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British soldier killed in London by a Muslim
British soldier savagely killed in London machete attack
A British soldier was savagely killed in an attack in South London in an attack that may have been the work of terrorists. CBS News’ Charlie D’Agata reports.
Malkin Explodes On Hannity Over UK Terrorist Attack
British Soldier Killed in Machete Attack in London
British soldier hacked to death in London, witness who filmed attackers speaks out (May 22, 2013)
British SOLDIER BEHEADED on busy London street in Act of TERRORISM
London TERROR ATTACKED: British Soldier BEHEADED by two Islamic TERRORISTS in Woolwich
Sunrise – UK soldier killed near army base
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Woolwich Terrorist Atttack Police statement
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Far-right Clash with Police After a Killing of British Soldier
Deporting Millions Of Muslims May Be Necessary – Geert Wilders
POLICE HIT BACK AT CLAIMS THEY TOOK 20 MINS TO REACH SCENE
Police today defended their response to the killing after eyewitnesses claimed they took up to 20 minutes to arrive at the scene.
Assistant Commissioner Simon Byrne, said: ‘One point I would like to address is around some of the speculation as to how long it took the Met to respond yesterday as this incident started to unfold.
‘We first received a 999 call from the public at 2.20pm stating a man was being attacked, further 999 calls stated that the attackers were in possession of a gun.
‘We had officers at the scene within nine minutes of receiving that first 999 call.
‘Once that information about a gun or guns being present was known firearms officers were assigned at 2.24pm.
‘Firearms officers were there and dealing with the incident 10 minutes after they were assigned, 14 minutes after the first call to the Met.’
You and your children will be next’: Islamic fanatics wielding meat cleavers butcher and try to behead a British soldier, taking their war on the West to a new level of horror
One of the men arrested is believed to be Michael Adebolajo
Two men repeatedly stab and tried to behead off-duty soldier in SE London
They shouted ‘Allah Akbar’ attack and told witnesses to film them
Charged at police officers with rusty revolver, knives and meat cleavers
Killing took place 200 yards from barracks and close to primary school
Both men placed under arrest after being treated for gunshot wounds
PM: Killing is ‘sickening’ and Britain will ‘never buckle’ in face of terror
Clutching a bloodied meat cleaver, the man suspected of executing a soldier on a crowded street declared: ‘you and your kids will be next’.
In a chilling rant captured on camera, the knife-wielding man declared: ‘The only reason we have killed this man today is because Muslims are dying daily by British soldiers.’
The man who launched the terrifying diatribe in Woolwich, south-east London, is believed to be Michael Adebolajo, who has been identified on Twitter and web forums as one of the two people arrested.
In the video obtained by ITV News he added: ‘Remove your governments – they don’t care about you. You think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we start bursting our guns? You think politicians are going to die?
‘No, it’s going to be the average guy, like you, and your children. So get rid of them – tell them to bring our troops back so we can… so you can all live in peace.’
Police are today believed to be searching addresses that Adebolajo, known by the Muslim name Mujahid, is linked to in Romford, Essex.
They also carried out raids in Lincolnshire and Greenwich, south east London.
Yesterday the serviceman, wearing a Help for Heroes top, was run down by a car before being brutally attacked in Woolwich, just 200 yards from the barracks.
In broad daylight, an attacker and an accomplice repeatedly stabbed and tried to behead the man in front of dozens of passers-by.
After the attack, speaking in a clear south London accent, the man named as Adebolajo said: ‘You people will never be safe. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’
Throughout the frenzied attack the two killers shouted ‘Allah Akbar’ – Arabic for ‘God is great’ – then demanded horrified witnesses film them as they ranted over the crumpled body.
The two black men in their 20s, waited calmly for armed police to arrive before charging at officers brandishing a rusty revolver, knives and meat cleavers.
When the old pistol was shot towards police it backfired and blew the thumb off one of the men.
Moments later they were cut down in a hail of bullets believed to be fired by a woman marksman. Last night both men were being treated in hospital for their wounds and will face questioning.
Mother-of-two Ingrid Loyau-Kennett bravely remonstrated with one of the killers in the aftermath of the terror attack.
After pleading with them to hand her the weapons, one told her: ‘We want to start a war in London tonight’.
She replied: ‘Right now it is only you versus many people, you are going to lose’.
Ms Loyau-Kennett said she was not trained in any way to deal with the situation – she used to be a teacher.
Yesterday’s slaughter took place close to a primary school at 2.20pm. Witnesses told how the men drove a dark blue Vauxhall Tigra on to the pavement.
The soldier was wearing a t-shirt with the army charity Help for Heroes logo on it and was carrying a military issue rucksack. The men then leapt out of their car and ‘hacked and chopped’ at their victim before dragging his bloodied body into the middle of the road.
Last night both men were placed under arrest after being treated for gunshot wounds under armed guard in separate hospitals.
Today Prime Minister David Cameron said the murder of a ‘brave soldier’ on the streets of London will bring the UK together and ‘make us stronger’.
Speaking outside Downing Street after chairing a meeting of the Government’s emergency Cobra committee, the Prime Minister said the attack ‘sickens us all’ and was a ‘betrayal of Islam’.
‘The people who did this were trying to divide us. They should know something like this will only bring us together and make us stronger,’ he said.
‘This country will be absolutely resolute in its stand against violent extremism and terror. We will never give in to terror or terrorism in any of its forms.
‘This view is shared by every community in our country. This was not just an attack on Britain and on the British way of life; it was also a betrayal of Islam and of the Muslim communities who give so much to our country.’
Last night Mr Cameron cut short his trip to Paris and described the assassination as ‘absolutely sickening’, insisting Britain will ‘never buckle’ in the face of terrorist attacks.
Security was tightened at dozens of other Army barracks across the country amid fears of copycat attacks and Home Secretary Theresa May called a meeting of Cobra, Whitehall’s emergency committee, after being briefed by MI5 and counter-terrorism police.
Experts believe the pair were using Muslim names and could be of Somali or Nigerian heritage.
It is thought the two fundamentalists had spent weeks watching the barracks, which the Queen is due to visit next week, prior to the attack.
The ambush and stabbing of a soldier close to an army barracks is an unprecedented Islamic attack on mainland Britain.
A group of military wives who laid flowers today said they were ‘numb’.
One of the women, in her 20s, who did not want to be named, said: ‘We are all just very numb at the moment – shaken up and very shocked. It could have been any one of our husbands.
‘He was a young guy who cared very much about his job, like they all do. I think he was in training.’
The killing immediately prompted widespread revulsion. David Cameron said Britain ‘will not be cowed, will never buckle’ in the face of terrorism last night as he urged people to go about their lives as normal in defiance of the ‘absolutely sickening’ killing in London.
London Mayor Mr Johnson said: ‘Londoners from all communities, from across this city have been here before.
I know that this is a city of incredible resilience and courage and we have to protect ourselves with the best security services, the most professional police service, in the world.’
Relations between British Muslims in the armed forces and their colleagues will not be strained following the murder of a British soldier in Woolwich, a retired army captain has said.
Captain Afzal Amin, former chairman of the Armed Forces Muslim Association, said: ‘I send my condolences to the poor victim, not just as a former army officer but as a British Muslim.
‘We’re not accustomed to this kind of completely inexplicable attack.’
‘There are a wide range of racial backgrounds in the armed forces which have formed a good, solid integrated body. I’m sure relations are already well established.’
‘Remember the context of all of this,’ he added. ‘This was an attack on an innocent soldier, an abhorrent crime in a normally cohesive society.’
Last night the Muslim Council of Britain said it was a ‘truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam’. ‘We condemn this unreservedly,’ a spokesman said. ‘Our thoughts are with the victim and his family.
‘We understand the victim is a serving member of the Armed Forces. Muslims have long served in this country’s Armed Forces, proudly and with honour.
‘This attack on a member of the Armed Forces is dishonourable and no cause justifies this murder. This action will no doubt heighten tensions on the streets of the United Kingdom.’
The Angels of Woolwich: How three extraordinarily brave women confronted the Islamic fanatics who butchered and tried to behead a soldier on London street – and prayed next to his mutilated body
‘Religious’ woman in her 50s ‘walked straight up to suspects with no fear’
Sat next to victim in middle of the road and put her hands on his chest
Witness: ‘She saw everything and wanted to comfort him. The poor man’s head was beside her’
Second woman talks to one killer as he wandered around with bloodied weapons and hands
Female Cub Scout leader tells other attacker: ‘Right now, it is only you versus many people. You are going to lose’
David Cameron praises her bravery, saying: ‘She speaks for us all’
By Richard Hartley-parkinson and Simon Tomlinson
In the aftermath of the brutal murder of a soldier, the remarkable courage of three women stands out.
They selflessly confronted the two killers and went to the aid of the victim, praying for him and preventing further carnage.
The first heroine, described as a religious woman in her 50s, bravely approaches the attackers as they roam the streets covered in blood and demands they let her sit next to the dead man.
As she comforts him in the middle of the road, a second woman stands over her and appears to talk to one of the killers in an apparent attempt to placate him.
Meanwhile, a third lady, a Cub Scout leader, remonstrates with the other alleged murderer who rants at her: ‘We want to start a war in London tonight’.
Standing firm, mother-of-two Ingrid Loyau-Kennett replies: ‘Right now it is only you versus many people. You are going to lose’.
Describing the scene, a witness said he saw the first woman approach the men and ask to go to the soldier’s side moments after the horrific attack in which they nearly behead the soldier.
Joe Tallant told the Daily Mirror: ‘She is a very religious woman. She saw everything and wanted to comfort the man. She just walked straight up to them with no fear.
‘She put her hands on his chest and I think she prayed for him. The poor man’s head was beside her.’
Footage from ITV News shows the woman sat on the road next to the soldier’s body while another image shows her putting her hand on his back as she prays.
A second woman stands over her and appears to talk to one of the killers as he wanders around with bloodied weapons and hands.
Meanwhile, Ms Loyau-Kennett, 48, jumped off her bus when she saw the soldier’s body lying in the south-east London street, checked his pulse and then tried to talk to the men who hacked him to death.
One told her: ‘We want to start a war in London tonight’.
e added: ‘We will defeat violent extremism by standing together, by backing our police and security services and, above all, by challenging the poisonous narrative of extremism on which this violence feeds.’
Mr Cameron refused to say if the suspected killers were known to police and security services but said it was something the Independent Police Complaints Commission and intelligence committees would look into.
‘She put her hands on his chest and I think she prayed for him. The poor man’s head was beside her.’
Witness, Joe Talllant
After the attack, one of the alleged killers was filmed launching into a diatribe as he pledged the fight would go on.
Speaking in a clear south London accent, he said: ‘You people will never be safe. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’
The two suspects apparently shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’, which means ‘God is great’ in Arabic as they hacked the soldier to death.
They waited calmly for the police to arrive before charging at officers brandishing a rusty revolver, knives and meat cleavers.
They were then shot by armed officers, and both suspects are under guard in separate hospitals today.
But it was a brave female Cub Scout leader who confronted the armed men.
‘I saw a man on the road, obviously injured and a car badly crashed I assumed it was a road accident, although the car was funny on the pavement, it was not coming on the road,’ she told ITV’s Daybreak.
‘When I approached the body there was a lady cradling him and then the guy, the most excited one of the two said, don’t go too close to the body.
‘I could see a butcher’s knife and you know these axes butchers have to cut -that’s what he had and blood all over him. I thought what the heck happened here?
‘Okay I thought obviously he was a bit excited, so I thought the thing was just to talk to him.
Ms Loyau-Kennett said she was not trained in any way to deal with the situation – she used to be a teacher.
‘I know it’s big today, for me he was just a regular guy, just a bit upset. He was not on drugs, he was not drunk.’
She said the man told her ‘Don’t touch, I killed him.’
When she questioned him, he said ‘He is a British soldier, he killed people, he killed Muslim people, in Muslim countries. ‘
Mrs Loyau-Kennett explained the man holding the knife told her it was for ‘all the bomb droppings and killings, blindly, women.’
When asked if she feared for her life she replied: ‘Better me than the children.
‘There were mothers with children. It was important.’
Mrs Loyau-Kennett’s son said her bravery was motivated by her ‘incredible maternal instinct’.
The 48-year-old was in London celebrating her son Basil Baradaran’s 23rd birthday when she came across the horrific scene.
Basil, an animation graduate who lives close to the murder scene with sister Pawony, 24, said: ‘Mum came up to visit for my birthday and we’d had a lovely celebration.
‘I was meeting her at the train station when she walked up and started telling me had happened.
‘My first thought was for her safety but I could see she was completely intact. I couldn’t believe what she was telling me.
‘I don’t know what was going through her mind or how she found the strength to do what she did but I’m totally awestruck. I’m about as proud as a son could be.’
Mrs Loyau-Kennett, who is half-French, brought up her two children alone after their father returned to France when they were very young.
She lives in Helston, Cornwall, works as a language teacher and translator, and has recently completed a further qualification with the Open University.
She previously lived in Ipswich and New Zealand, where she worked with cubs, scouts, beavers and brownies.
Chris Hedges: Monitoring of AP Phones a “Terrifying” Step in State Assault on Press Freedom
Obama Worse Than Nixon? Pentagon Papers Attorney Decries AP Phone Probe, Julian Assange Persecution
Bernstein Unloads on White House for AP Scandal
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AP Reporter Questions Carney on DOJ AP Scandal: ‘Doesn’t Responsibility Rest With The President?
Judge Andrew Napolitano on the DOJ vs AP
Fox News On James Rosen Targeting
Fox News Targeted By DOJ FNC Reporter Effectively Accused Of A Crime Megyn Kelly
Brit Hume: Chilling Search Of Fox Reporter Shows DOJ Treats News Gathering As Crime
DOJ Targeted Fox Reporter for Espionage
Fox News Targeted By DOJ – Free Press Is Now Under Attack By The Obama Admin – Wake Up America
Judge Napolitano To Shep: Rosen Committed ‘No Crime,’ ‘Absolutely Protected By 1st Amendment’
Report: DOJ seized multiple White House, Fox News records in Rosen ‘investigation’
Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that the Justice Department’s secretive and sketchy gathering of two months’ worth of Associated Press editors and journalists’ phone records is unfortunately a far cry from a the only freedom-of-the-press-stifling incident coming out of this administration. In 2010, the DOJ also spied on Fox News’ Washington correspondent James Rosen as a supposed co-conspirator in an espionage case for the oh-so-heinous crime of cultivating a State Department source — a.k.a., doing what D.C. journalists regularly and rightly do.
A new report from the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, however, reveals more details on the case, and it appears that their specific targeting of James Rosen does not quite cover the extent of the DOJ’s lack of scrupulousness:
The Obama Justice Department has seized the phone records of numbers that are associated with White House staffers and, apparently, with Fox News reporters, according to a document filed on October 13, 2011, in the case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a former State Department contractor accused of violating the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking classified information to James Rosen, a Fox News reporter. Ronald C. Machen, Jr., the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, who is prosecuting the case, has seized records associated with two phone numbers at the White House, at least five numbers associated with Fox News, and one that has the same area code and exchange as Rosen’s personal-cell-phone number (the last four numbers are redacted).
In all, Ronald C. Machen, Jr., the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, has seized records associated with over thirty different phone numbers. In the filing that included the new information, the last four digits of each telephone line targeted by the Obama Administration are redacted. Two of the numbers begin with area code 202 and the exchange 456, which, according to current and former Administration officials, are used exclusively by the White House. (The phone number for the White House switchboard is (202) 456-1414.)
At least five other numbers targeted by the government include the area code 202 and the exchange 824. The phone number for the Fox News Washington bureau, which is publicly available, is (202) 824-0001. Rosen’s work phone number at Fox News begins with the same area code and exchange.
So, it looks like the DOJ had not ‘merely’ been sticking their big, fat nose into Rosen’s personal and professional e-mails/calls/comings and goings, but just higgledy-piggledy been nabbing up records that may-or-may-not have been associated with the ‘case’ — including five separate Fox News phone numbers — all in the attempt to somehow involve investigative reporting in a probe of potentially criminal behavior? Wow, guys. Really crack team you got there. Bang-up job on protecting and respecting the First Amendment, and all that.
The White House Correspondents’ Association, as you might imagine, is getting somewhat concerned about all of the targeting of the press coming out of this administration, because this is quickly turning into a dangerous-looking pattern:
The White House Correspondents’ Association said Tuesday that two recent cases in which the Obama administration went after reporters’ phone and email records show the government may be getting “far too aggressive” in tracking journalists. …
Though no charges were brought against Rosen, the White House Correspondents’ Association said no journalist should even face that threat for doing their jobs.
“Reporters should never be threatened with prosecution for the simple act of doing their jobs,” the WHCA said in a statement Tuesday. “The problem is that in two recent cases, one involving Fox News’ James Rosen and the other focused on the Associated Press, serious questions have been raised about whether our government has gotten far too aggressive in its monitoring of reporters’ movements, phone records, and even personal email.”
Washington Times Writer: Fox News Scandal Goes ‘Much Deeper,’ W.H. Sitting on Something Top Obama Aides ‘Terrified’ About
Jason Howerton
Washington Times columnist and Drudge Report editor Joseph Curl on Monday said the Obama administration’s developing scandal involving the monitoring of Fox News reporter James Rosen’s email accounts goes “much deeper.”
Citing a “CIA source,” Curl claimed via his official Twitter account that the Fox News scandal was the “4th Shoe” and the White House is sitting on “something” that has top White House aides “terrified.”
The daughter of Don and Taylor Tartt, she was born in Greenwood, Mississippi and raised in the nearby town of Grenada. At age five, she wrote her first poem, and she was first published in a Mississippi literary review when she was 13.
Tartt began writing her first novel, originally titled “The God of Illusions”[2] and later published as The Secret History, during her second year at Bennington. She graduated from Bennington in 1986. After Ellis recommended her work to literary agent Amanda Urban, The Secret History was published in 1992, and sold out its original print-run of 75,000 copies, becoming a bestseller. It has been translated into 24 languages.
The Secret History is set at a fictional college and concerns a close-knit group of six students and their professor of classics. The students embark upon a secretive plan to stage a bacchanal. The narrator reflects on a variety of circumstances that lead ultimately to murder within the group.
The murder, the location and the perpetrators are revealed in the opening pages, upending the familiar framework and accepted conventions of the murder mystery genre. Critic A.O. Scott labelled it “a murder mystery in reverse.”[3]
The book was wrapped in a transparent acetate book jacket, a retro design by Barbara De Wilde and Chip Kidd. According to Kidd, “The following season acetate jackets sprang up in bookstores like mushrooms on a murdered tree.”[4]
The Little Friend
The Little Friend, Tartt’s second novel, was published in October 2002. It is a mystery centered on a young girl living in the American South in the late 20th century. Her implicit anxieties about the long-unexplained death of her brother and the dynamics of her extended family are a strong focus, as are the contrasting lifestyles and customs of small-town Southerners.
The Goldfinch
In February 2013, the New York Observer announced that Tartt’s long-awaited third novel, titled The Goldfinch, was set for publication on October 22, 2013 after originally being slated for publication in September 2008.[5] The plot is described thus: ““A young boy in New York City, Theo Decker, miraculously survives an accident that takes the life of his mother. Alone and determined to avoid being taken in by the city as an orphan, Theo scrambles between nights in friends’ apartments and on the city streets,” Amazon’s description reads. “He becomes entranced by the one thing that reminds him of his mother: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that soon draws Theo into the art underworld. Composed with the skills of a master, The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America. It is a story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the enormous power of art”[6]
Other writing
In 2002, it was reported that Tartt was working on a retelling of the myth of Daedalus and Icarus for the Canongate Myth Series, a series of novellas in which ancient myths are reimagined and rewritten by contemporary authors.[7]
Audio
Tartt has recorded several audiobooks:
The Secret History
The Little Friend (abridgment)
True Grit (with afterword expressing her love of the novel)
The Secret History, the first novel by Mississippi-born writer Donna Tartt, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1992. A 75,000 print order was made for the first edition (as opposed to the usual 10,000 order for a debut novel), and the book became a bestseller.
Set in New England, The Secret History tells the story of a closely knit group of six classics students at a small, elite Vermont college, Hampden College, similar in many respects to Bennington College (in Bennington, Vermont) where Tartt was a student from 1982 to 1986.
One of the six students is the story’s narrator, Richard Papen, who reflects, years later, on the situation that led to a murder within the group, the murder being confessed at the outset of the novel but the events otherwise revealed sequentially. In the opening chapter, as the reader is introduced to Papen, we are told of the death of student Edmund “Bunny” Corcoran, although few details are given initially. The novel explores the circumstances and lasting effects of Bunny’s death on the academically and socially isolated group of Classics students of which he was a part.
The impact on the students is ultimately destructive, and the potential promise of many young lives is lost to circumstance. The story parallels, in many ways, a Greek tragedy with fate dictating the very circumstances that lead to an escalation of already fermenting issues.
Synopsis
As the story opens, Richard leaves Plano, California, where he is generally unhappy, for Hampden College in Vermont. His approach to his background is in keeping with the contrast of aestheticism and literary beauty, as opposed to harsh reality, that continues throughout the novel. He misleads others about his background as necessary, replacing his mediocre working-class childhood with a fabricated and more glamorous one of boarding schools and wealth.
After moving to Vermont, Richard attempts to continue his study of Ancient Greek, only to be denied admittance to the Greek class, as Classics professor Julian Morrow limits his enrollment to a tiny hand-picked coterie of students. Richard becomes obsessed with the small group, after observing them around campus, and eventually manages to ingratiate himself with the group by helping them solve a Greek grammar problem as they study in the college library. Soon after, armed with advice from the students on how to impress Julian, he meets with him once more and is finally admitted to the select Classics tutorial.
The group includes fraternal twins Charles and Camilla Macaulay, who are charming but secretive, as well as Francis Abernathy, whose secluded country home becomes a sanctuary for the group. Two students become the central focus of the story: the linguistic genius Henry Winter, an intellectual with a passion for the Pali canon and Plato, and the back-slapping Bunny Corcoran, a slightly bigoted jokester more comfortable reading Sax Rohmer‘s Fu Manchu, particularly if someone else has bought him a copy.
Their relationship, already considered odd by Richard, becomes even more mystifying when Bunny announces that he and Henry will be spending the winter break together in Italy. This, despite the fact that Henry appears barely tolerant of Bunny and that Bunny is unable to afford such a lavish holiday himself. In fact, it is Henry who is footing the bill for the trip. To avoid unraveling his fabricated past, Richard takes a low-paying job on the college campus and spends the winter break in an unheated warehouse. He nearly dies from exposure and pneumonia but is rescued and taken to the hospital by Henry, who has returned early from the trip to Italy.
When the rest of the group returns from winter break, Richard notes that the relationships between them and Bunny have become even more strained. Ultimately, Richard learns the truth from Henry and Francis: during a Bacchanal that both Richard and Bunny were excluded from, Henry had inadvertently killed a local farmer. Bunny, having been suspicious for some time, uncovers the truth during the trip to Italy after reading some of Henry’s private notes, and has blackmailed the group ever since. The group, led by Henry, begin to view Bunny as the weak link who threatens to reveal their secret, and Bunny’s penchant for playing on his friends’ fears and insecurities does little to assuage their concern.
No longer able to meet Bunny’s demands and fearing that Bunny will report the matter to the police, the group resolves to kill Bunny. Henry forms several plots to accomplish such, and one of the plans is finally put into motion after Bunny tells Richard of the killing of the farmer in a drunken rant. The group confronts Bunny while he is hiking, with Henry pushing him into a ravine to his death.
The remainder of the novel focuses on the aftermath of Bunny’s death, especially the collapse of the group, the psychological strains of remorse borne by the individual members and their efforts to maintain secrecy as investigators and other students develop theories about Bunny’s disappearance. The supporting cast of other students includes loquacious drug user Judy Poovey, a reader of “those paranoia books by Philip K. Dick.”
Charles develops a drinking problem and becomes increasingly abusive towards his sister. Francis begins to suffer panic attacks. Julian discovers the evidence in the form of a pleading letter sent to him by Bunny, imploring him to help: “You’re the only one who can.” Julian never reports the crime but instead leaves the college.
With the group splintered, the members deal with their crime, to a large extent, in isolation. Henry begins living and sleeping with Camilla, which drives Charles further into the grip of his barely controlled alcoholism. Henry is deeply upset by Julian’s departure, seeing it as an act of cowardice and hypocrisy. The plot reaches a climax when Charles, jealous of Henry and now a full-blown alcoholic, barges into Camilla and Henry’s hotel room and tries to kill Henry with Francis’ Beretta. In the struggle that follows, Henry gets hold of the gun as the inn-keeper pounds on the door. Aghast, the others are not sure whom he intends to kill. Instead, Henry kisses Camilla for a final time, and shoots himself. It seems that Henry wants to uphold the principles that he feels Julian has betrayed. With Henry’s suicide, the group disintegrates: Francis, a homosexual, is forced by his rich grandfather to marry a woman; Camilla takes care of her grandmother and ends up isolated; Charles runs from rehab with a married woman; Richard, the narrator, becomes a lonely academic whose love for Camilla is unrequited. Henry’s death is described as having cut the cord between them and set them all adrift. The book ends with Richard recounting a strange dream where he meets Henry in a tall atrium, and doesn’t know how to voice everything he feels about what has happened. Finally, he settles on asking him “Are you happy here?”; Henry replies, “Not particularly. But you’re not very happy where you are, either”, and walks away, leaving Richard as aimless as ever.
Themes
Michiko Kakutani (New York Times) commented, “In The Secret History, Ms. Tartt managed to make… melodramatic and bizarre events (involving Dionysian rites and intimations of satanic power) seem entirely plausible.” Because the author introduces the murder and those responsible at the outset, critic A.O. Scott labeled it “a murder mystery in reverse.” [2]
On a deeper level, highlighted by many literary references and allusions, the novel undertakes a complex analysis of truth versus beauty, aesthetics versus justice, social constraints compared to the desire for liberation, and an examination of the relationships that exist behind social structure, particularly relationships of power and control. Early on, the question arises: “Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.” This theme continues throughout the novel as Richard is repeatedly confronted with the separation of literary and artistic beauty as he would capture and report it, compared to reality as it unfolds.
Cross-references
Bret Easton Ellis‘s novel The Rules of Attraction is set at Camden College, a fictional liberal arts college in northeastern New Hampshire. In many ways, Camden mirrors Ellis’ alma mater, Bennington College, and Hampden College, the setting of Tartt’s The Secret History. Both books contain cross-references to each other’s storylines and characters. Tartt mentions the suicide of a freshman girl in passing, while Ellis repeatedly mentions a group of classics majors who “dress like undertakers” and are suspected of staging pagan rituals and slaying farmers in the countryside.
Glenn Beck Ties Together Benghazi, IRS, & AP Scandals ‘Fundamental Transformation’
Glenn Beck – IRS targeted conservatives
IRS Admits Targeting Conservatives – TheBlazeTV – The Glenn Beck Radio Program – 2013.05.10
Lou Dobbs Rips ‘Nixonian’ Obama For Lying ‘Through His Teeth’ About IRS ‘President Who Has Lost His
Paul Steiger: The ProPublica Story
ProPublica founder and CEO, Paul Steiger, on the creation of this foundation-funded investigative newsroom, the challenges they faced and their plans for the future. ProPublica is the first online-only organization to win a Pulitzer Prize.
Paul Steiger: The ProPublica Story part 2
Paul Steiger: The ProPublica Story part 3
Paul Steiger: The ProPublica Story part 4 Q&A
Paul Steiger: The ProPublica Story part 5 Q&A
Jon Stewart Totally DESTROYS Obama Administration Over IRS Scandal | A MUST WATCH
IRS scandal widens
Ex-commissioner on tea party scandal: IRS did “the wrong thing”
Tea Party IRS Investigations Not Politically Motivated? ‘How Stupid Do They Think We Are’
IRS in the spotlight: What’s a 501(c)(4)? By Martina Stewart, CNN
Deceptive Dollars Tied To 501(c)(4) Groups
Mark Levin Dissects Obama, The IRS & The Republican Party in Scandal – Sean Hannity – 5-13-13
Mark Levin Attacks Obama & ‘Impotent’ House GOP Over IRS Scandal ‘Absolutely Unacceptable’
Glenn Beck: Failure to Impeach Over IRS Scandal Means America ‘Already Operating Under Tyranny’
CU President David Bossie on Fox News (02/19/2013)
President Obama Calls IRS Targeting of Conservative, Tea Party Groups ‘Outrageous’
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Progressive Group: IRS Gave Us Conservative Groups’ Confidential Docs
The progressive-leaning investigative journalism group ProPublica says the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) office that targeted and harassed conservative tax-exempt groups during the 2012 election cycle gave the progressive group nine confidential applications of conservative groups whose tax-exempt status was pending.
The commendable admission lends further evidence to the lengths the IRS went during an election cycle to silence tea party and limited government voices.
ProPublica says the documents the IRS gave them were “not supposed to be made public”:
The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year… In response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent ProPublica applications or documentation for 31 groups. Nine of those applications had not yet been approved—meaning they were not supposed to be made public. (We made sixof those public, after redacting their financial information, deeming that they were newsworthy.)
The group says that “no unapproved applications from liberal groups were sent to ProPublica.”
According to Media Research Center Vice President for Business and Culture Dan Gainor, ProPublica’s financial backers include top progressive donors:
ProPublica, which recently won its second Pulitzer Prize, initially was given millions of dollars from the Sandler Foundation to “strengthen the progressive infrastructure”–“progressive” being the code word for very liberal. In 2010, it also received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from the Open Society Foundations. In case you wonder where that money comes from, the OSF website is http://www.soros.org. It is a network of more than 30 international foundations, mostly funded by Soros, who has contributed more than $8 billion to those efforts.
On Friday, the House Ways and Means Committee is scheduled to hold a formal hearing on the IRS conservative targeting scandal. IRS Commissioner Steve Miller and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George are slated to testify.
More trouble for the IRS: The same office that singled out conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status also leaked confidential information about conservative groups last year, ProPublica reports. How does ProPublica know? Well, because the nine pending applications were leaked to ProPublica in the first place. The investigative site had asked to see the applications for 67 nonprofits and the IRS’ Cincinnati office sent over 31, nine of which had not been approved yet, meaning they were supposed to be confidential.
ProPublica was interested in the applications because it was revealing how social-welfare nonprofits, which don’t have to identify their donors and can spend money on elections as long as social welfare is their primary goal, misled the IRS when applying for tax-exempt status. Among the applications released to ProPublica: Karl Rove’s Crossroads group, which had promised to spend only “limited” money on 2012 elections and ended up spending more than $70 million. Also included were five other groups that all claimed they would not spend any money to sway the elections and spent more than $5 million. ProPublica reported on all six (here and here). Interestingly, the New York Times reported today that Crossroads and other larger groups were not subjected to the same intense scrutiny the IRS applied to small Tea Party groups; click for more on that.
ProPublica is the brainchild of Herbert and Marion Sandler, the former chief executives of the Golden West Financial Corporation, who have committed $10 million a year to the project.[8] The Sandlers hired Paul Steiger, former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, to create and run the organization as editor in chief. At the time ProPublica was set up, Steiger responded to concerns about the role of the Sandlers’ political views, saying on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer:
Coming into this, when I talked to Herb and Marion Sandler, one of my concerns was precisely this question of independence and nonpartisanship… My history has been doing ‘down the middle’ reporting. And so when I talked to Herb and Marion I said ‘are you comfortable with that?’ They said ‘absolutely’. I said ‘well suppose we did an expose of some of the left leaning organizations that you have supported or that are friendly to what you’ve supported in the past’. They said ‘no problem’. And when we set up our organizational structure, the board of directors, on which I sit and which Herb is the chairman, does not know in advance what we’re going to report on.[9]
ProPublica has attracted attention for the salaries it pays its top executives.[12][13] The head of ProPublica, Paul Steiger, was paid $571,687 in 2008, according to the company’s tax filings.[14] The managing editor, Stephen Engelberg, was paid $343,463.[15][16] The large salaries have been widely criticized by other journalists and even some in the non-profit world as excessive.[17][17][18] Steiger is the former managing editor at the Wall Street Journal. Engelberg is a former New York Times editor who co-wrote the non-fiction book Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War, with Times reporter Judith Miller. He was recently elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board.
Awards
In 2010, ProPublica jointly won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting (it was also awarded to another new organization for a different story), for “a story that chronicles the urgent life-and-death decisions made by one hospital’s exhausted doctors when they were cut off by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina.”[19] It was written by ProPublica’s Sheri Fink and published in the New York Times Magazine[6] as well as on ProPublica.org.[7] This was the first Pulitzer awarded to an online news source.[4][5] That investigation also won a National Magazine Award for reporting.
In 2011, ProPublica won its second Pulitzer Prize.[20] Reporters Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein won the Pulitzer for National Reporting for their series, The Wall Street Money Machine. This was the first time a Pulitzer was awarded to a group of stories not published in print.
ProPublica’s reporters have also received the Selden Ring, George Polk, National Magazine, Society of Professional Journalists, James Aronson, ABA Silver Gavel, Overseas Press Club, Online Journalism, Investigative Editors and Reporters, Society of News Design, Society of American Business Editors and Writers, and Dart Center awards (among others) for their work.
Reception
Praise
ProPublica is also renowned for conducting a large-scale, circumscribed investigation on Psychiatric Solutions, a company based in Tennessee that buys failing hospitals, cuts staff, and accumulates profit.[21] The report covered patient deaths at numerous Psychiatric Solutions facilities, the failing physical plant at many of their facilities, and covered the State of Florida‘s first closure of Manatee Palms Youth Services, which has since been shut down[22] by Florida officials once again.[23] Their report was published in conjunction with The Los Angeles Times.
Criticism
Dave Kopel, a policy analyst for the libertarianCato Institute and a former columnist for the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News, criticized a ProPublica report on hydraulic fracturing as a “one-sided series of facts arrayed to support a point of view”. He argued that a common theme in ProPublica’s work is that “the government is not doing a good enough job in controlling things, particularly things involving big business”.[24] ProPublica later responded to his article, countering those claims and saying quote, “using carefully culled quotations and selected statistics, Kopel asserts ‘indisputably false facts’ in ProPublica’s reporting.” [25]
After fallout from the IRS publicly admitting to targeting conservative tax exempt groups for added scrutiny, ProPublica broke the news that it had requested and received confidential pending applications for groups requesting tax exempt status.
^“About Us”. Retrieved 2009-01-11. ProPublica is a Dog Latin term literally meaning “for the public woman”; cf. publica.
^ “a story that chronicles the urgent life-and-death decisions made by one hospital’s exhausted doctors when they were cut off by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina.” – Pulitzer.org The 2010 Pulitzer Prize Winners: Investigative Reporting, accessed 13 April 2010
Claim: Obama Campaign Co-Chair Attacked Romney with Leaked IRS Docs
One of President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign co-chairmen used a leaked document from the IRS to attack GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney during the 2012 election, according to the National Organization for Marriage (NOM).
NOM, a pro-traditional marriage organization, claims the IRS leaked their 2008 confidential financial documents to the rival Human Rights Campaign. Those NOM documents were published on the Huffington Post on March 30, 2012. At that time, Joe Solmonese, a left-wing activist and Huffington Post contributor, was the president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). Solmonese was also a 2012 Obama campaign co-chairman.
Both the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein and HRC described the leak as coming from a “whistleblower.” The Huffington Post used the document to write a story questioning former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s support for traditional marriage. The document showed Romney donated $10,000 to NOM. HRC went a step further than the Huffington Post in its criticism of Romney and accused him of using “racially divisive tactics” in a press release.
Solmonese, then still the HRC’s president, said in the release he felt Romney’s “funding of a hate-filled campaign designed to drive a wedge between Americans is beyond despicable.”
“Not only has Romney signed NOM’s radical marriage pledge, now we know he’s one of the donors that NOM has been so desperate to keep secret all these years,” Solmonese added.
Solmonese resigned his position at HRC the next day and took up a position as an Obama campaign co-chair. He had announced the then-pending resignation from HRC the previous autumn.
NOM announced Tuesday that it will sue the IRS for this alleged leak. Under immense political pressure, Attorney General Eric Holder launched a criminal investigation into the IRS’s actions. Congress will conduct ts own investigation.
In early April 2012, NOM published documents which it said showed this leaked confidential information did not come from a “whistleblower” but “came directly from the Internal Revenue Service and was provided to NOM’s political opponents, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).”
NOM discovered that when HRC published its confidential financial documents, it failed to conceal the source of the documents. “After software removed the layers obscuring the document, it is shown that the document came from the Internal Revenue Service,” NOM asserted in its April 2012 release.
“The top of each page says, ‘THIS IS A COPY OF A LIVE RETURN FROM SMIPS. OFFICIAL USE ONLY,’” the statement continues. “On each page of the return is stamped a document ID of ‘100560209.’ Only the IRS would have the Form 990 with ‘Official Use’ information.”
NOM president Brian Brown argued in that April 2012 release that the leak was made to benefit President Obama’s re-election campaign against Romney, his GOP challenger. “The American people are entitled to know how a confidential tax return containing private donor information filed exclusively with the Internal Revenue Service has been given to our political opponents whose leader also happens to be co-chairing President Obama’s reelection committee,” Brown said.
“It is shocking that a political ally of President Obama’s would come to possess and then publicly release a confidential tax return that came directly from the Internal Revenue Service,” he declared. “We demand to know who is responsible for this criminal act and what the Administration is going to do to get to the bottom of it.”
President Barack Obama jokes with Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communication, aboard Air Force One
Cover-up
A cover-up is an attempt, whether successful or not, to conceal evidence of wrongdoing, error, incompetence or other embarrassing information. In a passive cover-up information is simply not provided; in an active cover-up deception is used.
The expression is usually applied to people in positions of authority who abuse their power to avoid or silence criticism or to deflect guilt of wrongdoing. Those who initiate a cover up (or their allies) may be responsible for a misdeed, a breach of trust or duty or a crime.
While the terms are often used interchangeably, cover-up involves withholding incriminatory evidence, while whitewash involves releasing misleading evidence.
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From the Rhodes — The President in Mexico
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Rice University, and New York University. He has been described as a realist by The Washington Post,[2] and was mentioned by Time on the “40 Under 40″ list of powerful and prominent young professionals in 2011.[3] His brother, David, is president of CBS News.
Rhodes wrote Pres. Barack Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech A New Beginning.[4]
Rhodes was the one who advised Pres. Barack Obama to withdraw support from Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, becoming a key adviser during the Arab Spring.[5]
Rhodes euphemistically described the United States’ military involvement in Libya as “kinetic military action.”[6] In a March 16, 2013 feature story appearing in The New York Times, Rhodes declined to comment on his role in Obama administration policy decisions, saying, “My main job, which has always been my job, is to be the person who represents the president’s view on these issues.”[5]
The White House continued to fend off suggestions it misled the public about the attack on the US mission in Libya in September, a day after ex-CIA chief David Petraeus told Congress that mentions of al-Qaeda were edited out of public talking points.
The White House insisted on Saturday that it did not make significant changes to its talking points about the September attack on a US diplomatic building in the Libyan city of Benghazi, as it continued to fend off accusations by Republicans that the Obama administration had misled the American public about the terrorist nature of the attack.
“The only edit that was made by the White House and also by the State Department was to change the word ‘consulate’ to the word ‘diplomatic facility,’ since the facility in Benghazi was not formally a consulate,” deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday.
“Other than that, we were guided by the points that were provided by the intelligence community. So I can’t speak to any other edits that may have been made,” Rhodes said about notes that were used by UN Ambassador Susan Rice to speak to the press about the attack that left Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead.
On Friday, former CIA chief David Petraeus revealed that the original taking points about the attack had mentioned groups linked to al-Qaeda, but those mentions were removed from the texts used by Rice, according to US lawmakers who heard Petraeus’ testimony to Congress.
Petraeus –who is caught up in a career-ending sex scandal– appeared before House and Senate intelligence panels that were closed off to reporters. The respected ex-spy chief also said the changes to talking points were not made for political reasons during President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, as some Republicans have suggested.
After his testimony to Congress, Petraeus was escorted through a back exit to avoid contact with journalists. His testimony to Congress was later relayed by Republican and Democratic lawmakers who attended the closed-door hearings.
‘Changes made to protect classified information’
On Saturday, Rhodes deflected responsibility for removing the Al Qaeda references onto the CIA and other members of the US intelligence community. “If there were adjustments made to them [the talking points] within the intelligence community, that’s common, and that’s something they would have done themselves,” the deputy national security advisor told reporters.
Democratic lawmakers said that Petraeus was adamant that there had been no White House interference. The recently resigned four-star general explained that references to terrorist groups suspected of carrying out the violence were removed from the public statement by Rice and others so as not to tip off those groups that US intelligence was on their trail.
“There was an interagency process to draft it, not a political process,” Congressman Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California said. “They came up with the best assessment without compromising classified information or source or methods. So changes were made to protect classified information.”
Republicans remain skeptical
However, Republicans remained skeptical over the White House and Petraeus’ explanation, maintaining that the Obama administration may have watered down information to cover up for poor intelligence or inadequate security of US personnel in Libya.
Ambassador Rice has been floated as a possible successor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is stepping down early next year, but some Republicans are threatening to block Rice’s nomination.
Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, said Petraeus’ testimony showed that security measures were inadequate “despite an overwhelming and growing amount of information that showed the area in Benghazi was dangerous, particularly on the night of September 11.”
Peter King, a Congressman from New York and the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters on Friday he saw a contradiction between the account Petraeus had given to an earlier House hearing and the one given during his most recent appearence.
“His testimony was he told us that from the start it was a terrorist attack. I told him that was not my direct recollection. The clear impression we were given was that the overwhelming amount of evidence was that it arose out of a spontaneous demonstration and [not] that it was a terrorist attack.”
On Saturday King told Fox News television that it remained unclear who had made the edits concerning al Qaeda involvement in Benghazi, and did not rule out the White House.
“That’s why it’s important to find out why it was done. It could be anywhere in the Defense Department, the State Department, the Justice Department, the White House,” King told the right-wing news channel. “[We need] to find out why it was done, what the purpose of it was.
Even as the White House strove last week to move beyond questions about the Benghazi attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2012, fresh evidence emerged that senior Obama administration officials knowingly misled the country about what had happened in the days following the assaults. The Weekly Standard has obtained a timeline briefed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence detailing the heavy substantive revisions made to the CIA’s talking points, just six weeks before the 2012 presidential election, and additional information about why the changes were made and by whom.
As intelligence officials pieced together the puzzle of events unfolding in Libya, they concluded even before the assaults had ended that al Qaeda-linked terrorists were involved. Senior administration officials, however, sought to obscure the emerging picture and downplay the significance of attacks that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. The frantic process that produced the changes to the talking points took place over a 24-hour period just one day before Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, made her now-famous appearances on the Sunday television talk shows. The discussions involved senior officials from the State Department, the National Security Council, the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the White House.
The exchange of emails is laid out in a 43-page report from the chairmen of five committees in the House of Representatives. Although the investigation was conducted by Republicans, leading some reporters and commentators to dismiss it, the report quotes directly from emails between top administration and intelligence officials, and it includes footnotes indicating the times the messages were sent. In some cases, the report did not provide the names of the senders, but The Weekly Standard has confirmed the identities of the authors of two critical emails—one indicating the main reason for the changes and the other announcing that the talking points would receive their final substantive rewrite at a meeting of top administration officials on Saturday, September 15.
The White House provided the emails to members of the House and Senate intelligence committees for a limited time and with the stipulation that the documents were available for review only and would not be turned over to the committees. The White House and committee leadership agreed to that arrangement as part of a deal that would keep Republican senators from blocking the confirmation of John Brennan, the president’s choice to run the CIA. If the House report provides an accurate and complete depiction of the emails, it is clear that senior administration officials engaged in a wholesale rewriting of intelligence assessments about Benghazi in order to mislead the public. The Weekly Standard sought comment from officials at the White House, the State Department, and the CIA, but received none by press time. Within hours of the initial attack on the U.S. facility, the State Department Operations Center sent out two alerts. The first, at 4:05 p.m. (all times are Eastern Daylight Time), indicated that the compound was under attack; the second, at 6:08 p.m., indicated that Ansar al Sharia, an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group operating in Libya, had claimed credit for the attack. According to the House report, these alerts were circulated widely inside the government, including at the highest levels. The fighting in Benghazi continued for another several hours, so top Obama administration officials were told even as the fighting was taking place that U.S. diplomats and intelligence operatives were likely being attacked by al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists. A cable sent the following day, September 12, by the CIA station chief in Libya, reported that eyewitnesses confirmed the participation of Islamic militants and made clear that U.S. facilities in Benghazi had come under terrorist attack. It was this fact, along with several others, that top Obama officials would work so hard to obscure.
After a briefing on Capitol Hill by CIA director David Petraeus, Democrat Dutch Ruppersburger, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, asked the intelligence community for unclassified guidance on what members of Congress could say in their public comments on the attacks. The CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis prepared the first draft of a response to the congressman, which was distributed internally for comment at 11:15 a.m. on Friday, September 14 (Version 1 at right). This initial CIA draft included the assertion that the U.S. government “know[s] that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda participated in the attack.” That draft also noted that press reports “linked the attack to Ansar al Sharia. The group has since released a statement that its leadership did not order the attacks, but did not deny that some of its members were involved.” Ansar al Sharia, the CIA draft continued, aims to spread sharia law in Libya and “emphasizes the need for jihad.” The agency draft also raised the prospect that the facilities had been the subject of jihadist surveillance and offered a reminder that in the previous six months there had been “at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy.”
After the internal distribution, CIA officials amended that draft to include more information about the jihadist threat in both Egypt and Libya. “On 10 September we warned of social media reports calling for a demonstration in front of the [Cairo] Embassy and that jihadists were threatening to break into the Embassy,” the agency had added by late afternoon. And: “The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al Qaeda in Benghazi and Libya.” But elsewhere, CIA officials pulled back. The reference to “Islamic extremists” no longer specified “Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda,” and the initial reference to “attacks” in Benghazi was changed to “demonstrations.”
The talking points were first distributed to officials in the interagency vetting process at 6:52 p.m. on Friday. Less than an hour later, at 7:39 p.m., an individual identified in the House report only as a “senior State Department official” responded to raise “serious concerns” about the draft. That official, whom The Weekly Standard has confirmed was State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland, worried that members of Congress would use the talking points to criticize the State Department for “not paying attention to Agency warnings.”
In an attempt to address those concerns, CIA officials cut all references to Ansar al Sharia and made minor tweaks. But in a follow-up email at 9:24 p.m., Nuland wrote that the problem remained and that her superiors—she did not say which ones—were unhappy. The changes, she wrote, did not “resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership,” and State Department leadership was contacting National Security Council officials directly. Moments later, according to the House report, “White House officials responded by stating that the State Department’s concerns would have to be taken into account.” One official—Ben Rhodes, The Weekly Standard is told, a top adviser to President Obama on national security and foreign policy—further advised the group that the issues would be resolved in a meeting of top administration officials the following morning at the White House.
There is little information about what happened at that meeting of the Deputies Committee. But according to two officials with knowledge of the process, Mike Morrell, deputy director of the CIA, made broad changes to the draft afterwards. Morrell cut all or parts of four paragraphs of the six-paragraph talking points—148 of its 248 words (see Version 2 above). Gone were the reference to “Islamic extremists,” the reminders of agency warnings about al Qaeda in Libya, the reference to “jihadists” in Cairo, the mention of possible surveillance of the facility in Benghazi, and the report of five previous attacks on foreign interests.
What remained—and would be included in the final version of the talking points—was mostly boilerplate about ongoing investigations and working with the Libyan government, together with bland language suggesting that the “violent demonstrations”—no longer “attacks”—were spontaneous responses to protests in Egypt and may have included generic “extremists” (see Version 3 above).
If the story of what happened in Benghazi was dramatically stripped down from the first draft of the CIA’s talking points to the version that emerged after the Deputies Committee meeting, the narrative would soon be built up again. In ensuing days, administration officials emphasized a “demonstration” in front of the U.S. facility in Benghazi and claimed that the demonstrators were provoked by a YouTube video. The CIA had softened “attack” to “demonstration.” But as soon became clear, there had been no demonstration in Benghazi.
More troubling was the YouTube video. Rice would spend much time on the Sunday talk shows pointing to this video as the trigger of the chaos in Benghazi. “What sparked the violence was a very hateful video on the Internet. It was a reaction to a video that had nothing to do with the United States.” There is no mention of any “video” in any of the many drafts of the talking points.
Still, top Obama officials would point to the video to explain Benghazi. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even denounced the video in a sort of diplomatic public service announcement in Pakistan. In a speech at the United Nations on September 25, the president mentioned the video several times in connection with Benghazi.
On September 17, the day after Rice appeared on the Sunday shows, Nuland defended Rice’s performance during the daily briefing at the State Department. “What I will say, though, is that Ambassador Rice, in her comments on every network over the weekend, was very clear, very precise, about what our initial assessment of what happened is. And this was not just her assessment, it was also an assessment you’ve heard in comments coming from the intelligence community, in comments coming from the White House.”
“Innocence of Muslims” FULL MOVIE HD Anti-Muslim Anti-Islam Prophet Muhammad
Is Ben Rhodes the Mastermind Behind the Benghazi Cover Up?
wrote yesterday about how the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) knew that the attack in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 was a terrorist attack by Al-Qaeda operatives. We know the Obama White House put out the story for nearly a week that it was just Muslims upset over a benign YouTube video. In spite of knowing what was going on and having the ability to intervene, the Obama administration did nothing to stop or assist Americans who they knew were being attacked by Al-Qaeda. Instead, they chose to cover it up and intimidate witnesses. Stephen F. Hayes has an excellent piece at the Weekly Standard titled The Benghazi Talking Points, in which he fingers the man he believes is the main person behind the Benghazi cover up, Ben Rhodes.
Of course, one would immediately have to wonder about those who would be around a man who has vowed to stand with the Muslims instead of America. If you recall, Barack Obama made a speech in Cairo, Egypt to an audience which included the Muslim Brotherhood, in which he distorted the Qur’an to put it in a good light and then attempted to make out like Islam had made great contributions to both America and the world. That speech was written by Ben Rhodes, Obama’s foreign policy speechwriter and now a part of a his National Security Council.
Hayes writes in his article about the talking points that were first put out to officials. He writes:
The talking points were first distributed to officials in the interagency vetting process at 6:52 p.m. on Friday. Less than an hour later, at 7:39 p.m., an individual identified in the House report only as a “senior State Department official” responded to raise “serious concerns” about the draft. That official, whom The Weekly Standard has confirmed was State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland, worried that members of Congress would use the talking points to criticize the State Department for “not paying attention to Agency warnings.”
In an attempt to address those concerns, CIA officials cut all references to Ansar al Sharia and made minor tweaks. But in a follow-up email at 9:24 p.m., Nuland wrote that the problem remained and that her superiors—she did not say which ones—were unhappy. The changes, she wrote, did not “resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership,” and State Department leadership was contacting National Security Council officials directly. Moments later, according to the House report, “White House officials responded by stating that the State Department’s concerns would have to be taken into account.” One official—Ben Rhodes, The Weekly Standard is told, a top adviser to President Obama on national security and foreign policy—further advised the group that the issues would be resolved in a meeting of top administration officials the following morning at the White House.
There is little information about what happened at that meeting of the Deputies Committee. But according to two officials with knowledge of the process, Mike Morrell, deputy director of the CIA, made broad changes to the draft afterwards. Morrell cut all or parts of four paragraphs of the six-paragraph talking points—148 of its 248 words (see Version 2 above). Gone were the reference to “Islamic extremists,” the reminders of agency warnings about al Qaeda in Libya, the reference to “jihadists” in Cairo, the mention of possible surveillance of the facility in Benghazi, and the report of five previous attacks on foreign interests.
Ed Lasky writes concerning Rhodes, “Ben Rhodes should be called to account for trying to divert blame away from Islamic terrorists and the Obama team members whose feckless negligence led to the Benghazi massacre.”
“I have previously written about Ben Rhodes and his role in the Obama White House,” writes Lasky. “It is shameful that this ‘kid’ (he is all of 35) has been given any responsibility at all in our government. In ‘Does it bother anyone that this person is the Deputy National Security Adviser?’ I noted his problematic background for someone given so much power by Obama. But then again he does specialize in fiction-writing. He earned a master’s degree in fiction-writing from New York University just a few years ago . He did not have a degree in government, diplomacy, national security; nor has he served in the CIA, or the military. He was toiling away not that long ago on a novel called ‘The Oasis of Love’ about a mega church in Houston, a dog track, and a failed romance. ”
Lasky concludes that Ben Rhodes is the man that attempted to whitewash Islamists and the Obama administration, not only in the Cairo speech, but in the talking points promoted by the Obama White House in the days following the attack on Benghazi that left four Americans dead.
I guess we’ll wait and see if he is even called as a witness this by the House in this week’s hearings.
Tim Brown is the Editor of Freedom Outpost and a regular contributor to The D.C. Clothesline.
Rhodes grew up in New York City and moved to Washington in 2002, eventually taking a job writing speeches for Barack Obama, then a freshman Senator. Now, as Obama’s principal communications aide on national security, he reads the top-secret President’s Daily Brief, advises the President on key decisions and runs meetings with advisers much older than he is. “It was awkward for the first few weeks,” says Rhodes, 32, “but you get used to it.”
Who is your political hero/inspiration?
Robert F. Kennedy.
If you weren’t working in politics, what would you be doing?
I’d probably be living in New York trying to write novels but making a living off of non-fiction.
What’s the most overlooked issue facing America these days?
We need a broad and sustainable consensus about the politics of national security and America’s role in the world, which we have not had in the 21st century
Where do you see yourself professionally in five years?
Transitioning out of the second Obama Administration to live in California (per my wife), trying to write novels but making a living off of non-fiction.
House Oversight Committee Investigation of Benghazi Terrorist Attack
The Band – The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
Cover-up
A cover-up is an attempt, whether successful or not, to conceal evidence of wrongdoing, error, incompetence or other embarrassing information. In a passive cover-up information is simply not provided; in an active cover-up deception is used.
The expression is usually applied to people in positions of authority who abuse their power to avoid or silence criticism or to deflect guilt of wrongdoing. Those who initiate a cover up (or their allies) may be responsible for a misdeed, a breach of trust or duty or a crime.
While the terms are often used interchangeably, cover-up involves withholding incriminatory evidence, while whitewash involves releasing misleading evidence.
Glenn Beck Ties Together Benghazi, IRS, & AP Scandals ‘Fundamental Transformation’
Treason: Benghazi Revelations Could Sink Obama
Obama Hiding Arms Shipments To Syrian Jihadists
Gen. Jerry Boykin: “Get accountability and get the truth out” on Benghazi
Lt Gen Mclnemey Is Ashamed Our Military Responded Benghazi Libya & Blames Obama Admin – Lou Dobbs
Adm. Ace Lyons: On Benghazi, Obama Needs to Come Clean
CNBC: Benghazi is not about Libya! “It’s An NSC Operation Moving Arms & Fighters Into Syria”
Benghazi-Gate: Connection between CIA and al-Qaeda in Libya and Syria, with Turkey’s Help
The Real Reason Petraeus Resigned
Mother of Benghazi victim: I blame Hillary
ISSA: This Benghazi hearing is over, but the investigation is not
ISSA: Our Goal in this Benghazi Investigation is to Get Answers
(Benghazi Witness) THOMPSON: “We needed to act now and not wait”
(Benghazi Witness) HICKS: Until Benghazi I Loved Everyday of My Job
Gregory Hicks’ 30 Minute Recount of Benghazi Attack
(Benghazi Witness) NORDSTROM: Labors to Uncover What Happened Matters
Benghazi Witness Says State Dept. Told Him Not To Meet With Congressional Investigators
During Call With Clinton On Night Of Benghazi Attacks, No Mention Of A Demonstration
Rep. Jordan Q&A – Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage
Rep. McHenry Q&A – Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage
Rep. Chaffetz Q&A – Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage
Rep. Turner Q&A – Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage
Rep. Mica Q&A – Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage
Rep. Gowdy Q&A – Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage
Rep. Gosar Q&A – Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage
Rep. Hastings Q&A – Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage
Rep. Meehan Q&A – Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage
Rep. Walberg Q&A – Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage
Rep. Duncan Q&A – Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage
Rep. DesJarlais Q&A – Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage
Rep. Lankford Q&A – Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage
Rep. Amash Q&A – Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage
NORDSTROM: It’s not what the ARB report says, it’s what it doesn’t
Dem Rep. Elijah Cummings Tears Into GOP Rep. Issa For ‘Politicizing’ Benghazi
Rep. Gerry Connolly Speaks at Benghazi Hearing (5/8/13)
Benghazi ‘By Definition A Cover-Up’
Conflicting Reports on Benghazi Attack Leave Many Asking Who Changed the CIA Talking Points and Why
The Five Hosts Hammer Obama, Media For ‘Blatant CoverUp’ On Benghazi
Issa and Chaffetz Update Fox News’ Sean Hannity on the Benghazi Investigation, Part 1
Benghazi Whistleblower Claims Clinton Tried To Cut Out Counterterror Dept – Lou Dobbs
Issa and Chaffetz Update Fox News’ Sean Hannity on the Benghazi Investigation, Part 2
Chairman Issa Reveals Startling Information on Benghazi Terrorist Attack
Rep. Chaffetz Discusses the Benghazi Investigation on Fox News Sunday
Benghazi Gate – New Explosive Info On Attack In Libya – Whistleblowers Threaten By Obama Admin
Benghazi Whistle Blower PART 2 Talks to Fox News on 05-01-13
Rush Limbaugh on Benghazi Scandal: “They’re about to Blow this Sky High”; Reviews Scandal Timeline
Death And Deceit In Benghazi – Did Obama Amind Try Hide The Truth? – W Bret Bair
Benghazi-Gate: Connection between CIA and al-Qaeda in Libya and Syria, with Turkey’s Help
Obama’s UN Speech – TheBlaze
The Project parts 1-2, FULL video
The Project, by Glenn Beck, covers the infiltration of the United States government and our institutions by the Muslim Brotherhood
A Caliphate Is Coming – GBTV
Obama: violence and intolerance have no place among United Nations
Obama and his Press Secretary Blaming the Video for the Benghazi Attack
Benghazi white house disinformation
Innocence of Muslims full movie
Background Articles and Videos
Oversight Hearing Part 1 – “The Security Failures of Benghazi”
Breaking News-Benghazi Investigation’s Over. Judge Jeanine:Obama&Hillary Blame the Victim !!!???
Jeanine Pirro and Pat Caddell discuss Hillary Clinton’s roll in the Benghazi cover-up
Below is a letter from a group of about 700 retired U.S. military special operations veterans to the House of Representatives, urging Congress to establish a committee to investigate the Benghazi attack. Colonel Dick Brauer, founder of the group Special Operations Speaks explained the effort on Fox and Friends this morning.
To: Members of The U.S. House of Representatives
Subject: The Benghazi attacks on 9/11/ 2012
The undersigned are a representative group of some 700 retired Military Special Operations professionals who spent the majority of their careers
preparing for and executing myriad operations to rescue or recover detained or threatened fellow Americans. In fact, many of us participated in both the Vietnam era POW rescue effort, The Son Tay Raid, as well as Operation Eagle Claw, the failed rescue attempt in April of 1980 in Iran, so we have been at this for many years and have a deep passion for seeking the truth about what happened during the national tragedy in Benghazi.
The purpose of this letter is to encourage all members of the US House of Representatives to support H.Res. 36, which will create a House Select Committee on the Terrorist Attack in Benghazi. It is essential that a full accounting of the events of September 11, 2012, be provided and that the American public be fully informed regarding this egregious terrorist attack on US diplomatic personnel and facilities. We owe that truth to the American people and the families of the fallen.
It appears that many of the facts and details surrounding the terrorist attack which resulted in four American deaths and an undetermined number of American casualties have not yet been ascertained by previous hearings and inquiries. Additional information is now slowly surfacing in the media, which makes a comprehensive bipartisan inquiry an imperative. Many questions have not been answered thus far. The House Select Committee should address, at a minimum, the following questions:
1. Why was there no military response to the events in Benghazi?
a. Were military assets in the region available? If not, why not?
b. If so, were they alerted?
c. Were assets deployed to any location in preparation for a rescue or recovery attempt?
d. Was military assistance requested by the Department of State? If so, what type?
e. Were any US Army/Naval/USMC assets available to support the US diplomats in Benghazi during the attack?
f. What, if any, recommendations for military action were made by DOD and the US Africa Command?
2. What, if any, non-military assistance was provided during the attack?
3. How many US personnel were injured in Benghazi?
4. Why have the survivors of the attack not been questioned?
5. Where are the survivors?
6. Who was in the White House Situation Room (WHSR) during the entire 8-hour period of the attacks, and was a senior US military officer present?
7. Where were Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey during the crisis, and what inputs and recommendations did they make?
8. Where were Tom Donilon, the National Security Advisor, Denis McDonough, his deputy, Valerie Jarrett and John Brennan during the attacks, and what (if any) recommendations or decisions did any of them make?
9. Why were F-16 fighter aircraft based in Aviano, Italy (less than two hours away) never considered a viable option for disruption (if not dispersal) of the attackers until “boots on the ground” (troop support–General Dempsey’s words) arrived?
10. Were any strike aircraft (such as an AC-130 gunship) in the area or possibly overhead that would cause former SEAL Tyrone Woods to laser-designate his attacker’s position and call for gunship fire support, thereby revealing his own location that led to his death?
11. Who gave the order to “STAND DOWN” that was heard repeatedly during the attacks?
12. What threat warnings existed before the attack, and what were the DOD and DOS responses to those warnings? What data (which will reveal exact timelines and command decisions) is contained within the various SITREPS, records, logs, videos and recordings maintained by the myriad of DOD, Intelligence Community and State Department Command Centers that were monitoring the events in Benghazi as they unfolded?
13. Why did the Commander-in Chief and Secretary of State never once check in during the night to find out the status of the crisis situation in Benghazi?
14. What was the nature of Ambassador Stevens’ business in Benghazi at the time of the attack?
15. What guidance has been provided to survivors and family members since the time of the attack, and who issued that guidance?
16. Why are so many agencies now requiring their personnel that were involved in or have access to information regarding the events that took place in Benghazi sign Non-Disclosure Agreements?
This was the most severe attack on American diplomatic facilities and personnel since the attacks on the US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998. Thus far, it appears that there has been no serious effort to determine critical details of this attack. This is inexcusable and demands immediate attention by the Congress. Congress must show some leadership and provide answers to the public as to what actually occurred in Benghazi. Americans have a right to demand a full accounting on this issue.
A longstanding American ethos was breached during the terrorist attack in Benghazi. America failed to provide adequate security to personnel deployed into harm’s way and then failed to respond when they were viciously attacked. Clearly, this is unacceptable and requires accountability. America has always held to the notion that no American will be left behind and that every effort will be made to respond when US personnel are threatened. Given our backgrounds, we are concerned that this sends a very negative message to future military and diplomatic personnel who may be deployed into dangerous environments. That message is that they will be left to their own devices when attacked. That is an unacceptable message.
The House Select Committee should focus on getting a detailed account of the events in Benghazi as soon as possible. H. Res. 36 will provide a structure for the conduct of a thorough inquiry of Benghazi and should be convened immediately.
We ask that you fulfill your responsibilities to the American people and take appropriate action regarding Benghazi. With over sixty members of the US House of Representatives calling for this Select Committee already, it seems that the time is right to take appropriate action on Benghazi.
CBS Devotes Two Straight Days of Coverage to ‘Possible Cover-Up’ on Benghazi; ABC, NBC Out to Lunch
By Matthew Balan
CBS used its Sunday evening and Monday morning newscasts to keep the spotlight on the question of a “possible cover-up” surrounding the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Jeff Glor led CBS Evening News with the scoop from earlier in the day on Face the Nation – that a “career U.S. diplomat is raising new questions” about the Obama administration’s claim that the attack spontaneously erupted in response to an early protest in Egypt.
Monday’s CBS This Morning also aired a report on this latest development on the September 11, 2012 attack. Meanwhile, ABC and NBC have yet to pick up on the veteran diplomat’s allegations, despite the fact that he is set to testify publicly to Congress on the issue on Wednesday.
Glor teased a report from correspondent David Martin by trumpeting that “a new witness emerges – a senior U.S. diplomat contradicts the White House and seems to support Republican claims of a cover-up over the attack in Benghazi.” Martin first outlined what Rep. Darrell Issa had revealed earlier in the day on Face the Nation:
DAVID MARTIN: Greg Hicks – at the time, the number-two diplomat at the U.S. embassy in Tripoli…directly contradicts administration claims that at first, the attack was thought to be nothing more than a demonstration growing out of a similar protest that day in Cairo. ‘I thought it was a terrorist attack from the get-go. I think everybody in the mission thought it was a terrorist attack from the beginning.’
The CBS journalist continued with a clip of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s now-discredited assertion about the terror attack, which she made on several Sunday morning talk shows on September 16, 2012. He also noted that Rep. Issa “pointed out Rice’s statement directly contradicted the president of Libya, who had appeared just before her on ‘Face the Nation’.”
Near the end of the segment, Martin underlined a key assertion from Hicks – that the diplomat “told committee investigators Rice’s words were an insult to the president of Libya, and may have hobbled efforts to capture those responsible for the attack. ‘I firmly believe that the reason it took us so long to get the FBI to Benghazi is because of those Sunday talk shows.’”
Hours later, on Monday’s CBS This Morning, correspondent Margaret Brennan rehashed much of what her colleague had reported the previous evening. Brennan also highlighted another statement from Hicks on Rice’s apparent slight to the Libyan president:
MARGARET BRENNAN: Hicks said that the public contradiction was a personal insult to the Libyan president, because Ambassador Rice – quote, ‘basically said that the president of Libya is either a liar or doesn’t know what he’s talking about. My jaw hit the floor as I watched this.’ He believes that’s why the Libyan government refused to allow the FBI access to the crime scene for several weeks.
The Benghazi talking points: What’s known and unknown
Posted by Glenn Kessler
“I wasn’t involved in the talking points process…. As I understand it, as I’ve been told, it was a typical interagency process where staff, including from the State Department, all participated, to try to come up with whatever was going to be made publicly available, and it was an intelligence product.”
— Then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Jan. 23, 2013
New information is raising questions about the development of the administration’s talking points on the deadly attack on the diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, which left four Americans, including the ambassador, dead.
Readers may recall that The Fact Checker concluded that there was something rather odd about U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice’s comments on the Sunday news shows shortly after the attack. Rice said the attack “began spontaneously” because of a reaction to a protest in Cairo sparked by a “hateful video,” and there was no indication it was “premeditated or preplanned.”
We awarded her Two Pinocchios the morning after she appeared on the shows, concluding that “the publicly available evidence stands in stark contrast to Rice’s talking points.”
The White House at the time sharply disputed that conclusion, but over time that column has held up rather well. (In an interview with congressional investigators that was released over the weekend, deputy chief of mission Gregory Hicks said “my jaw hit the floor as I watched this.”) Some readers have suggested we should boost the Pinocchio rating for Rice’s comments. Still, it is clear Rice was simply mouthing the words given to her. The bigger mystery now is who was involved in writing — and rewriting — the talking points.
The talking points have become important because, in the midst of President Obama’s reelection campaign, for a number of days they helped focus the journalistic narrative on an anti-Islam video — and away from a preplanned attack. As we noted in our timeline of administration statements, it took two weeks for the White House to formally acknowledge that Obama believed the attack was terrorism.
We also have awarded Pinocchios to Republicans for claims about Benghazi. In this column, as a reader service, we outline below some of the new disclosures, contained in a report by House Republicans and an article in the Weekly Standard, and contrast the new information with previous statements made by administration officials.
The House report contains references to specific e-mails between administration officials; the Weekly Standard then identifies who wrote the e-mails as well as various drafts of the talking points. As far as we know, the administration has not publicly denied the information about the talking points contained in the GOP report or the article.
The key new disclosure is that senior levels of the White House and State Department were closely involved in the rewriting of the talking points. Previously, Obama administration officials had strongly suggested that the talking points were developed almost exclusively by intelligence officials.
“Ambassador Rice was using unclassified talking points that were developed by the intelligence community and provided not just to her, not just to the executive branch, but to the legislative branch. And they represented the best assessment by our intelligence professionals about what had happened in Benghazi at that time.”
“The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two — of these two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility,’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate. Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened.”
Note how Carney stressed that this was “developed by the intelligence community” and the “talking points originated from the intelligence community.”
In a narrow sense, this is correct. Both the House report and the Weekly Standard say the CIA created — or “originated” — the first draft of the talking points. The version as of Friday morning, Sept. 14, 2012, was rather detailed, saying that “Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qaeda participated in the attack” and mentioning the militant group Ansar al-Sharia. It also referred to previous attacks against foreign interests and the possibility there had been surveillance of the U.S. facility.
But a senior State Department official — identified by the Weekly Standard as State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland — objected to this draft after being asked to clear the talking points for release. The CIA made some changes, but apparently that was not enough. Nuland said in an e-mail disclosed by the House report that the edits did not “resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership” and that the State Department’s leadership “was consulting with [National Security Staff.]”
(Update: Reading between the lines, part of State’s concern appears to be inconsistency in messaging. Nuland, as State Department spokesman, had been constrained from saying much about the attack at the podium, and now the CIA was proposing to give lawmakers much more information than the administration had released. Moreover, from State’s perspective, the original draft contained references to CIA’s warnings about the security environment, which appeared designed to deflect attention from the agency’s substantial role in Benghazi.)
Minutes later, a White House official (said to be Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications), who was part of the email group receiving Nuland’s message, e-mailed to say that the State Department’s concerns would need to be addressed and the issue would be resolved at a meeting the next day at the White House.
The result, after the meeting, was a wholesale rewriting of the talking points. The House report says “the actual edits, including deleting all references to al-Qaeda, were made by a current high-ranking CIA official,” which the Weekly Standard identifies as Deputy Director Mike Morell.
Oddly, in November, three GOP senators released a statement saying that Morell had told them that the references to al-Qaeda had been removed by the FBI — but then six hours later the CIA contacted them to say Morell “misspoke” and instead the CIA had actually made those deletions. His own apparent role appears not to have been mentioned.
Morell may have had his hand on the pen, but the available evidence suggests that White House and State Department had much more involvement than the “single adjustment” of changing the word “consulate” to “diplomatic facility,” as Carney asserted.
The biggest unknown is whether the “building leadership” in the State Department that objected to the initial talking points included anyone on Clinton’s immediate staff. (One presumes that nit-picking over wording would not have risen to Clinton’s level.) There is no indication that Nuland had any role in crafting or even discussing the talking points after her email on Friday evening, nor is it clear from the email portions that have been released whether she had actually consulted with other officials before objecting to the draft.
Nuland is expected to be nominated for assistant secretary for European affairs. Lawmakers are likely to question her closely on this point during her confirmation hearings.
Clinton, during her testimony before the Senate and the House in January, made the following comments about the development of the talking points. She also stressed it was an “intelligence product” and said she was not involved in the “talking points process” and she “personally” was not focused on them — odd locutions that leave open the possibility that she was aware of the internal debate at the time.
“I would say that I personally was not focused on talking points. I was focused on keeping our people safe.”
“I wasn’t involved in the talking points process…. As I understand it, as I’ve been told, it was a typical interagency process where staff, including from the State Department, all participated, to try to come up with whatever was going to be made publicly available, and it was an intelligence product.”
“I was not involved in the so-called talking points process. My understanding is it was a typical process, trying to get to the best information available. It was an intelligence product.”
“The evidence was being sifted and analyzed by the intelligence community, which is why the intelligence community was the principal decider about what went into talking points. And there was also the added problem of nobody wanting to say things that would undermine the investigation.”
As more information emerges, we will continue to track how the administration’s statements hold up over time and whether more Pinocchio ratings are appropriate.
Democrats Split On How To Deal With Nation’s Debt, Key Leaders Come Out Against Spending Cuts
Chairman Hensarling Opening Statement at Hearing with Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke
Chairman Hensarling’s Opening Statement at Hearing with FHFA Director Edward J. DeMarco
US Debt A Threat To National Security
U.S. National Debt Documentary Part 1
U.S. National Debt Documentary Part 2
U.S. National Debt Documentary Part 3
U.S. National Debt Documentary Part 4
U.S. National Debt Documentary Part 5
U.S. National Debt Documentary Part 6
‘US hides real debt, in worse shape than Greece’
Does Government Have a Revenue or Spending Problem?
What If the National Debt Were Your Debt?
How Big Is the U.S. Debt?
Funding Government by the Minute
Why Not Print More Money?
Yaron Answers: Can The U.S. Go Bankrupt?
US Debt Crisis – Perfectly Explained
Deficits, Debts and Unfunded Liabilities: The Consequences of Excessive Government Spending
Capitalism Without Guilt – Yaron Brook on morals of capitalism.
The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2013 to 2023
Economic growth will remain slow this year, CBO anticipates, as gradual improvement in many of the forces that drive the economy is offset by the effects of budgetary changes that are scheduled to occur under current law. After this year, economic growth will speed up, CBO projects, causing the unemployment rate to decline and inflation and interest rates to eventually rise from their current low levels. Nevertheless, the unemployment rate is expected to remain above 7½ percent through next year; if that happens, 2014 will be the sixth consecutive year with unemployment exceeding 7½ percent of the labor force—the longest such period in the past 70 years.
If the current laws that govern federal taxes and spending do not change, the budget deficit will shrink this year to $845 billion, or 5.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), its smallest size since 2008. In CBO’s baseline projections, deficits continue to shrink over the next few years, falling to 2.4 percent of GDP by 2015. Deficits are projected to increase later in the coming decade, however, because of the pressures of an aging population, rising health care costs, an expansion of federal subsidies for health insurance, and growing interest payments on federal debt. As a result, federal debt held by the public is projected to remain historically high relative to the size of the economy for the next decade. By 2023, if current laws remain in place, debt will equal 77 percent of GDP and be on an upward path, CBO projects (see figure below).
Such high and rising debt would have serious negative consequences: When interest rates rose to more normal levels, federal spending on interest payments would increase substantially. Moreover, because federal borrowing reduces national saving, the capital stock would be smaller and total wages would be lower than they would be if the debt was reduced. In addition, lawmakers would have less flexibility than they might ordinarily to use tax and spending policies to respond to unexpected challenges. Finally, such a large debt would increase the risk of a fiscal crisis, during which investors would lose so much confidence in the government’s ability to manage its budget that the government would be unable to borrow at affordable rates.
Under Current Law, Federal Debt Will Stay at Historically High Levels Relative to GDP
The federal budget deficit, which shrank as a percentage of GDP for the third year in a row in 2012, will fall again in 2013, if current laws remain the same. At an estimated $845 billion, the 2013 imbalance would be the first deficit in five years below $1 trillion; and at 5.3 percent of GDP, it would be only about half as large, relative to the size of the economy, as the deficit was in 2009. Nevertheless, if the laws that govern taxes and spending do not change, federal debt held by the public will reach 76 percent of GDP by the end of this fiscal year, the largest percentage since 1950.
With revenues expected to rise more rapidly than spending in the next few years under current law, the deficit is projected to dip as low as 2.4 percent of GDP by 2015. In later years, however, projected deficits rise steadily, reaching almost 4 percent of GDP in 2023. For the 2014–2023 period, deficits in CBO’s baseline projections total $7.0 trillion. With such deficits, federal debt would remain above 73 percent of GDP—far higher than the 39 percent average seen over the past four decades. (As recently as the end of 2007, federal debt equaled just 36 percent of GDP.) Moreover, debt would be increasing relative to the size of the economy in the second half of the decade.
Those projections are not CBO’s predictions of future outcomes. As specified in law, CBO’s baseline projections are constructed under the assumption that current laws generally remain unchanged, so that they can serve as a benchmark against which potential changes in law can be measured.
Revenues
Federal revenues will increase by roughly 25 percent between 2013 and 2015 under current law, CBO projects. That increase is expected to result from a rise in income because of the growing economy, from policy changes that are scheduled to take effect during that period, and from policy changes that have already taken effect but whose full impact on revenues will not be felt until after this year (such as the recent increase in tax rates on income above certain thresholds).
As a result of those factors, revenues are projected to grow from 15.8 percent of GDP in 2012 to 19.1 percent of GDP in 2015—compared with an average of 17.9 percent of GDP over the past 40 years. Under current law, revenues will remain at roughly 19 percent of GDP from 2015 through 2023, CBO estimates.
Outlays
In CBO’s baseline projections, federal spending rises over the next few years in dollar terms but falls relative to the size of the economy. During those years, the growth of spending will be restrained both by the strengthening economy (as spending for programs such as unemployment compensation drops) and by provisions of the Budget Control Act of 2011 (Public Law 112-25). Although outlays are projected to decline from 22.8 percent of GDP in 2012 to 21.5 percent by 2017, they will still exceed their 40-year average of 21.0 percent. (Outlays peaked at 25.2 percent of GDP in 2009 but have fallen relative to GDP in the past few years.)
After 2017, if current laws remain in place, outlays will start growing again as a percentage of GDP. The aging of the population, increasing health care costs, and a significant expansion of eligibility for federal subsidies for health insurance will substantially boost spending for Social Security and for major health care programs relative to the size of the economy. At the same time, rising interest rates will significantly increase the government’s debt-service costs. In CBO’s baseline, outlays reach about 23 percent of GDP in 2023 and are on an upward trajectory.
Changes from CBO’s Previous Projections
The deficits projected in CBO’s current baseline are significantly larger than the ones in CBO’s baseline of August 2012. At that time, CBO projected deficits totaling $2.3 trillion for the 2013–2022 period; in the current baseline, the total deficit for that period has risen by $4.6 trillion. That increase stems chiefly from the enactment of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (P.L. 112-240), which made changes to tax and spending laws that will boost deficits by a total of $4.0 trillion (excluding debt-service costs) between 2013 and 2022, according to estimates by CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation. CBO’s updated baseline also takes into account other legislative actions since August, as well as a new economic forecast and some technical revisions to its projections.
Looming Policy Decisions May Have a Substantial Effect on the Budget Outlook
Current law leaves many key budget issues unresolved, and this year, lawmakers will face three significant budgetary deadlines:
Automatic reductions in spending are scheduled to be implemented at the beginning of March; when that happens, funding for many government activities will be reduced by 5 percent or more.
The continuing resolution that currently provides operational funding for much of the government will expire in late March. If no additional appropriations are provided by then, nonessential functions of the government will have to cease operations.
A statutory limit on federal debt, which was temporarily removed, will take effect again in mid-May. The Treasury will be able to continue borrowing for a short time after that by using what are known as extraordinary measures. But to avoid a default on the government’s obligations, the debt limit will need to be adjusted before those measures are exhausted later in the year.
Budgetary outcomes will also be affected by decisions about whether to continue certain policies that have been in effect in recent years. Such policies could be continued, for example, by extending some tax provisions that are scheduled to expire (and that have routinely been extended in the past) or by preventing the 25 percent cut in Medicare’s payment rates for physicians that is due to occur in 2014. If, for instance, lawmakers eliminated the automatic spending cuts scheduled to take effect in March (but left in place the original caps on discretionary funding set by the Budget Control Act), prevented the sharp reduction in Medicare’s payment rates for physicians, and extended the tax provisions that are scheduled to expire at the end of calendar year 2013 (or, in some cases, in later years), budget deficits would be substantially larger over the coming decade than in CBO’s baseline projections. With those changes, and no offsetting reductions in deficits, debt held by the public would rise to 87 percent of GDP by the end of 2023 rather than to 77 percent.
In addition to those decisions, lawmakers will continue to face the longer-term budgetary issues posed by the substantial federal debt and by the implications of rising health care costs and the aging of the population.
Economic Growth Is Likely to Be Slow in 2013 and Pick Up in Later Years
The U.S. economy expanded modestly in calendar year 2012, continuing the slow recovery seen since the recession ended in mid-2009. Although economic growth is expected to remain slow again this year, CBO anticipates that underlying factors in the economy will spur a more rapid expansion beginning next year.
Even so, under the fiscal policies embodied in current law, output is expected to remain below its potential (or maximum sustainable) level until 2017 (see figure below). By CBO’s estimates, in the fourth quarter of 2012, real (inflation-adjusted) GDP was about 5½ percent below its potential level. That gap was only modestly smaller than the gap between actual and potential GDP that existed at the end of the recession because the growth of output since then has been only slightly greater than the growth of potential output. With such a large gap between actual and potential GDP persisting for so long, CBO projects that the total loss of output, relative to the economy’s potential, between 2007 and 2017 will be equivalent to nearly half of the output that the United States produced last year.
The Economic Outlook for 2013
CBO expects that economic activity will expand slowly this year, with real GDP growing by just 1.4 percent. That slow growth reflects a combination of ongoing improvement in underlying economic factors and fiscal tightening that has already begun or is scheduled to occur—including the expiration of a 2 percentage-point cut in the Social Security payroll tax, an increase in tax rates on income above certain thresholds, and scheduled automatic reductions in federal spending. That subdued economic growth will limit businesses’ need to hire additional workers, thereby causing the unemployment rate to stay near 8 percent this year, CBO projects. The rate of inflation and interest rates are projected to remain low.
The Economic Outlook for 2014 to 2018
After the economy adjusts this year to the fiscal tightening inherent in current law, underlying economic factors will lead to more rapid growth, CBO projects—3.4 percent in 2014 and an average of 3.6 percent a year from 2015 through 2018. In particular, CBO expects that the effects of the housing and financial crisis will continue to fade and that an upswing in housing construction (though from a very low level), rising real estate and stock prices, and increasing availability of credit will help to spur a virtuous cycle of faster growth in employment, income, consumer spending, and business investment over the next few years.
Nevertheless, under current law, CBO expects the unemployment rate to remain high—above 7½ percent through 2014—before falling to 5½ percent at the end of 2017. The rate of inflation is projected to rise slowly after this year: CBO estimates that the annual increase in the price index for personal consumption expenditures will reach about 2 percent in 2015. The interest rate on 3 month Treasury bills—which has hovered near zero for the past several years—is expected to climb to 4 percent by the end of 2017, and the rate on 10-year Treasury notes is projected to rise from 2.1 percent in 2013 to 5.2 percent in 2017.
The Economic Outlook for 2019 to 2023
For the second half of the coming decade, CBO does not attempt to predict the cyclical ups and downs of the economy; rather, CBO assumes that GDP will stay at its maximum sustainable level. On that basis, CBO projects that both actual and potential real GDP will grow at an average rate of 2¼ percent a year between 2019 and 2023. That pace is much slower than the average growth rate of potential GDP since 1950. The main reason is that the growth of the labor force will slow down because of the retirement of the baby boomers and an end to the long-standing increase in women’s participation in the labor force. CBO also projects that the unemployment rate will fall to 5.2 percent by 2023 and that inflation and interest rates will stay at about their 2018 levels throughout the 2019–2023 period.
Updated February 5, 2013, to correct an error in note “a” to Table 1-7.
May 3rd 2013 CNBC Stock Market Squawk Box (April Jobs Report)
Jobless Rate Falls to Four-Year Low, and More
Jobs Pop, Unemployment Rate Drops
Data extracted on: May 3, 2013 (11:51:32 AM)
Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey
Employment Level
143,579,000
Series Id: LNS12000000
Seasonally Adjusted Series title: (Seas) Employment Level Labor force status: Employed Type of data: Number in thousands Age: 16 years and over
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
136559(1)
136598
136701
137270
136630
136940
136531
136662
136893
137088
137322
137614
2001
137778
137612
137783
137299
137092
136873
137071
136241
136846
136392
136238
136047
2002
135701
136438
136177
136126
136539
136415
136413
136705
137302
137008
136521
136426
2003
137417(1)
137482
137434
137633
137544
137790
137474
137549
137609
137984
138424
138411
2004
138472(1)
138542
138453
138680
138852
139174
139556
139573
139487
139732
140231
140125
2005
140245(1)
140385
140654
141254
141609
141714
142026
142434
142401
142548
142499
142752
2006
143150(1)
143457
143741
143761
144089
144353
144202
144625
144815
145314
145534
145970
2007
146028(1)
146057
146320
145586
145903
146063
145905
145682
146244
145946
146595
146273
2008
146378(1)
146156
146086
146132
145908
145737
145532
145203
145076
144802
144100
143369
2009
142153(1)
141644
140721
140652
140250
140005
139898
139481
138810
138421
138665
138025
2010
138439(1)
138624
138767
139296
139255
139148
139167
139405
139388
139097
139046
139295
2011
139253(1)
139471
139643
139606
139681
139405
139509
139870
140164
140314
140771
140896
2012
141608(1)
142019
142020
141934
142302
142448
142250
142164
142974
143328
143277
143305
2013
143322(1)
143492
143286
143579
1 : Data affected by changes in population controls.
Civilian Labor Force Level
155,238,000
Series Id: LNS11000000
Seasonally Adjusted Series title: (Seas) Civilian Labor Force Level Labor force status: Civilian labor force Type of data: Number in thousands Age: 16 years and over
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
142267(1)
142456
142434
142751
142388
142591
142278
142514
142518
142622
142962
143248
2001
143800
143701
143924
143569
143318
143357
143654
143284
143989
144086
144240
144305
2002
143883
144653
144481
144725
144938
144808
144803
145009
145552
145314
145041
145066
2003
145937(1)
146100
146022
146474
146500
147056
146485
146445
146530
146716
147000
146729
2004
146842(1)
146709
146944
146850
147065
147460
147692
147564
147415
147793
148162
148059
2005
148029(1)
148364
148391
148926
149261
149238
149432
149779
149954
150001
150065
150030
2006
150214(1)
150641
150813
150881
151069
151354
151377
151716
151662
152041
152406
152732
2007
153144(1)
152983
153051
152435
152670
153041
153054
152749
153414
153183
153835
153918
2008
154063(1)
153653
153908
153769
154303
154313
154469
154641
154570
154876
154639
154655
2009
154232(1)
154526
154142
154479
154742
154710
154505
154300
153815
153804
153887
153120
2010
153455(1)
153702
153960
154577
154110
153623
153709
154078
153966
153681
154140
153649
2011
153244(1)
153269
153358
153478
153552
153369
153325
153707
154074
154010
154096
153945
2012
154356(1)
154825
154707
154451
154998
155149
154995
154647
155056
155576
155319
155511
2013
155654(1)
155524
155028
155238
1 : Data affected by changes in population controls.
Labor Force Participation Rate
63.3%
Series Id: LNS11300000
Seasonally Adjusted Series title: (Seas) Labor Force Participation Rate Labor force status: Civilian labor force participation rate Type of data: Percent or rate Age: 16 years and over
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
67.3
67.3
67.3
67.3
67.1
67.1
66.9
66.9
66.9
66.8
66.9
67.0
2001
67.2
67.1
67.2
66.9
66.7
66.7
66.8
66.5
66.8
66.7
66.7
66.7
2002
66.5
66.8
66.6
66.7
66.7
66.6
66.5
66.6
66.7
66.6
66.4
66.3
2003
66.4
66.4
66.3
66.4
66.4
66.5
66.2
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.1
65.9
2004
66.1
66.0
66.0
65.9
66.0
66.1
66.1
66.0
65.8
65.9
66.0
65.9
2005
65.8
65.9
65.9
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.2
66.1
66.1
66.0
66.0
2006
66.0
66.1
66.2
66.1
66.1
66.2
66.1
66.2
66.1
66.2
66.3
66.4
2007
66.4
66.3
66.2
65.9
66.0
66.0
66.0
65.8
66.0
65.8
66.0
66.0
2008
66.2
66.0
66.1
65.9
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.1
66.0
66.0
65.9
65.8
2009
65.7
65.8
65.6
65.7
65.7
65.7
65.5
65.4
65.1
65.0
65.0
64.6
2010
64.8
64.9
64.9
65.1
64.9
64.6
64.6
64.7
64.6
64.4
64.6
64.3
2011
64.2
64.2
64.2
64.2
64.2
64.0
64.0
64.1
64.2
64.1
64.1
64.0
2012
63.7
63.9
63.8
63.6
63.8
63.8
63.7
63.5
63.6
63.8
63.6
63.6
2013
63.6
63.5
63.3
63.3
Unemployment Level
11,659,000
Series Id: LNS13000000
Seasonally Adjusted Series title: (Seas) Unemployment Level Labor force status: Unemployed Type of data: Number in thousands Age: 16 years and over
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
5708
5858
5733
5481
5758
5651
5747
5853
5625
5534
5639
5634
2001
6023
6089
6141
6271
6226
6484
6583
7042
7142
7694
8003
8258
2002
8182
8215
8304
8599
8399
8393
8390
8304
8251
8307
8520
8640
2003
8520
8618
8588
8842
8957
9266
9011
8896
8921
8732
8576
8317
2004
8370
8167
8491
8170
8212
8286
8136
7990
7927
8061
7932
7934
2005
7784
7980
7737
7672
7651
7524
7406
7345
7553
7453
7566
7279
2006
7064
7184
7072
7120
6980
7001
7175
7091
6847
6727
6872
6762
2007
7116
6927
6731
6850
6766
6979
7149
7067
7170
7237
7240
7645
2008
7685
7497
7822
7637
8395
8575
8937
9438
9494
10074
10538
11286
2009
12079
12881
13421
13826
14492
14705
14607
14819
15005
15382
15223
15095
2010
15016
15078
15192
15281
14856
14475
14542
14673
14577
14584
15094
14354
2011
13992
13798
13716
13872
13871
13964
13817
13837
13910
13696
13325
13049
2012
12748
12806
12686
12518
12695
12701
12745
12483
12082
12248
12042
12206
2013
12332
12032
11742
11659
Unemployment Rate U-3
7.5%
Series Id: LNS14000000
Seasonally Adjusted Series title: (Seas) Unemployment Rate Labor force status: Unemployment rate Type of data: Percent or rate Age: 16 years and over
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
4.0
4.1
4.0
3.8
4.0
4.0
4.0
4.1
3.9
3.9
3.9
3.9
2001
4.2
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.3
4.5
4.6
4.9
5.0
5.3
5.5
5.7
2002
5.7
5.7
5.7
5.9
5.8
5.8
5.8
5.7
5.7
5.7
5.9
6.0
2003
5.8
5.9
5.9
6.0
6.1
6.3
6.2
6.1
6.1
6.0
5.8
5.7
2004
5.7
5.6
5.8
5.6
5.6
5.6
5.5
5.4
5.4
5.5
5.4
5.4
2005
5.3
5.4
5.2
5.2
5.1
5.0
5.0
4.9
5.0
5.0
5.0
4.9
2006
4.7
4.8
4.7
4.7
4.6
4.6
4.7
4.7
4.5
4.4
4.5
4.4
2007
4.6
4.5
4.4
4.5
4.4
4.6
4.7
4.6
4.7
4.7
4.7
5.0
2008
5.0
4.9
5.1
5.0
5.4
5.6
5.8
6.1
6.1
6.5
6.8
7.3
2009
7.8
8.3
8.7
9.0
9.4
9.5
9.5
9.6
9.8
10.0
9.9
9.9
2010
9.8
9.8
9.9
9.9
9.6
9.4
9.5
9.5
9.5
9.5
9.8
9.3
2011
9.1
9.0
8.9
9.0
9.0
9.1
9.0
9.0
9.0
8.9
8.6
8.5
2012
8.3
8.3
8.2
8.1
8.2
8.2
8.2
8.1
7.8
7.9
7.8
7.8
2013
7.9
7.7
7.6
7.5
16-19 Years (Teenage) Unemployment Rate
24.1%
Series Id: LNS14000012
Seasonally Adjusted Series title: (Seas) Unemployment Rate – 16-19 yrs. Labor force status: Unemployment rate Type of data: Percent or rate Age: 16 to 19 years
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
12.7
13.8
13.3
12.6
12.8
12.3
13.4
14.0
13.0
12.8
13.0
13.2
2001
13.8
13.7
13.8
13.9
13.4
14.2
14.4
15.6
15.2
16.0
15.9
17.0
2002
16.5
16.0
16.6
16.7
16.6
16.7
16.8
17.0
16.3
15.1
17.1
16.9
2003
17.2
17.2
17.8
17.7
17.9
19.0
18.2
16.6
17.6
17.2
15.7
16.2
2004
17.0
16.5
16.8
16.6
17.1
17.0
17.8
16.7
16.6
17.4
16.4
17.6
2005
16.2
17.5
17.1
17.8
17.8
16.3
16.1
16.1
15.5
16.1
17.0
14.9
2006
15.1
15.3
16.1
14.6
14.0
15.8
15.9
16.0
16.3
15.2
14.8
14.6
2007
14.8
14.9
14.9
15.9
15.9
16.3
15.3
15.9
15.9
15.4
16.2
16.8
2008
17.8
16.6
16.1
15.9
19.0
19.2
20.7
18.6
19.1
20.0
20.3
20.5
2009
20.7
22.2
22.2
22.2
23.4
24.7
24.3
25.0
25.9
27.1
26.9
26.6
2010
26.0
25.4
26.2
25.5
26.6
26.0
26.0
25.7
25.8
27.2
24.6
25.1
2011
25.5
24.0
24.4
24.7
24.0
24.7
24.9
25.2
24.4
24.1
23.9
22.9
2012
23.4
23.7
25.0
24.9
24.4
23.7
23.9
24.5
23.7
23.7
23.6
23.5
2013
23.4
25.1
24.2
24.1
Average Weeks Unemployed
36.5%
Series Id: LNS13008275 Seasonally Adjusted Series title: (Seas) Average Weeks Unemployed Labor force status: Unemployed Type of data: Number of weeks Age: 16 years and over
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
13.1
12.6
12.7
12.4
12.6
12.3
13.4
12.9
12.2
12.7
12.4
12.5
2001
12.7
12.8
12.8
12.4
12.1
12.7
12.9
13.3
13.2
13.3
14.3
14.5
2002
14.7
15.0
15.4
16.3
16.8
16.9
16.9
16.5
17.6
17.8
17.6
18.5
2003
18.5
18.5
18.1
19.4
19.0
19.9
19.7
19.2
19.5
19.3
19.9
19.8
2004
19.9
20.1
19.8
19.6
19.8
20.5
18.8
18.8
19.4
19.5
19.7
19.4
2005
19.5
19.1
19.5
19.6
18.6
17.9
17.6
18.4
17.9
17.9
17.5
17.5
2006
16.9
17.8
17.1
16.7
17.1
16.6
17.1
17.1
17.1
16.3
16.2
16.1
2007
16.3
16.7
17.8
16.9
16.6
16.5
17.2
17.0
16.3
17.0
17.3
16.6
2008
17.5
16.9
16.5
16.9
16.6
17.1
17.0
17.7
18.6
19.9
18.9
19.9
2009
19.8
20.1
20.9
21.6
22.4
23.9
25.1
25.3
26.7
27.4
29.0
29.7
2010
30.4
29.8
31.6
33.2
33.9
34.4
33.8
33.6
33.4
34.0
34.1
34.8
2011
37.3
37.4
39.2
38.6
39.5
39.6
40.4
40.3
40.4
38.9
40.7
40.7
2012
40.2
39.9
39.5
39.1
39.6
39.7
38.8
39.3
39.6
39.9
39.7
38.1
2013
35.3
36.9
37.1
36.5
Unemployment Level New Entrants
1,280,000
Series Id: LNS13023569
Seasonally Adjusted Series title: (Seas) Unemployment Level – New Entrants Labor force status: Unemployed Type of data: Number in thousands Age: 16 years and over Unemployed entrant status: New entrants
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
394
420
429
406
466
427
433
499
415
402
419
490
2001
444
396
378
457
468
467
448
485
473
481
495
515
2002
484
507
538
527
497
549
545
612
536
479
591
535
2003
599
584
630
635
630
661
669
652
686
636
593
693
2004
676
666
631
652
718
649
702
704
695
734
700
702
2005
621
753
712
764
710
650
630
626
607
638
673
633
2006
616
711
636
591
517
646
639
646
612
572
591
586
2007
622
599
615
620
530
640
602
588
668
696
678
679
2008
677
656
704
625
797
786
835
821
815
819
763
803
2009
779
999
874
901
965
1002
1004
1085
1150
1100
1326
1240
2010
1199
1192
1155
1188
1201
1170
1207
1279
1211
1277
1272
1308
2011
1352
1289
1308
1301
1220
1231
1278
1260
1370
1289
1271
1286
2012
1258
1382
1421
1362
1347
1316
1299
1268
1253
1302
1326
1291
2013
1287
1279
1316
1280
Not in Labor Force, Search For Work and Available
2,347,000
Series Id: LNU05026642
Not Seasonally Adjusted Series title: (Unadj) Not in Labor Force, Searched For Work and Available Labor force status: Not in labor force Type of data: Number in thousands Age: 16 years and over Job desires/not in labor force: Want a job now Reasons not in labor force: Available to work now
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
1207
1281
1219
1216
1113
1142
1172
1097
1166
1044
1100
1125
1157
2001
1295
1337
1109
1131
1157
1170
1232
1364
1335
1398
1331
1330
1266
2002
1532
1423
1358
1397
1467
1380
1507
1456
1501
1416
1401
1432
1439
2003
1598
1590
1577
1399
1428
1468
1566
1665
1544
1586
1473
1483
1531
2004
1670
1691
1643
1526
1533
1492
1557
1587
1561
1647
1517
1463
1574
2005
1804
1673
1588
1511
1428
1583
1516
1583
1438
1414
1415
1589
1545
2006
1644
1471
1468
1310
1388
1584
1522
1592
1299
1478
1366
1252
1448
2007
1577
1451
1385
1391
1406
1454
1376
1365
1268
1364
1363
1344
1395
2008
1729
1585
1352
1414
1416
1558
1573
1640
1604
1637
1947
1908
1614
2009
2130
2051
2106
2089
2210
2176
2282
2270
2219
2373
2323
2486
2226
2010
2539
2527
2255
2432
2223
2591
2622
2370
2548
2602
2531
2609
2487
2011
2800
2730
2434
2466
2206
2680
2785
2575
2511
2555
2591
2540
2573
2012
2809
2608
2352
2363
2423
2483
2529
2561
2517
2433
2505
2614
2516
2013
2443
2588
2326
2347
Not in Labor Force, Searched for Work and Available,
Discouraged Reasons For Not Currently Looking
835,000
Series Id: LNU05026645
Not Seasonally Adjusted Series title: (Unadj) Not in Labor Force, Searched For Work and Available, Discouraged Reasons For Not Currently Looking Labor force status: Not in labor force Type of data: Number in thousands Age: 16 years and over Job desires/not in labor force: Want a job now Reasons not in labor force: Discouragement over job prospects (Persons who believe no job is available.)
Year
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Annual
2000
236
267
258
331
280
309
266
203
253
232
236
269
262
2001
301
287
349
349
328
294
310
337
285
331
328
348
321
2002
328
375
330
320
414
342
405
378
392
359
385
403
369
2003
449
450
474
437
482
478
470
503
388
462
457
433
457
2004
432
484
514
492
476
478
504
534
412
429
392
442
466
2005
515
485
480
393
392
476
499
384
362
392
404
451
436
2006
396
386
451
381
323
481
428
448
325
331
349
274
381
2007
442
375
381
399
368
401
367
392
276
320
349
363
369
2008
467
396
401
412
400
420
461
381
467
484
608
642
462
2009
734
731
685
740
792
793
796
758
706
808
861
929
778
2010
1065
1204
994
1197
1083
1207
1185
1110
1209
1219
1282
1318
1173
2011
993
1020
921
989
822
982
1119
977
1037
967
1096
945
989
2012
1059
1006
865
968
830
821
852
844
802
813
979
1068
909
2013
804
885
803
835
Total Unemployment Rate U-6
13.9%
Series Id: LNS13327709
Seasonally Adjusted Series title: (seas) Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of all civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers Labor force status: Aggregated totals unemployed Type of data: Percent or rate Age: 16 years and over Percent/rates: Unemployed and mrg attached and pt for econ reas as percent of labor force plus marg attached
2000
7.1
7.2
7.1
6.9
7.1
7.0
7.0
7.1
7.0
6.8
7.1
6.9
2001
7.3
7.4
7.3
7.4
7.5
7.9
7.8
8.1
8.7
9.3
9.4
9.6
2002
9.5
9.5
9.4
9.7
9.5
9.5
9.6
9.6
9.6
9.6
9.7
9.8
2003
10.0
10.2
10.0
10.2
10.1
10.3
10.3
10.1
10.4
10.2
10.0
9.8
2004
9.9
9.7
10.0
9.6
9.6
9.5
9.5
9.4
9.4
9.7
9.4
9.2
2005
9.3
9.3
9.1
8.9
8.9
9.0
8.8
8.9
9.0
8.7
8.7
8.6
2006
8.4
8.4
8.2
8.1
8.2
8.4
8.5
8.4
8.0
8.2
8.1
7.9
2007
8.4
8.2
8.0
8.2
8.2
8.3
8.4
8.4
8.4
8.4
8.4
8.8
2008
9.2
9.0
9.1
9.2
9.7
10.1
10.5
10.8
11.0
11.8
12.6
13.6
2009
14.2
15.1
15.7
15.9
16.4
16.5
16.5
16.7
16.7
17.1
17.1
17.1
2010
16.7
17.0
17.0
17.1
16.6
16.5
16.5
16.5
16.8
16.7
16.9
16.6
2011
16.2
16.0
15.8
16.0
15.8
16.1
16.0
16.1
16.3
16.0
15.5
15.2
2012
15.1
15.0
14.5
14.5
14.8
14.8
14.9
14.7
14.7
14.5
14.4
14.4
2013
14.4
14.3
13.8
13.9
Background Articles and Videos
Employment Situation Summary
Transmission of material in this release is embargoed USDL-13-0785
until 8:30 a.m. (EDT) Friday, May 3, 2013
Technical information:
Household data: (202) 691-6378 * cpsinfo@bls.gov * www.bls.gov/cps
Establishment data: (202) 691-6555 * cesinfo@bls.gov * www.bls.gov/ces
Media contact: (202) 691-5902 * PressOffice@bls.gov
THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- APRIL 2013
Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 165,000 in April, and the unemployment
rate was little changed at 7.5 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
reported today. Employment increased in professional and business services,
food services and drinking places, retail trade, and health care.
Household Survey Data
The unemployment rate, at 7.5 percent, changed little in April but has
declined by 0.4 percentage point since January. The number of unemployed
persons, at 11.7 million, was also little changed over the month; however,
unemployment has decreased by 673,000 since January. (See table A-1.)
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for adult women
(6.7 percent) declined in April, while the rates for adult men (7.1
percent), teenagers (24.1 percent), whites (6.7 percent), blacks (13.2
percent), and Hispanics (9.0 percent) showed little or no change. The
jobless rate for Asians was 5.1 percent (not seasonally adjusted),
little changed from a year earlier. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)
In April, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27
weeks or more) declined by 258,000 to 4.4 million; their share of the
unemployed declined by 2.2 percentage points to 37.4 percent. Over the
past 12 months, the number of long-term unemployed has decreased by
687,000, and their share has declined by 3.1 percentage points. (See
table A-12.)
The civilian labor force participation rate was 63.3 percent in April,
unchanged over the month but down from 63.6 percent in January. The
employment-population ratio, 58.6 percent, was about unchanged over
the month and has shown little movement, on net, over the past year.
(See table A-1.)
In April, the number of persons employed part time for economic
reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers)
increased by 278,000 to 7.9 million, largely offsetting a decrease in
March. These individuals were working part time because their hours
had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.
(See table A-8.)
In April, 2.3 million persons were marginally attached to the labor
force, essentially unchanged from a year earlier. (The data are not
seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force,
wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime
in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because
they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.
(See table A-16.)
Among the marginally attached, there were 835,000 discouraged workers
in April, down by 133,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not
seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently
looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them.
The remaining 1.5 million persons marginally attached to the labor
force in April had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the
survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities.
(See table A-16.)
Establishment Survey Data
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 165,000 in April, with
job gains in professional and business services, food services and
drinking places, retail trade, and health care. Over the prior 12
months, employment growth averaged 169,000 per month. (See table B-1.)
Professional and business services added 73,000 jobs in April and has
added 587,000 jobs over the past year. In April, employment rose in
temporary help services (+31,000), professional and technical services
(+23,000), and management of companies (+7,000).
Within leisure and hospitality, employment in food services and
drinking places rose by 38,000 over the month. Job growth in the food
services industry averaged 25,000 per month over the prior 12 months.
Retail trade employment increased by 29,000 in April. The industry
added an average of 21,000 jobs per month over the prior 12 months. In
April, job growth occurred in general merchandise stores (+15,000) and
in health and personal care stores (+5,000).
Health care added 19,000 jobs in April. Within the industry, employment
rose in ambulatory health care services (+14,000). Over the prior 12
months, job growth in health care averaged 24,000 per month. In April,
employment also continued its upward trend in social assistance (+7,000).
Employment changed little over the month in construction, with small
offsetting movements in the residential and nonresidential components.
Construction gained an average of 27,000 jobs per month over the prior
6 months. Manufacturing employment was unchanged in April.
Employment in other major industries, including mining and logging,
wholesale trade, transportation and warehousing, financial activities,
and government, showed little change over the month.
The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls
decreased by 0.2 hour in April to 34.4 hours. Within manufacturing,
the workweek decreased by 0.1 hour to 40.7 hours, and overtime declined
by 0.1 hour to 3.3 hours. The average workweek for production and
nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls decreased by 0.1
hour to 33.7 hours. (See tables B-2 and B-7.)
In April, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm
payrolls rose by 4 cents to $23.87. Over the year, average hourly
earnings have risen by 45 cents, or 1.9 percent. In April, average
hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory
employees edged up by 2 cents to $20.06. (See tables B-3 and B-8.)
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for February was
revised from +268,000 to +332,000, and the change for March was
revised from +88,000 to +138,000. With these revisions, employment
gains in February and March combined were 114,000 higher than
previously reported.
____________
The Employment Situation for May is scheduled to be released on
Friday, June 7, 2013, at 8:30 a.m. (EDT).
Employment Situation Summary Table A. Household data, seasonally adjusted
HOUSEHOLD DATA
Summary table A. Household data, seasonally adjusted
[Numbers in thousands]
CategoryApr.
2012Feb.
2013Mar.
2013Apr.
2013Change from:
Mar.
2013-
Apr.
2013Employment status Civilian noninstitutional population242,784244,828244,995245,175180Civilian labor force154,451155,524155,028155,238210Participation rate63.663.563.363.30.0Employed141,934143,492143,286143,579293Employment-population ratio58.558.658.558.60.1Unemployed12,51812,03211,74211,659-83Unemployment rate8.17.77.67.5-0.1Not in labor force88,33289,30489,96789,936-31 Unemployment rates Total, 16 years and over8.17.77.67.5-0.1Adult men (20 years and over)7.57.16.97.10.2Adult women (20 years and over)7.47.07.06.7-0.3Teenagers (16 to 19 years)24.925.124.224.1-0.1White7.46.86.76.70.0Black or African American13.113.813.313.2-0.1Asian (not seasonally adjusted)5.26.15.05.1-Hispanic or Latino ethnicity10.39.69.29.0-0.2 Total, 25 years and over6.86.36.26.1-0.1Less than a high school diploma12.511.211.111.60.5High school graduates, no college7.97.97.67.4-0.2Some college or associate degree7.56.76.46.40.0Bachelor’s degree and higher4.03.83.83.90.1 Reason for unemployment Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs6,8806,5226,3296,41081Job leavers989956986864-122Reentrants3,3363,3403,1763,151-25New entrants1,3621,2791,3161,280-36 Duration of unemployment Less than 5 weeks2,5672,6672,4642,474105 to 14 weeks2,8412,7822,8382,8481015 to 26 weeks1,9841,6951,7371,96723027 weeks and over5,0404,7974,6114,353-258 Employed persons at work part time Part time for economic reasons7,8967,9887,6387,916278Slack work or business conditions5,2105,1364,9065,129223Could only find part-time work2,3932,5782,5762,527-49Part time for noneconomic reasons18,86818,90818,74518,908163 Persons not in the labor force (not seasonally adjusted) Marginally attached to the labor force2,3632,5882,3262,347-Discouraged workers968885803835– Over-the-month changes are not displayed for not seasonally adjusted data.
NOTE: Persons whose ethnicity is identified as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race. Detail for the seasonally adjusted data shown in this table will not necessarily add to totals because of the independent seasonal adjustment of the various series. Updated population controls are introduced annually with the release of January data.
Employment Situation Summary Table B. Establishment data, seasonally adjusted
ESTABLISHMENT DATA
Summary table B. Establishment data, seasonally adjusted
Footnotes (1) Includes other industries, not shown separately. (2) Data relate to production employees in mining and logging and manufacturing, construction employees in construction, and nonsupervisory employees in the service-providing industries. (3) The indexes of aggregate weekly hours are calculated by dividing the current month’s estimates of aggregate hours by the corresponding annual average aggregate hours. (4) The indexes of aggregate weekly payrolls are calculated by dividing the current month’s estimates of aggregate weekly payrolls by the corresponding annual average aggregate weekly payrolls. (5) Figures are the percent of industries with employment increasing plus one-half of the industries with unchanged employment, where 50 percent indicates an equal balance between industries with increasing and decreasing employment. (p) Preliminary
Slow “growth”,GDP makeover, Keynesians demand more debt and inflation
The Fed, Ben Bernanke & the Economy (4/30/13)
Coming Economic Collapse Peter Schiff RT America
Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle | Roger W. Garrison
Tom Woods Discusses his New Documentary, The Bubble
Director of “The Bubble” Jimmy Morrison interview with ManifestLiberty.com Part 1/2
Director of “The Bubble” Jimmy Morrison interview with ManifestLiberty.com Part 2/2
Fed Keeps Interest Rates Low, Continues Bond Buying Program
The Federal Reserve held fast to its ultra-accommodative monetary policy Wednesday, solidified by what board members described as an economy weakened by fiscal policy.
Interest rates will remain at historically low levels while the U.S. central bank will not alter its $85 billion a month asset purchasing program, the Fed’s Open Markets Committee decided at this week’s meeting.
While recent meetings have been remarkable for signs of dissent over the long-standing Fed policy, the sentiment this month turned towards concerns about “downside risks” to growth, though the FOMC made no mention of the recent set of weak economic data.
The Federal Reserve held fast to its ultra-accommodative monetary policy Wednesday, solidified by what board members described as an economy weakened by fiscal policy.
Interest rates will remain at historically low levels while the U.S. central bank will not alter its $85 billion a month asset purchasing program, the Fed’s Open Markets Committee decided at this week’s meeting.
While recent meetings have been remarkable for signs of dissent over the long-standing Fed policy, the sentiment this month turned towards concerns about “downside risks” to growth, though the FOMC made no mention of the recent set of weak economic data.
While stocks have soared to new highs, the economy remains in slow-growth mode as it has throughout Chairman Ben Bernanke’s term, which began just before the onset of the financial crisis.
The stock market reacted little to the 2 pm news, maintaining an earlier selloff spurred over jobs fears.
Fed officials have long bemoaned Washington fiscal policy, with Congress and the White House in a continued stalemate that has resulted in a raft of mandated tax increases and spending cuts known as the sequester.
The May FOMC statement kept up the heat.
“Household spending and business fixed investment advanced, and the housing sector has strengthened further, but fiscal policy is restraining economic growth,” the statement said.
The Fed’s decision came the same day as a report on private payrolls fell well below expectations, indicating just 119,000 new jobs created, a seven-month low.
While critics worry about inflation, the Fed continued to conclude that “expectations have remained stable.”
The Fed has vowed to keep interest rates exceptionally low until unemployment falls to 6.5 percent from its current 7.6 percent and until inflation reaches 2.5 percent from its current 1.5 percent.
The United States might run into trouble accessing debt markets if it defaulted on any of its financial obligations, even if it were able to keep up payments on government bonds, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told Congress.
Lew was responding to questions about a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that would prioritize payments on government bonds and Social Security if the United States hits its debt limit, in order to avoid a credit default.
If passed, the law would make it easier for Republicans to use a fight over the nation’s legal borrowing limit, known as the debt ceiling, to try to extract spending cuts from President Barack Obama.
“The thing I would urge you to consider is, you enter a world we’ve never been in once the United States is not meeting its obligations,” Lew told a House subcommittee. “We cannot assume markets will function in an orderly way if that (happens).”
The current suspension of the debt limit expires on May 19, although the Treasury can use emergency cash-management measures to push off the day of reckoning into August. The date could fall even further in the future given unexpectedly strong tax revenues and the possibility of a big payment to the Treasury from housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Lew has said it is impossible to try to pinpoint when exactly the use of these emergency maneuvers would be exhausted due to a delayed tax filing season and uncertainty about the effect of steep government spending cuts known as the sequester.
Once the United States reaches its debt limit, the government faces the prospect of defaulting on financial obligations, and potentially its debt, which could shake up markets and damage the economy.
Staff at the International Monetary Fund warned that failure to smoothly raise the U.S. debt ceiling could do serious damage to the global economy.
Over more than a decade following 9/11, MAJ Stephen Coughlin was one of the US government’s most astute and objective analysts, and an expert in the connections between Islamic law, terrorism and the jihadist movement around the globe.
Through knowledge of published Islamic law, MAJ Coughlin had an demonstrated ability to forecast events both in the Middle East and domestically and to accurately assess the future threat posture of jihadist entities before they happen.
He has briefed at the Pentagon, for national and state law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and on Capitol Hill for Members of Congress. Today, he is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy. His book, Catastrophic Failure, will be released in late 2012.
With this series of presentations, the general public has access to a professional standard of intelligence training in order to better understand the jihadist threat.
PARTS OF THIS SERIES:
(1) Lectures on National Security & Counterterror Analysis (Introduction)
(2) Understanding the War on Terror Through Islamic Law
(3) Abrogation and the ‘Milestones’ Process
(4) The Muslim Brotherhood, the Arab Spring & the ‘Milestones’ Process
(5) The Role of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Enforcing Islamic Law
Stephen Coughlin, Part 1: Lectures on National Security & Counterterror Analysis (Introduction)
Stephen Coughlin, Part 2: Understanding the War on Terror Through Islamic Law
Stephen Coughlin, Part 3: Abrogation & the ‘Milestones’ Process
Stephen Coughlin, Part 4: Muslim Brotherhood, Arab Spring & the ‘Milestones’ Process
Stephen Coughlin, Part 5: The Role of the OIC in Enforcing Islamic Law
Benghazi: US Foreign Policy and the Influence of Shariah Doctrine
Steven Coughlin Remarks on the Benghazi Embassy Cover Up
Are there radical Islamic terror camps in North America? Apparently there are dozens author says
Radical Jihadists Training On U.S. Soil – Behind Enemy Lines – Wake Up America!!!
Glenn Beck – The Project Part 1
Glenn Beck – The Project Part 2
The Third Jihad – Radical Islam’s Vision for America
Beslan: 5 years on
Dispatches – Beslan (2006)
The school siege at Beslan was the bloodiest act of terrorism ever to take place on Russian soil. Yet beyond this horrible truth remain many unanswered questions. There is no agreement on who the terrorists were. How many they numbered? Where they came from? How they got to Beslan? What they wanted? Whether they were all killed or captured? And just how the siege which began on September 1 2004, ended so catastrophically?
This Dispatches special uses testimony from eyewitnesses, survivors and security services. This is combined with video and audio archive footage presents the fullest account of what happened at Beslan.
The film examines the background to the events of Beslan. It also looks at the Russian state’s reaction to the atrocity and the motivation of the hostage-takers. Beslan School Siege also documents how a small town is coming to terms with the loss of its children.
Jihad: Slaughter of the Innocents – Beslan (Беслан) Part 1
Jihad: Slaughter of the Innocents – Beslan (Беслан) Part 2
Jihad: Slaughter of the Innocents – Beslan (Беслан) Part 3
Jihad: Slaughter of the Innocents – Beslan (Беслан) Part 4
Jihad: Slaughter of the Innocents – Beslan (Беслан) Part 5
Glenn Beck U.S. Denial of Islamic Jihad Threat, Beslan School Massacre 4-26-13
Glenn Beck The Story of Beslan
Glenn Beck Beslan, Terror, and Chechnya
Glenn Beck Experts on Beslan
Background Articles and Videos
Terrorism & Jihad: An Islamic Perspective – Dr. Zakir Naik
Stephen Coughlin, Part 1: Lectures on National Security & Counterterror Analysis (Introduction)
Stephen Coughlin, Part 2: Understanding the War on Terror Through Islamic Law
Stephen Coughlin, Part 3: Abrogation & the ‘Milestones’ Process
Stephen Coughlin, Part 4: Muslim Brotherhood, Arab Spring & the ‘Milestones’ Process
Stephen Coughlin, Part 5: The Role of the OIC in Enforcing Islamic Law
Pages from the FBI File (This 40-page report includes selected pages from the FBI file which document Davis’s Communist history and pro-Soviet and anti-white views). PDF
Ben Bernanke Is The Most Dangerous Man In US History
US BOND BUBBLE’S READY TO BURST!
Max Keiser: Propped Up Bond Market Set To Burst In April
U.S. Government Bond Bubble to Burst, Faber Says
James Grant and James Turk discuss gold, the Fed and the fiscal situation of the USA
USA Will Die – Economic Collapse 2013 – Jim Rogers
JIM ROGERS – 2013 to Be Bad, ‘God Knows What Will Happen in 2014′
Jim Rogers Predicts Global Depression In 2013-2014
Peter Schiff on Max Keiser – Stopping the Global Financial Crisis
Keiser Report: Psyops & Debt Diets
Max Keiser: Will the next crash be on Bonds?
MAX KEISER: Colossal Collapse Coming! Keiser Report
MAX KEISER: Colossal Collapse Coming! Keiser Report
ALEX JONES & Max Keiser 2013, Year of The GREAT CRASH!
Peter Schiff – Dollar Could Collapse This Fall 2013
Peter Schiff – Economic Collapse 2013
Fed Will Keep Printing Until The Dollar Collapses~ Jim Rickards
Jim Rickards Gold is Money ($7,000 Gold Price)
James Rickards Predicts US Inflation in 2013 due to the Devaluation of the US dollar
Currency Wars: Jim Rickards
Financial Pearl Harbor’ is a Real Threat Warns a Pentagon Adviser
CNBC Global Recession Is Coming – Marc Faber
Dr. Marc Faber – US is in 50-100 trillion worth of debt!
Marc Faber ‘We Are in the End Game’ Part 1
Marc Faber ‘We Are in the End Game Part 2
Marc Faber – We Could See a 1987-Like Market Crash – Be Prepared and Get OUT!
Marc Faber-No Government Complies With Anything
Total Economic Collapse, Death of the Dollar, Impovershment, WWIII, Marc Faber Interview
Gerald Celente Deal Or No Debt Deal, The Debt Still Exists
Bill Gross: Economy Faces Structural Headwinds, “I Think We Are Facing Bubbles Almost Everywhere”
ECONOMIC CRASH WORLDWIDE STARTING
Harry Dent predicts global economic crash in 2013
Planned Economic Collapse 2013-2014
Background Articles and Videos
Meltdown (pt 1-4) The Secret History of the Global Financial Collapse 2010
Meltdown (pt 2-4) The Secret History of the Global Financial Collapse 2010
Meltdown (pt 3-4) The Secret History of the Global Financial Collapse.2010
Meltdown – pt 4-4 The Secret History of the Global Financial Collapse (2010)
The Fall of Lehman Brothers
Goldman Sachs: Power and Peril – Documentary
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of The World by Niall Ferguson Epsd. 1-5 (Full Documentary)
The Fall of the Dollar – The Death of a Fiat Currency part 1
The Fall of the Dollar – The Death of a Fiat Currency part 2
The First 12 Hours of a US Dollar Collapse
LIFE HIDDEN TRUTH 2013 GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS
Billionaires Dumping Stocks, Economist Knows Why
Despite the 6.5% stock market rally over the last three months, a handful of billionaires are quietly dumping their American stocks . . . and fast.
Warren Buffett, who has been a cheerleader for U.S. stocks for quite some time, is dumping shares at an alarming rate. He recently complained of “disappointing performance” in dyed-in-the-wool American companies like Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, and Kraft Foods.
In the latest filing for Buffett’s holding company Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett has been drastically reducing his exposure to stocks that depend on consumer purchasing habits. Berkshire sold roughly 19 million shares of Johnson & Johnson, and reduced his overall stake in “consumer product stocks” by 21%. Berkshire Hathaway also sold its entire stake in California-based computer parts supplier Intel.
With 70% of the U.S. economy dependent on consumer spending, Buffett’s apparent lack of faith in these companies’ future prospects is worrisome.
Unfortunately Buffett isn’t alone.
Fellow billionaire John Paulson, who made a fortune betting on the subprime mortgage meltdown, is clearing out of U.S. stocks too. During the second quarter of the year, Paulson’s hedge fund, Paulson & Co., dumped 14 million shares of JPMorgan Chase. The fund also dumped its entire position in discount retailer Family Dollar and consumer-goods maker Sara Lee.
Finally, billionaire George Soros recently sold nearly all of his bank stocks, including shares of JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs. Between the three banks, Soros sold more than a million shares.
So why are these billionaires dumping their shares of U.S. companies?
After all, the stock market is still in the midst of its historic rally. Real estate prices have finally leveled off, and for the first time in five years are actually rising in many locations. And the unemployment rate seems to have stabilized.
It’s very likely that these professional investors are aware of specific research that points toward a massive market correction, as much as 90%.
One such person publishing this research is Robert Wiedemer, an esteemed economist and author of the New York Times best-selling book Aftershock.
Before you dismiss the possibility of a 90% drop in the stock market as unrealistic, consider Wiedemer’s credentials.
In 2006, Wiedemer and a team of economists accurately predicted the collapse of the U.S. housing market, equity markets, and consumer spending that almost sank the United States. They published their research in the book America’s Bubble Economy.
The book quickly grabbed headlines for its accuracy in predicting what many thought would never happen, and quickly established Wiedemer as a trusted voice.
A columnist at Dow Jones said the book was “one of those rare finds that not only predicted the subprime credit meltdown well in advance, it offered Main Street investors a winning strategy that helped avoid the forty percent losses that followed . . .”
The chief investment strategist at Standard & Poor’s said that Wiedemer’s track record “demands our attention.”
And finally, the former CFO of Goldman Sachs said Wiedemer’s “prescience in (his) first book lends credence to the new warnings. This book deserves our attention.”
In the interview for his latest blockbuster Aftershock, Wiedemer says the 90% drop in the stock market is “a worst-case scenario,” and the host quickly challenged this claim.
Wiedemer calmly laid out a clear explanation of why a large drop of some sort is a virtual certainty.
It starts with the reckless strategy of the Federal Reserve to print a massive amount of money out of thin air in an attempt to stimulate the economy.
“These funds haven’t made it into the markets and the economy yet. But it is a mathematical certainty that once the dam breaks, and this money passes through the reserves and hits the markets, inflation will surge,” said Wiedemer.
“Once you hit 10% inflation, 10-year Treasury bonds lose about half their value. And by 20%, any value is all but gone. Interest rates will increase dramatically at this point, and that will cause real estate values to collapse. And the stock market will collapse as a consequence of these other problems.”
Ken Langone: Regulation Biggest Issue Hurting U.S. Economy
April 26 (Bloomberg) — Ken Langone, founder & CEO at Invemed Associates, talks with Bloomberg’s Erik Schatzker and Sara Eisen about first-quarter U.S. GDP, the impact of regulations and the anti-business stance of the Obama Administration. He speaks on Bloomberg Television’s “Market Makers.”
Peter Schiff We re in Depression, Dollar Crisis Coming
[
GDP Propaganda Exposed
Data shift to lift US economy 3%
By Robin Harding in Washington
The US economy will officially become 3 per cent bigger in July as part of a shake-up that will see government statistics take into account 21st century components such as film royalties and spending on research and development.
Billions of dollars of intangible assets will enter the gross domestic product of the world’s largest economy in a revision aimed at capturing the changing nature of US output.
Brent Moulton, who manages the national accounts at the Bureau of Economic Analysis, told the Financial Times that the update was the biggest since computer software was added to the accounts in 1999.
“We are carrying these major changes all the way back in time – which for us means to 1929 – so we are essentially rewriting economic history,” said Mr Moulton.
The changes will affect everything from the measured GDP of different US states to the stability of the inflation measure targeted by the Federal Reserve. They will force economists to revisit policy debates about everything from corporate profits to the causes of economic growth.
The revision, equivalent to adding a country as big as Belgium to the estimated size of the world economy, will make the US one of the first adopters of a new international standard for GDP accounting.
“We’re capitalising research and development and also this category referred to as entertainment, literary and artistic originals, which would be things like motion picture originals, long-lasting television programmes, books and sound recordings,” said Mr Moulton.
At present, R&D counts as a cost of doing business, so the final output of Apple iPads is included in GDP but the research done to create them is not. R&D will now count as an investment, adding a bit more than 2 per cent to the measured size of the economy.
GDP will soar in small states that host a lot of military R&D, but barely change in others, widening measured income gaps across the US. R&D is expected to boost the GDP of New Mexico by 10 per cent and Maryland by 6 per cent while Louisiana will see an increase of just 0.6 per cent.
Creative works are expected to add a further 0.5 per cent to the overall size of the US economy. Around one-third of that will come from movies, one-third from TV programmes, and one-third from books, music and theatre.
Deficits in defined benefit pension schemes will also be included because what companies have promised to pay out will be measured, rather than the cash they pay into plans.
“We will now show a liability for underfunded plans, which particularly has large ramifications for the government sector, where both at the state level and the federal level we have large underfunded plans,” said Mr Moulton.
The changes are in addition to a comprehensive revision of the national accounts that takes place every five years based on an economic census of nearly 4m US businesses.
Steve Landefeld, BEA director, said it was hard to predict the overall outcome given the mixture of new methodology and data updates. “What’s going to happen when you mix it with the new source data from the economic census . . . I don’t know,” he said.
But he said the revisions were unlikely to alter the picture of what has happened to the economy in recent years. “I wouldn’t be looking for large changes in trends or cycles.”
Those who have been following the US debt to GDP ratio now that the US officially does not have a debt ceiling indefinitely, may have had the occasional panic attack seeing how this country’s leverage ratio is rapidly approaching that of a Troika case study of a PIIG in complete failure. And at 107% debt/GDP no explanations are necessary. Luckily, the official gatekeepers of America’s economic growth (with decimal point precision), the Bureau of Economic Analysis have a plan on how to make the US economy, which is now growing at an abysmal 1.5% annualized pace, or about 5 times slower than US debt growing at 7.5% annually, catch up: magically make up a number out of thin air, and add it to the total. And it literally is out of thin air: according to the FT the addition will constitute of a one-time addition of intangibles, amounting to 3% of total US GDP, or more than the size of Belgium at $500 billion, to the US economy.
The US economy will officially become 3 per cent bigger in July as part of a shake-up that will see government statistics take into account 21st century components such as film royalties and spending on research and development.
Billions of dollars of intangible assets will enter the gross domestic product of the world’s largest economy in a revision aimed at capturing the changing nature of US output.
Brent Moulton, who manages the national accounts at the Bureau of Economic Analysis, told the Financial Times that the update was the biggest since computer software was added to the accounts in 1999.
“We are carrying these major changes all the way back in time – which for us means to 1929 – so we are essentially rewriting economic history,” said Mr Moulton.
What exactly will constitute GDP growth going forward? In a word, intangibles: films, books, magazines and iTunes songs.
“We’re capitalising research and development and also this category referred to as entertainment, literary and artistic originals, which would be things like motion picture originals, long-lasting television programmes, books and sound recordings,” said Mr Moulton.
At present, R&D counts as a cost of doing business, so the final output of Apple iPads is included in GDP but the research done to create them is not. R&D will now count as an investment, adding a bit more than 2 per cent to the measured size of the economy.
Nothing like adding intangibles in the fluid, ever-changing definition of what constitutes an economy.
Naturally, the only reason for this artificial “boost” to the US economy which apparently can be any old arbitrary number agreed upon by a few accountants, and which always goes up post revision, never down, is to make US debt/GDP under 100% once again, if only very briefly. Surely a few months later something else can be “added” to GDP making the US economy appear better than it is once more.
Finally, all of the above is a distraction for idiots.
As most people should know by know (this logically excludes economists), the only factor leading to economic “growth” is the expansion of liabilities of the financial system, whereby new credit (in a healthy environment, not one centrally-planned by several Princeton real-world rejects, where the central bank is forced to create all credit expansion with money that never leaves the banks and the capital markets closed loop) creates new money, creates demand for products and services, and circulates in the economy.
This can be seen in the chart below which shows the nearly perfect correlation between total bank liabilities in the US, as per the Fed’s Flow Of Funds report, and total US GDP.
Bottom line: the BEA can capitalize air consumption if it thinks it will make US GDP soar, but unless new credit and bank liabilities are created not due to forced supply but demand, and unless the private financial sector is finally willing to start lending money (which for the entire duration of QE it has not) US growth will stall and then proceed to decline.
Case in point: total US commerical bank loans are still lower than they were the day Lehman filed.
In other words, all the GDP “growth” since the Lehman failure has come on the back of money “created” by the Fed.
And there are still those who think the Fed will ever unwind…
EMBARGOED UNTIL RELEASE AT 8:30 A.M. EDT, FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2013
BEA 13-18
* See the navigation bar at the right side of the news release text for links to data tables,
contact personnel and their telephone numbers, and supplementary materials.
National Income and Product Accounts
Gross Domestic Product, First Quarter 2013 (advance estimate)
Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property
located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the first quarter of 2013 (that
is, from the fourth quarter to the first quarter), according to the "advance" estimate released by the
Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter, real GDP increased 0.4 percent.
The Bureau emphasized that the first-quarter advance estimate released today is based on source
data that are incomplete or subject to further revision by the source agency (see the box on page 3 and
"Comparisons of Revisions to GDP" on page 5). The "second" estimate for the first quarter, based on
more complete data, will be released on May 30, 2013.
The increase in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from
personal consumption expenditures (PCE), private inventory investment, exports, residential investment,
and nonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by negative contributions from federal
government spending and state and local government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the
calculation of GDP, increased.
BOX_______________________
Comprehensive Revision of the National Income and Product Accounts
BEA plans to release the results of the 14th comprehensive (or benchmark) revision of the national
income and product accounts (NIPAs) in conjunction with the second quarter 2013 "advance" estimate
on July 31, 2013. More information on the revision is available on BEA’s Web site at
www.bea.gov/gdp-revisions, including a link to an article in the March 2013 issue of the Survey of
Current Business that discusses the upcoming changes in definitions and presentations, including
capitalizing spending on research and development and on entertainment originals and measuring
transactions of defined benefit pension plans on an accrual accounting basis. An article in the May
Survey will describe changes in statistical methods, and an article in the September Survey will describe
the estimates in detail. Revised NIPA table stubs and news release stubs will be available in June.
FOOTNOTE___________________
Quarterly estimates are expressed at seasonally adjusted annual rates, unless otherwise
specified. Quarter-to-quarter dollar changes are differences between these published estimates. Percent
changes are calculated from unrounded data and are annualized. "Real" estimates are in chained (2005)
dollars. Price indexes are chain-type measures.
This news release is available on www.bea.gov along with the Technical Note and highlights related to this release.
___________________________
The acceleration in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected an upturn in private
inventory investment, an acceleration in PCE, an upturn in exports, and a smaller decrease in federal
government spending that were partly offset by an upturn in imports and a deceleration in nonresidential
fixed investment.
Motor vehicle output added 0.24 percentage point to the first-quarter change in real GDP after
adding 0.18 percentage point to the fourth-quarter change. Final sales of computers subtracted 0.01
percentage point from the first-quarter change in real GDP after adding 0.10 percentage point to the
fourth-quarter change.
The price index for gross domestic purchases, which measures prices paid by U.S. residents,
increased 1.1 percent in the first quarter, compared with an increase of 1.6 percent in the fourth.
Excluding food and energy prices, the price index for gross domestic purchases increased 1.3 percent in
the first quarter, compared with an increase of 1.2 percent in the fourth.
Real personal consumption expenditures increased 3.2 percent in the first quarter, compared with
an increase of 1.8 percent in the fourth. Durable goods increased 8.1 percent, compared with an increase
of 13.6 percent. Nondurable goods increased 1.0 percent, compared with an increase of 0.1 percent.
Services increased 3.1 percent, compared with an increase of 0.6 percent.
Real nonresidential fixed investment increased 2.1 percent in the first quarter, compared with an
increase of 13.2 percent in the fourth. Nonresidential structures decreased 0.3 percent, in contrast to an
increase of 16.7 percent. Equipment and software increased 3.0 percent, compared with an increase of
11.8 percent. Real residential fixed investment increased 12.6 percent, compared with an increase of
17.6 percent.
Real exports of goods and services increased 2.9 percent in the first quarter, in contrast to a
decrease of 2.8 percent in the fourth. Real imports of goods and services increased 5.4 percent, in
contrast to a decrease of 4.2 percent.
Real federal government consumption expenditures and gross investment decreased 8.4 percent
in the first quarter, compared with a decrease of 14.8 percent in the fourth. National defense decreased
11.5 percent, compared with a decrease of 22.1 percent. Nondefense decreased 2.0 percent, in contrast
to an increase of 1.7 percent. Real state and local government consumption expenditures and gross
investment decreased 1.2 percent, compared with a decrease of 1.5 percent.
The change in real private inventories added 1.03 percentage points to the first-quarter change in
real GDP after subtracting 1.52 percentage points from the fourth-quarter change. Private businesses
increased inventories $50.3 billion in the first quarter, following increases of $13.3 billion in the fourth
quarter and $60.3 billion in the third.
Real final sales of domestic product -- GDP less change in private inventories -- increased 1.5
percent in the first quarter, compared with an increase of 1.9 percent in the fourth.
Gross domestic purchases
Real gross domestic purchases -- purchases by U.S. residents of goods and services wherever
produced -- increased 2.9 percent in the first quarter; it was unchanged in the fourth quarter.
Disposition of personal income
Current-dollar personal income decreased $109.1 billion (3.2 percent) in the first quarter, in
contrast to an increase of $262.3 billion (8.1 percent) in the fourth. The downturn in personal income
primarily reflected a sharp downturn in personal dividend income and a sharp acceleration in
contributions for government social insurance -- a subtraction in the calculation of personal income.
Fourth-quarter personal dividend income was boosted by the payment of accelerated and special
dividends. The acceleration in contributions for government social insurance in the first quarter resulted
from the expiration of the "payroll tax holiday."
Personal current taxes increased $27.2 billion in the first quarter, compared with an increase of
$34.3 billion in the fourth.
Disposable personal income decreased $136.3 billion (4.4 percent) in the first quarter, in contrast
to an increase of $228.0 billion (7.9 percent) in the fourth. Real disposable personal income decreased
5.3 percent, in contrast to an increase of 6.2 percent.
Personal outlays increased $116.3 billion (4.1 percent) in the first quarter, compared with an
increase of $97.0 billion (3.4 percent) in the fourth. Personal saving -- disposable personal income less
personal outlays -- was $313.3 billion in the first quarter, compared with $566.0 billion in the fourth.
The personal saving rate -- personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income -- was
2.6 percent in the first quarter, compared with 4.7 percent in the fourth. For a comparison of personal
saving in BEA’s national income and product accounts with personal saving in the Federal Reserve
Board’s flow of funds accounts and data on changes in net worth, go to
www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/Nipa-Frb.asp.
Current-dollar GDP
Current-dollar GDP -- the market value of the nation's output of goods and services -- increased
3.7 percent, or $146.1 billion, in the first quarter to a level of $16,010.2 billion. In the fourth quarter,
current-dollar GDP increased 1.3 percent, or $53.1 billion.
BOX_____________________
Information on the assumptions used for unavailable source data is provided in a technical note
that is posted with the news release on BEA's Web site. Within a few days after the release, a detailed
"Key Source Data and Assumptions" file is posted on the Web site. In the middle of each month, an
analysis of the current quarterly estimate of GDP and related series is made available on the Web site;
click on Survey of Current Business, "GDP and the Economy." For information on revisions, see
"Revisions to GDP, GDI, and Their Major Components."
________________________
BEA's national, international, regional, and industry estimates; the Survey of Current Business;
and BEA news releases are available without charge on BEA's Web site at www.bea.gov. By visiting the
site, you can also subscribe to receive free e-mail summaries of BEA releases and announcements.
* * *
Next release -- May 30, 2013, at 8:30 A.M. EDT for:
Gross Domestic Product: First Quarter 2013 (Second Estimate)
Corporate Profits: First Quarter 2013 (Preliminary Estimate)
Comparisons of Revisions to GDP
Quarterly estimates of GDP are released on the following schedule: the "advance" estimate, based on
source data that are incomplete or subject to further revision by the source agency, is released near the end of the
first month after the end of the quarter; as more detailed and more comprehensive data become available,
the "second" and "third" estimates are released near the end of the second and third months, respectively.
The "latest"” estimate reflects the results of both annual and comprehensive revisions.
Annual revisions, which generally cover the quarters of the 3 most recent calendar years, are usually carried
out each summer and incorporate newly available major annual source data. Comprehensive (or benchmark)
revisions are carried out at about 5-year intervals and incorporate major periodic source data, as well as
improvements in concepts and methods that update the accounts to portray more accurately the evolving U.S.
economy.
The table below shows comparisons of the revisions between quarterly percent changes of current-dollar
and of real GDP for the different vintages of the estimates. From the advance estimate to the second estimate (one
month later), the average revision to real GDP without regard to sign is 0.5 percentage point, while from the
advance estimate to the third estimate (two months later), it is 0.6 percentage point. From the advance estimate to
the latest estimate, the average revision without regard to sign is 1.3 percentage points. The average revision
(with regard to sign) from the advance estimate to the latest estimate is 0.2 percentage point, which is larger
than the average revisions from the advance estimate to the second or to the third estimates. The larger average
revisions to the latest estimate reflect the fact that comprehensive revisions include major improvements, such as
the incorporation of BEA’s latest benchmark input-output accounts. The quarterly estimates correctly indicate the
direction of change of real GDP 97 percent of the time, correctly indicate whether GDP is accelerating or
decelerating 72 percent of the time, and correctly indicate whether real GDP growth is above, near, or below trend
growth more than four-fifths of the time.
Revisions Between Quarterly Percent Changes of GDP: Vintage Comparisons
[Annual rates]
Vintages Average Average without Standard deviation of
compared regard to sign revisions without
regard to sign
____________________________________________________Current-dollar GDP_______________________________________________
Advance to second.................... 0.2 0.6 0.4
Advance to third..................... .1 .7 .4
Second to third...................... .0 .3 .2
Advance to latest.................... .3 1.2 1.0
________________________________________________________Real GDP_____________________________________________________
Advance to second.................... 0.1 0.5 0.4
Advance to third..................... .1 .6 .5
Second to third...................... .0 .2 .2
Advance to latest.................... .2 1.3 1.0
NOTE. These comparisons are based on the period from 1983 through 2009.
INTRINSIC NATURE OF RIGHTS
I believe that only individuals have rights, not the collective group; that these rights are intrinsic to each individual, not granted by the state; for if the state has the power to grant them, it also has the power to deny them, and that is incompatible with personal liberty.
I believe that a just state derives its power solely from its citizens. Therefore, the state must never presume to do anything beyond what individual citizens also have the right to do. Otherwise, the state is a power unto itself and becomes the master instead of the servant of society.
SUPREMACY OF THE INDIVIDUAL
I believe that one of the greatest threats to freedom is to allow any group, no matter its numeric superiority, to deny the rights of the minority; and that one of the primary functions of a just state is to protect each individual from the greed and passion of the majority.
FREEDOM OF CHOICE
I believe that desirable social and economic objectives are better achieved by voluntary action than by coercion of law. I believe that social tranquility and brotherhood are better achieved by tolerance, persuasion, and the power of good example than by coercion of law. I believe that those in need are better served by charity, which is the giving of one’s own money, than by welfare, which is the giving of other people’s money through coercion of law.
EQUALITY UNDER LAW
I believe that all citizens should be equal under law, regardless of their national origin, race, religion, gender, education, economic status, life style, or political opinion. Likewise, no class should be given preferential treatment, regardless of the merit or popularity of its cause. To favor one class over another is not equality under law.
PROPER ROLE OF THE STATE
I believe that the proper role of the state is negative, not positive; defensive, not aggressive. It is to protect, not to provide; for if the state is granted the power to provide for some, it must also be able to take from others, and that always leads to legalized plunder and loss of freedom. If the state is powerful enough to give us everything we want, it also will be powerful enough to take from us everything we have. Therefore, the proper function of the state is to protect the lives, liberty, and property of its citizens, nothing more. That state is best which governs least.
THE THREE COMMANDMENTS OF FREEDOM
The Creed of Freedom is based on five principles. However, in day-to-day application, they can be reduced to just three codes of conduct. These are The Three Commandments of Freedom:
INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS
Only individuals have rights, not groups. Therefore, do not sacrifice the rights of any individual or minority for the alleged rights of groups.
EQUALITY UNDER LAW
To favor one class of citizens over others is not equality under law. Therefore, do not endorse any law that does not apply to all citizens equally.
FREEDOM OF CHOICE
The proper function of the state is to protect, not to provide. Therefore, do not approve coercion for any purpose except to protect human life, liberty, or property.
THE THREE PILLARS OF FREEDOM
Another way of viewing these principles is to consider them as the three pillars of freedom. They are concepts that underlie the ideology of individualism, and individualism is the indispensable foundation of freedom.
For the rational and historical support for The Creed of Freedom, see The Chasm in the Issues section of his site. This 21-page document will take 10 to 45 seconds to load depending on the speed of your Internet connection.
Background Articles and Videos
Freedom Force International speaker for Liberty in Pittsburgh
Rare Carroll Quigley interview
Professor Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton’s mentor at Georgetown University, authored a massive volume entitled “Tragedy and Hope” in which he states: “There does exist and has existed for a generation, an international network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims, and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies, but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.”
[1 of 5] Rare Carroll Quigley Interview
Carroll Quigley was the historian for the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Tragedy and Hope (tragedy is all the people who must suffer and die for the NWO, and the hope is the NEW WORLD ORDER )
Professor Quigley was a Globalist, he supported the idea NEW WORLD ORDER and wrote about it, he, unlike the elites, thought the people should know about it.
“I know of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years in the early 1960s to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies … but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.” — Dr. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope
“The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements, arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences…”
“The apex of the system was the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the worlds’ central banks which were themselves private corporations…”
“The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect injury of all other economic groups.” Tragedy and Hope: A History of The World in Our Time (Macmillan Company, 1966,) Professor Carroll Quigley of Georgetown University
“The Council on Foreign Relations is the American branch of a society which originated in England … [and] … believes national boundaries should be obliterated and one-world rule established.” Dr. Carroll Quigley
“As a teenager, I heard John Kennedy’s summons to citizenship. And then, as a student, I heard that call clarified by a professor I had named Carroll Quigley.”President Clinton, in his acceptance speech for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, 16 July 1992
[2 of 5] Rare Carroll Quigley Interview
[3 of 5] Rare Carroll Quigley Interview
[4 of 5] Rare Carroll Quigley Interview
[5 of 5] Rare Carroll Quigley Interview
The Creature From Jekyll Island (by G. Edward Griffin)
The Creature From Jekyll Island
A Second Look at the Federal Reserve
by G. Edward Griffin
Recorded: 1994
Edward Griffin – The Subversion Factor
CFR – List of Members and Organisations Involved
Jimmy Carter Administration
President Carter (who became a CFR member in 1983) appointed over 60 CFR members to serve in his Administration:
Walter Mondale (Vice-President)
Zbigniew Brzezinski (National Security Advisor)
Cyrus R. Vance (Secretary of State)
W. Michael Blumenthal (Secretary of Treasury)
Harold Brown (Secretary of Defense)
Stansfield Turner (Director of the CIA)
Gen. David Jones (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff)
Ronald Reagan Administration
There were 75 CFR and Trilateral Commission members under President Reagan:
Alexander Haig (Secretary of State)
George Shultz (Secretary of State)
Donald Regan (Secretary of Treasury)
William Casey (CIA Director)
Malcolm Baldridge (Secretary of Commerce)
Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick (U.N. Ambassador)
Frank C. Carlucci (Deputy Secretary of Defense)
William E. Brock (Special Trade Representative)
George H. W. Bush Administration
During his 1964 campaign for the U.S. Senate in Texas, George Bush said: “If Red China should be admitted to the U.N., then the U.N. is hopeless and we should withdraw.” In 1970, as Ambassador to the U.N., he pushed for Red China to be seated in the General Assembly. When Bush was elected, the CFR member became the first President to publicly mention the “New World Order” and had in his Administration nearly 350 CFR and Trilateral Commission members:
Brent Scowcroft (National Security Advisor)
Richard B. Cheney (Secretary of Defense)
Colin L. Powell (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff)
William Webster (Director of the CIA)
Richard Thornburgh (Attorney General)
Nicholas F. Brady (Secretary of Treasury)
Lawrence S. Eagleburger (Deputy Secretary of State)
Horace G. Dawson, Jr. (U.S. Information Agency and Director of the Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights)
Alan Greenspan (Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board)
Bill Clinton Administration
When CFR member Bill Clinton was elected, Newsweek magazine would later refer to him as the “New Age President.” In October, 1993, Richard Harwood, a Washington Post writer, in describing the Clinton Administration, said its CFR membership was “the nearest thing we have to a ruling establishment in the United States”.
Albert Gore, Jr. (Vice-President)
Donna E. Shalala (Secretary of Health and Human Services)
Laura D. Tyson (Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors)
Alice M. Rivlin (Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget)
Madeline K. Albright (U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.)
Warren Christopher (Secretary of State)
Clifton R. Wharton, Jr. (Deputy Secretary of State and former Chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation)
Les Aspin (Secretary of Defense)
Colin Powell (Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff)
W. Anthony Lake (National Security Advisor)
George Stephanopoulos (Senior Advisor)
Samuel R. ‘Sandy’ Berger (Deputy National Security Advisor)
R. James Woolsey (CIA Director)
William J. Crowe, Jr. (Chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board)
Lloyd Bentsen (former member, Secretary of Treasury)
Roger C. Altman (Deputy Secretary of Treasury)
Henry G. Cisneros (Secretary of Housing and Urban Development)
Bruce Babbit (Secretary of the Interior)
Peter Tarnoff (Under Secretary of State for International Security of Affairs)
Winston Lord (Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs)
Strobe Talbott (Aid Coordinator to the Commonwealth of Independent States)
Alan Greenspan (Chairman of the Federal Reserve System)
Walter Mondale (U.S. Ambassador to Japan)
Ronald H. Brown (Secretary of Commerce)
Franklin D. Raines (Economics and International Trade).
George W. Bush Administration
Richard Cheney (Vice President, former Secretary of Defense under President G.H.W. Bush)
Colin Powell (Secretary of State, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents Bush and Clinton)
Condoleeza Rice (National Security Advisor, former member of President Bush’s National Security Council)
Robert B. Zoellick (U.S. Trade Representative, former Under Secretary of State in the Bush administration)
Elaine Chao (Secretary of Labor)
Brent Scowcroft (Chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, former National Security Advisor to President Bush)
Richard Haass (Director of Policy Planning at the State Department and Ambassador at Large)
Henry Kissinger (Pentagon Defense Policy Board, former Secretary of State under Presidents Nixon and Ford)
Robert Blackwill (U.S. Ambassador to India, former member of President Bush’s National Security Council)
Stephen Friedman (Sr. White House Economic Advisor)
Stephen Hadley (Deputy National Security Advisor, former Assistant Secretary of Defense under Cheney)
Richard Perle (Chairman of Pentagon Defense Policy Board, former Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration)
Paul Wolfowitz (Assistant Secretary of Defense, former Assistant Secretary of State in the Reagan administration and former Under Secretary of Defense in the Bush administration)
Dov S. Zakheim (Under Secretary of Defense, Comptroller, former Under Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration)
I. Lewis Libby (Chief of Staff for the Vice President, former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense).
Bret Baier – TheBlazeTV – The Glenn Beck Radio Program – 2013.04.24
Bob Trent – TheBlazeTV – The Glenn Beck Program – 2013.04.24
The Glenn Beck Program Saudi Suspect/Boston Bombing Air Date: 4-24-13.
Multiple Confirmations of Immediate Deportation of Saudi National in Boston Bombing
Saudi National and Boston Student Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi Is Being Deported
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Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment
The Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, (TIDE) is the U.S. Government’s central database on known or suspected international terrorists, and contains highly classified information provided by members of the Intelligence Community such as CIA, DIA, FBI, NSA, and many others.
There are about 745,000 names in TIDE.[1] In 2008, more than 27,000 names were removed from the list when it was determined they no longer met the criteria for inclusion. According to the FBI, international terrorists include those persons who carry out terrorist activities under foreign direction. For this purpose, they may include U.S. persons (U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents).[2] The Terrorist Identities Group (TIG), located in NCTC’s Information Sharing & Knowledge Development Directorate (ISKD), is responsible for building and maintaining TIDE.[3]
From the classified TIDE database, an unclassified, but sensitive, extract is provided to the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, which compiles the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB).
This database, in turn, is used to compile various watch lists such as the TSA’s No Fly List, State Department’s Consular Lookout and Support System, Homeland Security’s Interagency Border Inspection System, and FBI’s NCIC (National Crime Information Center) for state and local law enforcement.
Judge Napolitano: “LIBOR Scandal One of the Largest Bank Orchestrated Frauds in History”
The Department of Justice is reportedly deciding whether to charge banks over growing LIBOR interest rate fixes. The international investment bank Barclays Capital has already paid $450 million in fines for illegally manipulating the rates that banks charge each other to borrow money. That rate affects everything from credit cards to car loans and mortgage rates. Shepard Smith reported that it remains to be seen whether Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner knew about the rate manipulation when he was head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Judge Andrew Napolitano explained the importance of the LIBOR interest rate, saying, “Think of it this way, the biggest banks in London each morning announce what they’re going to charge each other for money and that number is averaged … Whatever that rate is, is the baseline for millions of other loans and mortgages around the country.”
Libor scandal
The Libor scandal is a series of fraudulent actions connected to the Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate) and also the resulting investigation and reaction. The Libor is an average interest rate calculated through submissions of interest rates by major banks in London. The scandal arose when it was discovered that banks were falsely inflating or deflating their rates so as to profit from trades, or to give the impression that they were more creditworthy than they were.[3] Libor underpins approximately $350 trillion in derivatives. It is controlled by the British Bankers’ Association (BBA).[4]
The banks are supposed to submit the actual interest rates they are paying, or would expect to pay, for borrowing from other banks. The Libor is supposed to be the total assessment of the health of the financial system because if the banks being polled feel confident about the state of things, they report a low number and if the member banks feel a low degree of confidence in the financial system, they report a higher interest rate number. In June 2012, multiple criminal settlements by Barclays Bank revealed significant fraud and collusion by member banks connected to the rate submissions, leading to the scandal.[5][6][7]
Because Libor is used in U.S. derivatives markets, an attempt to manipulate Libor is an attempt to manipulate U.S. derivatives markets, and thus a violation of American law. Since mortgages, student loans, financial derivatives, and other financial products often rely on Libor as a reference rate, the manipulation of submissions used to calculate those rates can have significant negative effects on consumers and financial markets worldwide.
On 27 July 2012, the Financial Times published an article by a former trader which stated that Libor manipulation had been common since at least 1991.[8] Further reports on this have since come from the BBC[9][10] and Reuters.[11] On 28 November 2012, the Finance Committee of the Bundestag held a hearing to learn more about the issue.[12]
The British Bankers’ Association said on 25 September 2012 that it would transfer oversight of Libor to UK regulators, as predicted by bank analysts,[13] proposed by Financial Services Authority Managing Director Martin Wheatley‘s independent review recommendations.[14] Wheatley’s review recommended that banks submitting rates to Libor must base them on actual inter-bank deposit market transactions and keep records of those transactions, that individual banks’ LIBOR submissions be published after three months, and recommended criminal sanctions specifically for manipulation of benchmark interest rates.[15] Financial institution customers may experience higher and more volatile borrowing and hedging costs after implementation of the recommended reforms.[16] The UK government agreed to accept all of the Wheatley Review’s recommendations and press for legislation implementing them.[17]
Early reports of Libor manipulation
WSJ Libor study
Libor manipulation to lower rate
Hi Guys, We got a big position in 3m libor for the next 3 days. Can we please keep the lib or fixing at 5.39 for the next few days. It would really help. We do not want it to fix any higher than that. Tks a lot.
“
”
Barclays Bank trader in New York to submitter, 13 September 2006[18]
On 16 April 2008, The Wall Street Journal released a controversial article, and later study, suggesting that some banks might have understated borrowing costs they reported for the Libor during the 2008 credit crunch that may have misled others about the financial position of these banks.[19][20] In response, the BBA claimed that the Libor continued to be reliable even in times of financial crisis. Other authorities contradicted The Wall Street Journal article saying there was no evidence of manipulation. In its March 2008 Quarterly Review, the Bank for International Settlements stated that “available data do not support the hypothesis that contributor banks manipulated their quotes to profit from positions based on fixings.”[21] Further, in October 2008, the International Monetary Fund published its regular Global Financial Stability Review which also found that “Although the integrity of the U.S. dollar Libor-fixing process has been questioned by some market participants and the financial press, it appears that U.S. dollar Libor remains an accurate measure of a typical creditworthy bank’s marginal cost of unsecured U.S. dollar term funding.”[22]
A study by economists, Snider and Youle, in April 2010, however, corroborated the results of the earlier Wall Street Journal study that the Libor submissions by some member banks were being understated.[23] Unlike the earlier study, Snider and Youle suggested that the reason for understatement by member banks was not that the banks were trying to appear strong, especially during the financial crisis period of 2007 to 2008, but rather that the banks sought to make substantial profits on their large Libor interest-linked portfolios.[24] For example, in the first quarter of 2009, Citigroup had interest rate swaps of notional value of $14.2 trillion, Bank of America had interest rate swaps of notional value of $49.7 trillion and JP Morgan Chase had interest rate swaps of notional value of $49.3 trillion.[25] Given the large notional values, a small unhedged exposure to the Libor could generate large incentives to alter the overall Libor. In the first quarter of 2009, Citigroup for example reported that it would make that quarter $936 million in net interest revenue if interest rates would fall by .25 percentage points a quarter, and $1,935 million if they were to fall by 1 percentage point instantaneously.[26]
Central banks aware of Libor flaws
The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, by the end of 2008, described the Libor to the UK Parliament saying “It is in many ways the rate at which banks do not lend to each other, .. it is not a rate at which anyone is actually borrowing.”[27][28]
The New York Federal Reserve in July 2012, released documents dating back to 2007 which showed that they were aware that banks were lying about their borrowing costs when setting Libor and chose to take no action against them at that time.[29][30] Released minutes from the Bank of England indicated similarly that the bank and its deputy governor Paul Tucker were also aware as early as November 2007 of industry concerns that the Libor rate was being underreported.[31][32] In one 2008 document a Barclays employee told a New York Fed analyst, “We know that we’re not posting an honest Libor, and yet we are doing it, because if we didn’t do it, it draws unwanted attention on ourselves.”[30]
The documents show that in early 2008 a memo written by then New York Fed President Tim Geithner to Bank of England chief Mervyn King looked into ways to “fix” Libor.[33][34] While the released memos suggest that the New York Fed helped to identify problems related to Libor and press the relevant authorities in the UK to reform, there is no documentation that shows any evidence that Geithner’s recommendations were acted upon or that the Fed tried to make sure that they were. In October 2008, several months after Geithner’s memo to King, a Barclays employee told a New York Fed representative that Libor rates were still “absolute rubbish.”[30]
Regulatory investigations
The Wall Street Journal reported in March 2011 that regulators were focusing on Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and UBS AG in their probe of Libor rate manipulation.[35] A year later, it was reported in February 2012 that the U.S. Department of Justice was conducting a criminal investigation into Libor abuse.[36] Among the abuses being investigated were the possibility that traders were in direct communication with bankers before the rates were set, thus allowing them an unprecedented amount of insider knowledge into global instruments.[37] In court documents, a trader from the Royal Bank of Scotland claimed that it was common practice among senior employees at his bank to make requests to the bank’s rate setters as to the appropriate Libor rate, and that the bank also made on occasions rate requests for some hedge funds.[38] One trader’s messages from Barclays Bank indicated that for each basis point (0.01%) that Libor was moved, those involved could net “about a couple of million dollars”.[37]
The Canadian Competition Bureau was reported on 15 July 2012 to also be carrying out an investigation into price fixing by five banks of the yen denominated Libor rates. Court documents filed indicated that the Competition Bureau had been pursuing the matter since at least January 2011. The documents offered a detailed view of how and when the international banks allegedly colluded to fix the Libor rates. The information was based on a whistleblower who traded immunity from prosecution in exchange for turning on his fellow conspirators. In the court documents, a federal prosecutor for the bureau stated that the “IRD (interest-rate derivatives) traders at the participant banks communicated with each other their desire to see a higher or lower yen LIBOR to aid their trading positions”. The alleged participants are the Canadian branches of the Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Bank, and Citibank, as well as ICAP (Intercapital), an interdealer broker.[39]
Fines for manipulation
Libor manipulation to raise rate
Pls go for 5.36 libor again, very important that the setting comes as high as possible … thanks.
“
”
Barclays Bank trader in New York to submitter, 29 July 2007[18]
Barclays manipulated rates for at least two reasons. Routinely, from at least as early as 2005, traders sought particular rate submissions to benefit their financial positions. Later, during the 2007–2012 global financial crisis, they artificially lowered rate submissions to make their bank seem healthy.[6]
Following the interest rate rigging scandal, Marcus Agius, chairman of Barclays, resigned from his position.[44] One day later, Bob Diamond, the chief executive officer of Barclays, also resigned from his position.[45][46] Bob Diamond was subsequently questioned by the Parliament of the United Kingdom regarding the manipulation of Libor rates. He said he was unaware of the manipulation until that month, but mentioned discussions he had with Paul Tucker, deputy governor of the Bank of England.[47] Tucker then voluntarily appeared before parliament, to clarify the discussions he had with Bob Diamond. He said he had never encouraged manipulation of the Libor, and that other self-regulated mechanisms like the Libor should be reformed.[48]
On 19 December 2012, UBS agreed to pay regulators $1.5bn ($1.2bn to the US Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, £160m to the UK Financial Services Authority and 60m CHF to the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority) for its role in the scandal.[49] The investigations revealed that UBS traders had colluded with other panel banks and had made over 2,000 written requests for movements in rates from at least January 2005 to at least June 2010 to benefit their trading positions.[50] According to transcripts released by the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority, UBS traders also offered financial inducements to interdealer brokers to help manipulate rates by spreading false information. In one exchange between a UBS banker identified as Trader A and an interdealer broker, the banker wrote “if you keep 6s [i.e. the six month JPY LIBOR rate] unchanged today … I will f—ing do one humongous deal with you … Like a 50,000 buck deal, whatever … I need you to keep it as low as possible … if you do that …. I’ll pay you, you know, 50,000 dollars, 100,000 dollars… whatever you want … I’m a man of my word.” Subsequent trades between UBS and this broker generated more than $250,000 in fees to the broker.[51][52]
US Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer described the conduct of UBS’s as “simply astonishing” and declared the US would seek, as a criminal matter, the extradition of traders Tom Hayes and Roger Darin.[49] The bank has stated that these and other fines would probably result in a significant fourth-quarter loss in 2012.[49] The fine levied by the FSA, reduced due to the bank’s cooperation, was the largest in the agency’s history.[49]
Breadth of scandal becomes apparent
By 4 July 2012 the breadth of the scandal was evident and became the topic of analysis on news and financial programs that attempted to explain the importance of the scandal.[53] Two days later, it was announced that the U.K. Serious Fraud Office had also opened a criminal investigation into manipulation of interest rates. The investigation was not limited to Barclays.[54][55] It has been reported since then that regulators in at least ten countries on three different continents are investigating the rigging of the Libor and other interest rates.[56][57] Around 20 major banks have been named in investigations and court cases.[58]
Early estimates are that the rate manipulation scandal cost U.S. states, counties, and local governments at least $6 billion in fraudulent interest payments, above $4 billion that state and local governments have already had to spend to unwind their positions exposed to rate manipulation.[59] An increasingly smaller set of banks are participating in setting the Libor, calling into question its future as a benchmark standard, but without any viable alternative to replace it.[60]
On 4 October 2012, Republican U.S. SenatorsChuck Grassley and Mark Kirk announced that they were investigating Treasury SecretaryTim Geithner for complicity with the rate manipulation scandal. They accused Geithner of knowledge of the rate-fixing, and inaction which contributed to litigation that “threatens to clog our courts with multi-billion dollar class action lawsuits” alleging that the manipulated rates harmed state, municipal and local governments. The senators said that an American-based interest rate index is a better alternative which they would take steps towards creating.[62]
Appearing before Parliament on 16 July, Jerry del Missier, a former senior Barclays executive, said that he had received instructions from Robert Diamond to lower rates after Diamond’s discussions with bank regulators. He said that he had received information of a conversation between Diamond and Paul Tucker, deputy governor of the Bank of England, in which they had discussed the bank’s financial position at the height of the 2008 financial crisis. It was his understanding that senior British government officials had instructed the bank to alter the rates. Del Missier’s testimony followed statements from Diamond in which he denied that he had told his deputies to report false Libor rates. Speaking before Parliament the previous week, Tucker stated that he had shared concerns regarding Barclays Libor rates because the markets might view Barclays to be at risk if its Libor submissions continued to be higher than those of other international banks. In the midst of the Lehman Brothers collapse, there was concern the bank might need to be bailed out if the financial markets perceived it was a credit risk. Tucker told the committee, “I wanted to make sure that Barclays’ day-to-day funding issues didn’t push it over the cliff.”[64]
Libor banks are sued in civil court
Libor fixing operates as a cartel
Libor fixing a banking cartel
It’s just amazing how Libor fixing can make you that much money or lose if opposite. It’s a cartel now in London.
“
”
RBS trader in Singapore to Deutsche Bank trader, 19 August 2007[65]
In court documents filed in Singapore, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) trader Tan Chi Min told colleagues that his bank could move global interest rates and that the Libor fixing process in London had become a cartel. Tan in his court affidavit stated that the Royal Bank of Scotland knew of the Libor rates manipulation and that it supported such actions. In instant messages, traders at RBS extensively discussed manipulating Libor rates. In a released transcript of a 21 August 2007 chat, Jezri Mohideen, who was the head of yen products in Singapore, asked to have the Libor fixed in a conversation with other traders:[65]
Mohideen: “What’s the call on the Libor?”
Trader 2: “Where would you like it, Libor that is?”
Trader 3: “Mixed feelings, but mostly I’d like it all lower so the world starts to make a little sense.”
Trader 4: “The whole HF [hedge fund] world will be kissing you instead of calling me if Libor move lower.”
Trader 2: “OK, I will move the curve down 1 basis point, maybe more if I can.”
In another conversation on 27 March 2008, Tan asked that RBS raise its Libor submission and noted that an earlier lower figure that the bank had submitted had cost his team 200,000 pounds. In other released instant chats, Tan made it clear that the Libor fixing process had become a highly lucrative money making cartel. Tan in a conversation with traders at other banks, including Deutsche Bank’s Mark Wong said on 19 August 2007:[65]
Tan: “It’s just amazing how Libor fixing can make you that much money or lose if opposite. It’s a cartel now in London.”
Wong: “Must be damn difficult to trade man, especially [if] you [are] not in the loop.”
Mortgage rates manipulated on reset date
Homeowners in the US filed a class action lawsuit in October 2012 against twelve of the largest banks which alleged that Libor manipulation made mortgage repayments more expensive than they should have been.
Statistical analysis indicated that the Libor rose consistently on the first day of each month between 2000 and 2009 on the day that most adjustable-rate mortgages had as a change date on which new repayment rates would “reset”. An email referenced in the lawsuit from the Barclay’s settlement, showed a trader asking for a higher Libor rate because “We’re getting killed on our three-month resets.”[66] During the analysed period, the Libor rate rose on average more than two basis points above the average on the first day of the month, and between 2007 and 2009, the Libor rate rose on average more than seven and one-half basis points above the average on the first day of the month.[67]
The five lead plaintiffs included a pensioner whose home was repossessed after her subprime mortgage was securitized into Libor-based collateralized debt obligations, sold by banks to investors, and foreclosed. The plaintiffs could number 100,000, each of whom has lost thousands of dollars.[68] The complaint estimates that the banks earned hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, in wrongful profits as a result of artificially inflating Libor rates on the first day of each month during the complaint period.[67]
Municipalities lost billions due to rigging
The city of Baltimore and others in the US filed a class action lawsuit in April 2012 against Libor setting banks which alleged that the manipulation of Libor caused payments on their interest rate swaps to be smaller than they should have been.[69] Before the financial crisis, states and localities bought $500 billion in interest rate swaps to hedge their municipal bond sales. It is estimated that the manipulation of Libor cost municipalities at least $6 billion. These losses were in addition to $4 billion that localities had already paid to unwind backfiring interest rate swaps.[70]
Municipalities began using interest rate swaps to hedge their municipal bond sales in the late 1990s. At this time, investment bankers began offering local governments a way to save money on the sale of municipal bonds. The banks suggested instead of selling fixed interest rate bonds that local governments sell variable interest rate bonds which typically have interest rates as much as one percentage point lower than fixed interest rate bonds. For a municipal government this could mean saving as much as $1 million a year on the sale of a $100 million bond.[71]
In order to hedge costs on the sale of variable interest rate bonds, which can rise and fall with the market, local governments, such as Baltimore, purchased interest rate swaps which exchange a variable interest rate for a fixed interest rate.[72] In a swap deal, when the interest rate rises, the swap seller pays the local government the increased cost on the bond, while when the interest rate falls, the swap seller saves and pays the local government the decreased cost on the bond. The interest rate swap mechanism generally works well, however, between 2007 and 2010 the payments to local governments on their swaps artificially decreased but the cost on their bonds remained at actual market rates. This was because most interest rate swaps are linked to the Libor interest rate, while municipal bond rates are linked to the SIFMA Municipal Bond Index interest rate. During the financial crisis the two benchmark rates decoupled. Municipalities continued to pay on their bonds at the actual market Sifma rate but were paid on their interest rate swaps at the artificially lower Libor rate.[71]
Reactions and impact on banking regulation
The cost to colluding and suspect banks from litigation, penalties, and loss of confidence may drive down finance industry profits for years. The cost of litigation from the scandal may exceed that of asbestos lawsuits.[73]
United States
US experts such as Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts have argued that the Libor Scandal completes the picture of public and private financial institutions manipulating interest rates in order to prop up the prices of bonds and other fixed income instruments, and that “the motives of the Fed, Bank of England, US and UK banks are aligned, their policies mutually reinforcing and beneficial. The Libor fixing is another indication of this collusion.”[74] In that perspective they advocate stricter bank regulation, and a profound reform of the Federal Reserve System.
Former Citigroup Chairman and CEO Sandy Weill, considered one of the driving forces behind the considerable financial deregulation and “mega-mergers” of the 1990s, surprised financial analysts in Europe and North America by calling for splitting up the commercial banks from the investment banks. In effect, he says: “Bring back the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which led to half a century, free of financial crises.” [75]
Europe
Mainland European scholars discussed the necessity of far-reaching banking reforms in light of the current crisis of confidence, recommending the adoption of binding regulations that would go further than the Dodd–Frank Act: notably in France where SFAF and World Pensions Council (WPC) banking experts have argued that, beyond national legislations, such rules should be adopted and implemented within the broader context of separation of powers in European Union law, to put an end to anti-competitive practices akin to exclusive dealing and limit conflicts of interest.[76][77] This perspective gained ground after the unraveling of the Libor scandal, with mainstream opinion leaders such as the Financial Times‘ editorialists calling for the adoption of an EU-wide “Glass–Steagall II”.[78]
Naomi Wolf of The Guardian suggested in an editorial that the “notion that the entire global financial system is riddled with systemic fraud – and that key players in the gatekeeper roles, both in finance and in government, including regulatory bodies, know it and choose to quietly sustain this reality – is one that would have only recently seemed like the frenzied hypothesis of tinhat-wearers”.[79] Following Tim Geithner‘s promotion to Treasury Secretary, Wolf commented, “It is very hard, looking at the elaborate edifices of fraud that are emerging across the financial system, to ignore the possibility that this kind of silence – ‘the willingness to not rock the boat’ — is simply rewarded by promotion to ever higher positions, ever greater authority. If you learn that rate-rigging and regulatory failures are systemic, but stay quiet, well, perhaps you have shown that you are genuinely reliable and deserve membership of the club.”[79]
Recommendations
The British Bankers’ Association said on 25 September that it would transfer oversight of Libor to UK regulators, as proposed by Financial Services Authority Managing Director Martin Wheatley and CEO-designate of the new Financial Conduct Authority.[14] On 28 September, Wheatley’s independent review was published, recommending that an independent organization with government and regulator representation, called the Tender Committee, manage the process of setting Libor under a new external oversight process for transparency and accountability. Banks that make submissions to Libor would be required to base them on actual inter-bank deposit market transactions and keep records of their transactions supporting those submissions. The review also recommended that individual banks’ Libor submissions be published, but only after three months, to reduce the risk that they would be used as a measure of the submitting banks’ creditworthiness. The review left open the possibility that regulators might compel additional banks to participate in submissions if an insufficient number do voluntarily. The review recommended criminal sanctions specifically for manipulation of benchmark interest rates such as the Libor, saying that existing criminal regulations for manipulation of financial instruments were inadequate.[15] Libor rates could be higher and more volatile after implementation of the reforms, so financial institution customers may experience higher and more volatile borrowing and hedging costs.[16] The UK government agreed to accept all of the Wheatley Review’s recommendations and press for legislation implementing them.[17]
Bloomberg LP CEO Dan Doctoroff told the European Parliament that Bloomberg LP could develop an alternative index called the Bloomberg Interbank Offered Rate that would use data from transactions such as market-based quotes for credit default swap transactions and corporate bonds.[80][81]
^“Dissecting Barclays’ Libor woes”. Euro Money. 29 June 2012. Retrieved 7 January 2013. “‘Regulators might look to quote Libor based on actual transactions, though the technical hurdles are enormous. Regulators will try to safeguard the model rather than find an alternative to Libor.’”
Police perform house-to-house raids in Watertown MA ripping innocent families from their homes
On Friday, April 19, 2013, during a manhunt for a bombing suspect, police and federal agents spent the day storming people’s homes and performing illegal searches. While it was unclear initially if the home searches were voluntary, it is now crystal clear that they were absolutely NOT voluntary. Police were filmed ripping people from their homes at gunpoint, marching the residents out with their hands raised in submission, and then storming the homes to perform their illegal searches.
Shocking footage has emerged from Friday’s lockdown in Boston, where police, federal agents, national guard troops and SWAT teams enforced door to door searches of everyone’s home within twenty blocks as the entire city was placed under orders to stay off the streets.
The video, shot by a resident from their own house across the street, shows police barking orders at men and women as they order them at gunpoint to identify themselves, put their hands on their heads, and get out of their own home. They are then ordered to run down the street to be further frisked by police as scores of armed militarized cops look on.
The scenes look like something out of a disaster movie, with the backdrop of suburban America juxtaposed with what is essentially martial law playing out in full daylight.
The story floated in the mainstream media that the door to door searches were conducted with the voluntary consent of the residents of Watertown is clearly false. 9000+ Police locked down an entire city and went in with full force, with armored vehicles and combat gear, all to search for an injured 19 year old kid who turned out to be cowering in someone’s back yard.
While armies of police roamed around people’s homes and private property, Public transportation was shut down, businesses were forced to close, and a no-fly zone was enacted over Boston in an unprecedented show of force.
At this point, as military helicopters buzzed over neighborhoods, the Fourth Amendment had ceased to exist in Boston, which quickly resembled a war zone.
The compliant mainstream media reported on the activity without alarm or question. Katy Waldman of Slate wrote an article claiming that under dire circumstances police can suspend 4th Amendment rights against unreasonable searches:
In exigent circumstances, or emergency situations, police can conduct warrantless searches to protect public safety. This exception to the Fourth Amendment’s probable cause requirement normally addresses situations of “hot pursuit,” in which an escaping suspect is tracked to a private home. But it might also apply to the events unfolding in Boston if further harm or injury might be supposed to occur in the time it takes to secure a warrant.
This activity, once again, sets a shocking precedent. Police and military are training in these circumstances every single day of the year. They are fully acclimatized to the process, as if it is completely normal. They do not hesitate in carrying out such orders, which are now being implemented whenever the authorities deem a situation to be an emergency.
This is what fully fledged martial law in America looks like.
Has Watertown Made Warrantless Searches The ‘New Normal’?
April 25, 2013
By Bob Parks
The whole notion of the police “manhunt” is not a new American phenomenon. Cops chase bad guys, cops corner bad guys. Sometimes the bad guys give up quietly, sometimes they go down in a blaze of glory. But we’ve always had rules of engagement when it came to law enforcement interaction with the general public.
It appears all that got thrown out the window in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon terror bombing and the subsequent police chase in Cambridge, Massachusetts that came to a screeching halt in Watertown.
Seemingly, for the first time in the United States, we witnessed paramilitary-garbed law enforcement personnel forcing residents out of their homes at gunpoint. In some cases, the language used by law enforcement was menacing.
Because of the hysteria that comes after any terror event, the American people wanted the perpetrators caught and, in doing so, appeared to have allowed their rights against unlawful search and seizure to not be suspended, but removed.
How many times have we watched cop dramas on television where the police had a pretty good idea of where the bad guys were, but as they weren’t sure, came to the door and asked permission to come inside to “have a look around”? The only time they ever bashed a door in is when they absolutely knew the bad guys were there. If there was ever any doubt, they’d have to wait… for a court order from a judge.
That did not happen here.
The police came to people’s homes, ordered them to leave immediately at the point of a gun in some cases, and then entered their place of residence. It’s never “consensual” when the person asking you for something has a gun in his hand. “Probable cause” is convenient, but in this case, very arbitrary.
Again, I understand this was the culmination of a horrific event, but let’s say instead of the Thursday evening car chase racing through the streets and winding up in Watertown, it went up Route 9 and ended in very upscale Newton?
Do you think armed police would, under the authority of the governor of Massachusetts and the federal government, put an assault rifle nozzle in the face of a potential wealthy political donor? Would those policemen force the family of the elite into the streets while they entered a home that is worth 20 of their salaries combined?
If it weren’t a middle class area like Watertown, would you really see a politician ordering law enforcement to forcibly enter and search homes on the upper west side of Manhattan or Georgetown or Beverly Hills? Would this happen to a celebrity in his home or, heaven forbid, a congressman?
When citizens are searched by pat-down, rousted out of their homes, and we end up thanking the police with blind understanding, the government has essentially found an acceptable means to take more of our rights away without even one politician having to cast a vote.
These past events in Watertown have set a precedent.
The police can now enter our homes anytime they want. It just requires a verbal massaging of the circumstance. After all, who ever heard of “shelter-in-place” before Friday, April 19, 2013?
If the government can order us to stay in our homes, it looks like it can throw us out of them any time it wants… at the point of a gun.
Systematic House-to-House Raids in Locked-Down Watertown, Massachusetts
Police and FBI Comb Watertown for Bombing Suspect
Boston Bombing: Watertown Operation: SWAT team secures houses searching for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
Boston Door To Door Searches – Raw Video
Raid on Boston bombing suspect captured on film
Obama signs Executive Order NDRP Martial Law – Hannity Full News Clip Fox News (Mar 19, 2012)
Alex Jones – Obama’s New America with Martial Law
President Obama recently signed an Executive Order giving him the power to implement martial law in the US. The National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order will give Obama the power to seize the countries resources in a time of crisis or peace. This includes resources ranging from livestock to sources of energy and water.
Many critics of the Obama Administration believe this is another effort at power grab, but others argue that EO update is irrelevant. Alex Jones, host of The Alex Jones Show, joins RT with his take on the EO.
Obama Signs NDAA Martial Law in America 2012
Obama Signs NDAA Martial Law ∞ Justifying why U have no Rights ? Ron Paul Rohbs new channel
The Final Loss of Freedom in America NDAA.
Scary New NDAA Bill Passed
For Immediate Release
March 16, 2012
Executive Order — National Defense Resources Preparedness
EXECUTIVE ORDER
NATIONAL DEFENSE RESOURCES PREPAREDNESS
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended (50 U.S.C. App. 2061 et seq.), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, and as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:
PART I – PURPOSE, POLICY, AND IMPLEMENTATION
Section101. Purpose. This order delegates authorities and addresses national defense resource policies and programs under the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended (the “Act”).
Sec. 102. Policy. The United States must have an industrial and technological base capable of meeting national defense requirements and capable of contributing to the technological superiority of its national defense equipment in peacetime and in times of national emergency. The domestic industrial and technological base is the foundation for national defense preparedness. The authorities provided in the Act shall be used to strengthen this base and to ensure it is capable of responding to the national defense needs of the United States.
Sec. 103. General Functions. Executive departments and agencies (agencies) responsible for plans and programs relating to national defense (as defined in section 801(j) of this order), or for resources and services needed to support such plans and programs, shall:
(a) identify requirements for the full spectrum of emergencies, including essential military and civilian demand;
(b) assess on an ongoing basis the capability of the domestic industrial and technological base to satisfy requirements in peacetime and times of national emergency, specifically evaluating the availability of the most critical resource and production sources, including subcontractors and suppliers, materials, skilled labor, and professional and technical personnel;
(c) be prepared, in the event of a potential threat to the security of the United States, to take actions necessary to ensure the availability of adequate resources and production capability, including services and critical technology, for national defense requirements;
(d) improve the efficiency and responsiveness of the domestic industrial base to support national defense requirements; and
(e) foster cooperation between the defense and commercial sectors for research and development and for acquisition of materials, services, components, and equipment to enhance industrial base efficiency and responsiveness.
Sec. 104. Implementation. (a) The National Security Council and Homeland Security Council, in conjunction with the National Economic Council, shall serve as the integrated policymaking forum for consideration and formulation of national defense resource preparedness policy and shall make recommendations to the President on the use of authorities under the Act.
(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security shall:
(1) advise the President on issues of national defense resource preparedness and on the use of the authorities and functions delegated by this order;
(2) provide for the central coordination of the plans and programs incident to authorities and functions delegated under this order, and provide guidance to agencies assigned functions under this order, developed in consultation with such agencies; and
(3) report to the President periodically concerning all program activities conducted pursuant to this order.
(c) The Defense Production Act Committee, described in section 701 of this order, shall:
(1) in a manner consistent with section 2(b) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2062(b), advise the President through the Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy on the effective use of the authorities under the Act; and
(2) prepare and coordinate an annual report to the Congress pursuant to section 722(d) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2171(d).
(d) The Secretary of Commerce, in cooperation with the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and other agencies, shall:
(1) analyze potential effects of national emergencies on actual production capability, taking into account the entire production system, including shortages of resources, and develop recommended preparedness measures to strengthen capabilities for production increases in national emergencies; and
(2) perform industry analyses to assess capabilities of the industrial base to support the national defense, and develop policy recommendations to improve the international competitiveness of specific domestic industries and their abilities to meet national defense program needs.
PART II - PRIORITIES AND ALLOCATIONS
Sec. 201. Priorities and Allocations Authorities. (a) The authority of the President conferred by section 101 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2071, to require acceptance and priority performance of contracts or orders (other than contracts of employment) to promote the national defense over performance of any other contracts or orders, and to allocate materials, services, and facilities as deemed necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense, is delegated to the following agency heads:
(1) the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to food resources, food resource facilities, livestock resources, veterinary resources, plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment and commercial fertilizer;
(2) the Secretary of Energy with respect to all forms of energy;
(3) the Secretary of Health and Human Services with respect to health resources;
(4) the Secretary of Transportation with respect to all forms of civil transportation;
(5) the Secretary of Defense with respect to water resources; and
(6) the Secretary of Commerce with respect to all other materials, services, and facilities, including construction materials.
(b) The Secretary of each agency delegated authority under subsection (a) of this section (resource departments) shall plan for and issue regulations to prioritize and allocate resources and establish standards and procedures by which the authority shall be used to promote the national defense, under both emergency and non-emergency conditions. Each Secretary shall authorize the heads of other agencies, as appropriate, to place priority ratings on contracts and orders for materials, services, and facilities needed in support of programs approved under section 202 of this order.
(c) Each resource department shall act, as necessary and appropriate, upon requests for special priorities assistance, as defined by section 801(l) of this order, in a time frame consistent with the urgency of the need at hand. In situations where there are competing program requirements for limited resources, the resource department shall consult with the Secretary who made the required determination under section 202 of this order. Such Secretary shall coordinate with and identify for the resource department which program requirements to prioritize on the basis of operational urgency. In situations involving more than one Secretary making such a required determination under section 202 of this order, the Secretaries shall coordinate with and identify for the resource department which program requirements should receive priority on the basis of operational urgency.
(d) If agreement cannot be reached between two such Secretaries, then the issue shall be referred to the President through the Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor and the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.
(e) The Secretary of each resource department, when necessary, shall make the finding required under section 101(b) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2071(b). This finding shall be submitted for the President’s approval through the Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor and the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. Upon such approval, the Secretary of the resource department that made the finding may use the authority of section 101(a) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2071(a), to control the general distribution of any material (including applicable services) in the civilian market.
Sec. 202. Determinations. Except as provided in section 201(e) of this order, the authority delegated by section 201 of this order may be used only to support programs that have been determined in writing as necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense:
(a) by the Secretary of Defense with respect to military production and construction, military assistance to foreign nations, military use of civil transportation, stockpiles managed by the Department of Defense, space, and directly related activities;
(b) by the Secretary of Energy with respect to energy production and construction, distribution and use, and directly related activities; and
(c) by the Secretary of Homeland Security with respect to all other national defense programs, including civil defense and continuity of Government.
Sec. 203. Maximizing Domestic Energy Supplies. The authorities of the President under section 101(c)(1) (2) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2071(c)(1) (2), are delegated to the Secretary of Commerce, with the exception that the authority to make findings that materials (including equipment), services, and facilities are critical and essential, as described in section 101(c)(2)(A) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2071(c)(2)(A), is delegated to the Secretary of Energy.
Sec. 204. Chemical and Biological Warfare. The authority of the President conferred by section 104(b) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2074(b), is delegated to the Secretary of Defense. This authority may not be further delegated by the Secretary.
PART III – EXPANSION OF PRODUCTIVE CAPACITY AND SUPPLY
Sec. 301. Loan Guarantees. (a) To reduce current or projected shortfalls of resources, critical technology items, or materials essential for the national defense, the head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense, as defined in section 801(h) of this order, is authorized pursuant to section 301 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2091, to guarantee loans by private institutions.
(b) Each guaranteeing agency is designated and authorized to: (1) act as fiscal agent in the making of its own guarantee contracts and in otherwise carrying out the purposes of section 301 of the Act; and (2) contract with any Federal Reserve Bank to assist the agency in serving as fiscal agent.
(c) Terms and conditions of guarantees under this authority shall be determined in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The guaranteeing agency is authorized, following such consultation, to prescribe: (1) either specifically or by maximum limits or otherwise, rates of interest, guarantee and commitment fees, and other charges which may be made in connection with such guarantee contracts; and (2) regulations governing the forms and procedures (which shall be uniform to the extent practicable) to be utilized in connection therewith.
Sec. 302. Loans. To reduce current or projected shortfalls of resources, critical technology items, or materials essential for the national defense, the head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority of the President under section 302 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2092, to make loans thereunder. Terms and conditions of loans under this authority shall be determined in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of OMB.
Sec. 303. Additional Authorities. (a) To create, maintain, protect, expand, or restore domestic industrial base capabilities essential for the national defense, the head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority of the President under section 303 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2093, to make provision for purchases of, or commitments to purchase, an industrial resource or a critical technology item for Government use or resale, and to make provision for the development of production capabilities, and for the increased use of emerging technologies in security program applications, and to enable rapid transition of emerging technologies.
(b) Materials acquired under section 303 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2093, that exceed the needs of the programs under the Act may be transferred to the National Defense Stockpile, if, in the judgment of the Secretary of Defense as the National Defense Stockpile Manager, such transfers are in the public interest.
Sec. 304. Subsidy Payments. To ensure the supply of raw or nonprocessed materials from high cost sources, or to ensure maximum production or supply in any area at stable prices of any materials in light of a temporary increase in transportation cost, the head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority of the President under section 303(c) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2093(c), to make subsidy payments, after consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of OMB.
Sec. 305. Determinations and Findings. (a) Pursuant to budget authority provided by an appropriations act in advance for credit assistance under section 301 or 302 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2091, 2092, and consistent with the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990, as amended (FCRA), 2 U.S.C. 661 et seq., the head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority to make the determinations set forth in sections 301(a)(2) and 302(b)(2) of the Act, in consultation with the Secretary making the required determination under section 202 of this order; provided, that such determinations shall be made after due consideration of the provisions of OMB Circular A 129 and the credit subsidy score for the relevant loan or loan guarantee as approved by OMB pursuant to FCRA.
(b) Other than any determination by the President under section 303(a)(7)(b) of the Act, the head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority to make the required determinations, judgments, certifications, findings, and notifications defined under section 303 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2093, in consultation with the Secretary making the required determination under section 202 of this order.
Sec. 306. Strategic and Critical Materials. The Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of the Interior in consultation with the Secretary of Defense as the National Defense Stockpile Manager, are each delegated the authority of the President under section 303(a)(1)(B) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2093(a)(1)(B), to encourage the exploration, development, and mining of strategic and critical materials and other materials.
Sec. 307. Substitutes. The head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority of the President under section 303(g) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2093(g), to make provision for the development of substitutes for strategic and critical materials, critical components, critical technology items, and other resources to aid the national defense.
Sec. 308. Government-Owned Equipment. The head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority of the President under section 303(e) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2093(e), to:
(a) procure and install additional equipment, facilities, processes, or improvements to plants, factories, and other industrial facilities owned by the Federal Government and to procure and install Government owned equipment in plants, factories, or other industrial facilities owned by private persons;
(b) provide for the modification or expansion of privately owned facilities, including the modification or improvement of production processes, when taking actions under sections 301, 302, or 303 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2091, 2092, 2093; and
(c) sell or otherwise transfer equipment owned by the Federal Government and installed under section 303(e) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2093(e), to the owners of such plants, factories, or other industrial facilities.
Sec. 309. Defense Production Act Fund. The Secretary of Defense is designated the Defense Production Act Fund Manager, in accordance with section 304(f) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2094(f), and shall carry out the duties specified in section 304 of the Act, in consultation with the agency heads having approved, and appropriated funds for, projects under title III of the Act.
Sec. 310. Critical Items. The head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority of the President under section 107(b)(1) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2077(b)(1), to take appropriate action to ensure that critical components, critical technology items, essential materials, and industrial resources are available from reliable sources when needed to meet defense requirements during peacetime, graduated mobilization, and national emergency. Appropriate action may include restricting contract solicitations to reliable sources, restricting contract solicitations to domestic sources (pursuant to statutory authority), stockpiling critical components, and developing substitutes for critical components or critical technology items.
Sec. 311. Strengthening Domestic Capability. The head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority of the President under section 107(a) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2077(a), to utilize the authority of title III of the Act or any other provision of law to provide appropriate incentives to develop, maintain, modernize, restore, and expand the productive capacities of domestic sources for critical components, critical technology items, materials, and industrial resources essential for the execution of the national security strategy of the United States.
Sec. 312. Modernization of Equipment. The head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense, in accordance with section 108(b) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2078(b), may utilize the authority of title III of the Act to guarantee the purchase or lease of advance manufacturing equipment, and any related services with respect to any such equipment for purposes of the Act. In considering title III projects, the head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense shall provide a strong preference for proposals submitted by a small business supplier or subcontractor in accordance with section 108(b)(2) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2078(b)(2).
PART IV - VOLUNTARY AGREEMENTS AND ADVISORY COMMITTEES
Sec. 401. Delegations. The authority of the President under sections 708(c) and (d) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2158(c), (d), is delegated to the heads of agencies otherwise delegated authority under this order. The status of the use of such delegations shall be furnished to the Secretary of Homeland Security.
Sec. 402. Advisory Committees. The authority of the President under section 708(d) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2158(d), and delegated in section 401 of this order (relating to establishment of advisory committees) shall be exercised only after consultation with, and in accordance with, guidelines and procedures established by the Administrator of General Services.
Sec. 403. Regulations. The Secretary of Homeland Security, after approval of the Attorney General, and after consultation by the Attorney General with the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, shall promulgate rules pursuant to section 708(e) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2158(e), incorporating standards and procedures by which voluntary agreements and plans of action may be developed and carried out. Such rules may be adopted by other agencies to fulfill the rulemaking requirement of section 708(e) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2158(e).
PART V - EMPLOYMENT OF PERSONNEL
Sec. 501. National Defense Executive Reserve. (a) In accordance with section 710(e) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2160(e), there is established in the executive branch a National Defense Executive Reserve (NDER) composed of persons of recognized expertise from various segments of the private sector and from Government (except full time Federal employees) for training for employment in executive positions in the Federal Government in the event of a national defense emergency.
(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security shall issue necessary guidance for the NDER program, including appropriate guidance for establishment, recruitment, training, monitoring, and activation of NDER units and shall be responsible for the overall coordination of the NDER program. The authority of the President under section 710(e) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2160(e), to determine periods of national defense emergency is delegated to the Secretary of Homeland Security.
(c) The head of any agency may implement section 501(a) of this order with respect to NDER operations in such agency.
(d) The head of each agency with an NDER unit may exercise the authority under section 703 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2153, to employ civilian personnel when activating all or a part of its NDER unit. The exercise of this authority shall be subject to the provisions of sections 501(e) and (f) of this order and shall not be redelegated.
(e) The head of an agency may activate an NDER unit, in whole or in part, upon the written determination of the Secretary of Homeland Security that an emergency affecting the national defense exists and that the activation of the unit is necessary to carry out the emergency program functions of the agency.
(f) Prior to activating the NDER unit, the head of the agency shall notify, in writing, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism of the impending activation.
Sec. 502. Consultants. The head of each agency otherwise delegated functions under this order is delegated the authority of the President under sections 710(b) and (c) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2160(b), (c), to employ persons of outstanding experience and ability without compensation and to employ experts, consultants, or organizations. The authority delegated by this section may not be redelegated.
PART VI - LABOR REQUIREMENTS
Sec. 601. Secretary of Labor. (a) The Secretary of Labor, in coordination with the Secretary of Defense and the heads of other agencies, as deemed appropriate by the Secretary of Labor, shall:
(1) collect and maintain data necessary to make a continuing appraisal of the Nation’s workforce needs for purposes of national defense;
(2) upon request by the Director of Selective Service, and in coordination with the Secretary of Defense, assist the Director of Selective Service in development of policies regulating the induction and deferment of persons for duty in the armed services;
(3) upon request from the head of an agency with authority under this order, consult with that agency with respect to: (i) the effect of contemplated actions on labor demand and utilization; (ii) the relation of labor demand to materials and facilities requirements; and (iii) such other matters as will assist in making the exercise of priority and allocations functions consistent with effective utilization and distribution of labor;
(4) upon request from the head of an agency with authority under this order: (i) formulate plans, programs, and policies for meeting the labor requirements of actions to be taken for national defense purposes; and (ii) estimate training needs to help address national defense requirements and promote necessary and appropriate training programs; and
(5) develop and implement an effective labor management relations policy to support the activities and programs under this order, with the cooperation of other agencies as deemed appropriate by the Secretary of Labor, including the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, the National Mediation Board, and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.
(b) All agencies shall cooperate with the Secretary of Labor, upon request, for the purposes of this section, to the extent permitted by law.
PART VII - DEFENSE PRODUCTION ACT COMMITTEE
Sec. 701. The Defense Production Act Committee. (a) The Defense Production Act Committee (Committee) shall be composed of the following members, in accordance with section 722(b) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2171(b):
(1) The Secretary of State;
(2) The Secretary of the Treasury;
(3) The Secretary of Defense;
(4) The Attorney General;
(5) The Secretary of the Interior;
(6) The Secretary of Agriculture;
(7) The Secretary of Commerce;
(8) The Secretary of Labor;
(9) The Secretary of Health and Human Services;
(10) The Secretary of Transportation;
(11) The Secretary of Energy;
(12) The Secretary of Homeland Security;
(13) The Director of National Intelligence;
(14) The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency;
(15) The Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers;
(16) The Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and
(17) The Administrator of General Services.
(b) The Director of OMB and the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy shall be invited to participate in all Committee meetings and activities in an advisory role. The Chairperson, as designated by the President pursuant to section 722 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2171, may invite the heads of other agencies or offices to participate in Committee meetings and activities in an advisory role, as appropriate.
Sec. 702. Offsets. The Secretary of Commerce shall prepare and submit to the Congress the annual report required by section 723 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2172, in consultation with the Secretaries of State, the Treasury, Defense, and Labor, the United States Trade Representative, the Director of National Intelligence, and the heads of other agencies as appropriate. The heads of agencies shall provide the Secretary of Commerce with such information as may be necessary for the effective performance of this function.
PART VIII - GENERAL PROVISIONS
Sec. 801. Definitions. In addition to the definitions in section 702 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2152, the following definitions apply throughout this order:
(a) “Civil transportation” includes movement of persons and property by all modes of transportation in interstate, intrastate, or foreign commerce within the United States, its territories and possessions, and the District of Columbia, and related public storage and warehousing, ports, services, equipment and facilities, such as transportation carrier shop and repair facilities. “Civil transportation” also shall include direction, control, and coordination of civil transportation capacity regardless of ownership. “Civil transportation” shall not include transportation owned or controlled by the Department of Defense, use of petroleum and gas pipelines, and coal slurry pipelines used only to supply energy production facilities directly.
(b) “Energy” means all forms of energy including petroleum, gas (both natural and manufactured), electricity, solid fuels (including all forms of coal, coke, coal chemicals, coal liquification, and coal gasification), solar, wind, other types of renewable energy, atomic energy, and the production, conservation, use, control, and distribution (including pipelines) of all of these forms of energy.
(c) “Farm equipment” means equipment, machinery, and repair parts manufactured for use on farms in connection with the production or preparation for market use of food resources.
(d) “Fertilizer” means any product or combination of products that contain one or more of the elements nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium for use as a plant nutrient.
(e) “Food resources” means all commodities and products, (simple, mixed, or compound), or complements to such commodities or products, that are capable of being ingested by either human beings or animals, irrespective of other uses to which such commodities or products may be put, at all stages of processing from the raw commodity to the products thereof in vendible form for human or animal consumption. “Food resources” also means potable water packaged in commercially marketable containers, all starches, sugars, vegetable and animal or marine fats and oils, seed, cotton, hemp, and flax fiber, but does not mean any such material after it loses its identity as an agricultural commodity or agricultural product.
(f) “Food resource facilities” means plants, machinery, vehicles (including on farm), and other facilities required for the production, processing, distribution, and storage (including cold storage) of food resources, and for the domestic distribution of farm equipment and fertilizer (excluding transportation thereof).
(g) “Functions” include powers, duties, authority, responsibilities, and discretion.
(h) “Head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense” means the heads of the Departments of State, Justice, the Interior, and Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the General Services Administration, and all other agencies with authority delegated under section 201 of this order.
(i) “Health resources” means drugs, biological products, medical devices, materials, facilities, health supplies, services and equipment required to diagnose, mitigate or prevent the impairment of, improve, treat, cure, or restore the physical or mental health conditions of the population.
(j) “National defense” means programs for military and energy production or construction, military or critical infrastructure assistance to any foreign nation, homeland security, stockpiling, space, and any directly related activity. Such term includes emergency preparedness activities conducted pursuant to title VI of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, 42 U.S.C. 5195 et seq., and critical infrastructure protection and restoration.
(k) “Offsets” means compensation practices required as a condition of purchase in either government to government or commercial sales of defense articles and/or defense services as defined by the Arms Export Control Act, 22 U.S.C. 2751 et seq., and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, 22 C.F.R. 120.1 130.17.
(l) “Special priorities assistance” means action by resource departments to assist with expediting deliveries, placing rated orders, locating suppliers, resolving production or delivery conflicts between various rated orders, addressing problems that arise in the fulfillment of a rated order or other action authorized by a delegated agency, and determining the validity of rated orders.
(m) “Strategic and critical materials” means materials (including energy) that (1) would be needed to supply the military, industrial, and essential civilian needs of the United States during a national emergency, and (2) are not found or produced in the United States in sufficient quantities to meet such need and are vulnerable to the termination or reduction of the availability of the material.
(n) “Water resources” means all usable water, from all sources, within the jurisdiction of the United States, that can be managed, controlled, and allocated to meet emergency requirements, except “water resources” does not include usable water that qualifies as “food resources.”
Sec. 802. General. (a) Except as otherwise provided in section 802(c) of this order, the authorities vested in the President by title VII of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2151 et seq., are delegated to the head of each agency in carrying out the delegated authorities under the Act and this order, by the Secretary of Labor in carrying out part VI of this order, and by the Secretary of the Treasury in exercising the functions assigned in Executive Order 11858, as amended.
(b) The authorities that may be exercised and performed pursuant to section 802(a) of this order shall include:
(1) the power to redelegate authorities, and to authorize the successive redelegation of authorities to agencies, officers, and employees of the Government; and
(2) the power of subpoena under section 705 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2155, with respect to (i) authorities delegated in parts II, III, and section 702 of this order, and (ii) the functions assigned to the Secretary of the Treasury in Executive Order 11858, as amended, provided that the subpoena power referenced in subsections (i) and (ii) shall be utilized only after the scope and purpose of the investigation, inspection, or inquiry to which the subpoena relates have been defined either by the appropriate officer identified in section 802(a) of this order or by such other person or persons as the officer shall designate.
(c) Excluded from the authorities delegated by section 802(a) of this order are authorities delegated by parts IV and V of this order, authorities in section 721 and 722 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2170 2171, and the authority with respect to fixing compensation under section 703 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2153.
Sec. 803. Authority. (a) Executive Order 12919 of June 3, 1994, and sections 401(3) (4) of Executive Order 12656 of November 18, 1988, are revoked. All other previously issued orders, regulations, rulings, certificates, directives, and other actions relating to any function affected by this order shall remain in effect except as they are inconsistent with this order or are subsequently amended or revoked under proper authority. Nothing in this order shall affect the validity or force of anything done under previous delegations or other assignment of authority under the Act.
(b) Nothing in this order shall affect the authorities assigned under Executive Order 11858 of May 7, 1975, as amended, except as provided in section 802 of this order.
(c) Nothing in this order shall affect the authorities assigned under Executive Order 12472 of April 3, 1984, as amended.
Sec. 804. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect functions of the Director of OMB relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
Saudi National held by police after Boston Marathon bombing. Person of interest
The Glenn Beck Program Saudi Suspect/Boston Bombing Air Date: 4-24-13.
Glenn Beck- Big Sis Lied: New Info On Saudi National In Boston Attacks Confirms Cover Up.
The Saudi – U.S. Relationship – TheBlazeTV – The Glenn Beck Radio Program – 2013.04.22
The Saudi Arabia Connection – TheBlazeTV – The Glenn Beck Program – 2013.04.22
New Evidence On Boston Bombings Government Cover-Up
From TV Glenn updates on the Saudi national — Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck detailed new update on the Boston bombing 23/04/2013
Glenn Beck Reveals More about Saudi National
“…Monday on radio, Glenn Beck revealed further details about the Saudi national who was the first suspect in the Boston marathon bombing. Despite denials from Janet Napolitano and officials from the U.S. Immigrations and Customs (ICE) that a Saudi national was taken into custody in connection to the Boston marathon bombing, several sources have confirmed that Abdul Rahman Ali Al-Harbi was set to be deported for proven terrorist activity.
According to two FBI sources, Abdul Rahman Ali Al-Harbi was taken “into custody” Monday April 15th at a Boston after he was injured in the blast.
A source within the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) told TheBlaze that on Monday night Al-Harbi’s Revere, Massachusetts apartment was searched and property was taken out.
At 4:00pm ET on Tuesday April 16th, The NCTC Field Watch Commander created an “event file” calling for Al-Harbi’s deportation using Section 212 3b, which is proven terrorist activity. According to TheBlaze’s sources, tagging someone as 3b requires solid evidence.
Fox News reporter Todd Starnes has also reported, “The Saudi national who was initially detained and then ruled out as a suspect in the Boston Marathon terrorist attack had been flagged on a terror watch list and was granted a student visa without being properly vetted, sources have told me.”
Starnes report no longer appears on the Fox News website, but can be found on Townhall.
Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) has told TheBlaze that he has detailed information on the Saudi national and confirmed that Al-Harbi was to be deported under Section 212 3b of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Alongside three other Congressmen, Rep. Duncan has requested a classified briefing on the Saudi national and the deportation order. …”
Glenn Beck- Saudi National Is An Al Qaeda Recruiter Behind Boston Marathon Bombing
Obama’s “Catch & Release” of Saudi Boston Marathon Bombing Suspect
Jeff Duncan Questions Napolitano On Deportation Of Saudi National. Boston Bombing
Terror in Boston – Saudi Being Deported For National Security Reason? – What The Hell Is This?
Still think the FBI is telling you the truth? CHECK THIS OUT
Abdul Rahman Ali Al-Harbi, Bombing ‘Person Of Interest’ Has 6 Saudi ‘Terrorists’ In Family,5 More Are In Gitmo -
Obama Buries Boston Massacre Saudi Connection
Boston Bombing Suspects Were Gov’t Assets
National Counterterrorism Center’s Role in Counterterrorism
Pres. Obama Remarks to National Counterterrorism Center Staff
Pres. Obama Remarks to National Counterterrorism Center Staff
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
President Obama traveled to the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington, DC. He met with NCTC leadership and delivered remarks to staff members.
Background Articles and Videos
Briefing on Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi Requested by Congressional Committee; Was on “Terror” Watch List
Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi was the Saudi national and initial “person of interest” in the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three and injured scores of others, some critically.
It turns out that he was “flagged on a terror watch list”, as reported by Todd Starnes of Town Hall. What a coincidence! Soon after the terror attack, a brave citizen tackled Ali Alharbi when he spotted the 22-year-old running away from one of the explosive devices. It would be very interesting to speak to the vigilant citizen(s) who spotted the Saudi National, but he (or they) are yet to be named. Why? John Miller, former Assistant Director to the FBI and CBS News correspondent stated, “this person was pretty close to wherever this blast went off, but not so close as to suffer the serious injuries that other people did.” Police initially denied all reports of having a Saudi in custody, but later relented.
The man was transferred to the hospital, but not as a “suspect,” insisted officials. Regardless, a warrant was issued to search the Saudi National’s apartment, where “bags of evidence” were removed and his roommate questioned “for hours.” One would imagine that the police would have cause to get a warrant in the first place. It would be interesting to see the warrant. It turns out that it was NOT the police, but “federal authorities” who made the decision to drop the case against Ali Alharbi. According to the Boston Herald, Revere police Lt. Amy O’Hara said that federal authorities “are telling us he’s no longer a person of interest.” Another interesting fact from the Boston Herald article was that the roommate said he was “forbidden to speak about the home search by both the FBI and the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia.” Why?
Janet Napolitano Dismisses Deportation “Rumors”
Previous reports that Ali Alharbi was to be deported were roundly disregarded (and even mocked) by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. She roundly dismissed deportation concerns during a “heated exchange”, which occurred on Thursday regarding the Saudi National with Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC). She said,
“I am unaware of anyone who is being deported for national security concerns at all related to Boston…I don’t know where that rumor came from.”
When Duncan questioned the wisdom of deporting “someone who was reportedly at the scene of the bombing”, Napolitano dodged the question by mocking it. She said,
“It is so full of misstatements and misapprehensions, that it is just not worthy of any answer…There has been so much reported on this that has been wrong. I can’t even begin to tell you, congressman.”
The condescending answer is a knee-jerk response to uncomfortable questions.
House Committee on Homeland Security Wants Answers
Despite Napolitano’s faux outrage, Key members of the House Committee on Homeland Security says it has “copies of the original deportation order” and have sent a letter to Janet Napolitano that says in part, “We request the Department provide a detailed overview of the records associated with this individual to include his law enforcement and immigration records prior to April 15, 2013, as well as his current status.” The letter was signed by Chairman Michael T. McCaul, Chairman Jeff Duncan of the subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency, Chairman Peter King of the subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, and Chairman Candice Miller of the subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security as reported by theBlaze.
Is Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi involved in any way in the Boston Bombings? One thing is for sure, when the federal government dodges questions, it is not reassuring, adds to speculation, and fuels conspiracy theories. Add the inconsistent and conflicting media coverage; not to mention their endless and irresponsible speculation about the motives of the bombers before facts emerged, and it is no wonder that the mainstream media is losing credibility.
“…Monday on radio, Glenn Beck revealed further details about the Saudi national who was the first suspect in the Boston marathon bombing. Despite denials from Janet Napolitano and officials from the U.S. Immigrations and Customs (ICE) that a Saudi national was taken into custody in connection to the Boston marathon bombing, several sources have confirmed that Abdul Rahman Ali Al-Harbi was set to be deported for proven terrorist activity.
According to two FBI sources, Abdul Rahman Ali Al-Harbi was taken “into custody” Monday April 15th at a Boston after he was injured in the blast.
A source within the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) told TheBlaze that on Monday night Al-Harbi’s Revere, Massachusetts apartment was searched and property was taken out.
At 4:00pm ET on Tuesday April 16th, The NCTC Field Watch Commander created an “event file” calling for Al-Harbi’s deportation using Section 212 3b, which is proven terrorist activity. According to TheBlaze’s sources, tagging someone as 3b requires solid evidence.
Fox News reporter Todd Starnes has also reported, “The Saudi national who was initially detained and then ruled out as a suspect in the Boston Marathon terrorist attack had been flagged on a terror watch list and was granted a student visa without being properly vetted, sources have told me.”
Starnes report no longer appears on the Fox News website, but can be found on Townhall.
Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) has told TheBlaze that he has detailed information on the Saudi national and confirmed that Al-Harbi was to be deported under Section 212 3b of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Alongside three other Congressmen, Rep. Duncan has requested a classified briefing on the Saudi national and the deportation order. …”
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Background Articles and Videos
Abdulrahman Ali Al-Harbi deportation order records altered
Abdulrahman Ali Al-Harbi was originally named as a ‘person of interest’ after the Boston bombings. The Saudi National was cleared of any involvement in the bombing, but there have been a lot of strange things going on with Abdulrahman Ali Al-Harbi and the Obama regime. According to Breitbart, the Saudi National Abdulrahman Ali Al-Harbi had his deportation order records altered. This rescinded his deportation order. Michelle Obama decided to pay Al-Harbi a visit while he was in the hospital recovering from wounds in the attack. Michelle Obama never paid a visit to any of the other injured people, including those who lost limbs in the attack. Also, Obama himself met with the Saudi foreign minister two days after the attack. This was not listed on Obama’s public schedule and as usual the media didn’t report on this. Something very fishy is going on here. I wonder if this was supposed to be Glenn Beck’s big ‘bombshell’ for tomorrow? If so, Breitbart scooped him.
Now that it’s been revelaed that Abdulrahman Ali Al-Harbi deportation order records altered, it probably explains why Janet Napolitano got so testy when asked about Al-Harbi last week. Why would Obama or his regime alter the deportation order? Are they hiding something? Of course they are. Without a media in this country, we’ll never know what they are hiding.
The alteration occurred the night before Secretary Napolitano vehemently denied the existence of any deportation order in testimony before the House of Representatives. Sources with knowledge of these matters says the change occurred subsequent to Secretary John Kerry’s closed door meeting on Tuesday with the Saudi Minister and around the time of the meeting between the Saudi Minister and Obama later on Wednesday evening. The Saudi National has been identified as Abdulrahman Ali Al-Harbi. There is no evidence that Al-Harbi is connected to the Boston Marathon Bombings. Steven Emerson announced on Wednesday night’s episode of Hannity that the Saudi National who was a person of interest and later cleared, was set to be deported.
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Senate defeats Obama’s gun grabbing agenda
By Raymond Thomas Pronk
President Barack Obama and progressive liberals of the Democratic and Republican parties are once again attempting to infringe upon the Second Amendment Constitutional rights of the American people to keep and bear arms.
The progressive gun grabbers recognize that under Article V of the Constitution they do not have the necessary two-thirds of both Houses needed to propose an Amendment to repeal the Second Amendment nor do the gun grabbers have the necessary three-fourths of the state legislatures to ratify such an amendment.
Instead the gun grabbers propose laws that would infringe upon law-abiding American citizens in defending and protecting themselves against criminals, drug dealers, the dangerously deranged and tyrants.
In March Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) at a Senate Judiciary committee hearing on her amendment to reinstate the ban on “assault weapons” and high capacity magazines, said: “The time has come, America, to step up and ban these weapons. The other very important part of this bill is to ban large capacity ammunition feeding devices — those that hold more than 10 rounds. We have federal regulations and state laws that prohibit hunting ducks with more than three rounds. And yet it’s legal to hunt humans with 15-round, 30-round, even 150-round magazines. Limiting magazine capacity is critical because it is when a criminal, a drug dealer, a deranged individual has to pause to change magazines and reload that the police or brave bystanders have the opportunity to take that individual down.”
First, murder is a crime in all 50 states. Second, criminals, drug dealers and the dangerously deranged will use their weapons and magazines of choice, usually handguns not rifles, no matter what the federal or state laws ban. Restricting law-abiding citizens’ choice of weapons and magazine capacity would place them at an immediate disadvantage. Third, the so-called “assault weapons” that Feinstein would again ban includes semi-automatic rifles that most Americans use for hunting and sport shooting.
As John Lott, author of the books “More Guns, Less Crime” and “”The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You’ve Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong” points out, “When the federal assault weapons ban ended on Sept. 13, 2004, gun crimes and police killings were predicted to surge. Instead, they have declined.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on the floor of the Senate said, “On the anti-gun legislation before the Senate, we are making good progress on the effort to schedule a series of votes on amendments to the anti-gun violence legislation before the Senate.”
On April 17 Obama’s progressive gun-grabbing agenda was handed a major defeat. The Feinstein “assault weapons” ban was defeated in a bipartisan Senate vote of 60-40. An amendment to expand background checks also failed in a bipartisan vote of 54-46. The defeated amendment would have expanded background checks to cover all firearms sales at gun shows and over the Internet. However, the amendment would have exempted sales between friends and acquaintances outside of commercial venues.
The National Rifle Association’s chief lobbyist Chris W. Cox said, “This amendment would have criminalized certain private transfers of firearms between honest citizens, requiring lifelong friends, neighbors and some family members to get federal government permission to exercise a fundamental right or face prosecution.”
Under the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 (FOP), the vast majority of gun sales at gun shows and over the Internet involve a Federal Firearms License (FFL) dealer that is required under the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA) to run a criminal background check through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) maintained by the FBI prior to transferring the firearm to the purchaser.
Only unlicensed private party sellers such as gun collectors and occasional sellers who sell firearms at such shows are exempt from running a background check. This is the so-called “gun show loophole” that the gun grabbers want to close. However, even under existing law, if the private seller believes that the purchaser could not pass a background check, it is illegal to sell the firearm.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz pointed out, “Why is all this focus directed at background checks? The reason is because the Department of Justice has said the only way to implement what they want–universal background checks — is a registry, a federal list of every gun owner in America. And that would be wrong; it’d be unconstitutional.”
The American people through their elected representatives in Congress will peacefully resist any attempt by progressive liberals to infringe upon their Constitutional right to keep and bear arms in order to defend and protect their lives and property from criminals, predators, the dangerously deranged and tyrants.
Ever since Obama was elected president in 2008 and re-elected in 2012, gun and ammunition sales across the country are breaking sales records and the number of criminal background checks is soaring. The American people no longer trust their political leaders for they believe the gun grabbers’ real aim through federal anti-gun laws is to eventually repeal the Second Amendment.
As Richard Feldman said in his April 18 speech to Richland College students, progress in the gun debate will not be made until the focus shifts from controlling guns to controlling gun violence and this requires the political leaders to trust the people and the people in turn to trust their political leaders.
Richard Feldman was interviewed on the April 19 Pronk Pops Show presented by Raymond Thomas Pronk on KDUX web radio from 3-5 p.m. Fridays and author of the companion blog http://www.pronkpops.wordpress.com/.