RWC Unfiltered 10-27-11

• Brits Invent Super Broccoli
• Iran, Turkey, Syria Set to Chop Up Iraq
  

  Iran as Center Of Radical Islam

• FAST AND FURIOUS stink spreads
• Celts and Halloween Linked
• USA On Edge of Another Credit Downgrade
• Laypeople Rescue Churches
• Obama Tosses Taiwan To Wolves

A company in Taiwan makes dinnerware out of wheat, so you can eat your plate!

Popeye might want to consider switching to broccoli. British scientists recently unveiled a new breed of the vegetable that experts say packs a big nutritional punch.

The new broccoli was specially grown to contain two to three times the normal amount of glucoraphanin, a nutrient believed to help ward off heart disease.

ucoraphanin works by breaking fat down in the body, preventing it from clogging the arteries. It is only found in broccoli in significant amounts.

It’s been on sale as Beneforte in select stores in California and Texas for the last year, and hit British shelves this month. Later this fall, the broccoli will be rolled out across the U.S.

The worlds oldest piece of chewing gum is over 9000 years old!

Iran is pleased If somewhat surprised by Obama’s gift of Iraq that will be chopped up among it, Turkey and Syria. Kuwait is scampering around in near panic for dependable allies. It looks more and more like the Persian Gulf could become untenable for the U. S. threatening the oil produced and exported from there.

It is likely energy prices will rise and billions will pour into America’s enemy’s treasuries as the noose is tightened around Israel’s neck.

Afghanistan’s Karzai pledged to fight with Pakistan if it were attacked even by the U. S. After being slapped around by he U. S. he appears to have recanted - well sort of. He knows Obama will use any pretext to get out before his 2012 reelection bid regardless of consequences.

Libya’s caretaker leader has endorsed Sharia Law opening the way for the Egypt-like collapse into radical Islam. Rush Limbaugh contends Obama fully expects a radical mulim government to emerge. In another grim result Islamists on Monday claimed victory in Tunisia’s first democratic election, sending a message to other states in the region that long-sidelined Islamists are challenging for power after the “Arab Spring.”

Little will happen before the 2012 election because America’s enemies are excited at the benefits to them of Obama being reelected

Quisle (KWIZ-uhl) verb intr.: To betray, especially by collaborating with an enemy. Etymology Back-formation from quisling (traitor), after Norwegian army officer Vidkun Quisling, who collaborated with the German occupying forces during World War II. Earliest documented use: 1940.

THE DISGRACEFUL AND DANGERIOUS Operation Fast and Furious involves the Obama Justice Department and was carried out by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). It involves, among other things, at least 2,000 weapons, about 1,000 of which ended up in Mexico, and a Border Patrol Agent, Brian Terry, who was murdered with weapons found near the scene of the crime in Rio Rico, Arizona on December 14, 2010. Four suspects were arrested, who were linked to a Mexican drug smuggling operation. The weapons were among 57 linked to Fast and Furious which have been tied to at least 11 violent crimes in the U.S., including the Terry murder. The Justice Department, while largely stonewalling, has admitted this much to Congress, as reported by The Los Angeles Times. In addition, at least 200 people have been killed or wounded in Mexico with weapons linked to the operation. On February 15th of this year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jaime Zapata was shot to death in Mexico, another apparent victim.

The Bush administration had introduced Project Gunrunner in 2005 in an effort to reduce drug and firearms trafficking and the associated violence on both sides of the border with Mexico. Operation Fast and Furious began in September of 2009 and continued into early this year. What is known is that the federal government purposefully allowed gun smugglers, some with criminal records, to purchase guns at federally licensed firearms dealers in Arizona. In some cases the guns were taken across the Mexican border with the knowledge of U.S. government officials and delivered to major Mexican drug cartels.

According to CNS News, “The reported purpose of the operation was to track and uncover the entirety of the smuggling operations so they could be completely shut down. However, two rifles sold to a smuggler in the course of Operation Fast and Furious in January 2010 ended up at the scene of the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010.”

The Murder of Agent Brian Terry

The murder of Agent Terry apparently was the last straw for some. A number of agents were sickened by what they knew was going on. CNS News also put together a timeline of known events regarding Fast and Furious. In the timeline it talks about “a January 8, 2010 briefing paper from the ATF Phoenix Field Division Group VII” that says: ‘This investigation has currently identified more than 20 individual connected straw purchasers.’ It further says: ‘To date (September 2009 - present) this group has purchased in excess of 650 firearms (mainly AK-47 variants) for which they have paid cash totaling more than $350,000.’

“October 2009: The ATF’s Phoenix Field Division establishes a gun trafficking group called Group VII, which initially began using the strategy of ‘gunwalking,’ or allowing suspects to walk away with illegally purchased guns, according to a report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the staff of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“‘The purpose was to wait and watch, in hope that law enforcement could identify other members of a trafficking network and build a large, complex conspiracy case,’ the report says. It goes on to say: ‘Group VII initially began using the new gunwalking tactics in one of its investigations to further the Department’s strategy. The case was soon renamed ‘Operation Fast and Furious.’”

“Jan. 5, 2010: ATF agents met with Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona Emory Hurley, the lead prosecutor in the matter, according to the briefing paper. The briefing paper says: ‘a determination was made that there was minimal evidence at this time to support any type of prosecution; therefore, additional firearms purchases should be monitored and additional evidence continued to be gathered.’

“Further, US Attorney for the District of Arizona Dennis Burke was briefed on this day. [Burke had been Sec. of Homeland Security' Janet Napolitano's chief of staff] Burke “concurs with the assessment of his line prosecutors and fully supports the continuation of the investigation,” the briefing paper says. The paper goes on to say that then head of the ATF Phoenix Field Division, Special Agent in Charge William Newell, “has repeatedly met with the US A[ttorney] Burke regarding the on-going status of this investigation and both are in full agreement with the current investigative strategy.”

“Jan. 8, 2010: The aforementioned briefing paper from the ATF Phoenix Field Division sheds further light on the operation:

• The paper makes clear: ‘Currently our strategy is to allow the transfer of firearms to continue to take place, albeit at a much slower pace, in order to further the investigation and allow for the identification of additional co-conspirators who would continue to operate and illegally traffic firearms to Mexican DTOs [Drug Trafficking Organizations].’
• The ATF worked with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Phoenix Ariz.
• The ultimate goal is to secure [REDACTED] to identify and prosecute all co-conspirators of the DTO to include the 20 individual straw purchasers, the facilitators of the distribution cell centered here in Phoenix, the transportation cells taking firearms South, and ultimately to develop and provide prosecutable information to our Mexican law enforcement counterparts for actions.”

CBS’s Sharyl Attkisson later revealed that “ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office Bill Newell-who led Fast and Furious-and then-White House National Security Staffer Kevin O’Reilly” were in close contact. “Emails indicate the two also spoke on the phone. Such detailed, direct communications between a local ATF manager in Phoenix and a White House national security staffer has raised interest among Congressional investigators looking into Fast and Furious. Newell has said he and O’Reilly are longtime friends.”

“The email exchanges span a little over a month last summer. [The emails were exchanged between late July and early September of 2010] They discuss ATF’s gun trafficking efforts along the border including the controversial Fast and Furious case, though not by name. The emails to and from O’Reilly indicate more than just a passing interest in the Phoenix office’s gun trafficking cases. They do not mention specific tactics such as ‘letting guns walk.’

“A lawyer for the White House wrote Congressional investigators: ‘none of the communications between ATF and the White House revealed the investigative law enforcement tactics at issue in your inquiry, let alone any decision to allow guns to ‘walk.’”

“Among the documents produced: an email in which ATF’s Newell sent the White House’s O’Reilly an ‘arrow chart reflecting the ultimate destination of firearms we intercepted and/or where the guns ended up.’ The chart shows arrows leading from Arizona to destinations all over Mexico.”

Attkisson reported in March 2011 on ATF agent John Dodson, a courageous whistleblower who had seen enough of letting these weapons move freely across the border. He had seen the consequences. You can see him tell part of his story to Attkisson in a March 2011 report on CBS.

In my article on Fast and Furious I credited some of those in the media who had been reporting on the story as information became known. They included Michelle Malkin, Andy McCarthy of National Review Online, Andrew Breitbart, Pajamas Media, American Thinker, WorldNetDaily, the Heritage Foundation. I then received several emails identifying others who had been the earliest to expose the details and the outline of this growing scandal. I heard from Dave Workman, Senior Editor of Gun Week, who wrote that the two men who uncovered the scandal last December were “National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea and independent blog journalist Mike Vanderboegh at Sipsey Street Irregulars. They broke this story, nobody else.” Workman has also contributed to the development of the story. Others include Mike Whipple of USActionnews.com and Bob Owens writing in Pajamas Media.

Sharyl Attkisson Steps Up Again

Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News has stood out as the one reporter in the mainstream media to take on this story, without fear or favor. She has stood strong in the past, and we have noted that as well. More than a decade ago, Attkisson was virtually alone when she began, during the Clinton administration, reporting on lax security at America’s leading nuclear weapons facility, Los Alamos. She stayed on that story for more than five years, and in doing so provided a great service to this country. She is doing so again on this story, and is paying a price. Recently Attkisson went on the Laura Ingraham radio show and “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News to describe how she was yelled and screamed at by officials both at the White House and DOJ for her pursuit of this story. She said she was yelled at by Tracy Schmaler at Justice and screamed at by Eric Schultz at the White House. She said she was told that she’s the only reporter who is not being “reasonable.” It is an outrage and other journalists should express that outrage.

Fox News has been all over the story. Sean Hannity had a one-hour special back in July devoted to this emerging scandal. William Lajeunesse of Fox News has also done some excellent reporting on this. CNN eventually carried some good stories on Fast and Furious, by Anderson Cooper and John King. But in general, the mainstream media have ignored the story and have gone to great lengths to be sure that it doesn’t implicate President Obama, much less Eric Holder, for anything other than being out of the loop.

The story got much larger when it was revealed that the federal government apparently purchased weapons and sold them directly to criminals in Mexico. As Michael Walsh of the New York Post wrote, “the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently ordered one of its own agents to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel. Let that sink in: After months of pretending that ‘Fast and Furious’ was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US Attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys.”

This revelation, along with the possibility that Holder may have perjured himself, could prove to be the game changer, and force the Obama administration to turn this over to an independent counsel. In May, Holder appeared before Congress. When asked when he first heard about Fast and Furious, Holder responded, “I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”

But recently released documents reveal that Holder received memos referring to the program in July, 2010. One such memo said, “Operation Fast and Furious” involved a “firearms trafficking ring.”

Holder later said that he had misunderstood the question.

Another key figure is Kenneth Melson, who was the Acting Director of ATF. Melson got a lawyer and voluntarily decided to meet with Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee, and Sen. Chuck Grassley, on July 4th of this year. He said he was told by Justice Department officials to not respond to such requests from Congress. But he did it anyway. The next month he was transferred out of ATF and brought into the DOJ as an “advisor.”

After being challenged by Issa for his answer, Holder fired off a letter to Congress claiming that he had never read the memos, and that it was the responsibility of his staff to brief him on what they considered important.

Holder then went on to say that the reason the ATF was unable to prevent the weapons from being sold to the cartels was a lack of gun control and registration.

Issa responded to Holder, saying that “the American people have a right to know more, knowing that these guns were deliberately intended to end up in the hands of the drug cartels without any kind of traceability, except if you find a gun in the scene of the crime. That is the reason that it is felony and stupid-and I use the word ‘felony’ deliberately-program.”

He wrote that “Mexico’s Attorney General Marisela Morales, who stated that more than 200 Mexican citizens have been killed with Fast and Furious weapons, referred to the Obama administration plot as ‘an attack on Mexicans’ security.’”

Issa let Holder have it:

“Mr. Attorney General, you have made numerous statements about Fast and Furious that have eventually been proven to be untrue. Your lack of trustworthiness while speaking about Fast and Furious has called into question your overall credibility as Attorney General. The time for deflecting blame and obstructing our investigation is over. The time has come for you to come clean to the American public about what you knew about Fast and Furious, when you knew it, and who is going to be held accountable for failing to shut down a program that has already had deadly consequences, and will likely cause more casualties for years to come.”

“Operation Fast and Furious was the Department’s most significant gun trafficking case. It related to two of your major initiatives-destroying the Mexican cartels and reducing gun violence on both sides of the border. On your watch, it went spectacularly wrong. Whether you realize yet or not, you own Fast and Furious. It is your responsibility.”

Also, a group of ten Arizona sheriffs (5 Republican, 5 Democrat) have called for a special counsel to investigate the gunwalking operations, as has House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith.

The outcome of this scandal will have huge repercussions for years to come.

Early Halloween celebrations included “play parties,” which were public events held to celebrate the harvest. Neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell fortunes, dance and sing.

2,000 years ago, the Celts, who lived in what is now the United Kingdom, Ireland, and northern France, had a festival commemorating the end of the year. Their New Year was November 1. Halloween is typically linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain, whose original spelling was Samuin (pronounced sow-an or sow-in)”. The name of the festival historically kept by the Gaels and Celts in the British Isles which is derived from Old Irish and means roughly “summer’s end”.

According to the Oxford Dictionary of English folk lore: “Certainly Samhain was a time for festive gatherings, and medieval Irish texts and later Irish, Welsh, and Scottish folklore use it as a setting for supernatural encounters, but there is no evidence that it was connected with the dead in pre-Christian times, or that pagan religious ceremonies were held.”

The Irish myths which mention Samhain were written in the 10th and 11th centuries by Christian monks. This is around 200 years after the Catholic church inaugurated All Saints Day and at least 400 year after Ireland became Christian.

The word Halloween is first attested in the 16th century and represents a Scottish variant of the fuller All-Hallows-Even (”evening”), that is, the night before All Hallows Day. Although the phrase All Hallows is found in Old English (ealra hālgena mæssedæg, mass-day of all saints), All-Hallows-Even is itself not attested until 1556.

Artifacts and symbols associated with Halloween formed over time. For instance, the carving of jack-o’-lanterns springs from the souling custom of carving turnips into lanterns as a way of remembering the souls held in purgatory. The turnip has traditionally been used in Ireland and Scotland at Halloween, but immigrants to North America used the native pumpkin, which are both readily available and much larger - making them easier to carve than turnips. The American tradition of carving pumpkins is recorded in 1837 and was originally associated with harvest time in general, not becoming specifically associated with Halloween until the mid-to-late 19th century

The practice of dressing up in costumes and begging door to door for treats on holidays dates back to the Middle Ages and includes Christmas wassailing. Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of souling, when poor folk would go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1), receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls’ Day (November 2). It originated in Ireland and Britain, although similar practices for the souls of the dead were found as far south as Italy.

Wassaling is linked to drinking large amouns of alcohol and going carroling in a ribald moving party and is still a Christmas custom in parts of Scotland.

On November 5, 1606, Guy Fawkes was to be executed but leapt to his death from the scaffold thereby avoiding the agony of being disemboweled, ,drawn and quartered for attempting to blow up England’s Parliament. Fawkes, along with an extremist Catholic organization he belonged to, wanted to remove the Protestant King James from his throne.

The United States will likely suffer the loss of its triple-A credit rating from another major rating agency by the end of this year due to concerns over the deficit, Bank of America Merrill Lynch forecasts.

The trigger would be a likely failure by Congress to agree on a credible long-term plan to cut the U.S. deficit, the bank said in a research note published on Friday.

A second downgrade - either from Moody’s or Fitch - would follow Standard & Poor’s downgrade in August on concerns about the government’s budget deficit and rising debt burden. A second loss of the country’s top credit rating would be an additional blow to the sluggish U.S. economy, Merrill said.

A lightning bolt generates temperatures up to 54,000 degrees,  five times hotter than those found at the sun’s surface, and can travel at speeds of 140,000 miles per hour. There are some 16,000,000  (million) strikes every day somewhere on Earth.

Thousands of lay people are emerging in churches across the country at the same time the number of Catholic priests is falling because faith is growing in popularity, authors Michael Novak and William Simon told Newsmax.

It’s a new and promising new development in the history of Catholicism, Novak said.

“They’re filling a vacuum,” he said. “They’re taking over more and more of the administrative duties in the parishes, freeing up the priests for their sacramental duties.”

People may say, ‘Let’s keep religion out of the public square, let’s have an official policy,’ ” he told Newsmax. “But they can’t keep the people down. They’re emerging because they feel filled with an energy. The fact is that they want to observe their faith.”

Both men wrote the book “Living the Call: An Introduction to the Lay Vocation.”

When asked what role lay people play in the economy, Simon said those who have taken up employment in religious institutions are no different than workers in small businesses, which he described as the economic engines of America.

“In our book, ‘Living the Call,’ what we talk about are people that are living their everyday lives,” he said. “They’re balancing all the things they do.”

As the celebration of faith grows among the public, it’s become more important in politics, the authors told Newsmax.

“I think that faith has been an important part of American history, literally since its founding,” Simon said. “Whether it be in presidential campaigns, whether it be in other campaigns, whether it be virtually in every area of life, someone’s faith is normally a very integral part of what they do.

“The First Amendment in very clear,” he continued. “There’s a freedom of exercise.”

Added Novak: “Look at our inaugurals of presidents. If that isn’t a religious service, I don’t know what is. You can’t have a political festival without talking about the people, and the people are the most religious in the world.”

When asked what role government should play in spiritual and moral decisions facing Americans, Novak said, “There are some activities that clearly are banned, punishable, murder, robbery, rape.”

“That’s what the argument over abortion is about,” he told Newsmax. “It’s an argument about whether abortion is an act of violence against the child in the womb that’s destined to become a human being unless stopped, and people have radically different views about that.”

There are more than 2 billion Christians in the world - two out of every six people - and half of those is Catholic, Simon said. Islam has 1.6 billion adherents worldwide. 83 percent of Americans claim to belong to a religious denomination, 40 percent claim to attend services nearly every week or more, and 58 percent claim to pray at least weekly.

Contrary to Obama’s claim that America is no longer a Christian nation (76%) identify themselves as Christians, mostly within Protestant and Catholic denominations, accounting for 51% and 25% of the population respectively. Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism etc.), collectively make up about 3.9% to 5.5% of the adult population. About 15% of the adult population identifies as having no religious belief or no religious affiliation.

Al Capone’s business card said he was a used furniture dealer

Taiwan’s military position was long akin to Israel in the Middle East, hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned by regional adversaries but holding a qualitative edge, especially in the Air Force. Taiwan is trying to purchase additional American built F-16 fighters to narrow the gap.

Taiwan’s current F-16 A/B squadrons date from the mid 1990’s.  Think about it, how has your computer technology changed since 1995?  Windows 95 anyone?  In other words, new then, but hopelessly outdated now. Or what about a 1996 car, well maintained, high mileage?  Military avionics standards have reached even higher levels and thus Taiwan’s current F-16’s are now at least a generation or two behind.

While the United States has given the green light for a $ 5.3 billion upgrade packages for the 145 ageing F-16’s, the fact remains these are older platforms being improved.

The Taipei government wants to buy an additional 66 new F-16 C/D models but has hit a roadblock from the Obama Administration who wishes not to ruffle Beijing’s feathers.

In a Lockheed memo to U.S. lawmakers, the aircraft manufacturer stressed that selling  Taiwan 66 new F-16 C/D models costing $8.3 billion would benefit not only the  aircraft maker, but would equally create 16,000 American jobs over a five year period.

Defense experts concur that the Republic of China on Taiwan’s Air Force needs both the F-16 upgrades as well as the new planes which the Taipei government has been trying to purchase them for the past five years.

Beijing vocally opposes the arms sales and warns that continued support of Taiwan, an island which it claims but has never ruled, will hurt relations between the People’s Republic and the USA.

Bipartisan support in Congress for the sales has been growing. Forty-seven U.S. Senators and 181 members of the House of Representatives have written to President Obama urging him to support the new fighter jet sales. Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn and New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez, have co-sponsored legislation which would require the U.S. to sell the new aircraft to Taiwan under terms of the 1979 Taiwan Relations act which requires the U.S. to provide the island with defensive weapons. The act was passed in response to the Carter Administration’s abrogation of the U.S./ROC (Republic of China) security treaty when Washington established full diplomatic relations with Beijing.

Currently the Republic of China’s Air Force flies the  F-16’s,  squadrons of equally dated French Mirage jets, and the near-antique Vietnam-era F-5’s are the mainstay of the island’s defense.  Upgrading the existing fleet with new planes is a process which will take a few years; the items are not simply “off the shelf” and thus must be phased in.

The F-16 upgrades as well as new model sales should go forward for a number of reasons:

• First and foremost, honoring the American commitment ensuring Taiwan’s security, serving as a deterrent to Beijing, and preserving the island’s vibrant democracy.
• Second the sale sends a signal that Washington is not willing to look aside while the balance of power in East Asia continues to tip towards the People’s Republic. Regional states among the Japan, the Philippines and Korea are closely monitoring the outcome as a barometer of America’s military commitments in the Far East.
• Third, both the upgrades and the sales of new aircraft would, needless to say, be good for American jobs and industry.

Maintaining America’s geo-political credibility in the Pacific, without question, remains  the most vital interest.

One quarter of the bones in your body are in your feet!