As the Obama administrations engages in an awkward and uncertain recalibration of its policy towards the Middle East since of the emergence of the caliphate of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi–the Islamic State–the internal debate amongst the President’s inner circle is being mirrored by pundits on both the Right and the Left. They have vastly different perceptions of the degree of threat the Islamic State poses to the United States, however they share a common disaffection with President Barack Obama’s policymaking.

The rightwing media pundits excoriate Obama as an incompetent in the face of hordes of ISIS jihadists stealthily penetrating the nation’s southern border, aiming to engage in a multitude of attacks against individual Americans. On the other extreme of the ideological divide, liberal media commentators, particularly on one cable news network, seize upon any alarm being sounded by those on the Right as sure evidence of conservative hysteria, clear proof that any claims of a threat being directed at the United States by ISIS are simply wildly exaggerated scare-mongering.

I think they are both wrong.

Neither the Right nor the Left  in America have any credible insights into the strategy, goals and tactical doctrine of the Islamic State. I recall the media response to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s first public appearance at the Great Al-Nuri  Mosque located in the second largest city in Iraq, Mosul, soon after its capture by the caliph’s army.  There was universal scorn espoused by mainstream media representing the entire political spectrum, with more attention devoted to what brand of luxury watch al-Baghdadi was wearing on his wrist rather than the content and meaning of the violent and threatening words pouring from his lips. While the public discourse may have adopted a new script since then, it remains characterized by superficiality.

If it is not for the media pundits to diagnose the threat posed by the Islamic State, can America’s intelligence community be relied upon to perform better? The evidence is not reassuring. The most fateful miscalculation the U.S. has made to date in the region has been the invasion of Iraq mounted in 2003–an intervention which, to his credit, Obama opposed at the time–which opened the Pandora’s box that fueled the jihadist movements in the heart of the Middle East. The justification for that disastrous military escapade was based on the premise of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which we now know was a fallacy. What we must remind ourselves of is that the world’s most expensive intelligence community lacked a single credible human source in the nation its military was planning to invade. In 2014 the intelligence picture is no more reassuring. It is likely that the United States has no human sources operating within the inner command structure of the Islamic State. That being the case, the policymakers in Washington, and the ideological media pundits of both the Right and the Left, lack any substantive basis to construct a meaningful threat assessment with respect to the intentions of al-Baghdadi and his caliphate towards the United States.

What we are left with are the words spoken by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Mosul in early July of this year.  There is no ambiguity or subtlety in his message. The creation of the caliphate is not an end in itself, but merely the means to achieving the ultimate end, which is total victory for the religion of Allah–Islam. “So take up arms, take up arms, O soldiers of the Islamic State! And fight, fight!,” proclaimed the caliph to his followers, reinforcing his message that the Islamic State’s raison d’être was waging perpetual war and inflicting vengeance against the “unbelievers” until their complete destruction and submission (https://ia902501.us.archive.org/2/items/hym3_22aw/english.pdf).

Though  al-Baghdadi defines the entire non-Islamic world as the enemy, and adds to the list Muslims he views as collaborators with those enemies, in the hierarchy of targets it is the “crusaders,”  primarily represented by the United States and Russia, who are at the top of the hierarchy of  “unbelievers.” Accordingly, I would infer from his speech the intention of attacking the United States. Furthermore, based on the observable military characteristics of the Islamic State, one can see clear evidence of well conceived strategic planning, effective tactical execution on the battlefield, the ability to think long-term and, most importantly, utter ruthlessness in the infliction of maximum casualties upon its enemies.

I don’t have a crystal ball, however, any serious observer and analyst of the intentions and capabilities of the Islamic State must conclude that their command authority is constantly thinking of ways and means of inflicting maximum damage on the United States, and should they succeed, I fear the consequences would surpass that horrible day of September 11, 2001.

If Hillary Clinton runs for President of the United States  in 2016, see the video about the book that warned back in 2008 what a second Clinton presidency would mean for the USA:

CLICK ON IMAGE TO VIEW VIDEO Hillary Clinton Nude

The latest in a rash of credit rating reductions that has ensued since the onset of the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis occurred on July 9. One of the three major global credit ratings agencies, Standard & Poor’s, has cut its valuation on Italian government debt. Rome’s credit rating was cut from BBB plus to BBB. In addition to reducing the Italian sovereign debt credit rating by one notch, S & P posted a negative outlook on the Italian fiscal situation.

Italy is one of the so-called PIIGS nations, those entities in the Eurozone most vulnerable to fiscal and economic shocks. Despite the illusion that the European Central Bank has everything under control, Italy-like many other Eurozone nations, remains gripped and economically paralyzed by the ongoing sovereign debt crisis.

If Hillary Clinton runs for President of the United States  in 2016, see the video about the book that warned back in 2008 what a second Clinton presidency would mean for the USA:

YouTube

Hillary Clinton Nude

Hillary Clinton Nude

YouTube

HILLARY CLINTON NUDE

WALL STREET KILLS--A CHILLING NOVEL ABOUT WALL STREET GREED GONE MAD

To view the official trailer YouTube video for “Wall Street Kills,” click image below:

Wall Street Kills-Official Trailer

In a world dominated by high finance, how far would Wall Streetgo in search of profits? In Sheldon Filger’s terrifying novel about money, sex and murder, Wall Street has no limits. “Wall Street Kills” is the ultimate thriller about greed gone mad. Read “Wall Street Kills” and blow your mind.

As the Dow Jones surpasses previous records, in nominal terms, the striking contrast between fantasies on Wall Street, subsidized  by the Federal Reserve, and what is transpiring in the real global economy is best demonstrated by the latest data emerging from Europe. The unemployment disaster in the Eurozone, a by-product of the Eurozone fiscal and debt crisis and austerity-driven policy prescriptions, continues to worsen. The official unemployment rate in the European monetary union countries has now reached 12 percent, a record level.

While discordant and asymmetrical records are being recorded on Wall Street and in Europe, the very fabric of European society is fraying. The 12 percent unemployment figure is, of course, uneven. It is much worse in countries that are most afflicted by the sovereign debt crisis, especially Spain and Greece. But the countries in the core of the Eurozone, in particular Germany, with more robust economies, cannot forever see their job markets immune. They are export dependent, and many of those exports are to countries in the Eurozone with legion of unemployed. Inevitably, export-driven economies in the Eurozone such as Germany will see a day of reckoning within their own job markets, as the economic, fiscal and debt crisis continues to ravage the Eurozone with reckless abandon, most recently witnessed with the banking catastrophe in Cyprus.

WALL STREET KILLS--A CHILLING NOVEL ABOUT WALL STREET GREED GONE MAD

To view the official trailer YouTube video for “Wall Street Kills,” click image below:

Wall Street Kills-Official Trailer

In a world dominated by high finance, how far would Wall Streetgo in search of profits? In Sheldon Filger’s terrifying novel about money, sex and murder, Wall Street has no limits. “Wall Street Kills” is the ultimate thriller about greed gone mad. Read “Wall Street Kills” and blow your mind.

To view the YouTube video overview of “Wall Street Kills,” click image below:

For about two weeks, a seemingly spontaneous protest movement has evolved in the financial district of New York, dubbing itself the “Occupy Wall Street Movement.” Supposedly leaderless, there seems to be a core of ideologically committed individuals utilizing social media to empower a protest movement aimed squarely at the financial oligarchy that dominates the American political establishment, and particularly its economic and fiscal policymaking. The organizers of this self-described “leaderless” movement openly state that their methods are inspired by the protest movement of the Arab Spring.

On Saturday, October 1 more than 700 protesters were arrested by the New York Police Department. Previously, the NYPD had been accused by not only the protesters but media observers of engaging in brutality and unwarranted violence against peaceful protesters.  It is not likely that the mass arrests will attenuate these protests; the opposite actually seems to be the case.

Why is the “Occupy Wall Street Movement” protesting in Manhattan’s financial district? The website of the movement states:

“Occupy Wall Street is a leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that we are the 99 percent that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1 percent.”

While it is too early to determine the future course of this movement, and whether or not it is a flash in the pan or a self-sustaining phenomenon that could lead to a full-scale national, revolutionary mass protest movement, I think the following observation is in order. The arrest of 700 plus protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge in the brief period of an afternoon is not an everyday occurrence  in the United States. The fact that so many middle class and especially younger people are out on the streets openly railing against America’s financial oligarchy is at the very least a concrete manifestation that in the economic depression that has swept the land, the emerging generation of Americans has lost faith in the country’s politicians, feels alienated from the political culture and is increasingly hostile to those it perceives as the wire-pullers of the nation’s economic and political life and dispossessors of the future for the vast majority of Americans. Though the movement describes itself as leaderless, should a leadership emerge this movement has the potential to grow and morph into a revolutionary form of resistance to the ruling circles of contemporary America. If that happens, based on the police response to date, will those who dominate decision-making in America  unleash repression to suppress this movement? Time will tell, but as America’s economic situation grows worse and President Barack Obama’s mantra of hope and change becomes increasingly dysfunctional and irrelevant, the potential for massive social unrest in the United States grows and may eventually reach a point of critical mass, leading to unforeseen but potentially radical consequences.

A few weeks before these antics a more sober assessment of America’s banking health was delivered at the National Press Club in Washington by Dr. Martin D. Weiss, the head of Weiss Research, a global investment research firm. Previously, Weiss had accurately forecast the demise of Bear Stearns and the implosion of the U.S. investment-banking sector. However, at the National Press Club he offered a more chilling prediction: 1,568 U.S. banks and thrifts risk failure. Included in that number are several of the largest American banks, including J.P. Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Sun Trust Bank and HSBC Bank USA. The numbers and depth of the banking problem highlighted by Dr. Weiss are far larger and much more ominous than has been portrayed by the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and FDIC. He backed up his dire analysis with documentation and precise mathematical modeling. For example, he refers to the government’s justification for a hideously expensive taxpayer bailout of AIG, based on the firm’s exposure to the fragile investment vehicles known as Credit Default Swaps, or CDS. The policymakers maintain that AIG’s $2 trillion in CDS exposure represented an unacceptable systemic risk, meaning AIG was “too big to fail.” However, Weiss points out that Citigroup alone holds a portfolio of $2.9 trillion in Credit Default Swaps, while J.P. Morgan Chase possesses a staggering $9.2 trillion of these toxic instruments, about five times the exposure that led AIG to demand that the government rescue it, or see the global financial system implode.

The essential point Dr. Weiss made at his press conference is that the degree of exposure U.S. banks have to a variety of toxic assets is beyond what the U.S. government and, by extension, the American taxpayer is financially capable of rescuing. Continued bailouts of insolvent banking institutions will not repair a broken financial order, but may very well cripple the overall economy.

Earlier, NYU economics professor Nouriel Roubini had already gone on record as declaring that much of the U.S. banking sector was functionally insolvent, and that bailing out zombie financial institutions would only replicate the Japanese “lost decade” of the 1990s, when Tokyo’s preference for keeping alive insolvent banks instead of closing them down led to a prolonged L-shaped recession. Roubini and other critics of both Bush and Obama administration policies on bank bailouts have looked to the Swedish model for resolving a profound banking crisis, which involved temporary short-term nationalization, closing down insolvent banks, while those banks that can be salvaged are cleaned up of their toxic assets, recapitalized and then sold back to the private sector. “You have to take them over and you have to split them up into three or four national banks, rather than having a humongous monster that is too big to fail,” Nouriel Roubini has argued.

According to the International Monetary Fund, the global financial and economic crisis has already created more than $4 trillion in credit losses due to toxic assets. If nothing else, the IMF estimate on the scale of the economic and financial disaster thus far should compel the Washington political establishment to face the painful yet necessary truths regarding America’s precarious situation. However, it appears that fantasy is preferred over reality within the corridors of power.

The procrastination of policymakers in Washington in facing dark reality, and preference to avoid any public takeover of troubled banking institutions while simultaneously subsidizing these financial dead men walking with almost unlimited taxpayer funds, at the same time maintaining the fiction, as Timothy Geithner has just done, that all is basically fine with the “vast majority” of U.S. banks, is to insure the inevitability of a systemic banking collapse in the United States. The conglomeration of reckless, greed-induced banking practices by the oligarchs of finance and inept, reality-denying policymakers is sending much of the American banking sector on a Wagnerian death ride into a financial apocalypse. Many of the U.S. banks are in fact doomed to fail, and no contrived stress test or Geithner speech can alter that outcome. And that isn’t even the worst part. For when mass banking failures occur in the United States and overseas, a global economic depression will be an irreversible outcome.