Afghanistan and the Long War By George Friedman | March 20, 2012 The war in Afghanistan has been under way for more than 10 years. It has not been the only war fought during this time; for seven of those years another, larger war was waged in Iraq, and smaller conflicts were under way in a number of other countries as well. But the Afghanistan War is still the longest large-scale, multi-divisional war fought in American history. An American soldier's killing of 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, on March 11 represents only a moment in this long war, but it is an important moment. In the course of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, military strategists in the United States developed the concept of the long war. The theory was presented in many ways, but its core argument was this: The defeat of Taliban forces and the Iraqi resistance would take a long time, but success would not end the war because Islamist terrorism and its supporters would be a constantly shifting threat, both in the places and in the ways they would operate. Therefore, since it was essential to defeat terrorism, the United States was now engaging in a long war whose end was distant and course unknown. Read More » Comments? Send them to feedback@stratfor.com

Borderland Beat: UNhelpful: The UN report on forced disappearances...

Borderland Beat: UNhelpful: The UN report on forced disappearances...: By Chris Covert Rantburg.com A post at the AnimalPolitico.com blog by Catalina Perez Correa last week detailed the circumstances by which 44...

Subject: California Is Obama's Dream           Roger Hedgecock is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host. RADIO STATION 600 AM, SAN DIEGO CALIFORNIA IS OBAMA’S DREAM Written by Roger Hedgecock, former Mayor of San Diego http://api.ning.com/files/nResYytUsItZ4ibWlesfpQCr0LX9E2MNVgXsiipY6B7wql5r4GWUW-BsbD2yhsWQQYuzMznh62f6wm-ijK0o9bjoq2mMGo/Hedgecock.jpg  I live in California . If you were wondering what living in Obama's second term would be like, wonder no longer. We in California are living there now. California is a one-party state dominated by a virulent Democrat Left enabled by a complicit media where every agency of local, county, and state government is run by and for the public employee unions. The unemployment rate is 12%. California has more folks on food stamps than any other state, has added so many benefits and higher rates to Medicaid that we call it "Medi-Cal." Our K-12 schools have more administrators than teachers, with smaller classes but lower test scores and higher dropout rates with twice the per-student budget of 15 years ago. Good job, Brownie. This week, the once and current Gov. Jerry "Moon-beam" Brown had to confess that the "balanced" state budget adopted five months ago was billions in the red because actual tax revenues were billions lower than the airy-fairy revenue estimates on which the balance was predicated. After trimming legislators' perks and reducing the number of cell phones provided to state civil servants, the governor intoned that drastic budget reductions had already hollowed out state programs for the needy, law enforcement and our schoolchildren. California government needed more money. Echoing the Occupy movement, the governor proclaimed the rich must pay their fair share. Fair share? The top 1% of California income earners currently pays 50% of the state's income tax. California has seven income tax brackets. The top income tax rate is 9.3%, which is slapped on the greedy rich earning at least $47,056 a year. Income of more than $1 million pays the "millionaires' and billionaires'" surcharge tax rate of 10.3%. Brown's proposal would add 2% for income over $250,000. A million-dollar income would then be taxed at 12.3%. And that's just for the state. Brown also proposed a one-half-cent sales tax increase, which would bring sales taxes (which vary by county) up to 7.75% to as much as 10%. Both tax increases would be on the ballot in 2012. The sales tax increase proposal immediately brought howls of protest from the Left (of Brown!). Charlie Eaton, a sociology grad student at UC Berkeley and leader of the UC Student-Workers Union, said, "We've paid enough. It's time for millionaires to pay." At least five other ballot measures to raise taxes are circulating for signatures to get on the 2012 ballot in California . The governor's proposals are the most conservative. The Obama way doesn't end with taxes. The governor and the state legislature continue to applaud the efforts of the California High Speed Rail Authority to build a train connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco . Even though the budget is three times the voter-approved amount, and the first segment will only connect two small towns in the agricultural Central Valley . But hey, if we build it, they will ride. And we don't want to turn down the Obama bullet-train bucks Florida and other states rejected because the operating costs would bankrupt them. Can't happen here because we're already insolvent. If we get into real trouble with the train, we'll just bring in the Chinese. It worked with the Bay Bridge reconstruction. After the 1989 earthquake, the bridge connecting Oakland and San Francisco was rebuilt with steel made in China . Workers from China too. Paid for with money borrowed from China . Makes perfect sense. In California , we hate the evil, greedy rich (except the rich in Hollywood, in sports, and in drug dealing). But we love people who have broken into California to eat the bounty created by the productive rich. Illegals get benefits from various generous welfare programs, free medical care, free schools for their kids, including meals, and of course, instate tuition rates and scholarships too. Nothing's too good for our guests. To erase even a hint of criticism of illegal immigration, the California Legislature is considering a unilateral state amnesty. Democrat State Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes has proposed an initiative that would bar deportation of illegals from California . Interesting dilemma for Obama there. If immigration is exclusively a federal matter, and Obama has sued four states for trying to enforce federal immigration laws he won't enforce, what will the President do to a California law that exempts California from federal immigration law? California is also near fulfilling the environmentalist dream of deindustrialization. After driving out the old industrial base (auto and airplane assembly, for example), air and water regulators and tax policies are now driving out the high-tech, biotech and even Internet-based companies that were supposed to be California's future. The California cap-and-trade tax on business in the name of reducing CO2 makes our state the leader in wacky environmentalism and guarantees a further job exodus from the state. Even green energy companies can't do business in California . Solyndra went under, taking its taxpayer loan guarantee with it. No job is too small to escape the regulators. The state has even banned weekend amateur gold miners from the historic gold mining streams in the Sierra Nevada Mountains . In fact, more and more of California's public land is off-limits to recreation by the people who paid for that land. Unless you're illegal. Then you can clear the land, set up marijuana plantations at will, bring in fertilizers that legal farmers can no longer use, exploit illegal farm workers who live in hovels with no running water or sanitation, and protect your investment with armed illegals carrying guns no California citizen is allowed to own. The rest of us only found out about these plantations when the workers' open campfire started one of those devastating fires that have killed hundreds of people and burned out thousands of homes in California over the last decade. It's often said that whatever happens in California will soon happen in your state. You'd better hope that's wrong. Roger Hedgecock is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host. RADIO STATION 600 AM, SAN DIEGO

Analysis of Obama Reelection Campaign: "A tale told by an IDIOT, Full on sound and fury.....SIGNIFYING NOTHING!

PRESIDENCY SOME WILL APPRECIATE THIS AND SOME WILL NOT. HOWEVER,   ALL OF IT IS TRUE. After 29 months of Obama .... Here's your change!   January 2009 TODAY % chg Source Avg.. Retail price/gallon gas in U.S. $1.83 $3.44 84% 1 Crude oil, European Brent (barrel) $43..48 $99..02 127.7% 2 Crude oil, West TX Inter. (barrel) $38..74 $91..38 135.9% 2 Gold: London (per troy oz.) $853.25 $1,369.50 60.5% 2 Corn, No.2 yellow, Central IL $3.56 $6.33 78.1% 2 Soybeans, No. 1 yellow, IL $9.66 $13..75 42.3% 2 Sugar, cane, raw, world, lb.Fob $13..37 $35..39 164.7% 2 Unemployment rate, non-farm, overall 7.6% 9.4% 23.7% 3 Unemployment rate, blacks 12.6% 15.8% 25.4% 3 Number of unemployed 11,616,000 14,485,000 24.7% 3 Number of fed. Employees 2,779,000 2,840,000 2.2% 3 Real median household income $50,112 $49,777 -0.7% 4 Number of food stamp recipients 31,983,716 43,200,878 35.1% 5 Number of unemployment benefit recipients 7,526,598 9,193,838 22.2% 6 Number of long-term unemployed 2,600,000 6,400,000 146.2% 3 Poverty rate, individuals 13.2% 14.3% 8.3% 4 People in poverty in U.S. 39,800,000 43,600,000 9.5% 4 U.S.. Rank in Economic Freedom World Rankings 5 9 n/a 10 Present Situation Index 29.9 23.5 -21.4% 11 Failed banks 140 164 17.1% 12 U.S.. Dollar versus Japanese yen exchange rate 89.76 82.03 -8.6% 2 U.S.. Money supply, M1, in billions 1,575.1 1,865.7 18.4% 13 U.S.. Money supply, M2, in billions 8,310.9 8,852.3 6.5% 13 National debt, in trillions $10..627 $14..052 32.2% 14           Just take this last item: In the last two years we have accumulated national debt at a ratemore than 27 times as fast as during the rest of our entire nation's history. Over 27 times as fast. Metaphorically speaking, if you are driving in the right lane doing 65 MPH and a car rockets past you in the left lane.  27 times faster, it would be doing 1,755 MPH! Sources: (1) U.S. Energy Information Administration; (2) Wall Street Journal; (3) Bureau of Labor Statistics; (4) Census Bureau; (5) USDA; (6) U.S. Dept. Of Labor;  (7) FHFA; (8) Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller; (9) RealtyTrac; (10) Heritage Foundation and WSJ; (11) The Conference Board; (12) FDIC;  (13) Federal Reserve; (14) U.S. Treasury So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive?  Can't think of anything?  Don't worry.  He's done all this in 29 months -- so you'll have one year to come up with an answer.  Every statement in this email is factual and directly attributable to Barrack Hussein Obama.  Every bumble is a matter of record and completely verifiable.   "You can't fix stupid, but you can vote it out."  

A Practical Guide to Situational Awareness

This is FREE intelligence for distribution. Forward this to your colleagues. A Practical Guide to Situational Awareness By Scott Stewart | March 15, 2012 For the past three weeks we have been running a series in the Security Weekly that focuses on some of the fundamentals of terrorism. First, we noted that terrorism is a tactic not exclusive to any one group and that the tactic would not end even if the jihadist threat were to disappear. We then discussed how actors planning terrorist attacks have to follow a planning process and noted that there are times during that process when such plots are vulnerable to detection. Last week we discussed how one of the most important vulnerabilities during the terrorism planning process is surveillance, and we outlined what bad surveillance looks like and described some basic tools to help identify those conducting it. At the end of last week's Security Weekly we also discussed how living in a state of paranoia and looking for a terrorist behind every bush not only is dangerous to one's physical and mental health but also results in poor security. This brings us to this week, where we want to discuss the fundamentals of situational awareness and explain how people can practice the technique in a relaxed and sustainable way. Read More »

Vets angry over American flag featuring Obama

Vets angry over American flag featuring Obama. THIS IS INDICATIVE OF THE ARROGANCE AND -/:()?'jbffmki=€%<}~]\_ OF THE LIBTARDIAN SOCIALIST OBAMA REGIME! #TAKEBACKUSA1122012!