DON'T BELIEVE LIBERALS THAT FASCISM IS COMING TO AMERICA FROM THE RIGHT, IT IS COMING FROM THE LEFT, FROM THE OBAMA SUPPORTERS

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Tolerance, Health and Fascism

by Dennis Prager

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

I cannot count the number of times I heard liberal professors and liberal writers quote the phrase: "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." The phrase is brilliant. There is actually no threat to America of fascism coming from the right. The essence of the American right, after all, is less government; and fascism, by definition, demands ever larger government.



Therefore, if there is a real fascist threat to America, it comes from the left, whose appetite for state power is essentially unlimited. But because the left has so long dominated American intellectual, academic, artistic, and media life, it has succeeded in implanting fear of the right.



I have never written that there is a threat of fascism in America. I always considered the idea overwrought. But now I believe there really is such a threat -- and it will come draped not in an American flag, but in the name of tolerance and health.



Before explaining what this means, let's be clear about what this does not mean.
First, it does not mean, or have anything in common with, Nazism. Nazism may have been a form of fascism. But Nazism was a unique form of fascism and a unique evil. It was race-based and it was genocidal. No other expression of fascism was race-based. And not all fascism is genocidal. So my fear that the American left is moving America toward an expression of fascism in no way implies anything Nazi-like or genocidal.



Second, it is not liberals or liberalism that presents a threat of fascism. It is the left. Liberals of the 1940s to 1970s such as John F. Kennedy, Harry Truman, Hubert Humphrey, Henry "Scoop" Jackson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and so many others were not leftists. They were liberals.
But liberalism has been taken over by the left. There are virtually no non-left liberals.
The left now has a president who is a true leftist who is asserting unprecedented presidential power through his cabinet and myriad other agencies (such as the Environmental Protection Agency) and through presidential decrees. The left has taken over the universities and, increasingly, high schools and elementary schools. It dominates the news and entertainment media. And many judges and courts are leftist -- meaning that their decisions are guided by leftism more than by the law or the Constitution.



With all this power, the left controls more and more of the life of the American citizen. And when nothing stops the left, the left doesn't stop.



Take tolerance.



Last week, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that an event photographer's refusal on religious grounds to shoot the commitment ceremony of a same-sex couple amounted to illegal discrimination.
The photographer had never objected to photographing gays. She did not, however, wish to be part of a ceremony to which she religiously objected. In America today, thanks to myriad laws and progressive justices, people can go to prison for refusing to participate in an event to which they object.



This is what happened to a florist in Washington state who had always sold flowers to gay customers but refused to be the florist for a gay wedding: sued and fined.



This is what happened to a baker in Oregon who had always sold his goods to gays but refused to provide his products to a gay wedding: sued and fined.



This is what happened in Massachusetts, Illinois and elsewhere to Catholic Charities, historically the largest adoption agency in America. Their placing children with married (man-woman) couples, rather than with same-sex couples, was deemed intolerant and a violation of the law. In those and other states, Catholic Charities has left adoption work.



In the name of tolerance -- and fighting sexual harassment -- five- and six-year-old boys all over the country are brought to the police for innocently touching a girl.



In the name of tolerance, girls' high school teams in California and elsewhere must now accept male players who feel female.



In the name of tolerance, businesses cannot fire a man who one day shows up on the sales floor dressed as a woman.



For the left, tolerance does not mean tolerance. It means first, acceptance. And second, celebration.



That is totalitarianism: You not only have to live with what you may differ with, dear citizen, you have to celebrate it or pay a steep price.



Meanwhile, in the name of health, there is a similar intrusion into the life of the individual. We saw it in New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's call for a law limiting the amount of soda a person can order at one time.
In the name of health, people are banned from smoking outdoors, cigar stores are prohibited from allowing customers to smoke inside, and, incredibly, California is about to ban electronic "cigarettes" as if they were real cigarettes, even though they contain no tobacco, nothing is burning, and they emit only water vapor.



In the name of health, some businesses, like the Bert Fish Medical Center in Florida and Kids II, Inc. (Baby Einstein, Disney Baby) do not hire those who smoke at home. In the name of health, for the first time in American history, what you do -- legally -- at home will be reason for companies not hiring or terminating employees.



In the name of safety, first-grade boys are suspended from schools for playfully aiming a pencil at another boy and "shooting" him.



And then there are the ubiquitous "re-education" and "rehabilitation" seminars that the allegedly insensitive need to take at both private and government workplaces and the speech codes at nearly all universities.



The only question is: Will Americans awaken to the increasingly rapid deprivation of their freedoms -- not draped in an American flag but draped in tolerance and health?

IN AN UNBELIEVABLE INSULT, OBAMA REMOVED THE BUST OF CHURCHILL FROM THE WHITE HOUSE AND SENT IT BACK TO ENGLAND.

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Lord Moran on Churchill’s State Funeral

August 22, 2013

Sr. Winston Churchill

He was taken at night to Westminster, to the Hall of William Rufus, and there for three days he lay in state, while the people gathered in crowds that stretched over Lambeth Bridge to the far side of the river, to do honor to the man they loved for his valor. On the fourth day he was borne on a gun-carriage to St. Paul’s. There followed a long line of men in arms, marching to sorrowful music. With all the panoply of Church and State, and in the presence of his Queen, he was carried to an appointed place hard by the tombs of Nelson and Wellington, under the great dome, while with solemn music and the beating of drums the nation saluted the man who had saved them and saved their honor.

OBAMA'S BROTHER IS LINKED TO THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, ARE YOU SURPRISED?

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New post on Now The End Begins

Obama’s Brother Is Linked To The Muslim Brotherhood by NTEB News Desk

NEW YORK – President Obama’s half-brother in Kenya could cause the White House more headaches over new evidence linking him to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and establishing that controversial IRS supervisor Lois Lerner signed his tax-exempt approval letter.

Malik Obama’s oversight of the Muslim Brotherhood’s international investments is one reason for the Obama administration’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to an Egyptian report citing the vice president of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt, Tehani al-Gebali

In a news report on Egyptian television of a Gebali speech, translated by researcher Walid Shoebat, a former Palestinian Liberation Organization operative, Gebali said she would like “to inform the American people that their president’s brother Obama is one of the architects of the major investments of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

“We will carry out the law, and the Americans will not stop us,” she said. “We need to open the files and begin court sessions.

“The Obama administration cannot stop us; they know that they supported terrorism,” she continued. “We will open the files so these nations are exposed, to show how they collaborated with [the terrorists]. It is for this reason that the American administration fights us.”

New! “Impeachable Offenses” lays out the blueprint for impeaching Barack Obama for crimes against the United States. Order it now at WND’s Superstore!

Shoebat said Gebali explained the news is important to Americans who are concerned about their president’s actions, calling it “is a gift to the American people,” implying there were more revelations to come.

In an interview on Egyptian television, Gebali said the cost to Egypt has been great, and she vowed her country will not allow any conspiracy against its people or the Egyptian state. She insisted that pushing Egypt to bankruptcy is unacceptable, because it would plunge her country into a dire state similar to Iraq and Libya.

Shoebat said that if the reports are correct, Turkey appears to play a central role in the alleged conspiracy. He emphasized that Egypt has asserted to the international community that it will not tolerate any attempt to push the country to bankruptcy.

Shoebat’s blog linked to three “very credible sources” that corroborate the report on Gebali’s comments.

Shoebat reported in May that Malik Obama is the executive secretary of the Islamic Da’wa Organization, or IDO, a group created by the government of Sudan, which is considered by the U.S. State Department to be a terrorist state.

In 2010, Malik Obama attended an IDO conference in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. One of the objectives of the IDO is to spread Wahhabist Islam across the African continent.

Sudan President Omar Al-Bashir supervised the conference. Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court on seven counts related to crimes against humanity.

Shoebat asserted the evidence places Malik Obama “in bed with terrorists, working in a terrorist state as an official of an organization created by terrorists.”

Malik’s tax-exempt problems

WND reported in May that funds contributed in the U.S. to a 501(c)3 foundation run by Malik Obama have been diverted to support Malik’s multiple wives in Kenya, an expert on Islamic extremism has charged.

Lois Lerner, the director of the IRS tax-exempt division currently under congressional investigation, signed the letter approving tax-exempt status for the Malik Obama’s Barack H. Obama Foundation.

Lerner, currently on paid executive leave from her IRS supervisory position, took the Fifth Amendment before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on May 22 rather than answer questions on inappropriate criteria used by her IRS department to delay or otherwise deny tax-exempt status for tea party and “patriot” groups.

Shoebat has detailed his allegations in a 22-page investigative report titled “New IRS Scandal: Islamic Extremism and Sex Slaves: Report Reveals Obama’s Relatives Run Charities of Deceit,” published on his website

After a thorough examination of available evidence, Shoebat explained to WND his allegations against the Obama family tax-exempt foundati

IN WASHINGTON FIG LEAVES ARE AS NUMEROUS AS DOLLARS

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Published: Aug. 16, 2013 Updated: 2:20 p.m.

Mark Steyn: NSA oversight overstated, overrated

 

By MARK STEYN

ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

On Thursday, the Washington Post’s revelation of thousands upon thousands of National Security Agency violations of both the law and supposed privacy protections included this fascinating detail:
A “large number” of Americans had their telephone calls accidentally intercepted by the NSA when a top-secret order to eavesdrop on multiple phone lines for reasons of national security confused the international code for Egypt (20) with the area code for Washington (202).

MICHAEL RAMIREZ / CREATORS.COM

Seriously.


I enjoy as much as the next chap all those Hollywood conspiracy thrillers about the all-powerful security state – you know the kind of thing, where the guy’s on the lam, and he stops at a diner at a windswept one-stoplight hick burg in the middle of nowhere and decides to take the risk of making one 15-second call from the pay phone, and as he dials the last digit there’s a click in a basement in Langley, and even as he’s saying hello the black helicopters are already descending on him. It’s heartening to know that, if I ever get taken out at a pay phone, it will be because some slapdash timeserving pen-pusher mistyped the code for Malaysia (60) as that of New Hampshire (603).



The Egypt-Washington industrial-scale wrong number is almost too perfectly poignant a vignette at the end of a week in which hundreds are dead on the streets of Cairo. On the global scene, America has imploded: Its leaders have no grasp of its national interests, never mind any sense of how to achieve them. The assumption that we are in the early stages of “the post-American world” is now shared by everyone from Gen. Sisi to Vladimir Putin. Gen. Sisi, I should add, is Egypt’s new strongman, not Putin’s characterization of Obama. Meanwhile, in contrast to its accelerating irrelevance overseas, at home Washington’s big bloated blundering bureaucratic security state expands daily. It’s easier to crack down on 47 Elm Street than Benghazi.



Perhaps this is unavoidable. A couple of months back, I quoted Tocqueville’s prescient words from almost two centuries ago: Although absolute monarchy theoretically “clothed kings with a power almost without limits,” in practice, “the details of social life and of individual existence ordinarily escaped his control.” In other words, the King couldn’t do it even if he wanted to. What would happen, Tocqueville wondered, if administrative capability were to evolve to bring “the details of social life and of individual existence” within His Majesty’s oversight? That world is now upon us. Today, the King concedes he most certainly can do it, but assures us not to worry, he doesn’t really want to. “If you look at the reports,” President Obama said earlier this month, “even the disclosures that Mr. Snowden’s put forward, all the stories that have been written, what you’re not reading about is the government actually abusing these programs and, you know, listening in on people’s phone calls or inappropriately reading people’s emails. What you’re hearing about is the prospect that these could be abused.”



But that was a week ago. And the “prospect” is now a reality: “actual abuse” – including “listening in on people’s phone calls” and “inappropriately reading people’s emails” – occurs daily. In early 2012, “actual abuse” was occurring at the rate of 10 “incidents” a day – and “incident” is a term of art that can cover hundreds of violations of thousands or even millions of citizens.



Privacy is dying in all technologically advanced nations, and it may simply be a glum fact of contemporary existence that the right to live an unmonitored life is now obsolete unless one wishes to relocate to upcountry villages in Somalia or Waziristan. Nevertheless, even by the standards of other Western nations, America’s loss of privacy is deeply disturbing. Its bureaucracy is bigger and better-funded, and its response to revelations of its abuse of power is to make it still bigger and better-funded and more bureaucratic. For example, after multiple significant violations of the law in 2009, the NSA’s “oversight staff” was quadrupled. Quadrupled! Just like that! And what was the result of putting four times as many salaried, benefitted, pensionable, fully credentialed government-licensed “overseers” in place? The rate of NSA violations increased dramatically through 2011. Who would have thought it? In the first quarter of 2012, the NSA’s executive-order violations were running at almost twice the rate of what they were in the second quarter of 2011. Maybe if they’d octupled the number of “oversight staff,” all these overseers would have been able to keep pace with the rampaging lawlessness.



Or, maybe the oversight is a lot of hooey, anyway. The Egyptian dialing-code fiasco, for example, was never passed on to the NSA’s “oversight staff,” but it was the subject of a “quality assurance review,” which sounds like the sort of follow-up you get when you buy a fridge from Sears. Maybe they could just have NSA customer-service representatives announcing that your call may be monitored for quality control purposes at the start of every telephone conversation. Of course, most customer-service representatives are based in India (telephone code 91) but there’s a sporting chance the NSA would confuse it with Kansas (code 913), which could do wonders for the employment rate.
NSA personnel additionally fall under the external oversight of the FISA Amendment Act, which means the Department of Justice and Office of the Director of National Intelligence. A leaked document instructs NSA agents to remove all details of the “targeting rationale” except for “one short sentence” in generic language. An actual example from the leaked document:


“Mohammad Badguy was on the buddy list of al-Qaida in Mogadishu, Somalia.”


That’s way too much information. In order to comply with federal oversight, it should be amended to:


“Selector was found on buddy list of al-Qaida in Somalia.”


“Selector was found on selector list of al-Selecta in Selectistan” would probably work, too.


OK. Well, how about this Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that has to sign off on everything? The chief judge of the FISC, Reggie B. Walton, says that the he can only “rely upon the accuracy of the information that is provided to the court.” So, if it sounds kosher, it probably is.



I once bought my daughter a Siamese kitten in rural Québec and drove her back to my home in New Hampshire. At the border post, the guard leaned in the window and said, “You better have some paperwork for that cat.” I handed over the official form from the Ordre des médecins vétérinaires du Québec. The officer stared at it for a few seconds, and then asked, “Do you understand French?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Does this seem on the level to you?”
“Yes,” I said. She waved us through.



That’s basically what FISA court “oversight” boils down to. And, insofar as they decide it isn’t on the level, it’s usually after the fact.



What does that leave? Congressional oversight? Sen. Dianne Feinstein said that she had not seen the 2012 NSA audit on its 2,776 legal violations until the Washington Post asked her about it. Which means until Edward Snowden brought it to her attention. So she’s just another rubber stamp, too. Most nations that spy on their own citizens manage to make do with one fig leaf of accountability, but in money-no-object Washington there are fig leaves without end.



Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports that the IRS is continuing to target American citizens according to their political ideology – and that’s before they have your Obamacare records to frolic and gambol in.



But, like Obama says, it’s merely a theoretical “prospect” of abuse. You’d have to be paranoid to think it could actually happen…




©MARK STEYN

OBAMA, CLUELESS IN CAIRO

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Contentions

COMMENTARY MAGAZINE

Obama on Egypt: The Clueless Presidency

Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary 08.18.2013 - 12:10 PM 

 CAIRO BURNING

There’s some soul searching going on in the Obama administration as it ponders how they got sidelined in Egypt as the situation there got out of control in a spiral of violence. As the New York Times details in a post-mortem of U.S. policy, the administration went all out to persuade the military that had overthrown the Muslim Brotherhood to compromise and allow the Islamists to rejoin the government. Among other efforts to cajole them or to threaten aid cutoffs, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel made 17 often-lengthy phone calls to Egyptian General Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi trying to get him to make nice with the Brotherhood. They even sent two Republican senators—John McCain and Lindsey Graham—to continue the pressure in person in Cairo. And they’re baffled as to why they were ignored as Sisi ordered police and troops to clear out the Brotherhood’s armed camps in Cairo this week.



The easy answer to their questions is that unlike Sisi and the military, President Obama and his foreign policy-team continue to fail to understand that the conflict in Egypt is a zero-sum game. The choice there is between the military and the Brotherhood and the transformation of a key Arab country into an Islamist stronghold. This failure to comprehend the nature of the conflict has led inevitably to paralysis. This spectacle of American impotence is worrisome no matter what you think the U.S. should do about Egypt. But it’s not unrelated to the administration’s other foreign-policy failures that are piling up in the Middle East. Having failed to act decisively to try to avoid a far bigger bloodbath in Syria, and content to waste years on futile diplomacy on the Iranian nuclear threat while devoting disproportionate effort on reviving Israeli-Palestinian talks that have little chance to succeed, it’s obvious that Egypt isn’t the only venue where Obama has demonstrated his cluelessness.



As Sisi prepares to decide whether to enact a ban on the Brotherhood that might bring the confrontation in Egypt to a head, it’s important to understand that Obama’s failure in Egypt is not unrelated to his problems elsewhere. The common thread is a refusal to abandon its preconceptions and to look at facts rather than fiction inspired by ideology.




In Egypt, Obama’s main problem is his lack of understanding of the threat that the Muslim Brotherhood poses to both the non-Islamist majority in that country as well as to the region. Having bought into the myth that the Brotherhood’s rise in the aftermath of the fall of the Mubarak regime was an expression of democratic sentiment, it refused to see that if it was allowed to take power it would quickly move to destroy any opposition. The U.S. pressured the military to let Mohamed Morsi take office and then continued to urge them to stand aside as he proceeded to demonstrate that the Brotherhood had little interest in democracy. Even as 14 million people took to the streets to demand that Morsi step down, the president continued to preach restraint and then stood by in puzzlement when the military realized that this was probably their last chance to save their country. Even now, the administration seems stuck in the same mythical “Arab Spring” mindset that is predicated on the idea that a totalitarian movement like the Brotherhood is compatible with liberal democracy. Since they don’t understand what led to the events of the last week, how can we expect the Obama team to put forward a coherent position on what happened and what may unfold in the days to come?




This is a familiar pattern.
Obama came into office thinking that he could charm the Iranians into giving up their nuclear ambitions and that American pressure on Israel could magically create peace with the Palestinians. If problems arose elsewhere in the Middle East, he thought they would be easily resolved with bad guys like Bashar Assad conveniently leaving the stage because President Obama said he “must go.” So as we now peruse the Middle East, we see an Iran that thinks it can go on fooling the West with a diplomatic process intended to stall talks until they can build a nuke while the United States invests precious time and energy on muscling Israel into making concessions to a Palestinian Authority that has no interest in ever signing a peace agreement. And Bashar Assad, with the help of his Iranian and Hezbollah allies, remains in power while winning a civil war that Obama could have spiked two years ago with a timely push.




While critics from both the left and right assail Obama’s indecision that–as I noted on Friday–protects neither American interests nor values in Egypt, this is yet another symptom of an administration that remains besotted with the same preconceptions that it brought to Washington in 2009. While he laments his lack of good choices and the fact that America’s ability to influence events is limited, it is the president’s refusal to face facts about the Brotherhood and some of his other blind spots that is most to blame for the fact that he has left American foreign policy hanging in the wind at a decisive moment in history.

Topics: Muslim Brotherhood, U.S. foreign policy, U.S.-Egypt relations

EGYPT IS REAPING THE WHIRLWIND THAT OBAMA SOWED IN CAIRO IN 2009

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Egypt’s Military: Doing What Germany's Military Should Have Done in 1933

By Robert Reilly

August 16, 2013  

http://www.intercollegiatereview.com/index.php/2013/08/16/egypts-military-doing-what-the-wehrmacht-should-have-done-in-1933/

 

Thirty million people in the streets of Egypt, with the help of the Egyptian military, have saved the United States from the consequences of its disastrous policy of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood since President Barack Obama came to office. Just months after his inauguration in 2009, Mr. Obama appeared in Cairo to address the Muslim world. He ensured that members of the Muslim Brotherhood were seated in the front row of the auditorium at Cairo University. Since the group was still officially banned in Egypt, no one from President Hosni Mubarak’s administration could attend. The message from the seating arrangement was unmistakable: even at the price of snubbing his official host, Mr. Obama recognized the Muslim Brotherhood as a legitimate player in Egyptian politics. Already, this was clearly interference in the internal affairs of the Egyptian state.




Former British ambassador Charles Crawford later characterized Obama’s quixotic address in the following way: “It boiled down to a well delivered speech full of clever emollient phrases that ultimately sent a message of appeasement to militant Islamist tendencies: Under my restrained leadership the United States will respect and accept conservative forms of Islam. Even if Islamism gets too aggressive we don’t plan to do much about it.”




Why would the United States want to give the green light to militant Islam? Wasn’t militant Islam, after all, the problem? Of course, President Obama has never publicly admitted that it is as a form of the “violent extremism” he opposes. But perhaps the Obama administration thought there was no alternative, or perhaps it was simply ignorant of the true nature of the Muslim Brotherhood. Most likely it thought that the Brotherhood could be tamed if it were given political responsibility. At any event, its representatives said some extraordinarily strange things. At a House Intelligence Committee hearing on February 10, 2011, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper described the Muslim Brotherhood as a “largely secular” organization with “no overarching agenda.” This was a rather unusual characterization of a group whose motto is: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” If that is secular, what might the religious be?




As for an overarching agenda, the de facto spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi proclaimed: “Islam is a comprehensive school of thought, a creed, an ideology, and cannot be completely satisfied but by [completely] controlling society and directing all aspects of life, from how to enter the toilet to the construction of the state.” That means the rule of sharia (Islamic jurisprudence), to which the Muslim Brotherhood has been dedicated since its inception in 1928. The other objective is the restoration of the universal caliphate. The vehicle for doing both is establishment of a one-party totalitarian state.

Totalitarians Don’t Share Power

The totalitarian parties on which the Muslim Brotherhood was modeled – Lenin’s Communists, Mussolini’s Fascists, and Hitler’s National Socialists – showed no inclination toward moderation once having obtained political power. All of them remained true to their principles. Once in power after Mubarak’s overthrow, President Mohammed Morsi gave a hint of what was to come by openly calling for Shaykh Omar Abdel-Rahman’s repatriation to Egypt from the U.S. federal prison in which he is incarcerated. The famous blind Shaykh was considered the spiritual inspiration behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and is serving a life sentence in connection with a subsequent plot to bomb New York landmarks and tunnels. Might this have been a sign of trouble to come?
In January, a congressional delegation, including Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, were in Cairo visiting President Morsi when an embarrassing pair of videos appeared on the site of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), documenting the virulent anti-Semitism Morsi had expressed in campaign appearances in 2010. In a September, 2010 interview, Morsi gave a preview of what Egypt’s approach to Israel might be:

Either [you accept] the Zionists and everything they want, or else it is war. This is what these occupiers of the land of Palestine know – these blood-suckers, who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs…We must confront this Zionist entity… We want a country for the Palestinians on the entire land of Palestine, on the basis of [Palestinian] citizenship. All the talk about a two-state solution and about peace is nothing but an illusion…

In another 2010 appearance at a rally in his hometown in the Nile Delta, Morsi said:

We must never forget, brothers, to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews.”  Morsi added that Egyptian children “must feed on hatred; hatred must continue… The hatred must go on for God and as a form of worshiping him.

Everyone in the U.S. delegation got terribly embarrassed over these indiscretions but cleared their throats and continued their trip after President Morsi assured them that the remarks were taken out of context. What might that context have been? Could it have been the context of the Qur’an with its proclamations of everlasting curses upon the Jews? Or perhaps the context of the Muslim Brotherhood program itself – or of its Hamas branch which promises in its charter to eliminate Israel? In either case, how anyone could have been surprised by what Morsi had said after more than eight decades of such rhetoric from the Muslim Brotherhood and its branches must have been in a state of either willful or blissful ignorance. Nonetheless, support from the United States continued. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Morsi in March when he released $250 million in American aid, with promises of more to come.




The only way the United States could have behaved in the way in which it has was by not taking the principles of the Muslim Brotherhood seriously. We still don’t, which explains the many lamentations over Morsi’s downfall (such protestations were notably absent when Mubarak fell in much the same way). Even intelligent commentators like Fouad Ajami can make statements that, “When the Obama administration could not call the coup d’état by its name, we put on display our unwillingness to honor our own democratic creed…” Come again? Since when does our democratic creed require support for the restoration of a party whose principles are inimical to that creed and to the underlying principle of democracy that all people are created equal?




Bernard Lewis predicted this mess when he said that the rush to early elections after the fall of Mubarak would lead, as did similar events in the Weimar Republic, to the ascension of the most dangerous elements society – meaning victory for the Muslim Brotherhood. In an interview with David Horowitz in the Jerusalem Post (February 25, 2011), Lewis cautioned that the discourse in Egypt is still “religiously defined” and that “the language of Western democracy is for the most part newly translated and not intelligible to the great masses.” How many Egyptians, for instance, actually believe that Copts and Muslims, men and women, believers and nonbelievers, are equal—to say nothing of Jews and Muslims? Pressing for elections now, he warned, could lead to catastrophe, as only religious parties are well enough organized to take advantage of them. (Lewis preferred first to see the development of local self-governing institutions.) Therefore, he said, “I don’t see elections, Western-style, as the answer to the problem. I see it rather as a dangerous aggravation of a problem. The Western-style election…has no relevance at all to the situation in most Middle Eastern countries. It can only lead to one direction, as it did in [Weimar] Germany, for example.” He was right. True to form, once in power, the Muslim brotherhood and Morsi went methodically about trying to monopolize power. Morsi assigned himself powers that a Pharaoh would have envied.
Sudanese writer Al-Hajj Warraq, got it exactly right in an Egyptian television interview last year. He said:

Democracy is about more than just the ballot box. Democracy is a culture engraved upon the cerebral box before it is the ballot box. One cannot talk about freedom in the absence of free minds. The tragedy of the Arab Spring is that when the tyrannical regimes fell, the fruits were reaped by movements that preach closed-mindedness, rather than free thinking. The outcome will be regimes that are worse than those that were toppled.

Apparently, the Egyptian people – at least the 30 million who were in the streets marching against Morsi – agreed with him. Unfortunately, the United States has not.



When Hosni Mubarak was arrested in 2001 after his overthrow, no United States senators visited him in prison or in his prison hospital. Why not? He had been an ally of the United States for almost three decades. The answer is that such a visit would have clearly telegraphed to the Egyptian people that the United States supported Mubarak’s restoration.

Why are Americans Backing the Muslim Brotherhood?

Likewise, what were the Egyptian people expected to make of the visits earlier this month by Senators McCain and Graham to Mohammed Morsi under house arrest and to, of all people, the Deputy Guide of the Brotherhood, Khairat al-Shater, also under arrest? No matter what intentions Senators McCain and Graham may have had, the choreography of the visits clearly indicated support by the United States for a Muslim Brotherhood restoration. On top of that, President Obama has now canceled the long-planned military exercises with the Egyptian military, further expressing his disapproval. These actions obviously encourage and incite the pro-Morsi opposition. The Brotherhood will be less likely to reach an accommodation with the new government because of them.




However, accommodation is not in the cards, anyway. The Muslim Brotherhood thought, no doubt, that with its accession to power in Egypt, arguably the most important Arab country, it was well on its way to realizing its millenarian dream of expansion and the reconstruction of the caliphate. Arab spring eruptions elsewhere in the Middle East were also going its way. Therefore, to lose the pinnacle of power in Egypt places its members in a life or death struggle. Since this struggle is at its heart every bit as ideological as were the struggles in the Weimar Republic in the 1930s or the struggles in Imperial Russia in the 1917, deploring violence and calling for reconciliation simply makes the United States appear naïve and totally disconnected from the ground truth of what is actually taking place. (Saudi Arabia and the UAE understand what is going on, which is why they are willing to pony up $12 billion in support of the new government. They are relieved that the Brotherhood’s imperial project, of which they were intended victims, has been thwarted for the time being.)




In this struggle for power, some people will win; others will lose, but it is important enough that both sides are willing both to take and to lose lives to reach their objectives. Tut-tutting on the sidelines makes the United States appear ridiculous. Instead of just deploring violence, we should be appraising the character of the moral principles animating the two sides in this conflict and supporting the side that more closely comports with our own. And yes, that may require the choice of a lesser evil.




Unfortunately, the German military did not move against Adolph Hitler when he became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Had they done so, Europe and the United States would have been spared a world of woe. Had that happened, would the American government have tried to intervene at the time, insisting on a restoration of Hitler, who had been democratically elected by a plurality of the German people? Would we have insisted that our democratic creed required us to do so? These questions answer themselves. We would have been grateful to the German military for doing so. We should likewise have some appreciation for what the Egyptian military has done to save its country and, by the way, preserve U.S. strategic interests in that area of the Middle East.




But what about the transition to democracy? Maybe the new government will be able to make one, but most likely, at least for the foreseeable future, it may not be able to. That will depend on the underlying conditions of which Bernard Lewis and Al-Hajj Warraq spoke. In any case, as Jean Kirkpatrick taught us long ago, an authoritarian regime is always preferable to a totalitarian one.






Robert Reilly is a Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council. He has taught at the National Defense University and has written for The Wall Street Journal, National Review, Claremont Review of Books, and The Washington Post. He has served in the White House as Special Assistant to the President (1983-85) and was Senior Advisor for Information Strategy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (2002-06). He is a former Director of the Voice of America and is a member of the board of the Middle East Media Research Institute. Mr. Reilly is the author of Surprised by Beauty: A Listener’s Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music (2002). His most recent book, The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis, was published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in 2010.

THE ABSURDITY OF AMERICAN EXHIBITIONISM

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The Israeli satirical web site Latma (Latma.co.il) had it right when it “reported” a few weeks ago that “Americans are very upset to learn that the government has been spying on their private lives, even before they have a chance to post about it on Facebook.” There is something bizarre about a nation of emotional exhibitionists baring their every secret (and more) in the public domain, and then griping about a loss of privacy. Of course, the government has no right to intrude, and every American possesses a constitutional right to make an absolute fool of himself/herself by reporting on the inanities of their lives and sharing every stray, incomplete thought in incomplete and ungrammatical sentences. But a little self-awareness is also appropriate.

- Rabbi Steven Pruzansky

IF YOU DID NOT BELIEVE THAT THE UNITED NATIONS IS PROMOTING THE CONFISCATION OF YOUR GUNS, READ THIS. FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED!

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Agenda 21

EVERYBODY MUST GET STONED. IS THAT BIBLICAL OR ISLAMIC OR WHAT?

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In Defense of Dylan’s Voice

August 13, 2013

Stephen H. Webb 

FIRST THINGS BLOG

If you have been following Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour, online or in person, you’ll notice that a lot of people, even some who are self-professed Dylanologists, have been complaining about the roughness of his voice. To these critics I say: Complaining about Dylan’s voice is like complaining that your scotch tastes too peaty. If you want something sweet, get a colorless spirit that easily surrenders to the overwhelming invasion of fruit juice. Otherwise, let his voice burn your ears just as it sounds like it is blistering his throat when he sings.

Since it is little more than decayed vegetation, peat is actually not a bad metaphor for Dylan’s voice, which has never sounded fresh and youthful. It was old when he was young, and now that he is old, it sounds ancient. Just as barley dried on a mossy fire adds flavor to whisky, creaky and rusty vocal folds (or so I imagine what a laryngoscopy would find) add timbre to Dylan’s singing. Would anyone really want a doctor to smooth the fibrous tissue or remove the bumpy nodules on his vocal cords in order to make his voice sound “better”?

What I have said about Dylan can be said about beauty generally, but that does not make it less true. Both scotch and Dylan are reminders that beauty emerges out of and redeems, rather than opposes and destroys, the ugly. A little bitterness makes the scotch taste sweeter, and wavering off key makes the difference between a good singer and a great performer.

There are many imitators of Dylan (and many types of bourbon that aim at scotch’s greatness), but you cannot fake peaty stench or smoke-aged vocal cords. Think about how a beauty mark can make someone who is merely attractive appear perfect, and then think too of the curious phenomenon of Monroe piercing, which is the insertion of a metal ball above the left side of the upper lip, in homage of Marilyn. You can’t buy the kind of ugly from which beauty is made.

Dylan has always been an unconventional singer, but he knows, to paraphrase the Apostle Paul (2 Cor. 12:9–10), that strength comes from weakness. He knows, that is, how to sing against the weaknesses in his voice in order to reveal its strength just where it is most limited.

That is surely not easy to do, nor is it easy to describe. Indeed, the sonic character of any voice, perhaps because voices are both intimate and invisible, is hard to pin down with any accuracy or detail. If so, consider that it would take a writer as skillful as John Updike, who indeed was sensitive throughout his work to the literary challenges of sound, to describe a voice like Dylan’s. In fact, early in his career, before Dylan became Dylan, Updike took on the challenge, describing him as having a “voice to scour a skillet with.” That seems about right for detail and accuracy but misses what lets Dylan get so deep inside your head.

Dylan himself was skilled at describing the voices of singers. In his memoir Chronicles, he describes how Woody Guthrie “would throw in the sound of the last letter of a word whenever he felt like it and it would come like a punch” and how Johnny Cash’s “voice was so big it made the world grow small.” Dylan writes like a singer, just as he sings like a writer.

To paraphrase the Bible again, this time a comment made about Jesus (Matt. 7:29), Dylan sings as one having authority, not like the pop stars who just want to please. When critics complain about Dylan’s voice, they sound like they are whining, which is exactly what they claim Dylan sounds like. Perhaps what the critics miss most is how Dylan’s voice gives sound to suffering while still being uplifting and, yes, entertaining.

In Chronicles, Dylan documents the period, right before the making of Oh Mercy, where he felt like he was losing his vocal touch. The whisky, he says, had “gone out of the bottle,” and his songs felt like “a package of heavy rotting meat.” He had lost not his voice but his purpose, since he “wasn’t keeping my word with myself.” He needed to recall his music “up from the grave.”

He recovered his voice when, taking a walk one night, he heard someone singing in a nondescript bar. He doesn’t name the singer, but he does try to name the experience he had. “I knew where the power was coming from and it wasn’t his voice, though the voice brought me sharply back to myself.” To paraphrase the Bible one last time (Matt. 11:15), Dylan sings as one who has ears to hear.

Stephen H. Webb is a columnist for First Things. He is the author of Jesus Christ, Eternal God and, forthcoming, Mormon Christianity. His book on Bob Dylan is Dylan Redeemed.

Become a fan of First Things on Facebook, subscribe to First Things via RSS, and follow First Things on Twitter.

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Comments:

8.13.2013 | 1:54am

Rick says:

When I first heard Dylan on a phonograph back in 1965, I didn't like him. But he is definitely an acquired taste, and after two or three years, I recognized him as a superbly gifted musical poet. After that, the voice didn't bother me. I listened to the poetry of the lyrics.

Earlier this year, I went to a Dylan concert at our university here in Kentucky. The voice was raspier and more guttural than ever. But that didn't bother me. What bothered both me and my wife (a professor of poetry) was that we couldn't make out what he was saying over the amplified instruments. All the magic of his poetry was lost. Maybe I should just look for transcripts of his current songs.

8.13.2013 | 4:11am

Joe Z says:

Sed contra: the picture at the top of the page. Why not do him the favor of taking him seriously?

8.13.2013 | 7:40am

david says:

I love Dylan as a vocalist, and agree with Stephen Webb's descriptions/analogies, Dylan's songs are wonderful, his voice is an acquired taste. But I've also witnessed a handful of live performances where his voice was bad, or at least disappointing and frustrating to me. His body of work is undeniable. What would be a reasonable expectation for a singer on a Never Ending Tour with six decades as a performer in the rear view mirror?

8.13.2013 | 9:34am

Tom Connelly says:

A humorous treatment of this issue by folk singer Eric Bogle, a Scotsman now residing in Australia.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mOHvUUzgn0

Note: re-submitted because I believe the first link was incorrect.

8.13.2013 | 10:12am

John Willson says:

The real problem is, Dylan has never been able to carry a tune.

8.13.2013 | 12:07pm

Craig Payne says:

Remember the famous comment from Jimi Hendrix: "At first I thought I couldn't sing, but then I heard Bob Dylan...."

8.13.2013 | 1:06pm

DeGaulle says:

We should all be very grateful for Mr Dylan. He ploughs an ideological furrow diagonally opposed to most of his colleagues in rock music. He is a believer in all the old values that most people that post here hold dear. Indeed, he doesn't seem to like modernity at all, and his songs are steeped in archaic language and ideas. As such, there are very few like him. He is the first person I can recall attacking the notion of equality('My Back Pages' from 1964), and condemning moral relativism-which he described as every man 'having his own truth'. His latest album, which I believe is one of his best (yet!) is well-served by his extremely time-worn voice. Songs about his own death are more poignant sung by a man who threatens to drown in his own phlegm. But, it is a great Christian work, even featuring Our Lady a few times.

8.13.2013 | 1:22pm

Gregg says:

Bob Dylan is an acquired taste, to be sure. But my take is, he's kind of putting everybody on. In other words, he wants to see how bad he can sing before people say "Enough!" It's in tune with his askance bemusement at popular culture, in general. It's like America has become France. That is to say, we (claim to) like Dylan BECAUSE he's so bad, just to thumb our nose at convention. It's like pretending you love modern art. It makes us feel good.

But most people much prefer the concept of Bob Dylan to that of his real music. If everyone who claimed to "looove" Bob Dylan actually bought his albums, he'd make Paul McCartney look like a pauper.

If you really want to get into a guy who "can't sing," then Tom Waits is your man.

8.13.2013 | 1:50pm

Jonathan D. Lauer says:

I am in my 50th year as a Dylan fan and I have taught a Dylan course nine times at the institution where I am library director. Michael Gray, in his _Dylan Encyclopedia_ cites favorably an article I published some years ago in _On the Tracks_. I participated last year in a review forum of _Tempest_ in _The Bridge_. I've experienced Dylan live at least 20 times, beginning in 1974 and continuing nearly annually since 1993. But I have almost sworn off his live shows and find I am listening to his newer albums less and less. For all the apologia in the article and comments above, one can't help but mourn Dylan's diminished abilities as a singer and also as a songwriter. A careful listen of most of his songs since _Love and Theft_, though there are exceptions, reveals an artist grasping for rhyme at the expense of coherence of theme and logical song progression. And listening to vocal performances like that on "Copper Kettle," "Moonshiner," or most anything on _Desire_, not to mention a boot of the rehearsals with the Grateful Dead before hitting the road in 1988, or the hair-raising, chill-inducing 1995 duet with Patti Smith of "Dark Eyes," causes me to sigh deeply and nearly weep. My young friends tell me they will keep hearing him live as long as he has breath. And they are occasionally rewarded with unforgettable performances like the recent cover of "The Weight" with Jeff Tweedy and Jim Jones. For me, though, I will think twice before putting down $100 for hollow versions of "All Along the Watchtower" or a jumpy, piano-driven "Tangled up in Blue." There is one song I would love to hear live, however, and that is "Forgetful Heart." Maybe chasing that possibility is worth getting frisked another time or two as I pass the turnstile at one more venue, waiting to hear that familiar announcement, "Ladies and gentleman, Columbia recording artist Bob Dylan!"

8.13.2013 | 2:05pm

Douglas LeBlanc says:

For those who believe that being a great singer means hitting all the right notes in all the right places, time after predictable time, I have just the act for you: The Eagles, man.

8.13.2013 | 2:18pm

AF Zamarro says:

I've seen Dylan live four times, and I've heard him indecipherable and quite clear. He played the Boston Garden about ten years ago with Van Morrison and Dylan had the whole crowd on its feet - no small feat at a show where the median age looked to be 60 or so, and with Boston crowds not being inclined to dance.

I also admire how he never sings a song the same way twice. You can never sing along at his concerts. He has refused to become a relic of the sixties, or to stop creating.

Whatever else can be said, Dylan is a performer and he knows how to "move" an audience. I look forward to my next chance to see him.

8.13.2013 | 2:38pm

Brian says:

What then of Tom Waits, Shane MacGowan, Tim Armstrong and other "bad" singer s that end up sounding good.

8.13.2013 | 3:10pm

Vergilius says:

After decades of finding the Dylan mystique elusive, and finding his work in its totality unattractive, a friend finally helped me to gain enlightenment. He styled Dylan's work as "People's Music". In that understanding, ordinary canons of assessing the quality of a musician simply do not apply.

8.13.2013 | 3:20pm

George Sim Johnston says:

Dylan once told Keith Richard that whereas he (Dylan) could have written "Satisfaction", Richard and Jagger could not have written "Mr. Tamborine Man". True enough.

NIDAL HASAN MAY, OR MAY NOT, BE INSANE, BUT THE U.S. MILITARY IS NUTS FOR THE WAY IT IS BRINGING HIM TO JUSTICE

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This undated photo provided by the Bell County Sheriff's Department shows Nidal Hasan, who is charged in the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood that left 13 dead and more than 30 others wounded.
ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO






Published: Aug. 9, 2013 Updated: 2:54 p.m.

'Beard debacle' not only one in Fort Hood trial
Orange County Register


By MARK STEYN 

Syndicated columnist




On Dec. 7, 1941, the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor was attacked. Three years, eight months and eight days later, the Japanese surrendered. These days, America's military moves at a more leisurely pace. On Nov. 5, 2009, another U.S. base, Fort Hood, Texas, was attacked – by one man standing on a table, screaming "Allahu akbar!", and opening fire. Three years, nine months and one day later, his court-martial finally got underway.



The intervening third-of-a-decade-and-more has apparently been taken up by such vital legal questions as the fullness of beard Maj. Nidal Hasan is permitted to sport in court. This is not a joke: see "Judge Ousted In Fort Hood Shooting Case Amid Beard Debacle" (CBS News). Army regulations require soldiers to be clean-shaven. The judge, Col. Gregory Gross, ruled Hasan's beard in contempt, fined him $1,000, and said he would be forcibly shaved if he showed up that hirsute next time. At which point Hasan went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, which ruled that Col. Gross's pogonophobia raised questions about his impartiality, and removed him. He's the first judge in the history of American jurisprudence to be kicked off a trial because of a "beard debacle." The new judge, Col. Tara Osborn, agreed that Hasan's beard was a violation of regulations, but "said she won't hold it against him."



The U.S. Army seems disinclined to hold anything against him, especially the 13 corpses plus an unborn baby. Maj. Hasan fired his lawyers, presumably because they were trying to get him off – on the grounds that he'd had a Twinkie beforehand, or his beard don't fit so you must acquit, or some such. As a self-respecting jihadist, Maj. Hasan quite reasonably resented being portrayed as just another all-American loon gone postal. So he sacked his defense team, only to have the court appoint a standby defense team just in case there were any arcane precedents and obscure case law he needed clarification on. I know that's the way your big-time F Lee Bailey types would play it, but it doesn't seem to be Maj. Hasan's style. On the very first day of the trial, he told the jury that "the evidence will clearly show that I am the shooter." Later, in one of his few courtroom interventions, he insisted that it be put on the record that "the alleged murder weapon" was, in fact, his. The trial then came to a halt when the standby defense team objected to the judge that Maj. Hasan's defense strategy (Yes, I did it; gimme a blindfold, cigarette, and tell the virgins, here I come) would result in his conviction and execution.



Maj. Hasan is a Virginia-born Army psychiatrist and a recipient of the Pentagon's Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, which seems fair enough, since he certainly served in it, albeit for the other side. Most Americans think he's nuts. He thinks Americans are nuts. It's a closer call than you'd think. In the immediate aftermath of his attack, the U.S. media, following their iron-clad rule that "Allahu akbar" is Arabic for "Nothing to see here," did their best to pass off Maj. Hasan as the first known victim of pre-Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. "It comes at a time when the stress of combat has affected so many soldiers," fretted Andrew Bast in a report the now-defunct Newsweek headlined, "A Symptom Of A Military On The Brink."



Maj. Hasan has never been in combat. He is not, in fact, a soldier. He is a shrink. The soldiers in this story are the victims, some 45 of them. And the only reason a doctor can gun down nearly four dozen trained warriors (he was eventually interrupted by a civilian police officer, Sgt. Kimberly Munley, with a 9 mm Beretta) is that soldiers on base are forbidden from carrying weapons. That's to say, under a 1993 directive, a U.S. military base is, effectively, a gun-free zone, just like a Connecticut grade school. That's a useful tip: If you're mentally ill and looking to shoot up a movie theater at the next "Batman" premiere, try the local barracks – there's less chance of anyone firing back.
Maybe this Clinton-era directive merits reconsideration in the wake of Fort Hood? Don't be ridiculous. Instead, nine months after Maj. Hasan's killing spree, the Department of Defense put into place "a series of procedural and policy changes that focus on identifying, responding to, and preventing potential workplace violence."



Maj. Hasan says he's a soldier for the Taliban. Maybe if the Pentagon were to reclassify the entire Afghan theater as an unusually prolonged outburst of "workplace violence," we wouldn't have to worry about obsolescent concepts such as "victory" and "defeat." The important thing is that the Army's "workplace violence" is diverse. After Maj. Hasan's pre-post-traumatic workplace wobbly, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army's Chief of Staff, was at pains to assure us that it could have been a whole lot worse: "What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty." And you can't get much more diverse than letting your military personnel pick which side of the war they want to be on.



Like I said, we think he's nuts; he thinks we're nuts. Right now, there's a petition on the Internet, seeking to persuade the United States government to reclassify Hasan's "workplace violence" as an act of terror. There are practical consequences to this: The victims, shot by an avowed enemy combatant in an act of war, are currently ineligible for Purple Hearts. The Pentagon insists the dead and wounded must be dishonored in death because to give them any awards for their sacrifice would prejudice Maj. Hasan's trial and make it less likely that he could be convicted.



Hence, the Internet petition. Linking to it from their home page, my colleagues at National Review Online promoted it with the tag: "Thirteen people lost their lives with dozens of others wounded. And now the man responsible wants to claim it was workplace violence."



That's not true – and, actually, it's grossly unfair to Maj. Hasan. He's admirably upfront about who and what he is – a "Soldier of Allah," as he put on his business card. On Tuesday, he admitted he was a traitor who had crossed over from "the bad side" (America's) to "the good side" (Islam's). He has renounced his U.S. citizenship and its effete protections such as workplace-violence disability leave. He professes loyalty to America's enemies. He says, "I am the shooter." He helpfully informs us that that's his gun. In this week's one-minute statement, he spoke more honestly and made more sense than Obama, Gates, Casey, the Armed Forces Court of Appeals, two judges, the prosecution and defense lawyers, and mountains of bureaucratic reports and media coverage put together.
But poor old Hasan can say, "Yup, I did it," all he wants; what does he know?



Unlike the Zimmerman trial, Maj. Hasan's has not excited the attention of the media. Yet it is far more symbolic of the state of America than the Trayvon Martin case, in which superannuated race hucksters attempted to impose a half-century-old moth-eaten Klan hood on a guy who's a virtual one-man melting pot. The response to Nidal Hasan helps explain why, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, this war is being lost – because it cannot be won because, increasingly, it cannot even be acknowledged. Which helps explain why it now takes the U.S. military longer to prosecute a case of "workplace violence" than it did to win World War II.

GET READY FOR THE NEXT ELECTRO MAGNETIC PULSE

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The National Power Grid

Forecast: Millions dead within a year, Part 1

by garnet92

http://peskytruth.wordpress.com/2013/08/04/forecast-millions-dead-within-a-year-part-1/



This is the first of a four-part series about EMP’s and the catastrophic results they can cause.



Part 1. What is an EMP and why should I worry?



EMP is an acronym for Electro Magnetic Pulse. An electromagnetic pulse is a burst of electromagnetic energy. It can occur in the form of a radiated, electric or magnetic pulse depending on the source.



So, why should we be concerned about EMP’s?
Because a strong EMP could literally return the country to the dark ages.
If the headline or that statement didn’t get your attention, it should have, because an EMP can fry electronics including computers, communications, and most importantly, the electrical grid – thereby plunging us into darkness, both figuratively and literally.
Remember, when the electrical grid shuts down, so do ATMs, gas stations, supermarkets, GPS, cell phones, water and sewer pumps, etc.



BS you say, that’s just some alarmist tinfoil-hat-wearing gloom and doom guy who’s replaced that fizzled-out Mayan 2012 end-of-the-world debacle with a new “catastrophe.”
No, actually we’ve been hit by EMP storms before; six recorded over 160 years of record keeping on geomagnetic storms , including the strongest one that occurred in 1859, when two EMP’s hit the earth, one shortly after the other. That storm (the largest on record) has come to be known as the Carrington Event.



The Carrington Event



On September 1, 1859, amateur astrologer Richard Carrington pointed his telescope toward the sun and began to sketch a cluster of enormous dark sun spots that appeared on its surface. Suddenly, Carrington spotted what he described as “two patches of intensely bright and white light” erupting from the sunspots (we now call them solar flares). Five minutes later the fireballs vanished, but within hours their impact was felt across the globe.



That night the first burst hit. Telegraph communications around the world began to fail; there were reports of sparks showering from telegraph wires and machines, shocking operators and setting papers ablaze. Many telegraph lines across North America were rendered inoperable when the first of two successive solar storms struck.



One telegraph manager reported that the resulting currents flowing through the wires were so powerful that platinum contacts were in danger of melting and “streams of fire” were pouring forth from the circuits.



The next morning, the magnetic mayhem resulting from the second storm continued as telegraph company employees arrived at their offices to discover that it was impossible to transmit or receive dispatches. By noon, operations were beginning to return to normal, but, as they say, that was then, this is now.



Consider that 1859 was long before electrical grids, satellite communications and computers simplified our lives. Think of how things have changed; how much of our everyday life requires electricity and electronics?



What if a “Carrington Event” happened today?



A similar storm, though several times smaller, did happen in 1989. A solar storm in March of that year caused a blackout in Quebec which left over 5 million people without electricity for up to 12 hours, and cost the region an estimated 2 billion dollars, closing hospitals and halting trading on Toronto's stock market. By the way, that link is to a NASA article – not exactly a tinfoil hat operation, eh?



Here’s what happened: On the evening of Monday, March 12 a vast cloud of solar plasma (a gas of electrically charged particles) struck Earth's magnetic field. The violence of this “geomagnetic storm” caused spectacular northern lights that could be seen as far south as Florida and Cuba.
The magnetic disturbance was incredibly intense. It created electrical currents in the ground beneath much of North America. Just after 2:44 a.m. on March 13, the currents found a weakness in the electrical power grid of Quebec. In less than 2 minutes, the entire Quebec power grid lost power.
During the 12-hour blackout that followed, millions of people suddenly found themselves in dark office buildings and underground pedestrian tunnels, and in stalled elevators. Most people woke up to cold homes for breakfast. The blackout also closed schools and businesses, kept the Montreal Metro shut during the morning rush hour, and closed Dorval Airport.



The Quebec Blackout was by no means a local event. Across the United States from coast to coast, over 200 power grid problems erupted within minutes of the start of the March 13 storm. Fortunately, none of them caused a blackout.



The Quebec event may have been a preview of what lies in store for us as sun activity is expected to steadily increase, reaching its maximum strength in 2013, according to a prediction issued by NASA together with NOA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A testament to the seriousness with which these solar storms are viewed is evidenced by that fact that the National Weather Services’ Space Weather Prediction Center sole task is to predict space weather.
Solar activity peaks about every 11 years sending waves of charged particles speeding toward the earth at over 1,000 miles an hour. Much of this energy is absorbed by the upper atmosphere, but some of it gets through and hits the surface of the earth - fortunately at levels too low to cause direct damage to humans.



The danger from an electromagnetic pulse is a function of simple physics: Electromagnetic pulses and geomagnetic storms can alter Earth's magnetic field. Changing magnetic fields in the atmosphere, in turn, can trigger surging currents in power lines - power lines like those 200,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines that crisscross North America, for example.
They’re supplying 1,800 utilities with the power for TVs, lights, refrigerators and air conditioners in homes, and for the businesses, hospitals and police stations that take care of us all.
In addition to overloading the transmission lines which traverse the U.S., the excessive current can damage and sometimes destroy the EHV (Extra High Voltage) transformers whose task it is to step down the transmission line voltage to consumer-level voltage. This is what led to the blackout in Quebec.



The strong electric currents that would flow through the electrical grid during a repeat of the Carrington event would likely cause melting and burn-out of large-amperage copper windings and leads in electrical transformers. These multi-ton, multi-million dollar devices generally cannot be repaired in the field, and if damaged in this manner, they’ll need to be replaced with new units. There are only a handful of spares in reserve, so most of the region affected by the collapse would remain without power until new transformers could be custom built... months, even years later.





This image shows the Extra High Voltage (EHV) transmission lines across U.S. most susceptible to power-system collapse.
It should now be quite apparent that a strong EMP attack on our power grid can be catastrophic for the U.S.



As dependent as we are today on everything being electrically-powered, consider how you and your family would survive even a six-month absence of electricity, not to mention a year or more?
Scientists know that vastly larger and more destructive solar storms than Quebec are not only possible, but inevitable. The last recorded large solar super-storm was the previously mentioned Carrington Event, which was caused by an explosion on the sun that scientists estimate was the equivalent of a thousand hydrogen bombs.



Nobody knows when another storm of this size will envelop our planet, but a recent estimate published in the International Journal of Research and Applications in 2012 says that there is a one in eight chance of this happening within the next decade.



If it does, electrical grids throughout the world will not just fail, they’ll be destroyed. NASA warns that such an event would cause an avalanche of blackouts carried across continents that could last for weeks, months, even years, depending on the magnitude of the storm.
 Stay tuned for Part 2, How Damaging Could It Be?

garnet92 | August 4, 2013 at 10:42 AM | Categories: Political | URL: http://wp.me/pL408-jZ