Pension Funds are Money Pots for the Biggest Risk-takers on Wall Street

The Real Risk of Pension Plans: They Give Retirees False Security

December 22, 2014

Business Week - Retirement security is ending the year at an all-time low. The $1.1 trillion last-minute spending bill will allow trustees to cut benefits in multiemployer defined benefit pension plans. And while it affects a relatively small population, 10 million people at most, it opens the door for other employers to make similar cuts. Maybe that’s a long way off; maybe not. But the provision is a rude awakening: We may romanticize guaranteed retirement benefits and lament our 401(k) world, but pensions aren’t safe these days either.

Until recently, a pension benefit seemed as good as money in the bank. Companies or governments set aside money for employees’ retirements; the sponsors were on the hook for funding the promised benefits appropriately. In recent years, it has become clear that most pension plans are falling short, but accrued benefits normally aren’t cut unless the plan, or employer, is on the verge of bankruptcy—high-profile examples include airline and steel companies. Public pension benefits appear even safer, because they are guaranteed by state constitutions.

By comparison, 401(k) and other defined contribution plans seem much less reliable. They require employees to decide, individually, to set aside money for retirement and to invest it appropriately over the course of 30 or so years. Research suggests that people are remarkably bad at both: About 20 percent of eligible employees don’t participate in their 401(k) plan. Those who do save too little, and many choose investments that underperform the market, charge high investment fees, or both.

It turns out that pension plan sponsors, and the politicians who oversee them, are just as fallible as workaday employees. We all prefer to spend more today and deal with the future when it comes. Pension plans have done this for years by promising generous benefits without a clear plan to pay for them. When pressed, they may simply raise their performance expectations or choose more risky investments in search of higher returns. Neither is a legitimate solution. In theory, regulators should keep pension plan sponsors in check. In practice, the rules regulators must enforce tend to indulge, or even encourage, risky behavior.

Because pension plans seem so dependable, workers do in fact depend on them and save less outside their plans. According to the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances, people between ages 55 and 65 with pensions have, on average, $60,000 in financial assets. Households with other kinds of retirement savings accounts have $160,000. It’s true that defined benefit pensions are worth more than the difference, but not if the benefit is cut.

As the new legislation makes clear, pension plans can kick the can down the road for only so long. Defined contribution plans have their problems, but a tremendous effort has been made to educate workers about the importance of participating. (Even if the education campaign has been the product of asset managers who make money when more people participate, it’s still valuable.) Almost half of 401(k) plans now automatically enroll employees, which has increased participation and encouraged investment in low-cost index funds. And now it looks like a generous 401(k) plan with sensible, low-cost investment options may turn out to be less risky than a poorly managed pension plan, not least of all because workers know exactly what the risks are.

Prudential Piles on the Corporate Pensions

December 18, 2014

Business Week - Big U.S. companies have found a way to escape the burden of ballooning pension obligations: pay an insurance company to take them over. Since 2012 corporations have transferred $41.4 billion of U.S. pensions to insurers, according to Limra, an insurance industry trade association. Prudential (PRU) has dominated the dealmaking, agreeing to acquire more than $35 billion in pension obligations from companies including Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY), General Motors (GM), Motorola Solutions (MSI), and Verizon (VZ)—meaning the nation’s second-biggest life insurer now has the responsibility of making pension payments to almost 200,000 of those companies’ retirees.

For corporate executives, the transfers offer peace of mind. They no longer need worry about how stock market crashes or low bond yields will affect the company’s pension burdens. And they don’t need to estimate how long each of their retirees will live. For insurers, pensions are familiar territory: They already sell annuities and are in the business of managing pools of money to meet long-term obligations. Corporations have “no strategic rationale for wanting to hold on to these liabilities,” says Jonathan Novak, who oversees American International Group’s (AIG) institutional life business. “It’s a far more natural fit for the skill set of the life insurers.”

Prudential’s pension acquisitions: $25b in assets for 110,000 GM retirees

For workers, the benefits of the deals are less clear. Pensions lose federal government protection when they’re transferred to insurers, according to Karen Friedman, policy director at the Pension Rights Center, a nonprofit consumer organization. “The verdict is not in on how safe these transactions are,” she says. “They happen very quickly. We still think the government regulators need to act.”

Story: Congress Says It Has to Cut Pensions to Save Them

Companies typically transfer plans covering employees who are retired or near retirement and are no longer accruing additional benefits. At some companies, retirees outnumber employees. Motorola Solutions, which employs 15,000 people, had 95,000 participants in its pension plans before striking a deal with Prudential in September to take over payments for 30,000 of them. The agreements have increased in popularity in recent years as a recovering stock market helped bring pension assets back in line with liabilities, making the transfers less costly for companies. In a typical transaction, the insurer gets about $1.09 in assets for every dollar of pension promises it takes on, according to consulting firm Mercer (MMC). 

$3.2b in liabilities for 30,000 Motorola Solutions beneficiaries

The market is growing fast. About $100 billion to $150 billion in transactions could take place in the next five years, says Mercer. MetLife (MET) took on about $279 million of obligations in the first nine months of the year, while AIG has acquired $65.6 million, according to Limra. Prudential was No. 1 with $604.8 million (the figures include only completed deals). The latest: On Dec. 16, MetLife said it agreed to take over pension benefits for about 7,000 people from TRW Automotive (TRW) in a $440 million deal.

Ultimately, AIG estimates, at least $1 trillion in U.S. pensions could go to insurers. To ensure a deal is profitable, insurers have to make complicated calculations about mortality, interest rates, and investment returns over periods of 20 years or more. Small variations from a forecast could have a large impact on results. “The competitive landscape for large closeouts leaves little margin for error,” MetLife Chief Executive Officer Steven Kandarian warned in October. “A negative surprise relative to assumptions could impact returns for decades.”

Story: The 401(k) Killed Off Pensions 

$7.5b in liabilities for 41,000 Verizon beneficiaries

Prudential’s success in winning the biggest deals could mean its pricing is too low. Moody’s Investors Service (MCO) tried to figure out what would happen if death rates fell at about 2 percent a year faster than Prudential’s expectations. That’s the equivalent of the average 70-year-old living 1.7 years longer than expected. That sort of shock, while highly unlikely, could lead to big losses for the insurer, especially if it takes on many more pensions, Moody’s analysts warned. “Once you write a block of business, you’ve assumed that risk for decades,” says Scott Robinson, a senior vice president at Moody’s. “If you write a big deal, you don’t get a second chance.”

Aegon (AEG), the Dutch owner of Transamerica, says insurers need to take a lot of credit risk to earn enough to meet the obligations they’re taking on and generate a profit. “We’ve looked at that market, and we cannot make that pricing work,” says Chief Financial Officer Darryl Button. “I don’t think that product in that market is rationally priced in the U.S.”

Story: What Does Your Retirement Plan Really Cost?

The Hidden Risk in the World’s Best Pension System

October 17, 2014 

Business Week - In the pension-nerd community (of which I am a card-carrying member), the Dutch are renowned for their creativity and prudence. According to the New York Times, Dutch corporate pensions are the gold standard. They’re well funded, cover 90 percent of Dutch workers, and replace 70 percent of income.

Compared with defined-benefit plans in the U.S.—rare, underfunded, and governed by accounting standards derided by almost every economist—the Dutch pension system looks even better. It does have a weakness, though, one that’s often overlooked, even though it may be the only aspect of the Dutch system that’s likely to be adopted here: In the Netherlands, annual cost-of-living increases depend (PDF) on the health of the pension’s balance sheet. If returns fall, benefits don’t increase. If the fund performs badly enough, pensioners may even suffer benefit cuts.

This kind of risk-sharing has been catching on in America. Public pension benefits are often secured by state constitutions, but it’s not clear whether those guarantees extend to inflation-linked adjustments. Eager to contain costs, some states have eliminated cost-of-living increases entirely. The state of Wisconsin adopted a variant of the Dutch model in which retirees in the Wisconsin Retirement System get a cost-of-living adjustment only when pension assets return at least 5 percent. Previous inflation adjustments can be clawed back; monthly checks were 10 percent smaller in 2013 as a result of the financial crisis. Although, unlike in the Dutch plans, retirement income can never fall below its nominal level at retirement.

Story: Russia Set Aside $83 Billion for Pensioners. Putin Is Using It to Aid Russia Inc.

Such risk-sharing seems to solve one of the U.S. pension system’s biggest problems: Most pensions are horribly underfunded, because guaranteeing income for thousands of people no matter what is more expensive than most state governments can even admit to themselves. Letting benefits fluctuate with the pension funds’ assets puts some boundaries around the guarantee that make it more affordable. Stanford economist Josh Rauh and University of Rochester’s Robert Novy-Marx estimate that if other states followed Wisconsin’s lead, unfunded pension liabilities would fall 25 percent. If they went with the full Dutch-style model, and could cut benefits, unfunded liabilities would fall 50 percent.

But to call it risk-sharing makes it sound more benign than it really is, particularly because retirees can’t tolerate as much risk as working people can. Post-retirement, most people live on a fixed income. In general, it’s too late to save more or get another job. Many state employees don’t have other sources of inflation-linked income like Social Security. If “fairness” means everyone has to bear risk equally, then the Dutch system makes sense. But if it’s more “fair” to treat people differently according to their means, then it would be better to share the risk with current workers instead.

Inflation risk may not seem like a big deal now. But the future is uncertain, which is why the guarantees are so valuable. Until the financial crisis, Dutch pensioners took it for granted they’d get their cost-of-living adjustment each year. Gambling on future inflation may be preferable to an underfunded pension—or no pension at all—but it’s no free lunch.

Public Pensions Cannot Stop Chasing Performance

August 08, 2014

Business Week - At the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the biggest public pension in the U.S., 1.6 percent of the assets were invested in hedge funds

Two basic principles of investing hold up remarkably well: Past results really don’t predict future performance, and high fees eat away at your returns. Smart investors don’t chase performance (as much as they can help themselves) and keep costs to a minimum. Unfortunately for taxpayers, the experts who run public pension funds aren’t following these rules. What’s more, they have little incentive to start.

First, the good news: Public pensions in California, Ohio, and New Jersey have been reducing their investments in hedge funds, noting high fees and poor performance, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Los Angeles Fire and Police fund invested $500 million in a hedge fund that returned less than 2 percent over the last seven years; the fund had comprised just 4 percent of Fire & Police’s portfolio but 17 percent of investment fees paid.

The pension plans reconsidering these high-fee, low-performance investments include those with allocations to hedge funds ranging from 1.6 percent to 15 percent of assets, according to the Journal. What they share, though, is dismal returns: The average hedge fund return for public pensions was 3.6 percent for the three years ended March 31, a period when returns from stocks were up more than 10 percent.

Story: Pension Funds and Catastrophe Bonds: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

But for all the griping about hedge funds’ high costs and lousy performance, it doesn’t appear pension funds have learned their lesson: They are maintaining their investment in private equity, in some cases, even expanding it. Private equity funds invest in non-publically traded assets; like hedge funds, they also promise higher returns—in exchange for high fees and often more risk. And historically, private equity has been a bust for pensions, too. Research by economists Josh Lerner, Antoinette Schoar, and Wan Wong found public pensions underperformed in private equity relative to other institutional investors such as endowments, private pensions, and insurance companies. In the period they looked at (funds raised from 1991 to 2001), the pension funds’ private equity investments didn’t do much better than an equity index fund.

So why the preference for private equity? It sure looks like performance chasing. According to the Journal, private equity investments returned more than 10 percent to large pension funds in the last three years. Accordingly, pension funds have dived in.

Just 0.6 percent of Ohio’s state pension assets were invested in private equity in 2002. By 2013 it took up more than 9 percent. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) increased its investment from less than 1 percent to more than 12.4 percent of its assets between 2001 and 2013.

Story: An Unpalatable Plan to Rescue Failing Pensions

In 2013, Ohio celebrated its move: The five-year return on private equity was almost 12 percent—one of its best-performing asset classes. That means either pension fund managers have been luckier since 2001, more skilled, or private equity is having its day. Private equity is risky, and you’d expect high returns some of the time. The question is, can they keep it up?

Fund managers have every reason to be bullish. After all, they’re tacitly rewarded for chasing investments that promise higher returns. The funds use their expected return on their assets to figure out what they expect to owe pensioners in the future. The higher the expected return, the smaller their future liabilities appear. The only way to jack up the expected return is to pay for it, either by paying for access to more exclusive markets (like private equity) or by taking on more risk, or both. If pension funds invested only in low-cost index funds, it would be harder to justify the 7 percent to 8 percent return states currently forecast. This leaves pension fund managers with an incentive to constantly chase the latest, greatest, and most expensive assets.

China Offers to Help Russia and Wean the World Off the Dollar

China offers to help Russia...and wean the world off the dollar

December 22, 2014

Yahoo! Finance - It’s been a tough year for Russia. The sliding ruble, plunging oil prices and economic sanctions have all cut a swathe through the economy. China, Russia’s biggest economic partner is now offering to help. Think of it as an olive branch filled with yuan leaves. 

Henry Blodget says this is an example of the changing global economy: 

“The world is realigning. This is the big picture. China is getting stronger and stronger. Russia is in trouble.” 

Don’t tell that to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin doesn’t consider his country’s current economic state as a crisis and he remains defiant that the Ruble will bounce back.

China and Russia are both trying to decrease dependence on the U.S. dollar in international trading. In October, the countries agreed on a $24 billion currency swap to strengthen the ruble and make trading easier between the two partners.

Perhaps, not looking to offend Putin, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi says they would only help Russia, if they needed it and that he believes Russia has the wherewithal to get out from under its problems. Blodget disagrees and sees some bumpy roads ahead: 

“You’re going to get destabilization. China and Russia are cozying up. China is playing it both ways. Saying not too much help here and keeping their options open.”

China and Russia both need each other. Earlier this year China signed a 30-year $400 billion deal to buy Russian gas and shore up their energy supplies. Western economic sanctions placed on Russia after its meddling in the Ukraine have also forced the country to import more from China. China’s exports to Russia are up over 10% from last year.

Russia’s struggles are also a prime opportunity for China to showcase its economic prowess. China’s buying power and global emergence is altering the global landscape. 

 “This idea that the U.S. and Europe control the whole world is starting to change,” says Blodget. Look for China to continue to find ways to assert its economic power in the coming year.

China is Providing Pakistan with Military Assistance and Equipment and has Repeatedly Exhorted the People's Liberation Army to 'Be Ready to Win a War'

Over the last several months, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party have repeatedly exhorted the People's Liberation Army to "be ready to win a war." Xi has repeatedly called for greater military modernization, increased training, and enhanced overall readiness of the Chinese army, navy, and air force. These repeated calls have alarmed China's neighbors from New Delhi to Washington. The question on everyone's mind: what is all this preparation for? Is the Chinese leadership preparing for something? Are they gearing up for a military operation, or merely the option to carry one out? Or is there a more innocent explanation for all of this? [Source]

India has conveyed concern to Beijing over Chinese activities in PoK, govt tells Lok Sabha

December 17, 2014

Times of India - Confirming that a recent BSF report had flagged attention to weapons training exercises conducted by the Chinese troops for Pakistani Army in forward posts located in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), the government on Tuesday said the information, however, was not corroborated by any intelligence agency.

Minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju, in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha, recalled that China and Pakistan have termed bilateral defence cooperation as an important component of their strategic cooperation. China, by virtue of this partnership, has been providing Pakistan with military assistance and equipment.

He said the government had, on its part, conveyed to Beijing its consistent position that "Pakistan is in illegal occupation of parts of Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir since 1947". Accordingly, it has conveyed its concerns about Chinese activities in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and asked them to cease the same.

"Chinese persons have been visiting Pakistan for conducting acceptance tests on the military equipment supplied by them and subsequently training Pakistani soldiers on the same. Both countries regularly hold joint exercises between their Armies, Navies and Air Forces," Rijiju told the MPs during the Question Hour on Tuesday.

According to Rijiju, China has also said that it regards Kashmir as a bilateral matter to be settled between India and Pakistan.

"Government keeps a constant watch on all developments having a bearing on India's security and takes all necessary measures to safeguard it," he added.

According to the BSF report submitted to national security advisor Ajit Doval in November, Chinese troops were reportedly conducting weapons training exercises for Pakistan army at some posts in PoK adjoining Rajouri in Jammu & Kashmir.

The Chinese army trainers, spotted in some Pakistani forward posts in the area of 3rd and 4th PoK brigades opposite the Rajouri sector, were imparting weapons handling training to their Pakistani counterparts. However, the report did not give details regarding the weapons.

Democrats Tax-and-Spend, Republicans Borrow-and-Spend: Both Parties are Staunch Supporters of Massive Federal Spending, and Both Parties Support Fighting Perennial Foreign Wars Abroad and Supporting the Creation of a Police State at Home

"The Beat Goes On"

December 11, 2014

Chuck Baldwin Live - The hit song by Sonny and Cher is an apt description of what happens in Washington, D.C. I’m referring to their Top 10 hit song, “The Beat Goes On.” No matter which party controls Congress, the beat goes on. No matter which party’s candidate is elected President, the beat goes on. Rhetoric and campaign promises notwithstanding, the beat goes on.

Here is how the “Potomac Shuffle” is played: Democrats openly and boldly promote Big Government. Oh, it’s masked under the rubric of “compassion,” of course. But there is little doubt that the modern Democrat Party is known far and wide as the party of Big Government. And when they are elected, they keep their word and implement big-government policies.

At some point, the American people awaken to the draconian nature of the big-government policies implemented by Democrats and demand a return to smaller government. The Republican Party is there to answer the bell. They postulate “conservative” ideals and loudly proclaim themselves to be the champions of smaller government and individual liberty. The message of smaller government resonates with voters and Republicans are swept to large victories in national elections. However, instead of reversing the big-government policies that had been passed by Democrats, the newly-ensconced GOP leadership actually SOLIDIFIES those policies. And, as they say, the beat goes on.

The basic difference between the two major parties in Washington, D.C., is that the Democrats tell the truth about promoting Big Government, while Republicans lie about promoting smaller government and then turn around and join Democrats in promoting Big Government. Both parties in Washington, D.C., are the parties of Big Government. 

Another distinction between the two parties is that Democrats want to tax-and-spend, while Republicans want to borrow-and-spend. But both parties are staunch supporters of massive federal spending.

Both major parties are also twin sisters when it comes to fighting perennial foreign wars abroad and supporting the creation of a Police State at home. Oh, the Democrats love to whine about police abuse any time an apparent (whether real or fabricated) injustice is committed within the black community by a white police officer (never the other way around). But, in truth, Democrats are as eager to impose more and more limitations on individual liberties (including those within the black community) as are Republicans.

And Republicans will get on their soap boxes and talk loquaciously about more freedom and smaller government. They will send out a barrage of fund-raising letters to the constituents back home about reining in “big-government Democrats.” Their leadership might even allow an occasional vote to be held where Republican lawmakers can make a symbolic—albeit meaningless—vote against a specific big-government policy, all the while knowing that such a bill is destined to fail in the other chamber or be completely diluted of its original language in subsequent conference committees. And, once again, the beat goes on.

We are witnessing this redundant fraud take place once again. The American people, fed up with the big-government machinations of Barack Obama, swept Republicans into the majority in both houses of the U.S. Congress. In fact, Obama now holds the unenviable distinction of having lost more of his own party’s congressional seats in a mid-term election than any President in history.

And there is no question that the reason voters put Republicans in charge of Congress was due to their outrage against two of Obama’s pet policies: Obamacare and amnesty. And of the two, amnesty was the straw that broke the back of the Democrats’ dominance in D.C. As for Obamacare, forget it! It’s settled. Republicans will spend no capital trying to reverse it. And most Americans (even Republicans) know this is the case. However, amnesty is another issue altogether.

The American people are fed up with what the deluge of illegal immigration is doing to their country—as well as their communities. And they sent Republicans to Capitol Hill to do something about it. But instead of doing anything to reverse Obama’s executive amnesty, House Speaker John Boehner and his fellow elitists in the GOP are going to SOLIDIFY an amnesty deal. And the beat goes on.

Let me provide readers with just a few samples of how pro-amnesty Republicans like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are betraying their constituents in working to solidify amnesty for illegal aliens.

*The recent vote by House Republicans that was sold to House members as a vote that would block Obama’s amnesty was actually a vote that STRENGTHENED the amnesty order. In other words, House Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Majority Whip Steve Scalise deliberately TRICKED their fellow Republicans. The bill they passed will significantly strengthen Obama’s amnesty order.

See the report here:

Exclusive: House GOP Leaders Trick 216 House Republicans Into Accidentally Supporting Obama’s Executive Amnesty

*The GOP 2015 “omnibus” spending bill includes nearly $1 billion in funding for illegals that are being granted amnesty.

According to a published report, “The GOP’s draft 2015 ‘omnibus’ spending bill reportedly includes $948 million to help poor and unskilled Central American migrants establish themselves in the United States, but includes no effective restrictions on President Barack Obama’s plan to provide work permits and tax payments to millions of resident illegal immigrants.”

The report continued, saying, “Much of the $948 million may also be used to care for the next wave of illegals who could flood across the border during the summer. The influx in the summer of 2015 is expected to be large, because Obama is offering work permits and social security numbers to at least five million illegals already in the country.

“The $948 million fund is part of the one-year, $1 trillion 2015 spending plan described in a late-night report from The New York Times.”

Also see this report:

Pride Goeth: Boehner Begs Hoyer For Dem Votes To Fund Obama Amnesty

*GOP Congressman Pete Sessions (R-TX) revealed that the Republican leadership intends to push an amnesty bill in next year’s congressional session that would subject only the “most dangerous illegal immigrant criminals” to deportation.

According to Breitbart.com, “One of the top House Republican leaders, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), revealed this week that GOP leaders intend to push an amnesty bill in the next Congress that would subject only the most dangerous illegal immigrant criminals to deportation so that ‘not one person’ who is in the country illegally and has not committed a violent crime is ‘thrown out.’”

The report continued, “Sessions said, ‘We intend to push a bill that would operate under the activity of trying to do under rule of law... But that, even in our wildest dream, would not be to remove any person that might be here unless they were dangerous to this country and committed a crime...that was never even in a plan that I thought about.’”

Sessions went on to condemn Obama’s executive amnesty (just like Boehner does), but not because he, or the GOP leadership, is opposed to amnesty, but because they (GOP leaders) want to enact LEGISLATIVE amnesty.

See the report here:

Congressman Reveals GOP Leaders To Push Amnesty For All But Violent Criminals

The preoccupation and fascination with the two major parties is killing America. Neither party in Washington, D.C., has the liberties and well being of the American people in mind. NOT THE LEAST LITTLE BIT! At the leadership level, both parties are controlled by the same establishment elitists who are working to enrich themselves on the backs of the American people and the Bill of Rights.

Republican toadies love to talk about “compromise.” But it’s not compromise; it’s CONSPIRACY. For the most part, the leadership of both parties is nothing more than the worst kind of sycophants.

As long as the American electorate is stuck in this Republican vs. Democrat, “liberal” vs. “conservative,” and “right” vs. “left” illusion, nothing will change in this country. The American people are being played by D.C.’s “game makers” the way Katniss and Peeta are played by the Capital’s “game makers” in “The Hunger Games” movies.

After two years of capitulation, Republicans will pout, “We couldn’t get anything done, because we didn’t have the White House. Elect a Republican President in 2016, and we will get things done.” It’s the old “Potomac Shuffle,” folks. And the beat goes on.

Obama Promises $3.5 Billion for Mass Transit in Urban Cities to Support Agenda 21 Policies

Agenda 21, High-Speed Rails & Obama’s $302 Billion Transportation Bill

February 27, 2014

Occupy Corporatism - Speaking in St. Paul, Minnesota, President Obama explained his 4 year scheme to create jobs and repair American infrastructure by building bridges, roads and high-speed rail systems (HSR) throughout the nation.

This plan, costing $302 billion to taxpayers, would facilitate projects for transportation and planning directives that will alter the US landscape.

By executive power of Congressional approval, Obama vows to get this agenda through and implemented.

The Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program has invested $3.5 billion of taxpayer money into 270 projects across the ntion thus far.

The Obama administration would like to see funding moved to transit schemes as priority to ensure “projects that make it easier for Americans to get to jobs, school, and other opportunities, promote neighborhood revitalization and business expansion, and reconnect neighborhoods that are unnaturally divided by physical barriers such as highways and railroads.”

Last month Obama revealed a project with the Department of Transportation (DOT) to revamp bus lines and create more access for residents of urban cities to mass transit.

Along with Vice President Joe Biden, Obama made his 3 year plan to invest private corporate investments into American infrastructure.

Under the Rebuild America Partnership (RAP) the corporate infiltration coincides with employment creation who also handing over traditionally governmental roles to private sector members of local communities.

Two years ago, Ray LaHood, then secretary of the DOT, revealed a stated last week that $470 million in unspent funds are still available to states for such projects.

In 2011, Obama called for these HSRs to be built in America within the next 25 years.

HRS is the brainchild of America 2050, a non-governmental organization that supports Agenda 21 policies in the US.

America 2050 claims that the railway will provide more trains to the growing population in California and that this endeavor is necessary to “close the gap” between Northern and Southern California.

Conveniently enough, in 2013 Elton Musk, founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, announced his plans to development faster and more efficient high-speed bullet trains that move Americans from San Francisco Bay to Los Angeles at speeds unheard of before.

The Hyperloop, as described by Musk, is the fifth mode of transportation.

Beyond the four modes of current transportation (boats, planes, cars and trains), the Hyperloop would move 3 to 4 times faster than the bullet trains built across the globe; meaning it would travel at twice the speed of an average commercial airliner.

THE NEW AMERICA: Agenda 21 and the U.N. One World Government plan

February 19, 2013

Renew America - I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I investigate conspiracy theories and I gather evidence before I believe anything anyone purports to be true. 8-10 years ago this New World Order topic came to my attention, and along with it, the One World Government plans. At the time, I remember reading that the American mainstream media was calling the New World Order a "conspiracy theory" and denied that any such thing existed. They pooh-poohed the idea of a One World Government, as well.

In 1992, however, in their Venezuela conference, the United Nations passed something called "Agenda 21," which the elder President George Bush of the United States of America publicly gave it his support. It referred to something called "Sustainable Development" and seemed to be concerned with protecting the planet by limiting and controlling the development of corporate and personal structures. As I perused this effort, I saw that rural development was going to start being restricted and that the Train to Nowhere, that we have been struggling with here in Sonoma County (called that because it starts in a little hamlet devoid of much corporate activity and ended at a location in San Rafael which did not connect with the existing train – BART – and required a taxi ride across town in one wished to take this train into San Francisco).

Why would anyone be so intent on building a high-speed train from a little town called "Cloverdale" with a population of 8,634 that sits out in the middle of nowhere, nearly 2 hours north of San Francisco, to another destination which isn't connected to BART, and is still another 30 minutes outside of SF? Millions of dollars have been poured into a campaign to get public approval over the past ten years. By their own estimation, only 1,400 trips are estimated, which would be 700 round trips. Estimating a cost into the hundreds of millions of dollars, to transport barely 700 people? Were they serious? Yes, they were. But why?

UN Agenda 21 was passed in 1992 without any particular fanfare. The media was almost completely silent about it, and continues to relegate Agenda 21 to page 9, if any mention is made at all. But included in Agenda 21 is a plan for high-speed trains nationwide. Ooo, how exciting! Another interesting part of the plan is that it includes building six-story apartment complexes along these train lines, intended to relocate civilians away from their farms and ranches, which will no longer be approved for residential development. If you want to know what researchers have discovered about this effort, a simple google will lead you to all you ever wanted to know. Personally, I prefer the facts, Ma'am, nothing but the facts.

Further investigation reveals that the Clintons and the Bushes approved of Agenda 21 and also approve of this development of a One World Government system. Barack Obama is also supportive of this Agenda 21 effort and this OWG plan, with approval and funding coming from our own federal government as well as local governments, is being implemented nationwide today. Locally, the little towns of Cotati (population 7,333 not counting the chickens or the snakes) and Cloverdale have been putting elements of Agenda 21 in place for years already. Why would our government choose these little unknown towns to begin implementing this thing?

More importantly, if our own presidents are willing to give the United States of America over to a one world government system, then who is looking out for America's best interests now? That is, on the world stage, who has America's best interests at heart? Certainly not someone who supports a plan to eliminate the USA's independent nation status. Am I right? My point – and this is an awful realization to me – is that no one is looking out for America's best interests anymore. Our own presidents and leaders in Congress have already given their blessings to turn our nation over to an undetermined, unelected world government organization. That only leaves We, the People and God to look out for America's best interest. That said, we may have troubled times ahead, but when God is with us, who can be against us? That is, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. We can do this.

Agenda 21 is being implemented across America, and many Americans have never heard of it. There is a list of mayors who have signed on to support it on the ICLEI website. It is actually a list of Progressive politicians, and the list includes mayors of nearly every major American city. (See diagram, above.) What this means, interestingly, is that when polled, while Progressives make up less than 20% of the political landscape in America, they've made a particularly impressive nationalized effort to put themselves into leadership in so many of America's largest cities! Bravo to the Progressives, but aren't you curious how they managed that?



So the media has been almost silent about this, but nearly every large city in America has signed on to support Agenda 21? Should you or I be concerned about this? I am concerned, and I'll tell you why: The only civilized nation who hasn't officially signed onto the One World Government plan is the good ole' USA. Well, actually, President George H. Bush, President Clinton, President George W. Bush and even President Obama has signed on now, in 2011, but there has been no formal public announcement of this plan to hand America over to the OWG folks, virtually no media attention and most importantly, there has been no buy-in from We, the People! Can a U.S. president legally commit to handing governing authority of The United States of America over to the United Nations? Not according to our Constitution.

But as we've seen, our current president has been making hundreds of questionable appointments and actions in the four short years he's been in office. Clearly, the presidents before him engaged in and signed some similar somewhat secret agreements. I am in no way trying to paint Barack Obama as a bad person, because I'm certain that he is not spearheading this One World Government effort. Apparently it's been going on long before Obama was even born. As America's leader, however, Mr. Obama must do whatever those who put him in power tell him to do. Yes, I just said "those who put him in power," and I am not referring to you and me. I'm referring to those people who have put together and who are implementing this One World Government plan.

There is a One World Government planned, and that is a fact. Google it. It's not a "conspiracy theory" or even a secret anymore. Granted, the U.S. government isn't talking about it. The media, who called it a "conspiracy theory" just ten years ago, now acknowledges it, although you don't see any media outlet making a big deal out of it. Why on Earth wouldn't something as huge as a transition of all the independent nations on the planet into a new worldwide governing organization be big news, splashed all over the television and newspapers of America? That's BIG NEWS, right?

And who do you think is planning this One World Government? Do you know? I don't have any idea. The media hasn't disclosed that information yet. Our own government hasn't revealed that information to us yet, either. Obviously, if the United Nations has spent decades planning such a government, someone surely knows who the planners are, but We, the People don't know yet.

Do you think an effort of this magnitude would ever be left to chance, or would the reigns of this nation be left for a bunch of yahoos like We, the People to determine who is going to run this country? Really? Do you believe that? What if we were to elect someone who doesn't support this One World Government plan? That would certainly be a possibility if our elections were truly left up to Americans' votes. So what is the likelihood that these 'secret people' would leave something like leadership of the most important, prosperous and powerful nation on Earth to chance? It's not really likely, is it? I doubt it.

So if electing our president isn't being left to chance, then how is the president being selected? That's a great question, isn't it? I know many Americans will be bothered by this question, and by the disturbing things my questions might indirectly suggest. I am bothered too. That's' why I'm writing this article. I've become increasingly bothered by recent events here in America.



This effort to convince Americans that giving up our 2nd Amendment right to bear arms disturbs me most, I think. There is only one reason a government would want to disarm its citizens, and that is if that government planned on doing something that would so enrage the citizenry that people might be prone to become violent toward that government. That's the only reason any nation has ever disarmed it's citizens. Gun regulation has commonly been followed by gun confiscation and then tyranny and bloodshed as the government turned on its people. We, the People know this, and we see the media making an effort to convince people that giving up our guns is a good idea.

Considering that Agenda 21 is being implemented nationwide right now, and that this United Nations plan for a One World Government is also in the works, are we Americans willing to give up American sovereignty in order to become a part of a worldwide governing organization? When we don't even know who our 'new rulers' might be? Clearly, taking away our guns would be mandatory if our government planned on handing America's sovereignty over to some unelected world governing body. There would be angry Americans marching on Washington DC and marching on every state capital in America if our government agreed to give up our autonomy and become part of a "North American Union," which is what the UN is planning for us. I suspect that this effort to demonize guns is directly connected to the OWG plan to give up America's sovereignty.

What really prompted me to write this article doesn't have anything to do with Agenda 21 or with the One World Government being planned for our planet. What drove me to write this afternoon was when it occurred to me that (a) the reason they are trying to convince us to give up our 2nd Amendment right to bear arms and give up our guns is because whoever is really leading this nation – our president, Congress, whoever gets them elected – knows that they are planning on doing something that will likely incite us to violence, and when that violence starts, they would like us to be rock-throwers like the Arab citizenry. They don't want to be looking down the barrels of our guns when the stuff hits the fan. And (b) when I considered the magnanimity of this planned One World Government, it hit me that whoever is planning this new worldwide governing body would never allow hicks and rednecks like We, the People to choose our own leaders. They would want to make sure that everyone with any power was on board with this plan, and that no one would spill the beans too soon and piss off We, the People while we are still heavily armed.

Well guess what... it wasn't too hard to connect the dots, and once I saw even a glimpse of the likely big picture, I had to put pen to paper. Some facts I would ask you to consider are these:

Fact: The UN has been planning a transition to a One World Government for decades, and for decades world leaders have been busy preparing for it.

Fact: The American mainstream media hasn't been reporting all of this responsibly. In fact, I don't hesitate to say that our media has been irresponsible in investigating and informing the American public about these plans to hand America over to an unknown World governing organization.

Fact: Agenda 21 is being implemented locally in my own Sonoma County. It is possibly being implemented in every state in the union today.

Fact: America's leaders support this planned transition to a One World Government. If they did not support this plan, there would have been much said about it by our Senators and Representatives in the House. No one is raising so much as an eyebrow over this plan to sacrifice America's sovereignty and our right to exist as a sovereign nation in order to be part of this proposed, planned world governing organization.

Fact: Who the people are behind the planning and implementation of this OWG is still completely unknown to myself and to every American I questioned about this. This is the biggest story in the history of Mankind, and none of us knows (a) who has planned it or (b) who is overseeing the implementation of this plan.

Fact: Suddenly the Democrat Party is making a concerted effort to convince Americans that owning guns is bad for America. While every other nation who has been disarmed is warning us not to give up our guns, such as the United Kingdom and Australia, Diane Feinstein and some of her cohorts are leading the charge to demonize guns, pretending that giving up our guns will somehow make us safer. The Republican Party is doing little to counter that absurd contention. Despite the opposite being true, in every nation in which guns have been banned, Feinstein and other Democrats are still going through the motions to convince us that giving up our guns is in our own best interest. It's not. Gun-related crime invariable rises dramatically when gun bans are put into effect.That is a fact, too.

So why is this all-too-common American husband, father, Cancer survivor, worship pastor, author and licensed addiction counselor concerning myself with plans for a world government by the world's leaders of today? The answer is simple. I love America, and I don't love that America's leaders are planning on sacrificing our sovereign nation status so that a group of heretofore unidentified rich and powerful global elitists can play "King of the World." I want America to be here for my daughters, so that they can have the same kind of freedom and liberty that I've had in my lifetime. I want my girls to enjoy the security of living in the most prosperous and powerful nation on Earth, not some "North American Union" in which self-appointed Communists are ruling everyone and dictating everything as law. Of all the plans for this One World Government that I have read thus far, there has been no mention whatsoever of (a) who the rulers might be or (b) how they might go about becoming "world rulers." There is no mention whatsoever in any UN documents I've seen which discuss worldwide elections for this new, not-only-proposed but planned, world government.

And I do not want my daughters to have to depend on an average of 11 minute response time to their 911 calls if/when they are being assaulted or worse. I want them to be able to pull out their AK 47 Bullpup's and protect themselves and their families, like Americans all over our nation can do today.

That's why.

If you didn't know all of the facts that I've presented here, then perhaps you might want to start doing a little investigating of your own. While We, the People weren't paying attention, a whole lot of bad people started planning a whole lot of bad things for America. We don't have to sit back and let them carry out their plans, however. We are American patriots. Our ancestors fought and died for our freedom and our rights and I will not sit back and do nothing while some elitist foreigners take over our nation and force us into some North American Union, ruled by other rich, foreign or domestic elitists.

If you've ever wondered why John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer – and even our President much of the time – all seem so incredibly smug and arrogant, perhaps it's because they don't consider themselves 'one of us.' Perhaps, too, it's because of what they're planning on doing with America, that we are not privy to know...just yet. You know, that thing about throwing the USA on the dung heap of nations chartered for One World Government rule? Australia was thrown on that pile last year. All of America's ally nations are already doomed for inclusion. We are the last hope...the world's last hope for freedom. Just like we've always been.

And why is it that you're getting these facts from me, instead of from the mainstream media, whose job it is to report newsworthy events such as, oh, I don't know... converting all of the world's autonomous nations into a one world government? Great question, isn't it?

The truth is that I don't want any of this to be true. I would love it if this was nothing more than a "conspiracy theory"...but it's not. Agenda 21 is out in the open now. The United Nation's plan for a One World Government is public knowledge now. And frankly, I am very, very disturbed by all of it, particularly becoming aware that our own leaders aren't looking out for America's best interests any longer. If that sounds unfair, or like a reckless conclusion, answer this for me:

1. Why would our leaders be concerned with America's best interests when America won't even exist soon if/when these UN OWG plans come to fruition?
   
   
2. How could people who are planning on abandoning America's autonomy and our precious independent nation sovereignty in order to hand America over to the United Nations' One World Government plan be serious about watching out for America's best interests?
   

The answers to those two questions, of course, is "They aren't" and "They can't." If America is going to remain a sovereign nation, it is going to be because God and We, the People stood our ground and refused to turn our nation over to any foreign governing body. Our own government has already been active in planning on throwing America on the dung heap of nations earmarked for the One World Government. This, I'm afraid, is what all this saber rattling about gun control is really about. They must take our weapons before they take that final step of sacrificing our sovereign nation status in order to include the USA in this UN OWG plan. Again, they would rather deal with angry rock-throwers than angry gun owners. And it's likely to get much worse before it gets better, I suspect. Get ready to be the patriot you and I have always bragged about being. The proverbial rubber is about to hit the proverbial road...hard, in fact.

Flashback: New Governors Could Derail Obama's High-Speed Trains

October 5, 2010

Governing.com - One of the biggest initiatives announced in President Obama's State of the Union address earlier this year was his plan for a network of high-speed rail lines throughout the nation. His administration even directed $8 billion in stimulus funds to states to begin work on the lines.

But many of the current Republican candidates for governor across the country have said that, if elected,they'll delay or halt implementation of the rail system, according to the New York Times:

In Ohio, the Republican candidate for governor, John Kasich, is vowing to kill a $400 million federal stimulus project to link Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati by rail. Florida, Rick Scott, the Republican candidate for governor, has questioned whether the state should invest in the planned rail line from Orlando to Tampa. The state got $1.25 billion in federal stimulus money for the project, but it will cost at least twice that much to complete.

And the nation’s most ambitious high-speed rail project, California’s $45 billion plan to link Los Angeles and San Francisco with trains that would go up to 220 miles per hour, could be delayed if Meg Whitman, a Republican, is elected governor. “In the face of the state’s current fiscal crisis, Meg doesn’t believe we can afford the costs associated with new high-speed rail at this time,” said Tucker Bounds, a campaign spokesman.

In some places, GOP opposition to the plan is even stronger. Fighting high-speed rail has become a central campaign issue for Scott Walker, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Wisconsin.

Mr. Walker, who worries that the state could be required to spend $7 million to $10 million a year to operate the trains once the line is built, started a Web site, NoTrain.com, and has run a television advertisement in which he calls the rail project a boondoggle. “I’m Scott Walker,” he says in the advertisement, “and if I’m elected as your next governor, we’ll stop this train.”

 

Related:

• Agenda 21: Osborne unveils plan for Northern super city and new high speed rail link between Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds
• Agenda 21: Social Engineering for a New World Order
• The Purpose of the Economic Meltdown
• Global Education, Land Use, and Population Control
• Sustainable Development: The Communist Agenda for the 21st Century
• The UN's Agenda for 2010
• Freedom Is Being Replaced By Servitude, Capitalism By Socialism, and Property Rights By 'Sustainable Development'
• Transportation System of the New World Order Excludes Private Auto Mobility
• Agenda 21: 'Walkable Urbanism' Rather Than 'Drivable Suburbanism'
• Social Engineering is Forcing People into Cities Because It is Easier to Track and Control an Urban Population
• U.S. Population by Major City and State
• Non-Human-Use Zones in America
• Vehicle Tracking and Disabling Systems
• Vehicle Mileage Tax
• Intelligent Transportation Systems: Big Brother Tracking Our Every Move By Vehicle and Public Transit

Iran's New Anti-missile Defense System to be Deployed in 2015

In February 2014, Iran’s chief air defense commander said that a homegrown air defense system, based on Russia’s highly-regarded S-300 battery, would come online in two years. The highly anticipated Bavar 373 program — “belief” in Persian — has been hampered by setbacks, but Brigadier General Farzad Esmayeeli claimed that the troubles facing development had been solved and the anti-missile defense system would be completed by the end of 2015. The deployment of S-300 batteries in Iran could provide a significant impediment to carrying out a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, a threat which forms the core of Israel’s deterrence policy. [Source]

Iran's Nukes and Israel's Dilemma

Winter 2012, pp. 31-38

Yoaz Hendel, Middle East Quarterly - While the Obama administration has not reconciled itself to the futility of curbing Tehran's nuclear buildup through diplomatic means, most Israelis have given up hope that the international sanctions can dissuade the Islamic Republic from acquiring the means to murder by the millions. Israel's leadership faces a stark choice—either come to terms with a nuclear Iran or launch a preemptive military strike.

The Begin Doctrine

Tehran's "The World without Zionism" conference, October 26, 2005.

When the Israeli Air Force (IAF) decimated Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor thirty years ago, drawing nearly universal condemnation, the government of prime minister Menachem Begin declared Israel's "determination to prevent confrontation states … from gaining access to nuclear weapons."

Then-defense minister Ariel Sharon explained: "Israel cannot afford the introduction of the nuclear weapon [to the Middle East]. For us, it is not a question of balance of terror but a question of survival. We shall, therefore, have to prevent such a threat at its inception"[1]

Editor's Note: Despite the fact that the Israel's nuclear programme has been an open secret since a disgruntled technician, Mordechai Vanunu, blew the whistle on it in 1986, the official Israeli position is still never to confirm or deny its existence. When the former speaker of the Knesset, Avraham Burg, broke the taboo in December 2013, declaring Israeli possession of both nuclear and chemical weapons and describing the official non-disclosure policy as "outdated and childish," a rightwing group formally called for a police investigation for treason. Meanwhile, western governments have played along with the policy of "opacity" by avoiding all mention of the issue. In 2009, when a veteran Washington reporter, Helen Thomas, asked Barack Obama in the first month of his presidency if he knew of any country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, he dodged the trapdoor by saying only that he did not wish to "speculate." [Source]

On December 2, 2014, four Nations — the United States, Canada, Micronesia and Palau — along with Israel voted "No" to the call for Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which renounces any possession of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. In addition to calling on Israel to endorse the creation of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East, the resolution also called on Israel to put its nuclear facilities under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency. [Source]

This preventive counter-proliferation doctrine is rooted in both geostrategic logic and historical memory. A small country the size of New Jersey, with most of its inhabitants concentrated in one central area, Israel is highly vulnerable to nuclear attack. Furthermore, the depth of hostility to Israel in the Muslim Middle East is such that its enemies have been highly disposed to brinksmanship and risk-taking. Given the Jewish people's long history of horrific mass victimization, most Israelis find it deeply unsettling to face the threat of annihilation again.

While the alleged 2007 bombing of Syria's al-Kibar reactor underscored Jerusalem's willingness to take military action in preventing its enemies from developing nuclear weapons, its counter-proliferation efforts have relied heavily on diplomacy and covert operations. The raid on Osirak came only after the failure of Israeli efforts to dissuade or prevent France from providing the necessary hardware. Likewise, the Israelis have reportedly been responsible for the assassinations of several Iranian nuclear scientists in recent years.[2] They reportedly helped create the Stuxnet computer worm, dubbed by The New York Times "the most sophisticated cyber weapon ever deployed," which caused major setbacks to Iran's uranium enrichment program in 2009.[3] However, such methods can only slow Tehran's progress, not halt or reverse it.

The Iranian Threat

Tehran has already reached what Brig. Gen. (res.) Shlomo Brom has called the "point of irreversibility" at which time the proliferator "stops being dependent on external assistance" to produce the bomb.[4] Most Israeli officials believe that no combination of likely external incentives or disincentives can persuade the Iranians to verifiably abandon the effort. The Iranian regime has every reason to persevere in its pursuit of the ultimate weapon. While the world condemned North Korea's development of nuclear weapons, it was unwilling to apply sufficient penalties to dissuade Pyongyang from building the bomb.

The regime has an impressive ballistic missile program for delivering weapons of mass destruction. The Iranians began equipping themselves with SCUD missiles during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.[5] Afterward, it turned to North Korea for both missiles and the technology to set up its own research and production facilities. Tehran has produced hundreds of Shahab-3 missiles, which have a range of nearly 1,000 miles and can carry a warhead weighing from 500 kilograms to one ton.[6] In 2009, Tehran successfully tested a new two-stage, solid propellant missile, the Sejil-2, which has a range of over 1,200 miles, placing parts of Europe within its reach.

There is some disagreement as to how long it will take Tehran to produce a nuclear weapon. While the government of Israel has claimed that Iran is within a year or two of this goal, in January 2011, outgoing Mossad director Meir Dagan alleged that Iran will be unable to attain it before 2015.[7]

Iranian Intentions

Much of the debate in Israel is focused on the question of Iranian intentions. The fact that Tehran has poured staggering amounts of money, human capital, and industrial might into nuclear development—at the expense of its conventional military strength, which has many gaps, not to mention the wider Iranian economy—is by itself a troubling indicator of its priorities. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and many other leading Israeli political and security figures view the Islamic Republic as so unremittingly hostile that "everything else pales" before the threat posed by its pursuit of nuclear weapons.[8]

Proponents of this view draw upon repeated threats by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to wipe Israel off the map[9] and Iranian support for radical Palestinian and Lebanese groups seeking its destruction. They also point to Ahmadinejad's radical millenarian strand of Shiite Islamism.[10] Shiites believe that the twelfth of a succession of imams directly descendant of the Prophet Muhammad went into hiding in the ninth century and will one day return to this world after a period of cataclysmic war to usher in an era of stability and peace.

Editor's Note: Iranian government sources denied that Ahmadinejad issued any sort of threat. On February 20, 2006, Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference: "How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognize this regime legally." Ahmadinejad himself stated that Iran is not a threat to any country, including Israel. At a gathering of foreign guests marking the 19th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 2008, Ahmadinejad said: "You should know that the criminal and terrorist Zionist regime which has 60 years of plundering, aggression and crimes in its file has reached the end of its work and will soon disappear off the geographical scene."

The "wiped off the map" translation originated from the state-controlled Islamic Republic News Agency. The original New York Times article about it noted that Ahmadinejad said he was quoting Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution, but that aspect was largely overlooked. Then, specialists such as Juan Cole of the University of Michigan and  Arash Norouzi of the Mossadegh Project pointed out that the original statement in Persian did not say that Israel should be wiped from the map, but instead that it would collapse. [Source]

Arash Norouzi also said the statement, "wiped off the map," did not exist in the original speech and that Ahmadinejad directed his comment toward the "regime occupying Jerusalem". Norouzi's translation of the Persian quote reads: "the Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." Juan Cole, historian of the Middle East and South Asia, concurs: Ahmadinejad's statement should be translated as, "the Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)," noting that there is no Persian idiom to wipe something off the map. Shiraz Dossa, a professor of Political Science at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada, also believes the text is a mistranslation. "Ahmadinejad was quoting the Ayatollah Khomeini in the specific speech under discussion: what he said was that 'the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time.' No state action is envisaged in this lament: it denotes a spiritual wish, whereas the erroneous translation — 'wipe Israel off the map' — suggests a military threat. There is a huge chasm between the correct and the incorrect translations. The notion that Iran can 'wipe out' U.S.-backed, nuclear-armed Israel is ludicrous." [Source]

Ahmadinejad appears to believe that this day will happen in his lifetime. In 2004, as mayor of Tehran, he ordered the construction of a grand avenue in the city center, supposedly to welcome the Mahdi on the day of his reappearance. As president, he allocated $17 million for a mosque closely associated with the Mahdi in the city of Jamkaran.[11] Rather than seeking to reassure the world about Tehran's peaceful intentions during his 2007 address before the U.N. General Assembly, Ahmadinejad embarked on a wide-eyed discourse about the wonders of the Twelfth Imam: "There will come a time when justice will prevail across the globe ... under the rule of the perfect man, the last divine source on earth, the Mahdi."[12]

The fear in Israel is that someone who firmly believes an apocalyptic showdown between good and evil is inevitable and divinely ordained will not be easily deterred by the threat of a nuclear war. "There are new calls for the extermination of the Jewish State," Netanyahu warned during a January 2010 visit to Israel's Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem. "This is certainly our concern, but it is not only our concern."[13] For Netanyahu, a nuclear Iran is a clear and present existential threat.

Those who dissent from this view point out that the Iranian people are not particularly hostile to Israelis; indeed, the two countries enjoyed close relations before the 1979 Iranian revolution. They argue that the Iranian regime's militant anti-Zionism is a vehicle for gaining influence in the predominantly Sunni Arab Middle East but not something that would drive its leaders to commit suicide. "I am not underestimating the significance of a nuclear Iran, but we should not give it Holocaust subtext like politicians try to do," said former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff Dan Halutz, who commanded the Israeli military during the war in Lebanon in 2006.[14] Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in a widely circulated September 2009 interview that Iran was not an "existential" threat to Israel.[15]

The question of whether Iran is an existential danger is more rhetorical than substantive. Even if Iranian nuclear weapons are never fired, their mere existence would be a profound blow to most Israelis' sense of security. In one poll, 27 percent of Israelis said they would consider leaving the country if Tehran developed nuclear capabilities. Loss of investor confidence would damage the economy. This could spell the failure of Zionism's mission of providing a Jewish refuge as Jews will look to the Diaspora for safety.[16] This is precisely why Israel's enemies salivate over the possibility of an Iranian bomb.

Even if the prospect of mutually assured destruction effectively rules out an Iranian first strike, Tehran's acquisition of nuclear weapons would still shift the balance of power greatly. Iran projects its power throughout the Middle East mainly by way of allies and proxies, such as Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army in Iraq, Hamas in Gaza, the Assad regime in Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Iranian nuclear umbrella will embolden them. The next time an Israeli soldier is abducted in a cross-border attack by Hezbollah or Hamas, Jerusalem will have to weigh the risks of a nuclear escalation before responding. There is also the possibility that Tehran could provide a nuclear device to one of its terrorist proxies.[17]

A successful Iranian bid to acquire the bomb will set off an unprecedented nuclear arms race throughout the region. Arab countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates will want to create their own nuclear insurance policies in the face of Tehran's belligerence and regional ambitions. Turkey has passed a bill in its parliament paving the way for the construction of three nuclear reactors by 2020.[18]

Most of Israel's decision-makers believe that Israel cannot afford the risks of living with a nuclear Iran. Those who publicly differ with Netanyahu on this score seem mainly concerned that he is exploiting popular fears for political gain, but they are likely to fall in line with public opinion at the end of the day. The large majority of Israelis support a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities as a last resort, and a small majority (51 percent according to a 2009 poll) favor an immediate strike on Iran as a first resort.[19]

The Military Option

The general assessment is that the IDF has the ability to knock out some of Tehran's key nuclear facilities and set back its nuclear program by a couple of years but not completely destroy it—at least not in one strike.[20] Several factors make Iran's nuclear program much more difficult to incapacitate than that of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Whereas most of Iraq's vital nuclear assets were concentrated at Osirak, "Iran's nuclear facilities are spread out," notes former IDF chief of staff Ya'alon,[21] some of them in close proximity to population centers. The distance to targets in Iran would be considerably greater than to Osirak, and its facilities are better defended. Iran has mastered nuclear technology much more thoroughly than Iraq and can, therefore, repair much of the damage without external help.

Of the known Iranian nuclear sites, five main facilities are almost certain to be targeted in any preemptive strike. The first is the Bushehr light-water reactor, along the gulf coast of southwestern Iran. The second is the heavy-water plant under construction near the town of Arak, which would be instrumental to production of plutonium. Next is the uranium conversion facility at Isfahan. Based on satellite imagery, the facility is above ground although some reports have suggested tunneling near the complex.[22]

Fourth is the uranium enrichment facility at Qom, which the Iranians concealed from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) prior to September 2009 and well after major Western intelligence agencies knew about it. The facility, which can hold about 3,000 centrifuges, was built into a mountain, making it difficult to penetrate. Israeli defense minister Barak called it "immune to standard bombs."[23]

The fifth and most heavily fortified primary target is the main Iranian uranium enrichment facility in Natanz. The complex consists of two large halls, roughly 300,000 square feet each, dug somewhere between eight and twenty-three feet below ground and covered by several layers of concrete and metal. The walls of each hall are estimated to be approximately two feet thick. The facility is also surrounded by short-range, Russian-made TOR-M surface-to-air missiles.

Military planners may also feel compelled to attack Tehran's centrifuge fabrication sites since their destruction would hamper the efforts to reestablish its nuclear program. However, it is believed that the Iranians have dispersed some centrifuges to underground sites not declared to the IAEA. It is by no means clear that Israeli intelligence has a full accounting of where they are.

The Israelis may also choose to bomb Iranian radar stations and air bases in order to knock out Tehran's ability to defend its skies, particularly if multiple waves are required. Ya'alon estimates that Israel would need to attack a few dozen sites.[24]

The Operation

The Israeli Air Force is capable of striking the necessary targets with two to three full squadrons of fighter-bombers with escorts to shoot down enemy aircraft; however, most of the escorts will require refueling to strike the necessary targets in Iran.[25] In addition, the Israelis can make use of ballistic missiles and cruise missiles from their Dolphin-class submarines.

The IAF has carried out long-range missions in the past. In 1981, Israeli F-16s struck the Osirak reactor without midair refueling. Refueling tankers were activated for Israel's longest-range air strike to date, the 1985 bombing of the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) headquarters in Tunis, 1,500 miles away. The IAF's highly publicized 2009 flyover over Gibraltar was widely perceived as a dress rehearsal for a strike against Iran.[26] In 2009, the IAF instituted a new training regimen that included refueling planes as their engines were on and sitting on the runway with fuel nozzles disconnected seconds before takeoff.

The IAF has specialized munitions designed to penetrate fortified targets, including GBU-27 and GBU-28 laser-guided bunker buster bombs and various domestically produced ordnance. Israeli pilots are skilled at using successive missile strikes to penetrate fortifications. "Even if one bomb would not suffice to penetrate, we could guide other bombs directly to the hole created by the previous ones and eventually destroy any target," explains former IAF commander Maj. Gen. Eitan Ben-Eliyahu, who participated in the strike on Osirak.[27]

Israel's advanced electronic-warfare systems are likely to be successful in suppressing Iran's air defenses although these were significantly upgraded by Moscow during the 2000s.[28] Moreover, whereas thirty years ago Israeli pilots needed to fly directly over Osirak to drop their bombs, today they can fly at higher altitudes and launch satellite or laser-guided missiles from a safer distance. Nor are Tehran's roughly 160 operational combat aircraft, mostly antiquated U.S. and French planes, likely to pose a serious threat to Israeli pilots.

Possible Attack Routes

The main problem Jerusalem will encounter in attacking Iran's nuclear facilities results from the long distance to the main targets. Since greater distance always means that more things can go wrong, Israeli losses and efficacy will likely depend on which of three possible routes they take to Iran.

The northern route runs along the Turkish-Syrian border into Iran and is estimated to be about 1,300 miles. This route entails several risks and would need to take into account Syrian air defenses and Turkish opposition to violating its airspace. Israeli planes flew over Turkey when the IAF bombed al-Kibar in 2007 and even dropped fuel tanks in Turkish territory. However, the recent deterioration in relations between Ankara and Jerusalem makes it extremely unlikely that the Turkish government will allow such an intrusion.

The central route over Jordan and Iraq is the most direct, bringing the distance to Natanz from the IAF's Hatzerim air base down to about 1,000 miles, yet it entails serious diplomatic obstacles. Jerusalem would have to coordinate either with the Jordanians and the Americans or fly without forewarning. While Israel has a peace treaty with Jordan, Amman will not want to be perceived as cooperating with Israeli military action against Tehran and thus possibly face the brunt of an Iranian reprisal. Washington may not want to be involved either, as it needs Tehran's acquiescence to withdraw its forces from Iraq successfully. While Jerusalem could limit the risk of hostile fire by notifying its two allies of the impending attack, there would be considerable diplomatic costs.

The southern route would take Israeli planes over Saudi Arabia and then into Iran. While this is longer than the central route, there have been reports that the Saudis have given Jerusalem permission to use their airspace for such an operation.[29]

The difficulties also depend on the precise goal of the air strike. A short-term, financially costly degradation of Iran's nuclear program can be achieved in one wave of attacks, but Israeli defense analysts have estimated that a decisive blow could require hitting as many as sixty different targets with return sorties lasting up to two days.

Estimates in Israel vary regarding the losses the IAF might suffer in such an operation.[30] Some estimates claim that with their advanced, Russian-supplied air defense systems, the Iranians might be able to shoot down a small number of aircraft. But even just a few pilots shot down and captured by Iran would be a heart-wrenching tragedy for Israelis. To prepare for this, in 2009 the IAF began increasing mental training for its airmen with an emphasis on survival skills.

Many former, high-ranking generals and intelligence chiefs have cast doubt on whether Jerusalem can succeed in decisively setting back Tehran's nuclear program. Addressing an audience at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in May 2011, Meir Dagan said that the idea of attacking Iranian nuclear sites was "the stupidest thing" he had ever heard and that such an attempt would have a near-zero chance of success.[31]

The Fallout

The strategic fallout from an Israeli attack will likely be significant. Hezbollah will probably initiate hostilities across the Lebanese-Israeli border. During the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, the Shiite Islamist group fired more than 4,000 rockets into Israel, causing extensive damage and killing forty-four civilians.[32] Today, its arsenal is considerably larger and includes many more rockets capable of reaching Tel Aviv. Dagan estimates that the Iranians can fire missiles at Israel for a period of months, and that Hezbollah can fire tens of thousands of rockets.[33] Hamas may also attack Israel with rockets from Gaza. It is not inconceivable that Syrian president Bashar Assad would join the fight, if still in power, in hope of diverting public anger away from his regime.

Iran has also developed an extensive overseas terrorist network, cultivated in conjunction with Hezbollah. This network was responsible for two car bombings against the Jewish community in Argentina that left 114 people dead in the early 1990s.[34]

Last year, Israel distributed gas masks to prepare for the possibility that Iran or Syria would deploy chemical or biological weapons[35] while the IDF's Home Front Command received an increased budget to prepare bomb shelters and teach the public what to do in case of emergency.[36] C4I systems were improved between early-warning missile detection systems and air sirens, including specially designed radars that can accurately predict the exact landing site of incoming missiles. Since no one is certain how accurate Iran's Shahab and Sajil missiles are, Jerusalem began strengthening defenses at its Dimona nuclear reactor in 2008.[37]

Jerusalem will not sit back and allow its citizens to be bombed mercilessly. Since Lebanon will probably be the main platform of any major Iranian attack, Israeli retaliation there is sure to be swift and expansive. Should Syria offer up any form of direct participation in the war, it too may come under Israeli attack. The Israelis may go so far as to bomb Iran's oil fields and energy infrastructure. Since oil receipts provide at least 75 percent of the Iranian regime's income and at least 80 percent of export revenues, the political shock of losing this income could lead the regime to rethink its nuclear stance, as well as erode its public support, and make it more difficult to finance the repair of damaged nuclear facilities.[38]

On the other hand, Tehran may double down by sending its own ground troops to Lebanon or Syria to join the fight against Israel. This could draw in the Persian Gulf Arab monarchies, particularly if the Alawite-led Assad regime is still facing active opposition from its majority Sunni population.

How long such a war will last is impossible to predict. Israel's defense doctrine calls for short wars, so it will likely launch a diplomatic campaign with Western backing to end the war as soon as possible. However, the Iranians may hunker down for the long haul, much as they did during the 8-year Iran-Iraq war.[39]

If a military solution cannot guarantee success at an acceptable price, some in Israel argue that the best hope for countering the threat posed by Iranian nuclear weapons is regime change. "The nuclear matter will resolve itself once there is a regime change," says Uri Lubrani, Israel's former ambassador to Iran and a senior advisor to the Israeli defense minister until last year. According to Lubrani, the highest priority for Israel and the West should be to strengthen the Iranian masses that rose up in protest following the fraudulent June 2009 elections.[40]

"A military strike will at best delay Iran's nuclear program, but what's worse, it will rally the Iranian people to the defense of the regime," says Lubrani. He argues that it is better to let sanctions eat away at the regime's legitimacy even if they do not lead to a stand down on its nuclear program.[41]

However, it is not clear whether Lubrani is correct in his assessment that war will benefit the regime. While most Iranians are generally supportive of their country's nuclear ambitions, devastating Israeli air strikes may drive home the folly of their government's reckless provocations just as they did during the later stages of the Iran-Iraq war. It is unlikely that many are willing to sacrifice their country's well-being in pursuit of the bomb.
Whether an Israeli attack will unite the public for or against President Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i is anyone's guess. Much will depend on whether the air strikes produce significant collateral damage. The Bushehr, Isfahan, and Natanz facilities contain uranium hexafluoride (UF6) and even some low-enriched uranium, the release of which into the environment would almost certainly raise public health concerns.

Conclusion

The Israelis will ultimately have to choose between launching an attack likely to spark a large-scale regional conflict or allowing Iran to go nuclear with dire long-term implications. Notwithstanding some disagreement about the immediacy of the threat and possible repercussions, the large majority of Israelis favor military action over living with the ubiquitous threat of nuclear annihilation.

With a U.N. vote on Palestinian statehood threatening to erode Israel's international standing still further, attacking Iran could prove dangerously isolating for Israel even with Washington's blessing—to proceed without it would be a step into the unknown. Much, therefore, depends on whether policymakers in Washington will stand by Jerusalem when push eventually comes to shove.

The American people have increasingly come to recognize the threat to world peace posed by Iran. Whereas 6 percent of Americans named Iran as the country that poses the greatest threat to the United States in 1990, in 2006, Iran led the field with 27 percent.[42] However, though Washington's official stance is that all options remain on the table, Obama is unlikely to undertake direct military action to stop Tehran from building the bomb and may prove reluctant to tacitly support Israeli action.

That is why the decision will ultimately be left to Israel, or rather to its prime minister, who will be faced with a Churchillian dilemma, unprecedented in the Jewish state's history.

The Feds Want to Replace Your Driver’s License with a National ID Card

The federal secure driver's license law, known as the REAL ID Act, became law in 2005 but few states have fully implemented it. This is America, land of the free. It's not the land of "Your papers, please." The purpose of RFID technology is to destroy our way of life.

• REAL ID assumes you are a foreign terrorist or illegal immigrant, and that you must "prove" my innocence.
• You are punished with higher fees, more red tape, and longer DMV lines.
• And your private information will be centralized, making you more susceptible to identity theft and other dangers.

According to Nick Sandberg ("Blueprint for Total Control," 2001) and Serge Monast ("NASA's" Project Blue Beam," 1994):

By first removing cash and then by introducing problems into electronic money systems while simultaneously promoting microchip implants as a safe and acceptable alternative, the global elite will lead us slowly into accepting personal implant technology.

The phasing out of cash most likely will begin with some kind of worldwide economic disaster—not a complete crash, but enough to allow the New World Order to introduce some kind of in-between currency before they introduce their electronic cash to replace all paper money. The in-between currency will be used to force anyone with savings to spend or turn in their cash, because the global elite understand that people who have money are not dependent upon them and might be the very ones who will mount an insurrection against them. If everyone is broke, no one can fund a war of any kind; paper currency will cease to exist; this will be one of the first signs.

Proof RFID Microchip Is In Obama Health Care

The Feds Want to Replace Your Driver’s License with a National ID Card

January 2015 Issue

Car and Driver - If you live in Arizona, Louisiana, New York, or one of more than a dozen other states, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has bad news for you. Come January 19, your driver’s license will no longer allow you access to certain federal facilities. Unless DHS changes its mind. Again.

In 2005, Congress passed a bill called the Real ID Act, based upon recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission. Whether or not you’ve heard of the law depends largely upon how in tune you are with conspiracy theories. Where you live matters, too, because nearly a decade after the law’s passage, only 19 states actually comply with its standards.

Real ID’s stated intent is to ensure that all jurisdictions issuing driver’s licenses and other identification meet federal stand­ards, “which should inhibit terrorists’ ability to evade detection by using fraudulent identification.” Basically, the government is upping the ante on what it will accept as valid forms of ID at federal facilities, nuclear power plants, and—here’s the biggie—federally regulated airline flights (i.e., most of them).

Opponents fear that Real ID will lead to a national identity card like those issued by “totalitarian” governments and that its requirement that states share data from their department of motor vehicle databases is an invasion of privacy. Others object because Congress didn’t offer financial backing to help states implement Real ID. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) contends that the program wastes state resources while doing little to combat terrorism, calling it a “bureaucratic nightmare.”

For its part, Homeland Security promises that Real ID will leave states with control over the look and administration of driver’s licenses, and, more important, over the information they collect to issue them. “There is no federal database of driver information,” the agency says on its website, although the ACLU contends that the law says otherwise. What does non-compliance mean for residents of those states? Most states have been granted extensions, although many have passed legislation that amounts to a promise not to comply.

For most Americans, that flight restriction is the big worry. But DHS says that any state driver’s license will be accepted as a valid ID at airports until at least 2016. And after that, passports and other federal IDs will work. The ACLU doesn’t put much stock in DHS deadlines either way, including the latest one. 

“We know how it’s going to play out because it’s played out three times already,” says Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the ACLU. “They give a deadline, the deadline goes, and then they give an extension. The states know that DHS isn’t going to keep all the residents from non–Real ID states from boarding airplanes.” 

Which means that those refusing to play along might just achieve the goal of dooming Real ID to failure.