The Futility of European Elections

The Futility of European Elections

Kupelian: An amazing from Ronald Reagan to Obama Here’s a very personal story that illustrates just how radically America’s attitude toward Marxism and communism has changed during our lifetime. It’s about one of our nation’s top rocket scientists – my dad, Vahey S. Kupelian, who if he were still alive would be 100 years old June 23. As a little boy, my dad survived the horrific Turkish genocide of the Armenians that took the life of his physician father, infant sister and dozens of other family members. Yet he and his mother, Mary, were blessed to escape to the Promised Land, America, where they thrived. It was hard – my father worked as a janitor at age 13 while he was learning English – but a few years later he graduated from MIT and ultimately became one of this nation’s key aerospace pioneers. As the Army’s chief scientist for ballistic missile defense, and later, as deputy undersecretary of defense for strategic and theater nuclear forces under Ronald Reagan, my dad contributed greatly to his adopted nation’s security, heading up the development of many cutting-edge ballistic missile defense projects including the Army’s HIT program – the original “spaced-based” missile interceptor in Reagan’s visionary Strategic Defense Initiative. In fact, as I write this, I’m holding the original of a personal letter to my dad from President Reagan, which says, in part: “You have been responsible for major steps forward in our ability to deter aggression and to meet the threats posed by our adversaries. I am particularly grateful to you for the outstanding leadership you have contributed to our strategic defense program. Because of your ideas and your labor, we are much closer to reaching the dream of a world free of the possibility of nuclear holocaust. Your work on ballistic missile defenses will have a profound and continuing effect on U.S. policies and strategic thinking for generations to come. God bless you. Sincerely, Ronald Reagan.” Yet there was a time during the 1970s that my father’s four-decade career was in danger of grinding to a halt, when the government considered withdrawing his top secret security clearance. Why? Well, it seems that decades earlier, during his teen years, his mother had driven to an Armenian church picnic (Armenia was then, however unwillingly, part of the Soviet Union) where apparently a pro-Soviet speaker gave a talk, and she had picked up a copy of the communist newspaper Workers World. The FBI was surveilling the event as possibly subversive, took down my grandmother’s license plate, and somehow – years later – made the cross-connection with my dad’s top secret clearance and determined to find out whether he had any communist or Soviet loyalties. This, we must remember, occurred during an era when, due to proven Soviet infiltration of the United States government, the FBI was very concerned about the loyalty of federal employees, especially those with security clearances and access to sensitive national security information. Today, those on the left contemptuously scoff at the “McCarthy era,” “red scare” and “Hollywood blacklist” as though they constituted the modern equivalent of the Salem witch trials, hysterically demonizing and destroying the lives of countless innocents. Innocent? It’s true that some Americans faddishly joined the Communist Party USA because it was the “cool” (if stupid and deluded) thing to do at that time (when Reagan headed the Screen Actors Guild there were more than 400 Communist Party members in Hollywood alone, including well-known actors and directors, some of whom later disavowed their previous communist infatuation). However, overshadowing this is the reality that the U.S. government was host to many real-life Soviet agents, as proven conclusively by the post-Cold War release of the decrypted “Venona cables” in 1995, transcripts of actual communications between the Kremlin and Soviet agents in the U.S. Let’s be very clear: We’re talking about people in the United States government, some in very senior positions, who were secretly loyal to our No.1 enemy – an “evil empire” dedicated to America’s destruction – a threat ultimately manifesting in thousands of nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles aimed at American population centers. It was not “cool” to have such people occupy trusted positions in our government. Therefore, due to this official fervor to root out communists at that time, my father was in danger of losing his security clearance. Years later, my mother would tell me of my dad sitting on the side of their bed, tearfully breaking the news to her that he might lose his career and livelihood over this long-forgotten Workers World incident from decades earlier. Crazy as this scenario may sound – high-level government concern over reported possession of a communist newspaper his mother picked up at a church picnic – my dad submitted a detailed written defense of his picnic activities to the FBI. In the aftermath of my mother’s recent death, I have had occasion to go through many of my father’s papers and came across a partial copy of his defense. As my dad explained to the government, his mother Mary was a trained social worker who dealt routinely with people of foreign nationalities and differing political ideologies, and she had an obvious special interest in helping Armenians. Therefore, explained my father, she was “bound to come into contact with … persons who were pro-Soviet Armenia.” “Since my mother was a social and Americanization worker with many ethnic groups, she would have had access to some of their nationality journals and papers,” my dad continued, explaining: At one time or other I recollect seeing papers in Armenian, Turkish, Greek, and probably even the Daily Worker, which I presumed contained news of Soviet Armenia. However, I don’t recall actually reading the Daily Worker, and I know that it has never had any bearing on my political thinking. … I cannot recall ever having attended, specifically, any meetings, picnic, or rally where any kind of political speeches were given. It is inevitable that I may have gone to an occasional Armenian picnic where Armenians of all political beliefs were present, but I cannot recall any such picnics or other meetings where political propaganda was distributed or the Daily Worker was distributed. I have never been a subscriber to the Daily Worker or the Sunday edition of that newspaper and I have never subscribed to any periodicals or papers that promoted Communism. I am not now nor have I ever been a member of or in any way affiliated with the Communist Party or any other Communist controlled or Soviet organization. To the best of my knowledge, I have never belonged to any organization designated by the Attorney General of the United … That’s all I’ve got – “United” being the last word typed on Page 4, the only page I have of my dad’s defense of his and his mom’s youthful picnicking activities. Had the government not believed him, our nation would have lost one of its most important, creative and loyal defense scientists. Now let’s contrast the government’s level of concern over communism a generation ago with that of today. The president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama – whose level of security clearance is far higher than was my dad’s, who indeed has access to all intelligence and all secrets, not to mention having his “finger on the nuclear button” – was during his college years a committed Marxist, advocating the revolutionary overthrow of America’s capitalist system. His father was a communist. His main mentor as a young teenager, Frank Marshall Davis, was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party USA. Obama admits in “Dreams From My Father” that, during college, he was attracted to the “Marxist professors.” Indeed, the Marxist student leader at Occidental College at the time, John Drew, says Obama was far more radical than even Drew was, actually believing that Marx’s prophesied proletariat revolution to overthrow capitalism was imminent in the United States. Today Drew, who has long since repudiated his former radicalism, says that even in his Marxist days he attempted to rein in Obama by trying to persuade him to work within America’s political system to bring about the Marxist transformation they all desired. After college, Obama followed in the footsteps of Chicago Marxist Saul Alinsky and went on to practice and teach Alinsky’s revolutionary street-organizing methods. Obama launched his political career in the living room of Bill Ayers, a self-described “small-c communist” and unrepentant Pentagon-bombing terrorist. Moreover, the evidence is indisputable that Ayers played a major role in writing Obama’s highly acclaimed autobiography, “Dreams From My Father.” Obama’s pastor for two decades, whom he described as his “spiritual mentor,” was Jeremiah Wright, a perennially enraged, America-hating purveyor of “Black Liberation Theology” (Marxism disguised as Christianity). As president, Obama appointed as White House communications director Anita Dunn, who in a speech to students claimed mass-murdering Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong was one of her “favorite political philosophers,” and “green jobs czar” Van Jones, who in his earlier years admitted to being a communist and, in fact, founded the communist group Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM. I could go on and on. These oft-cited facts merely scratch the surface of Obama’s long-term radicalism. But the point in juxtaposing my father’s story and Obama’s is as inescapable as it is troubling: My dad, a true American who was immeasurably grateful and loyal to his adopted country, could have lost everything because his mother went to a church picnic and picked up a Marxist rag. That was then. But now, sitting in the White House is a man who has spent most of his entire life immersed in Marxist ideology, influences, mentors and benefactors. He has proven, as president, that he is still fully committed to dragging America – kicking and screaming if necessary (recall the outrageous and illegal way Obamacare was passed) – into a new era of unprecedented, government-coerced redistribution of wealth and power. To be precise: Marxism. It would be folly, of course, to imagine that Obama just magically appeared out of thin air to lead a nation of liberty-loving, responsible, moral, right-thinking grownups leftward. America has been moving in this sad direction for decades. No, not under the “Marxist” label, or any of those other nasty words of yesteryear, like “socialism” or “communism” or “collectivism.” They’ve all been carefully replaced by warm-and-cuddly terms like “fairness,” “economic justice,” “redistribution,” “progressivism” and – as an off-script Obama famously told Joe the Plumber – “spread[ing] the wealth around.” The spirit of socialism has taken root and flowered spectacularly in America, especially in all of our elite, idea-generating institutions like education, the news and entertainment media, and, of course, government. The original American spirit – stout, risk-taking, God-fearing, responsible, adult – has progressively been displaced by the spirit of dependency and helplessness, of perpetual grievance and victimization, and most of all, of envy and resentment. All of which cries out for ever bigger government. So the question is: Will we Americans re-embrace the values that made ours the greatest nation in history, or will we continue on our current path toward the godless mirage of “redistributive change” – and the poverty and loss of liberty that always follow? In any event, for the present I can at least derive some solace from remembering that I was raised by parents and grandparents who appreciated their adopted country and all the blessings the Creator freely bestowed upon it – and weren’t angrily obsessed with “transforming” it into a socialist paradise. For that I am truly grateful. May those blessings continue. May this nation repent of its sins. And may we come to our senses before it’s too late. Happy 100th birthday, Dad. God bless you. The preceding is reprinted from the June issue of WND’s monthly Whistleblower magazine, “MARXISM, AMERICAN-STYLE.”

Absolutely Beautiful  !! Subject:  What a stunning commercial from the BBC!     Beautiful     www.youtube.com/embed/auSo1MyWf8g?rel=0 <  

How to Avoid Poverty: Lessons for Our Youth. PASS IT ON TO THEM!

 The Relationship Between Individual Initiative and Poverty Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Ron Haskins testifying before the Senate Finance Committee, June 5: I want to emphasize the importance of individual initiative in reducing poverty and promoting economic success. Young people can virtually assure that they and their families will avoid poverty if they follow three elementary rules for success—complete at least a high school education, work full time, and wait until age 21 and get married before having a baby. Based on an analysis of Census data, people who followed all three of these rules had only a 2% chance of being in poverty and a 72% chance of joining the middle class (defined as above $55,000 in 2010). These numbers were almost precisely reversed for people who violated all three rules, elevating their chance of being poor to 77% and reducing their chance of making the middle class to 4%. Individual effort and good decisions about the big events in life are more important than government programs. Call it blaming the victim if you like, but decisions made by individuals are paramount in the fight to reduce poverty and increase opportunity in America. The nation's struggle to expand opportunity will continue to be an uphill battle if young people do not learn to make better decisions about their future. A version of this article appeared June 11, 2012, on page A13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Notable & Quotable.

What's Changed After Wisconsin The Obama administration suddenly looks like a house of cards. By PEGGY NOONAN What happened in Wisconsin signals a shift in political mood and assumption. Public employee unions were beaten back and defeated in a state with a long progressive tradition. The unions and their allies put everything they had into "one of their most aggressive grass-roots campaigns ever," as the Washington Post's Peter Whoriskey and Dan Balz reported in a day-after piece. Fifty thousand volunteers made phone calls and knocked on 1.4 million doors to get out the vote against Gov. Scott Walker. Mr. Walker's supporters, less deeply organized on the ground, had a considerable advantage in money. But organization and money aren't the headline. The shift in mood and assumption is. The vote was a blow to the power and prestige not only of the unions but of the blue-state budgetary model, which for two generations has been: Public-employee unions with their manpower, money and clout, get what they want. If you move against them, you will be crushed. Mr. Walker was not crushed. He was buoyed, winning by a solid seven points in a high-turnout race. Governors and local leaders will now have help in controlling budgets. Down the road there will be fewer contracts in which you work for, say, 23 years for a city, then retire with full salary and free health care for the rest of your life—paid for by taxpayers who cannot afford such plans for themselves, and who sometimes have no pension at all. The big meaning of Wisconsin is that a public injustice is in the process of being righted because a public mood is changing. Political professionals now lay down lines even before a story happens. They used to wait to do the honest, desperate, last-minute spin of yesteryear. Now it's strategized in advance, which makes things tidier but less raggedly fun. The line laid down by the Democrats weeks before the vote was that it's all about money: The Walker forces outspent the unions so they won, end of story. Money is important, as all but children know. But the line wasn't very flattering to Wisconsin's voters, implying that they were automatons drooling in front of the TV waiting to be told who to back. It was also demonstrably incorrect. Most voters, according to surveys, had made up their minds well before the heavy spending of the closing weeks. Mr. Walker didn't win because of his charm—he's not charming. It wasn't because he is compelling on the campaign trail—he's not, especially. Even his victory speech on that epic night was, except for its opening sentence—"First of all, I want to thank God for his abundant grace," which, amazingly enough, seemed to be wholly sincere—meandering, unable to name and put forward what had really happened. But on the big question—getting control of the budget by taking actions resisted by public unions—he was essentially right, and he won. By the way, the single most interesting number in the whole race was 28,785. That is how many dues-paying members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees were left in Wisconsin after Mr. Walker allowed them to choose whether union dues would be taken from their paychecks each week. Before that, Afscme had 62,218 dues-paying members in Wisconsin. There is a degree to which public union involvement is, simply, coerced. People wonder about the implications for the presidential election. They'll wonder for five months, and then they'll know. President Obama's problem now isn't what Wisconsin did, it's how he looks each day—careening around, always in flight, a superfluous figure. No one even looks to him for leadership now. He doesn't go to Wisconsin, where the fight is. He goes to Sarah Jessica Parker's place, where the money is. There is, now, a house-of-cards feel about this administration. It became apparent some weeks ago when the president talked on the stump—where else?—about an essay by a fellow who said spending growth is actually lower than that of previous presidents. This was startling to a lot of people, who looked into it and found the man had left out most spending from 2009, the first year of Mr. Obama's presidency. People sneered: The president was deliberately using a misleading argument to paint a false picture! But you know, why would he go out there waving an article that could immediately be debunked? Maybe because he thought it was true. That's more alarming, isn't it, the idea that he knows so little about the effects of his own economic program that he thinks he really is a low spender. For more than a month, his people have been laying down the line that America was just about to enter full economic recovery when the European meltdown stopped it. (I guess the slowdown in China didn't poll well.) You'll be hearing more of this—we almost had it, and then Spain, or Italy, messed everything up. What's bothersome is not that it's just a line, but that the White House sees its central economic contribution now as the making up of lines. Any president will, in a presidential election year, be political. But there is a startling sense with Mr. Obama that that's all he is now, that he and his people are all politics, all the time, undeviatingly, on every issue. He isn't even trying to lead, he's just trying to win.   Most ominously, there are the national-security leaks that are becoming a national scandal—the "avalanche of leaks," according to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, that are somehow and for some reason coming out of the administration. A terrorist "kill list," reports of U.S. spies infiltrating Al Qaeda in Yemen, stories about Osama bin Laden's DNA and how America got it, and U.S. involvement in the Stuxnet computer virus, used against Iranian nuclear facilities. These leaks, say the California Democrat, put "American lives in jeopardy," put "our nation's security in jeopardy." This isn't the usual—this is something different. A special counsel may be appointed. And where is the president in all this? On his way to Anna Wintour's house. He's busy. He's running for president. But why? He could be president now if he wanted to be. It just all increasingly looks like a house of cards. Bill Clinton—that ol' hound dog, that gifted pol who truly loves politics, who always loved figuring out exactly where the people were and then going to exactly that spot and claiming it—Bill Clinton is showing all the signs of someone who is, let us say, essentially unimpressed by the incumbent. He defended Mitt Romney as a businessman—"a sterling record"—said he doesn't like personal attacks in politics, then fulsomely supported the president, and then said that the Bush tax cuts should be extended. His friends say he can't help himself, that he's getting old and a little more compulsively loquacious. Maybe. But maybe Bubba's looking at the president and seeing what far more than half of Washington sees: a man who is limited, who thinks himself clever, and who doesn't know that clever right now won't cut it. Because Bill Clinton loves politics, he hates losers. Maybe he just can't resist sticking it to them a little, when he gets a chance.

Terrorism and the Exceptional Individual By Scott Stewart | May 17, 2012 There has been a lot of chatter in intelligence and academic circles about al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) bombmaker Ibrahim al-Asiri and his value to AQAP. The disclosure last week of a thwarted AQAP plot to attack U.S. airliners using an improved version of an "underwear bomb" used in the December 2009 attempted attack aboard a commercial airplane and the disclosure of the U.S. government's easing of the rules of engagement for unmanned aerial vehicle strikes in Yemen played into these discussions. People are debating how al-Asiri's death would affect the organization. A similar debate undoubtedly will erupt if AQAP leader Nasir al-Wahayshi is captured or killed. AQAP has claimed that al-Asiri trained others in bombmaking, and the claim makes sense. Furthermore, other AQAP members have received training in constructing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) while training and fighting in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. This means that al-Asiri is not the only person within the group who can construct an IED. However, he has demonstrated creativity and imagination. His devices consistently have been able to circumvent existing security measures, even if they have not always functioned as intended. We believe this ingenuity and imagination make al-Asiri not merely a bombmaker, but an exceptional bombmaker. Read More » Comments? Send them to responses@stratfor.com

GR8 Presentation on ANWR Oil Potential

  Sent: Monday, March 12, 2012 11:03:23 AM Subject: From Alaska - ANWR     From Alaska ....        My daughter and son-in-law were in L. A. last week from their home in Anchorage . He is a foreman in the oil fields at ANWR. He has to fly his own plane to get to the job where he spends months at a time in the most God forsaken place this side of Siberia .  He confirmed everything that is in this story, and brought dozens of pictures for proof. Our environmentalist friends have forced gas prices up to an impossible rate, forcing us to buy oil from our enemies, for whatever reason that simply isn't true.  There is enough oil in ANWR to supply the US at our present rate of usage for more than 200 years. The space that ANWR occupies in Alaska is equivalent to a postage stamp in the Mojave Desert .  If you won't mind paying $5.00 a gallon in the very near future try to make sense of the following:  Something you should know: Oil!!  This is the best presentation on ANWR I have seen.  I would like to add a little more information. A new pipeline across  Alaska isn't required since the location for drilling in ANWR is about  160 miles from the North Slope Prudhoe Bay pipeline where it would  be connected. I did not know this.  Second the wildlife love the pipeline since it is heated and provides a  shelter during the worst times during the winter.  Maybe another question should be asked. FIRST do you know what  ANWR is? ANSWER: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.   Now a comparison    And some perspective  NOTE WHERE THE PROPOSED  DEVELOPMENT AREA IS (it's in the "ANWR Coastal Plain")      THIS IS WHAT THE DEMOCRATS,  LIBERALS AND "GREENS" SHOW YOU WHEN THEY TALK ABOUT ANWR  and they are right these ARE  photographs of ANWR         ISN'T ANWR BEAUTIFUL? WHY SHOULD WE DRILL HERE  AND DESTROY THIS BEAUTIFUL  PLACE?  WELL THAT'S NOT EXACTLY  THE TRUTH! Do you remember the map?  The map showed that the proposed drilling area is in the ANWR Coastal  Plain. Do those photographs look like a  coastal plain to you?     WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?  THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE  THAT IS NOT WHERE THEY ARE  WANTING TO DRILL!     THIS IS WHAT THE PROPOSED  EXPLORATION AREA ACTUALLY  LOOKS LIKE IN THE WINTER         AND THIS IS WHAT IT ACTUALLY  LOOKS LIKE IN THE SUMMER       HERE ARE A COUPLE SCREEN SHOTS FROM GOOGLE EARTH AS YOU CAN SEE, THE AREA  WHERE THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT  DRILLING IS A BARREN WASTELAND.   OH... AND THEY SAY THAT THEY  ARE CONCERNED ABOUT THE EFFECT  ON THE LOCAL WILDLIFE?   HERE IS A PHOTO (SHOT DURING THE SUMMER) OF THE  "DEPLETED WILDLIFE" SITUATION CREATED BY DRILLING AROUND  PRUDHOE BAY*   DON'T YOU THINK THAT THE CARIBOU  REALLY HATE THAT DRILLING?  HERE'S THAT SAME SPOT DURING  THE WINTER.    HEY, THIS BEAR SEEMS TO REALLY  HATE THE PIPELINE NEAR  PRUDHOE BAY *The Prudhoe bay area accounts for 17% of U.S.  Domestic oil production NOW, WHY DO YOU THINK THAT  THE DEMOCRATS ARE  LYING ABOUT ANWR?   REMEMBER WHEN  AL GORE SAID THAT  THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD WORK TO  ARTIFICIALLY RAISE GAS PRICES  TO $5.00 A GALLON?   WELL AL GORE AND HIS FELLOW DEMOCRATS HAVE ALMOST  REACHED THEIR GOAL!   NOW THAT YOU KNOW THAT THE  DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN LYING,  WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO  ABOUT IT?  YOU CAN START BY FORWARDING  THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW  SO THAT THEY WILL KNOW  THE TRUTH.