Posted on May 2, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog
We’ll interview Ms. Edmonds later today. So check back for updates.
Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has been deemed credible by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, several senators (free subscription required), and a coalition of prominent conservative and liberal groups.
The ACLU described Edmonds as:
The most gagged person in the history of the United States of America.
And famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says that Edmonds possesses information “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers”.
Edmonds translated terror-related communications for the FBI right after 9/11. In that capacity, she read communications between terrorists and other radicals.
Edmonds said last week that Bin Laden – and his number 2 Al Qaeda lieutenant – Ayman al-Zawahiri – worked with the U.S. government for 3 months after 9/11 to coordinate destablizaton in the Caucus region:
If this sounds crazy, please remember that the U.S. National Security Adviser admitted that the U.S. created, organized and armed the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan – including Bin Laden – to fight the Soviets. The Mujahadeen eventually morphed into Al Qaeda.
And the U.S. has backed the most dangerous and radical Muslim terrorists for decades.
And the mainstream French paper Le Figaro alleged that the CIA met with Bin Laden 2 months before.
And 9/11 Commissioners admit that they never got to the bottom of 9/11. For example:
- 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says “I don’t believe for a minute we got everything right”, that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, and that the 9/11 debate should continue
- 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that “There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn’t have access . . . .” He also says that it might take “a permanent 9/11 commission” to end the remaining mysteries of September 11
The U.S. Is Supporting the Most Violent Muslim Terrorists In Order to Wage War for Oil
The Government – Which Has Taken Away Our Liberties and Destroyed Our Prosperity to Fight An Endless War On Terror – Has Been Arming, Funding and Otherwise Backing the Very Terrorists Who Are Carrying Out Most of the Attacks
Sunni Muslims commit more terrorist acts worldwide than any other group. For example, the National Counterterrorism Center’s 2011 Report on Terrorism found that:
Sunni extremists accounted for the greatest number of terrorist attacks and fatalities for the third consecutive year. More than 5,700 incidents were attributed to Sunni extremists, accounting for nearly 56 percent of all attacks and about 70 percent of all fatalities. Among this perpetrator group, al-Qa‘ida (AQ) and its affiliates were responsible for at least 688 attacks that resulted in almost 2,000 deaths, while the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan conducted over 800 attacks that resulted in nearly 1,900 deaths. Secular, political, and anarchist groups were the next largest category of perpetrators, conducting 2,283 attacks with 1,926 fatalities, a drop of 5 percent and 9 percent, respectively, from 2010.
(Thankfully, the percentage of Muslim terror attacks in the U.S. is relatively small).
Saudi Arabia is the center of the Sunni branch of Islam. It is also the center of the most violent and radical sect of Islam … the “Wahhabis” (also called “Salafis”). But the U.S. has long supported the Madrassa schools within Saudi Arabia which teach radical Wahabi beliefs.
Indeed, the U.S. has directly inserted itself into a sectarian war between the two main Islamic sects, backing the “Sunnis” and attacking the “Shiites” (also called “Shia”). See this, this and this.
For example, American political leaders have been very close to Saudi (i.e. Sunni) leaders for decades:
Obama is no different:
Why? Because of Saudi oil. (Virtually all geopolitics are based on oil and other hydrocarbons.)
Indeed, (1) the Co-Chair of the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 and former Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and (2) a former 6-year congressman and MSNBC talk show host have both said that – even if the Saudi government was behind 9/11 – we need Saudi oil too much to do anything about it.
Our backing of the most violent branch of Sunni Muslims has had real consequences:
- Our backing of Sunnis in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia led to 9/11*
- Our backing of Sunni extremists in Chechnya led to the Boston bombings
- Our backing of Sunni extremists throughout the Middle East and North Africa has led to thepersecution of Christians and Jews
And McClatchy interviewed an Al Qaeda terrorist fighting against the Syrian government – with U.S. backing – as saying:
When we finish with Assad, we will fight the U.S.!
Do you still doubt that the U.S. is supporting Sunni terrorists?
The U.S. National Security Adviser admitted that the U.S. created, organized and armed the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan – including Bin Laden and his lieutenants – to fight the Soviets. The Mujahadeen are predominately Sunni. The Mujahadeen eventually morphed into Al Qaeda, which is aSunni organization.
During various times and places, the U.S. has also backed the Muslim Brotherhood … another Sunni group.
In addition, the American government has supported:
- Al Qaeda Sunni terrorists in Libya and Mali
- Sunni terrorists in Chechnya
- Sunni MEK terrorists in Iran
- Al Qaeda Sunnis in Bosnia
- The brutal Sunni government in Bahrain as it crushes its majority Shia population whenever it pushes for democratic reform
And the “rebels” in Syria who we’ve been supporting are Al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood.
The New York Times reports this week:
In Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, rebels aligned with Al Qaeda control the power plant, run the bakeries and head a court that applies Islamic law. Elsewhere, they have seized government oil fields, put employees back to work and now profit from the crude they produce.
Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government.
Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.
Do you get it?
The government has taken away our liberties and destroyed our prosperity in order to fight an endless war on terror. Americans have become the most spied upon people in history. Never-ending war hasdestroyed our economy.
And yet the government has been arming, funding and otherwise backing the very terrorists who are carrying out the biggest percentage of terror attacks.
As we noted last year:
In the name of “fighting Al Qaeda or associated forces” or those who “support” those bad guys, the U.S. government has authorized:
- Assassinating people anywhere in the world without due process or even a legal charge . . .
- including U.S. citizens living on American soil
- Indefinitely detaining any American – without trial (and see this)
- Torturing people . . .
- including Americans living on American soil
- Labeling virtually any American as a “terrorist“
In other words, the government has shredded our constitution and destroyed our freedom and liberties in order to fight Al Qaeda and associated forces.
And yet the government is itself supporting – with money, arms, and logistical support – Al Qaeda and associated forces in a number of nations.
People who believe that we’re in a “new post-9/11 reality” should remember that everything happening now started before 9/11, and that current U.S. policy towards the Middle East and North Africa wasdetermined many decades ago. It’s not just the Neocons who planned this strategy. Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser helped to map out the battle plan for Eurasian petroleum resources over a decade ago, and Obama is clearly continuing the same agenda.
Sadly – by any measure – the U.S. causes much more terror than we prevent … all to justify our geopolitical goals.
* The question of false flags is beyond the scope of this post.
IRS to Spy on Our Shopping Records, Travel, Social Interactions, Health Records and Files from Other Government Investigators
More and More People Are Staring Into Our Fishbowl
We noted in March that all U.S. intelligence agencies – including the CIA and NSA – are going to spy on Americans’ finances.
The IRS is joining the fun.
U.S. News and World Report notes today:
Starting this year, the IRS tools will be able to track all credit card transactions, for starters. The agency has also instructed agents on using online sources such as social media and e-commerce sites including eBay, as well as the rich data generated by mobile devices. In one controversial disclosure in April, the ACLU showed documents in which the IRS general counsel said the agencycould look at emails without warrants, but the IRS has said it will not use this power.
While the agency has declined to give details about what third-party personal data it will use in robo-audits and data mining, it has told government and industry groups that its computers are capable of scanning multiple networks at the same time to collect “matching” comprehensive profiles for every taxpayer in America. Such profiles will likely include shopping records, travel, social interactions and information not available to the public, such as health records and files from other government investigators, according to IRS documents.
***
The IRS is following the philosophy of former Obama regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein [remember him?], who advocates using technology tools and behavioral science policies to “nudge” people to do the right thing. In the case of the IRS, that policy so far has fallen most heavily on lower-income taxpayers and has done little to collect substantially more tax revenue.
***
Harry Surden, a University of Colorado—Boulder Law School associate professor and former fellow at Stanford’s Center for Computers and Law, who has done in-depth studies on the use of technology by government … has found that data mining and new technology make possible a level of government intrusion into personal lives that few realize is possible.
We’ve long been the most spied upon people in history. There are more and more people staring into our fishbowl.
The Fed Engaging In Quantitative Easing Until Unemployment Falls Is Like a Medieval Doctor Bleeding a Patient with Leeches Until His Iron Deficiency Goes Away
Fed Policy Raising – Rather than Reducing – Unemployment
The Federal Reserve announced that it will keep on engaging in quantitative easing in the amount of$85 billion dollars per month (or more) until unemployment improves.
That is like a medieval doctor bleeding a patient with leeches until his iron deficiency goes away.
Ken Griffin – head of Citadel Capital – noted this week:
As we’ve all learned over the years, if you reduce the cost of capital you increase your use of fixed assets and you take out jobs. Corporate America, seeing an ever increasing cost for its employee base and extraordinarily low interest rates, is taking every step it can possibly take to reduce employment, to build factories abroad and domestically to substitute technology and automated processes for people.
By way of background, Dallas Federal Reserve Bank president Richard Fisher said in 2011:
I firmly believe that the Federal Reserve has already pressed the limits of monetary policy. So-called QE2, to my way of thinking, was of doubtful efficacy, which is why I did not support it to begin with. But even if you believe the costs of QE2 were worth its purported benefits, you would be hard pressed to now say that still more liquidity, or more fuel, is called for given the more than $1.5 trillion in excess bank reserves and the substantial liquid holdings above the normal working capital needs of corporate businesses.
Similarly, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich pointed out in 2010:
Cheaper money won’t work. Individuals aren’t borrowing because they’re still under a huge debt load. And as their homes drop in value and their jobs and wages continue to disappear, they’re not in a position to borrow. Small businesses aren’t borrowing because they have no reason to expand. Retail business is down, construction is down, even manufacturing suppliers are losing ground.
That leaves large corporations. They’ll be happy to borrow more at even lower rates than now — even though they’re already sitting on mountains of money.
But this big-business borrowing won’t create new jobs. To the contrary, large corporations have been investing their cash to pare back their payrolls.They’ve been buying new factories and facilities abroad (China, Brazil, India), and new labor-replacing software at home.
If Bernanke and company make it even cheaper to borrow, they’ll be unleashing a third corporate strategy for creating more profits but fewer jobs — mergers and acquisitions.
William F. Ford – former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta – wrote in 2011:
Table 2 below shows our estimates of the possible losses in spending power, output, and employment generated by the Fed’s artificially low interest rates. Even by our most conservative estimate, which only looks at the $9.9 trillion in assets most directly affected by depressed yields on Treasurys, the losses are impressive. The average yield on Treasurys in June 2010 was 2.14 percent compared to an average of 7.07 percent in the previous nine recoveries, a difference of 4.93 percentage points. The projected annual impact of this loss of interest income on just $9.9 trillion of rate-sensitive assets translates into $256 billion of lost consumption, a 1.75 percent loss of GDP, and about 2.4 million fewer jobs.(Our calculations assume that the recipients of interest income face a 25 percent average income tax rate and consume 70 percent of their after-tax income.)
Had these jobs not been lost, the unemployment rate would be 7.5 percent, instead of the current 9.1 percent, and this is the minimal effect we estimate.
***
As the estimate of the total of affected interest-sensitive assets gets bigger, the negative effects of depressed yields becomes even more striking. Using our mid-point estimate of $14.35 trillion of interest-sensitive assets, a 4.93 percentage point reduction in interest rates annually cost the economy $371 billion in spending, 3.5 million jobs, and 2.53 percent of GDP. This is a sizable effect, given that during this time GDP grew by only 2.33 percent and the economy added only 870,000 jobs.
With the additional jobs that might have been created by higher interest income levels, the unemployment rate could fall to 6.8 percent. And output could grow more than twice as fast as it has. The resulting GDP growth rate of 4.86 percent would then be closer to the average second-year growth rate of the past nine recoveries, and the U.S. economy would be well on its way to a vigorous recovery, rather than struggling as it is now.
This midpoint appraisal is our best estimate of the likely effect of the Fed’s policy. It may still be on the low side.
The numbers do not account for any so-called multiplier effects. Additional spending by recipients of interest income creates revenues for businesses, which in turn increases the income of their owners and employees, who themselves spend more. This, in turn, could boost overall spending and employment by more than the gain in interest income alone would suggest.
***
The housing market has not even begun to recover since the QE initiatives were created. U.S. auto sales and the stock market also remain well below pre-recession levels. And the sharp decline of the U.S. dollar has not created an export boom. But it has put upward pressure on the cost of our food and energy imports.
And tens of millions of U.S. savers, largely the elderly, still are facing strained circumstances created by Fed-driven abnormally low interest rates across the entire Treasury yield curve.
The negative impacts on output and employment caused by quantitative easing through the interest income effects shown here are large. In fact, they may outweigh the expected, but hard-to-document, positive effects of the QE program.
John Doukas – founding and managing editor of European Financial Management, a leading journal in European finance, and Chair in Finance and Eminent Scholar at Old Dominion University, Virginia – wrote this April:
The repeated Quantitative Easing (QE) policies of the US Federal Reserve in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, with similar actions by the Bank of England and the European Central Bank (ECB), have failed miserably to restore growth and reduce unemployment.
***
The practice of expansionary monetary policy leads to capital misallocation as it favours short-term spending at the expense of long-term spending (investing less in long-term projects). That is, it creates a savings-investment gap that reduces the capital formation required for the economy to grow, which renders a high fraction of its existing capital stock obsolete. This, low interest rate policy, an outcome of quantitative easing, in turn, has an adverse effect on productivity forcing capital to migrate in foreign/emerging markets in order to realise higher returns. In other words, excessive money supply fails to increase real economic activity because itraises the labour cost while it lowers the cost of capital. Depressing yields at home, as a result of quantitative easing, in an open economy setting, leads yield-seeking investors into higher-risk investments such as emerging markets.
***
While quantitative easing, like expansionary fiscal policy, may increase aggregate spending, this does not trickle down to the real economy because relative prices (labour vs. capital) work against it. This results in higher rates of unemployment with capital flying to foreign markets. A related effect is that foreign economies, especially those with lower labour costs than western economies, become more attractive places to invest because of these lower costs and promising higher returns to capital. That is, quantitative easing encourages outsourcing, as capital is excessively substituted for overseas labour causing jobs and product innovation to move offshore. Imported goods and services from these countries, then, become more attractive to western consumers because they are cheaper in comparison to the ones locally produced resulting in great outflow of capital, outsourcing and unemployment. This vicious circle exacerbates the disadvantaged position of western economies as they are forced to continue relying on overseas lenders to meet their spending needs, leading to mounting budget deficits and external debt.
Moreover, it is well-documented that quantitative easing increases inequality. Quantitative easingdoesn’t help Main Street or the average American. It only helps big banks, giant corporations, and big investors.
Too much inequality causes economic downturns and decreases aggregate consumer demand … and companies fire workers when demand decreases. So quantitative easing also indirectly – but in a veryreal fashion – destroys jobs by destroying consumer demand.
Non-Muslims Carried Out More than 90% of All Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Soil
Terrorism Is a Real Threat … But the Threat to the U.S. from Muslim Terrorists Has Been Exaggerated
An FBI report shows that only a small percentage of terrorist attacks carried out on U.S. soil between 1980 and 2005 were perpetrated by Muslims.
Princeton University’s Loon Watch compiled the following chart from the FBI’s data (as explained below, this chart is over-simplified … and somewhat inaccurate):
Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Soil by Group, From 1980 to 2005, According to FBI Database
According to this data, there were more Jewish acts of terrorism within the United States than Islamic (7% vs 6%). These radical Jews committed acts of terrorism in the name of their religion. These were not terrorists who happened to be Jews; rather, they were extremist Jews who committed acts of terrorism based on their religious passions, just like Al-Qaeda and company.
(The chart is misleading in several ways. For example, it labels “Extreme Left Wing Groups” and “Communists”, but not “Extreme Right Wing Groups” or “Fascists”. It should have either discarded allpartisan labels, or included labels for both ends of the spectrum. In addition, “Latinos” is misleading, as Loonwatch is actually referring to Puerto Rican separatist groups, Cuban exile groups and the like. However, as shown below, many of the basic concepts are correct.)
U.S. News and World Report noted in February of this year:
Of the more than 300 American deaths from political violence and mass shootings since 9/11, only 33 have come at the hands of Muslim-Americans, according to the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security. The Muslim-American suspects or perpetrators in these or other attempted attacks fit no demographic profile—only 51 of more than 200 are of Arabic ethnicity. In 2012, all but one of the nine Muslim-American terrorism plots uncovered were halted in early stages. That one, an attempted bombing of a Social Security office in Arizona, caused no casualties.
Wired reported the same month:
Since 9/11, [Charles Kurzman, Professor of Sociology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, writing for the Triangle Center on Terrorism and National Security] and his team tallies, 33 Americans have died as a result of terrorism launched by their Muslim neighbors. During that period, 180,000 Americans were murdered for reasons unrelated to terrorism. In just the past year, the mass shootings that have captivated America’s attention killed 66 Americans, “twice as many fatalities as from Muslim-American terrorism in all 11 years since 9/11,” notes Kurzman’s team.
Law enforcement, including “informants and undercover agents,” were involved in “almost all of the Muslim-American terrorism plots uncovered in 2012,” the Triangle team finds. That’s in keeping with the FBI’s recent practice of using undercover or double agents to encourage would-be terrorists to act on their violent desires and arresting them when they do — a practice critics say comes perilously close to entrapment. A difference in 2012 observed by Triangle: with the exception of the Arizona attack, all the alleged plots involving U.S. Muslims were “discovered and disrupted at an early stage,” while in the past three years, law enforcement often observed the incubating terror initiatives “after weapons or explosives had already been gathered.”
The sample of Muslim Americans turning to terror is “vanishingly small,” Kurzman tells Danger Room. Measuring the U.S. Muslim population is a famously inexact science, since census data don’t track religion, but rather “country of origin,” which researchers attempt to use as a proxy. There are somewhere between 1.7 million and seven million American Muslims, by most estimates, and Kurzman says he operates off a model that presumes the lower end, a bit over 2 million. That’s less a rate of involvement in terrorism of less than 10 per million, down from a 2003 high of 40 per million, as detailed in the chart above.
Yet the scrutiny by law enforcement and homeland security on American Muslims has not similarly abated. The FBI tracks “geomaps” of areas where Muslims live and work, regardless of their involvement in any crime. The Patriot Act and other post-9/11 restrictions on government surveillance remain in place. The Department of Homeland Security just celebrated its 10th anniversary. In 2011, President Obama ordered the entire federal national-security apparatus to get rid of counterterrorism training material that instructed agents to focus on Islam itself, rather than specific terrorist groups.
Kurzman doesn’t deny that law enforcement plays a role in disrupting and deterring homegrown U.S. Muslim terrorism. His research holds it out as a possible explanation for the decline. But he remains surprised by the disconnect between the scale of the terrorism problem and the scale — and expense — of the government’s response.
“Until public opinion starts to recognize the scale of the problem has been lower than we feared, my sense is that public officials are not going to change their policies,” Kurzman says. “Counterterrorism policies have involved surveillance — not just of Muslim-Americans, but of all Americans, and the fear of terrorism has justified intrusions on American privacy and civil liberties all over the internet and other aspects of our lives. I think the implications here are not just for how we treat a religious minority in the U.S., but also how we treat the rights & liberties of everyone.”
We agree. And so do most Americans. Indeed – as we’ve previously documented – you’re more likely to die from brain-eating parasites, alcoholism, obesity, medical errors, risky sexual behavior or just about anything other than terrorism.
Kurzman told the Young Turks in February that Islamic terrorism “doesn’t even count for 1 percent” of the 180,000 murders in the US since 9/11.
While the Boston marathon bombings were horrific, a top terrorism expert says that the Boston attack was more like Columbine than 9/11, and that the bombers are “murderers not terrorists”. Theoverwhelming majority of mass shootings were by non-Muslims. (This is true in Europe, as well as in the U.S.)
However you classify them – murder or terrorism – the Boston bombings occurred after all of the statistical analysis set forth above. Moreover, different groups have different agendas about how to classify the perpetrators (For example, liberal Mother Jones and conservative Breitbart disagree on how many of the perpetrators of terror attacks can properly be classified as right wing extremists.)
So we decided to look at the most current statistics for ourselves, to do an objective numerical count not driven by any agenda.
Specifically, we reviewed all of the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil as documented by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). (2012). Global Terrorism Database, as retrieved from http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd.
The START Global Terrorism Database spans from 1970 through 2012 (and will be updated from year-to-year), and – as of this writing – includes 104,000 terrorist incidents. As such, it is the most comprehensive open-source database open to the public.
We counted up the number of terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims. We excluded attacks by groups which are obviously not Muslims, such as the Ku Klux Klan, Medellin Drug Cartel, Irish Republican Army, Anti-Castro Group, Mormon extremists, Vietnamese Organization to Exterminate Communists and Restore the Nation, Jewish Defense League, May 19 Communist Order, Chicano Liberation Front, Jewish Armed Resistance, American Indian Movement, Gay Liberation Front, Aryan Nation, Jewish Action Movement, National Front for the Liberation of Cuba, or Fourth Reich Skinheads.
We counted attacks by Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Black American Moslems, or anyone who even remotelysounded Muslim … for example anyone from Palestine, Lebanon or any other Arab or Muslim country, or any name including anything sounding remotely Arabic or Indonesian (like “Al” anything or “Jamaat” anything).
If we weren’t sure what the person’s affiliation was, we looked up the name of the group to determine whether it could in any way be connected to Muslims.
Based on our review of the approximately 2,400 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil contained within the START database, we determined that approximately 60 were carried out by Muslims.
In other words, approximately 2.5% of all terrorist attacks on U.S. soil between 1970 and 2012 were carried out by Muslims.* This is a tiny proportion of all attacks.
(We determined that approximately 118 of the terror attacks – or 4.9% – were carried out by Jewish groups such as Jewish Armed Resistance, the Jewish Defense League, Jewish Action Movement, United Jewish Underground and Thunder of Zion. This is almost twice the percentage of Islamic attacks within the United States. In addition, there were approximately 168 attacks – or 7% – by anti-abortion activists, who tend to be Christian. Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional – a Puerto Rican paramilitary organization – carried out more than 120 bomb attacks on U.S. targets between 1974 and 1983, and there were some 41 attacks by Cuban exiles, and a number of attacks by other Latin American groups. If we look at worldwide attacks – instead of just attacks on U.S. soil – Sunni Muslims are the main perpetrators of terrorism. However: 1. Muslims are also the main victims of terror attacks worldwide; and 2. the U.S. backs the most radical types of Sunnis over more moderate Muslims and Arab secularists.)
Moreover, another study undertaken by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism – called ”Profiles of Perpetrators of Terrorism in the United States” – found:
Between 1970 and 2011, 32 percent of the perpetrator groups were motivated by ethnonationalist/separatist agendas, 28 percent were motivated by single issues, such as animal rights or opposition to war, and seven percentwere motivated by religious beliefs. In addition, 11 percent of the perpetrator groups were classified as extreme right-wing, and 22 percent were categorized as extreme left-wing.
Preliminary findings from PPT-US data between 1970 and 2011 also illustrate a distinct shift in the dominant ideologies of these terrorist groups over time, with the proportion of emerging ethnonationalist/separatist terrorist groups declining and the proportion of religious terrorist groups increasing. However, while terrorist groups with religious ideologies represent 40 percent of all emergent groups from 2000-2011 (two out of five), they only account for seven percent of groups over time.
Similarly, a third study by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism Religion found that religion alone is not a key factor in determining which terrorists want to use weapons of mass destruction:
The available empirical data show that there is not a significant relationship between terrorist organizations’ pursuit of CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear) weapons and the mere possession of a religious ideology, according to a new quantitative study by START researchers Victor Asal, Gary Ackerman and Karl Rethemeyer.
Therefore, Muslims are not more likely than other groups to want to use WMDs.
* The Boston marathon bombing was not included in this analysis, as START has not yet updated its database to include 2013 terrorist attacks. 3 people died in the Boston attack. While tragic, we are confident that non-Musliims killed more than 3 during this same period.
We are not experts in terrorism analysis. We would therefore defer to people like Kurzman on the exact number. However, every quantitative analysis of terrorism in the U.S. we have read shows that the percent of terror attacks carried out by Muslims is far less than 10%.
Postscript: State-sponsored terrorism is beyond the scope of this discussion, and was not included in our statistical analysis. Specifically, the following arguments are beyond the scope of this discussion, as we are focusing solely on non-state terrorism:
- Arguments by University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole that deaths from 20th century wars could be labeled Christian terrorism
- Arguments that our recent use of torture and double tap drone strikes are terrorism
Is The U.S. Is Engaged In a Muslim Religious War … On the Side of Islamic Jihadis?
Backing One Side Against the Other In Someone Else’s Religious War Is Dangerous
Preface: Americans would be disgusted if the might of the U.S. military and the riches of the U.S. treasury were used to support one Christian faith (say Methodists) in a shooting war against another faith (say Luterhans). We would be even more offended if the U.S. backed one Hindu sect in a war against a competing Hindu sect, or one school of Judaism against a competing school of Judaism in an armed battle. But that’s exactly what we’ve been doing … backing one Islamic faith against another.
We are not siding with one sect or the other. Nor are we claiming that all people of any particular sect are bad or violent people.
What we’re saying is that the whole problem is that the U.S. is taking sides … in someone else’sreligious war.
Many Americans assume either:
(1) The U.S. doesn’t take sides in religious wars
Or
(2) We are fighting a crusade against Muslims
Neither assumption is correct. In fact, we are fighting a religious war on the same side as the Muslim jihadis. Unfortunately – as shown below – this is neither wild-eyed conspiracy theory or breathless hyperbole.
Specifically, the U.S. has directly inserted itself into a sectarian war between the two main Islamic sects, backing the “Sunnis” and attacking the “Shiites” (also called “Shia”). See this, this and this.
For example, American political leaders have been very close to Saudi (i.e. Sunni) leaders for decades:
(Obama has been similarly close to the Saudis.)
Saudi Arabia is the center of the Sunni branch of Islam. It is also the center of the most radical sect of Islam … the “Wahhabis” (also called “Salafis”), the most radical and terrorist-minded Sunni sect. But the U.S. has long supported the Madrassa schools within Saudi Arabia which teach radical Wahabi beliefs.
The U.S. has also supported the most radical and dangerous Sunni elements around the world.
For example, the U.S. National Security Adviser admitted that the U.S. created, organized and armed the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. The Mujahadeen are predominately Sunni.
The Mujahadeen eventually morphed into Al Qaeda, which is a Sunni organization.
During various times and places, the U.S. has also backed the Muslim Brotherhood … another Sunni group.
We supported Al Qaeda Sunni terrorists in Libya and Mali,
We’ve long supported Sunni terrorists in Chechnya.
We support MEK terrorists – who are Sunnis who target Shias – in Iran.
We support the brutal Sunni government in Bahrain as it crushes its majority Shia population whenever it pushes for democratic reform.
We supported Al Qaeda Sunnis in Bosnia.
The “rebels” in Syria who we’ve been supporting are Al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood.
As the New York Times reports this week:
In Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, rebels aligned with Al Qaeda control the power plant, run the bakeries and head a court that applies Islamic law. Elsewhere, they have seized government oil fields, put employees back to work and now profit from the crude they produce.
Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government.
Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.
Why should Americans care if our government is backing the Sunnis over the Shiites?
Because we are supporting the side which carries out most of the terrorism. Indeed, Sunni Muslims commit most of the terrorist acts worldwide.
For example, the National Counterterrorism Center’s 2011 Report on Terrorism found that:
Sunni extremists accounted for the greatest number of terrorist attacks and fatalities for the third consecutive year. More than 5,700 incidents were attributed to Sunni extremists, accounting for nearly 56 percent of all attacks and about 70 percent of all fatalities. Among this perpetrator group, al-Qa‘ida (AQ) and its affiliates were responsible for at least 688 attacks that resulted in almost 2,000 deaths, while the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan conducted over 800 attacks that resulted in nearly 1,900 deaths. Secular, political, and anarchist groups were the next largest category of perpetrators, conducting 2,283 attacks with 1,926 fatalities, a drop of 5 percent and 9 percent, respectively, from 2010.
(The National Counterterrorism Center’s 2011 Report found that Muslim terrorism is mainly directed against other Muslims:
Muslims continued to bear the brunt of terrorism.
***
In cases where the religious affiliation of terrorism casualties could be determined,Muslims suffered between 82 and 97 percent of terrorism-related fatalities over the past five years.
The percentage of Muslim terror attacks in the U.S. is relatively small).
Could our support for Al Qaeda and Muslim Brother terrorists all over the world come back to bite us?
Our backing of Sunnis in Afghanistan led to 9/11.* Top American government officials have alsoimplicated the Saudi government in the 9/11 attack.
Our backing of Sunni extremists in Chechnya led to the Boston bombings.
Our backing of Sunni extremists in Libya led to attacks on our embassies in Libya and Tunisia.
And McClatchy interviewed an Al Qaeda terrorist fighting against the Syrian government – with U.S. backing – as saying:
When we finish with Assad, we will fight the U.S.!
Postscript: Not only have we been backing the Sunnis against the Shias, we have also backed the Sunnis against secular leaders such as Saddam Hussein and Gaddaffi.
* The question of whether 9/11 or the Boston bombings were false flags is beyond the scope of this post.
FBI Report Implicates Saudi Government in 9/11
But “We Can’t Afford to Irritate the Saudis” By Actually Looking Into Who Backed 9/11 … “Especially with Oil Prices Going Up Now”
Contrary to the official narrative, 9/11 was state-sponsored terror. The only question is which state sponsored it.
A 9/11 Commissioner and Co-Chair of the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 say in sworn declarations that the Saudi government is linked to the 9/11 attacks.
This week, the Miami Herald provided more evidence of a Saudi link:
A Saudi family who “fled” their Sarasota area home weeks before 9/11 had “many connections” to “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001,” according to newly released FBI records.
One partially declassified document, marked “secret,” lists three of those individuals and ties them to the Venice, Fla., flight school where suicide hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi trained. Accomplice Ziad Jarrah took flying lessons at another school a block away.
Atta and al-Shehhi were at the controls of the jetliners that slammed into the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center, killing nearly 3,000 people. Jarrah was the hijacker-pilot of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania.
The names, addresses and dates of birth of the three individuals tied to the flight school were blanked out before the records were released to BrowardBulldog.org amid ongoing Freedom of Information Act litigation.
The information in the documents runs counter to previous FBI statements. It also adds to concerns raised by official investigations but never fully explored, that the full truth about Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 attacks has not yet been told.
***
The documents are the first released by the FBI about its once-secret probe in Sarasota. Information contained in the documents flatly contradicts prior statements by FBI agents in Miami and Tampa who have said the investigation found no evidence connecting the al-Hijjis to the hijackers or the 9/11 plot.
Concerned residents in the gated community of Prestancia tipped the FBI, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, to the al-Hijjis’ sudden departure in late August 2001. The family left behind three cars, clothes, furniture, diapers, toys, food and other items.
[A] counterterrorism officer and Prestancia’s former administrator, Larry Berberich, both said an analysis of gatehouse security records — log books and snapshots of license tags — had determined that vehicles either driven by or carrying several of the future hijackers had visited the al-Hijji home.
Phone records revealed similar, though indirect, ties to the hijackers, said the counterterrorism officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
***
An April 16, 2002, FBI report says “repeated citizen calls” led to an inspection of the home by agents of the Southwest Florida Domestic Security Task Force.
***
That person and a second individual were said to be flight students at Huffman Aviation — the flight school at the Venice Municipal Airport attended by hijackers Atta and al-Shehhi.
The third person on the list “lived with flight students at Huffman Aviation” and was“arrested numerous times by the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office,” the report says.
***
A notice on the document indicates the censored information regarding the three individuals associated with the terrorist attacks is scheduled to remain classified for another 25 years — until March 14, 2038.
***
Al-Hijji, who following 9/11 worked for the Saudi oil company Aramco in England, could not be reached by phone or email last week. Aramco staff said there was no longer anyone by that name in the London office.
***
The FBI documents also disclose that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., queried Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller about the Sarasota investigation six days after its existence was disclosed in Broward Bulldog/Miami Herald story.
***
Similarly, Weich denied an assertion by then Sen. Bob Graham of Florida that the FBI had not turned over its Sarasota records to Congress. The bureau, he stated, made all of its records available and suggested they may have been overlooked by investigators.
The documents the FBI has released do not mention other known aspects of the Sarasota investigation, including information provided to the FBI by al-Hijji’s former friend, Wissam Hammoud.
Hammoud, 47, is a federal prisoner classified by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons as an “International Terrorist Associate.” He is serving a 21-year sentence for weapons violations and attempting to kill a federal agent and a witness in a previous case against him.
[S]hortly after his 2004 arrest, Hammoud told agents that al-Hijji considered Osama bin Laden a “hero,” may have known some of the hijackers, and once introduced Hammoud to fugitive al-Qaeda leader and ex-Miramar resident Adnan Shukrijumah.
When reached last year, al-Hijji acknowledged having known Hammoud well. He did not, however, respond to a question about Hammoud’s allegations and said Shukrijumah’s name did not “ring a bell.”
***
Other FBI documents about Sarasota are known to exist, but were not released, including a report Graham says he read last year but can’t discuss because it is classified.
The [Broward] Bulldog’s FOIA lawsuit asks U.S. District Judge William Zloch to order the FBI to produce all records of its Sarasota investigation, including the records seen by Graham.
The Daily Beast reported last year:
The FBI-led investigation in Sarasota reportedly focused on Saudi millionaire Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his wife, Anoud. Their upscale home was owned by Anoud al-Hijji’s father, Esam Ghazzawi, an adviser to Prince Fahd bin Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, the nephew of King Fahd.
An FBI informant hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000. Specifically, investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House. As the New York Timesnotes:
Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence ….The accusation stems from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s refusal to allow investigators for a Congressional inquiry and the independent Sept. 11 commission to interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the landlord in San Diego of two Sept. 11 hijackers.
The 2 hijackers were Saudis. Indeed, 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudis.
The Daily Beast reported last year:
In San Diego, allegations of links between the Saudi government and the 9/11 hijackers revolve around two enigmatic Saudi men: Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Basnan, both of whom have long since left the United States.
Al-Bayoumi had previously worked for the Saudi government in civil aviation (a part of the Saudi defense department), and was alleged by many San Diego Muslims to be an agent for the Saudi government who reported on the activities of Saudi-born students living in Southern California.
In early 2000, al-Bayoumi invited two of the hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, to San Diego from Los Angeles. He told authorities he met the two men by chance when he sat next to them at a restaurant.
As Newsweek reported in 2002, al-Bayoumi’s invitation was extended on the same day that he visited the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles for a private meeting.
Al-Bayoumi arranged for the two future hijackers to live in an apartment near the San Diego Islamic Center mosque and paid $1,500 to cover their first two months of rent.
When asked not long after the 9/11 attacks about al-Bayoumi’s possible involvement, San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore, then the San Diego head of the FBI, told this reporter that there was no evidence al-Bayoumi played a role.
But a former top FBI official later told Newsweek, “We firmly believed that [al-Bayoumi] had knowledge [of the 9/11 plot].”
After 9/11, al-Bayoumi was detained by New Scotland Yard while living in the U.K. Gore said the FBI sent agents to London to interview him, but he was released a week later and allowed to return to Saudi Arabia.
Newsweek reported that classified sections of the congressional 9/11 inquiry indicated that the Saudi Embassy in London pushed for al-Bayoumi’s release.
Where is al-Bayoumi now? “I can’t say too much, but what I can tell you is that he is still alive and living in Saudi Arabia,” says Graham.
As for Basnan, whom Graham calls “Bayoumi’s successor,” Newsweek reported that he received monthly checks for several years totaling as much as $73,000 from the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar, and his wife, Princess Haifa Faisal.
The checks were sent because Basnan’s wife, Majeda Dweikat, needed thyroid surgery, Newsweek and other media outlets reported. But Dweikat inexplicably signed many of the checks over to al-Bayoumi’s wife, Manal Bajadr. This money allegedly made its way into the hands of hijackers Almihdhar and Alhazmi, according to the congressional report.
At a post-9/11 gathering in San Diego, Basnan allegedly called the attack “a wonderful, glorious day” and celebrated the hijackers’ “heroism,” a law-enforcement official toldNewsweek.
Despite all this, he was ultimately allowed to return to Saudi Arabia ….
Another man who might have helped investigators get to the bottom of this mystery is Abdussattar Shaikh, a longtime FBI asset in San Diego who was friends with al-Bayoumi and invited two of the San Diego-based hijackers to live in his home.
However, Shaikh was not allowed by the FBI or the Bush administration to testify before the 9/11 Commission or the JICI.
“For me, that was the low point of the [JICI] investigation,” says Graham. “Bayoumi introduced the hijackers to Shaikh, who clearly knew a lot, but the FBI, who had Shaikh in protective custody, seemed to care more about protecting their asset than allowing us to find out what he knew about 9/11.”
During roughly the same period after the 9/11 attacks, San Diego FBI agent Steven Butler alerted his superiors about a flow of money from Saudi government officials that had made its way into the hands of two of the San Diego-based hijackers, according toU.S. News & World Report. But the warning was ignored.
“Butler is claiming that people [in the FBI] didn’t follow up,” a congressional source toldU.S. News & World Report. Another congressional source told U.S. News: “Butler saw a pattern, a trail, and he told his supervisors, but it ended there.”
The investigation into the Saudi government’s alleged connections to the hijackers seemed to end there. Arguably the greatest crime mystery of our time has become a cold case.
***
[The Co-Chair of the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 and former Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham] believes the Bush administration protected the Saudis during the 9/11 inquiry [and] wonders why the Obama administration hasn’t reopened the investigation and sought answers.
“Perhaps they feel that we can’t afford to irritate the Saudis, especially with oil prices going up now,” he says. “I don’t know. Someday, I do believe we will get to the bottom of 9/11 and the Saudi government connections.”
Indeed, a U.S. congressman for 6 years, who is now a talking head on MSNBC (Joe Scarborough) says that – even if the Saudi government backed the 9/11 attacks – Saudi oil is too important to do anything about it:
Bail-out Is Out, Bail-in Is In: Another Argument for Publicly-Owned Banks
Guest post by Ellen Brown. Brown is an attorney, chairman of the Public Banking Institute, and the author of eleven books, including Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free. Her websites are webofdebt.com and ellenbrown.com.
“[W]ith Cyprus . . . the game itself changed. By raiding the depositors’ accounts, a major central bank has gone where they would not previously have dared. The Rubicon has been crossed.”
—Eric Sprott, Shree Kargutkar, “Caveat Depositor”
The crossing of the Rubicon into the confiscation of depositor funds was not a one-off emergency measure limited to Cyprus. Similar “bail-in” policies are now appearing in multiple countries. (See my earlier articles here.) What triggered the new rules may have been a series of game-changing events including the refusal of Iceland to bail out its banks and their depositors; Bank of America’s commingling of its ominously risky derivatives arm with its depository arm over the objections of the FDIC; and the fact that most EU banks are now insolvent. A crisis in a major nation such as Spain or Italy could lead to a chain of defaults beyond anyone’s control, and beyond the ability of federal deposit insurance schemes to reimburse depositors.
The new rules for keeping the too-big-to-fail banks alive: use creditor funds, including uninsured deposits, to recapitalize failing banks.
But isn’t that theft?
Perhaps, but it’s legal theft. By law, when you put your money into a deposit account, your money becomes the property of the bank. You become an unsecured creditor with a claim against the bank. Before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was instituted in 1934, U.S. depositors routinely lost their money when banks went bankrupt. Your deposits are protected only up to the $250,000 insurance limit, and only to the extent that the FDIC has the money to cover deposit claims or can come up with it.
The question then is, how secure is the FDIC?
Can the FDIC Go Bankrupt?
In 2009, when the FDIC fund went $8.2 billion in the hole, Chairwoman Sheila Bair assured depositorsthat their money was protected by a hefty credit line with the Treasury. But the FDIC is funded with premiums from its member banks, which had to replenish the fund. The special assessment required to do it was crippling for the smaller banks, and that was just to recover $8.2 billion. What happens when Bank of America or JPMorganChase, which have commingled their massive derivatives casinos with their depositary arms, is propelled into bankruptcy by a major derivatives fiasco? These two banks both have deposits exceeding $1 trillion, and they both have derivatives books with notional values exceeding the GDP of the world.
Bank of America Corporation moved its trillions in derivatives (mostly credit default swaps) from its Merrill Lynch unit to its banking subsidiary in 2011. It did not get regulatory approval but just acted at the request of frightened counterparties, following a downgrade by Moody’s. The FDIC opposed the move, reportedly protesting that the FDIC would be subjected to the risk of becoming insolvent if BofA were to file for bankruptcy. But the Federal Reserve favored the move, in order to give relief to the bank holding company. (Proof positive, says former regulator Bill Black, that the Fed is working for the banks and not for us. “Any competent regulator would have said: ‘No, Hell NO!’”)
The reason this risky move would subject the FDIC to insolvency, as explained in my earlier articlehere, is that under the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005, derivatives counter-parties are given preference over all other creditors and customers of the bankrupt financial institution, including FDIC insured depositors. Normally, the FDIC would have the powers as trustee in receivership to protect the failed bank’s collateral for payments made to depositors. But the FDIC’s powers are overridden by the special status of derivatives. (Remember MF Global? The reason its customers lost their segregated customer funds to the derivatives claimants was that derivatives have super-priority in bankruptcy.)
The FDIC has only about $25 billion in its deposit insurance fund, which is mandated by law to keep a balance equivalent to only 1.15 percent of insured deposits. And the Dodd-Frank Act (Section 716) now bans taxpayer bailouts of most speculative derivatives activities. Drawing on the FDIC’s credit line with the Treasury to cover a BofA or JPMorgan derivatives bust would be the equivalent of a taxpayer bailout, at least if the money were not paid back; and imposing that burden on the FDIC’s member banks is something they can ill afford.
BofA is not the only bank threatening to wipe out the federal deposit insurance funds that most countries have. According to Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup, most EU banks are zombies. And that explains the impetus for the new “bail in” policies, which put the burden instead on the unsecured creditors, including the depositors. Below is some additional corroborating research on these new, game-changing bail-in schemes.
Depositors Beware
An interesting series of commentaries starts with one on the website of Sprott Asset Management Inc. titled “Caveat Depositor,” in which Eric Sprott and Shree Kargutkar note that the US, UK, EU, and Canada have all built the new “bail in” template to avoid imposing risk on their governments and taxpayers. They write:
[M]ost depositors naively assume that their deposits are 100% safe in their banks and trust them to safeguard their savings. Under the new “template” all lenders (including depositors) to the bank can be forced to “bail in” their respective banks.
Dave of Denver then followed up on the Sprott commentary in an April 3 entry on his blog The Golden Truth, in which he pointed out that the new template has long been agreed to by the G20 countries:
Because the use of taxpayer-funded bailouts would likely no longer be tolerated by the public, a new bank rescue plan was needed. As it turns out, this new “bail-in” model is based on an agreement that was the result of a bank bail-out model that was drafted by a sub-committee of the BIS (Bank for International Settlement) and endorsed at a G20 summit in 2011. For those of you who don’t know, the BIS is the global “Central Bank” of Central Banks. As such it is the world’s most powerful financial institution.
The links are in Dave’s April 1 article, which states:
The new approach has been agreed at the highest levels . . . It has been a topic under consideration since the publication by the Financial Stability Board (a BIS committee) of a paper, Key Attributes of Effective Resolution Regimes for Financial Institutions in October 2011, which was endorsed at the Cannes G20 summit the following month. This was followed by a consultative document in November 2012, Recovery and Resolution Planning: Making the Key Attributes Requirements Operational.
Dave goes on:
[W]hat is commonly referred to as a “bail-in” in Cyprus is actually a global bank rescue model that was derived and ratified nearly two years ago. . . . [B]ank deposits in excess of Government insured amount in any bank in any country will be treated like unsecured debt if the bank goes belly-up and is restructured in some form.
Jesse at Jesse’s Café Americain then picked up the thread and pointed out that it is not just direct deposits that are at risk. The too-big-to-fail banks have commingled accounts in a web of debt that spreads globally. Stock brokerages keep their money market funds in overnight sweeps in TBTF banks, and many credit unions do their banking at large TBTF correspondent banks:
You say you have money in a pension fund and an IRA at XYZ bank? Oops, it is really on deposit in you-know-who’s bank. You say you have money in a brokerage account? Oops, it is really being held overnight in their TBTF bank. Remember MF Global? Who can say how far the entanglements go? The current financial system and market structure is crazy with hidden risk, insider dealings, control frauds, and subtle dangers.
Also at Risk: Pension Funds and Public Revenues
William Buiter, writing in the UK Financial Times in March 2009, defended the bail-in approach as better than the alternative. But he acknowledged that the “unsecured creditors” who would take the hit were chiefly “pensioners drawing their pensions from pension funds heavily invested in unsecured bank debt and owners of insurance policies with insurance companies holding unsecured bank debt,” and that these unsecured creditors “would suffer a large decline in financial wealth and disposable income that would cause them to cut back sharply on consumption.”
The deposits of U.S. pension funds are well over the insured limit of $250,000. They will get raided just as the pension funds did in Cyprus, and so will the insurance companies. Who else?
Most state and local governments also keep far more on deposit than $250,000, and they keep these revenues largely in TBTF banks. Community banks are not large enough to service the complicated banking needs of governments, and they are unwilling or unable to come up with the collateral that is required to secure public funds over the $250,000 FDIC limit.
The question is, how secure are the public funds in the TBTF banks? Like the depositors who think FDIC insurance protects them, public officials assume their funds are protected by the collateral posted by their depository banks. But the collateral is liable to be long gone in a major derivatives bust, since derivatives claimants have super-priority in bankruptcy over every other claim, secured or unsecured, including those of state and local governments.
The Cyprus Wakeup Call
Robert Teitelbaum wrote in a May 2011 article titled “The Case Against Favored Treatment of Derivatives”:
. . . Dodd-Frank did not touch favored status [of derivatives] and despite all the sound and fury, . . . there are very few signs from either party that anyone with any clout is suddenly about to revisit that decision and simplify bankruptcy treatment. Why? Because for all its relative straightforwardness compared to more difficult fixes, derivatives remains a mysterious black box to most Americans . . . . [A]s the sense of urgency to reform passes . . . we return to a situation of technical interest to only a few, most of whom have their own particular self-interest in mind.
But that was in 2011, before the Cyprus alarm bells went off. It is time to pry open the black box, get educated, and get organized. Here are three things that need to be done for starters:
- Protect depositor funds from derivative raids by repealing the super-priority status of derivatives.
- Separate depository banking from investment banking by repealing the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 and reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act.
- Protect both public and private revenues by establishing a network of publicly-owned banks, on the model of the Bank of North Dakota.
For more information on the public bank option, see here. Learn more at the Public Banking Institute conference June 2-4 in San Rafael, California, featuring Matt Taibbi, Birgitta Jonsdottir, Gar Alperovitz and others.
Multiple Polls: Americans Are More Afraid of the GOVERNMENT than TERRORISTS
Washington Post and Fox News Find that – Even Right After the Boston Terror Attacks – Americans Are More Leery of Government Tyranny than Terrorists
WND reports today:
According to a pair of recent polls, for the first time since the 9/11 terrorist hijackings, Americans are more fearful their government will abuse constitutional liberties than fail to keep its citizens safe.
Even in the wake of the April 15 Boston Marathon bombing – in which a pair of Islamic radicals are accused of planting explosives that took the lives of 3 and wounded over 280 – the polls suggest Americans are hesitant to give up any further freedoms in exchange for increased “security.”
A Fox News survey polling a random national sample of 619 registered voters the day after the bombing found despite the tragic event, those interviewed responded very differently than following 9/11.
For the first time since a similar question was asked in May 2001, more Americans answered “no” to the question, “Would you be willing to give up some of your personal freedom in order to reduce the threat of terrorism?”
Of those surveyed on April 16, 2013, 45 percent answered no to the question, compared to 43 percent answering yes.
In May 2001, before 9/11, the balance was similar, with 40 percent answering no to 33 percent answering yes.
But following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the numbers flipped dramatically, to 71 percent agreeing to sacrifice personal freedom to reduce the threat of terrorism.
Subsequent polls asking the same question in 2002, 2005 and 2006 found Americans consistently willing to give up freedom in exchange for security. Yet the numbers were declining from 71 percent following 9/11 to only 54 percent by May 2006.
Now, it would seem, the famous quote widely attributed to Benjamin Franklin – “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety” – is holding more sway with Americans than it has in over a dozen years.
A similar poll sampling 588 adults, conducted on April 17 and 18 for the Washington Post, also discovered the change in attitude.
“Which worries you more,” the Post asked, “that the government will not go far enough to investigate terrorism because of concerns about constitutional rights, or that it will go too far in compromising constitutional rights in order to investigate terrorism?”
The poll found 48 percent of respondents worry the government will go too far, compared to 41 percent who worry it won’t go far enough.
And similar to the Fox News poll, the Post found the worry to be a fresh development, as only 44 percent worried the government would go too far in January 2006 and only 27 percent worried the government would go too far in January 2010.
The Fox News poll found that a bare majority of Democrats (51%) would give up more personal freedom to reduce the threat of terror, while only 47% of Republicans – and a mere 29% of independents – would do so.
This is not entirely surprising.
As we noted in February:
For years, “conservative” pollsters have said that Americans are furious at the government:
- Rasmussen noted in 2010 that only a small minority of the American people think that the government has the consent of the governed, and that the sentiment was “pre-revolutionary”
- Gallup noted in 2011 that a higher percentage of American liked King George during the colonial days than currently like Congress
- And last year, Gallup noted that trust was plummeting in virtually all institutions
Liberals may be tempted to think that this is a slanted perspective. But non-partisan and liberal pollsters are saying the same thing:
- An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll from 2011 found that 76% of Americans believe that the country’s current financial and political structures favor the rich over the rest of the country
- The Washington Post reported in 2011 that Congress was less popular thancommunism, BP during the Gulf oil spill or Nixon during Watergate
- Public Policy Polling added last month that Congress is also less popular thancockroaches, lice, root canals, colonoscopies, traffic jams, used car salesman and Genghis Khan
- And the liberal Pew Charitable Trusts noted last week that – for the first time – amajority of the public says that the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms:
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Jan. 9-13 among 1,502 adults, finds that 53% think that the federal government threatens their own personal rights and freedoms while 43% disagree.
In March 2010, opinions were divided over whether the government represented a threat to personal freedom; 47% said it did while 50% disagreed. In surveys between 1995 and 2003, majorities rejected the idea that the government threatened people’s rights and freedoms.
***
The survey finds continued widespread distrust in government. About a quarter of Americans (26%) trust the government in Washington to do the right thing just about always or most of the time; 73% say they can trust the government only some of the time or volunteer that they can never trust the government.
***
Majorities across all partisan and demographic groups express little or no trust in government.
Obviously, Democrats are currently more trusting in government than Republicans. For example:
The Pew Research Center’s 2010 study of attitudes toward government found that, since the 1950s, the party in control of the White House has expressed more trust in government than the so-called “out party.”
But given that even a growing percentage of Dems believe that government is a threat to their freedom, things are indeed getting interesting …
It doesn’t help that the government claims the power to assassinate American citizens living on U.S. soil, indefinitely detain Americans without trial, spy on everyone and otherwise intrude into every aspect of our lives.
Postscript: What are the actual risks coming from government versus terrorism? That’s an interesting question.
You’re More Likely to Die from Brain-Eating Parasites, Alcoholism, Obesity, Medical Errors, Risky Sexual Behavior or Just About Anything OTHER THAN Terrorism
Calm Down … You Are Much More Likely to Be Killed By Boring, Mundane Things than Terrorism
We noted in 2011:
– You are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack
– You are 12,571 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack
— You are 11,000 times more likely to die in an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane
— You are 1048 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack
–You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack
— You are 87 times more likely to drown than die in a terrorist attack
– You are 13 times more likely to die in a railway accident than from a terrorist attack
–You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocation in bed than from a terrorist attack
–You are 9 times more likely to choke to death on your own vomit than die in a terrorist attack
–You are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist
–You are 8 times more likely to die from accidental electrocution than from a terrorist attack
– You are 6 times more likely to die from hot weather than from a terrorist attack
Let’s look at some details from the most recent official statistics.
The U.S. Department of State reports that only 17 U.S. citizens were killed worldwide as a result of terrorism in 2011. That figure includes deaths in Afghanistan, Iraq and all other theaters of war.
In contrast, the American agency which tracks health-related issues – the U.S. Centers for Disease Control – rounds up the most prevalent causes of death in the United States:
Comparing the CDC numbers to terrorism deaths means:
– You are 35,079 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack
– You are 33,842 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack
(Keep in mind when reading this entire piece that we are consistently and substantially understatingthe risk of other causes of death as compared to terrorism, because we are comparing deaths from various causes within the United States against deaths from terrorism worldwide.)
Wikipedia notes that obesity is a a contributing factor in 100,000–400,000 deaths in the United States per year. That makes obesity 5,882 to times 23,528 more likely to kill you than a terrorist.
The annual number of deaths in the U.S. due to avoidable medical errors is as high as 100,000. Indeed, one of the world’s leading medical journals – Lancet – reported in 2011:
A November, 2010, document from the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services reported that, when in hospital, one in seven beneficiaries of Medicare (the government-sponsored health-care programme for those aged 65 years and older) have complications from medical errors, which contribute to about 180 000deaths of patients per year.
That’s just Medicare beneficiaries, not the entire American public. Scientific American noted in 2009:
Preventable medical mistakes and infections are responsible for about 200,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to an investigation by the Hearst media corporation.
But let’s use the lower – 100,000 – figure. That still means that you are 5,882 times more likely to die from medical error than terrorism.
The CDC says that some 80,000 deaths each year are attributable to excessive alcohol use. So you’re4,706 times more likely to drink yourself to death than die from terrorism.
Wikipedia notes that there were 32,367 automobile accidents in 2011, which means that you are 1,904times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack. As CNN reporter Fareed Zakaria writes this week:
“Since 9/11, foreign-inspired terrorism has claimed about two dozen lives in the United States. (Meanwhile, more than 100,000 have been killed in gun homicides and more than 400,000 in motor-vehicle accidents.) “
According to a 2011 CDC report, poisoning from prescription drugs is even more likely to kill you than a car crash. Indeed, the CDC stated in 2011 that – in the majority of states – your prescription meds are more likely to kill you than any other source of injury. So your meds are thousands of times more likely to kill you than Al Qaeda.
The number of deaths by suicide has also surpassed car crashes, and many connect the increase in suicides to the downturn in the economy. Around 35,000 Americans kill themselves each year (and more American soldiers die by suicide than combat; the number of veterans committing suicide is astronomical and under-reported). So you’re 2,059 times more likely to kill yourself than die at the hand of a terrorist.
The CDC notes that there were 7,638 deaths from HIV and 45 from syphilis, so you’re 452 times more likely to die from risky sexual behavior than terrorism.
The National Safety Council reports that more than 6,000 Americans die a year from falls … most of them involve people falling off their roof or ladder trying to clean their gutters, put up Christmas lights and the like. That means that you’re 353 times more likely to fall to your death doing something idiotic than die in a terrorist attack.
The agency in charge of workplace safety – the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration – reports that 4,609 workers were killed on the job in 2011 within the U.S. homeland. In other words, you are 271 times more likely to die from a workplace accident than terrorism.
The CDC notes that 3,177 people died of “nutritional deficiencies” in 2011, which means you are 187times more likely to starve to death in American than be killed by terrorism.
Scientific American notes:
You might have toxoplasmosis, an infection caused by the microscopic parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which the CDC estimates has infected about 22.5 percent of Americans older than 12 years old
Toxoplasmosis is a brain-parasite. The CDC reports that more than 375 Americans die annually due to toxoplasmosis. In addition, 3 Americans died in 2011 after being exposed to a brain-eating amoeba. So you’re about 22 times more likely to die from a brain-eating zombie parasite than a terrorist.
There were at least 155 Americans killed by police officers in the United States in 2011. That means that you were more than 9 times more likely to be killed by a law enforcement officer than by a terrorist.
And the 2011 Report on Terrorism from the National Counter Terrorism Center notes that Americans are just as likely to be “crushed to death by their televisions or furniture each year” as they are to be killed by terrorists.
Let’s switch to 2008, to take advantage of another treasure trove of data.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, 33 U.S. citizens were killed worldwide in 2008 from terrorism. There were 301,579,895 Americans living on U.S. soil in 2008, so the risk of dying from terrorist attacks in 2008 was 1 in 9,138,785.
This graphic from the National Safety Council – based upon 2008 data – shows the relative risks of dying from various causes:
If the risk of being killed by a terrorist were added to the list, the dot would be so small that it would be hard to see. Specifically, the risk of being killed by terrorism in 2008 was 14 times smaller than being killed by fireworks.
thedude75 