Could the economic collapse lead to a new kind of warfare?

from Nukes & Spooks

Today, the House Armed Services Committee is holding a hearing entitled Security Challenges Arising from the Global Financial Crisis. I realize this sounds like a lot of jargon but I found the topic and Chairman Ike Skelton's opening statement fascinating. The hearing is basically trying to tackle how the world economic collapse could affect U.S. national security, but not in the way we have come to think of that threat in the past few years.

I have spent the last six years reporting on the national security threat from rogue elements, usually operating in unstable states. My pieces focus on insurgencies and asymmetric warfare. Indeed, when the U.S. military talks about preparing for the future, it talks about counterinsurgencies and the need to stop groups from rising and plotting attacks against the United States, not wars fought along proper battle lines. But the hearing raises the question: What threat could proper states now pose to the United States because of the economic crisis?

My editor, Roy, interestingly pointed out to me that tough economic times can lead to the rise of extreme nationalistic leaders. That kind of ideology can often lead to war on its own. After all, the argument goes, our country, economy and way of life is superior. Therefore the military will prevail. A weak economy can further fuel the march toward war. As Skelton is his opening statement: “Hyper inflation in Germany was a significant factor in the rise of Hitler. The economic decay of the Soviet Union led to regime change across Eastern Europe So we know that economic crises can have consequences for national security of the highest order.” Roy added that Slobodan Milosevic's rise to power in Yugoslavia, at a time Communism had run out of steam, and the economic prospects were sinking, was on a wave of extreme nationalism, which led almost directly to war.

Could Pakistan’s collapsing economy lead to a new government, one that whose interests strongly diverge from U.S. interests? Could the rapid drop in oil lead Hugo Chavez to start a war of some kind to jump start his economy, perhaps with a U.S. ally? Could Egypt’s economic strain lead to the rise of a government other than the U.S. friendly regime of Hosni Mubarak?

Could the United States or a key ally once again find itself fighting a traditional army because of this economic crisis?

I realize these issues seem years in the future. After all, new nationalist leaders usually don’t rise overnight. But this economic crisis could last long enough for that to happen. And that means, the U.S. military may have to start preparing for that kind of war now.

Pakistan proposes integration of Taliban into security forces

(Compiler's note: This reasoning defies any logic that I recognize.)

By Bill Roggio

A senior official in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province wants the Taliban to integrate into the security forces in the region where the governemnt ceded to the Taliban's demands to implement sharia, or Islamic Law, and end military operations. The official also described the Swat Taliban leader as "good human being."

Syed Muhammad Javed, the Malakand Division Commissioner, has proposed the Taliban provide recruits for the police and the paramilitary Levies force. The Malakand Division is made up of the districts of Malakand, Swat, Shangla, Buner, Dir, and Chitral.

"I have proposed the Taliban be adjusted in police or Levies force and have suggested this at several forums," Javed told Daily Times. He claimed the police force's "confidence is shaken" due to a Taliban campaign of assassination and intimidation.

The police have been hit so hard that the force has been rendered ineffective. The governemnt claimed 70 policemen, an estimated five percent of the force, have been killed since the fighting in Swat broke out in July 2007. More than 800 policemen, more than half of the force, have deserted their posts or taken extended leaves to avoid the Taliban attacks. Another 142 troops from the paramilitary Frontier Corps have been reported killed since August 2008.

During the fighting between the Swat Taliban and government forces, the Swat Taliban targeted police officers, tribal leaders, and politicians. Family members of government officials and tribal leaders were killed, and their homes were torched.

The military ceased operations in Swat in February 2009 after it failed to dislodge the Taliban. Sufi Mohammed, the father-in-law of Swat Taliban commander Mullah Fazlullah, brokered a peace agreement between the government and the Taliban. Under the agreement, the government has committed to implement sharia, end the military campaign, and release Taliban prisoners, while the Taliban agreed to end attacks. But the Taliban have violated the agreement several times when it kidnapped the district coordinating officer and his bodyguards, murdered two soldiers, and captured a Frontier Corps officer and several of his men.

Javed and the military have refused to respond to the Taliban infractions. Javeed even went out of his way to praise Mullah Fazlullah. He described Fazlullah as a "good human being," Daily Times reported.

Javed's proposal to integrate the Taliban into the security forces comes as the US Congress is debating a $20 billion aid package to Pakistan. Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar have proposed giving Pakistan a one-time $5 billion grant plus a 10 year aid package worth $15 billion. Some of this money is slated to improve the security forces in Paksitan's Northwest Frontier Province and the Taliban-controlled tribal agencies.

But Pakistan's history of appropriately spending US aid money is appalling. More than $3.8 billion of an estimated $5 billion of military aid given to Pakistan up until December 2007 is unaccounted for, and it has been reported that millions of dollars in US aid has gone to pay reparations to the Taliban in Swat.

Chief justice publicly accepts WND's eligibility petition

(Compiler's note: This is a must read for sure. Get ready -- this is not going away until proved one way or the other. Also please read the embedded URLs in this article.)

By Drew Zahn

U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts

A California attorney lobbying the U.S. Supreme Court for a review of Barack Obama's qualifications to be president confronted the chief justice yesterday with legal briefs and a WND petition bearing names of over 325,000 people asking the court to rule on whether or not the sitting president fulfills the Constitution's "natural-born citizen" clause.

According to Orly Taitz, the attorney who confronted Chief Justice John Roberts at a lecture at the University of Idaho, the judge promised before the gathered crowd that he would, indeed, read and review the briefs and petition.

"I addressed him in front of 800 people in the audience," Taitz told WND, "including university officials, the president of the Idaho State Bar and the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Idaho, and in front of all them, [Roberts] promised to read my papers."

Roberts was lecturing on Abraham Lincoln to approximately 1,200 attendees of the annual Bellwood Memorial

Lecture Series at the Moscow, Idaho, university. Roberts has been chief justice of the Supreme Court since his nomination by President George W. Bush and subsequent confirmation in 2005.

Earlier in the week, Taitz confronted Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who told her the issue of Obama's eligibility, which has been raised before the Supreme Court at least four times but has yet to be given a single hearing, still lacked the votes of the required four justices in conference before it would be officially heard.

Taitz said, "I told Scalia that I was an attorney that filed Lightfoot v. Bowen that Chief Justice Roberts distributed for conference on Jan. 23 and now I represent nine state reps and 120 military officers, many of them high ranked, and I want to know if they will hear Quo Warranto and if they would hear it on original jurisdiction, if I bring Hawaii as an additional defendant to unseal the records and ascertain Obama's legitimacy for presidency."

The legal phrase Quo Warranto essentially means an explanation is being demanded for what authority Obama is using to act as president. An online constitutional resource says Quo Warranto "affords the only judicial remedy for violations of the Constitution by public officials and agents."

Where's the proof Barack Obama was born in the U.S. or that he fulfills the "natural-born American" clause in the Constitution? If you still want to see it, join more than 325,000 others and sign up now!

"Tell me what to do, what can I do?" Taitz reports asking Scalia. "Those soldiers [her plaintiffs] can be court-martialed for asking a legitimate question, who is the president, is he legitimate?"

She says Scalia responded, "Bring the case, I'll hear it, I don't know about others."

In Idaho, Taitz obtained the promise of one of the others, the chief justice, that he would read through the eligibility challenge, including the petition brought by WND readers.

As WND reported, Taitz is submitting a motion to the Supreme Court for re-hearing of Lightfoot v. Bowen, a case she is working on through her foundation Defend Our Freedoms, alleging some of her documentation may have been withheld from the justices by a court clerk.

Orly Taitz

She asserts docketing information about her case "was erased from the docket of the Supreme Court on January 21st, one day after the inauguration and two days before [the case was to be heard]."

At the lecture in Idaho, Taitz grabbed the attention of Justice Roberts by boldly addressing her allegation that a clerk had buried the case.

Taitz told WND that the forum rules required that those questioning Roberts announce their relationship to the University of Idaho and refrain from talking about cases currently before or likely to appear before the court.

"I said, 'Justice Roberts, my name is Orly Taitz. I'm an attorney from California, and I got up at 3 o'clock in the middle of the night, flew and drove thousands of miles just to ask you a question. So please give me some leeway,'" Taitz told WND. "My question is, do you know there is illegal activity going on in the Supreme Court of the United States?"

According to Taitz, the room was stunned silent as she continued, "I have presented my case to you, and you personally agreed to hear this case in conference. But your clerk refused to forward a supplemental brief to you. He has hidden this brief from you. He refused to put it on the docket. Additionally, my case was erased from the docket one day after the Inauguration, two days before my case was to be heard.

"Outraged citizens and members of the media and state representatives are calling the Supreme Court, demanding to have the case reentered on the docket," Taitz told Roberts.

Then she held up the WND petition and continued, "Moreover, here are the names of U.S. citizens who signed this petition and who sent individual letters to individual justices, including you, Justice Roberts, all of them demanding the same thing – that you hear my case in regards to Barack Hussein Obama's eligibility for presidency."

According to Taitz, Roberts approached the microphone and said, "I see you have papers. I promise you I will read all your papers, I will review them. Please give them to my Secret Service and I will review all of them."

Shortly thereafter, Taitz told WND, a Secret Service agent identified by his badge as Gilbert Shaw accepted two suitcases of documents and pledged to deliver them to Roberts....

Click here for additional information.

Why are there still questions about qualifications?

(Compiler's note: This is a must read subject that simply must be understood by the American citizens.)

Arguments of president's defenders never actually addressed eligibility

By Bob Unruh

In the last few months, dozens of U.S. courts have dismissed legal challenges to Barack Obama's constitutional eligibility to occupy the Oval Office, and even the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hold a hearing on the evidence – but what have the courts actually cited as reasons for dismissing the concerns of millions of Americans?

Mootness, lack of jurisdiction, lack of responsibility, lack of standing, a series of "no comments" and even the fact the issue has been "twittered."

The one subject that has been avoided to date has been whether or not the president is, in fact, eligible.

So far, there have been two definitive statements on the issue that have been made public, including one from an Obama campaign spokeswoman talking about the challenges who told WND, "All I can tell you is that it is just pure garbage."

The other is from Chiyome Fukino, the director of the Hawaiian Department of Health, who issued a statement, "I as Director of Health for the State of Hawaii, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health

has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures."

As with the court opinions, what is not said is significant. While the certificate on file is "in accordance with state policies and procedures," there's no affirmation that the document reflects a Hawaiian birth.

Nor is there any explanation for the image of the Hawaii state "certification of live birth" that has been posted by Obama on the Internet, purporting to document his Hawaiian birth, even though Hawaiian procedures at the time allowed that document to be issued to parents of children not born in the state.

For example, why would an individual with a verified birth certificate also have a "certification of live birth?"

The questions raised over Obama's eligibility are all very simple: The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

But getting the issue discussed has been a huge obstacle, and what courts have done several times, including once in a California

case, is to schedule hearings on the issue on a date far beyond any reasonable expectation of having applicability, lawyers

have said. For example, a challenge to the Electoral College vote for Obama, raised early in November, still hasn't had a court hearing.

The ramifications

The impact of an ineligible president isn't complicated either. If ineligible, critics argue that the constitutional provision acknowledging that possibility, and assigning the vice president to fill in until the president is eligible, applies.

In Amendment 20, Section 3, the Constitution says Congress must fully qualify the candidate "elected" by the Electoral College Electors, and that "If the president-elect shall have failed to qualify, then the vice president elect shall act as president until a president shall have qualified."

"Here's the bottom line," writes WND columnist Janet Porter of Faith2Action. "Either the Constitution matters or it doesn't. And if we're willing to ignore the constitutional requirements for the highest office in the land, what else are we willing to forgo? That part about free speech? Freedom of the press? Freedom of religion? If we are willing to shred one part of the Constitution, brace yourself to lose the rest."

According to a lawsuit filed by Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation on behalf of presidential candidate Ambassador Alan Keyes, an ineligible Obama would mean "then no act that he takes is, arguably, valid, the laws that he signs would not be valid, the protective orders that he signs would be null and void, and every act that he takes would be subject to legal challenge, both in Courts of the United States of America, and in International Courts."

The result? No legally binding stimulus bill, presidential appointments in doubt, federal budgets in limbo and the closure of Gitmo? Probably have to reopen it.

The birth location arguments

Obama reported in his autobiography that he was born in Honolulu, and the online "Certification of Live Birth" states that.

But when WND Senior Staff Reporter Dr. Jerome Corsi went there, he was told any Obama records were sealed, and although they would be released if the person made the request, Obama simply has refused to do that.

Corsi also was told records pertaining to Obama in Kenya likewise were sealed.

There also have been no confirmed hospital records uncovered that would document his birth, and an investigator even cast doubt on whether the Obama family lived at the address listed in the newspaper announcements.

A woman who reportedly "remembered" Obama's birth and was quoted widely in support of his Hawaiian birth later explained to WND she had been told of the birth of a baby boy by an acquaintance who was a doctor who noted the mother's unusual name of Stanley, but she had no knowledge of the details.

Citizenship from parents?

According to much legal research, at the time of Obama's birth he could be a natural born citizen by being born in the United States, by being born to two U.S. citizen parents (not possible because of his father), or, if only one parent was a U.S. citizen at the time of the birth, that parent must have resided in the United States for at least 10 years, at least five of which had to be after the age of 16.

The problem is, Obama's mother was only 18 when she gave birth, so his only apparent route to "natural born" citizenship status would have been to be born in Hawaii.

But there are other questions, too. Even if Obama was born in the state, would he have inherited citizenship from his Kenyan father or his American mother, a juvenile?

If he was born overseas as some critics contend, is there any way he would have acquired U.S. citizenship at birth? After all, statements from members of his extended family in Kenya, including some from his paternal grandmother, seem to indicate his birth location was in Kenya, not Hawaii.

The Indonesian question

At the time Obama moved to Indonesia as a child, only citizens of that country were allowed to attend school there. He was registered there as Barry Soetoro, his citizenship was listed as Indonesian and his religion as Islam. Porter reports there was no dual citizenship with Indonesia at the time.

The obvious question is what happened to Obama-Soetoro's citizenship during that time, did he retain an American citizenship, or not?

"If he was adopted by his Indonesian stepfather, he would have forfeited any U.S. citizenship he may have had, just as when a child is adopted in America, he or she becomes an American," Porter wrote.

Pakistan

Also, Porter reports it is likely that Obama traveled to Pakistan in 1981 on a passport other than a U.S. document, raising the question of the status of his citizenship at that point. Could one obtain another nation's passport while being an American citizen?

The 'Certification of Live Birth'

The Obama campaign posted the COLB image online, reportedly to dispel rumors that his middle name was Mohammad. But several bloggers who analyzed the image said it appeared to have been modified from the official state version, raising questions at to its authenticity.

Staff members at FactCheck claim to have examined the original "birth certificate," and found it to be genuine. But that doesn't include an explanation for the "Certification of Live Birth," a different document, nor an explanation for whether they really were looking at the "birth certificate," which the state of Hawaii maintains hasn't been released.

FactCheck.org also is part of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and linked to the Annenberg organization with whom Obama worked.

One of the lawsuits challenging Obama notes that when Republican Sen. John McCain's eligibility was questioned because of his birth to two U.S. citizens while his father was on active military duty in the Panama Canal Zone, he produced the documentation of his birth for examination.

Congress even held hearings and adopted a resolution referencing and resolving the questions. However, with Obama, there has been no documentation released and no hearings.

The biggest question

Mario Apuzzo, the attorney handling one of the cases challenging Obama's eligibility, told WND the biggest question is why Obama hasn't simply ordered a copy of the original birth certificate to be made available and dispel all the rumors.

Kreep noted that in Obama's book, he wrote of finding his birth certificate in a book, so he wouldn't even have to authorize the state to release it; just provide the original for inspection.

Several of the lawyers involved in the cases said they believe the information eventually will come out, because interest is growing. Kreep said he googled his own name with Obama's, and came up with 944,000 references. Linking Obama's to Keyes' name came up with nine million..

Until then, the challenges will continue.

"When Obama starts signing executive orders and legislation," said Kreep, "I'll be filing lawsuits unless and until he proves he's an American citizen."

Several state lawmakers also are working on new requirements for candidates to provide documentation before they would be on the ballots.

California lawyer Orly Taitz, whose work is on her Defend Our Freedoms Foundation website, said there are just too many unanswered questions.

:"The Certification of Live Birth does not name a hospital, name a doctor, have any signatures or a seal of the Hawaiian Health Department on the front of the document. This document is usually given to parties that don't have a proper hospital birth certificate and it is given based on a statement of one relative only. Even the state of Hawaii doesn't give full credit to these documents," she said.

Among the claims being raised in the various lawsuits: That Congress didn't properly determine whether Obama is qualified, that active and retired members of the military have a need to know his qualifications to be commander-in-chief, that state officials failed to properly qualify Obama as a candidate (California previously had removed ineligible candidates from the ballot), and his college records should be released to reveal whether he attended school as a U.S. citizen.

Russia weighs Cuba, Venezuela bases: report

Russia could use bases for its strategic bombers on the doorstep of the United States in Cuba and Venezuela to underpin long-distance patrols in the region, a senior air force officer said Saturday.

"This is possible in Cuba," General Anatoly Zhikharev, chief of the Russian air force's strategic aviation staff, told the Interfax-AVN military news agency.

The comments were the latest signal that Moscow intends to project its military capability in far-flung corners of the globe despite a tight defence budget and hardware that experts consider in many respects outdated. ....