According to revised data from the Commerce Department, the American economy grew by only 2.2 percent in Q4 of 2014, significantly lower than the earlier reported figure of 2.6 percent, which caught analysts off-guard.  The corrected GDP growth figure for Q4 is a sharp drop from the reported 5 percent growth in Q3, throwing a wet blanket over claims made earlier by the Obama administration that the U.S. economy was set for strong, consistent growth.

Typical with poor economic data emanating from Washington, the analysts and pundits are already doing their spin routine, claiming that the disappointing economic data for Q4 of last year was merely a temporary speed bump. The prediction of annual GDP growth in excess of 3 percent in 2015 for the American economy is being forecasted by many observers.

But what about the undeniably very bad economic news coming from the Eurozone and Russia, and the slowdown in China and Brazil? As the U.S. economy is not a island, it seems unreasonably optimistic to believe that the proliferation of bad economic news from abroad will not impact the United States negatively.

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

There are growing indications that the Obama administration will sign a nuclear agreement with Iran that will allow Tehran to become a nuclear-threshold state. It seems the only issue being contested at present is the extent of the cosmetic and temporary concessions the Iranians will grant so that Iran does not fully emerge as a nuclear weapons state until after the expiration of the Obama presidency.  The disarming body language and genuine warmth that characterizes the public interaction between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran’s Minster of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif seems to point in that direction, belying the fact that these two nations have not had diplomatic relations for 35 years because the government of one of those states ordered its armed thugs to attack and seize the embassy of the other nation, in the most flagrant violation of international law, holding its diplomats hostage for 444 days.

Of course, Barack Obama has promised on more than one occasion that he would never permit Iran to become a nuclear armed state. Then again, this is the same President Obama who warned Syria’s president not to use poison gas on his own people, or there would be consequences for crossing that red line. And let us not forget the President’s assurances that the war in Iraq was over and it was safe to withdraw all U.S. forces, or that the emerging Islamic State was nothing more than a “jayvee team” or that Yemen was a great success story for America’s anti-terrorism strategy–the same Yemen where Washington was recently forced to close its embassy after a coup in that country staged by anti-American rebels loyal to Iran.

The consequences involved in permitting Iran to become a nuclear weapons state are, obviously, far more consequential. Barack Obama is not the first president confronting a rogue regime about to acquire nuclear weapons capability. In the early 1990s, evidence mounted that North Korea was embarking on a nuclear weapons program. As with President Obama, then President Clinton pledged to the American people that the North Korean regime would never be permitted to obtain nuclear weapons. Then former President Jimmy Carter came to the rescue. He flew to North Korea, met with the reigning dictator and laid the groundwork for what became the 1994 Agreed Framework treaty, which supposedly froze North Korea’s attempt to develop atomic weapons through plutonium production in exchange for U.S. economic aid. However, the treaty collapsed after Clinton left office when U.S. intelligence learned that North Korea had cheated on the agreement by secretly developing a uranium enrichment program as an alternative path towards developing nuclear bombs. In 2006, North Korea conducted its first test detonation of a nuclear bomb.

It appears that the Obama administration is following in the path originally set by President Clinton. In addition to tolerating a vast nuclear enrichment facility, much of it underground, that can only have been established for the eventual mass production of nuclear bombs to mate with Tehran’s increasingly powerful and longer-range ballistic missiles, the current administration has been passive in the face of Iran’s growing hegemony in the Middle East, as witnessed by Tehran’s virtual  occupation of Lebanon through its proxy militia, its massive intervention in the Syrian civil war on the side of Bashar al-Assad, and increasing military involvement and control in Iraq and the recent pro-Iranian coup in Yemen. This passivity is inexplicable, considering the potential  and dire strategic and economic consequences for the United States.

What about the character of the regime that President Obama and his national security team seem about to trust with the most destructive weapons on earth? Amid  the long list of Iranian terrorist attacks against the U.S. and its interests aboard  unleashed by Tehran since 1979, there is one which, more than any other, defines the essence of the regime of the Ayatollahs and its contempt for the United States.

In 1984 the CIA station chief in Beirut, William Buckley, was kidnapped by the Iranian controlled Hezbollah  militia. The fate of William Buckley was disclosed by Washington Post columnist Jack Anderson in an article published the following year (http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1979&dat=19851210&id=ZqUiAAAAIBAJ&sjid=1a0FAAAAIBAJ&pg=3231,8626261). According to Anderson, who based his account on confidential sources within the U.S. intelligence community, Buckley was smuggled into Iran, and subjected to numerous bouts of brutal interrogation under barbaric torture in the basement of the Iranian foreign ministry, the same building being presided over today by John Kerry’s Iranian counterpart, Zarif.  The barbarous torture eventually induced a heart attack, leading to the death of Buckley. As Jack Anderson stated in his article, Iran was responsible for the horrific murder under torture of an American patriot.

President Obama seems determined to move forward on a nuclear agreement with the regime that tortured and murdered William Buckley. He should reflect on how this dedicated CIA agent must have felt, abandoned by his government and alone with his Iranian torturers, enduring a hellish nightmare in the basement of the Iranian foreign ministry.  Is the nation William Buckley died for now about to be abandoned, for the sake of a presidential legacy?

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 medium is the message”

Marshall McLuhan

In declaring himself caliph of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is following in the footsteps of an ancient role model, Abu al-Abbas, founder of the Abbasid Caliphate. Historians regard the Abbasid dynasty as the most successful Arab Caliphate. Under their rule, Arab-speaking Islamic civilization reached its zenith, and at its peak it exceeded European civilization in its economic and scientific advancement. Its founder, however, did not rise to power on a bed of roses by conforming to what present-day international law experts would label the “rules of war.” Abu al-Abbas marched to the beat of a different drummer, whose echoes resonate with the present-day leader of the Islamic State.

Abu al-Abbas appointed himself caliph in a manner replicated by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He initiated a civil war against the then-existing Omayyad Caliphate, raising the black flag  that would be copied nearly thirteen centuries later by al-Baghdadi. The founder of the Abbasid dynasty had a very simple military strategy; slaughter every supporter, servant and blood-related operatives of the Omayyad Caliphate, without mercy and always justified on the basis of Islamic texts, suitably interpreted. Then, after the capture of Damascus by his forces in 750 A.D. , the new caliph seemed to relent in his blood lust, inviting eighty surviving officials of the deposed Omayyad Caliphate to a reconciliation dinner. While the unsuspecting dinner guests were gorging on food and drink, they were suddenly attacked by soldiers of the caliph, and hacked to pieces. As described in various Islamic histories, the caliph insisted that the dinner continue, including musical entertainment, without the corpses of the slaughtered victims being removed. Shortly afterwards, Abu al-Abbas delivered his first public address as caliph, in which he proudly referred to himself as “al Saffah,” Arabic for “The Bloodshedder.” That is how the founder of the Abbasid Caliphate has become known in history, and he is the role model for the man who appointed himself caliph of the nascent Islamic State.

The horrifically barbaric ritual murders being propagated via the Internet by the Islamic State would, in a different context, be classified as snuff pornography. However, in the second decade of the 21st century they amount to weapons of war. The Islamic State may not have an air force to compete with American dominance in the skies over Syria and Iraq, but it does have equal access to the  Internet, which in effect serves as the tactical air support for the Islamic State. In an era of asymmetrical warfare, it is the means utilized by al-Baghdadi to create what amounts to a level playing field, enabling him to confront the United States with some degree of success.

Cyberspace has evolved into the most effective operational realm for the Islamic State, and is integrated into all of its activities; military, ideological and psychological. The caliph of the Islamic State has created an image akin to that of the founder of the Abbasid Caliphate; “the Bloodshedder.” In one of the video execution spectacles released by the Islamic State, al-Baghdadi declared : “Know that we have armies in Iraq and an army in Sham [Syria] of hungry lions whose drink is blood and play is carnage.”

With the Islamic State and its elaborate Internet propaganda arm, it is clear that the medium is indeed the message. It provides the war effort of the new caliphate with a pervasiveness that is truly global in its impact. It conveys the clear message that the armies of al-Baghdadi take no prisoners, and display not the slightest compassion or mercy towards those it deems as the “unbelievers.” It also sends another message to that special breed of men it seeks to recruit as fighters;  a theologically-sanctified collective psycho-pathology that provides those on our planet with such inclinations an environment to practice barbaric cruelty on human beings without limits of conscience or the restraint of a Western-imposed Geneva Convention.

Standing in opposition to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is President Barack Obama, America’s Commander-in-Chief and leader of the Free World, whose latest pronouncement on this conflict, made at the National Prayer Breakfast, was advice to Christians not to get on their “high horse” because of the violence being committed by the Islamic State.  “People committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” proffered the President, in connection with the Crusades that occurred a millennium ago (http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-31156153).

While Obama engages in an esoteric verbal exercise  in deflecting any reference to radical Islamic extremism, his opponent, free of any intellectual ambiguity, ruthlessly but effectively pursues his war against those he deems the unbelievers. If anything, the most recent comments by the president display  growing disarray and confusion within the Obama administration on how to wage war against the Islamic State.

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