MFS - The Other News

                       Morning Posting.

• Live broadcast info from Japan directly ! Here.

• Libya Live Blog - April 19. Here .(Al-Jazeera).

• Syria Live Blog - April 19 Here (Al-Jazeera).

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world low seismic activity in Japan  today between 4.5 and 4.7! More info here.

• Japan - Latest official Situation Update No. 92.On 19.04.2011 at 08:16 GMT+2
  
  Workers at the quake-hit Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan are removing highly radioactive water from a reactor turbine building, a key step towards restoring cooling systems, the government said. The 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that hit the north-east coast of Japan on March 11 knocked out power systems at the plant, causing cooling systems to fail and triggering a series of explosions. To prevent a nuclear catastrophe, crews have pumped thousands of tonnes of seawater and later freshwater into the reactors and pools, creating a massive amount of radioactive runoff, some of which has leaked into the ocean. About 10,000 tonnes of highly radioactive water will be transferred from the turbine building of reactor No. 2 to a treatment facility inside the plant for processing, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said. NISA spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said the operation would allow emergency crews battling to stabilise the plant to "pour more water into the reactor in order to gradually decrease the amount of water dousing". "We expect to purify and remove salt from water transferred to the waste treatment facility so it can be poured into the reactor core again." The move is necessary in order to start work to restore cooling functions at the nuclear plant, where workers have found turbine buildings, trenches and shafts submerged in highly radioactive water. Tens of thousands of people living near the plant have been forced to evacuate their homes as radiation has leaked into the air, soil and sea. Embattled operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said on Sunday that it hoped to reduce radiation leaking from the plant in three months and to achieve "cold shutdowns" of all reactors within six to nine months.
  
  
  Situation Update No. 91 - On 19.04.2011 at 03:30 GMT+2.
  
  No deaths have been caused by the incident at the nuclear plant, though Japanese authorities have ordered people who live near the plant to evacuate because of the danger posed by radioactive particles that have been emitted from the plant. On Monday, safety officials said that remote-controlled robots and the workers controlling them have recorded high levels of radiation inside and around two reactor buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northern Japan. The tsunami damaged the plant's cooling systems unnerving hundreds of thousands of people. The U.S.-built robot probes measured radiation doses as high as 57 millisieverts inside the housing for reactor No. 3 and up to 49 millisieverts inside the No. 1 reactor building, Japan's Nuclearhttp://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/admin/event_update/step3.php?cid=29877 and Industrial Safety Agency reported. Levels found between the double doors of the airlocks of the reactor buildings were much higher -- 270 millisieverts in the case of reactor No. 1 and 170 millsieverts in No. 3, the agency said. By comparison, the average resident of an industrialized country receives a dose of about 3 millisieverts per year. Emergency standards for plant workers battling the month-old nuclear disaster limit their annual exposure to 250 millisieverts, while a CT scan produces just under 7 and a chest X-ray delivers a one-time dose of about .05 millisieverts. Doses above 100 millisieverts can increase the long-term risk of cancer, while 1,000 millisieverts can produce radiation sickness.
  
  There was no immediate explanation for the much-higher radiation levels recorded in the airlocks, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, the safety agency's chief spokesman. The robots were inserted Sunday in an attempt to determine the conditions inside the No. 1 and 3 reactor buildings, which were blown apart in massive hydrogen explosions in the first days of the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. The cooling systems for Fukushima Daiichi reactors 1-3 were knocked out by the March 11 tsunami that struck northern Japan, causing the reactor cores to overheat, spewing huge amounts of radioactive contamination across the surrounding area. Nishiyama said running the "Packbots" in reactor No. 3 was difficult because of the amount of debris scattered around the building, but engineers found the building was dry and the temperatures were normal. In unit 1, the robot found a high level of humidity, the explanation for which was not known Monday night. The robots were inserted the same day that the plant's owner, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, announced a six- to nine-month plan to restore normal cooling systems and shut down the damaged reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. Japan's government has designated the situation a top-scale nuclear disaster. Nishiyama said he did not know whether the data recorded Sunday would affect the timetable laid out by Tokyo Electric, which had been under pressure to lay out a timetable to resolve the crisis. No data has yet been reported from the No. 2 reactor, which is believed to be leaking an undetermined portion of the 6-7 cubic meters (1,600-1,800 gallons) of fresh water being pumped into it every day. The plan laid out Sunday would bring an end to that improvised solution, which has left workers scrambling to find places to contain the vast amounts of contaminated water that have flooded the basements of the units.
  
  Situation Update No. 90 - On 18.04.2011 at 12:33 GMT+2.
  
  Remote-controlled robots and workers controlling them have recorded high levels of radiation inside and around two reactor buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, safety officials said Monday. The U.S.-built robot probes measured radiation doses as high as 57 millisieverts inside the housing for reactor No. 3 and up to 49 millisieverts inside the No. 1 reactor building, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency reported. Levels found between the double doors of the airlocks of the reactor buildings were much higher -- 270 millisieverts in the case of reactor No. 1 and 170 millsieverts in No. 3, the agency said. By comparison, the average resident of an industrialized country receives a dose of about 3 millisieverts per year. Emergency standards for plant workers battling the month-old nuclear disaster limit their annual exposure to 250 millisieverts, while a CT scan produces just under 7 and a chest X-ray delivers a one-time dose of about .05 millisieverts. Doses above 100 millisieverts can increase the long-term risk of cancer, while 1,000 millisieverts can produce radiation sickness. There was no immediate explanation for the much-higher radiation levels recorded in the airlocks, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, the safety agency's chief spokesman.Source : Here .

• Obama’s Ultimate Insult to the Jews on Pesach.(AtlasShrugs).In Obama's dissolute Passover message, the infiltrator praises the rise of Islamic annihilationists in the Middle East. You can't make this stuff up. He can't help himself, that is how sick his soul is.The idea that Obama would equate the rise of the Jew-hating Muslim Brotherhood across Egypt, Bahrain, and the whole of the Middle East and North Africa with the Jews' four-hundred-year struggle for freedom from slavery and relentless persecution can only be described as wicked, vicious.

Obama, the Interpreter of the Message of Passover Israel National News.

Passover recalls the bondage and suffering of Jews in Egypt and the miracle of the Exodus, but U.S. President Barack Obama says its message is reflected in Muslim uprisings.In his annual message, prior to his third straight participation in the Passover Seder, President Obama stated, “The story of Passover…instructs each generation to remember its past, while appreciating the beauty of freedom and the responsibility it entails. This year that ancient instruction is reflected in the daily headlines as we see modern stories of social transformation and liberation unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa.”No other people have so consistently oppressed, brutalized, and humiliated the Jews as the Muslims have over the past 1,400 years.Having constructed a link between the Arab uprisings and Chosen People's experiencing the miracles of the Creator that led them out of Egypt and towards the receiving of the Ten Commandments, the President concluded, "As Jewish families gather for this joyous celebration of freedom, let us all be thankful for the gifts that have been bestowed upon us, and let us work to alleviate the suffering, poverty, injustice, and hunger of those who are not yet free.”For good measure, he also added the Hebrew term “Chag Samayach,” which means “Have a happy holiday.”Hmmmm.......every righteous Jew or Christian should refuse to vote for this 'person'.Read the full story here.

• Japan  : For the most accurate info on the nuclear disaster go to : Paul Langley's Nuclear History Blog

• Libya death toll 'touches 10,000'.(Al-Jazeera).Opposition claim comes as UN gets humanitarian access to Misurata and efforts are on to evacuate those stranded.Al Jazeera's Jonah Hull managed to reach Misurata aboard an aid ship and found a city living under the threat of bombardment and with growing shortages of food, water, fuel and electricity.At least 20 people died while queuing for bread when Grad rockets rained down on them, our correspondent said. Many residents have taken refuge in mosques and schools."There is no safe place left here," a woman from Sudan told Al Jazeera.Many black African migrants have been living in tents on the road outside the port awaiting rescue for weeks."Right now we don't know what is going to happen. We are afraid we are going to die here," Ghanaian Kusi Thomas said.UN sanctions, designed to constrain Gaddafi, have prevented rebels from selling oil to raise funds themselves.So far, the rebels have only been able to export small quantities of oil with the help of Qatar.Frattini said Rome remained opposed to sending ground troops to Libya, although the European Union said it is a move they are considering.The European Union (EU) says that it is prepared to send up to a thousand soldiers to Libya if requested by the United Nations, on what Catherine Ashton, the European Union's Foreign Policy Chief, says will be "strictly a humanitarian mission".Read the full story here.

• HT:BigGovernment.Talk About Heavily Edited! Where Is The Full Recording Of Obama’s Open Mic Moment?Does anyone out there know where we can find a copy of the full recording of His Presidency’s comments to donors in Chicago, made accidentally over an open mic?We have only been able to find select “heavily edited” moments from the recording.CBS broke the story by releasing the following short clip containing just Obama’s comments about the Republicans thinking he is stupid, and His Presidency’s comments on Paul Ryan : But where is the audio of the section where the President of the United States of America referred to some Americans as “slugs?”He did opine that some employees “are slugs and not trying to do their job. But that’s true of any large institution.”If His Presidency of the United States referred to a group of Americans as “slugs” and it was recorded, that is news and we deserve to hear it. At least so that we might judge for ourselves just how much insight his comments provide on his assessment of the American people. For all we know, it sounds better than it reads, but it reads pretty bad.Here is the audio of the section where the President of the Untied States laments that there is not enough revolutionary spirit in Qatar because they are too economically successful:There’s no big move towards democracy in Qatar,” Obama said. “But you know part of the reason is that the per capita income of Qatar is 145,000 dollars a year. That will dampen a lot of conflict,” he added.You would be forgiven for concluding that His Presidency would like to people of Qatar to suffer economic hardship, cynically, so that there would be more fertile ground for revolution. Can you imagine the headlines if President Bush had said the same thing about any one of the Socialist death camps like Cuba or Venezuela?But returning to the subject at hand, why is CBS only releasing a “heavily edited” version of this tape? And why aren’t all the media experts and critics demanding the full release of the complete recording?We certainty concede that we might simply be looking in the wrong place, or that we are ignorant as to when the recording ended and the first hand reports began, but we would sure like to know where the FULL UNEDITED RECORDING of His Presidency’s comments can be found.It seems like every time certain bloggers and video activists release damning candid material, the media elites demand the full recordings as a form of journalistic purity test.Live up to your own code ABC, CBS, NBC, Etc… Release the full recording and transcript of His Presidency’s potentially damning comments.Hmmmm......Who's the Voice behind the teleprompter?Read the full story here.

• 'Quartet may recognize Palestinian state'.Foreign diplomats warn that if Netanyahu fails to present new peace plan soon, superpowers may officially endorse Palestinian state in 1967 border, with east Jerusalem as its capital.American and European diplomats warned that if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fails to present a new peace initiative soon, the Quartet may be compelled to recognize a Palestinian State in the 1967 borders, with east Jerusalem as its capital, the Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday.According to the report, Netanyahu is under mounting pressure to unveil a new plan that would jump-start the deadlocked negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.If the prime minister does not deliver, the Quartet members – which include the United State, Russia, The European Union and the United Nations – may opt to resume the peace process by officially endorsing a Palestinian state. "The Israelis are facing a bit of pressure with the way things are proceeding," a western diplomat stationed in Israel told the newspaper. "People are starting to look to the US for some kind of action," he added. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hinted last week that the international community may apply pressure on both sides in order to promote a settlement to the longstanding conflict, which she said was as pressing as ever given recent developments in the Arab world."The status quo between Palestinians and Israelis is no more sustainable than the political systems that have crumbled in recent months," Clinton said during a speech at the US-Islamic World Forum in Washington.Analysts have claimed the US postponed a Quartet meeting, which was scheduled to take place in Berlin last week, due to Washington's reservations vis-à-vis the European peace initiative.Hmmmm......Who would have guessed that Obama would stab Israel in the back?Happy Pesach indeed Hussein!What could go wrong?Read the full story here.

• Could Your Shotgun Soon be Outlawed? Maybe, If the ATF Has Its Way.(TheBlaze).What’s the definition of a “shotgun?” According to Dictionary.com it’s “a smoothbore gun for firing small shot to kill birds and small quadrupeds, though often used with buckshot to kill larger animals.” For the gun enthusiasts, that’s only partly true, as there is also the option of using slugs. But what if there’s another addition that will soon be added to the definition? How about, illegal.In a series of fascinating, and eerie, posts over at the blog Beregond’s Bar (and linked on Redstate.com), author “Tom” pens a four-part series on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and their new campaign to change the definition of the term “shotgun.” A change, based on a recent study,* that could soon make some of them illegal. But as Tom points out, the implications for all guns are chilling.

Part 1, which focuses on changing the term “sporting use” in order to ban certain shotguns:

The Obama administration is seeking once again to do via regulation what they would never be able to do via legislation. This time shotguns are in the crosshairs, specifically certain popular imported weapons.Sporting use is one of the three main thrusts of gun control efforts in America. The other two are racism and those who openly advocate complete bans except for military and police. (The complete ban advocates often hide under cover of sporting use, but that and the racist history of gun control are topics for another day.

Sporting use was how the original distinction was made about what weapons would be subject to a special tax in the National Firearms Act (NFA) in 1934, and again in Title II of the Gun Control Act of 1968. The congressional power to tax was used selectively to make ownership of weapons the government didn’t like burdensome and expensive. This was gun control via the back door, as even the ATF admits. As would become the pattern, politicians found that actually dealing with crime and criminals was difficult and expensive. Blaming guns and passing a law to look like they were doing something about it was much simpler.

Part 2, which notes that the administration and the ATF’s definition of “sporting use” includes a list of things that cannot apply to such use. Things that are common in hunting and self-defense.Hmmmm.......Goodbye 'Standing militia' hellooooo dictatorship?Read the full story here.

• HT:BigPeace.King Demands Answers from Holder: Why Did DOJ Drop Muslim Brotherhood Prosecutions?Muslim Brotherhood front groups– like CAIR, ISNA, NAIT and others– will now have a new reason to hate Peter King. Today, the House Homeland Security Committee chairman is demanding to know why Eric Holder’s Justice Department decided not to go after the numerous unindicted coconspirators named in the largest terrorist financing trial in American history, US v Holy Land Foundation.

King’s tough statement comes on the heels of two revealing investigative reports by Big Peace’s Patrick Poole at Pajamas Media. (See both Andy McCarthy at The Corner and Frank Gaffney here at Big Peace for more.) Poole’s inside source believes that Holder, Obama or other well-placed White House decision-makers were afraid of going after Muslim Brotherhood fronts like CAIR, ISNA and NAIT because of embarrassment caused by their own agencies’ dealings with these very same groups.

Even more shocking: allegedly, the FBI may have wire-transfers from one such unindicted coconspirator group directly to Hamas. However, this group owns the deeds to a massive number of America’s mosques. The prosecution of this group would potentially place the US government in the very politically “sensitive” position of– at least temporarily– holding the deeds to Islamic centers and mosques around the country. This is many bridges too far for the likes of the Obama administration. After all, who’d be left to dine with the president during iftar?Here’s Rep. King’s press release below the fold. Let’s hope he gets to the bottom of this soon:

Washington, D.C. (Monday, April 18, 2011) – ­U.S. Rep. Peter T. King (R-NY), Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, has demanded an explanation from Attorney General Eric Holder as to why he decided not to prosecute the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), its co-founder Omar Ahmad, and other named unindicted co-conspirators in the Hamas terror finance case, United States v. Holy Land Foundation. The other unindicted co-conspirators include the Islamic Society of North America and the North American Islamic Trust.In a letter to Holder, King wrote: “I have been reliably informed that the decision not to seek indictments of the Council on American Islamic Relations (“CAIR”) and its co-founder Omar Ahmad, the Islamic Society of North America (“ISNA”), and the North American Islamic Trust (“NAIT”), was usurped by high-ranking officials at Department of Justice headquarters over the vehement and stated objections of special agents and supervisors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Dallas, who had investigated and successfully prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation case. Their opposition to this decision raises serious doubt that the decision not to prosecute was a valid exercise of prosecutorial discretion.”I request that you provide answers to the following questions:

What are the reasons for the Department’s decisions not to prosecute CAIR, ISNA, NAIT and Mr. Ahmad, who is a CAIR co-founder and former head of the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States?

Who made the final decision not to prosecute? Who, if anyone, from the Executive Office of the President, consulted with, advised, or otherwise communicated with the Department of Justice, in electronic, oral or written form, regarding the Department’s decision to not seek indictments of CAIR, ISNA, NAIT and Mr. Ahmad?

How does and will the Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation address the potential for CAIR, ISNA, or NAIT to engage in terrorism financing? What policies with regard to those organizations have you implemented to address that threat?

I believe that in order to maintain the credibility of the Department, there should be full transparency into the Department’s decision. Please respond to this letter by April 25, 2011. If you have any questions regarding this letter, please contact Kevin Carroll at (202)226-8417.Sincerely,PETER T. KING - Chairman.Hmmmm......Now that's going to produce a lot of high wind.Read the full story here.

• Obama Empire Strikes Back on My PJM ‘Holdergate’ Reporting: We Blame Bush!!!(PajamasMedia).Now House Homeland Security Committee chairman Rep. Peter King (R-NY) has sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder inquiring about the details of our report. In the letter dated Friday, April 15, King asks for Holder’s reasons for dropping these terror finance prosecutions.In his letter, he goes beyond my own reporting and states that the DOJ decision was made:

…over the vehement and stated objections of special agents and supervisors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Dallas, who had investigated and successfully prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation case.

But now we’re starting to get wind of the Obama administration’s response. Fearful that this could easily turn into “Holdergate,” the administration is trying to spin its way out of this potential morass by returning to an old standard: WE BLAME BUSH!!That’s right. The excuse they are currently floating to their friends in the establishment media to explain the decision not to prosecute CAIR officials and the other Islamic leaders implicated in the Holy Land Foundation case (all of whom had been named unindicted co-conspirators) is that the Bush administration chose not to prosecute them in 2004 and they were just reaffirming what John Ashcroft had decided way back when.There are considerable problems with Holder’s fallback position — though admittedly it will be enough of a bone for the administration’s lapdogs in the establishment media to chew on to attack my “vast right-wing” reporting.The first obstacle with blaming Bush for this decision is that according to my high-ranking DOJ source, the decision made by Ashcroft and his Bush administration successors was not to never prosecute the CAIR officials and other Islamic leaders, but that they would go after them now, choosing to prosecute the case systematically as they do in many other federal prosecutions.Here’s what my source said:

It was always the plan to initially go after the [Holy Land Foundation] leaders first and then go after the rest of the accomplices in a second round of prosecutions. From a purely legal point of view, the case was solid. Jim Jacks [the U.S. attorney in Dallas who prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation executives] and his team were ready to go. There’s a mountain of evidence against all of these groups that was never introduced during the Holy Land trial and it is damning. We’ve got them on wiretaps. That’s exactly why many of these leaders and groups were named unindicted co-conspirators in the first round of prosecutions. [emphasis added]That’s quite different from what the Obama administration is now trying to float. They’re now claiming that the Bush administration never intended to prosecute any of the co-conspirators. But there’s a considerable gap between “not now” and “not ever.” Hopefully members of Congress won’t be so quick to fall for the bait and will demand proof that this was the Bush administration’s plan all along.Secondly, it seems a little odd that the Obama administration, which, mind you, was elected after campaigning vigorously that the Bush administration had been guilty of politicizing the Department of Justice, would fall back on the alleged decisions of that same administration.Fortunately, however, it doesn’t seem that Congress is going to be so quick to let the matter drop. According to a few sources on the Hill I spoke with late Monday, they believe that this attempt to pin the blame on Bush in this looming “Holdergate” scandal reeks of desperation. So they don’t intend to back down. Let’s hope that’s the case.Read the full story here.

• It's All Coming Apart. (AmericanThinker)By Monty Pelerin.Despite Government propaganda and manipulated statistics to the contrary, our economy continues to deteriorate. For every "green shoot" highlighted by the Government and its lackey media, multiple contra-examples are cited by independent analysts. To continue to deny reality risks credibility. Perhaps that is why S&P, arguably a sock-puppet of Wall Street, on Monday made its announcement regarding the financial condition of the US. As reported by the Wall Street Journal: Standard & Poor's Ratings Services Inc. cut its outlook on the U.S. to negative, increasing the likelihood of a potential downgrade from its triple-A rating, as the path from large budget deficits and rising government debt remains unclear.Fitch and Moody's have not yet seen fit to change their ratings. Preservation of the little credibility the ratings agencies have left will force them to follow in the course of time.Massive amounts of debt must be liquidated. But confidence also must be restored. Doug Casey characterizes our economic climate thusly:

We are in a financial no-man's land. "Investing" is problematic because of a deteriorating economy, unpredictable and increasing regulation, rising interest rates and wildly fluctuating prices.

Mr. Casey's negatives are enough to stop business investing, hiring, and growth dead in their tracks.Contrary to the way that economics is taught, there is no such thing as an economic machine where a "pump can be primed" or the economy can be "stimulated." All there are millions of individuals all making decisions designed to enable them to navigate through life. For most, their primary objective is the financial and physical security of themselves and their families. In scary economic times, these decisions are affected. In order to right the economy, the fear and uncertainty imposed by existing and future government mandates and actions alluded to by Mr. Casey must be removed. Doing so will not be easy, for more is in play than Mr. Casey's short quote suggests. There are at least five considerations that should be of concern to all of us:

1. An Incompetent President - The President is inexperienced and incompetent. He is likely a fraud, as evidenced by his guarded and unknown past. He is incapable of leadership, honesty, or management. Virtually every one of his policy initiatives has been harmful to the economy and country. His intentions are clear; the degree to which he will be able to drive us further down the Road to Serfdom is not.

2. An Incompetent Political Class - The political class attained power via Santa Claus economics, providing gifts to constituents in return for votes. Both parties are guilty. Politicians have conditioned themselves and their constituents to "free-lunch" governance. Few know how to govern in any other fashion. Most are indistinguishable from prostitutes -- vote for me and I will do "that" for you. Both parties want to preserve the welfare-warfare State, disagreeing merely on the means of doing so.

3. An Incorrect Paradigm - The Keynesian model of spend and spend has been good for politicians but disastrous for the economy. Over time, it has encouraged loose credit, overspending, and living beyond our means. The failures are obvious to all but Statists and so-called Keynesian economists. The political class cannot stop "free lunches" without suffering severe political consequences. Hence, the abuses will continue until resources are exhausted. Like Rome of old, we will soon run out of bread and circuses.

4. An Unhappy Ending - Current economic problems cannot be mitigated or solved without incurring another Great Depression. Whether it is preceded by a deflationary collapse or a hyperinflationary blow-off is moot. The ending is inevitable and as more people understand this ending, they take more extreme steps to protect themselves -- spending ratchets back, savings increases, and businesses refuse to engage in new investment or hiring.

5. A Dangerous Prelude to the Ending - Government is insolvent. It would be bankrupt without Federal Reserve Quantitative Easing. As a cornered, wounded animal will do anything to survive, so will Government. Does that mean confiscatory tax rates, capital controls, IRA investments forced into Treasury Bonds, "excess profits" taxes, a national sales tax, etc., etc.? It could mean any or all of these and more. Government will not roll over. It will do whatever it can to continue, regardless of how illegal, immoral, unethical, or harmful it may be for the country. John Maynard Keynes referred to "animal spirits." Alan Greenspan used the term "irrational exuberance." Both expressions acknowledged the importance of expectations and anticipations. The five factors listed above are not universally known or accepted. As they become more evident, the dismal level of animal spirits and exuberance will sink even lower. There can be no recovery under such conditions.The charade that government can solve this problem may continue for a while. So might the notion that the government cannot go bankrupt. Yet both beliefs are false and will be seen to be so. Spending, hiring, and investment will be unresponsive to anything the government may or can do. The myth of government is breaking down around the world. For those with 20-20 vision, the Emperor is already seen sans clothes.Read the full story here.

• Brazil: Iranian cleric recruiting for Islam…in time for the World Cup and the Olympics.(Faustasblog).Brazil will be hosting the World Cup in 2014, and the Olympics in 2016. Meantime, Mohsen Rabbani, an Iranian cleric who is wanted by Interpol in connection with two terrorist attacks in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 that killed 114 people, is in charge of converting young Brazilian men to Islam and training them in Iran.Reinaldo Azevedo blogs at Veja (link in Portuguese) that once converted to Islam, the young Brazilian men will travel to Iran, all expenses paid, with the official objective of “religious instruction.”Rabbani is considered one the two masterminds of the Buenos Aires attacks, and is also wanted for his involvement in terrorist acts of 2006, according to Veja’s report “Now based in Iran, he continues to play a significant role in propagating extremism in Latin America”, said Alberto Nisman, chief investigator at the Argentinian Public Ministry special unit for terrorism.Veja reports that three groups of Brazilians have traveled to Iran for “religious instruction.” The participants are hand-picked by Rabbani.Hmmmm....Why does the shooter of the Rio Shool come to mind?Ah yes he was a recent Islamic convert!Read the full story here.

• The President’s “matching deficit reduction” claim is off by a trillion dollars (or more).(KeithHennessey).In his weekly radio address the President said : Now, one plan put forward by some Republicans in the House of Representatives aims to reduce our deficit by $4 trillion over the next ten years.… That’s why I’ve proposed a balanced approach that matches that $4 trillion in deficit reduction.In the radio address the President did not give a timeframe for his $4 trillion in deficit reduction. He did in his budget speech last Wednesday, however : So today, I’m proposing a more balanced approach to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over 12 years.$4 trillion in deficit reduction over 12 years does not “match” $4 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years. It’s not even close.The twelve year timeframe is a red flag. Federal budgets are measured over 1, 5, and 10 year timeframes. Any other length “budget window” is nonstandard and suggests someone is playing games.The President and his team have not yet provided sufficient detail for us to know precisely how his $4 trillion of deficit reduction is distributed over this 12 year window, but we can make some back-of-the-envelope guesses to get a feel for the magnitudes involved.It’s fairly easy to see what’s going on here. The President decided on about $3 trillion of deficit reduction over 10 years, maybe a little less. He wanted to claim that he was “matching” the Ryan plan in deficit reduction, but was just achieving that same goal in a better way. Matching Republican deficit reduction is a lynchpin of the President’s fiscal argument. He was short by a trillion dollars or more, so he and his team decided to measure his proposal over a different timeframe and hope no one would notice. They lengthened the window by which they would measure the President’s deficit reduction until they matched the $4 trillion over 10 years in the Ryan plan and came up with 12 years.Yes, these conclusions are based on my assumption of the President’s proposed deficit reduction path. We will see if anyone who challenges that assumption wants to provide their own alternate path that leads to a fundamentally different conclusion. We will also see if the Administration provides us with their actual deficit reduction path.The President’s new budget plan provides insufficient detail to support his claim of $4 trillion of deficit reduction over 12 years. But if we stipulate that amount, it is likely that the President’s new budget proposal would result in $1 trillion more debt over the next ten years compared to the House-passed Ryan plan, and maybe more.The President was therefore wildly incorrect when he said, referring to the House-passed Ryan budget plan, “I’ve proposed a balanced approach that matches that $4 trillion in deficit reduction.”Hmmmm......Don't listen to what i say, but notice what i do?Read the full story here.

• Obama Accused of 'Dereliction of Duty' for Refusing to Defend Marriage Law.(CNSNews.com) – Ed Whelan, former Department of Justice legal counsel in the George W. Bush administration, testified on Friday that President Barack Obama’s refusal to have his Justice Department defend the “Defense of Marriage Act” in federal court is a “dereliction of duty” and part of an ongoing effort to advance homosexual marriage.“The Obama administration's decision to abandon defense of DOMA reflects a sharp departure from the Department of Justice's longstanding practice of defending congressional enactments,” said Whelan, who is president of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center.Whelan said the Obama administration “has subordinated its legal duty to its desire to please a favored and powerful political constituency, and it is eager to obscure from the public its stealth campaign to induce the courts to invent a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.”Speaking at a “Defending Marriage” hearing of the House Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee on Apr. 15, Whelan explained that the Obama administration was, in fact, using a legal strategy to advance its homosexual agenda.Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) said in opening the April 15 hearing that he believed gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender interest groups influenced Obama’s decision on DOMA.“The president and his administration had a duty to defend the Defense of Marriage Act but powerful constituencies of the president did not want to president to defend it and, unfortunately, politics trumped duty,” Franks said.Hmmmm........" and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States"?Read the full story here.

• U.S. artist's controversial 'Piss Christ' attacked by vandals in France.A controversial piece of art which shows a crucifix bathed in urine has been vandalised in a gallery in southern France.Police are today searching for the vandals who targeted the piece in Avignon just hours after 800 protesters held a demonstration against it.The work by U.S. artist Andres Serrano - called 'Piss Christ' - is supposed to make a statement about the misuse of religion.But when the part taxpayer-funded 1987 piece - which has also been described as 'blasphemous' - first went on display in the U.S. it was so controversial that it sparked a fierce debate about whether art should be publicly funded at all.Mr Serrano's work has previously been targeted by vandals while on display in Sweden and Australia.Police said two people tried to enter the museum late on Sunday morning carrying a can of paint spray and a chisel in their jackets.A guard removed the objects - just as a third person took a hammer to the piece.The attacker struggled with a guard, but helped by an accomplice, managed to escape, police said.French culture minister Frederic Mitterand described the incident as an 'attack on the freedom of creation'.Staff had closed early on Saturday because of the protest.A worker, who asked to remain anonymous, said that they had also received death threats.'Several people have called saying, "If you open, you're dead",' one museum worker said.'We're nervous and we have asked for protection from the police.'It was unclear whether the attack was linked to the earlier demonstration.Serrano made the controversial work by placing a crucifix in urine and blood, and it has drawn criticism in the past from some Christian groups.Young far-Right Christian activists from the General Alliance Against Racism and the Respect of the French and Christian Identity are taking the Collection Lambert to court tomorrow to try to have the crucifix photograph removed from the exhibit.The group denounced the photograph on its website, saying it 'insults and injures Christians at the heart of their faith'.Hmmm....."The Lord works in mysterious ways"?Read the full story here.

• HT:Memri.Khamenei Advisor To Saudi Arabia: You Too Will Be Attacked.Yahya Rahim Safavi, senior advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and former commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), has condemned the entrance of Saudi forces into Bahrain. Hinting at the entrance of U.S. troops into Saudi territory, he warned Saudi Arabia that the day would come when Saudi Arabia itself would fall victim to an attack like that in Bahrain.Hmmmm.....It seems the snakes are out of the bag?Read the full story here.

• HT:Memri.Palestinian Legislative Council Deputy Speaker and Hamas Senior Official: The Revolutions in the Arab World – A Prelude to an Islamic Caliphate.

Q: "How does the PLC view the wave of youth revolutions sweeping the Arab street?"

A: "There is no doubt that the [practices of the Arab dictatorships] – the violation of people's dignity, the denial of their rights, the denial of justice and liberty, the spread of oppression and of moral and financial corruption, the holding of elections as a [mere] formality, followed by the announcement of [the ruling party's] victory by imaginary margins, and the usurpation of power by force – are what aroused the rage of the Arab peoples and caused them to rise up in order to restore their liberty and rights. In Egypt, considered the most important country in the Arab and Islamic world, there are the Camp David Accords, which have kept the Egyptian people in fetters, and there is [the issue of the natural] gas, which is sold to the Zionist citizen at a cheaper price than to the Egyptian citizen. An analogy can made to what happened in Tunisia and Libya... As a legislative council, we support the peoples who rebelled against the corrupt regimes, and the restoration of liberty and justice.

"I would like to say that these [revolutions] are [merely] a prelude to the Islamic Caliphate... [whose establishment] the Prophet [Muhammad] foretold in the hadith: 'You will have the prophecy, according to Allah's will. Then will He put an end to it, according to His will. And then there will be a Caliphate by way of prophecy, according to the will of Allah... And there will be a biting kingdom [i.e., an oppressive rule], according to the will of Allah... [and then] a kingdom of coercion, according to the will of Allah... Then there will be a Caliphate by way of prophecy,' etc. The [term] 'kingdom of coercion,' as the hadith [commentators] explained, refers to the dictatorships that oppressed, cheated, killed, and destroyed. These were [created by] Western and American industry, which paved the way for the plundering of all the [Muslim] ummah's resources – its oil and its agriculture. I hope that this awakening heralds the establishment of a Caliphate by way of prophecy, according to the will of Allah..."Read the full story here.