This and That...

[Diane Amberg]

Uh...that's some sink hole.

[Warph]

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[Warph]

How Hard Will China's Crash Be?

 
by George Friedman

Major shifts underway in the Chinese economy that Stratfor has forecast and discussed for years have now drawn the attention of the mainstream media. Many have asked when China would find itself in an economic crisis, to which we have answered that China has been there for awhile -- something not widely recognized outside China, and particularly not in the United States. A crisis can exist before it is recognized. The admission that a crisis exists is a critical moment, because this is when most others start to change their behavior in reaction to the crisis. The question we had been asking was when the Chinese economic crisis would finally become an accepted fact, thus changing the global dynamic.


Last week, the crisis was announced with a flourish. First, The New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-recipient Paul Krugman penned a piece titled "Hitting China's Wall." He wrote, "The signs are now unmistakable: China is in big trouble. We're not talking about some minor setback along the way, but something more fundamental. The country's whole way of doing business, the economic system that has driven three decades of incredible growth, has reached its limits. You could say that the Chinese model is about to hit its Great Wall, and the only question now is just how bad the crash will be."

Later in the week, Ben Levisohn authored a column in Barron's called "Smoke Signals from China." He wrote, "In the classic disaster flick 'The Towering Inferno' partygoers ignored a fire in a storage room because they assumed it has been contained. Are investors making the same mistake with China?" He goes on to answer his question, saying, "Unlike three months ago, when investors were placing big bets that China's policymakers would pump cash into the economy to spur growth, the markets seem to have accepted the fact that sluggish growth for the world's second largest economy is its new normal."

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs -- where in November 2001 Jim O'Neil coined the term BRICs and forecast that China might surpass the United States economically by 2028 -- cut its forecast of Chinese growth to 7.4 percent.

The New York Times, Barron's and Goldman Sachs are all both a seismograph of the conventional wisdom and the creators of the conventional wisdom. Therefore, when all three announce within a few weeks that China's economic condition ranges from disappointing to verging on a crash, it transforms the way people think of China. Now the conversation is moving from forecasts of how quickly China will overtake the United States to considerations of what the consequences of a Chinese crash would be.



Doubting China
Suddenly finding Stratfor amid the conventional wisdom regarding China does feel odd, I must admit. Having first noted the underlying contradictions in China's economic growth years ago, when most viewed China as the miracle Japan wasn't, and having been scorned for not understanding the shift in global power underway, it is gratifying to now have a lot of company. Over the past couple of years, the ranks of the China doubters had grown. But the past few months have seen a sea change. We have gone from China the omnipotent, the belief that there was nothing the Chinese couldn't work out, to the realization that China no longer works.

It has not been working for some time. One of the things masking China's weakening has been Chinese statistics, which Krugman referred to as "even more fictional than most." China is a vast country in territory and population. Gathering information on how it is doing would be a daunting task, even were China inclined to do so. Instead, China understands that in the West, there is an assumption that government statistics bear at least a limited relationship to truth. Beijing accordingly uses its numbers to shape perceptions inside and outside China of how it is doing. The Chinese release their annual gross domestic product numbers in the third week of January (and only revise them the following year). They can't possibly know how they did that fast, and they don't. But they do know what they want the world to believe about their growth, and the world has believed them -- hence, the fantastic tales of economic growth.

China in fact has had an extraordinary period of growth. The last 30 years have been remarkable, marred only by the fact that the Chinese started at such a low point due to the policies of the Maoist period. Growth at first was relatively easy; it was hard for China to do worse. But make no mistake: China surged. Still, basing economic performance on consumption, Krugman notes that China is barely larger economically than Japan. Given the compounding effects of China's guesses at GDP, we would guess it remains behind Japan, but how can you tell? We can say without a doubt that China's economy has grown dramatically in the past 30 years but that it is no longer growing nearly as quickly as it once did.

China's growth surge was built on a very unglamorous fact: Chinese wages were far below Western wages, and therefore the Chinese were able to produce a certain class of products at lower cost than possible in the West. The Chinese built businesses around this, and Western companies built factories in China to take advantage of the differential. Since Chinese workers were unable to purchase many of the products they produced given their wages, China built its growth on exports.

For this to continue, China had to maintain its wage differential indefinitely. But China had another essential policy: Beijing was terrified of unemployment and the social consequences that flow from it. This was a rational fear, but one that contradicted China's main strength, its wage advantage. Because the Chinese feared unemployment, Chinese policy, manifested in bank lending policies, stressed preventing unemployment by keeping businesses going even when they were inefficient. China also used bank lending to build massive infrastructure and commercial and residential property. Over time, this policy created huge inefficiencies in the Chinese economy. Without recessions, inefficiencies develop. Growing the economy is possible, but not growing profitability. Eventually, the economy will be dragged down by its inefficiency.


Inflation vs. Unemployment
As businesses become inefficient, production costs rise. And that leads to inflation. As money is lent to keep inefficient businesses going, inflation increases even more markedly. The increase in inefficiency is compounded by the growth of the money supply prompted by aggressive lending to keep the economy going. As this persisted over many years, the inefficiencies built into the Chinese economy have become staggering.

The second thing to bear in mind is the overwhelming poverty of China, where 900 million people have an annual per capita income around the same level as Guatemala, Georgia, Indonesia or Mongolia ($3,000-$3,500 a year), while around 500 million of those have an annual per capita income around the same level as India, Nicaragua, Ghana, Uzbekistan or Nigeria ($1,500-$1,700). China's overall per capita GDP is around the same level as the Dominican Republic, Serbia, Thailand or Jamaica. Stimulating an economy where more than a billion people live in deep poverty is impossible. Economic stimulus makes sense when products can be sold to the public. But the vast majority of Chinese cannot afford the products produced in China, and therefore, stimulus will not increase consumption of those products. As important, stimulating demand so that inefficient factories can sell products is not only inflationary, it is suicidal. The task is to increase consumption, not to subsidize inefficiency.

The Chinese are thus in a trap. If they continue aggressive lending to failing businesses, they get inflation. That increases costs and makes the Chinese less competitive in exports, which are also falling due to the recession in Europe and weakness in the United States. Allowing businesses to fail brings unemployment, a massive social and political problem. The Chinese have zigzagged from cracking down on lending by regulating informal lending and raising interbank rates to loosening restrictions on lending by removing the floor on the benchmark lending rate and by increasing lending to small- and medium-sized businesses. Both policies are problematic.

The Chinese have maintained a strategy of depending on exports without taking into account the operation of the business cycle in the West, which means that periodic and substantial contractions of demand will occur. China's industrial plant is geared to Western demand. When Western demand contracted, the result was the mess you see now.

The Chinese economy could perhaps be growing at 7.4 percent, but I doubt the number is anywhere near that. Some estimates place growth at closer to 5 percent. Regardless of growth, the ability to maintain profit margins is rarely considered. Producing and selling at or even below cost will boost GDP numbers but undermines the financial system. This happened to Japan in the early 1990s. And it is happening in China now.

The Chinese can prevent the kind of crash that struck East Asia in 1997. Their currency isn't convertible, so there can't be a run on it. They continue to have a command economy; they are still communist, after all. But they cannot avoid the consequences of their economic reality, and the longer they put off the day of reckoning, the harder it will become to recover from it. They have already postponed the reckoning far longer than they should have. They would postpone it further if they could by continuing to support failing businesses with loans. They can do that for a very long time -- provided they are prepared to emulate the Soviet model's demise. The Chinese don't want that, but what they do want is a miraculous resolution to their problem. There are no solutions that don't involve agony, so they put off the day of reckoning and slowly decline.


China's Transformation
The Chinese are not going to completely collapse economically any more than the Japanese or South Koreans did. What will happen is that China will behave differently than before. With no choices that don't frighten them, the Chinese will focus on containing the social and political fallout, both by trying to target benefits to politically sensitive groups and by using their excellent security apparatus to suppress and deter unrest. The Chinese economic performance will degrade, but crisis will be avoided and political interests protected. Since much of China never benefited from the boom, there is a massive force that has felt marginalized and victimized by coastal elites. That is not a bad foundation for the Communist Party to rely on.

The key is understanding that if China cannot solve its problems without unacceptable political consequences, it will try to stretch out the decline. Japan had a lost decade only in the minds of Western investors, who implicitly value aggregate GDP growth over other measures of success such as per capita GDP growth or full employment. China could very well face an extended period of intense inwardness and low economic performance. The past 30 years is a tough act to follow.

The obvious economic impact on the rest of the world will fall on the producers of industrial commodities such as iron ore. The extravagant expectations for Chinese growth will not be met, and therefore expectations for commodity prices won't be met. Since the Chinese economic failure has been underway for quite awhile, the degradation in prices has already happened. Australia in particular has been badly hit by the Chinese situation, just as it was by the Japanese situation a generation ago.

The Chinese are, of course, keeping a great deal of money in U.S. government instruments and other markets. Contrary to fears, that money will not be withdrawn. The Chinese problem isn't a lack of capital, and repatriating that money would simply increase inflation. Had the Chinese been able to put that money to good use, it would have never been invested in the United States in the first place. The outflow of money from China was a symptom of the disease: Lacking the structure to invest in China, the government and private funds went overseas. In so doing, Beijing sought to limit destabilization in China, while private Chinese funds looked for a haven against the storm that was already blowing.

Rather than the feared repatriation of funds, the United States will continue to be the target of major Chinese cash inflows. In a world where Europe is still reeling, only the United States is both secure and large enough to contain Chinese appetites for safety. Just as Japanese investment in the 1990s represented capital flight rather than a healthy investment appetite, so the behavior we have seen from Chinese investors in recent years is capital flight: money searching for secure havens regardless of return. This money has underpinned American markets; it is not going away, and in fact more is on the way.

The major shift in the international order will be the decline of China's role in the region. China's ability to project military power in Asia has been substantially overestimated. Its geography limits its ability to project power in Eurasia, an endeavor that would require logistics far beyond China's capacity. Its naval capacity is still limited compared with the United States. The idea that it will compensate for internal economic problems by genuine (as opposed to rhetorical) military action is therefore unlikely. China has a genuine internal security problem that will suck the military, which remains a domestic security force, into actions of little value. In our view, the most important shift will be the re-emergence of Japan as the dominant economic and political power in East Asia in a slow process neither will really want.

China will continue to be a major power, and it will continue to matter a great deal economically. Being troubled is not the same as ceasing to exist. China will always exist. It will, however, no longer be the low-wage, high-growth center of the world. Like Japan before it, it will play a different role.

In the global system, there are always low-wage, high-growth countries because the advanced industrial powers' consumers want to absorb goods at low wages. Becoming a supplier of those goods is a major opportunity for, and disruptor to, those countries. No one country can replace China, but China will be replaced. The next step in this process is identifying China's successors.


Recognizing the End of the Chinese Economic Miracle is republished with permission of Stratfor

[Warph]

Lying in the Age of Obuma

A Nation of Liars

The attorney general of the United States lied recently to Congress. He said he knew of no citizen's communications that his department had monitored. Lie!

In fact, Holder knew that his subordinates were targeting reporters. He also did not tell the truth about the New Black Panthers case. He had sworn that there was no political decision to drop the case. Not true; the decision came from the top. He again lied about the time frame in which he first learned of the Fast and Furious case.

The director of national intelligence also lied, likewise while under oath to Congress. At first James Clapper confessed that he had given the "least untruthful" account.

Nixon's Washington used to call that sort of neat lie "a modified limited hangout." Later, Clapper admitted that he had just flat-out lied to Congress. Was he disgraced? Fired? Further confirmation of his "largely secular" lie?

Nope. Nothing followed.

Elizabeth Warren simply invented an entire pedigree. That blatant lie helped to earn her a Harvard tenured professorship and a U.S. Senate seat. Ward Churchill was doing well until he dared the country to call out his lies. Who is to say that Warren or Churchill cannot be Native Americans by professing to be Native Americans?

Barack Obama, as is the wont of politicians, has lied a lot — and from the very beginning of his national career. He knew Bill Ayers well, Tony Rezko too. He lied about his decision not to seek the presidency as a newly elected senator, and lied about his willingness to take public campaign financing funds in 2008. He misled about what he would shortly do about most of the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols. Obama lied about much of his own biography.

When the president uses emphatics like "make no mistake about it," "let me be perfectly clear," and "in point of fact," we know what follows will be untrue. He did not cut the deficit in half in his first four years. He had no intention of ever doing so. He lies about the circumstances of America's gas and oil production surge — occurring despite, not because of, him. He lied about his involvement in the radical ACORN community action group, and fabricated about his father's and grandfather's World War II involvement.

Tally up what Barack Obama said about his health care initiative, the border fence, and his fiscal policy. Almost all of the major assurances proved lies.

Ministers of Lies

But why pick on the president?

The media routinely peddles "noble" untruths. ABC manipulated a video to show George Zimmerman without much injury to his head. NBC edited a tape to suggest that he was a racist. The New York Times invented a new journalistic category, "white Hispanic," to suggest George Zimmerman was not Latino in a way that the paper would never suggest that Barack Obama is not African-American or Bill Richardson was a "white Hispanic."

Much of the prosecutorial testimony in the George Zimmerman case could not be true — unless someone gets grass stains on his back and contusions on the back of the head from pounding on someone atop him. Prosecution star witness Rachel Jeantel made up much of her racist testimony, and boldly confessed as much in her paid-for after-trial interviews.

It's Not Really the Cover-up

Our current scandals are predicated on lies. No one believed the official White House version that the IRS miscreants were rogue agents from a Cincinnati field office.

No one believes much of the official version of the Benghazi killings — least of all that the violence was prompted by a single video maker in the fashion that Susan Rice assured the nation.

The attorney general of the United States lied about the AP/James Rosen monitoring while under oath before Congress.

James Clapper lied about the NSA scandal. All four travesties are still being sorted out. For now the one commonality is that our officials lied about all of them.

Harry Reid knew nothing about Mitt Romney's tax returns. But lied about them all the same. It is hard to know whether Joe Biden lies, or simply believes his fantasies. He assured us that President Roosevelt addressed the nation on television after the panic of 1929. Remember in 1987 when he lifted much of his campaign stump speech from British Laborite Neil Kinnock?

Our most treasured icons in the media and literature lie. They tell untruth sometimes in the most serious fashion of claiming the work of others as if it were their own — or simply inventing things out of thin air. Fareed Zakaria plagiarized. So did Maureen Dowd.

Nearly all of Stephen Ambrose's work, book by book, was characterized by both plagiarism and false statements about archives and interviews. Michael Bellesiles was given the Bancroft Award for a mytho-history. If historians could not initially spot the lie, who else could? Or did they try all that much, given the enticing but mythic thesis that today's gun nuts, not our hallowed forefathers, dreamed up a nation in arms?

Is There Anyone Left Who Doesn't Lie?

Why do they lie? Because they can. Or to paraphrase Dirty Harry, they like it. We are a celebrity-and wealth-obsessed society, in which ends, not means, count. Barack Obama got to be president — who now cares how?

That Joe Biden habitually makes things up is the stuff of "that's just old' Joe," not a career-ending felony. Hillary Clinton lied a lot when she was first lady about documents under subpoena. She lied as a candidate about being under fire in the Balkans. And she lied as secretary of State about the train of events in Benghazi.

And? Those lies were either forgiven or forgotten, or contributed to the "complex" persona that now is among the most widely admired in the U.S.

Lying, of course, is a symptom of hubris. The once leftist and long-haired radical Stephen Ambrose finally assumed that he was Lord or Master Stephen Ambrose, voice of an entire generation, accustomed to instant TV access, huge advances, and minute-by-minute adulation on the street.

Lying won him all that, and he knew it. I remember him over three decades ago flat out lying about most of the details he offered on World War II while on The World At War. So to be sure, I watched the young Ambrose lie again last night on that documentary. But no matter: he seemed cool with long hair, a sweater, and an attitude, far more hip than the old plodding Brit historians who were meticulous in their honest recollections.

When caught, a dying Ambrose was unapologetic. He must have reckoned, why say "I'm sorry" to a society that did not care how he had become famous, only that he was? Had Martin Luther King, Jr. told the truth that he stole sizable work from other scholars to write his doctoral thesis, he would never have become Dr. King. Omitting that detail paid dividends.

We claim that no one fools history, especially in the age of the Internet. I grant few do, at least in the long run. Yet in the 21st century, the rub is not getting caught for plagiarism, but doing a cost-benefit-analysis of the downside of now and again agilely lying and plagiarizing, versus the upside of short-cutting to fame and riches.

Doris Kearns Goodwin is a plagiarist. But after a brief sojourn in the Washington doghouse, she is back again on television. Bringing up her untruth would be bad manners.

In Ambrose's case, it seemed a simple decision. It was "take another multimillion-dollar advance and spend 3,000 hours out of the limelight" — or "take the money and simply cut and paste the work of others over a few hundred hours." Did he fear that his widely read publishers and editors worried about sales, or the integrity of their branded text?

Bernie Madoff was a liar par excellence, but for most of his life his investors did not question his miraculous luck, given their miraculous returns that came in the mail each month.

It was not entirely money that drove columnists or reporters like Mike Barnicle, Patricia Smith, or Jayson Blair to lie, but the desire for attention, prestige, and being something more than an honest reporter in our empty metrosexual elite urban culture.


The Cover-up Pays

We repeat the nauseous canard that "it is not the crime, but the cover-up" that gets you in trouble in Washington. But that too is often a lie, at least most of the time. Had Eric Holder told the truth about Fast and Furious, the New Black Panther case, or the AP/James Rosen case, he would not be attorney general now.

If Susan Rice had gone on television and confessed the details about the status and recent history of the security measures in Libya, or the true nature of the post-"lead from behind" misadventure, or the spread of post-bin Laden al-Qaeda franchisers in 2012, she might have been out of a job — either by dismissal or by the failure of her president to win reelection. Lying worked. Obama is president. She is national security advisor.

Had Jay Carney confessed that the talking points about Benghazi were doctored from the outset, it might have mattered in the 2012 election. Lying then and now worked.

Why Do Our Best and Brightest Lie?

There are both age-old and more recent catalysts for lying.

One, lying and plagiarism are forms of narcissism. I know fabrications are born out of feelings of inferiority that makes an otherwise fine historian like a Joseph Ellis or a good actor like Brian Dennehy make up an entire war career, replete with tales of personal gallantry. But they persisted in such seemingly destructive behavior because they assumed that they had reached a level of fame and stature that made them immune from the normal accounting laws of the universe. There is no servant running along our triumphant masters when they star on television, muttering to them "Respice te, hominem te memento," or at least "memento mori."

Sic transit gloria? We would counter with vero possumus!

Two, lying more often than not pays. Take an ethical shortcut and the odds are small that one gets caught. Yes, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Fareed Zakaria were found out. But after brief anguished penance, they reinvented themselves and returned to the level of their prior stature. Perhaps some young journalist one day will do an Ambrose on them, and review all their previous work. But for what purpose? We know they have been dishonest once, and suspect the modus operandi was not a one-time occurrence. But we also know that the purified water in which they swim is not too toxic for liars and the dishonest.

Liars are good at what they do. Eric Holder certainly is. Again, like a shoplifter, why stop when you have mastered the craft? Does anyone think Patrick Fitzgerald is going to come out of retirement to indict Holder the way he did Scooter Libby for a crime that did not exist, and had it existed was committed by Richard Armitage — and known thusly to both Colin Powell and Fitzgerald himself at the outset?

Three, more recently postmodernism has blurred the divide from reality and truth. Tsarnaev is not quite a mass murderer, given his looks and youth. Major Hasan is guilty of work-place violence. For thirty years, the acolytes of fakers like Michel Foucault have taught our elites that truth is socially constructed — a relative thing, a power narrative fabricated by those of the right race, gender, and class to perpetuate their privilege. Howard Zinn could publish fantasies because who was to say that they were entirely wrong, and who would dare suggest that his myths were not put to a good cause?

Note that Maureen Dowd, Fareed Zakaria, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Mike Barnicle, and Eric Holder shoot their sometimes false arrows at the right targets. Does it then matter that their missiles were occasionally plastic rather than of authentic Native American wood?

Much of what Barack Obama has weaved about his past girlfriend, his parents' meeting, his father's/grandfather's war service, or his upbringing in Hawaii at one point or another is false. But why would I mention that if not for illiberal political reasons? And what a 59-year-old, rural white guy from the Central Valley calls "truth" may not be so for a young multiracial child coming of age in Hawaii, anguished at having door locks clicked by "typical white" people as he crosses the street.

So Why Not Lie?

I end with three reasons to tell the truth. The majority has to tell the truth — to the IRS, to the police, to the DA, to the census — if a consensual society is to work. You readers tell the truth so that the society can survive an Eric Holder or Mike Barnicle. Average people must speak honestly or our elites' lies will overwhelm, even destroy us. If 100 million tell the IRS lies during audits or take the 5th Amendment, our voluntary tax system collapses. We can take only so many Lois Lerners.

Two, this often sordid, sometimes beautiful world is not the end. There is transcendence. Lies damage our soul. Selling out in the here and now has consequences later on. If you are religious, your immortal soul is lost. If you are not, at least consider that your legacy, heritage, and remembrance are forever ruined. Ask the ghost of Stephen Ambrose. What good was all that money, all those interviews if based on a lie? All the insight and delight that he brought millions of readers was tarnished. And for what, exactly?

Third, we must strive to be tragic heroes, perhaps not as dramatic as Ajax, not as cool as Shane. Would you rather have been Ethan Edwards or Will Kane or have run Lehman Brothers in 2008? Sometimes, in less dramatic fashion, the choices are that Manichean.

We must try to tell the truth, not to doctor films, edit tapes, erase talking points, or lie before Congress, fabricate heroic war records, or invent false sources. Again, why? Because we seek to do the right thing with the full resignation that in the here and now we will often still lose and will lose often and gladly telling the truth.

"We always lose," says Chris at the end of the The Magnificent Seven after he did the right thing. Or to paraphrase the cinematic T.E. Lawrence about Auda Abu Tayi, we will not lie, as do our elites, because it is simply "our pleasure" not to.

[Diane Amberg]

Warph. There are live streaming police and fire channels available all over. I don't know if you were just interested in Chicago, but I just thought I'd add that comment. Have a nice day. Did you get hit by the big storm? My ILs were north of it.

[Warph]

 

The Nation's Lib Sports Blogger:
NFL Inspecting Players For Gang Tattoos Is "Racist"

(If a team owner is going to pay big bucks to these players, then he or she has the right to set standards that their players will project, Zirin.  You sound like a racist!)

(This is "Crybaby" Zirin BEFORE Pic without makeup...
got any gang signs in there, goofball)

(Zirin pictured AFTER Makeup applied

)

The Nation's sports blogger "Crybaby" Dave Zirin appeared on MSNBC with Tamron Hall on Thursday to discuss the measures the National Football League is taking to ensure prevent the league from signing potentially violent players like Aaron Hernandez in the future.  Hernandez is currently facing charges of first-degree murder in the death of a 27-year-old semi-pro football player. Zirin said that the NFL's plan to inspect players for gang tattoos will probably, and rightly, be construed as a racist policy improperly targeting African-American players.

"It's the NFL's worst idea since helmets without facemasks," Zirin said of the NFL's policy of checking players for gang tattoos.

Zirin found irony in the fact that a league "based on highly commodified violence" would squirm over the prospect of its players engaging in murderous acts outside the locker room. "It means that the NFL would be judging their prospective employees and people they are going to make millionaires as possible gang members without any proof whatsoever," Zirin added.


"This is going to be tagged for very good reason as racist, and race — certainly – motivated," he continued. "The only reason for this is an overreaction after what took place with Aaron Hernandez."

Zirin said that there is little proof that Hernandez was ever a member of the gang known as "the Bristol [Connecticut] Bloods." He dismissed the threat posed by the gang Hernandez was alleged to have been a member of, saying it sounds "only slightly more scary than something Arthur Fonzarelli would have been in."

[Warph]

Sick POS Obuma Ties Vietnamese Communist Leader Ho Chi Minh
To America's Founding Fathers

(Never mind the fact that Bastard
Ho Chi Minh led North Vietnam's war effort that ultimately killed almost 60,000 Americans)

Via PJ Tatler:

President Obama hailed hard-core communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh today as a pretty open guy who was actually inspired by the Founders.

Obama took a break from his jobs-pivot speeches to meet Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang at the White House. The pair held joint remarks in the Oval Office afterward.

Obama said their first bilateral meeting "represents the steady progression and strengthening of the relationship between our two countries." [...]

Obama said Sang concluded the meeting by sharing "a copy of a letter sent by Ho Chi Minh to Harry Truman."

"And we discussed the fact that Ho Chi Minh was actually inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the words of Thomas Jefferson. Ho Chi Minh talks about his interest in cooperation with the United States. And President Sang indicated that even if it's 67 years later, it's good that we're still making progress."

Sang said the pair "had a very candid, open, useful and constructive discussion."

[Warph]

POS Obuma Celebrates Ramadan
By Hosting Iftar Meal At White House

(Obuma: Allahu akbar!)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Hussein Obama is saluting Muslim Americans for their contributions in helping build the nation as business entrepreneurs, technology innovators and pioneers in medicine.

Obama spoke at a White House dinner he hosted Thursday to celebrate the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The meal, or iftar, breaks the day of fasting when Muslim families and communities eat together after sunset.

Obama said Ramadan is, quoting, "a time of reflection, a chance to demonstrate ones devotion to God through prayer and through fasting, but it's also a time for family and friends to come together."

He said the White House tradition is to celebrate sacred days of various faiths, adding that these occasions celebrate diversity that defines the country and reaffirms the freedom to worship.

[Warph]

Turkish Islamic Leader:
Pregnant Women In Public "Immoral And Unpleasant"

Via ANSAmed:

Islamic [Clown] thinker Omer Tugrul Inancer in a TV program exhorted pregnant women not to show themselves in public, sparking protests from secular Turks and opposition politicians, Hurriyet online reported.

"It is against our civilization to use fanfare to announce a pregnancy. Pregnant women also should not go around in public with those bellies. It's not aesthetic", Inancer said on public TRT 1 TV channel. "After seven or eight months, future mothers should only leave the house by car with their husbands to get some fresh air, and only in the evening. Instead we see them all over television. It's unpleasant. This is not realism, it's immorality". The program presenter thanked him with "May God listen to you". Secular Turks immediately took to social media, with #Omer Tugrul Inancer trending instantly.

Activists have called for a protest on Istanbul's Istiklal Avenue, near Taksim Square, with a pillow under their clothes in solidarity with pregnant women. "They must stop interfering with women in this country. If they could, they would rule on the very air they breathe", thundered Aylin Nazliaka, a Social Democrat. 

[Warph]

Report: Slimy Obuma Regime Demanding Web Firms
Turn Over User Account Passwords

(Big Brother is watching)

Via Cnet:

The U.S. [Dictatorial Obuma] government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users' stored passwords, according to two industry sources familiar with these orders, which represent an escalation in surveillance techniques that has not previously been disclosed.

If the government is able to determine a person's password, which is typically stored in encrypted form, the credential could be used to log in to an account to peruse confidential correspondence or even impersonate the user. Obtaining it also would aid in deciphering encrypted devices in situations where passwords are reused.

"I've certainly seen them ask for passwords," said one Internet industry source who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We push back."

A second person who has worked at a large Silicon Valley company confirmed that it received legal requests from the federal government for stored passwords. Companies "really heavily scrutinize" these requests, the person said. "There's a lot of 'over my dead body.'"

Some of the government orders demand not only a user's password but also the encryption algorithm and the so-called salt, according to a person familiar with the requests. A salt is a random string of letters or numbers used to make it more difficult to reverse the encryption process and determine the original password. Other orders demand the secret question codes often associated with user accounts.

A Microsoft spokesperson would not say whether the company has received such requests from the government. But when asked whether Microsoft would divulge passwords, salts, or algorithms, the spokesperson replied: "No, we don't, and we can't see a circumstance in which we would provide it."

Google also declined to disclose whether it had received requests for those types of data. But a spokesperson said the company has "never" turned over a user's encrypted password, and that it has a legal team that frequently pushes back against requests that are fishing expeditions or are otherwise problematic. "We take the privacy and security of our users very seriously," the spokesperson said.

Apple, Yahoo, Facebook, AOL, Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and Comcast did not respond to queries about whether they have received requests for users' passwords and how they would respond to them.

Richard Lovejoy, a director of the Opera Software subsidiary that operates FastMail, said he doesn't recall receiving any such requests but that the company still has a relatively small number of users compared with its larger rivals. Because of that, he said, "we don't get a high volume" of U.S. government demands.