Najat Vallaud-Belkacem

The new French Minister of Education, appointed by President François HoIlande and in office effective August 26, 2014, is named Najat Vallaud-Belkacem.

Guess what her religion is:  Islam

Guess where she was born: Beni Chiker, Morocco.

Guess her political party: Socialist

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

				Najat Vallaud-Belkacem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedi... Najat Vallaud-Belkacem (born Najat Belkacem on 4 October 1977) is a French-Moroccan[1] socialist politician, who on 25 August 2014 was the first Fren...
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Now...just imagine if President Obama appointed a non-native American Muslim woman--and a socialist--to be Secretary of Education--or to any cabinet post...

I expect that every hysterical Islamophobic maniac in America would be marching on Washington to burn down the White House before Barack Obama throws the Constitution in the shredder and replaces it with Sharia Law.  Already, CBS News reported back in 2012 that, "30 percent of Republicans and 34 percent of conservative Republicans think President Obama is Muslim."

Conservatives more likely to think Obama is Muslim now than in 2008

				Conservatives more likely to think Obama is Muslim now t... Thirty percent of Republicans think Obama is Muslim, according to a new study, while just 16 percent thought so in 2008
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But in France, nobody raised an eyebrow.  Well, a few eyebrows were raised: another Muslim woman, Rachida Dati, former President Sarkozy's Minister of Justice [the equivalent of the American Attorney General], who was born in France but is of Moroccan and Algerian ancestry, critiziced her fellow female Muslim as "incompetent."   Not much feminist sisterhood or Muslim solidarity there!  Or maybe it's just because Dati is a member of the right-of-center UMP party and dislikes socialists, whatever their religion and whatever their sex!

Here's A Scientific Theory For Why Iraq Is Erupting Into Chaos

From Slate, via Business Insider, a fascinating and thought-provoking article by Eric Holthouse, entitled Here's A Scientific Theory For Why Iraq Is Erupting Into Chaos

Excerpts:

A punishing drought hit most of Syria and northern Iraq during what’s normally the wettest time of the year... The region has seen one of the worst droughts in decades.

Drought is becoming a fixture in the parched landscape, due to a drying trend of the Mediterranean and Middle East region fueled by global warming.

When taken in combination with other complex drivers, increasing temperatures and drying of agricultural land is widely seen as assisting in the destabilization of Syria under the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Before civil war broke out there, farmers abandoned their desiccated fields and flooded the cities with protests. A series of U.N. reports released earlier this year found that global warming is already destabilizing nation states around the world, and Syria has been no exception.

With the ongoing crisis in Iraq seemingly devolving by the day, it’s not a stretch to think something similar could already be underway just next door.

Could there be a connection between climate change and the emerging conflict in Iraq?

Jagor's Comment:

 

This is not the only article I have read that focuses on the inevitable conflicts brought about by shortages and skyrocketing prices of food and water.  

The outbreak of violence in Egypt that led to the overthrow of Mubarak was sparked by a continuing series of riots over the increases in the cost of bread which had been very heavily subsidized by the government--it cost the equivalent of a penny a loaf. This 2012 article, Let them eat baklava, published in The Economist discusses how high cost of food was sparking food riots in Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan and Morocco as far back as 2008.

  

In Egypt you've got massive overpopulation, a high population growth of 2% per year [U.S. population growth is 0.9% per year] a high level of unemployment of over 13% and a lack of enough arable land. Egypt imports 40% of its food and 60% of its wheat, and with droughts all over the world, the price of wheat has been skyrocketing: in May 2004 wheat was around  $150 per metric ton in May 2014 it was around $340 per metric ton: maybe good for Archer Daniels Midland but bad for Egyptians.)

You combine all those factors and you add a heatwave and you've got an explosive mix.  

Unlike the way the events were portrayed in the media, the Egyptians were not revolting because they wanted democracy. The recent overwhelming vote in favor of General Sissi (see the Jagoriade post of March 28, 2014, Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose) proves conclusively that the Egyptians did not want either democracy or Islamist fundamentalism, but the stability that can only be guaranteed by an authoritarian military dictator, a series of whom have ruled over Egypt since a military coup overthrew King Farouk in 1952. (The "Playboy King" sought refuge in Monaco, whose Prince Ranier granted him Monegasque citizenship.)

"Democratically elected" Mohamed Morsi's biggest mistake was dramatically reducing wheat imports and attempting to make Egypt self-sufficient in wheat production.

What the Egyptians wanted was not democracy but cheap, subsidized bread. Let's see if general Sissi can deliver the goods--the baked goods.

From Buzzfeed, an article by Arom Roston:

Ahmad Chalabi, Who Conned America Into War, Now Aims To Lead Iraq

George W. Bush’s man in Iraq tries to take over — this time under Obama.

Excerpts:

"Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi politician who peddled falsehoods to persuade the United States to invade Iraq, is now attempting to take over as Iraq’s prime minister, Iraqi and American sources say. While Chalabi has long aimed — but always failed — to lead Iraq, his latest bid has a better chance to succeed because the current prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has been crippled by the stunning loss of a third of Iraq’s territory to Sunni militants."

"Before the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Chalabi...became notorious for his influence in Washington among neoconservatives. Funded by the U.S. government itself, Chalabi’s group lobbied the successive American administrations to topple Saddam Hussein, pitching false stories about Hussein’s purported ties to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. When the U.S. invaded, Chalabi’s neoconservative allies in the administration of President George W. Bush thought Chalabi would sweep into power like an Iraqi Charles de Gaulle...And as the extent of his ties to Iran became clear, many of his American allies divorced themselves from him."

Jagor's comment:

Ahmad Chalabi was so much the darling of  Presdient George Bush's crowd that he was even a special guest of Laura Bush at President Bush's State of the Union messsage in January, 2004, seated directly behind the First Lady. 

This convicted felon after embezzling millions from a failed bank in Jordan,was on the run from the Jordanian government, that had sentenced him to be thrown in the slammer for 22 years at hard labor.  Once in Washingnton, Chalabi bedazzled and enthralled Bush's naive advisors with his slick con artistry, so they hand-picked him to be their puppet in Iraq after they got rid of Saddam Hussein, who, if you're old enough to remember, had been our friend in the war he started with Iran, because we hated the ayatollas in Tehran more than we hated Saddam!  

Just like Bush had hand-picked Chalabi, Victoria "Fuck the E.U." Nuland revealed in that infamous leaked phone call with American ambassador to the Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, that Obama had hand-picked "Yatz" [i.e. ArtseniyYatsenyuk] to be the puppet prime minister of the Ukraine, which be was in short order, after overthrowing the democratically-elected president of the Ukraine in a coup d'état, aided and abetted by the United States.  Question still unanswered: why did the United States foment a coup d'état in the Ukraine, when a presidential election had already been scheduled for March 29, 2015, five years after the election of Viktor Yanukovych in February 2010?

Both examples confirm what a lot of people outside the U.S. [and a a lot of people inside the United States] say about the Bush-Obama neo-con American foreign policy: Washington may preach democracy to the rest of the world, but whenever the powers that be find a democratically-elected president--or any other leader--that displeases them by not toeing their line closely enough, they get rid of him one way or another. In the case of the Ukraine it worked. They've got a civil war and the possible breakup of the Ukraine that they're blaming on Vladimir Putin by propagating the big lie that Russia invaded Crimea when--in actual fact--Russian troops had been stationed at their naval base for many years pursuant to a treaty between Russia and the Ukraine and the Crimeans voted overwhelmingly in a free and transparent election to reunite with Russia, just as the people of the Saar--a German-speaking French protectorate after World War II--voted in a referendum to reunite with Germay in 1955, a reunification confirmed by treaty and officilized on January 1, 1957.

In the case of Iraq the neo-cons failed to install Chalabi, but they still got their civil war and the possible breakup of Iraq into three separate regions, a plan that Joe Biden revealed on May 1, 2006, when he was still a sitting senator.

So we see an unbroken continuation of a Bush-Obama policy towards Iraq, driven by neo-con ideologues who infested the Bush Administration and of whom, many  have infiltrated the Obama Administraion. Among their underlying strategic goals have been to weaken one of the Israelis' main adversaries and foment sectarian conflict between Shias and Sunnis.

And now, we're witnessing Ahmad Chalabi renascent, resurrected Phoenix-like from the ashes of political limbo. Stay tuned...

China Warns off Retaliation after US Hacking Charges

Obama's gang of Keystone Kops have shot themselves in the foot once again.  This time, Attorney General Eric Holder has accused five Chinese military officers of hacking into American companies to steal trade secrets and plastered their faces on an FBI "Wanted" poster.  

Business Insider cites a Reuters article, China Warns Of Retaliation After US Hacking Charges datelined Beijing quoting unnamed State Internet Information Office spokesman that, "China has warned the United States that it would retaliate if Washington presses on with charges against five Chinese military officers accused of hacking into American companies to steal trade secrets."

The spokesman continued with a counter-accusation that, "The United States "attacks, infiltrates and taps Chinese networks belonging to governments, institutions, enterprises, universities and major communication backbone networks." 

The Chinese spokesman's statment is confirmed by Glenn Grenwald in his recently-published book, No Place to Hide, in which he states, "For years the US government loudly warned the world that Chinese routers and other Internet devices pose a ‘threat’ because they are built with backdoor surveillance functionality that gives the Chinese government the ability to spy on anyone using them. Yet what the NSA's documents show is that Americans have been engaged in precisely the activity that the United States accused the Chinese of doing." (Page 147, UK Edition)

So, first, the Obama Administration mindlessly rekindled the Cold War with Russia.  Why?  Because they realized that they had squandered the $5.1 billion they had spent since 1992 "supporting democracy-building programs" in the Ukraine when 96.7% of the 83.1% of the eligible voters among the inhabitants of Crimea decided to reunite with Russia in a referendum that was peaceful--not a shot was fired--democratic and entirely transparent. 

And now, Obama's gang that can't shoot straight is picking a fight with and infuriating America's number one creditor, China which, according to Treasury Department data, held $1.27 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds as of February 2014.

Jagor's comment:

If Obama and his infantile henchmen think that they can prevent the Russia-China rapprochement with a few ridiculous "sanctions" and "Wanted" posters, they are living in a fool's paradise.  

Real diplomacy is not conducted by reckless and bellicose actions more appropriate for comic strips or Hollywood westerns.  Real diplomacy is not conducted by overgrown children playing Cops and Robbers or Cowboys and Indians.  Real diplomacy is conducted by adults, acting as adults, not adults acting like petulant children.

Jagor's questions:

Do numbskulls like Eric Holder and Barack Obama and a fifth column of neocon holdovers from the George W. Bush Administration infesting the State Department, including the notorious provocateur Victoria "Fuck the E[uropean] U[nion]." Nuland, actually sit up nights thinking up more ways to damage the United States of America?  Could their actions be potentially impeachable?

Postscript:

And how did China retaliate against America's infantile diplomacy?  Why, for starters, by signing a $400 billion contract May 21, 2014, to import natural gas from Russia for the next 30 years in what is described as "the gas deal of the century." 

Senior Air Force Officer: The F-35 Is An Epic Waste

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has already been discussed in two previous posts on this blog, the first, The F-35: A Flying White Elephant, on March 8, 2013, and the second, Flying White Elephant Succeeds in Knocking out a Tank , on October 31, 2013.   As I wrote previously, "The entire program is now expected to cost taxpayers nearly $1.51 trillion; Each individual plane is now estimated to cost $160 million - more than double the $74.5 million the DoD initially estimated they'd cost."

Here's the lastest chapter in the ongoing saga of the worst military boondoggle in the history of the Untied States of America, as published by Business Insider in an article entitled, Senior Air Force Officer: The F-35 Is An Epic Waste, a reprint of  Britain 'should consider scrapping F-35 stealth fighter' by Defence Correspondent Ben Farmer that originally appeared in The Telegraph of London.
 
Excerpts:

"The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter being built for British and US forces is based on outdated ideas of air warfare, it is claimed. The aircraft could be unable to evade enemy radar and be too expensive for long campaigns. The critique in the US Air Force’s own journal concludes that the new fighter may even have “substantially less performance” than some existing aircraft."

“Specifically, its performance has not met initial requirements, its payload is low, its range is short, and espionage efforts by the People’s Republic of China may have compromised the aircraft long in advance of its introduction.”

"Advances in Russian and Chinese radar defences mean it is not clear that the stealth technology will still work, the analysis warns, adding: “The F-35 might well be the first modern fighter to have substantially less performance than its predecessors.”

Farmer cites a 24-page analysis entitled The Comanche and the Albatross...About out neck was hung by Col. Michael W. Pietrucha, USAF, published in the May-June 2014 issue of Air and Space Power Jounal.  Col. Pietrucha concludes:

"The F-35 program has long since passed the point where we can expect it to provide a substantial improvement in a broad war-fighting context over its predecessors. Designed for a European conflict that did not occur and a threat environment less advanced than the present one, the F-35 program offers little improvement over its predecessors and demands vast resources from diminishing funds."

Do you care that hundreds of millions of dollars of your money--our taxpayer money--are being squandered by an out-of-control coterie of Pentagon generals and their cronies in the aerospace industry?  

Do you care that those multi-trillion dollar boondoggles  are rubber-stamped by a supine and complicit Congress, whose venal and obsequious senators and representatives are bought and paid for like cheap hookers by those same aerospace companies and are pocketing tens of thousands of dollars in barely-legalized bribes?

If so, then Col. Pietrucha's study is well worth reading. 

Those Were the Days!

In the past few weeks, a pair of ignorant politicians named Barack Obama and John Kerry, egged on by a coterie of neo-con hangers-on from George W. Bush Administration such as the infamous agent provacateur Victoria "Fuck the E.U." Nuland, have reignited the Cold War, simply because the 96.77% of the voters of Crimea decided in an internationally-supervised, and totally transparent referendum to reunite with Russia. [See Jagoriade post dated March 29, 2014, The Truth about Crimea, the Ukraine and Russia]. 

Who can believe that only a few years ago United States and Russia were actively collaborating on a supersonic test aircraft, the TU-144 LL? 

Here's a view of the TU -144 LL: note the American and Russian flags emblazoned on the vertical stabilizer.

The project was a joint venture between NASA and Tupelov, as can be seen in the official insignia below.

The aircraft was basically a TU–144 [the "Russian Concorde"] equipped with four gargantuan engines from the supersonic, swing-wing TU–160 Blackjack, the largest largest supersonic aircraft ever constructed. The passenger compartment was converted into a flying laboratory and filled with scientific test equipment.

View this four-minute video clip of the TU-144 LL [French narration], a concrete example of peaceful and mutually-beneficial American-Russian cooperation. 

How long will it be before Russia and America work together peacefully again?

One Day with Evo Morales

!.

I just watched a half-hour program on RT entitled One Day with Evo Morales in which a female reporter spent the day with President Evo Morales Ayma of Bolivia, starting at 4:30 in the morning and ending at 11 o'clock at night.  At least 25 minutes was worthless, just showing the reporter standing around waiting for him to come out of a meeting, asking him stupid questions like how old he was or getting on and off the presidential aircraft.  

But there was one short episode that was interesting. While onboard, the reporter asked President Morales if they were flying in the same plane that, retruning Morales from a meeting in Moscow back to Bolivia, had been forcibly grounded in Vienna, Austria, on July 1, 2013.  and kept on the ground for nine hours while "they" tried to find out if American whistleblower Edward Snowden was hiding in the toilet or had sneaked into an overhead luggage bin--an unprecedented violation of diplomatic immunity and inviolability. 

Morales was idly thumbing through a newspaper and didn't even bother to look up, replying that yes, it was the same aircraft  in which he had been "kidnapped." Then the reporter asked the only intelligent question of the whole program, inquiring whether he intended to "sue the countries responsible for the incident," presumably the Austrians--not to mention the French, the Spanish and the Italians--all of whom had refused to allow President Morales's plane to cross their airspace.  Still leafing through his newspaper, Morales replied nonchalantly, "They just follow the orders they get from the Empire."

Of course, "the Empire" refers to the United States and "they" refers to all the pipsqueak countries on the planet, that is every country except the United States. 

What this means in practice is that according to the doctrine of "American exceptionalism" the United States government--in reality only the president--can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, wherever he wants and to whomever he wants regardless of international law, American law, the will of the American people as expressed by the Congress or the Constitution of the United States, which he swore to "preserve, protect and defend."

And Morales appeared to be perfectly resigned to being the victim of a realpolitik that he knew he could not fight.

2.

It so happened that yesterday I was invited for lunch at a friend's place.  My friend's daughter, who lives in Vienna, was also there.  I asked the daughter what she thought about the hijacking of President Morales's aircraft.
  

She replied that she had completely forgotten about the incident. I answered, "Of course! They want you to forget about it!"

 

Copy of My Email to Charlie Rose Re: Rafael Correa

Below is a copy of an email sent to television personality Charlie Rose.  It is self-explanatory. Read my email--below-- then watch the program yourself and decide whether you agree with me or or not!

--Jagor

Dear Charlie Rose,

I just watched your half hour with President Rafael Correa of Ecuador.

Calling it an "interview" would be a grave misuse of the term. Instead of a debate, or even a conversation, the half-hour consisted of you asking one "gotcha" question after another whose purpose was to entrap President Correa into agreeing with your stereotypes and prejudices, interspersed with mini-sermons about the greatness of the United States.

Every time President Correa scored a point--despite his less-than-perfect English--you completely ignored him and, instead of following up, you immediately changed the subject to try to trap him with another "gotcha" question.

For example, when you asked President Correa what his greatest influences were--obviously hoping he would fall into your "gotcha" trap and confirm your prejudices by citing Marx or Lenin or some another arch-enemy of the United States such as Fidel Castro.  But no!  President Correa stated that the most important influences in his political thinking were "the social doctrine of the Catholic Church and liberation theology!" 

Now that must have shocked you since it didn't fit your stereotype of President Correa, and it could have led to a fascinating few minutes of dialogue, but no--you didn't even bother to ask a follow-up question.  [Maybe it's because you don't even know what liberation theology is and were not going to reveal your ignorance by asking President Correa to define the term.*]

Although the whole 30 minutes was a sham, perhaps the worst example I noticed was when you trotted out that old nonsense about "millions of people from all over the world yearning to come to America to be free blah blah blah."

Have you or your researchers ever bothered to study the statistics for immigration in other countries around the world? Obviously not!  A United Nations study revealed that Russia has the world's second largest number of immigrants--eleven million.  Yes, that Russia--Vladimir Putin's Russia.

  

I live in France where, just like in every other country in Western Europe, "millions of people from all over the world wanting to be free" have been arriving for droves, especially since the end of World War II.  France has 7.4 million immigrants, and Germany has the world's third largest number of immigrants, 9.8 million.

Canada, too, has a very welcoming immigration policy, that attracts people from all over the world--7.3 million, in fact-- and they have free medical care for all their citizens, too, just like all the other civilized countries in the world--who wouldn't want to live there?

And now there's a new phenomenon: thousands of citizens of the United States are emigrating out of the United States to Mexico because they can get excellent health care for 90% less than what they pay in "the land of the free and the home of the brave."

And I am not even going to elaborate on the countries of the Gulf--Saudi Arabia [9.1 million immigrants], the United Arab Emirates [7.8 million immigrants], Qatar, Bahrain and Oman--were people arrive from all over the world, including the United States, hoping to earn the money to provide a better life for their families and themselves.  I know, because I have worked both in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

Now I do not want to deny that millions of immigrants come to the United States; my point is that many more millions of immigrants go to many other countries besides the United States.

Of course, I was holding my breath, hoping  that President Correa would say all that but, unfortunately, he didn't, so you got away with perpetuating your bogus stereotype.

Charlie, with all due respect, I recommend that you go back and take 30 minutes out of your busy schedule to watch that segment again.  Then write me back if you believe that my observations above are erroneous.

But better than that, please stop peppering your foreign guests with "gotcha" questions and start engaging in actual dialogues with them.  You might actually learn some facts that would dispel your prejudices and misconceptions.

With best regards,

C. Jagor 



* The Wikipedia defines "liberation theology" as: "A political movement in Roman Catholic theology which interprets the teachings of Jeus Christ in relation to a liberation from unjust economic, political, or social conditions. It has been described as "an interpretation of Christian faith through the poor's suffering, their struggle and hope, and a critique of society and the Catholic faith and Christianity through the eyes of the poor"

"Complete Breakdown of Constitutional Government"

A friend wrote me recently. "What we are seeing is the "complete breakdown of constitutional government in Obama's America."

Jagor's response:

The "complete breakdown of constitutional government in America" certainly did not begin in Obama's administration. It goes back many decades.  

When I was studying political science as an undergraduate, there was almost no discussion of the legislative branch at all. The only required texts books I can remember using as were about the presidency and the Supreme Court.  It was as if the legislative branch didn't even exist.  

Yet, to the framers of the Constitution, the legislative branch--the Congress--is the People's house and, as such, is the most important branch of the three, the first among equals.  For example, Congress has the power to impeach and convict executive branch officials up to and including the president as well as Federal judges and justices of the Supreme Court, but Congress cannot impeach its own members.  A separate section of the Constitution, Article I, Section 5, Clause 2, describes the procedures for the Senate and the House of Representatives to expell members.

The Supreme Court was virtually powerless, heard few cases and didn't even have a home of its own until Marbury v. Madison in 1803, which improperly implemented the unconstitutional doctrine of judicial review--that a handful of unelected kings--and now queens--of the Supreme Court could overturn the will of the American people as expressed by their elected representatives in Congress.  

Thomas Jefferson expressed his outrage with the decision, writing to Justice Marshall, "You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy."

The framers of the Constitution didn't even bother to specify the number of justices on the Supreme Court: the number is determined by the People's representatives in the Congress.  Originally, in 1789, there were six justices--one Chief Justice of the United States and five associate justices, but since then the number varied from 5 to 10.  Congress fixed the number at nine in 1869.

As for the president, the framers wanted his job to be as a managing director of a federal bureaucracy and the diplomatic corps and to serve as commander in chief of the Armed Forces, but only obeying the orders of Congress. That's why they specified that only Congress can declare war. 

But the last time Congress declared war was in1941, and presidents now have arrogated to themselves the tyrannical power to send troops or bomb foreign countries as they please, with or without the consent of the People's representatives.  Therefore the case can be made that every war, "police action," invasion, bombardment and drone strike since 1941 has been unconstitutional, if not necessarily illegal.

Senate Report: CIA Misled on Interrogations

An article by Greg Miller published on April 1, 2014, in the Washington Post is entitled "CIA misled on interrogation program, Senate report says."

Excerpts:

"A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques."

"The CIA described [its program] repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives,” said one U.S. official briefed on the report. “Was that actually true? The answer is no.”

Jagor's Comment::

Now I guess that film director Kathryn Bigelow, Hollywood's reincarnation of  Leni Riefenstahl, will have to remake her pro-torture propaganda film, Zero Dark 30, which showed the torture techniques ["enhanced interrogation," to use the Orwellian Newspeak term] enabled interrogators to obtain information that led to the defeat of Al Qaeda.  

  

The military's trained, professional interrogators knew at the time that torture doesn't work  and that the victims figure out that the only way to make the torture stop is to tell their torturers what they want to hear, not the actual truth. Chapter One of Army Field Manual 34-52 states:

"Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear."

But the professional military interrogators were either silenced, sidelined or ignored by the civilians in the George W. Bush administration.  And now, at last, the truth comes out in the Washington Post.