http://www.liveleak.com/browse?q=masking Tue, 18 Jun 2013 03:32:03 -0400 Liveleak http://edge.liveleak.com/80281E/u/u/ll2/logo.gif http://www.liveleak.com/browse?q=masking Fri, 07 Jun 2013 11:29:03 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=342_1370618745 2cr51 7 June 2013 Last updated at 16:15 Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22813207 The United Nations has launched the largest appeal in its history - seeking $5bn (lb3.2bn; 3.7bn euros) for humanitarian aid to Syria. The UN estimates more than 10 million Syrians - half the population - will need help by the end of the year. As many as four million children are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, the UN children's agency Unicef says. UN humanitarian officials have admitted they may struggle to raise the record sums they are now asking for. Continue reading the main storyAnalysisNick Childs,BBC defence and security correspondentEarlier this week, British Foreign Secretary William Hague told the BBC that the Syria crisis was "a desperate and deteriorating" situation. But UN humanitarian officials acknowledge that it will not be easy raising the record new aid funds that they are appealing for now, in an age of austerity when budgets are stretched and resources are limited. There has been criticism that governments have been slow to commit funds that they had pledged for the previous UN target. In terms of public aid donations, it seems people are more ready to contribute to appeals connected to natural disasters rather than conflicts. Britain's Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Syria crisis appeal has so far raised lb15m ($23m). The appeal continues until 20 September. According to the umbrella organisation, this is "a respectable sum" for public donations to a humanitarian appeal for an armed conflict. For example, the figure for the appeal for the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2008 was lb10.5m ($16m). That for Darfur and Chad in 2007 was lb13.6m ($21m). However, these are eclipsed by the public response to DEC's appeals for the Haiti earthquake in 2010, the East Africa crisis in 2011, and the Pakistan floods in 2010, which raised lb107m, lb79m, and lb71m respectively. Governments were criticised for being slow to commit funds to the previous UN target of $1.5bn for the first six months of this year, the BBC's Nick Childs says. UN officials say most of that money - $1.2bn - has now been committed, he adds. But, in Geneva on Friday, the UN said it had revised up the amount of funding needed because of the worsening security situation in Syria. 'Masking a human tragedy'One in three Syrians is now in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, UN Emergency Relief Co-ordinator Valerie Amos said in a news conference on Friday. "Between January and April, the number of people displaced in Syria more than doubled. These are massive figures, but those figures mask a human tragedy," she added. The UN expects the number of refugees - currently more than 1.5 million - to leap to nearly 3.5 million by the end of 2013. Antonio Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told reporters that refugee camps were currently receiving 7,000 new arrivals every day - putting huge pressure on Syria's neighbours. "Funding Syria's humanitarian needs is a matter not only of generosity but enlightened self-interest," he said. Lebanon and Jordan, which host about half a million refugees each, have joined the appeal, asking for donations of $450 million (lb289m) and $380 million (lb245m) respectively to cover the financial costs. Within Syria itself, UN officials estimate that nearly seven million people will be dependent on aid, having been forced to flee their homes. Continue reading the main storySyria's humanitarian crisis4.25m people displaced inside Syria 1.6m refugees sheltering in neighbouring countries - figure expected to more than double this year 4m Syrian children in need of humanitarian assistance Many of those within Syria have already suffered or witnessed appalling violence, lost family members and are living without food, shelter, medical care and schooling. Unicef is warning of a lost generation of young Syrians. The $5bn sought by the UN would cover only the most basic needs of people until the end of this year. Aid workers say that, even if the fighting were to stop tomorrow, Syria and its people would still need years to recover. Responding to the UN's latest appeal, International Development Secretary Justine Greening said the UK is "ready to play its role" and urged other donors to make contributions. The UK-based Save the Children charity says "money alone will not be enough", calling for greater access for aid agencies to worst affected areas of Syria as an urgent priority. Access to QusairThe UN-led appeal was launched just days after Syrian troops backed by Lebanese Hezbollah militants regained control of the key town of Qusair after weeks of fierce fighting with rebel forces. Qusair, which lies 10km (six miles) from the Lebanese border, is a major supply route for both sides of the conflict. Hundreds of injured civilians are reported to be trapped in Qusair with little access to medical supplies, food and water. However, on Friday Russia agreed to a UN Security Council statement demanding "immediate, safe and unhindered" access to the town after blocking an earlier version of the communique. Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based activist group, said pro-Assad forces were "massing in their thousands" in the northern province of Aleppo in a bid to cut off rebel supply routes to Turkey. This follows the rebel fighters' attempted takeover on Thursday of the UN-monitored crossing in the Golan Heights separating Israeli and Syrian troops. The Syrian government forces retook the symbolically significant position just hours later, an Israeli military force said. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=342_1370618745 2cr51 Syria crisis: UN launches largest ever aid appeal Syria, Islam, destroyed, it, Islam, should, pay, to, fix, it, Tue, 04 Jun 2013 10:43:44 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=102_1370356060 simply minded WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration has released a review of its strategy in the war on terrorism. The report failed to even mention the word "Islam." CBN News traveled to London to talk with Anjem Choudary, a leading Muslim radical who says Islamic teachings are what shaped his pro-jihad message. Although both George W. Bush and Barack Obama have declared that Islam is a religion of peace, Choudary begs to differ. "You can't say that Islam is a religion of peace," Choudary told CBN News. "Because Islam does not mean peace. Islam means submission. So the Muslim is one who submits. There is a place for violence in Islam. There is a place for jihad in Islam." Choudary is the leader of Islam4UK, a group recently banned in Britain under the country's counter-terrorism laws. He wants Islamic Sharia law to rule the United Kingdom and is working to make that dream a reality. While Islamic radicals in the United States usually prefer to speak in more moderate tones while in public, masking their true agenda, Choudary has no such inhibitions. He has praised the 9/11 hijackers and has called for the execution of Pope Benedict. He also stirred controversy recently when video emerged of him converting a 10-year-old British boy to Islam. Choudary told CBN News his group is a "non-violent political and ideological movement" that resides in the UK under "a covenant of security." Yet he openly praises violent jihad. "The Koran is full of, you know, jihad is the most talked about duty in the Koran other than tawhid -- belief," he said. "Nothing else is mentioned more than the topic of fighting." Several former members of Choudary's group have been arrested on terrorism charges. "A very significant amount of former al-Muhajiroun people were involved in terrorist plots against this country," London-based terrorism expert Peter Neumann said. "A number of people have actually gone to Afghanistan, joined the Taliban and died fighting for the Taliban." Choudary refuses to condemn acts of terror including 9/11 and the July 7, 2005 London bombings, which killed 52 people. CBN News asked Choudary for his thoughts on the 7/7 bombings on London's transport system, and whether he condemned them. "For the people who carried it out, it was legitimate," he replied. "If you look at the will of the 7/7 bombers Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, they would be justified. And there are many verses from the Koran and many statements to say that's the Islamic argument. And that is a difficult Islamic argument to refute. And there are many scholars who support that argument as well." Choudary says his group is merely following core Islamic teachings and that Islam is much more than a religion. "This particular belief is more than just a religion," he declared. "It is not just a spiritual belief. It is, in fact, an ideology which you believe in and you struggle for and you are willing even to die for, because you believe in that: That is your whole life." Choudary seems to relish being called Great Britain's "most hated man" and pledges to continue his rallies calling for the overthrow of the British system. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=102_1370356060 simply minded Muslim Leader Admits Islam Not a Religion of Peace ISLAM, PEACE, MUSLIM, LIES , JIHAD Sun, 12 May 2013 05:45:02 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b95_1368351158 AntiPropagaanda Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism and the Spread of Sunni Theofascism Amb. Curtin Winsor, Ph.D. The United States has largely eliminated the infrastructure and operational leadership of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network over the past five years. However, its ideological offspring continue to proliferate across the globe. American efforts to combat this contagion are hamstrung by the fact that its ideological and financial epicenter is Saudi Arabia, where an ostensibly pro-Western royal family governs through a centuries-old alliance with the fanatical Wahhabi Islamic sect. In addition to indoctrinating its own citizens with this extremist creed, the Saudi government has lavishly financed the propagation of Wahhabism throughout the world, sweeping away moderate interpretations of Islam even within the borders of the United States itself. The Bush administration has done little to halt this ideological onslaught beyond quietly (and unsuccessfully) urging the Saudi royal family to desist. This lack of resolve is rooted in American dependence on Saudi oil production, fears of instability in the kingdom, wishful thinking about democracy promotion as an antidote to religious extremism, and preoccupation with confronting Iran. Background Wahhabism is derived from the teachings of Muhammad ibn abd al-Wahhab, an eighteenth century religious zealot from the Arabian interior. Like most Sunni Islamic fundamentalist movements, the Wahhabis advocated the fusion of state power and religion through the reestablishment of the Caliphate, the form of government adopted by the Prophet Muhammad's successors during the age of Muslim expansion. What sets Wahhabism apart from other Sunni Islamist movements is its historical obsession with purging Sufis, Shiites, and other Muslims who do not conform to its twisted interpretation of Islamic scripture. In 1744, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab forged an historic alliance with the Al-Saud clan and sanctified its drive to vanquish its rivals. In return, the Al-Saud supported campaigns by Wahhabi zealots to cleanse the land of "unbelievers." In 1801, Saudi-Wahhabi warriors crossed into present day Iraq and sacked the Shiite holy city of Karbala, killing over 4,000 people. After the Saudis conquered Mecca and Medina in the 1920s, they destroyed such "idolatrous" shrines as the Jannat al-Baqi cemetary, where four of the twelve Shiite imams were buried (on the grounds that grave markers are bida'a, or objectionable innovations). In return for endorsing the royal family's authority in political, security, and economic spheres after the establishment of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932, Wahhabi clerics were granted control over state religious and educational institutions and allowed to enforce their rigid interpretation of sharia (Islamic law). Wahhabism was largely confined to the Arabian peninsula until the 1960s, when the Saudi monarchy gave refuge to radical members of the Muslim Brotherhood fleeing persecution in Nasser's Egypt. A cross-fertilization of sorts occurred between the atavistic but isolated Wahhabi creed of the Saudi religious establishment and the Salafi jihadist teachings of Sayyid Qutb, who denounced secular Arab rulers as unbelievers and legitimate targets of holy war ( jihad ). "It was the synthesis of the twain-Wahhabi social and cultural conservatism, and Qutbist political radicalism- that produced the militant variety of Wahhabist political Islam that eventually (produced) al-Qaeda." The terms Islamofascism and theofascism have been frequently misused by Westerners to refer to virtually all forms of radical Islamism, but they are fitting appellations for Wahhabism today. The sect's rejection of individual liberties, disparagement and reduction of women's rights and status, disregard for the intrinsic value of human life, and encouragement of violence against unbelievers, are unparalleled among Islamic fundamentalist movements. Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey has used the term "Sunni theocratic totalitarianism," a term that highlights both the movement's "will to power" over the most minute aspects of Muslim daily life and its global ambitions. He also notes that its adherents do not raise the banner of Islam in pursuit of specific national, political, or territorial gains. Al-Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri has sharply rebuked the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood for participating in national elections. During the 1970s, Wahhabi clerics encouraged the spread of this revolutionary and atavistic ideological synthesis into Saudi universities and mosques, because it was seen as a barrier to the threat of cultural Westernization and spread of corruption that accompanied the 1970s oil boom. Consequently, the royal family and their religious establishment looked for a cause with which to deflect the growing zealotry from Wahhabist theofascism, a danger highlighted by the seizure of the Grand Mosque at Mecca by heavily armed Islamic Studies students in 1979. The diversion that the royal family seized upon was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Saudis financed a large-scale program of assistance to the Afghan mujahideen , in coordination with the Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence agency (ISI) and the CIA, while funding radicalized madrassas to disseminate neo-Wahhabi ideology and literature in the sprawling Afghan refugee camps of Pakistan. They also dispatched thousands of volunteer jihadis from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries to fight alongside the mujahideen. These so-called "Arab Afghans" dispersed to far-flung areas of the world after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988. They pursued further victories against "unbelievers" in the name of Islam, and they were accompanied by militant Wahhabi preachers. These elements would form the backbone of al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda was initially headquartered in Sudan, but returned to Afghanistan in 1996, following the seizure of Kabul by the Taliban. This was a new Afghan force, recruited in Wahhabi madrassas and, trained by the Pakistanis. Its goal was the establishment of a model Wahhabi state in Afghanistan. The Saudi royal family revoked bin Laden's Saudi citizenship (in response to heavy American pressure), but did little to interfere with Wahhabi "charities" in the Kingdom and abroad. These entities raised money for al-Qaeda, while the religious onslaught of Wahhabism continued to receive government sponsorship and funding. Osama bin Laden is widely believed to have reached an agreement with Prince Turki al-Faisal, then-chief of Saudi National Security and Intelligence in the mid 1990s, whereby al-Qaeda would not target the Kingdom, and the Kingdom would not interfere with al-Qaeda's fundraising or seek bin Laden's extradition. In fact, Al-Qaeda abstained completely from attacks on Saudi targets within the Kingdom prior to 9/11. Terrorist attacks and clashes between Saudi police and Islamist militants have erupted erupting periodically since May 2003, after the Saudi Government began cracking down on underground cells in the Kingdom (under pressure from Washington). However, it appears that most Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups still respect this quid pro quo Hundreds of members of the Saudi royal family jet around the world without fear of assassination. The country's vulnerable petroleum industry has only once been targeted by terrorists, and then in a less that serious manner. In return, and notwithstanding its limited cooperation with Washington in restricting terrorist financing, the Saudi monarchy has maintained its commitment to propagating Wahhabism at home and abroad, providing the terrorist underground with a growing flood of eager recruits. Wahhabi Indoctrination "Man . . . requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill educated, he is the most savage of earthly creatures." Plato It is estimated that well over one-third of Saudi Arabia's public school curriculum is devoted to Wahhabi teachings. Passages from Saudi textbooks quoted in the American media after 9/11 generated much controversy. One textbook, for example, informed ninth grade students that Judgment Day will not come "until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them," while another stated that it is "compulsory" for Muslims "to consider the infidels their enemy." Embarrassed by the revelations, the Saudi government purported to launch a comprehensive review of its educational curricula and pledged that all such references would be removed. Last year, however, Freedom House published an exhaustive report on the new curriculum, concluding that it "continues to propagate an ideology of hate toward the 'unbeliever,' which include Christians, Jews, Shiites, Sufis, Sunni Muslims who do not follow Wahhabi doctrine, Hindus, atheists and others." Some analysts dismiss the relevance of this indoctrination on the grounds that "conforming to an ultra-conservative, anti-pluralistic faith does not necessarily make you a violent individual," but this reasoning is fallacious. If only one percent of the 5 million Saudi students exposed to these teachings resort to violence, this would produce 50,000 jihadis. Not surprisingly, bin Laden himself denounced foreign interference in Saudi school curricula in an April 2006 audiotape. Moreover, these teachings are reinforced by Wahhabi clerics in Saudi Arabia, who advocate jihad against enemies of "true" Islam - outside the kingdom." Incitement to violence against Shiites is particularly common. In December 2006, a high-ranking cleric close to the Saudi royal family, Abdul Rahman al-Barak, denounced Shiites as an "evil sect . . . more dangerous than Jews and Christians." In November of 2004, twenty-six clerics, most of whom held positions as lecturers of Islamic studies at various Saudi state-funded universities, issued a call for jihad against American forces in Iraq. Two Saudi officials denounced the fatwa in interviews with the Western media, but no retraction was made in Arabic to local media outlets. Months later, a Saudi dissident group released a videotape showing the Chief Justice of Saudi Arabia's Supreme Judicial Council, Saleh bin Muhammad al-Luhaidan, advising young Saudis at a government mosque on how to infiltrate Iraq and fight US troops, as well as assuring them that Saudi security forces would not punish them after their return. While Luhaidan publicly retracted his statements, videotapes of prominent Saudi clerics exhorting the public to wage jihad in Iraq and elsewhere continue to surface. Exporting Hatred While Saudi citizens remain the vanguard of Islamic theofascism around the world, the growth potential for this ideology lies outside the Kingdom. The Saudis have spent at least $87 billion propagating Wahhabism abroad during the past two decades, and the scale of financing is believed to have increased in the past two years as oil prices have skyrocketed. The bulk of this funding goes to the construction and operating expenses of mosques, madrassas, and other religious institutions that preach Wahhabism. It also supports the training of imams; domination of mass media and publishing outlets; distribution of Wahhabi textbooks and other literature; and endowments to universities (in exchange for influence over the appointment of Islamic scholars). By comparison, the Communist Party of the USSR and its Comintern spent just over $7 billion propagating its ideology worldwide between 1921 and 1991. Wahhabism has made less headway in the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia, despite the fact that decades of Communist rule had weakened their traditional Islamic institutions. Several successor governments, especially the Uzbekis, have cracked down harshly on militant Islamist groups, while encouraging educational systems in the Hanafi tradition that promote tolerant and peaceful Islam. Africa is also a critical area of Wahhabi expansion, as it offers a multitude of "failed states" and communal cleavages ripe for exploitation, most notably in the Sudan and Nigeria. In all of these areas, the central dynamic is the same - it is the overwhelming wealth of Saudi Arabia that enables the Wahhabi sect to proselytize on a global scale, not the intrinsic appeal of its teachings. Throughout the world, moderates echo the assessment of Somali journalist Bashir Gothar, who writes that his country's tolerant Sufi-infused Islamic culture has been: "swept aside by a new brand of Islam that is being pushed down the throat of our people - Wahhabism. Anywhere one looks, one finds that alien, perverted version of Islam." Wahhabism in the West Wahhabi proselytizing is not limited to the Islamic world. The Saudis have financed the growth of thousands of Wahhabi mosques, madrassas, and other religious institutions in Western countries that have fast-growing Muslim minorities during the past three decades. Wahhabi penetration is deepest in the social welfare states of Western Europe, where chronically high unemployment has created large pools of able-bodied young Muslim men who have "become permanent wards of the state at the cost of their basic human dignity." This is a perfect storm of alienation and idleness, ripe for terrorist recruitment. The perpetrators of the 2005 London subway attacks were native-born Britons of Pakistani descent, recruited locally and trained in the use of explosives during visits to Pakistan. The Dutch Moroccan who murdered Dutch filmmaker Theodor Van Gogh in 2004 (for producing a film critical of Islam) was also a product of Wahhabi indoctrination. The Wahhabis have had less traction in the United States, which lacks the masses of unassimilated young people that exist in Europe. US welfare laws no longer allow able-bodied young men to have indefinite periods of government subsidized unemployment and immigrants (both Muslim and non-Muslim) tend to find a more stable niche in American society. Nevertheless, Wahhabi penetration of US mainstream Islamic institutions is substantial. A 2005 Freedom House Report examined over 200 books and other publications distributed in 15 prominent Saudi-funded American mosques. One such publication, bearing the imprint of the Saudi embassy and distributed by the King Fahd Mosque in Los Angeles, contained the following injunctions for Muslims living in America: Be dissociated from the infidels, hate them for their religion, leave them, never rely on them for support, do not admire them, and always oppose them in every way according to Islamic law. hoever helps unbelievers against Muslims, regardless of what type of support he lends to them, he is an unbeliever himself. Never greet the Christian or Jew first. Never congratulate the infidel on his holiday. Never befriend an infidel unless it is to convert him. Never imitate the infidel. Never work for an infidel. Do not wear a graduation gown because this imitates the infidel. Although Saudi-funded religious institutions have been careful not to incite or explicitly endorse violence since 9/11, they unapologetically promote distrust toward non-Muslims and self-segregation. In effect, they are trying to reproduce in America the kind of social conditions that have fueled radicalization and terrorist recruitment in Europe. While the Saudi ambassador in Washington said last year that his government was undertaking a "very intense review" of all missionary activities in the United States, it is clear that the Saudis are concerned primarily with avoiding bad publicity, not abandoning their drive to dominate Islamic institutions in America. Causes of American Inaction The Bush administration has been reluctant to put serious pressure on the Saudis to stop propagating Wahhabism, despite the enormous threat to American security posed by Sunni theofascism. There are several reasons for this. The first is American dependence on the kingdom's abundant oil reserves, which enable to the Saudis to maintain roughly 3 million b/d in spare production capacity. This spare capacity has been called the "energy equivalent of nuclear weapons," because it puts the Saudis in a unique position to compensate for disruptions in supplies from other producers and discourage price gouging - a service provided to the United States (and other industrialized nations) in exchange for protection. However, the argument that a firm public stance against Saudi propagation of religious hatred might lead the kingdom to retaliate economically is spurious. Saudi Arabia's use of the oil weapon would alienate the entire industrialized world, while threatening the relative economic prosperity that preserves stability in the kingdom. Some politicians and writers have voiced concern that pushing the Saudi royal family to curtail the Wahhabis could lead to terrorist attacks on the country's vulnerable petroleum infrastructure or lead to the collapse of the monarchy, which would produce an even worse outcome - a Saudi state controlled exclusively by religious fanatics. While these are serious risks, it must be borne in mind that most Wahhabi radicals view the monarchy (and its oil fields) as a golden goose. It is only by disguising Saudi Arabia as a 'friendly nation' that they have been able to go as far as they have in spreading their atavistic perversion of Islam. Such concerns reveal a tendency to imagine or spin the Saudi royal family as fundamentally pro-Western. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who served as ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005, has played an important role in masking Saudi - Wahhabi realities. His personal charm, Washington Post journalist David Ignatius writes, "many American leaders and even presidents to forget that he represented a secretive, repressive Muslim kingdom that survived because it had made a pact with 'puritanical' Wahhabi clerics who despised America." Bandar was also instrumental in the growth of what Daniel Pipes has called a "culture of corruption" that renders the executive branch of the American government "incapable of dealing with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the farsighted and disinterested manner that US foreign policy requires." Pipes points to a "revolving door syndrome" afflicting senior diplomats and policymakers who deal with the Saudis in their official capacities. Very often, they have enjoyed lucrative post-government careers working as consultants for Saudi businessmen and companies, or running Saudi-financed nongovernmental organizations. "If the reputation then builds that the Saudis take care of friends when they leave office," Bandar once reportedly told a close associate: "you'd be surprised how much better friends you have who are just coming into office." Unable or unwilling to combat the spread of Sunni theofascism at its main source (Saudi Arabia), the Bush administration launched a democracy promotion campaign intended to eradicate political conditions receptive to its global spread. However, rather than building stable and less oppressive systems resistant to religious extremism in Afghanistan and Iraq, the accumulating shortfalls of American intervention in both countries have made them magnets for jihadist recruitment. The Question of Iran The Bush Administration's reluctance to challenge the Saudis after 9/11 initially encountered impassioned objections from conservative and liberal commentators alike, but the outrage has tapered off as attention has became increasingly focused on Shiite Iran and its nuclear program which is hipped by Israel. In the view of the administration, the Iranian threat to American national security not only supercedes the threat of Sunni theofascism, but supercedes it to such a degree that a more accommodating policy toward Saudi Arabia is warranted. However, while the prospect of militant Shiite clerics in possession of nuclear weapons is understandably disconcerting to many Americans, the Iranian threat is mitigated by several important factors. For all of the shrill and unsettling words of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, his government's foreign policy is driven more by Iranian nationalism than Shiite Islamism (this is evident, for example, in Tehran's support for the predominantly Christian nation of Armenia in its dispute with Shiite Azerbaijan). This is not surprising, as Iran (known as Persia prior to the twentieth century) has existed in one form or another since biblical times, while it embraced Shiite Islam just 500 years ago. While Ahmadinejad exploits Iranian nationalism to win public support in his confrontation with the West, it can easily turn against him if he were to embark on a global adventure. Wahhabi clerics may support the Saudi royal family as a necessary evil in order to protect their global proselytizing mission, but they recognize no Saudi Arabian "nation" whose interests take precedence over their agenda. Such is not the case in Iran. Furthermore, Shiite Islamism does not exhibit theofascist tendencies. Radical clerics in Iran have been responsible for horrendous abuses of power, but they do not regard non-Shiite Muslims as "unbelievers" who must be systematically purged. Basically in Islam Christians and Jews are considered as belivers and in Quran are referred to as "the people of book". Even within the Shiite world, there is no prospect of a Wahhabi-style Iranian takeover of religious discourse because unlike the Sunnis, Shiite Islam is rigidly hierarchical. Iraqi and Lebanese Shiites gladly accept Iranian financial and military support, but they are fiercely loyal to their own clerical establishments. An even greater fallacy is the widespread belief in Washington that a strong relationship with Saudi Arabia is an asset in confronting Iran. On the contrary, coddling the Saudis makes it more difficult for the United States to deal with Iran. The Bush administration's refusal to hold Saudi leaders accountable for their incitement of Wahhabi jihadists (who have murdered far more Shiites than Americans, mostly in Iraq and Pakistan) is a source of deep resentment in the Shiite world. It is no surprise that the only two major public demonstrations against Al-Qaeda in the Islamic world after the 9/11 attacks were both organized by Shiites (in Tehran and Karachi, Pakistan). It is interesting to note that the recent escalation of US - Iranian tensions has made the Saudis less accommodating about Iraq than ever before. Reports that the Saudi Government is threatening to openly fund and arm Sunni insurgent groups if American forces withdraw from Iraq are a case in point. In effect, the Saudis are signaling to the Bush administration that they will thwart any American plan to cede control of Iraq to its Shiite-dominated, democratically-elected government, while signaling to the Sunni insurgents in Iraq that they can reject American efforts to broker a political settlement and not be left to face the consequences alone. Iran has no history of direct aggression against its neighbors, and unlike Saddam's Sunni-dominated Iraq, they have never used weapons of mass destruction during invasions of neighbors or against their own people. The strongest argument for this approach lies with the extent that Iran craves recognition of its actual status as the historically authentic nation state in the Middle East. Iran has long aspired to be and probably will be the region's predominant Islamic regional power. On the other hand Iranians are the most pro American and pro west people in the middle-east, although the recent Israeli pushed American forced sanctions are damaging this view. The Road Ahead Washington will eventually have to face the reality that derailing Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons (and, more broadly, its emergence as the predominant Islamic regional power) may be impossible over the long-term, and possible in the short term only at the expense of fatally undermining efforts to contain the spread of Sunni theofascism. The United States would do better to find a mutually acceptable means of working with this reality, rather sustaining a deadlocked confrontation by conditioning its willingness to normalize relations with Tehran on the abandonment of its nuclear aspirations. US - Iranian engagement will greatly enhance American leverage over the Saudis, as well as check the threat of Sunni theofascist terrorism in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan. Saudi officials have urged the Bush administration not to talk with Iran because they know that a reduction in US - Iranian tensions will draw more attention to their unbridled export of Wahhabism. Reducing American dependence on Saudi oil must also be part of any comprehensive strategy for addressing the threat of Sunni theofascism. Although President Bush has expressed commitment to developing alternative energy sources, the surplus production capacity of the Saudis enables them to lower prices as necessary to ensure that this will not be cost effective for a long time. Barring radical breakthroughs in fuel technologies, an optimistic forecast would have bio fuels (ethanol, synthetic diesel and bio oil) making up to 30% of US petroleum equivalent needs by 2030. For the short to medium term future, only conservation can significantly alter American petroleum dependency. Without the billions of dollars in Saudi funds, the ideological, political, and psychological edifice of Wahhabi theofascism will begin to crumble, particularly if a concerted effort is made by the Bush administration to promote moderate Islamic institutions (a recent study by the RAND Corporation offers some insightful recommendations). Ultimately, the devil is not in the details - it is the administration's broad lack of resolve in confronting the threat of theofascism, not the lack of viable methods of combating it, that imperils American security. REFERENCES See Mohammed Ayoob, "Political Islam: Image and Reality," World Policy Journal, Vol. 11, No. 3, Fall 2004. Fascism is "a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion." See Robert Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), p. 218. Saudi police 'stopped' fire rescue, BBC, 15 March 2002. Wahhabi religious police (mutaween) prevented Saudi schoolgirls from fleeing a burning school because they were not properly veiled, leaving fifteen of them to die inside in 2002, an outrage equaled only by the Taliban's rein of terror against women in Afghanistan. R. James Woolsey, "The Elephant in The Middle East Living Room: Watching Wahhabis," The National Review, 14 December 2005. Zawahiri declared in a December 2006 videotape, "How could they not demand an Islamic constitution before entering these elections? Are they not an Islamic movement?" See: "Al Qaeda Warns U.S. on Fighting in Muslim Lands," The New York Times, 21 December 2006. Zawahiri accused it of being "duped, provoked and used" by the United States after it participated in the 2005 legislative elections. See "Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader praises U.S. hints of troop reduction in Iraq," The Associated Press, 6 January 2006. In his 2003 book, Why America Slept, Gerald Posner cites two unidentified senior Bush administration officials as saying that captured Al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah revealed details of a Saudi-Pakistani-Bin Laden triangle. See Gerald Posner, Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11, (New York: Random House, 2003). "Inside the Kingdom," Time, 7 September 2003. Nina Shea, Saudi Arabia's Curriculum of Intolerance, Freedom House, 2006. John Esposito, quoted in Gary Leupp, On Terrorism, Methodism, Saudi 'Wahhabism' and the Censored 9-11 Report, Counterpunch, 8 August 2003. Ali al-Ahmed of the Washington Institute for Gulf Affairs makes this point. See Saudi Arabia's Curriculum of Intolerance, CBN.org, 14 June 2006. "Top Saudi cleric issues religious edict declaring Shiites to be infidels," Associated Press, 29 December 2006. More Evidence of Saudi Double Talk?, MSNBC, 26 April 2005. In an April 2006 lecture, Saudi cleric Nasser bin Suleiman al-Omar cautioned his audience not to "get involved in things that are not jihad . . . divert the strife and calamity into the lands of the Muslims, instead of aiming them directly at the enemies." He continued, saying that: "there are places where jihad is proper - in Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya, Kashmir, and the Philippines." See Saudi Cleric Nasser bin Suleiman Al-'Omar: 'America is Now Disappearing From the Hearts Within America Itself . . . MEMRI Special Dispatch #1154, 4 May 2006. Alex Alexiev, "Terrorism: Growing Wahhabi Influence in the United States", Testimony before the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, 26 June 2003. Author interview with Evgueni Novokov, Ph.D., former colonel, senior staff officer for the Soviet Politburo and deputy director for Middle East Operations, in charge of Arabic Department, and relationships with CPSU Central Committee front organizations and friendly parties; advised Central Committee members on Islamic affairs, 1986 -1988. 22 October 2006. Author interview with Abdel Guzman, Grand Imam of Jolo, Jolo City, Sulu Province, The Philippines, 5 March 2004. Author's interview with Abdel Guzman, The Grand Imam of Jolo, Op. Cit. See Freedom House, The Talibanization of Nigeria: Radical Islam, Extremist Sharia Law, and Religious Freedom, March 2002. "Against the Saudization of Somaliland," Addis Tribune (Ethiopia), 21 November 2003. http://www.addistribune.com/Archives/2003/11/21-11-03/Against.htm In March 2002, the official Saudi magazine Ain al-Yaqeen estimated that the Saudi royal family in countries where Muslims were a minority has funded 210 Islamic centers, 1,500 mosques, 202 colleges, and 2,000 madrassas. The number of all Saudi Government and charitably funded institutions beyond Saudi Arabia is much higher. Cited in "Inside the Kingdom," Time, 7 September 2003. Alex Alexiev, "France at the Brink", The San Diego Union Tribune, 20 November 2005. See also: Alex Alexiev, Europe's Islamist Future is Now, The Center for Security Policy, 13 June 2005. Other publications examined include textbooks from the Saudi Ministry of Education and collections of religious edicts by state-sanctioned clerics in the kingdom. See Freedom House, Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques, January 2005. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, "Wahhabism in the Big House: The Teaching of Jihad in American Penitentiaries," The Weekly Standard, 26 September 2005. "Terrorist Recruitment in Prisons and The Recent Arrests Related to Guantanamo Bay Detainees," Testimony of John S. Pistole, Assistant Director, Counterterrorism Division, FBI, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security, 14 October 2003. Testimony of Dr. J. Michael Waller before the US Senate Judiciary Committee's Terrorism Subcommittee, 14 October 2003. Frank Gaffney, A Troubling Influence, Front Page Magazine.com, 9 December 2003. Glenn Simpson, "Suspect Lessons: A Muslim School Used by Military Has Troubling Ties," The Wall Street Journal, 3 December 2003. "For Conservative Muslims, Goal of Isolation a Challenge; 9/11 Put Strict Adherents on the Defensive," The Washington Post, 5 September 2006. Edward L. Morse and James Richard, "The Battle for Energy Dominance," Foreign Affairs, March/April 2002. David Ignatius, "The Operator," The Washington Post, 5 November 2006, p.7. Daniel Pipes, "The Scandal of U.S.-Saudi Relations," The National Interest, Winter 2002/2003. "Oil for Security Fueled Close Ties; But Major Differences Led to Tensions," The Washington Post, 11 February 2002. In November 2006, Nawaf Obaid, a close advisor to Prince Turki, warned in a Washington Post op-ed that a phased American withdrawal from Iraq will result in "massive Saudi intervention," with options including "funding, arms and logistical support" to Sunni insurgents. "As the economic powerhouse of the Middle East, the birthplace of Islam and the de facto leader of the world's Sunni community (which comprises 85 percent of all Muslims), Saudi Arabia has both the means and the religious responsibility to intervene." See Nawaf Obaid, "Stepping Into Iraq: Saudi Arabia Will Protect Sunnis if the U.S. Leaves," The Washington Post, 29 November 2006. Outlook on Renewable Energy in America, Volume II: Joint Summary Report, American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), March 2007. The Rand Corporation, Building Moderate Muslim Networks, 2007. Curtin Winsor, Jr. is a former United States Ambassador to Costa Rica. He graduated from Brown University in 1961 with a degree in English literature, and then received a Masters in Latin American studies in 1964 and a Ph.D. in international studies in 1971 from the School of International Service at American University in Washington, D.C. He worked as an adviser to President Ronald Reagan and Sen. Robert Dole, as well as for the U.S. Foreign Service. * This article had previously been published in the Mideast Monitor. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b95_1368351158 AntiPropagaanda Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism &quot;A Must Read&quot; al-Qaeda, Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, Terrorism, America, Israel, Wed, 17 Apr 2013 04:58:34 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9bb_1366188398 religion_brings_death One of the most important monuments of late Byzantium, the 13th-century Church of Hagia Sophia in the Black Sea city of Trabzon, which is now a museum, will be converted into a mosque, after a legal battle that has dramatic implications for other major historical sites in Turkey. Many in Turkey believe that the Church of Hagia Sophia is a stalking horse for the possible re-conversion of its more famous namesake in Istanbul, the Hagia Sophia Museum (Ayasofya M"uzesi). For around 50 years, responsibility for the Church of Hagia Sophia in Trabzon has rested with Turkey's Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The courts now accept the claim made by the General Directorate of Pious Foundations, the government body responsible for most of the country's historical mosques, that this has been an "illegal occupation". The court has ruled that Hagia Sophia is an inalienable part of the foundation of Sultan Mehmed II who first turned the church into a mosque after his conquest of the Empire of Trebizond in 1462. "A building covenanted as a mosque cannot be used for any other purpose," says Mazhar Yildirimhan, the head of the directorate's office in Trabzon. He declined to speculate on whether this would mean covering up nearly half the wall space taken up with figurative Christian art, including the dome depicting a dynamic Christ Pantocrator. "There are modern techniques for masking the walls," he says. The church was rescued from dereliction (it had been used variously as an arsenal and a cholera hospital) between 1958 and 1962 by the University of Edinburgh under the direction of David Talbot Rice and David Winfield. This included restoring the original ground plan and removing a prayer niche constructed into an exterior porch. The church also has an exterior frieze depicting "the Fall of Man". "It is the whole ensemble-architecture, sculpture and painting-that makes Hagia Sophia unique," says Antony Eastmond of London's Courtauld Institute of Art, who is an authority on the building. " This is the most complete surviving Byzantine structure; there is no 13th-century monument like it. " Concern for the building is prompted by the fate of Istanbul's Arab Mosque-originally a 14th-century Dominican church-also administered by the directorate. An earthquake in 1999 shook loose plaster from the vaults revealing frescoes and mosaics. The conservation of these paintings was finished last year but they were immediately re-covered. Like its namesake in Trabzon, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was also turned into a mosque, after Mehmed II's conquest of the city in 1453. It was famously made into a museum in 1935 by cabinet decree-unlike the informal arrangement in Trabzon. The re-conversion of Istanbul's Hagia Sophia into a mosque has long been the "golden apple" sought by Turkey's religious right. For such a thing to happen would have major implications for the country's standing as a custodian of world heritage, according to one senior Western diplomat based in Istanbul. Yet already the current government has been working on a list of historical properties administered by the Hagia Sophia Museum. In January, Istanbul's oldest surviving church, the fifth-century St John Stoudios, which became the Imrahor Mosque in the 15th century before fire and earthquake left it in ruins, was transferred from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to the General Directorate, which plans to rebuild it as a mosque. Shrouded in secrecy Turkish scholars are also up in arms at the directorate's decision to transform another ruin, the Kesik Minare in Antalya, into a mosque. The local chamber of architects has gone to court to prevent this happening. Originally a Roman temple, the Kesik Minare has a Byzantine, Seljuk and Crusader past. A plan had already been drawn up to turn the site into an open-air museum. Recent experience suggests that the directorate reconstructs mosques without regard for the millennia of history they contain . The restoration of the sixth-century Church of Sts Sergius and Bacchus (now the Small Ayasofya Mosque) was shrouded in secrecy and completed in 2006 without the academic community being allowed to conduct a proper survey. Similar complaints have been leveled against the re-purposing of yet another Hagia Sophia-the fifth-century basilica in Iznik where the Second Council of Nicaea was held in AD787. It was a museum, but now it is a mosque. Contrary to accepted archaeological practice, the walls were capped with an attached rather than freestanding roof. "It has lost most of its original character," says Engin Akyurek, an archaeology professor at Istanbul University. "There is a great difference between conserving a historical building and reconstructing it so it can be used as a mosque," he says. http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Mosque-conversion-raises-alarm/29200 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9bb_1366188398 religion_brings_death Christian church to be converted into Mosque in Turkey Christian,church,Converted,Mosque,Turkey Sun, 24 Mar 2013 15:51:05 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7cb_1364154333 binladenisurdaddy Middle East-style oil wealth combined with a generous Nordic welfare model is slowly throttling big chunks of Norway's economy, threatening western Europe's biggest success story. On the surface, Norway is the envy of the world: growth is strong, per capita GDP has exceeded $100,000 and the nation sits on a $700 billion rainy day cash reserve, or $140,000 per man, woman and child. But it may just be too much money as Norwegians, more keen on leisure and family life are working less and less.Immigration is not filling the gap in the skilled part of the workforce, so productivity is stagnating, wages are surging and firms are pricing themselves out of their own market. "Oil is a metaphor for winning the lottery," said Ivar Froeness, a sociology professor at the University of Oslo. "Affluence has slowly crept into society... people just don't really notice it because it's been so gradual.""These days more people leave Oslo on Thursday afternoon than on Friday, taking long weekends," he said. "We may take for granted that we have a house and a cabin in the mountain, and maybe another house on the beach."Wage costs are up 63 percent since 2000, about six times more than in Germany or Sweden, while the employment rate, adjusted for part time work, is 61 percent, below rates anywhere in the Nordics and even below Greece, the central bank says. Still, unemployment is a barely visible 3 percent as more prefer part time work. "Why should I work more when I don't have to?" said Elise Bakke, 36, who recently cut her work day at a major telecom firm to 6 hours. Maybe it's luck, maybe we earned it, it doesn't really matter. We have the money to live the Nordic life: go to the cabin, ski, bike, spend time with the children."The government recently warned that unless working hours are increased by 10 percent over time, the state will eventually start eating into its savings. The central bank also warned that the welfare model is simply encouraging people to leave the labour market. "The number of working hours for full time employees in Norway have fallen by 270 hours a year since 1974," says Jostein Hansen, director of employment policies at Norwegian Hospitality Association. "Norwegians should follow Iceland's example and work 100 hours more a year."The oil sector, the source of the problem, is also becoming a victim of its own success. Aker Solutions, the nation's top oil services firm, will hire 4,000 engineers this year but only a third will be Norwegians. It has to run huge engineering hubs in Kuala Lumpur, London and Mumbai to get enough skilled workers.A study commissioned by the government showed that by 2016, the country will have a shortage of 6,000 engineers as oil investment hits new records and oil firms tap reserves in areas once thought close to depleted. Costs have risen so much, some oil services firms cannot compete at home. Kvaerner, which builds heavy equipment like oil platforms, recently lost a key contract from state-controlled Statoil to Daewoo Shipbuilding &amp; Marine Engineering because it was too expensive. It was a just the latest of many setbacks for the firm. "The Norwegian cost level is our challenge," Jan Arve Haugan, its chief executive said. "High (quality) cannot outweigh that price difference," he said, adding its prices are 7-15 percent higher than its competitors'. Norwegian Air Shuttle has threatened to move aircraft to Thailand and operate to Europe with an Asian crew because it says it can't afford the Nordic costs.Norway's problems are not unique: Australia's once-in-a-150-year mining boom has also skewed the economy, raising wages, fuelling immigration and lowering work hours to a 30-year low as wealth grows. Still, an average Australian works 19 percent more than a Norwegian, the OECD estimates. And Norway's oil sector accounts for a fifth of the economy, three times as much as mining in Australia, generating a quarter of state the revenues.Business groups say work hours have to be raised through government incentives, and benefits, particularly involving various leaves, need to be reduced. Though political parties generally agree, the topic is low on the agenda, especially with elections looming in September.Norway has embraced immigration as a stop-gap measure but it is only masking the problem, the central bank says. "Measured per capita, we do not generate more value today than we did five years ago," Norges Bank Governor Oeystein Olsen said in a speech recently. Norway, with a population of five million, attracts around 50,000 immigrants each year, but productivity is not improving. "We attract the wrong kind of immigrants" said Dag Aarnes, an economist at the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprises, a trade body. "We're not particularly competitive in attracting skilled labour, particularly engineers."Norway's egalitarian wage distribution pays low-skilled workers well above the European average but pays the higher-skilled at, or even a touch below, international norms. The central bank predicts that wages will rise about twice as fast as GDP for several years to come while productivity improvements will trail economic growth. With a budget surplus worth 12 percent of GDP, Norway can afford just about anything now but unless it scales down benefits like neighbour Sweden did in the 1990s, that surplus will melt away. But generous benefits, a good work-life balance and limited wage inequality are long-standing parts of a social model cherished by many Norwegians, so any change will be difficult. http://www.todayszaman.com/news-310606-sitting-on-too-much-money-norway-risks-going-off-course.html http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7cb_1364154333 binladenisurdaddy Norway slowly collapsing norway, oslo, kristiansand, nordic, europa, north, scandanavia Wed, 25 Jul 2007 20:04:39 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d58_1185408279 smartt Julie masking http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d58_1185408279 smartt Julie <span class="highlight">masking</span> Julie, masking Tue, 08 May 2012 04:45:39 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c46_1336466330 mooza74 as above. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c46_1336466330 mooza74 Artist using <span class="highlight">masking</span> tape and a back light. Very Talented. Max Zorn, Street Art, masking,tape Thu, 07 Mar 2013 15:18:37 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ed5_1362687204 OnlyLiarsBlock http://breggin.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=view&amp;id=187&amp;Itemid=93 Psychiatric Drug Adverse Reactions (Side Effects) and Medication Spellbinding Print Dr. Peter Breggin's new concept of medication spellbinding provides insights into why so many people take psychiatric drugs when the drugs are doing more harm than good. Psychiatric drugs, and all other drugs that affect the mind, spellbind the individual by masking their adverse mental effects from the individual taking the drugs. If the person experiences a mental side effect, such as anger or sadness, he or she is likely to attribute it to something other than drug, perhaps blaming it on a loved one or on their own "mental illness." Often people taking psychiatric drugs claim to feel better than ever when in reality their mental life and behavior is impaired. In the extreme, medication spellbinding leads otherwise well-functioning and ethical individuals to commit criminal acts, violence or suicide. The concept of medication spellbinding is a unifying theme in Dr. Breggin's newest book, Medication Madness (2008), which describes dozens of cases of otherwise self-controlled people who became spellbound by psychiatric drugs, leading them to perpetrate bizarre acts, including mayhem, murder and suicide. Dr. Breggin's other recent book, Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry (2008) , presents the science beyond the concept of medication spellbinding in great depth. The majority of Dr. Breggin's books focus on harmful medication effects on the brain, mind and behavior. Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry (2008) is the most up-to-date and thorough presentation of his overall views on the dangers associated with psychiatric medication. It describes how the supposed therapeutic effects of psychiatric drugs are in fact the result of drug-induced mental disabilities. The following very abbreviated summary should not substitute for the more thorough explanations in Brain Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry (2008): o Antidepressants cause emotional anesthesia and numbing or sometimes euphoria, providing a fleeting, artificial relief from emotional suffering. o Neuroleptic or antipsychotic drugs disrupt frontal lobe function, causing a chemical lobotomy with apathy and indifference, making emotionally distressed people more submissive and less able to feel. o Mood stabilizers slow down overall brain function, dampening emotions and vitality. o Benzodiazepines suppress overall brain function, sedating the individual, with temporary relief of tension or anxiety at the cost of reduced mental function. o Stimulants blunt spontaneity and enforce obsessive behaviors in children, making them less energetic, less social, less creative and more obedient. The individual taking the drugs or the doctor, family and classroom teacher can mistakenly interpret these effects as an improvement when they reflect dysfunction of the brain and mind. As an egregious example, millions of school children are prescribed these drugs because schools find them easer to deal with when their spontaneity is impaired and when they become more compulsively obedient. In the long run, all psychiatric drugs tend to disrupt the normal processes of feeling and thinking, rendering the individual less able to deal effectively with personal problems and with life's challenges. They worsen the individual's overall mental condition and produce potentially irreversible harm to the brain. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ed5_1362687204 OnlyLiarsBlock Psychiatric Drug Adverse Reactions (Side Effects) and Medication Spellbinding psychiatric, drugs, medicine, prescription, guns, law, illegal, Antidepressants, side, effects, medication, harmful Fri, 18 Jan 2013 21:01:57 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e7e_1358560140 Media File The long anticipated and prophesized year, 2012, has come and gone, yet, the problems and challenges facing mankind and planet earth remain. Those who have put stock in the idea of conscious evolution are now faced with the burden of proof: is there any legitimacy to this idea of a 'shift?' Some human experiences prove too extraordinary and too far outside of the purview of science and intellect to effectively put into words. Because of this, many people who have felt 'the shift' taking place in their lives in recent years, such as I, find it difficult to convey the significance of what we feel taking place in the realms of our own psyches and amongst the collective human consciousness. As a result, we are often at odds with family, friends, and colleagues who view conscious evolution as some sort of quackery or 'new age' jargon that has no practical value in a turbulent world where autocrats and a malignant elite are becomingly increasingly cancerous to prosperity, liberty and the eco-systems of planet earth. Straddling this dichotomy, we must find actionable ways to demonstrate how the betterment of mankind is possible amongst the tidal wave of disasters and bad news confronting us all. In this challenge lies the greatest opportunity of our lives, yet if we rise to this challenge, our efforts will naturally combine with the efforts of other conscious people to assist in the betterment of our households, communities and nations. But make no mistake, we are tasked with an overwhelming contest of will power and perseverance. In order to help steel your resolve and open up your heart, I've compiled a short list of 10 things for conscious people focus on in 2013 that will give you a framework of daily action so that you can better engage the world in your understanding 'the shift,' and better exemplify the positive qualities of the human race. So, let's get to work. 1.Dispel fear from your life. Kill it, once and for all. Bury it and never look back. The greatest force working against the rightful destiny of mankind is fear. Fear is the prime component of the control matrix and this human emotion alone is a more effective prison than even the gulags of Guantanamo Bay. We hear it on the radio, we see it on TV shows. Fear is king in the modern world and this king must be violently overthrown. Death is the ultimate fear of man, and reckoning with your own death is paramount to being an agent of positive change in the years to come. Behind death, we are programmed to fear pain of any kind, including physical pain and the pain of adverse economic conditions, the pain of perceived insecurity and the pain of feeling different amongst our peers. Stop running from pain. Stop masking it with material balms and mind-numbing medications and intoxications. Pain is your greatest teacher, and your greatest ally in your confrontation with fear. Use it, live with it, and let the pain of your broken expectations re-season and invigorate your life. Only once you have moved beyond being a pawn to fear can you truly make a difference in this cauldron of souls we call life. 2.Improve the total self. We are sick and immature. We are unenlightened, apathetic and selfish. We are overweight, dumb, cruel and sensational. Yet we are simultaneously radiant, compassionate and capable of amazing acts of love. So what is your true, rightful nature? Where is your soul most alive and inspired? The total health of the individual is mandatory in addressing these questions. Become what you should be, alert, alive, awake, and happy. The physical body is the vehicle for the mind, which is an expression of the spirit. Yet without the foundation of a healthy body, the mind and spirit languish in decay. Start here, with a solid foundation. Purify, detoxify, and re-evaluate what you put into your body. Then feed the mind, nourishing it with ideas and positive thought, so that your spirit may flourish, inspiring you to move on to bigger and better things in life. Grow up and individuate, tackling your personal demons and honing your will power. In no time at all, with effort towards your personal improvement, you can complete revolutionize your personal reality for the better, regardless of any adversity that stalks you in life. The world needs people who are whole and healthy, within and without. Be this. 3.Reconnect with this great Earth. Greater than any political crisis or national tragedy, the suffrages being waged against this planet will lead to more devastation and disruption than the mind can fathom. It's time, right now, to engage yourself in goodwill towards our eco-systems and the life they support. You are nothing without a healthy planet and the responsibility for a shift towards sustainability lies squarely on your shoulders. No longer can you fall for the empty promises of the elite to steward a healthy environment, you must act now in protest to the failed materialistic systems that extract, deplete, frack and burn the very substance of life. Disengage with materialism, and dig deep into the soil for relief from the madness consuming us all. 4.Abandon conflict. The sickness of conflict is an obstacle to all things positive. No longer is it acceptable to violently argue with your friends and family about the intentions of the ruling class, and no longer can you allow your energy to be sucked into battles of opinion or want. Learn to observe, learn to listen, learn to give rather than solely take. Your opinion matters, but, in the great scheme of things no one's opinion is more valuable than another's. Try living with this philosophy in your daily life and watch and see just how much easier it is to influence other people. 5.Practice gratitude daily. Gratitude is love in action. Love is the antithesis of fear and casts light upon all of the dark parts of life. Cherish your time with those you know and love, and say thank you daily to whichever God you worship, taking the time to specifically mention the things in your life that that make life richer, fuller, more beautiful, no matter how small. The transformational power of gratitude is unparalleled, and all those who engage in fulfilling acts of appreciation are rewarded with happiness in even the most adverse of situations. 6.Adopt a spirit of charity and kindness. The greatest achievement of an accomplished person is to abandon selfishness and live in service to others. Small things make a big difference in this world and the clearest path to happiness within is to engage in kindness without. Employ this idea any chance you can find and the goodwill you demonstrate to others is guaranteed to return to you ten fold, affecting your own prosperity and well-being. 7.Be creative. The human race is endowed with unbelievable ingenuity and curiosity, which offers us unlimited possibilities in creating worthwhile lives and correcting our collective mistakes. Yet conditioned to operate in patterns and habit, human beings are prone to growing stale in life and moving only within self-restrictive boundaries. Learn to break your own mold by trying new things, exploring new ideas and taking risks. Creativity is a tool for the thoughtful and evolution exists as a function of our ability to act upon the fantasies of our imagination. Problems persist when solutions are scarce, so put your whole being into the employment of creative solutions to any problems you may find, big or small. The old ways of thinking, acting, and doing have run out of promise, so, do your part in creating something new. 8.Explore consciousness and cultivate spirituality. There is so much more to our existence than the physical reality we accept as our material universe. Beyond that lies a vast infinity of awareness and surprises that can be accessed by various means, adding a richness and fullness to everyday life, which is incomprehensible to our scientific minds. Explore this and you will discover a limitless source of inspiration, which will allow you to look at the material world with a renewed curiosity and calm passivity. The unexplored realms of your consciousness is where peace resides, and the cultivation of individual spirituality is the gateway to this peace. If you are bold enough to pursue the revelations offered by plant medicines, then this may offer you a unique opportunity to break through our collective cultural programming and better understand your role in this crazy world. Spiritual cultivation is the noblest of personal endeavors and the path to total revolution. Spirituality and inner peace is your true nature, use it or lose it. 9.Get prepared. The world is sadly on the edge of all out war and for many nations this already far too real. Here in the United States we are facing systemic crises of biblical proportions as the depression deepens and the economy is completely hollowed out by the elite. Our food supply is compromised by corporate insanity and fascistic controls, and frighteningly we are facing the very serious prospect of civil war in America as the government advances its long predicted agenda to disarm the American public. Preppers are not crazy, they are prudent, and will be the saving grace of many when the inevitable collapse materializes in a flash. Don't be foolish enough to mistake this calm before the storm as business as usual. Put together a plan and provisions for at least a basic level of readiness for yourself and your family. This is not just a good idea it is your responsibility. It is a sign of good conscience to consider the worst case scenario, plan for it, then move on to focusing on the other areas of your life which bring you happiness. Being prepared materially and mentally is a key part of dispelling fear from your life. 10.Practice what you preach. People love to talk and share information, which is beneficial up to a point, but, the dire nature of our global situation demands that you set an example with this knowledge so that others can learn directly from your actions, not your ideas. Right now, today, this very moment, is the time to be bold and become the type of person who makes positive things happen in this world. Make a note of your interests and passions and get to it as though your hair was on fire. With every breath you take, you are closer to death, whatever that brings, and the value of your waking life is immeasurable, so make it count. This list is offered as a guidepost so that you may have the most amazing and transformative year of your life. Practicing each of these ten things will help you to develop more love for yourself, your community and the living organism we call planet earth, while helping to cultivate a demeanor of poise and fearlessness in these waking times. It is your calling in 2013 to rise to the challenges we all face and play a part in revitalizing our shared world. Do you have anything to add to this list? Please share in the comment section below. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e7e_1358560140 Media File 10 Things for Conscious People to Focus on in 2013 10 Things for Conscious People to Focus on in 2013, Practice what you preach, Get prepared, Explore consciousness and cultivate spirituality, Be creative, Adopt a spirit of charity and kindness, Practice gratitude daily, Abandon conflict, Reconnect with t Thu, 27 Dec 2012 13:04:26 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a9e_1356631268 Nooop JEFFREY WHITE Over the past several months, Bashar al-Assad's military position has become increasingly precarious. The regime's defensive capabilities have waned -- it has difficulty holding even the most advantageous positions, and all efforts to roll back opposition forces (using field artillery, airpower, and, most recently, Scud missiles) have failed. YouTube videos show regime forces looking and acting like a defeated army. Several trends have contributed to this deterioration. First, the rebels have significantly improved their combat capabilities since last winter, allowing them to reduce the regime's presence throughout the country and capture checkpoints, barriers, and police stations. In doing so, they have acquired more arms, ammunition, and combat experience while eroding Assad's ability to control the population. Currently, rebel forces control lines of communication in Idlib, Aleppo, and Raqqa and frequently isolate and harass regime airfields. They have defeated several regime units, contributing to their growing psychological dominance. Most significant, the rebels are now self-sustaining: they regularly seize antitank weapons, shoulder-fired missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, and other weapons from regime forces, and they appear to replace lost personnel with relative ease. They do not need much if any outside armament; the U.S. debate about whether to send them weapons seems to have been overtaken by events. They do need military aid, however, including training and intelligence. Second, the regime's military capabilities are declining. Its last large-scale maneuver was in the summer, when it tried to retake Aleppo city and failed -- perhaps the turning point of the war. Today, the army carries out only local operations, many of which are turned back by the rebels. Attrition of regime forces is rapid, with an estimated 1,000 men killed and 4,000 wounded per month for the past five to six months. By contrast, the rebels have lost about 850 men per month and seem better able to replace them. Regime forces appear largely demoralized by repeated losses of long-held positions and lack the will to engage in offensives. Third, the rebels have nearly closed the operational gap that the regime enjoyed at war's onset, particularly in terms of armor, mechanized infantry, and cross-country mobilization. The air-to-ground gap is likewise narrowing as rebel antiaircraft capabilities improve. The artillery gap has not yet closed, but the rebels are rapidly gaining capability. Militarily, the regime faces five possible endgames: 1. Provincial dismantlement, with control falling to the rebels province by province. This process is already underway to a certain degree, though the regime is masking it by maintaining at least a nominal presence in every province. 2. A chaotic collapse, with the Syrian army simply breaking. The situation is trending in this direction. 3. Controlled contraction, with the regime falling back to either Damascus or the Alawite heartland in a calculated maneuver. Currently, the regime lacks the capacity to develop and execute this decision. 4. A rush for the coast, with the regime and its forces fleeing in uncoordinated fashion. There is little sign of this happening. 5. Full recovery, the most unlikely scenario, with Assad completely reversing the course of the war. There is no indication that the regime is capable of this. One potential game-changer is Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons. A few weeks ago, the regime seemed to be preparing these weapons for use amid fighting near Damascus. Although Assad has since backed off such activity, the international community should be prepared for the regime to use chemical weapons, whether to terrorize the population in a given area, break the link between civilians and the armed opposition, or tactically change the military situation. Whatever the case, the regime appears to have only a few weeks left before it collapses. As the end nears, its allies may issue desperate pleas for a UN-brokered ceasefire, but the rebels see absolutely no advantage in that approach and would surely violate any such truce. For its part, longtime ally Russia may abandon the regime and evacuate its citizens. Meanwhile, regime forces will increasingly defect to the rebels, refuse to obey orders, or go rogue, while senior regime officials may defect or flee Damascus as part of an Alawite flight to the coast. The truest sign of the end, though, would be Iranian officials burning files at their embassy in Damascus.ANDREW J. TABLER Syria's neighbors currently accommodate 450,000 registered refugees and hundreds of thousands more unregistered. The 1.5 million internally displaced Syrians face a much more dire situation. During my recent visit to the Atmeh refugee camp straddling the Turkey-Syria border, there was little shelter, less food, and no toilets for the 12,000 occupants. Children are dying of disease and exposure -- their needs are outpacing most foreign charity efforts, including aid sent by the Maram Foundation, a Syrian American organization named after a girl paralyzed by shrapnel during the war. In this sense, the external battle for hearts and minds is already here -- while Washington's ability to send aid has been constrained, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are solidifying their influence. All three Sunni-majority countries hope to shape the outcome post-Assad by reorienting Syria away from their political and sectarian rival, Iran. Meanwhile, in light of American inaction, the rebels are trending toward Islamism and anti-Western sentiment. Formerly open-minded armed groups are growing suspicious of Western journalists, and extremist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra are becoming more popular. The fact that Nusra's recent designation as a terrorist group preceded official U.S. recognition of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (SOC) only exacerbated the already poor impression of Washington and led to protests against U.S. inaction. The SOC -- an elected, sixty-five-member council that includes fourteen members from Syrian local councils -- was created in Doha in November, with popular imam Moaz al-Khatib as its president. It has since been encouraged to form committees to address security and humanitarian services in liberated areas. A meeting of military council leaders was also convened in Doha, leading to the creation of the thirty-member Supreme Military Council (SMC) on December 7, headed by former chief of staff Gen. Salim Idris. Distinct from but related to the SOC, the SMC was intended to coordinate the funneling of weapons to the country's more moderate armed groups. Given the opposition's increasing seizure of regime weaponry, however, the council's purpose is now less clear, as is its ability to corral groups through the provision of arms. Both the SOC and the SMC are steps in the right direction, but despite their initial plans to cooperate, there is little evidence thus far that they will be able to overcome divisions within the opposition. Some analysts believe that the Obama administration's policy on Syria has been a success -- the Assad regime is about to collapse without any direct American engagement. Still, the struggle over Syria will not be complete for some time. Given the SOC's dubious political clout and the armed opposition's growing prominence, those who are taking the shots against Assad today will be calling the shots once he is gone. In the immediate aftermath of his ouster, Syria might look like it did in 1923, with different sects dominating different areas of the country and major chaos ensuing. Because of its reticence to act, Washington may have lost an opportunity to influence that outcome. Therefore, one powerful reason to provide military assistance to the rebels is to engage with them, gaining knowledge of and leverage with factions that will be key actors in shaping post-Assad Syria. To be sure, the administration's willingness to send diplomats and development officials into such a situation seems remote in light of the fallout from the tragic death of Ambassador Chris Stevens in Libya. Nevertheless, Washington must engage directly with these armed groups in order to promote U.S. interests in Syria. Rebel commanders visiting border areas present valuable opportunities to discover which factions are amenable to those interests without venturing into more dangerous areas. Washington should also work directly with moderate civilian and armed groups to channel humanitarian and military assistance and increase U.S. influence. Most important, any outreach must be done overtly rather than covertly, so that the United States can get much-deserved credit for engaging positively in Syria. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a9e_1356631268 Nooop Is the end of Assads regime near? syra, assad, usa, cia, dafuq Wed, 24 Oct 2012 14:33:08 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=356_1351102681 Warrenz666 You ever wonder why Willard takes on a different color every time you see him? well it's confirmed. He sprays bronze color on to keep from looking like a corpse. His secret was discovered when he gave a talk to the Univision forum in September when he sprayed to much bronze color on and ended up looking like Fernando Lamas. "It has been one of the running mysteries of the 2012 campaign trail: How Mitt Romney maintains the ruddy, glowing, and occasionally changing skin tone that helps him project an image of 65-year-old vigor. A knowledgeable source tells BuzzFeed the answer is in a bit of cosmetic technology used commonly by celebrities: spray tanning. The Republican nominee has made a habit of spray tanning before major speeches, debates, interviews, and other events that have a chance of getting wide TV coverage, the source said. He pays for the process out of pocket - sparing his campaign the expense, and the task of masking it on public campaign finance reports - and steers clear of public salons where he could be recognized. Instead, he gets misted down in the comfort of his own home or hotel suite. The Romney campaign flatly denied that the candidate spray tans: "Not true," spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in response to an inquiry. Romney's ever-changing complexion has been a point of public curiosity throughout the campaign, especially after his appearance at a Univision forum in September. There, his unusually dark skin tone prompted conspiracy-minded Tweeters to speculate that he had purposefully applied brown makeup in order to "look more Latino." At the time, one of the network's anchors debunked the rumor to BuzzFeed, and the makeup artist even came forward to defend Romney. "When he walked in, I remember thinking, 'Wow this is tanner than I thought he was,' but I think he's just been outside a lot lately for his campaign," Lazz Rodriguez told Univision afterward. "It was definitely a real tan." More here. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=356_1351102681 Warrenz666 Confirmed: Willard Mitt Romney uses spray on tan to look more human. Romney bronze tanning spray fake Latina color Thu, 30 Aug 2012 17:20:36 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=695_1346361489 SmellMyPits Paul Ryan's speech accepting his nomination for the vice presidency of the United States last night has already been widely hailed as a home run national debut by many sources. So it's no surprise that the Left, which views Ryan's ideas as the political equivalent of Typhoid Mary, has already pounced on the speech for its alleged inaccuracies, while simultaneously bringing up every conceivable nitpick they can. Dave Weigel at Slate huffed, "So I was in the cheap seats, not on carpet, when Ryan plowed through one of the more impressive strings of whoppers we've seen at this level. Ryan's been doling out chunks of this speech for weeks, which made the fibs sound even stranger." ThinkProgress, meanwhile, attacked the speech practically every minute in their liveblog, seizing on every rhetorical flourish of Ryan's, no matter how inconsequential, to blast him with some figure or quote that would make him seem to be a hypocrite or a liar. The piece de resistance has to be their final response to Ryan, in which they managed no less than two shots in response to an unfalsifiable bit of feel-good rhetoric: Ryan reminds the convention of the need to protect the weakest among us. It's too bad that his budget would drastically cut the programs they rely on. Religious leaders have described Ryan's budget as a "immoral disaster" that "robs the poor." At the same time, it gives the rich and corporations $3 trillion in tax breaks. In short, according to the Left, Ryan's speech was a fundamentally, inescapably dishonest argument - a "string of whoppers" and disingenuous statements - made in bad faith for the sake of masking his allegedly plutocratic agenda. But is this rather unflattering assessment accurate, those who are understandably reluctant to take their ideological opponents' word on anything must be asking. The answer is no - at least, not entirely. Avik Roy at Forbes, as well as Republican consultant Liz Mair, have already exploded some of the attacks on Ryan's speech, and we will turn to them for help in taking on some of the charges. You can find their full takes here and here. The ThinkProgress list of charges is probably the most extensive, comprising no less than 12 different charges. Here is our assessment of each: Charge #1: Ryan voted to add $6.8 trillion to the deficit, which means he's not a fiscal hawk. Explanation: In a blog post written by a ThinkProgress intern, Ryan is accused of voting for bills that increase the budget deficit by $6.8 trillion. How do they get this number? By adding up the cumulative cost of all tax cuts that Paul Ryan voted for ($2.5 trillion), as well as "every bill that increased defense spending," which has supposedly increased the deficit by $1.9 trillion. This only comes to $4.4 trillion, but ThinkProgress explains the rest using this table: So is it true? Barely. Yes, Ryan has voted to spend a lot of money. Outside of Dr. Ron Paul, so has practically every member of Congress. It's easy to quibble with the numbers here, but we're going to point out two things instead. Firstly, this chart is of total cost for these bills, not total cost minus revenue. In other words, this isn't what Ryan voted to add to the deficit. It's what Ryan voted to spend. So their statement that he added $6.8 trillion to the deficit is flat-out wrong. Secondly, this estimate covers 10 years. Ryan voted to spend $6.8 trillion over ten years . That comes out to roughly $680 billion per year. Compare this with President Obama's proposed budget for fiscal year 2013, which would spend $47 trillion over the next ten years, or $4.7 trillion/year, according to Forbes. Ryan's proposed budget shrinks that number to $40 trillion, or $4 trillion/year. Yes, that's right, even the supposedly draconian, nasty Ryan budget spends many times more money over ten years than Ryan has personally voted to spend. So this charge is deceitfully worded and quite arguably irrelevant. Charge #2: Paul Ryan talked about a General Motors plant that closed in his hometown, blaming President Obama even though that plant closed under Bush. Explanation: Near the beginning of his speech, Ryan told this story: A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: "I believe that if our government is there to support you ... this plant will be here for another hundred years." That's what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn't last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that's how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight. The Left wing of the blogosphere pounced, claiming the plant closed in December of 2008, when Bush was still President, so it's not Obama's fault and Ryan is lying. So is it true? The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel describes the plant as having completely shut down in 2009. The decision to close it was made in 2008, but the plant itself didn't shutter until the next year, by which time the GM bailout had already passed. MRCTV's Stephen Gutowski pinpoints its moment of failure at April 23, 2009. National Review's Henry Payne twists the knife further: His liberal media allies were quick to pounce on Ryan's comments. "GM stopped production at its Janesville, Wisconsin production facility in 2008, when George W. Bush was still president," barked the Daily Kos, filling in Ryan's obvious blank (true enough, unfriendly-to-Detroit-truck mpg laws are also the legacy of George "We're Addicted to Oil" Bush). But the Left misses the point. Under Obamanomics, the government picks winners and losers. Obama promised Janesville would be a winner even as his economic policies guaranteed it would always be a loser. Indeed, Obama's whole 2008 Janesville speech is a sobering road map for the job-killing policies he has put in place as president. As a final note - plants have almost certainly closed while President Obama has been in office. Ryan just happened to pick one he had a personal connection to as a symbol. Romney adviser Eric Fernstrohm said precisely this when questioned about the GM Plant issue by John Berman of CNN: And notice the Ryan said "candidate" Obama. That's because the president was campaigning in 2008 on saving the plant. He didn't, and it closed for good in 2009. Charge #3: Ryan is wrong about the stimulus, which actually "created or saved 3.3 million jobs." Explanation: From Ryan's speech: "What did the taxpayers get out of the Obama stimulus? More debt. That money wasn't just spent and wasted - it was borrowed , spent, and wasted." In response, ThinkProgress cites a study by the CBO saying that the stimulus "created or saved" 3.3 million jobs. So is it true? Not unless you think the highest possible estimate is always the right one. The CBO estimated that the stimulus could have saved up to 3.3 million jobs. In other words, "creating or saving" 3.3 million jobs is the absolute upper limit on what the stimulus could have done. The lowest estimate is 500,000 jobs created or saved. Both numbers are probably inaccurate, but to accept the 3.3 million jobs number requires an extreme degree of optimism. Charge #4: Paul Ryan supported the stimulus in 2002! Explanation: ThinkProgress links to a video from the Chris Hayes show showing Paul Ryan speaking on behalf of a 2002 stimulus bill that President Bush signed into law. This is supposed to prove that Ryan is a hypocrite when it comes to stimulus spending. So is it true? To begin with, it's irrelevant. Ryan was speaking against the Obama stimulus specifically in his speech. He didn't rail against the concept of stimulus spending, period. Moreover, there is a lot of daylight between supporting a $42 billion stimulus measure - most of which is in tax relief - and supporting an $831 billion bill that is loaded with giveaways for favored groups/industries. It's true that Ryan supports the idea of stimulus in principle, but when it comes to stimuli as big as the one Obama wrote? Not a chance. Charge #5: Ryan's attacks on Obamacare also hit Romneycare. Explanation: Ryan said in his speech, "Obamacare comes to more than two thousand pages of rules, mandates, taxes, fees, and fines that have no place in a free country." ThinkProgress asks, "What about Massachusetts? The two laws are very similar." So is it true? Yes, what about Massachusetts? And more to the point, what about what Ryan actually said? Romneycare isn't 2,000 pages. It doesn't include any new taxes. It doesn't include the infamous Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). Romney vetoed large chunks of regulation that were originally in the bill. Yes, it has a mandate, but that mandate is a lot less expansive. In other words, Romneycare comes to less than two thousand pages, with very few rules, one mandate, no taxes, some fees and some fines. What about Massachusetts? ThinkProgress probably doesn't want an answer to that question. Charge #6: Repealing Obamacare would increase the deficit by $109 billion from 2013 to 2022 and take away coverage from more than 30 million Americans. Explanation: This is a response to Ryan's promise to repeal Obamacare. Presumably, the idea is to claim that Obamacare is fiscally conservative and Ryan isn't. So is it true? The claim that Obamacare will guarantee coverage for "more than 30 million Americans" is nonsense. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office actually says that Obamacare itself will leave 30 million people uninsured. This means that, at most, Obamacare will grant coverage to 23 million of the more than 50 million people who are presently uninsured, according to the CBO. There's quite a bit of daylight between that figure and "more than 30 million." Moreover, these estimates are historically unreliable. The CBO has revised its projects on the fiscal impact of Obamacare multiple times. Not to mention, $109 billion over ten years is a comparatively small number, and should be more than offset by other cuts proposed by Romney and Ryan. Charge #7: Paul Ryan is a hypocrite on Medicare. Explanation: This is actually three separate charges in one. ThinkProgress alleges, firstly, that Ryan supported the $716 billion in Medicare cuts that he slams Obama for in the speech; secondly, that Ryan bragged about cutting Medicare spending more than Obama, and thirdly, that under Romney and Ryan, Medicare would actually become insolvent by 2016, instead of 2024, precisely because Romney wouldn't cut $716 from Medicare. So is it true? Avik Roy takes apart the "Ryan supported cutting $716 billion from Medicare," too, talking point this way: Here are the facts. It's true that Ryan's budgets in 2011 and 2012 preserved Obamacare's cuts to Medicare. However, there is a huge difference between cutting Medicare by $716 billion to fund $1.9 trillion in new health spending, as Obamacare did, and cutting Medicare by $716 billion to shore up the solvency of the Medicare program itself, as the Ryan budget sought to do. Secondly, the Romney Medicare plan fully repeals Obamacare, including the $716 billion in Medicare cuts. We will deal with Ryan's bragging about cutting Medicare spending faster than Obama in a moment. For now, consider the final attack - that Ryan and Romney's plan will make the program run out of money faster. Why? Well, because they restore the $716 in cuts. Or to be more specific, they would repeal cost-saving provisions in Obamacare that will make the budget of the program shrink naturally. In other words, they implicitly concede that reducing the Medicare budget by eliminating inefficiency is a good thing. And that is precisely what Ryan was trying to do with the Path to Prosperity. As established above, Ryan's original budget cut $716 billion now in order to shore up Medicare for the future. According to his own budget, the other cuts would have also been directed toward establishing Medicare's long term solvency. ThinkProgress is free to dispute whether his method would work, but if you follow the internal logic of these charges, they end up attacking Romney for being too friendly to Medicare, relative to Obama and Ryan. That's a talking point the Romney campaign would probably love, with some adjustments. Charge #8: Ryan's Medicare plan only cuts Medicare spending because it makes seniors pay more. Explanation: ThinkProgress links to one of their own studies showing that the Romney-Ryan plan on Medicare would force seniors to pay more out of pocket, making up for the savings to the government. But is it true? The ThinkProgress study isn't talking about current seniors, but about people who will be seniors in 2023. Which is strange, because they also think Medicare will end in 2016 under Romney-Ryan. So which is it? Will the Romney-Ryan plan end Medicare in four years, or will it keep it solvent while making people who are currently under 55 pay more down the line? Moreover, the actual study relies entirely on estimates of what would happen after Romney and Ryan repeal Obamacare to make its case that seniors would be hurt, suggesting that when Romney and Ryan replace Obamacare, they could easily put in other cost control mechanisms that keep their promise true. In fact, even the left-leaning Politifact agrees this is a possibility. Charge #9: The credit downgrade is Republicans' fault. Explanation: ThinkProgress says this: "Ryan just brought up a 'downgraded America.' It was his party that held the debt ceiling hostage, causing America's creditors to lose faith and downgrade the country. In fact, the ratings agency repeatedly blamed Republicans for refusing to raise taxes." But is it true? From Liz Mair (Warning! Language): If we go back to S&amp;P's original statement explaining its decision to downgrade, we see that it says this: We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process. We also believe that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration agreed to this week falls short of the amount that we believe is necessary to stabilize the general government debt burden by the middle of the decade. Our lowering of the rating was prompted by our view on the rising public debt burden and our perception of greater policymaking uncertainty, consistent with our criteria... This is S&amp;P essentially saying the downgrade occurred because of four things: 1) It wasn't clear until the last possible minute that the debt ceiling would definitely be raised (OK, blame the Tea Party on this one, though I'd also note Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling as a senator and if we give him a pass on that, he ONLY gets a pass because his position was so minority then as to not matter- so he was fringe AND irrelevant); 2) Washington- constituted by two relatively intransigent political parties- can't and won't get its s**t together to a) cut spending- and especially entitlements and/or b) raise revenue at an adequate level for S&amp;P's tastes (Democrats and Republicans get equal blame here, as Democrats won't accept significant cuts to entitlement spending, which S&amp;P calls out by name, and many Republicans won't accept any tax increases); 3) The deal cut in order to allow the debt ceiling to be raised sucked and didn't do enough (again, both parties get blame here); and 4) Our debt burden is getting too big and setting aside that Democrats and Republicans in Washington haven't been able to get their shit together to deal with it, S&amp;P thinks they won't, in the near future, get their s**t together, either (again, both parties get blame here). In short, no, this isn't all the Republicans' fault. Claim #10: Ryan is wrong that Obama has racked up more debt than all previous presidents combined. Explanation: Ryan claimed, "President Obama has added more debt than any other president before him, and more than all the troubled governments of Europe combined. One president, one term, $5 trillion in new debt." ThinkProgress responds, "Obama hasn't amassed more debt than all past presidents combined, as Ryan claimed. The New York Times beaks down the math: 'The national debt stood at $10.626 trillion on the day that President Obama took office. It now stands slightly above $15 trillion.'" But is it true? Only if you assume Ryan said something he didn't say. Ryan's numbers match up with ThinkProgress' numbers. He simply said that President Obama has added more debt than any other single president before him - not the more expansive line that President Obama added more than all of them combined, which they are correct to call deceitful. However, President Obama did add more debt than every President from Washington up until Reagan combined, according to CNSNews. Claim #11: Paul Ryan supports austerity, which has pushed European countries into second recessions. Explanation: Unlike the United States, which has spent a large amount of money to try and offset the recession, European countries have embraced a more fiscally conservative route by trying to get their budgets to balance. This approach hasn't gone well in some countries. Ryan is a fiscal conservative, therefore ThinkProgress concludes that he supports the same approach. But is it true? Not remotely. To begin with, the word "austerity" appears nowhere in Ryan's speech. Secondly, European austerity is loathed among American conservative economic thinkers for a very simple reason - it doesn't actually cut spending. It just raises taxes: In France, for example, the so-called austerity largely consisted of raising taxes. There was a 3 percent surtax on incomes above EUR500,000, an increase of one percentage point in the top marginal tax rate (from 40 to 41 percent), and an end to the automatic indexation of tax brackets for inheritance, wealth, and income taxes. There was also a 5 percent hike in the corporate income tax on businesses with revenue of more than EUR250 million, as well as a hike in the capital-gains tax, and closure of several corporate tax breaks. And even though most of these tax hikes were aimed at the wealthy, the middle class did not get off free. There was an increase in the Value Added Tax (VAT) and the excise taxes on tobacco and alcohol. That's an agenda that should gladden the heart of any tax-increase zealot - or even Paul Krugman. There is a candidate in this election with that agenda, and it's not Paul Ryan. Claim #12: Paul Ryan claims to support protecting the weak, but his budget attacks them. Explanation: Ryan said, "And the greatest of all responsibilities, is that of the strong to protect the weak. The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves." ThinkProgress responds to this by citing "religious leaders" who called Ryan's budget an "immoral disaster" and claiming he wants to cut the government benefits that help the weak. But is it true? ThinkProgress' idea of quoting religious leaders is quoting a group that includes Jim Wallis - in other words, the religious Left doesn't like Ryan's budget. They also quote one priest who's a constituent of Ryan's (hardly a religious leader), and one single Catholic bishop. This is a far cry from the entire Vatican rising up in arms against Ryan's budget plan. However, the idea that Ryan's budget ideas rob the poor is unfalsifiable, since it doesn't attack specific policies. Another ThinkProgress post (mercifully shorter) references Ryan's support for tax cuts as evidence that he doesn't care about the weak. It's probably news to John F. Kennedy that Catholics can't support tax cuts in good conscience. Isn't there a Deadly Sin like this someplace...? Bonus: Even Fox News is attacking Ryan's speech? Explanation: Fox News published an article today describing Ryan's speech as "deceitful." The Left has jumped on it as evidence that Ryan's gone too far even for the supposedly right-leaning Fox. But is it true? Not at all. The author of the article is one of Fox News' token liberal contributors. And it gets things wrong. It regurgitates three of the arguments covered here, as well as a thoroughly unfalsifiable semantic claim about President Obama's "You Didn't Build That" gaffe. Not to mention, every article published by a Fox News contributor does not represent the entire voice of the company. Content from "the blaze": http://www.theblaze.com/stories/fact-checking-the-fact-checkers-heres-a-break-down-of-the-claims-bashing-paul-ryans-speech/ http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=695_1346361489 SmellMyPits Paul Ryan Fact check to the Fact check. Fact Check