ONLY mr. miracle could break the democratic stranglehold on the black vote

americanthinker |  Donald Trump has exposed the greatest fault line in the Democrat coalition: the conflict of interest between blacks and advocates of a borderless immigration policy.  The competition for jobs at the lower end of the education and experience spectrum pits those two groups against each other, with the outcome being depressed wages, a widening income gap, and disastrous levels of black unemployment among younger black males in particular.  Employers generally prefer Hispanic males over black males for perceived (fairly or unfairly) differences in work ethic and attitude toward authority. With millions of poorly educated Hispanics accustomed to low wages and a low standard of living streaming into America, you don't need a PhD in labor economics to sense the result. Notice also that TRump garners 41% of the Asian vote.

Trump also benefits among blacks and many other groups from what I would call the “BS factor.” There is a justifiably pervasive sense that our politicians and media do not play straight with us, for fear of being called politically incorrect, and for reasons of self advantage. Trump, whatever his own faults and evasions, is unafraid to speak hard truths, at least some of the time.

It is imperative that other members of the GOP field learn from Trump on these points. If the Democratic Party ever loses its vice-like grip on the black vote, it is in deep trouble. And the Party has been playing a two-faced game in uniting blacks and Hisapnics into a coalition of the aggrieved. That may work with the race hustler class of Sharptons, Jacksons, and Jealouses, but it does not work with even mildly cognizant members of the rank and file African–Americans. They know they are being sold out for the younger, up and coming minority group demanding patronage from the Democrats.

Keep in mind that Hispanics are a more diverse group than African-Americans. There are many, many legal residents and citizens of Hispanic descent who are negatively affected by the arrival of un-vetted millions of Hispanics, some of the criminals.  Breaking the stranglehold of the Democrats on blacks does not mean dissing all Hispanics. Trump gets 39% of the Hispanic vote here.

Even if you don’t like Trump, you have to give him credit for smashing the barrier restraining honest talk about immigration, a barrier that substantially benefits the Democrats.

ain't but one rule...everything else is frivolous conversation....,

theatlantic |  Last week, I noted an effort by two sociologists to explain the rise of what they call “victimhood culture.” They focused their paper on “a new species of social control that is increasingly common at American colleges: the publicizing of microaggressions.” The scores of emails I’ve received in response to the article include people on both sides of the larger debate on whether “microaggressions” are a sound or unsound framework. Its defenders often fail to realize how many of its critics share their desired ends, if not their preferred means.

exactly why the cathedral disgusts me

theatlantic |  It isn’t honor culture.

“Honorable people are sensitive to insult, and so they would understand that microaggressions, even if unintentional, are severe offenses that demand a serious response,” they write. “But honor cultures value unilateral aggression and disparage appeals for help. Public complaints that advertise or even exaggerate one’s own victimization and need for sympathy would be anathema to a person of honor.”

But neither is it dignity culture:

“Members of a dignity culture, on the other hand, would see no shame in appealing to third parties, but they would not approve of such appeals for minor and merely verbal offenses. Instead they would likely counsel either confronting the offender directly to discuss the issue, or better yet, ignoring the remarks altogether.”

The culture on display on many college and university campuses, by way of contrast, is “characterized by concern with status and sensitivity to slight combined with a heavy reliance on third parties. People are intolerant of insults, even if unintentional, and react by bringing them to the attention of authorities or to the public at large. Domination is the main form of deviance, and victimization a way of attracting sympathy, so rather than emphasize either their strength or inner worth, the aggrieved emphasize their oppression and social marginalization.” 

It is, they say, “a victimhood culture.”

Victimhood cultures emerge in settings, like today’s college campuses, “that increasingly lack the intimacy and cultural homogeneity that once characterized towns and suburbs, but in which organized authority and public opinion remain as powerful sanctions,” they argue. “Under such conditions complaint to third parties has supplanted both toleration and negotiation. People increasingly demand help from others, and advertise their oppression as evidence that they deserve respect and assistance. Thus we might call this moral culture a culture of victimhood ... the moral status of the victim, at its nadir in honor cultures, has risen to new heights.”

what is mexico's immigration policy and why are its elites embroiled in a civil war with cartels?

derspiegel |  Given that the economic and political direction of the country is being steered today by a small number of billionaires, the United States has taken on many of the characteristics normally associated with oligarchies. "We've seen a complete subversion of our political system," former President Jimmy Carter recently said, diagnosing the ailment. He said that unlimited money in politics "violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president."

The race suits worn by Formula One drivers are littered with patches with the names and logos of sponsors covering the chest and arms as well as the helmet. If Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton or Ted Cruz were to wear something similar in the future, at least there would be some transparency. But it's highly unlikely they will do anything of the sort, because precious few in the United States are rebelling against the billionaires' power. A popular revolt against the power of the happy few -- and remember, "revolution" is a bad word in the US -- is nowhere in sight. Not even Donald Trump could be counted on to lead a movement like that. He's simply too rich. So it's not without irony that this über-oligarch himself, a man who spent decades trying to buy favors from politicians, is now presenting himself as being above the swampland of campaign finance. "Nobody knows the system better than me. I was the system," he has said. As an entrepreneur, Trump says he gave money to most politicians. Two or three years later, he says, when he had an issue of concern, they would pay back their debt by returning a favor. 

It's seldom that politicians get off as easily as Hillary Clinton did. During the first Republican televised debate, Trump revealed he had contributed to Clinton. "With Hillary Clinton, I said, 'Be at my wedding,' and she came to my wedding. You know why? She had no choice! Because I gave," Trump said. 

It may turn out that Trump is doing his country a major service with his candidacy because he is demonstrating very vividly what is rotten about this system. With all due respect, he's a useful idiot.

the kissingerian realist view of mexico is....?

firstlook |  The U.S. loves human-rights-abusing regimes and always has, provided they “cooperate”: meaning, honors U.S. dictates. On human rights abuses, such compliant regimes “get at least a free pass”: at least, meaning either passive acquiescence or active support. The only time the U.S. Government pretends to care in the slightest about human rights abuses is when they’re carried out by “countries that don’t cooperate,” in which case those flamboyant objections to abuses are used by U.S. officials as punishment for disobedience: to “ream them as best we can.”

This is not remotely new, of course, nor should it be even slightly surprising for people who pay minimal attention to the role of the U.S. Government in the world. But this nonetheless highlights what baffles me most about U.S. political discourse: how – whenever it’s time to introduce the next “humanitarian war” or other forms of attack against the latest Evil Dictator or Terrorist Group of the Moment – so many otherwise intelligent and well-reasoning people are willing to believe that the U.S. Government is motivated by opposition to human rights abuses and oppression.

Support for human rights abuses and tyranny – not opposition to it – is a staple of U.S. foreign policy. Standing alone: how can anyone believe that the same government that lavishes the Saudi regime with arms, surveillance capabilities and intelligence is waging war or using other forms of violence in order to stop human rights abuses? [Read this informative New York Times article today describing the central role played by the U.S. government in the ongoing, truly heinous slaughter of Yemeni civilians by its close Saudi ally, consistent with the months of Yemen-based reporting done by The Intercept on these atrocities].

If one wants to spout the Kissingerian “realist” view that only U.S. interests matter and human rights abuses are irrelevant, then fine: one can make that argument cogently and honestly if amorally. But to take seriously U.S. rhetoric on human rights abuses and freedom – we’re going to war against or otherwise sternly opposing these monstrous human-rights abusers – is totally mystifying in light of U.S. actions. The next time you’re tempted to do that, just read what U.S. officials, in their rare, candid moments, themselves say about how they cynically concoct and exploit human rights concerns.

I should support mexicans trumping blacks in the u.s. electorate again because.....?

NYTimes |  I am rooting for Donald Trump.

Not because I want to see him attempt to build an impenetrable wall along the border with Mexico nor because I’ve been following his grotesque campaign with the kind of guilty gusto that got me hooked on the reality show “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.”

I’m rooting for Donald Trump because he could unlock the potential of America’s Latino electorate.

Hispanics, among the fastest-growing of all segments of eligible voters, played a crucial role in President Obama’s two elections. Yet, over the past couple of decades, pollsters and political operatives have regarded the Latino vote as a sleeping giant waiting for the right jolt.

Hispanics have understandably responded to the xenophobic Trump campaign — which has hardened the immigration positions of other Republican candidates — with outrage. But many political organizers see him as a godsend.

“Quite frankly, it’s the best thing that can happen to us as community leaders to convince people that not participating in civic life has consequences,” said Ben Monterroso, the executive director of Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, one of several organizations that are mounting an ambitious effort to get Latinos to vote in 2016. “They’re challenging the Latino community to see if we’re going to be able to defend ourselves at the ballot box.”

In 2012, 48 percent of eligible Latino voters cast ballots in the presidential election, lagging behind white and African-American voters, whose turnout rates were 64 percent and 67 percent, respectively. Eligible voters of Mexican origin had an even lower turnout, 42 percent.

An estimated 5.4 million Latinos are eligible to become American citizens but have yet to take that step, making them by far the largest pool of non-naturalized immigrants who could become eligible to vote by 2016. Among them, Mexicans have been the least likely to naturalize. The cost of the process, roughly $680, and anxiety about taking a civics test are among the reasons many Latinos have not become citizens.

In 2016, an estimated 26.7 million Latinos will be eligible to vote, 58 percent more than a decade ago.

understanding technology is vital to understanding contemporary policy decisions...,

Take a look at how detailed this photo becomes when you enlarge it.

If you ever wondered why drones are so successful in hitting the right target, wonder no more.

Rather hard to disappear in a crowd nowadays….The Man can see you everywhere. Pick a small part of the crowd, place your computer’s cursor in the mass of people, click a couple of times -- wait --click a few more times and see how clear each individual face becomes.

This picture was taken with a 70,000 x 30,000 pixel camera (2100 Mega Pixels.) These cameras are not sold to the general public of course.

wikipedia |  A gigapixel image is a digital image bitmap composed of one billion (10⁹) pixels (picture elements), 1000 times the information captured by a 1 megapixel digital camera. Current technology for creating such veryhigh-resolution images usually involves either making mosaics of a large number of high-resolution digital photographs or using a film negative as large as 12" × 9" (30 cm × 23 cm) up to 18" × 9" (46 cm × 23 cm), which is then scanned with a high-end large-format film scanner with at least 3000 dpi resolution. Only a few cameras are capable of creating a gigapixel image in a single sweep of a scene, such as the Pan-STARRS PS1 and the Gigapxl Camera.^[1][2]

A gigamacro image is a gigapixel image which is a close up or macro image.

Gigapixel images may be of particular interest to the following:

• Artists
• Astronomers
• Curators and art historians, to better study artworks
• Genealogists
• Paleantologists
• Geologists
• Entomologists
• Health care providers, such as pathologists, for virtual microscopy utilizing whole slide images (digitally scanned glass microscope slides, also called virtual slides)
• Physicists viewing the results of supercomputer simulations
• Viewers of satellite composite images for various purposes, including agricultural policy, land use planning, and military intelligence
• Visual effects industry, where gigapixel images can enable the creation of immersive digital environments
• Holography

understanding history is vital to understanding contemporary policy decisions...,

aljazeera | Despite the revelations by WikiLeaks and NSA contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden, there is still a general belief in the West that oppressive forms of political surveillance belong to another time or place — contained in the snow globe of a turbulent era yet simultaneously quotidian and unremarkable.

In the U.S. this myopic detachment persists even though surveillance remains a daily reality, not just under foreign dictatorships but also in our own backyard.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s surveillance and sabotage under its first director, J. Edgar Hoover — most vividly remembered for the well-documented smear campaigns against civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. — might make one believe that politically repressive surveillance is something confined to a past era. However, recent revelations indicate the U.S. government has been regularly monitoring members of the Black Lives Matter movement since the early days of the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri.

Two of the movement’s most influential activists — Deray McKesson and Johnetta Elzie — were labeled threat actors and assigned a high severity level when they participated in the Freddie Gray protests in Baltimore earlier this year, according to a crisis management report (PDF) prepared by the cybersecurity firm ZeroFox.

The outfit maintained continuous monitoring of the protesters’ social media accounts, providing minute-by-minute updates of their movements and briefed classified partners at the NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade. The Department of Homeland Security monitored protests in Washington, D.C., even though a department memo to officials acknowledged it had “no current intel that these marches will be anything but peaceful” and an intelligence bulletin from the FBI noted that there is “no information suggesting violent behavior is planned.”

It demonstrates once again that the purpose of such surveillance has never been protection from vague threats to national security. As with the FBI’s crackdown on civil rights leaders in the 1960s and ’70s and leaders of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the monitoring was intended to intimidate those who dare to organize and galvanize popular opposition by marking them potential terrorists and criminals.

terrorists are deuterostems with no historical identity the new world order is bound to acknowledge....,

bibliotecapleyades |  Kissinger’s definition of terrorism might surprise you. Then again, it might be exactly what you thought it would be.

The clip below is from a 2007 AKBank convention in Istanbul, Turkey held right before the annual Bilderberg Meeting which took place there that same year.

In it, former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, as well as member of,
the Bilderberg Group
Council on Foreign Relations
Trilateral Commission
Bohemian Grove,
...among others, Henry Kissinger can be seen giving the following speech:
“In the Middle East, we live in a different world.

The nations do not represent historic entities in the same sense that European nations did. Turkey of course does, and Iran in a considerable extent does. But in the region in between, the borders were drawn by the victors of World War I on the basis largely of what would facilitate their influence.

So therefore, the identities of these countries, and of their borders, can be challenged more easily.”

“What we in America call terrorists are really groups of people that reject the international system, and they’re trying to regroup it to a radical Islamic fundamentalists kind.”
Clearly Kissinger is saying that, because many Middle Eastern countries do not have what appears to be in his view the ‘historical significance’ of older countries, they are wide open for attack, regime change and re-ordering.

Only a few years later, we have witnessed the Western-backed Arab Spring, which has turned over numerous North African and Middle Eastern nations.

After nearly two years of semi-covertly arming al Qaeda fighters in Syria, most recently Western support and provision of arms for Syrian Rebels (who admittedly used their own chemical weapons) are becoming public knowledge now that a mythical ‘red line’ has supposedly been crossed by Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

Remember how America ‘freed’ Egypt and Libya? Well Syria is wash, rinse, repeat.

On top of that, Kissinger is also saying the word “terrorist” is really someone who would reject the “international system” - a New World Order.

Part of that order appears to be American empire building and the spreading of our nation’s brand of “democracy” throughout the rest of the world… whether they like it or not.

architect of the new world order

bibliotecapleyades |  Born as Heinz Alfred Kissinger in Bavaria, Germany in 1923 to a traditional German Jewish family, Henry's father was a schoolteacher, and surely that was a major part of him becoming a bit of an academic.

Kissinger wasn't the family's surname originally, but had been adopted many years before, in 1817 by Henry's great great grandmother. The Kissingers could see and feel the turbulent political weather in Germany during the 1930s, and in 1938 they wisely moved to New York City.

Henry adopted the culture of the USA readily and quickly, but to hear Dr. Kissinger speak is to realize that he never lost his Frankish German accent.

Do you see how clean cut our Dr. Kissinger is in the photo up above? Well, when Henry got out of high school he promptly went to college, and he worked part time in an old fashioned shave brush factory to help pay his bills. Henry excelled academically and enjoyed working part time too.

At the City College Of New York he studied accounting, but his studies were interrupted when he was drafted into the army in 1943.

In the army the future Dr. Kissinger would meet another very talented German immigrant named Fritz Kraemer, and because both of them were very fluent in German, their talents were in great demand.

Henry was no coward, he'd volunteered for hazardous duty and got it during the Battle of The Bulge.

As the allied forces advanced into the German heartland, Henry Kissinger brilliantly arranged and organized German civilians, was promoted quickly to Sergeant, and set to tracking down Gestapo officers and other saboteurs, for his efforts, he was awarded the Bronze Star.

Soon young Henry would take on more and more authority - helping to De Nazify assigned districts of captured Western Germany.

Following his very worthy and appreciated service in the second world war, Henry Kissinger returned to the US and put his mind to books, he studied at Harvard College, and in 1954 was awarded his PhD from Harvard University.

Henry would then remain with Harvard University as a member of the faculty, and his primary manner of influence was in government and international affairs. As an Ivy League staff, one has tremendous sway with government, as universities such as Harvard are practically part of the federal government of the USA.

Henry was on his way to becoming the ultimate globalist philosopher - the kind of man that ultimately is an anti Patriot, a hater of the rights and the culture of the nation that so easily and lovingly adopted his family when they fled the Nazis.

Just like George Soros betrayed the United Kingdom for billions, Henry Kissinger would betray the citizens of the USA in favor of the New World Order.

Eager to influence US Foreign policy in such a manner as to destroy the United States from within, Henry Kissinger would team up with like minded anti American Americans such as Nelson Rockefeller, then Governor of New York.

From the influence with the governor of one of the nation's most populace and wealthy states, Kissinger would then leap into the least credible or honest presidential administration in US history, and Richard Nixon must have surely saw a kindred spirit in Henry - he made him National Security Advisor in 1969.

Soon Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State, and after Nixon was humiliated publicly, Henry Kissinger would remain as Secretary of State under Gerald Ford.

operation inherent resolve not degrading, destroying, or providing humanitarian assistance...,

RT |  The US and its allies have carried out 6700 airstrikes at an expense of nearly $4 billion in the year since President Barack Obama ordered a campaign against Islamic State. Yet the terror group shows no sign of defeat and has even expanded its reach. 

On September 10, 2014, Obama announced a “comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy” to “degrade, and ultimately destroy” Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS/ISIL), referring to it by the preferred US government acronym, ISIL (which stood for “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant”). US drones and warplanes had already been targeting the group since early August of 2014, after IS killed two American journalists it had been holding hostage.

In the announcement, Obama outlined a four prong strategy against Islamic State: while conducting a “systematic campaign of airstrikes,” the US would “increase our support to forces fighting these terrorists on the ground,” use counter-terrorism capabilities to prevent IS attacks elsewhere, and “provide humanitarian assistance to innocent civilians” displaced by the group.

Initially nameless, the campaign was dubbed “Operation Inherent Resolve” in October 2014. Since then, the US and its allies have flown 53,278 sorties “in support of operations” in Iraq and Syria, conducting a total of 6,700 airstrikes as of September 8, 2015, according to official information provided by the Pentagon.

Some 10,000 IS “targets,” from tanks and vehicles to trenches and oil facilities, have been destroyed. While there is no official body count, IS casualties were estimated at over 8,500 in May of this year. The cost of the campaign has been estimated to be $9.9 million per day, totaling over $3.7 billion as of August 2015.

fourteen years later and no IQ higher than 100 believes a word the high-status spokesleaders say...,

dailybeast |  More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military’s Central Command have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al Qaeda’s branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials, The Daily Beast has learned.

The complaints spurred the Pentagon’s inspector general to open an investigation into the alleged manipulation of intelligence. The fact that so many people complained suggests there are deep-rooted, systemic problems in how the U.S. military command charged with the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State assesses intelligence.

“The cancer was within the senior level of the intelligence command,” one defense official said.

Two senior analysts at CENTCOM signed a written complaint sent to the Defense Department inspector general in July alleging that the reports, some of which were briefed to President Obama, portrayed the terror groups as weaker than the analysts believe they are. The reports were changed by CENTCOM higher-ups to adhere to the administration’s public line that the U.S. is winning the battle against ISIS and al Nusra, al Qaeda’s branch in Syria, the analysts claim.

That complaint was supported by 50 other analysts, some of whom have complained about politicizing of intelligence reports for months. That’s according to 11 individuals who are knowledgeable about the details of the report and who spoke to The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity.

The accusations suggest that a large number of people tracking the inner workings of the terror groups think that their reports are being manipulated to fit a public narrative. The allegations echoed charges that political appointees and senior officials cherry-picked intelligence about Iraq’s supposed weapons program in 2002 and 2003.

lives matter when you're hard, skilled, organized, disciplined and motivated enough to make them matter

guardian |  One of Saddam Hussein’s former intelligence officers masterminded Islamic State’s takeover of northern Syria after becoming embittered by the US-led invasion of Iraq, according to a report by the German magazine Der Spiegel

Documents uncovered in Syria reveal meticulous planning for the group’s structure and organisation, the report says, with the 31 pages of handwritten charts, lists and schedules amounting to a blueprint for the establishment of a caliphate in Syria.

The documents were the work of a man identified by the magazine as Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi, a former colonel in the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein’s air defence force, who went by the pseudonym Haji Bakr, Spiegel says.

The files suggest that the takeover of northern Syria was part of a meticulous plan overseen by Haji Bakr using techniques – including surveillance, espionage, murder and kidnapping – honed in the security apparatus of Saddam Hussein.

Bakr was “bitter and unemployed” after the US authorities in Iraq disbanded the army by decree in 2003, the article says. Between 2006 to 2008 he was reportedly in US detention facilities, including Abu Ghraib prison.

The Iraqi national was reportedly killed in a firefight with Syrian rebels in January 2014, but not before he had helped secure swathes of Syria, which in turn strengthened Islamic State’s position in neighbouring Iraq.

“What Bakr put on paper, page by page, with carefully outlined boxes for individual responsibilities, was nothing less than a blueprint for a takeover,” the story by Spiegel reporter Christoph Reuter says.

“It was not a manifesto of faith, but a technically precise plan for an ‘Islamic Intelligence State’ – a caliphate run by an organisation that resembled East Germany’s notorious Stasi domestic intelligence agency.”

Between 2006 to 2008, Bakr was reportedly in US detention facilities, including Abu Ghraib prison.

In 2010, however, Bakr and a small group of former Iraqi intelligence officers made another former US detainee, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the official leader of Islamic State, with the goal of giving the group a “religious face”, the report says.

Two years later, the magazine says, Bakr travelled to northern Syria to oversee his takeover plan, choosing to launch it with a collection of foreign fighters that included novice militants from Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Europe alongside battle-tested Chechens and Uzbeks.

Iraqi journalist Hisham al-Hashimi, whose cousin served with Bakr, describes the former officer as a nationalist rather than an Islamist. The report argues that the secret to Islamic State’s success lies in its combination of opposites – the fanatical beliefs of one group and the strategic calculations of another, led by Bakr.

Spiegel said it had obtained the papers after lengthy negotiations with rebels in the Syrian city of Aleppo, who had seized them when Islamic State was forced to abandon its headquarters there in early 2014.

the ba'ath modeled on the nazi...,

scotsman |  The movement was based on classless racial unity, hence the strong anti-Marxism, and on national socialism in the scientific sense of the word, such as nationalised industry and an autarkic economy serving the needs of the nation. Hence, the antipathy towards Western capitalism. 

But the rise of German fascism also played a role. Many in the Arab world saw Hitler as an ally. In 1941, the Arab world was electrified by a pro-Axis coup in Baghdad. At that time, Iraq was nominally independent but Britain maintained a strong military presence. An Arab nationalist by the name of Rashid Ali al-Kailani organised an army coup against the pro-British Iraqi monarchy and requested help from Nazi Germany. In Damascus, then a Vichy French colony, the Baath Party founders immediately organised public demonstrations in support of Rashid Ali. 

After the Second World War, the Baathists emerged as the leadership of Arab nationalism for two reasons. First, they were the only force with a coherent ideology. Second, the existing Arab political elites were blamed for the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Nor was Islam a competitor. For the Western-educated founders of Baathism, Islam smacked of backwardness. For the nascent Islamic fundamentalists, the Baathists were substituting Arabism for the much wider historic conquests of Muslim civilisation. But it was that pan-Arab nationalism that appealed to discontented Arab youth in the Fifties and Sixties. 

Baathism had something else to offer these youths: its tight, disciplined internal organisation which - at any rate, before the party became corrupt - stood in sharp contrast to the ramshackle nature of many Arab civil institutions. 

Like the Nazi and Communist parties, the Baath is organised through small cells in a rigid hierarchy. Members are expected to devote their life to the party. In Iraq, would-be members pass through four stages even before becoming a full member: supporter, sympathiser, nominee and trainee. Currently, there are about two million Iraqis in these categories. The system requires passing successfully a series of tests, so full members of Saddam’s Baathist organisation are the most hardened and fanatical of his supporters. 

With war looming, Saddam has extended this principle with the establishment of Fedayeen Saddam, many of whom have been in action against allied troops. The Fedayeen consists of teenage level members or novices eager to move up in the Baath hierarchy ladder. In this respect, they are very reminiscent of the Hitler Youth. 

It is estimated that there are about 40,000 full members of the Baath Party in Iraq. Each is assigned to an autonomous cell. A cell consists of three to five members, only one of whom would have a link to the next level of operation. This limits the ability to penetrate the organisation from without. This structure was born of the original clandestine and illegal life of the Baathists before they came to power.  Fist tap Woodensplinter.

Heinz Alfred Kissinger: The Godfather of the Modern National Security State

democracynow |  Four decades after Henry Kissinger left office, his influence on the national security state can still be widely felt, as the United States engages in declared and undeclared wars across the globe. Kissinger served as national security adviser and secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations and helped revive a militarized version of American exceptionalism. We speak with Greg Grandin, author of the new book, "Kissinger’s Shadow: The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman.  Fist tap Bro. Makheru

these apes plan well in advance using the global extraction system put in place by Kissinger

RT | WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has opened up about his new book, 'The WikiLeaks Files,' speaking about the 'US empire' and telling RT's 'Going Underground' program that Washington had plans to overthrow Syria's government long before the 2011 uprising began. 

Speaking to 'Going Underground' host Afshin Rattansi, Assange referred to the chapter on Syria, which goes back to 2006. In that chapter is a cable from US Ambassador William Roebuck, who was stationed in Damascus, which apparently discusses a plan for the overthrow of the Assad government in Syria.

“...That plan was to use a number of different factors to create paranoia within the Syrian government; to push it to overreact, to make it fear there's a coup...so in theory it says 'We have a problem with Islamic extremists crossing over the border with Iraq, and we're taking actions against them to take this information and make the Syrian government look weak, the fact that it is dealing with Islamic extremists at all.'”

He added that the most serious part of the plan was to “foster tensions between Shiites and Sunnis. In particular, to take rumors that are known to be false...or exaggerations and promote them – that Iran is trying to convert poor Sunnis, and to work with Saudi and Egypt to foster that perception in order to make it harder for Iran to have influence, and also harder for the government to have influence in the population.”

like ww-II, ww-III will be a killer-ape struggle for autarky

oilprice |  The characteristic feeling of the post-2008 world has been one of anxiety. Occasionally, that anxiety breaks out into fear as it did in the last two weeks when stock markets around the world swooned and middle class and wealthy investors had a sudden visitation from Pan, the god from whose name we get the word "panic." Pan's appearance is yet another reminder that the relative stability of the globe from the end of World War II right up until 2008 is over. We are in uncharted waters.

Here is the crux of the matter as expressed in a piece which I wrote last year:

The relentless, if zigzag, rise in financial markets for the past 150 years has been sustained by cheap fossil fuels and a benign climate. We cannot count on either from here on out....

Another thing we cannot necessarily count on is the remarkable geopolitical stability that the world experienced for two long stretches during the fossil fuel age. The first one lasted from the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 to the beginning of World War I in 1914 (interrupted only by the brief Franco-Prussian War). The second lasted from the end of World War II in 1945 until now.

Following the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq, the Middle East has experienced increasing chaos devolving into a civil war in Syria; the rapid success of forces calling themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria which are busily reshaping the borders of those two countries; and now the renewed chaos in Libya. We must add to this the Russian-Ukranian conflict. It is no accident that all of these conflicts are related to oil and natural gas.

the human cost of botched u.s. regime change and resource theft

globalresearch |  At a meeting of the Foreign Ministers in Cairo in September 2002 the then Secretary General of the Arab League, Amr Moussa warned US President George W. Bush that the proposed invasion of Iraq would: “open the gates of Hell … in the region.” Iraq and Syria would be the first to be engulfed in the fire.

German’s Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said it would be a “big mistake” for the United States to launch its own war on Iraq: “ … and European foreign policy chief Javier Solana insisted that weapon inspections issues were a matter for the UN”, not an invasion (1.)

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was isolated as: “the sole European leader in Bush’s camp.” Even:  “Australian Prime Minister John Howard, long one of Bush’s staunchest allies, said he favored a diplomatic solution to the crisis and would not blindly follow the United States into war.”

There was of course no “crisis”, just a pack of lies to justify the illegal invasion for oil and to rid a government who had committed another unpardonable sin – switching oil trading from $US to Euros – and were a staunch supporter of Palestine. We are currently witnessing a similar murderous stitch up of another supporter of Palestine, Syria.

Syria is also believed to have considerable untapped reserves of oil and gas in her territorial waters in the Levantine Basin, exploration and finance of which is being undertaken in cooperation with Russia (2.)

Given the planning the United States has invested in destabilization of the country, aptly phrased by Syrian Military Intelligence in 2006 their: “efforts to provide military training and equipment to Syria’s Kurds” (3) and to “highlight Kurdish complaints” in order to implement another illegal “regime change” and resources theft there must be a fair amount of angst in Washington and Whitehall at resilience and government survival, though at huge human cost, approaching a decade later.

The “highlighting of Kurdish complaints” though, clearly had time devoted to its complexities, being needed: “to be handled carefully, since giving the wrong kind of prominence to Kurdish issue in Syria could be a liability for our efforts … given Syrian civil society’s skepticism of Kurdish objectives.”  Nevertheless, another plan for illegally overthrowing a sovereign government was underway, lessons from the Iraq nightmare ignored.

The human cost of US meddling has, as ever, been staggering. According the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) Syria’s 2013 population was 22,85 million. By May 2015  12.2 million people were in need of humanitarian assistance, 7.6 million displaced internally due to violence and 4 million had fled the country (4.) Incidentally for those who notice the discrepancy between the population and the UNOCHA figures, in crisis people return home to those they love: “If we die, at least we will die together” is a phrase that haunts.

that early childhood vocabulary is IQ determinative...,

theatlantic |  Re­search sug­gests that poor chil­dren hear about 600 words per hour, while af­flu­ent chil­dren hear 2,000. By age 4, a poor child has a listen­ing vocab­u­lary of about 3,000 words, while a wealth­i­er child wields a 20,000-word listen­ing vocab­u­lary. So it’s no sur­prise that poor chil­dren tend to enter kinder­garten already be­hind their wealth­i­er peers. But it’s not just the poverty that holds them back—it’s the lack of words. In fact, the single-best pre­dict­or of a child’s aca­dem­ic suc­cess is not par­ent­al edu­ca­tion or so­cioeco­nom­ic status, but rather the qual­ity and quantity of the words that a baby hears dur­ing his or her first three years.

Those early years are crit­ic­al. By age three, 85 per­cent of neur­al con­nec­tions are formed, mean­ing it’s dif­fi­cult for a child who has heard few words to catch up to his peers once he enters the school sys­tem.

While the word gap might sound like an edu­ca­tion prob­lem, the health consequences can be dire—and the be­ne­fits of elim­in­at­ing it can be im­mense. Pub­lic-health of­fi­cials in Geor­gia re­cog­nize this.

“This is pure bio­logy,” Brenda Fitzger­ald, Geor­gia’s Health Com­mis­sion­er and the wo­man in charge of state pub­lic-health pro­grams, said dur­ing an in­ter­view at her At­lanta of­fice. “Which is why it’s a pub­lic-health ini­ti­at­ive.”

Chil­dren with more words do bet­ter in school. Adults who were good stu­dents and earned a col­lege de­gree have longer life ex­pect­an­cies. They are at a lower risk for hy­per­ten­sion, de­pres­sion, and sleep prob­lems. They are less likely to be smokers and to be obese.

“There is no way we can sep­ar­ate health and edu­ca­tion,” said Jen­nifer Stapel-Wax, dir­ect­or of in­fant and tod­dler clin­ic­al re­search op­er­a­tions at the Mar­cus Aut­ism Cen­ter in At­lanta, and the self-de­scribed “chief cheer­lead­er” for the effort.

* * *

So in Geor­gia, from the gov­ernor’s of­fice on down to nurses and WIC (Wo­men, In­fants, and Chil­dren) clin­ics like the one the Pate boys vis­ited in Ma­con, the solu­tion and the mes­sage are clear: Talk with your baby (and help im­prove the state’s well-be­ing).

That second part is not touted much, but doc­tors and nurses be­hind the cam­paign hope that by en­ga­ging par­ents in the first part early and of­ten, the second part will fol­low—and they can al­le­vi­ate the need for costly in­ter­ven­tions down the line.

society depends upon competent parents

pbs |  Even though appearing to decrease somewhat recently, violence and crime have reduced public safety in the United States to an unacceptable level. The rising rates of juvenile violence and crime portend greater social problems in the future. 

The past focus on socioeconomic, racial, educational, and biological factors that contribute to violence and crime has obscured the most important element - parenting. The main source of these social problems is the cycle of child abuse and neglect that results when parenting fails. Incompetent (defined in legal terms as unfit) parenting is the most important factor in those adult outcomes. Competent parenting protects even biologically vulnerable and socioeconomically disadvantaged children from those outcomes. 

Because of the high financial and social costs of dealing with adult and juvenile violence and crime, in 1991 the National Commission on Children, appointed by Congress and by the president, urged a change in focus to preventive interventions during early life. 

By far most children who live in poverty, who come from broken homes, who receive welfare, who have been abused, or who have criminal relatives do not become habitual criminals or welfare dependent. When any of these factors converge with parental abuse and neglect, however, one of two or three of these children is destined for criminality or welfare dependency. Some are handicapped by brain damage resulting from maternal drug abuse and alcoholism and inadequate prenatal care. All do not learn from their parents the values and personal skills necessary for effective education and for productive employment. These dangerous and dependent persons are increasing in numbers to further drain public funds and to erode the productivity of our workforce.