The American Left and the Crisis in Egypt

by David Horowitz
Posted on January 30 2011 4:41 pm
David Horowitz is the editor-in-chief of NewsReal Blog and FrontPage Magazine. He is the President and CEO of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. His most recent book is Reforming Our Universities

The Mubarak dictatorship is crumbling, the Muslim Brotherhood is warning that regimes will fall all over the Middle East and the radical left in America and internationally is cheering them on. Of course. The unholy alliance between the radical secular left and the forces of the Islamic jihad was forged a long time ago in the crucial of the Palestinian Islamic jihad against Israel and the West. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood as are the Muslim Students Association, CAIR and every major Muslim organization in America. The MSA and the pro-Palestinian left was part of the coalition of radical organizations that defended the Saddam regime during the lead up to the Iraq war and was on the steering committee of the International Answer demonstrations. Yassir Arafat was one of Saddam’s leading cheerleaders when Iraq tried to swallow Kuwait, triggering the first Gulf War. The roots of the alliance we see shaping up in the Egyptian struggle are deep.

We saw the unholy alliance at work in the Hamas inspired campaign to break the Gaza blockade. Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn were leaders of the American wing of the Hamas coalition against the blockade and went to Gaza to meet with Hamas shortly before the terrorist Flotilla was intercepted by Israeli forces. The Gaza blockade was jointly instituted by Israel and Egypt – by the Mubarak regime in Egypt. Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood’s army. If the Muslim Brotherhood topples the Mubarak regime, Hamas’s war against the Jews will be immeasureably strengthened. The radical left in America and internationally is committed to Hamas and its genocidal campaign against the Jews and its general war against the United States. That is why the fate of Egypt in this crisis resonates for all of us.(source)

The Left's Pitiful Attempts to Rewrite The History Of Reagan

The other day I heard a caller on CSPAN's Washington Journal trumpet the Left's proudest example that CONSERVATIVES ARE RACISTS: the Neshoba County speech of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

The under-educated caller spewed, "Well everyone knows that Reagan chose to start his presidential campaign where those three civil rights workers were killed in 1964." For him, the proof was in the pudding: a white Republican talking to whites in Mississippi equals a Klan meeting. If the speech doesn't come right out and say, "When it comes down to good whites like you and those blacks, we're with you", then there has to be some coded phrase or tone that means the same.

This sad instance of looking-for-a-racist-under-every-rock is typical in today's impoverished understanding of history. With hateful people in our universities who are intent upon brainwashing the last three generations of teachers, this is the natural result. The entire beauty and grandeur of America has been reduced to a Howard Zinn bumper-sticker.

Here is a column from David Brooks which details the facts about Reagan's speech in Neshoba County, MS, in 1980 (but, unfortunately, for simple-minded haters like Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman, never let the facts get in the way of a good fairy tale):

History And Calumny

Today, I’m going to write about a slur. It’s a distortion that’s been around for a while, but has spread like a weed over the past few months. It was concocted for partisan reasons: to flatter the prejudices of one side, to demonize the other and to simplify a complicated reality into a political nursery tale.

The distortion concerns a speech Ronald Reagan gave during the 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., which is where three civil rights workers had been murdered 16 years earlier. An increasing number of left-wing commentators assert that Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign with a states’ rights speech in Philadelphia to send a signal to white racists that he was on their side. The speech is taken as proof that the Republican majority was built on racism.

The truth is more complicated.

In reality, Reagan strategists decided to spend the week following the 1980 Republican convention courting African-American votes. Reagan delivered a major address at the Urban League, visited Vernon Jordan in the hospital where he was recovering from gunshot wounds, toured the South Bronx and traveled to Chicago to meet with the editorial boards of Ebony and Jet magazines.

Lou Cannon of The Washington Post reported at the time that this schedule reflected a shift in Republican strategy. Some inside the campaign wanted to move away from the Southern strategy used by Nixon, believing there were more votes available in the northern suburbs and among working-class urban voters.

But there was another event going on that week, the Neshoba County Fair, seven miles southwest of Philadelphia. The Neshoba County Fair was a major political rallying spot in Mississippi (Michael Dukakis would campaign there in 1988). Mississippi was a state that Republican strategists hoped to pick up. They’d recently done well in the upper South, but they still lagged in the Deep South, where racial tensions had been strongest. Jimmy Carter had carried Mississippi in 1976 by 14,000 votes.

So the decision was made to go to Neshoba. Exactly who made the decision is unclear. The campaign was famously disorganized, and Cannon reported: “The Reagan campaign’s hand had been forced to some degree by local announcement that he would go to the fair.” Reagan’s pollster Richard Wirthlin urged him not to go, but Reagan angrily countered that once the commitment had been made, he couldn’t back out.

The Reaganites then had an internal debate over whether to do the Urban League speech and then go to the fair, or to do the fair first. They decided to do the fair first, believing it would send the wrong message to go straight from the Urban League to Philadelphia, Miss.

Reagan’s speech at the fair was short and cheerful, and can be heard at: www.onlinemadison.com/ftp/reagan/reaganneshoba.mp3. He told several jokes, and remarked: “I know speaking to this crowd, I’m speaking to a crowd that’s 90 percent Democrat.”

He spoke mostly about inflation and the economy, but in the middle of a section on schools, he said this: “Programs like education and others should be turned back to the states and local communities with the tax sources to fund them. I believe in states’ rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can at the community level and the private level.”

The use of the phrase “states’ rights” didn’t spark any reaction in the crowd, but it led the coverage in The Times and The Post the next day.

Reagan flew to New York and delivered his address to the Urban League, in which he unveiled an urban agenda, including enterprise zones and an increase in the minimum wage. He was received warmly, but not effusively. Much of the commentary that week was about whether Reagan’s outreach to black voters would work.

You can look back on this history in many ways. It’s callous, at least, to use the phrase “states’ rights” in any context in Philadelphia. Reagan could have done something wonderful if he’d mentioned civil rights at the fair. He didn’t. And it’s obviously true that race played a role in the G.O.P.’s ascent.

Still, the agitprop version of this week — that Reagan opened his campaign with an appeal to racism — is a distortion, as honest investigators ranging from Bruce Bartlett, who worked for the Reagan administration and is the author of “Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy,” to Kevin Drum, who writes for Washington Monthly, have concluded.

But still the slur spreads. It’s spread by people who, before making one of the most heinous charges imaginable, couldn’t even take 10 minutes to look at the evidence. It posits that there was a master conspiracy to play on the alleged Klan-like prejudices of American voters, when there is no evidence of that conspiracy. And, of course, in a partisan age there are always people eager to believe this stuff. (source)

The CSPAN caller can't be blamed by himsef, of course. Listening to Pied Pipers like Bob Herbert obviously kept the man from thinking for himself. Here is an example of the kind of propaganda that the NYT has been pushing for years, now (ironically, you are about to witness an African American mention a Jewish person without the same Crown Heights-type hate and animosity that accompanies much of African America's regard of them today):

Righting Reagan's Wrongs

Let’s set the record straight on Ronald Reagan’s campaign kickoff in 1980.

Early one morning in the late spring of 1964, Dr. Carolyn Goodman, her husband, Robert, and their 17-year-old son, David, said goodbye to David’s brother, Andrew, who was 20.

They hugged in the family’s apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and Andrew left. He was on his way to the racial hell of Mississippi to join in the effort to encourage local blacks to register and vote.

It was a dangerous mission, and Andrew’s parents were reluctant to let him go. But the family had always believed strongly in equal rights and the benefits of social activism. “I didn’t have the right,” Dr. Goodman would tell me many years later, “to tell him not to go.”

After a brief stopover in Ohio, Andrew traveled to the town of Philadelphia in Neshoba County, Mississippi, a vicious white-supremacist stronghold. Just days earlier, members of the Ku Klux Klan had firebombed a black church in the county and had beaten terrified worshipers.

Andrew would not survive very long. On June 21, one day after his arrival, he and fellow activists Michael Schwerner and James Chaney disappeared. Their bodies wouldn’t be found until August. All had been murdered, shot to death by whites enraged at the very idea of people trying to secure the rights of African-Americans.

The murders were among the most notorious in American history. They constituted Neshoba County’s primary claim to fame when Reagan won the Republican Party’s nomination for president in 1980. The case was still a festering sore at that time. Some of the conspirators were still being protected by the local community. And white supremacy was still the order of the day.

That was the atmosphere and that was the place that Reagan chose as the first stop in his general election campaign. The campaign debuted at the Neshoba County Fair in front of a white and, at times, raucous crowd of perhaps 10,000, chanting: “We want Reagan! We want Reagan!”

Reagan was the first presidential candidate ever to appear at the fair, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he told that crowd, “I believe in states’ rights.”

Reagan apologists have every right to be ashamed of that appearance by their hero, but they have no right to change the meaning of it, which was unmistakable. Commentators have been trying of late to put this appearance by Reagan into a racially benign context.

That won’t wash. Reagan may have been blessed with a Hollywood smile and an avuncular delivery, but he was elbow deep in the same old race-baiting Southern strategy of Goldwater and Nixon.

Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans — they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew.

He was tapping out the code. It was understood that when politicians started chirping about “states’ rights” to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when it comes down to you and the blacks, we’re with you.

And Reagan meant it. He was opposed to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was the same year that Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were slaughtered. As president, he actually tried to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He opposed a national holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He tried to get rid of the federal ban on tax exemptions for private schools that practiced racial discrimination. And in 1988, he vetoed a bill to expand the reach of federal civil rights legislation.

Congress overrode the veto.

Reagan also vetoed the imposition of sanctions on the apartheid regime in South Africa. Congress overrode that veto, too.

Throughout his career, Reagan was wrong, insensitive and mean-spirited on civil rights and other issues important to black people. There is no way for the scribes of today to clean up that dismal record.

To see Reagan’s appearance at the Neshoba County Fair in its proper context, it has to be placed between the murders of the civil rights workers that preceded it and the acknowledgment by the Republican strategist Lee Atwater that the use of code words like “states’ rights” in place of blatantly bigoted rhetoric was crucial to the success of the G.O.P.’s Southern strategy. That acknowledgment came in the very first year of the Reagan presidency.

Ronald Reagan was an absolute master at the use of symbolism. It was one of the primary keys to his political success.

The suggestion that the Gipper didn’t know exactly what message he was telegraphing in Neshoba County in 1980 is woefully wrong-headed. Wishful thinking would be the kindest way to characterize it.(source)

Stanley Ann Dunham And The Left's Exploitation Of Women

Stanley Ann Dunham with her father, Barry, and daughter


By Robin of Berkeley

Obama's mother, the oddly named Stanley Ann, died of cancer about fifteen years ago. There's little known about Stanley Ann, aside from the details provided by Obama and his handlers. Of course, the truth about Obama's past is shrouded in secrecy.


But what can be pieced together about Obama's mom from the information at hand? For one, Stanley Ann was given her strange name by her strange father, Stanley Dunham, who desired a boy instead. Dunham was a volatile, hard-drinking man, who was expelled from high school for punching his principal. Mental illness may have run in the Dunham family; as a boy, Stanley discovered his mother dead of an apparent suicide.


We can make some inferences about Stanley Ann's childhood based on how her parents raised young Barry. Stanley Dunham designated the purported Communist, bisexual pedophile, Frank Marshall Davis, as Barry's mentor. Not only was Barry left alone with Davis, but Davis and Dunham would booze and tell dirty jokes in the boy's presence. Given the poor judgment Dunham exercised, he likely raised his daughter in the same reckless manner.


As for Stanley Ann's mom, Madelyn Dunham, she was the main breadwinner of the family; however, she, like most women of that generation, deferred to her husband. Thus, she allowed him to choose their daughter's peculiar name.

Frank Marshall Davis

Madelyn also permitted Frank Marshall Davis to carouse and smoke pot with her husband, even to mentor the impressionable Barry. Of course, Obama demonstrated no warmth towards his grandmother whom he dismissed as a "typical white person."


What else can we deduce about Stanley Ann? There's conjecture that Stanley Ann was raised in a radical family with Communist leanings. She spent her adolescence on progressive Mercer Island; the left-leaning Unitarian Church they attended there was known as the Little Red Church, while the school board's chairman was a self-identified communist. Of course, the family's connection with Frank Marshall Davis lends credence to the theory of a radical childhood.


As the official story goes, Stanley Ann met Obama Sr. at college, and their relationship produced Barack. However, American Thinker's Jack Cashill has highlighted doubts about Obama's paternity, including the possibility that Frank Marshall Davis may be father.


If Obama Sr. were Obama's father, this is a troubling scenario since Senior was a married man, seven years older, with an apparent alcohol problem. But even more disturbing is the prospect of Frank Marshall Davis being Obama's father. Davis was decades older than Stanley Ann, and a purported pedophile. Davis penned a thinly veiled memoir celebrating his and his wife's sexual relationship with a l3 year old girl.[i]


It was highly unusual for girls in the 1950's to have interracial relationships, much less babies, with a man of a difference race. During this time, however, the Communist Party of the United States encouraged women members to use their feminine wiles to entice men, especially black men, into the movement, as well as to reward the ones who joined up. Did Communist brainwashing play some role in Stanley Ann's choice of partners and her subsequent pregnancy?


Davis himself boasted, "The number of white babes interested in at least one meeting with a Negro male has been far more than I can handle." If Frank Marshall Davis were truly Obama's father, was Stanley Ann one of his many conquests?

While there is no way of knowing, there are reasons to be concerned. The American Left certainly has a long history of exploiting women. For instance, during the 60's, Leftist girls were expected to, according to the slogan: Say Yes to Boys Who Say No [to the Draft].


Communist movement recruiting poster

Much of the Left's dirty laundry has been expunged and reconstructed, particularly regarding its treatment of women. But women have always been viewed as the movement's maids -- and their mattresses. In the 60‘s, radical girls were expected to serve the food, as well as service the men sexually.

Activist Stokely Carmichael articulated the general vibe in an infamous, and candid, response. When asked the role of women in the Students for a Democratic Society, Carmichael replied, "The position of women in the movement is prone."


Radical women were brainwashed to believe that they needed to sacrifice their bodies for the Revolution. The women of the Weather Underground, for example, were required to have sex with any male who asked for it.


If a woman balked and demanded equality, she was told that women's rights were secondary to liberating blacks and stopping the war. (Interestingly, the early suffragists were also instructed to put their needs on hold, which is why American women couldn't vote until 1920, 50 years after black men.)


On the rare occasion that a movement woman would protest, she'd face swift and harsh retribution. When SDS member Marilyn Webb dared to take to the stage and advocate for women, she was besieged with cat calls and obscenities. After the event, Webb received death threats.[ii]


The Left's use and abuse of women did not stop with the 60‘s, nor with the feminist revolution of the 70's, which was launched, in part, because of the misogynist Left. And the Left's misuse of women, the life-bearers, is emblematic of the hypocrisy and the heartlessness that is at the core of the progressive movement.


Today, we see the sad spectacle of a new female generation being manipulated just like their foremothers. Egged on by radical professors, young women are falling for the same propaganda.


The pressure to be cool, progressive girls -- along with the media's force feeding of hedonism -- is corrupting millions of young women. And the fallout has been far-reaching, not only in broken lives, but in a public health crisis of STD's, cervical cancer, and abortions.


Like robotic Stepford Wives, progressive women of all ages follow their mostly male leaders. Even women's studies departments have been hijacked by the Radical Left; feminist professors support Radical Islam, regardless of the honor killings, stoning, and genital mutilation.


When I think of the Left's sordid history, I recall another time and place, and another woman who stumbled upon a heavily concealed secret. Her name was Iris Chang, and she exposed an even more iniquitous period, the Rape of Nanking. In her landmark book, Chang revealed the mass violation of Chinese women by the invading Japanese troops during World War II.


Tragically, hearing the horrific details, and receiving death threats, proved too much for Iris Chang. She suicided a few years after the book's release.


Perhaps someday, someone with Chang's courage (and the resources for personal bodyguards) will write a similar-type book about the Left's abominable treatment of its women. The narrative should include Diana Oughton, a once ebullient and lively woman who morphed into an emaciated zombie after she joined the Weather Underground. Oughton was killed in a botched bombing plot.


There are so many other women, like the nameless, anonymous readers who have emailed me, sharing their stories, sometimes for the first time. Many of these women were Leftists who turned conservative because of harrowing experiences in radical movements.


Was Stanley Ann Dunham one of them; was she a brainwashed victim of a Communist upbringing? Or was she simply an independent thinker, who willingly and happily forged her life's path?


I don't presume to know. But I do know that millions of American women have been hoodwinked by those sweet-talking progressives. And each new day, another young woman falls under their hypnotic spell.


A frequent American Thinker contributor, Robin is a recovering liberal and a psychotherapist in Berkeley. You can reach Robin through her blog www.robinofberkeley.com. Comments for this article can be posted here. Robin's articles are intended for informational and entertainment purposes, not to offer treatment or definitive diagnoses.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[i] Davis has confirmed that his novel, Sex Rebel: Black, with its description of sex with a l3 year old girl, was autobiographical. Davis also described himself as "a voyeur and an exhibitionist," with an interest in group sex, sadomasochism, water sports, simulated rape, and bondage.


[ii] From: A Conservative History of the America Left, by Daniel Flynn. (source)

Honor Killing in America

Muzzammil Hassan with his wife Aasiya Zubair Hassan.

The trials of two "honor killers" are underway in America this week: one in Buffalo, New York, and the other in Arizona.


In Buffalo, the moderate Muslim beheader and bridge-builder to the West, Muzzammil Hassan, was granted the right Monday to act as his own attorney. That should make for some interesting trial transcripts. Hassan had an attorney, Jeremy Schwartz, but Schwartz told the judge that he met with Hassan on Friday and they had an impasse and "irreconcilable differences and opinions" that go to the heart of the defense.


Muzzammil Hassan was a respected Muslim businessman in Buffalo. He founded the BridgesTV network several years ago to improve the image of Muslims in the United States. But now he is standing trial for the decapitation of his estranged wife, Aasiya Zubair Hassan, in February 2009. He beheaded her at his company's office in Orchard Park, New York -- that's right, in the offices of BridgesTV. Police records show that Muzzammil Hassan had abused Aasiya for years. And that means that the Buffalo-area Muslim community writ large ought to be on trial as well; they knew of the brutal violence Aasiya suffered and apparently kept silent. The Muslim community knew of Hassan's abuse.


And in Arizona, an Iraqi Muslim named Faleh Almaleki went on trial this week for murdering his daughter for being too "westernized." The Almaleki trial damn near didn't happen. They were negotiating a plea deal for this cold-blooded adherent to the sharia. But readers of my website AtlasShrugs.com called, wrote, and e-mailed, and in a huge victory for Atlas readers who fought the impending plea deal, it was withdrawn.

Faleh Almaleki and daughter Noor Almaleki

Muslim dad Faleh Almaleki ran over his daughter, Noor Almaleki. He is now showing his utter contempt for the infidel system of jurisprudence by saying that he ran down and murdered his daughter with his car accidentally while he was "concentrating on spitting at another woman." Spitting on a woman: the metaphor should not be lost on anyone. This disgusting defense and out-and-out lie contradicts Faleh Almaleki's admission in November 2009 (here) that, according to state prosecutor Stephanie Low, Faleh Almaleki admitted that he ran over his daughter on purpose:


By his own admission, this was an intentional act and the reason was that his daughter had brought shame on him and his family. This was an attempt at an honor killing.


Then-prosecutor Low said "attempt" because Noor Almaleki had not yet succumbed to her injuries. She hung on by a thread for two weeks.


After her father ran her over, he backed up his vehicle and ran her over again. Was this, too, in an attempt to spit?


Remember that these are not isolated incidents or actions of a "fringe" element within Islam. They are happening with increasing frequency. The Harry Potter actress Afshan Azad was recently almost killed by her father and brother in another attempted Islamic honor killing. How much more in the mainstream can you get? Yet despite who she is, the celebrity of the victim, still the dhimmedia shills for, aids, abets, and covers for Islamic misogyny. And even more galling was Azad's family's concern -- not with their Afshan, but with "what the Muslim community will think." That was their worry and obsession.


The horror of these young girls, terror-stricken victims who live in homemade concentration camps, is given the imprimatur of the West in its complicit silence. Notice how news accounts never mention the religion of the people involved. The West is intent upon putting an urbane face on bloodthirsty savagery. The West looks away, and more girls lead desperate, brutal lives. The "feminists" look away and pretend that Islamic honor killing is outside the realm of women's rights. The leftists are tools of Islamic jihad: these useful idiots are on someone's payroll, or else they fear Islam so much that they are willing to see these girls die.


Either way, get out of the way. Shame on all of you for failing our women, our children, our girls, our very way of life. How dare you throw away our superior culture with both hands?


As Muslim populations grow in the West, the status of women diminishes. The horrific murders of wives, daughters, moms, and sisters are the worst and ultimate punishment of Islamic gender apartheid, and something we see on the rise in the West. It should be a capital crime in America. (source)

Sign Of Our Times: Things You Never See In Civilized Communites (The SC IHOP Brawl)

Sign Of Our Times: Things You Never See In Civilized Communities (Teenage Girls Viciously Beat A Wendy's Cashier)

Vicious Attack on Wendy's Worker: MyFoxNY.com

China Bank Moves to Buy U.S. Branches

China's biggest bank signed an agreement that would make it the first Beijing-controlled financial institution to acquire retail bank branches in the U.S., though regulators could still block the deal.

Under the deal, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., by some measures the world's largest bank, agreed to acquire a majority stake in Bank of East Asia Ltd.'s U.S. subsidiary. ICBC will pay $140 million for an 80% stake. Bank of East Asia, which is a publicly traded company based in Hong Kong, has a total of 13 branches in New York and California. ICBC and Bank of East Asia have talked to U.S. regulators about the deal, these people said.

The move represents what could be the start of big expansions by Chinese financial institutions in the U.S.

Signed in Chicago on the last day of Chinese President Hu Jintao's state visit to the U.S., the move, comes as both Beijing and Washington are calling for greater commercial ties between the two countries.

Both Beijing and Washington are eager to showcase their willingness to strengthen the business ties between the two countries, despite the many issues that will continue to hinder the relations. China is prodding the U.S. to ease its export controls, especially those involving high-technology products, aimed at its biggest economic rival. The U.S. is asking for more Chinese purchases of made-in-America goods and services.

The transaction is expected to be carefully scrutinized by U.S. regulators, including the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., known as CFIUS, because of the state-controlled nature of the Chinese bank. A previous deal by a Chinese bank to acquire a bank in the U.S. was rejected by regulators. "It is going to be a long process," a person familiar with the matter said.

If ICBC's deal to acquire Bank of East Asia's U.S. subsidiary goes through, Americans could walk into the retail branches, open check and savings accounts and, most significantly for many investors, open yuan accounts to trade the currency.

ICBC, as the bank is known, is based in Beijing and is 70% owned by the Chinese government. It has become increasingly comfortable venturing outside its home markets, which still account for the bulk of its profit. Last year, ICBC got into the broker-dealer business in the U.S. with a symbolic $1 purchase of the U.S. brokerage unit of Fortis Securities, controlled by France's BNP Paribas SA. That deal didn't subject ICBC to tight U.S. regulatory restrictions on foreign purchases of retail-banking operations.

U.S. regulators often demand that foreign banks prove they are adequately supervised in their home markets and have proper antimoney-laundering procedures in place before allowing them to set up retail operations, legal experts say.

The agreement was signed at the Hilton Chicago as part of a slew of pacts announced by roughly 60 U.S. and Chinese companies at a giant "signing ceremony" organized on Friday by China's Commerce Ministry and its U.S. counterpart.

Both Beijing and Washington are eager to showcase their willingness to strengthen the business ties between the two countries, despite the many issues that will continue to hinder the relations. China is prodding the U.S. to ease its export controls, especially those involving high-technology products, aimed at its biggest economic rival while the U.S. is asking for more Chinese purchases of made-in-America goods and services. The contract-signing event in Chicago was hailed as "the most important event" in conjunction with President Hu's visit, according to officials in the Chinese delegation.

The move by ICBC underscores the desire by Chinese banking executives to transform their strength into a greater presence globally, as Chinese banks have emerged from the global financial crisis largely unscathed. Their hope is to better support Chinese companies and guard against losing customers to U.S. and European banks that already have networks world-wide. Meantime, Beijing has encouraged Chinese companies to expand overseas in recent years. In light of the huge foreign-exchange reserves China has, Beijing has encouraged its banks to invest more overseas.

In a speech at the event Friday, Chen Deming, China's Commerce Minister, said one of the priorities for the Commerce Ministry is to "encourage our companies to go out." He pointed to the vast foreign-exchange reserves held by China, saying that "we should turn those reserves into capital and assets." Otherwise, the reserves could decline in value because of inflation, Mr. Chen said.

While China's resource and construction companies have moved aggressively into new markets, its financial institutions generally have been slow to follow.

Bank of East Asia is led by prominent Asian banker Sir David Li. Mr. Li drew unwanted attention to himself in the U.S. and Hong Kong in 2007 when the former board member of Dow Jones became the target of an insider-trading case involving News Corp.'s buyout bid for Dow Jones. Mr. Li later agreed to pay $8.1 million to settle the civil charges. Mr. Li couldn't be reached for comment.

So far, most Chinese investments in the U.S. financial sector have involved the Chinese taking passive, minority stakes in firms such as Blackstone Group LP and Morgan Stanley. Taking a majority stake in Bank of East Asia is a change of tactic for ICBC

At the same time, Bank of East Asia is no stranger to ICBC. It sold a 70% stake in its Canadian operations to ICBC last year and all of its six branches in Canada have since been rebranded ICBC Canada. Bank of East Asia has 13 branches in the U.S., concentrating in New York and California—two states that boast the largest numbers of Chinese immigrants. The bank formed its U.S. banking subsidiary in 2001 through the acquisition of Grand National Bank, of Alhambra, Calif.

The deal, if approved by U.S. regulators, would allow ICBC to gain relatively quick access to American depositors. Right now, ICBC has one branch in New York, but it isn't involved in the retail-banking business. Bank of China Ltd. is the only mainland Chinese bank that has a retail license in the U.S. market. The bank, also state owned, has two branches in New York and one in Los Angeles. It recently has started allowing American customers to buy and sell the Chinese currency through its U.S. branches.

The decision by Bank of China is the latest move by China to allow the yuan, whose value is still tightly controlled by the government, to become an international currency that can be used for trade and investment.

Chinese banks have encountered uphill battles to gain access to the U.S. market in the past. For instance, it took almost two years for ICBC to get the approval from the Federal Reserve to open its New York branch, which has so far focused on commercial lending. That green light was given shortly before President George W. Bush's trip to Beijing for the Summer Olympics in 2008.

Some Chinese banks' bids to acquire U.S. counterparts have been rejected. A case in point is China Minsheng Banking Corp. In 2008, Minsheng, China's first private bank and a midsize lender, agreed to take a 9.9% stake in San Francisco lender UCBH Holdings Inc., the holding company for United Commercial Bank. When the bank ran into trouble during the financial crisis over bad loans and accounting errors, Minsheng tried to buy it. U.S. regulators rejected the move because of restrictions on foreign investment in U.S. banks, according to people familiar with the matter. Regulators in late 2009 shut down United Commercial Bank and Minsheng had to write off its $130 million investment.(source)

Barry As President: CHINA'S MILITARY RISE MEANS Appeasement Is The Proper Policy Towards Confucian China

We all learned at school how the status quo powers mismanaged the spectacular rise of Germany before World War I, a strategic revolution so like the rise of China today.

And we all learned how the Kaiser overplayed his hand. That much was obvious.

Yet it is difficult to pin-point exactly when the normal pattern of great power jostling began to metamorphose into something more dangerous, leading to two rival, entrenched, and heavily armed alliance structures unable or unwilling to avert the drift towards conflict. The Long Peace died by a thousand cuts, a snub here, a Dreadnought there, the race for oil.

The German historian Fritz Fischer has in a sense muddied the waters with his seminal work, Griff nach der Weltmacht (Bid for World Power). He draws on imperial archives in Potsdam to claim that Germany’s general staff was angling for a pre-emptive war to smash France and dismember the Russian Empire before it emerged as an industrial colossus. Sarajevo provided the “propitious moment”.

Kaiser Wilhelm’s court allegedly made up its mind after the Social Democrats (then Marxists) won a Reichstag majority in 1912, seeing war as a way to contain radical dissent. This assessment was tragically correct. War split the Social Democrats irrevocably, allowing the Nazis to exploit a divided Left under Weimar.

The Fischer version of events is a little too reassuring, and not just because the Entente allies had already fed Germany’s self-fulfilling fears of encirclement and emboldened Tsarist Russia to push its luck in the Balkans. A deeper cause was at work.

"The only condition which could lead to improvement of German-English relations would be if we bridled our economic development, and this is not possible," said Deutsche Bank chief Karl Helfferich as early as 1897. German steel output jumped tenfold from 1880 to 1900, leaping past British production. Sound familiar?

Is China now where Germany was in 1900? Possibly. There are certainly hints of menace from some quarters in Beijing. Defence minister Liang Guanglie said over New Year that China’s armed forces are “pushing forward preparations for military conflict in every strategic direction”.

Professor Huang Jing from Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew School and a former adviser to China’s Army, said Beijing is losing its grip on the colonels.

“The young officers are taking control of strategy and it is like young officers in Japan in the 1930s. This is very dangerous. They are on a collision course with a US-dominated system,” he said.

Yet nothing is foreordained. Which is why it was so unsettling to learn that most of the leadership of the US Congress declined to attend the state banquet at the White House for Chinese President Hu Jintao, including the Speaker of House.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Mr Hu a “dictator”. Is this a remotely apposite term for a self-effacing man of Confucian leanings, whose father was a victim of the Cultural Revolution, who fights a daily struggle against his own hotheads at home, and who will hand over power in an orderly transition next year?

Or for premier Wen Jiabao, who visited students in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, narrowly surviving the “insubordination purge” that followed? These leaders may be wrong in their assessment of how much democracy China can handle without flying out of control, but despots they are not.

President Barack Obama has bent over backwards to draw China into the international system through the G20, the World Bank and the IMF, in practical terms recognizing Beijing as co-equal in global condominium.

You could say Mr Obaba has won little in return for reaching out, but as Napoleon put it, “a leader is a dealer in hope”. What, pray, would a policy of crude containment do to China’s psyche?

Heaven protect us from unreconstructed Neo-cons such as ex-UN ambassador John Bolton, who wants to send aircraft carrier battle groups into the Straits of Taiwan, as if we were still living in that lost world of American pre-eminence in 1996, when China was still too weak to respond, and did not have operational missiles able to sink US carriers far at sea. Yet variants of the Bolton view are gaining ground on Capitol Hill.

Yes, China’s leaders should be careful not to succumb to the Wilhelmine illusion that economic and strategic momentum is the same as actual power.

There is a new edge to Chinese naval policy in the South China Sea, causing Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines to cleave closer to the US alliance. Has Beijing studied how German naval ambitions upset the careful diplomatic legacy of Bismarck and pushed an ambivalent Britain towards the Entente, even to the point of accepting alliance with Tsarist autocracy?

Factions in Beijing appear to think that China will win a trade war if Washington ever imposes sanctions to counter Chinese mercantilism. That is a fatal misjudgement. The lesson of Smoot-Hawley and the 1930s is that surplus states suffer crippling depressions when the guillotine comes down on free trade; while deficit states can muddle through, reviving their industries behind barriers. Demand is the most precious commodity of all in a world of excess supply.

The political reality is that China’s export of manufacturing over-capacity is hollowing out the US industrial core, and a plethora of tricks to stop Western firms competing in the Chinese market rubs salt in the wound. It is preventing full recovery in the US, where half the population is falling out of the bottom of the Affluent Society. Some 43.2m people are now on food stamps. The US labour force participation rate has fallen to 64.3pc, worse than a year ago. Only the richer half is recovering.

The roots of this imbalance lie in the structure of globalisation and East-West capital flows – and no doubt the deficiencies of US school education – but China plays a central role, and this will not tolerated for much longer if Beijing is also perceived to be a strategic enemy. China’s economic and military goals are in conflict. One defeats the other.

The undervalued yuan is merely the visible tip of the mercantilist iceberg, and is a diminishing factor in any case as leaked dollar stimulus from the Fed’s QE drives up Chinese wage inflation. What matters is that China’s entire credit, tax, and regulatory system is geared towards subsidised capital for exporters.

Professor Michael Pettis from Beijing University argues that a key reason why Chinese consumption has collapsed from 48pc to 36pc of GDP over 12 years – and therefore why China cannot eliminate the trade surplus with the US – is that the banking system has been bailed out with an interest rate subsidy extracted from depositors, shifting income from the people to corporate debtors. Unfortunately, this is about to happen again.

A cocky China needs to watch its step, as does a rancorous America, before resentments feed on each other in a Wilhelmine spiral.

The Chinese have no recent history of sweeping territorial expansion (except Tibet). The one-child policy has left a dearth of young men, and implies a chronic aging crisis within a decade. This is not the demographic profile of a fundamentally bellicose nation.

The correct statecraft for the West is to treat Beijing politely but firmly as a member of global club, gambling that the Confucian ethic will over time incline China to a quest for global as well as national concord. Until we face irrefutable evidence that this Confucian bet has failed, 'Boltonism’ must be crushed.

Appeasement, your hour has come.(source)

CHINESE MILITARY MACHINE: On The Rise

Lift-off: China's J-20 stealth plane has made a successful test flight. Military officials say it is likely the Chinese were able to develop the stealth technology from parts of an American F-117 Nighthawk that was shot down over Serbia in 1999

China was able to build its first stealth bomber using technology gleaned from a downed U.S. fighter, it has been claimed.

Beijing unveiled its state-of-the-art jet – the Chengdu J-20 – earlier this month.

Military officials say it is likely the Chinese were able to develop the stealth technology from parts of an American F-117 Nighthawk that was shot down over Serbia in 1999.

During Nato’s aerial bombing of the country during the Kosovo war, a Serbian anti-aircraft missile shot the Nighthawk. It was the first time one of the ‘invisible’ fighters had ever been hit.

The Pentagon believed a combination of clever tactics and luck had allowed a Soviet-built SA-3 missile to bring down the jet.

The pilot ejected and was rescued but the wreckage was strewn over a wide area of farmland.

Civilians collected the parts – some the size of small cars – as souvenirs.

‘At the time, our intelligence reports told of Chinese agents crisscrossing the region where the F-117 disintegrated, buying up parts of the plane from local farmers,’ says Admiral Davor Domazet-Loso, Croatia’s military chief of staff during the Kosovo war.

‘We believe the Chinese used those materials to gain an insight into secret stealth technologies... and to reverse-engineer them.’

A senior Serbian military official confirmed that pieces of the wreckage were removed by souvenir collectors, and that some ended up ‘in the hands of foreign military attaches’.

In what appears to be a clear message of its military might, China staged the first test flight of the new stealth jet earlier this month - at the same time that U.S. defence chief Robert Gates was in Beijing on the second day of an official visit.

The fighter jet's successful test follows reports that China is planning to launch its first aircraft carrier and has tested a ballistic missile capable of sinking U.S. vessels in the Pacific.

The prototype jet was shown in flight, with civilians and air force personnel watching on, in pictures on several unofficial Chinese military websites, after local media outlets had claimed a successful test flight had taken place.

While the Chinese government is renowned for its stringent approach to state secrets, photos and reports of the J-20's test have remained online.

According to international agencies, the scheduling of the test flight to coincide with Mr Gates' visit to China, coupled with the seemingly relaxed approach to reports about the flight, indicated Beijing's willingness to be more open about its military intentions.

Nonetheless, reports of the stealth's successful test will do little to quell anxieties about the speed of China's military progress.

The U.S. F-22 Raptor is currently the only operational stealth fighter in the world, while Russia's Sukhoi T-50 jet is expected to enter active service in the next four years.

But pictures of China's J-20, which looks larger than the F-22 or T-50, will be of concern to the Taiwanese government, whose antiquated aircraft and radar systems would provide little resistance to radar-evading Chinese jets.

The U.S. has claimed China would not be capable of developing a stealth jet for years and production of the F-22 was recently capped.

But the J-20's successful test, coupled with reports of the development of an aircraft carrier and missile system, confirms China's growing military might.(source)

Islamofile 012411: Suicide Bomber Kills 35 At Russia's Biggest Airport

A suicide bomber killed at least 35 people at Russia's busiest airport on Monday, state TV said, in an attack on the capital that bore the hallmarks of militants fighting for an Islamist state in the North Caucasus region.

President Dmitry Medvedev vowed to track down and punish those behind the bombing, which also injured over 150 people, including foreigners, during the busy late afternoon at Moscow's Domodedovo airport.

Islamist rebels have vowed to take their bombing campaign from the North Caucasus to the Russian heartland in the year before presidential elections, hitting transport and economic targets. They have also leveled threats at the 2014 Winter Olympics, scheduled for the Black Sea resort town of Sochi, a region some militants consider "occupied."

Dense smoke filled Domodedovo's international arrivals hall and a fire burned along one wall.

"Taxi drivers lined up in the arrivals hall were blown up. Pieces of their bodies covered us and my left ear doesn't hear very well at all," Artyom Zhilenkov, 30, told Reuters as he pointed to pieces of human flesh on his coat.

Thick drops of blood were scattered across the snow-covered tarmac outside the arrivals hall, where Interfax news agency said traces of shrapnel were found.

"I heard a loud boom... we thought someone had just dropped something. But then I saw casualties being carried away," a check-in attendant who gave her name as Elena told Reuters at Domodedovo, which is some 22 km (14 miles) southeast of Moscow.

The prosecutor's office said the bomb had been classified as a terrorist attack -- the largest since twin suicide bombings on the Moscow metro rocked the Russian heartland in March.

"The blast was most likely carried out by a suicide bomber"

State television said the blast was the work of a "smertnik," or suicide bomber.

U.S. President Barack Obama condemned the "outrageous act of terrorism" and offered Moscow help. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he was shocked, state TV said.

A decade after federal forces drove separatists from power in Chechnya in the second of two wars, the mainly Muslim North Caucasus is wracked by violence.

Medvedev, who has called the Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus the biggest threat to Russian security, wrote on Twitter: "Security will be strengthened at large transport hubs."

"We mourn the victims of the terrorist attack at Domodedovo airport. The organizers will be tracked down and punished."

Medvedev, due to open the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, delayed his Tuesday departure to the Swiss city of Davos.

No group has yet taken responsibility for the attack, but dozens of Internet surfers, writing in Russian, praised the suicide bomber on unofficial Islamist site kavkazcenter.com.

Russia's ruble-denominated stock market MICEX fell by nearly two percent following the blast, but traders said they expected little long-term impact.

"It (the blast) is moving the market in the short term, but there is no fundamental reason for the market to fall. If you remember, the market didn't react strongly to (previous blasts)," said trader Alexei Bachurin from Renaissance Capital.

The attack raised questions over Russian security -- one month after it won the right to host the 2018 World Cup.

SPREADING INSURRECTION

Twitter users posted mobile video phone footage of dozens of people lying on the floor amongst severed limbs and pools of blood as thick smoke filled the hall and a fire burned along one wall.

Airport staff were shown using flash lights to pick their way through the chaotic scene taped off immediately after the blast. Later videos showed emergency workers wheeling injured people out of the terminal on stretchers.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who shares power in a 'tandem' arrangement with the less influential Medvedev, has staked his political reputation on quelling rebellion in the North Caucasus.

He launched a war in late 1999 in Chechnya to topple a secessionist government. That campaign achieved its immediate aim and helped him to the presidency months later; but since then insurgency has spread to neighboring Ingushetia and Dagestan.

"It does not ... bode well for Russian ties to the North Caucasus and is yet another sign that what Putin started in 1999 by invading the rebellious republic of Chechnya has come home to roost again in the Russian capital," said Glen Howard, president of the U.S. Jamestown Foundation research institution.

Tensions between ethnic Russians and Muslims -- at 20 million they make up one seventh of Russia's population -- flared dramatically last month in a string of clashes, which involved thousands of Russian nationalists who attacked passersby of non-Slavic appearance, many of whom were from the North Caucasus.

Analysts say rebels are planning to increase violence in the run up to 2012 presidential elections, that may well see Putin returning to the presidency.

"It is a clear jab at the FSB (Federal Security Services) and at the elections," said Adil Mukashev, an independent expert on terrorism issues.

Security has been tightened at Moscow's other two airports, which will also receive diverted passengers who were flying toward Domodedovo, media reported.

Moscow suffered its worst attack in six years in March 2010 when two female suicide bombers from Dagestan set off explosives in the metro, killing 40 people.

The worst incident involving North Caucasus rebels took place in 2004 when militants seized control of a school in Beslan. When Russian troops stormed the building in an attempt to end a siege, 331 hostages, half of them children, were killed.(source)

Islamofile 012111: More Examples From The Religion Of Peace (The Harry Potter Star Case)

She was punched, dragged by her hair and threatened with death by her big brother, but Harry Potter star Afshan Azad begged the court not to jail him.

Azad, 21, who stars as Harry's classmate Padma Patil in the J.K. Rowling movie franchise, had her original police statement read in the U.K.'s Manchester Crown Court, which revealed how her 28-year-old brother, Ashraf Azad, put her through a three-hour nightmare when he discovered she was dating a non-Muslim man.

So why did she ask the judge for leniency?

According to a letter Ashraf had written to the judge, the actress had "forgiven" her brother for the incident.

Back in May 2010, after he overheard her speaking to her Hindu boyfriend, Ashraf grabbed her hair, threw her across the room and punched her repeatedly. She suffered bruising and swelling and fled the house through her bedroom window.

But the judge had no sympathy for him, sentencing him to six months in prison after he pled guilty to beating his sister.

"This is a sentence that is designed to punish you for what you did and also to send out a clear message to others that domestic violence involving circumstances such as have arisen here cannot be tolerated," he explained as he handed down the sentence.

Afshan's father, Abdul Azad, was recently cleared for making death threats against her.(source)

Welfare Tab for Children of Illegal Immigrants Estimated at $600M in L.A. County

July 29: Los Angeles workers from 32 different unions joined local faith and community leaders at Dodger Stadium boarding 11 buses bound for Arizona to protest Arizona immigration law SB 1070.

Welfare benefits for the children of illegal immigrants cost America's largest county more than $600 million last year, according to a local official keeping tabs on the cost.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich released new statistics this week showing social spending for those families in his county rose to $53 million in November, putting the county government on track to spend more than $600 million on related costs for the year -- up from $570 million in 2009.

Antonovich arrived at the estimate by factoring in the cost of food stamps and welfare-style benefits through a state program known as CalWORKS. Combined with public safety costs and health care costs, the official claimed the "total cost for illegal immigrants to county taxpayers" was more than $1.6 billion in 2010.

"Not including the hundreds of millions of dollars for education," he said in a statement.

Antonovich's figures, though, center on costs generated by American-born children of illegal immigrants. Isabel Alegria, communications director at the California Immigrant Policy Center, said it's "unfair" to roll together costs associated with both illegal immigrants and U.S.-born citizens.

"Those children are U.S. citizens, children eligible for those programs," Alegria said.

She also questioned the authenticity of Antonovich's numbers regarding health care and public safety -- though for the welfare program statistics, Antonovich cited numbers from the county's Department of Public Social Services.

Antonovich acknowledges that the children whose benefits he's focusing on are U.S.-born. But he argues that the money is collected by the illegal immigrant parents, putting a painful burden on taxpayers, including those who are legal immigrants.

"The problem is illegal immigration. ... Their parents evidently immigrated here in order to get on social services," Antonovich spokesman Tony Bell said. "We can no longer afford to be HMO to the world."

He said the state should cut back on these social benefits. According to the November statistics, that cost accounted for 22 percent of all food stamp and CalWORKS spending in the county.

Over the summer, the Federation for American Immigration Reform also looked at these kinds of costs nationwide to get an idea of the burden to local governments at a time when many are grappling with budget deficits.

The organization reported that the cost of illegal immigration stands at about $113 billion a year. Nearly half of that amount went toward education costs, according to the study. Costs were naturally higher in states with large illegal immigrant populations -- in California, the total annual cost was pegged at $21.8 billion.(source)

Philadelphia Abortion Doctor Charged With 8 Counts Of Murder

A West Philadelphia abortion doctor, his wife and eight other suspects are now under arrest following a grand jury investigation.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, faces eight counts of murder in the deaths of a woman following a botched abortion at his office, along with the deaths of seven other babies who, prosecutors allege, were born alive following illegal late-term abortions and then were killed by severing their spinal cords with a pair of scissors.

“I am aware that abortion is a hot-button topic,” said District Attorney Seth Williams. “But as district attorney, my job is to carry out the law. A doctor who knowingly and systematically mistreats female patients, to the point that one of them dies in his so-called care, commits murder under the law. A doctor who cuts into the necks severing the spinal cords of living, breathing babies, who would survive with proper medical attention, is committing murder under the law.”

Gosnell is facing charges of murder in the third degree for the death of 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar. Mrs. Mongar died on November 20, 2009, when she was overdosed with anesthetics prescribed by Gosnell. He is also facing seven murder charges for the deaths of infants who were killed after being born viable and alive during the sixth, seventh, or eighth month of pregnancy. Gosnell is also facing numerous other charges.

Gosnell is suspected of killing hundreds of living babies over the course of his 30-year practice. However, he is not charged because the records do not exist.

DA Williams said Gosnell made approximately $1.8 million in one year alone performing the procedures.

Four of the suspects, some improperly licensed according to officials, also face multiple counts of murder for allegedly killing the newborns. All of the suspects are now behind bars after warrants were served overnight.

A search of Gosnell’s office, called the Women’s Medical Society, revealed that bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses were scattered throughout the building. Jars containing the severed feet of babies lined a shelf.

Gosnell, a family practioner, was never certified as an OB/GYN. He is accused of re-using unsanitary instruments and performing procedures in filthy rooms. Some of the rooms had litter boxes and animals present at the time of the operations.

Investigators also said Gosnell allowed unlicensed employees, including a 15-year-old high school student, to perform operations and administer anesthesia.

The grand jury investigation revealed that, for over two decades, government health and licensing officials had received repeated reports about Gosnell’s dangerous practices. However, no action was ever taken, even after the agencies learned that Mrs. Mongar had died during routine abortions under Gosnell’s care (see related story).

Dr. Gosnell, who has practiced in the West Philadelphia neighborhood for decades, is also the target of a federal grand jury investigation into illegally prescribing prescription drugs. Investigators say during a search of his home, they found $240,000 in cash.

Defense attorney William J. Brennan, who was out of town when the arrest happened this morning, said he had not yet talked to Dr. Gosnell, but says the charges are extremely serious and emotionally charged, and it is extremely important not to have a rush to judgement. Brennan says Gosnell is “cloaked with the presumption of innocence.”

Meanwhile, a civil suit has also been filed against Gosnell on behalf of the husband and children of the woman who died after an abortion. The suit seeks unspecified damages for the family of Karna Mongar, an immigrant from Bhutan who spent many years as a refugee. The suit claims she died after just five months here because of treatment by unlicenced personnel in a facility that lacked proper medical equipment.

The doctor, in past interviews with Eyewitness News, has proclaimed his innocence, predicting if charged, he will be acquitted.(source)

26 States Join Suit Against Obama Health Law

Jan. 18: Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, speaks after accepting delivery of signed petitions demanding the repeal of 'ObamaCare' in Washington.

PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Six more states joined a lawsuit in Florida against President Obama's health care overhaul on Tuesday, meaning more than half of the country is challenging the law.

The announcement was made as House members in Washington, led by Republicans, debated whether to repeal the law.

The six additional states joined Florida and 19 others in the legal action, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said.

"It sends a strong message that more than half of the states consider the health care law unconstitutional and are willing to fight it in court," she said in a statement.

The states claim the health care law is unconstitutional and violates people's rights by forcing them to buy health insurance by 2014 or face penalties.

Government attorneys have said the states do not have standing to challenge the law and want the case dismissed.

Lawsuits have been filed elsewhere. A federal judge in Virginia ruled in December that the insurance-purchase mandate was unconstitutional, though two other federal judges have upheld the requirement. It's expected the Supreme Court will ultimately have to resolve the issue.

"It is important to note that two of the three courts that have reviewed this law on the merits have found it constitutional, and those decisions --as well as two others the government prevailed on -- are pending in courts of appeal. At the same time, trial courts in additional cases have dismissed numerous challenges on jurisdictional and other grounds that have not been appealed," Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said.

Meanwhile, the White House dismissed an expected vote on repealing the law, saying the Republicans' push was not a serious legislative effort. Democrats have a majority in the Senate and they have said they will block repeal in that chamber.

In the Florida case, the states also argue the federal government is violating the Constitution by forcing a mandate on the states without providing money to pay for it. They say the new law gives the state's the impossible choice of accepting the new costs or forfeiting federal Medicaid funding.

Florida U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson could rule later this month whether he will grant a summary judgment in favor of the states or the Obama administration without a trial.

Florida's former Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum filed the lawsuit just minutes after President Obama signed the 10-year, $938 billion health care bill into law in March. He chose a court in Pensacola, one of Florida's most conservative cities. The nation's most influential small business lobby, the National Federation of Independent Business, also joined the suit.

Joining the coalition in the Florida case were: Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Ohio, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

The other states that are suing are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington.(source)

HOW DEMS OPERATE: Call The House GOP Nazi's

The newfound civility didn’t last long. Political rhetoric in Congress doesn’t get much nastier than the words of one House Democrat during the debate on repealing the health care law.

In an extraordinary outburst on the House floor, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) invoked the Holocaust to attack Republicans on health care and compared rhetoric on the issue to the work of infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

“They say it's a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels," Cohen said. "You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually, people believe it. Like blood libel. That's the same kind of thing." And Congressman Cohen didn’t stop there.

“The Germans said enough about the Jews and people believed it--believed it and you have the Holocaust. We heard on this floor, government takeover of health care. Politifact said the biggest lie of 2010 was a government takeover of health care because there is no government takeover," Cohen said.

Cohen made his comments late last night, but they have attracted no attention because his speech was made to a virtually empty House chamber with no reporters around to watch.(source)

OBAMACARE REPEALED: House Votes To Repeal On Strict Party Lines

House Republicans passed a bill to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care plan Wednesday, taking their first major step toward rolling back the massive overhaul that has dominated the American political landscape for almost two years.

The vote was 245 to 189, and unanimous GOP support gave the vote the same partisan feel of the March vote to pass the law, underscoring once again the hardened political lines of the health care debate. Only three Democrats backed the repeal, a smaller number than Republicans had once predicted.


The bill will head next to the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has promised to block it. If it did receive a vote, the repeal bill would be unlikely to draw support from even a majority of senators. Even so, House Republican leaders have challenged Reid to give the bill a vote since Democrats, who control the chamber, have little to fear.

Republicans rejected a procedural maneuver by the Democratic minority to make repeal ineffective unless a majority of the House and Senate withdraw from the federal health benefits program within 30 days after passage by each chamber.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said the effort was “an attempt to derail an appeal of the Obamacare bill.”

House members flooded the floor throughout the day, delivering short but occasionally impassioned speeches that echoed their party’s talking points.

Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) called the law “a trillion-dollar tragedy.”

Rep. John Duncan (R-Tenn.) described it as “job-killing” and “socialistic.”

Rep. Kevin Duncan (R-Texas) said “health care is too important to get it wrong, and Obamacare got it wrong.”

But Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) took the debate to a new level late Tuesday night, suggesting to an empty House floor that Republican rhetoric around health care reform is akin to Nazi propaganda that fed anti-Semitism during World War II.


“They say it’s a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels,” Cohen said, referring to a Nazi propagandist. “You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually, people believe it. Like blood libel. That’s the same kind of thing.”

Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) agreed Wednesday afternoon that the health reform law creates jobs, but sparred on their merits.


Pallone said it’s a good thing that the new law creates jobs in the health care sector. He also said he was glad to hear Stearns say that the law will create jobs, a point, he says, Republicans won’t concede.

But Stearns fired back, saying the measure creates the wrong kind of jobs.

“Perhaps the gentleman of New Jersey didn’t listen to me when I just spoke,” Stearns said. “It’s creating 150 new government agencies. And these are all government jobs. When we talk about job creation here, that’s government jobs.”

The House will vote Thursday to instruct four committees to draft alternative health care proposals that reflect Republican priorities, such as reducing medical malpractice lawsuits, prohibiting the denial of coverage to people with preexisting conditions and barring the use of taxpayer money for abortions.

But House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Republicans won’t put a deadline on drafting an alternative to the Democrats’ health care reform law.

“I don’t know that we need artificial deadlines set up for the committees to act,” Boehner said. “We expect them to act in an efficient way, allowing all of their members on their committees to be heard, both Democrats and Republicans.”

Republicans introduced alternatives to the health reform legislation in the last Congress but have said they want to start those conversations anew in the several House committees with jurisdiction over health care.

Democrats tried to score some late political points amid the repeal vote by calling on members to give up their health benefits — the very kind of government-run health care Republicans rail against.

“It’s time for those who support repeal to give up the federal health benefits they currently enjoy as Members of Congress – the same benefits and protections they are voting to take away from millions of Americans,” a House Democratic leadership aide said. “Americans have a right to know that those who support repeal are willing to live without the same benefits they are denying their constituents.”(source)

Arizona Massacre Smear: Dems Want To Define What A "Threat" Means And Outlaw It As Speech

Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.) reportedly plans to introduce legislation that would make it a federal crime to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a federal official or member of Congress.

Brady told CNN that he wants federal lawmakers and officials to have the same protections against threat currently provided to the president. His call comes one day after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was shot, along with 19 other people, at a public event in Tucson. A suspect is currently in custody.

"The president is a federal official," Brady told CNN in a telephone interview. "You can't do it to him; you should not be able to do it to a congressman, senator or federal judge."

Among the six people killed was federal Judge John Roll.

While it is unknown at this time whether the shooting was politically motivated, that has not prevented a vigorous debate about whether heated political rhetoric seen during the healthcare reform debate and during the 2010 campaign is inciting violence.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) has had to fend off a fresh round of criticism for a map posted on one of her websites targeting 20 congressional districts that voted for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the 2008 presidential election but had Democratic members that voted in favor of healthcare reform.

Critics originally took Palin to task for the apparent use of the crosshairs of guns to identify the districts. The controversy re-ignited Saturday after the shooting, since Giffords's district was included on the map.

Brady singled out the map as the type of rhetoric he opposed.

"You can't put bull's-eyes or crosshairs on a United States congressman or a federal official," he said.

However, a Palin spokeswoman denied Sunday that the image was intended to depict gun sights. Palin offered condolences to the Giffords family and other victims of the shooting on her Facebook page Saturday.

"The rhetoric is just ramped up so negatively, so high, that we have got to shut this down," Brady said.(source)

Arizona Massacre Smear: Doesn't It Look As If The Left Wanted This Tragedy To Happen?

One of the fiercest gun control advocates in Congress, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), pounced on the shooting massacre in Tucson, Ariz., Sunday, promising to introduce legislation as soon as Monday targeting the high-capacity ammunition clip the gunman used.

McCarthy ran for Congress after her husband was gunned down and her son seriously injured in a shooting in 1993 on a Long Island commuter train.


“My staff is working on looking at the different legislation fixes that we might be able to do and we might be able to introduce as early as tomorrow,” McCarthy told POLITICO in a Sunday afternoon phone interview.

Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) said he’s preparing to introduce a similar bill in the Senate.

“The only reason to have 33 bullets loaded in a handgun is to kill a lot of people very quickly,” Lautenberg said in a statement. “These high-capacity clips simply should not be on the market.“

Gun control activists said it was time to reform weapons laws in the United States almost immediately after a gunman killed six and injured 14 more, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, in Arizona on Saturday.

Many said that people with a history of mental instability, like the alleged shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, should not be able to buy a gun — and no one should be able to buy stockpiles of the ammunition allegedly used by the 22-year-old assailant.

McCarthy said she plans to confer with House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to see “if we can work something through” in the coming week.

McCarthy’s spokesman confirmed that the legislation will target the high-capacity ammunition clips the Arizona gunman allegedly used in the shooting, but neither he nor the congresswoman offered any further details.

“Again, we need to look at how this is going to work to protect people, certainly citizens, and we have to look at what I can pass,” McCarthy said. “I don’t want to give the National Rifle Association — excuse the pun — the ammunition to come at me, either.”


Pennsylvania Rep. Robert Brady, a Democrat from Philadelphia, told CNN that he also plans to take legislative action. He will introduce a bill that would make it a crime for anyone to use language or symbols that could be seen as threatening or violent against a federal official, including a member of Congress.

Another vocal supporter of gun control, Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley, told POLITICO that he hopes “something good” can come from the Arizona tragedy — perhaps discussion of a new assault weapons ban, sales at gun shows and tracing measures.


Loughner legally purchased his weapon — a Glock 19 with an extended magazine — from an Arizona store. The same kind of extended magazine was illegal under the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004.

“The ability to buy a weapon that fires hundreds of bullets in less than a minute” is a problem, said Quigley. “He had an additional magazine capability. That’s not what a hunter needs. That’s not what someone needs to defend their home. That’s what you use to hunt people.”

After the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, in which a student with a history of psychological problems killed 33 and injured 25 others, lawmakers immediately started looking at gun control reforms at both the state and the federal level.

Then-Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine issued an executive order making it harder for people who have been committed to mental health treatment centers to buy a gun.

In 2008 President George W. Bush signed a law expanding the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which registered gun dealers use, to include more comprehensive reporting of mental health records. Under the current law, it is illegal for anyone who has been “adjudicated as a mental defective or committed to a mental institution” to purchase a firearm, according to the FBI’s website.

However, Loughner did not fall into either of those categories, according to Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

“I’ve seen no evidence that he falls into those categories. It’s the same thing as this guy at Virginia Tech,” said Horwitz. “We can do a much better job checking people’s mental health background.”(source)

The Effeminate Crowd Weighs In A Day Late And A Dollar Short: Still Blaming Sarah Palin Over AZ Massacre

Despite President Obama's speech about healing, shared responsibility and shared pain, conservative pundit Sarah Palin is plastered, unflatteringly, along one San Francisco street (so far).

The posters -- found and publisehd by SFist.com -- espouse "Enrage them with fear until they feel justified in their violence."

Granted, Palin has brought even more spotlight on herself with a recent diatribe against "irresponsible journalists."

Maybe the president's message stressing the strength of our words and how we use them will stick ... like a poster to a wall. (source)

Five Days Of Dems/Media Claiming Shooter Was A Right-Winger Goes Wrong: He Was A Nihilistic Non-Believer

Police Say They Visited Tucson Suspect’s Home Even Before Rampage

Favorite books: The Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf

TUCSON — The police were sent to the home where Jared L. Loughner lived with his family on more than one occasion before the attack here on Saturday that left a congresswoman fighting for her life and six others dead, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said on Tuesday.

A spokesman, Jason Ogan, said the details of the calls were being reviewed by legal counsel and would be released as soon as the review was complete. He said he did not know what the calls were about — they could possibly have been minor, even trivial matters — or whether they involved Jared Loughner or another member of the household.

A friend of Mr. Loughner’s also said in an interview on Tuesday that Mr. Loughner, 22, was skilled with a gun — as early as high school — and had talked about a philosophy of fostering chaos.

The news of police involvement with the Loughners suggests that county sheriff’s deputies were at least familiar with the family, even if the reason for their visits was unclear as of Tuesday night.

The account by Mr. Loughner’s friend, a rare extended interview with someone close to Mr. Loughner in recent years, added some details to the emerging portrait of the suspect and his family.

“He was a nihilist and loves causing chaos, and that is probably why he did the shooting, along with the fact he was sick in the head,” said Zane Gutierrez, 21, who was living in a trailer outside Tucson and met Mr. Loughner sometimes to shoot at cans for target practice.

The Loughner family released a statement on Tuesday, its first since the attacks, expressing — in a six-line document handed to reporters outside their house — sorrow for the losses experienced by the victims and their families.

“It may not make any difference, but we wish that we could change the heinous events of Saturday,” the statement said. “There are no words that can possibly express how we feel. We wish that there were, so we could make you feel better.”

The new details from Mr. Gutierrez about Mr. Loughner — including his philosophy of anarchy and his expertise with a handgun, suggest that the earliest signs of behavior that may have ultimately led to the attacks started several years ago.

Mr. Gutierrez said his friend had become obsessed with the meaning of dreams and their importance. He talked about reading Friedrich Nietzsche’s book “The Will To Power” and embraced ideas about the corrosive, destructive effects of nihilism — a belief in nothing. And every day, his friend said, Mr. Loughner would get up and write in his dream journal, recording the world he experienced in sleep and its possible meanings.

“Jared felt nothing existed but his subconscious,” Mr. Gutierrez said. “The dream world was what was real to Jared, not the day-to-day of our lives.”

And that dream world, his friend said, could be downright strange.

“He would ask me constantly, ‘Do you see that blue tree over there?’ He would admit to seeing the sky as orange and the grass as blue,” Mr. Gutierrez said. “Normal people don’t talk about that stuff.”

He added that Mr. Loughner “used the word hollow to describe how fake the real world was to him.”

As his behavior grew more puzzling to his friends, he was getting better with a pistol. Starting in high school, Mr. Loughner honed his marksmanship with a 9-millimeter pistol, the same caliber weapon used in the attack Saturday, until he became proficient at handling the weapon and firing it quickly.

“If he had a gun pointed at me, there is nothing I could do because he would make it count,” Mr. Gutierrez said. “He was quick.”

He also said that Mr. Loughner had increasing trouble interacting in social settings — during one party, for instance, Mr. Loughner retreated upstairs alone to a room and was found reading a dictionary.

Jared Loughner’s retreat — whether into the desert with his gun, or into the recesses of his dreams — coincided with a broader retreat by the Loughner family that left them increasingly isolated from their community, neighbors said.

His father, Randy, once more of a presence in their mostly working-class neighborhood in northwest Tucson as he went off to work as a carpet-layer and pool-deck installer, became a silent and often sullen presence.
One neighbor, George Gayan, who said he had known the family for 30 years, described a kind of a gradual “pulling back” by the family.

“People do this for different reasons,” said Mr. Gayan, 82. “I don’t know why.”

Some years ago, Randy Loughner built a wall to shield the side porch of the family’s home. Because of his often bellicose attitude, neighbors sometimes kept their distance.

Leslie Cooper owns the house next door, where her son and his family live. She recounted a time when her grandchildren would not chase after a ball that landed in the Loughners’ backyard.

“They had to buy a new one,” said Ms. Cooper, who was told of the incident by her son. “I’d tell my son, those are not normal people over there — there’s a reason why they stick to themselves,” she said, adding that she had warned him to steer clear of Randy Loughner.

“I said, be careful around that guy — don’t get him angry,” she added.

Other people in the neighborhood, though, said they saw glimpses of compassion in the Loughner family, and an ability to reach out to others, sometimes unexpectedly.

Richard Mckinley, 41, whose mother lives down the street from the Loughners, said his mother appreciated how Randy and Amy Loughner were among the first people to visit when her husband died two years ago.

“They were some of the first people to pay respects,” he said.

In contrast to the reputation of his father, Jared Loughner’s mother, Amy, is considered pleasant but reserved by those who know her.

She commuted about an hour each day to her job managing Agua Caliente Park, an area of spring-fed ponds surrounded by giant palm trees in the desert on the outskirts of Tucson. The impeccably maintained park was quiet Tuesday, but for the chirping of the dozens of species of birds that call it home and the occasional crunch of a birder’s hiking boots along the trails.

Donna DeHaan, a former board member of the nonprofit group that helps support the park, said Ms. Loughner was a reliable manager with a good background in environmental issues. Ms. DeHaan said she never spoke about her family but was always pleasant, if a tad quiet and shy.

Mr. Gutierrez said he sensed very little communication within the family when he was among them.

“Every time I met his parents they were kind of quiet and estranged,” he said. Jared Loughner did not complain about his parents, Mr. Gutierrez said, and seemed to simply accept the lack of interaction as a fact of life.

“Jared really did not talk to his parents or talk about them,” Mr. Gutierrez said. “I felt they were not really good reaching out and he was not good at reaching out to his parents.”

After his arrest for possession of drug paraphernalia in 2007, Mr. Loughner was ordered to attend a diversion program run by the county attorney’s office. The chief deputy county attorney, Amelia Craig Cramer, said the program is intended for first-time offenders who have no history of violence or serious mental illness.

Mr. Loughner was referred to an approved drug education program, and completed the required sessions in 30 days.

But the program is primarily educational, Ms. Cramer said, focused on “the dangers of drugs and the dangers of substance abuse,” rather than the kind of in-depth counseling that friends, including Mr. Gutierrez, strongly felt that Mr. Loughner needed.

“It got worse over time,” Mr. Gutierrez said. He said he stopped talking to Mr. Loughner last March, when their interactions grew increasingly unpredictable and troubling.

“He would call me at 2 a.m. and asked, ‘Are you hanging out in front of my house, stalking me?’ He started to get really paranoid, and said he did not want to see us anymore and did not trust us,” Mr. Gutierrez said, referring to himself and another friend. “He thought we were plotting to kill him or steal his car.”(source)