damned by the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee, charged with overseeing Government spending, which added that the Department of International Development had a “poor understanding” of the scale and likelihood of aid being lost to fraud. The chairman of the PAC, Labour MP and former minister Margaret Hodge, has said : “The department is going to be spending more in fragile and conflict-affected countries and the danger to the taxpayer is that there could be an increase in fraud and corruption. “However, the department could not even give us information as to the expected levels of fraud and corruption and the action they were taking to mitigate it.” Prime Minister David Cameron — apparently motivated by a confused desperation to have the Conservative Party shed a “nasty” image — has pledged that foreign aid will rise by about 34 percent from 8.4 billion pounds this year to 12.6 billion pounds in 2015, equal to 479 pounds — or about $1,000 — for every household in Britain. For a country is a deep economic crisis this is looks like not only madness, but a direct betrayal of its own people. The countries concerned include the following, as listed in the Daily Mail : • Burma, with one of the worst human rights records in the world, comparable to communist countries in the days of Stalinism, including genocide, will receive an increase of 82 percent to 185 million pounds. Its government is a peculiarly toxic cocktail of militarism and socialism, there is no political liberty and development remains mired in hopeless stagnation. There is a story from a few years ago that one Burmese signatory was allowed to travel to Singapore for medical treatment and broke down weeping when he saw what capitalism had achieved. • Somalia, a hopeless failed state and pirate headquarters, will receive an increase of 205 percent, to 250 million pounds by 2015. It is reckoned to be not just corrupt, but to be the most corrupt nation on Earth. • Yemen will have its aid approximately doubled from 46.7 million pounds to 90 million pounds a year, despite being a breeding ground for Al Qaeda terrorists. • Zimbabwe, under the demented tyrant Robert Mugabe, does best of all, with an increase in aid of 70 million pounds to 350 million pounds. A genocidal war was carried out by Mugabe against the Northern Ndebele (Matabele) tribe, using North Korean-trained troops. Torture in police cells is taken for granted. Once among the most prosperous food-growing countries in Africa, it has been reduced to destitution by Mugabe’s policy of confiscating mostly white-owned farms to redistribute among his cronies. James Delingpole has written in the highly respected Daily Telegraph : The biggest recipient of our foreign aid largesse is currently Pakistan, to which over the next four years, we will be sending a total of £1.4 billion. This is roughly the same amount that Pakistan has earmarked to spend on a new fleet of Chinese-made submarines ; these will go nicely with the two squadrons of Chinese J-10 fighters which Pakistan has also bought at a cost of $1.4 billion. So, in effect, our foreign aid donations are helping to underwrite the military expansion of the country which until recently was shielding the world’s number one Islamist terrorist, organised the massacre in Bombay and is doing so much to fund the Taliban insurgency killing and maiming our forces in Afghanistan. Still, at least [Britain] is winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan, with spectacular projects like the amusement park and ferris wheel in Lashkar Ga r (pop: 100,000) which you, dear taxpayer, cheerfully funded with a mere £420,000 of your hard earned dosh. One day a week, it’s Women Only day. That’ll certainly put paid to any funny ideas the Taliban may have of taking over the country as soon as we’ve made our ignominious departure: “You have the watches; we have the time; but, aieeee, nooo, we cannot compete with your secret propaganda weapon: impressive views of the green zone from a precariously swinging chair while struggling to eat candy floss through a burka.”
British Prime Minister David Cameron has cut British defense below the minimum level for national security, despite pleadings from service chiefs, much of his own party, and large sections of the public. Britain’s front-line Air Force is now hardly bigger than Belgium’s, with only seven squadrons of modern bombers and fighters (Belgium has six). The Falkland Islands are defended by just four aircraft. The Navy does not have a single capital ship. The air operations in Libya have had to be conducted without a single dedicated aircraft-carrier, multiplying their cost and diminishing their effectiveness. The Army has lost one historic regiment after another, and a succession of coroner’s inquests has blamed the deaths of British servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan on skimped and inadequate equipment. Where American troops have armored vehicles, British troops have been forced to travel in ancient Land Rovers, leaving them vulnerable to improvised roadside explosives. Servicemen in all three services have been sacked without warning in mid-career, sometimes receiving notice of dismissal while actually in action. There also seems to be a peculiar decadent passivity. An elderly British couple in a yacht off Somalia were kidnapped by pirates and severely mistreated while a Royal Navy auxiliary ship, the inappropriately named Wave Knight , with heavy machine-guns and a contingent of heavily-armed marines aboard, stood by, virtually alongside, and did nothing, lest the pirates’ human rights be violated (I am not making this up). When the pirates attempted to seize a Russian ship, the oddly, but perhaps more appropriately, named Moscow University , the Russian authorities evidently decided it was time for the Moscow University to teach them a lesson: they stormed the ship, captured the pirates, and sent them home, but apparently without benefit of their boat. Given they were several miles from shore, and in shark-infested waters, it is perhaps not surprising that they and their colleagues have attacked no more Russian ships. Meanwhile, Cameron has said Britain’s foreign aid expenditure is “ring-fenced” and will not be cut in any circumstances. International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell claims that lavish foreign aid makes the UK something called a “development superpower” and that voters should take the same pride in it as they do in their armed forces. Britain has actually decided to increase foreign aid spending by 34 percent to about $24 billion. Mitchell claims this spending is achieving “brilliant” results and gaining the country admiration around the world. One wonders if there is not some kind of impulse for national suicide at work in Westminster. Mitchell claims: “My ambition is that over the next four years people will come to think across our country — in all parts of it — of Britain’s fantastic development work around the poorest parts of the world with the same pride and satisfaction that they see in some of our great institutions like the armed forces and the monarchy. This is brilliant work that Britain is doing.” This includes $600 million a year to India, which, as Tory MP Phillip Davies pointed out, is spending billions on defense and has its own space program. It has a navy with about twice as many ships as Britain, a booming economy, and probably more nuclear weapons. This is despite the arguments of LSE economist Lord Peter Bauer, whose Dissent on Development was published in 1972, and others including a growing body of African economists, who believe foreign aid, except for emergency disaster relief (where something like an aircraft-carrier might be useful), is actually counter-productive and hinders rather than helps long-term development. Now, however, the British Daily Mail reports that African countries which persecute homosexuals will have their aid slashed by the government in a bid by David Cameron to take his homosexual rights crusade to the Third World. Mitchell has already cut aid to Malawi by about $40 million after two homosexual men were sentenced to prison. A spokesman for Mitchell said: “The Government is committed to combating violence and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in all circumstances, in this country and abroad. We take action where we have concerns.” This could be taken as a naked declaration of cultural imperialism. Meanwhile, Pakistan will continue to receive more than $400 million a year, but there the victims of persecution are only Christians, who don’t count. Hundreds of millions go to such dubious beacons of liberty as the Democratic Republic of Congo and the gulag-police state of Vietnam (try founding an opposition political party there, and see where it gets you!), with no suggestion that aid be tied to ordinary human rights. While all persecution is worse than deplorable, it seems the British Conservative government considers the rights of homosexuals in Africa worth cutting aid over. Not the case with innumerable other instances of persecution, nor its own national defense.
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British Priorities
I wanted to provide a cursory analysis of the most significant threats to American territorial security, national sovereignty and interests abroad, as evidenced by foreign state actors. The Cold War may be over, Osama bin Laden dead, and al-Qaeda weakened, vulnerable and displaced. However, we can all agree that threats remain, and must be identified, analyzed, and resolved. These threats take on a variety of forms and function: global terror exists, simultaneously, beyond the grasp of legitimate government and as a proxy of that authority, through state-sponsorship abroad. Chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons (CBRN) threaten American lives, both at home and abroad, and state actors aren’t the only one with their fingers on the trigger. Rather, there is a serious and legitimate concern surrounding rogue scientists and the potential that states are providing, or will provide, technological assistance to terrorist organizations. Moreover, financial crisis, narco-terror and deteriorating state solvency threatens lives around the world. Increasing interventionism will engender prompt reaction from a host of local, regional and national political actors. And as always, American interests will be targeted as the world’s hegemon and lonely superpower.
Filthy animals. MOGADISHU, SOMALIA — Hungry minority Christians in Somalia faced another struggle Sunday, September 18, after suspected Islamic militants beheaded a Christian convert and foreign aid workers were banned from reaching a dying population. Somali Christians and human rights activists confirmed that the body of Juma Nuradin Kamil, a kidnapped Christian who converted from Islam, was found decapitated near the southern town of Hudur on September 2. He was apparently killed after three suspected members of the Islamic group al-Shabab pushed him into a car, witnesses said. “Islamic radicals kidnapped a Christian brother and then beheaded him. His decapitated body was discovered” by locals on a street, explained Jonathan Racho, the regional manager for Africa of advocacy group International Christian Concern (ICC). His body was reportedly buried in secret after it lay two days in the open aid as locals feared Islamic reprisals. Keep reading…
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Somalia: Al-Shabaab Beheads Christian Convert For Leaving Islam…
