Eleanor Duckwall's Spotlight

Chattel slave or wage slave?

The evil institution of slavery is a stain wherever it's practiced. Regretfully America and West involuntarily enlisted transported Africans after they found it inefficient to enlist and transport other Europeans which had been subjected off and on to that institution for thousands of years as had Africans in Africa and Africans and Europeans to Muslims, etc., etc.

As the United States from progressed from colony to country, chattel slavery was eliminated in the Northern States, to be replaced by what came to be known as wage-slavery, or the cynical exploitation of "free" immigrant labor that were paid wages, but given no benefits, spurring the need for unions.

That they were "free" to "come and go," "to work or starve," or live in tenements or on the street, made these "free" people marginally better off than the chattels slaves on Southern plantations as they were forced to work and live under horrific conditions ... or face the streets and starve.

Harold Meyerson's op-ed in today's Washington Post compares the automobile plants located in "right to work states," those that permit workers to opt out of unions, to the plantation system of the Old South. If this were true, although denied the rights of "free" men, the workers would be at least minimally housed, fed, clothed, and kept sound for the purpose of "protecting property," whereas the Northern workers would be used for any and all purposes, regardless of safety and health issues because they were the responsibility of no one.

That both chattel and wage slavery has eliminated in the United States is a tribute to a length effort and perseverance to attainment of goals: decent wages and safe and humane conditions.Maintaining contractual obligations work as long a conditions permit. Sometimes common sense requires that parties make adjustments.

Mr. Myerson contends that Republicans are to blame for the financial mess in which we find ourselves. A closer look will show that members of Congress from both parties, and financiers at many levels are equally to blame: A lot of people screwed all of over. However, does that mean that any step down from the perks and guarantees attained by the unions is a reversion to slavery and Confederacy?

Harold, like many others, may be out of a job soon because he and others overplayed their hand. There is a fine line between just-enough and the too-much that will bring it down to serfdom under so-called Capitalism or under Socialism.

Pipes: "Insight into Obama's Middle East Policy?"

Dr. Pipes discusses the weaknesses of a recent joint report by the Brookings Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations and its probable influence on the upcoming Obama administration.

In one, Bush himself offered a valedictory speech, declaring that "the Middle East in 2008 is a freer, more hopeful, and more promising place than it was in 2001." In the other, an Iraqi journalist, Muntador al-Zaidi, expressed disrespect and rejection by hurling shoes at Bush as the U.S. president spoke in Baghdad, yelling at him, "This is a farewell kiss! Dog! Dog!"

Ironically, Zaidi's very impudence confirmed Bush's point about greater freedom; would he have dared throw shoes at Saddam Hussein?

"Hands off illegal aliens" says Air Marshalls

Let's crack some code at the FBI

The FBI challenged anyone in the online community to break a cipher code on its site. The bureau got thousands of responses to last year's challenge.

Read more here.

FOX News' Greg Jarrett cuts of Palestinian mouthpiece Diana Buttu as she spins the conflict

"I can only imagine how hard it was for Jarrett not to call her a liar."

Obviously she isn't "mistaken," and isn't "misrepresenting" a euphemism, or the same thing as lying...?

Via Eye on the World

A Caliphate "from the Red Sea to the Caspian"?

Kathy Shaidle:

In the wake of last month's [November 2008] horrific Mumbai massacre, a recent warning about the spread of Islamic extremism in Russia is particularly chilling.

On December 12, the Interfax news service quoted Major General Yury Tomchak, interior minister of the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic, as saying that “the wide-scale expansion of radical Islam into practically all regions of the Russian Federation” is a “source for concern.” He added that, “cells of international extremist organizations have developed intensive activities lately in individual constituent territories [of Russia], activities that include takeovers of “lucrative sectors of business.”

This growth of Islamic extremism within Russia’s borders, especially in Chechnya and Dagestan, comes even after the Russian government banned seventeen radical Muslim organizations. For whatever reason, deadly atrocities of the recent past, such as the Moscow Theatre seige or the Beslan school massacre, are frequently attributed to regional, secular separatists rather than Muslim terrorists. This, despite statements made by the terrorists themselves, which reference “Allah” and the establishment of a caliphate “from the Red Sea to the Caspian.”

Of course, the situation is extremely complex, and religion plays only one part, as Russia expert David Satter of the Hudson Institute explained to Front Page Magazine via email. In terms of Major General Tomchak’s Kabardino-Balkaria, which was rocked by attacks on police and security facilities in 2005, the spread of Islamic radicalism “is often fueled less by religious fervor than by the corruption of the local pro-Russian authorities and the brutality of the police,” said Satter.

Satter warns that Tomchak’s statement regarding the “takeover of businesses by radical Islamic groups should be treated with caution. The Russians like to depict their battle with Islamic groups as part of the war with international Islamic extremism. At the same time, they foster this extremism with their own lawless behavior. In 2005, [Cabinet minister] Dmitri Kosak warned [Russian Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin that corruption, clan ties, poverty and unemployment could lead to a sharp rise in radicalism in the North Caucasus.”

Meanwhile, reports indicate that anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment among ordinary Russians is on the rise. At least according to a December 20 Georgian Daily News story, such sentiments were confined to “xenophobic groups” but have recently “entered the mainstream as a result of worsening economic conditions.” The Mayor of Moscow condemned the number of “guest workers” allegedly stealing jobs from Russian citizens, and earlier this month, Putin said he favored cutting immigration quotas in half next year. Armed militias with links to the Russian Orthodox Church are reportedly “patrolling Russian cities” to police Muslim immigrants, prompting “some Muslim groups to become more active” in turn.

Semin Bagdasarov, of the Duma’s international relations committee, told a reporter last Wednesday that “Moscow must adopt new laws to limit the influx of radical Islamist terrorists from Central Asia and the Caucasus who threaten to bring ‘the global jihad’ into the Russian Federation and result in terrorist acts against the Russian people and the Russian state.”

He added that Moscow must direct the Muslim clergy in Russia to conduct an ideological campaign against terrorist supporters in their midst. (One expert claims that “eighty percent of Muslim literature published in Russia reflects ideas and principles of wahhabism” and “contains appeals not to observe laws of non-Muslim states and to liquidate peoples with other religious convictions.”) As Ilshat Alsayef, one of the founders of Muslims Against Sharia explained to Front Page in October,

“Centuries-old local mosques are being replaced by modern, Wahhabi-built mosques. Old imams who survived the communists are being replaced by Wahhabi clerics. This is not only true for predominantly Muslim countries like Tajikistan, but also for autonomous regions inside of Russia like Bashkiria and Tatarstan, where most people consider themselves more Russian than Muslim. You can see similar developments in former Yugoslavia, where moderate imams with little financial backing are being replaced by radicals with virtually unlimited financing.”

Due to high birth rates and immigration levels, Islam is poised to become the primary religion in the Russian Federation by 2050, in part because the native Russian population is in decline due to high rates of abortion. This has led some observers to the worrying conclusion that Russia’s all-conscript armed forces will also be majority Muslim by 2015.

However, David Satter maintains that “this is just one possible [outcome] of the ongoing demographic implosion affecting the Slavic population.” Satter insists that many of Russia’s Muslims are “quite secular” but the possible consequences of “sending a predominantly Muslim force to suppress Islamic radicals on behalf of a corrupt regime dominated by Russians are not hard to imagine.”

One expert on both Russia and the former Soviet Union as well as Islamic terrorism points to one of the many ironies and unexpected historical twists that have led to the current situation. Laurent Murawiec wrote recently that “Russia’s Bolsheviks played a singular role” in the evolution of modern Muslim terrorism:

“...the jihadis acquired most of their political technologies from the Soviets. As early as he came to power, Lenin made a pitch to recruit Russia's Muslims; a quarter million Muslim soldiers with their own officers and political commissars saved the Bolsheviks from defeat in the Russian Civil War. Lenin and the Communist International called and organized for jihad against ‘British Imperialism.’ (...) What the Muslim cadres learned from the Bolsheviks – often before returning to Islam – was that terror was a system of rule and of government. The lesson was not lost. It returned to haunt the modern world, in the form of the KGB's creation and steering of Arab terrorism, the PLO, the PFLP, the PDFLP and other terror groups; in the form of the Algerian FLN, and others.”

That was the past. What does the future hold? Last August witnessed a bizarre and little-reported meeting between two religious leaders: Russian Orthodox bishop teamed up with Russia’s Supreme Mufti to call for “a united Islamic-Orthodox Jihad against the Empire of Satan” (i.e., The United States.) For now, the meeting seems to have been a one-off event that has generated little enthusiasm amongst either Muslims or Russian Orthodox Christians. However, given the instability, corruption and conflict at the heart of Russian society, and Vladimir Putin’s unshakable lust for power, it isn’t wise to rule out the strangest of alliances as the latest chapter of Russian history begins.

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Eleanor: These are not idle threats. The lessons of history have proved that what the imams and muftis propose are willingly carried out by the faithful no matter the cost: "We love death more than you love life."

What recourse do life-loving people have when faced with an implacable enemy for whom all human and animal life is expendable in the service of Allah? We are a nation that drinks blood".

As peace means the "absence of enemies, i.e. capitulation in the form of conversion, death, or dhimmitude, the only recourse is blood and more blood. What a waste.

40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes

U.S. Military Preparing for Domestic Disturbances

Jim Meyers at Newsmax via Voltaire Net:

The US Army War College is on the case, ready to handle "unforeseen economic collapse" and the "rapid dissolution of public order in all or significant parts of the US." According to the Washington Post of 1 December 2008, the U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.

A new report from the U.S. Army War College discusses the use of American troops to quell civil unrest brought about by a worsening economic crisis.

The report from the War College’s Strategic Studies Institute warns that the U.S. military must prepare for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States” that could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.”

Entitled “Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development,” the report was produced by Nathan Freier, a recently retired Army lieutenant colonel who is a professor at the college — the Army’s main training institute for prospective senior officers.

He writes: “To the extent events like this involve organized violence against local, state, and national authorities and exceed the capacity of the former two to restore public order and protect vulnerable populations, DoD [Department of Defense] would be required to fill the gap.”

Freier continues: “Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order … An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home.”

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned last week of riots and unrest in global markets if the ongoing financial crisis is not addressed and lower-income households are beset with credit constraints and rising unemployment, the Phoenix Business Journal reported.

Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Rep. Brad Sherman of California disclosed that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson discussed a worst-case scenario as he pushed the Wall Street bailout in September, and said that scenario might even require a declaration of martial law.

The Army College report states: “DoD might be forced by circumstances to put its broad resources at the disposal of civil authorities to contain and reverse violent threats to domestic tranquility. Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States.

“Further, DoD would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance.”

He concludes this section of the report by observing: “DoD is already challenged by stabilization abroad. Imagine the challenges associated with doing so on a massive scale at home."

As Newsmax reported earlier, the Defense Department has made plans to deploy 20,000 troops nationwide by 2011 to help state and local officials respond to emergencies.

The 130-year-old Posse Comitatus Act restricts the military’s role in domestic law enforcement. But a 1994 Defense Department Directive allows military commanders to take emergency actions in domestic situations to save lives, prevent suffering or mitigate great property damage, according to the Business Journal.

And Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the U.S. military operations to liberate Iraq, said in a 2003 interview that if the U.S. is attacked with a weapon of mass destruction, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government.

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Eleanor: Perhaps the White House and the Military are waiting for the other economic shoe to drop, or the next bubble to burst.

Source: Jerome Corsi's Red Alert, a subscription service:

AIG announced a $10 billion loss in derivatives trade. This loss not only signals that AIG may not have hit bottom, but that the derivate market may be another financial bubble about to burst.

Even worse is that the loss is not covered by the $150 billion bailout the federal government has in place for AIG.

Derivatives are contracts where the value is derived from something else. A typical derivative may involve a currency swap or interest-rate swap, contracts in which one financial institution may trade a fixed for a variable interest rate stream of income on some notational, or agreed upon, hypothetical amount of principle – $ 1 billion, for instance.

AIG, before the loss, had $71.6 billion of derivative contracts. This means that almost 14 percent of these complicated bets AIG made have failed.

Put simply, AIG fund managers decided to gamble with AIG capital. With the derivative market nearing a quadrillion dollars, these types of gambles are becoming all too common.

In 2005, the derivatives market was less than $300 trillion. At the beginning of the George W. Bush administration, the derivatives market was insignificant, and the Bank of International settlements was just beginning to explain to capital managers in banks, insurance companies and brokerage firms around the world.

The Wall Street Journal described the $10 billion in AIG derivative losses as involving what is known as "credit-default swaps," or contracts with trading parties known as "counterparties," against losses suffered in mortgage-backed securities.

Derivative contracts are often made by small subsidiary units of the giant insurance companies, banks and brokerage firms.

In the case of AIG, the more than $70 billion in derivative contracts held by the giant insurance company were made by a tiny unit operating as AIG Financial Products, based in the United States and London.

Insurance industry analyst A.M. Best put out a statement on Tuesday saying the $10 billion loss was only in the "notational" amount of the contracts involved, or the hypothetical bet on which the loss-swap was predicated.

That is an admittedly difficult concept to understand, but Best was arguing that even though there was a collapse of $10 billion in the bet on the table, AIG lost only a fraction of that amount, as a "cash settlement" was made with the counterparties to cancel the derivatives contract that failed.

Best reported AIG has canceled more than $46.1 billion of its credit default exposure under terms of the $150 billion federal loan package that is keeping the company solvent.

In a separate article, the Associated Press quoted AIG spokesman Nick Ashooh. He confirmed that the $10 billion loss involved swaps of collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, where AIG is required to buy the underlying CDO bond when the derivative contract failed.

Because a multi-billion CDO bond will still have some redeemable value after AIG acquires the bond and attempts to take it apart to sell whatever yet solvent pieces of the bond are salable, the losses are still huge, even if not fully determinable for months or years to come.

This means that even if a $1 quadrillion derivative market collapsed, there would not be $1 quadrillion of real losses that have to be absorbed by the parties making the contracts.

Yes, $1 quadrillion in "notational value," or some significant portion of that amount, could evaporate if the derivative bubble bursts.

Still, the amounts that would have to be paid by the counterparty on the losing end of the derivative contract would be in the billions, possibly even in the hundreds of billions to settle the deal gone bad, but not necessarily in the trillions.

No one truly knows how much would be lost in a derivative market meltdown, largely because such a meltdown has never happened.

AIG's announcement of a $10 billion loss in derivative contract notational value means the market is on edge, and the losses yet to be experienced worldwide could be another huge bubble just waiting to burst, as Red Alert continues to warn could happen.

The AIG news is so bad because no financial analyst has ever lived through a massive collapse of a derivative market in which bets are made on as much of a quadrillion dollars in assets that are real or merely hypothecated – to make a deal work.

Red Alert's concern is that a derivative market meltdown will most certainly occur if the U.S. mortgage market continues to correct downward. And if the Dow approaches anywhere near the bottom 6,000 that could happen in the first quarter next year.

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And IF and WHEN this happens, a Russian professor has already predicted the outcome: the United States will divide into six separate nations ... in about 18 months.

Far fetched, I hope, but then again, who could have predicted amazing events of this past year?

PSA: More banks suing even after repossessing vehicles

If you thought you were off the hook on the bank loan after your car was repossessed, you might be wrong, especially the car was sold at auction for less than the amount owed to the bank.

Jonathan Ramsey, Autoblog, December 29, 2008:

Just because your car has been repossessed doesn't mean you don't still owe the bank money on it. If that vehicle gets sold at auction for less than the bank is owed on it, the difference is called the "deficiency." And as MSNBC informs, banks are increasingly suing to get that deficiency amount back, plus applicable attorney's fees.

With the increasing cost of vehicles, smaller down payments, and longer loan terms, it is easier than ever to get upside-down on your car loan. Furthermore, banks don't send a repossessed car to auction and work to get the highest price for it. They farm it out to third parties who need to move cars, not hold out for the absolute best deal. Take depressed auction prices into account as well, and it's not hard to end up with a deficiency in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Banks who win deficiency judgments can sometimes garnish wages and force the sale of property, but again, that's only in certain cases. The best ways to ward off a deficiency lawsuit are to get the shortest car loan term you can afford, which will help avoid getting upside-down in the first place. If you still can't manage, try and sell the car yourself, since you'll likely get a much better price than the bank will at auction (and you'll avoid a repo on your credit history). Failing that, bankruptcy should clear the debt as an unsecured loan.

Eleanor: Isn't that a kick in the head?

Australia: Topless bathing to be banned to "protect" Muslims

You've got to be kidding! Not that I promote toplessness, but how many rights and freedoms must Westerners give up for the sake of Islam? According to the CIA World Factbook, Muslims make up 1.5% of the total population.

Who needs "protection" from whom?

At Dhimmi Watch:

After all, Australia wants all people from far and wide to feel welcome, and "at home," especially "If they've come from a Middle Eastern or Asian country [general PC-code for "Muslim country"] where women never go topless - in fact they usually wear a lot of clothing - I think it's important to respect all the different cultures that make up Australia." Indeed -- especially those that may attack you for not behaving like a subdued dhimmi.