ET Williams

The Doctor of Common Sense

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Can We Truly Get Representation When There Is Super PAC

We Don't Want To Stop Corruption

If the American presidential system were boiled down into a Las Vegas casino game, “Super PAC” betting would be placed exclusively in the high-stakes room.

 The Super PAC system, a product of recent Supreme Court rulings, allows unlimited donations for political causes. And recent federal disclosure forms reveal the people behind them are the whales of the campaign trail — putting up donations frequently in excess of a quarter-million dollars.

For the first time, voters are getting a glimpse at who’s funding the previously opaque organizations boosting the presidential candidates’ campaigns with outside spending.

 Mitt Romney, not surprisingly, has a slew of investment titans — including former colleagues at Bain Capital — pumping money into the Super PAC supporting his campaign. Newt Gingrich enjoys high-powered support out of Vegas. Ron Paul is being indirectly funded by the co-founder of PayPal. Rick Santorum’s Super PAC is backed mostly by two people. And President Obama’s Super PAC is kept well-heeled by Hollywood and union support.

The nature of the donations is a world apart from the traditional campaign finance of presidential campaigns themselves — for which individual donations are capped at $2,500.

In the world of Super PACs, $2,500 makes for a modest starting point. Donors routinely put up $100,000 and up in support of the campaign committee of their choice. And a relatively small number of high-dollar contributors are involved.

No Super PAC better exemplifies the unbound financial potential of the new system than Romney’s group Restore Our Future.

According to end-of-year filings with Federal Election Commission, the pro-Romney committee has raised more than $30 million, from just 282 donors. The average donation tops $100,000, and the fund is backed by plenty of high-rollers.

At the top are donors like Robert Mercer, an executive at hedge fund firm Renaissance Technologies; John Paulson, president of hedge fund Paulson and Co.; Julian Robertson, founder of hedge fund Tiger Management; Paul Singer, founder of Elliott Management Corp.; and Edward Conard, a former Bain colleague. All put up $1 million apiece.

J.W. Marriott Jr., chairman of Marriott International, also contributed $500,000, as did Richard Marriott, chief of Marriott offshoot Host Hotels & Resorts.

By law, these campaign committees cannot coordinate with the presidential campaigns themselves or directly fund them. This catch explains why, when Romney and other candidates are challenged on Super PAC-funded ads, they note that their campaigns had nothing to do with the production.

But they are surely aware, and the Super PACs serve a blunt purpose.

According to a study by the Center for Responsive Politics, Restore Our Future has spent $17 million in opposition to Gingrich – in large part through advertising.

The other Super PACs don’t have nearly as much money, but nevertheless serve as a potent tool for the candidates.

Winning Our Future, a pro-Gingrich group, has been backed by Texas businessman Harold Simmons. The group reported raising over $2 million at the end of the year, from just 18 people.

 More recently, and subsequent to the 2011 filing period, Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson drew headlines for putting up $5 million for the Gingrich Super PAC. His wife reportedly followed suit with another $5 million.

In Paul’s corner is the Endorse Liberty group, which reported about $1 million raised for 2011. The group is supported almost exclusively by Peter Thiel, a hedge fund manager who co-founded PayPal.

Santorum’s Red White and Blue Fund has raised slightly less than Paul’s Super PAC. That, too, is backed by a handful of supporters, including wealthy investor Foster Friess and John Templeton Jr., son of philanthropist John Templeton.

And the pro-Obama Priorities USA Super PAC has raised a total of $4.4 million as of the end of 2011. About half of that came in the form of a $2 million donation from DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg. Steven Spielberg also threw in $100,000.

Those five groups are just a slice of the national Super PAC pie, though they account for much of the money raised. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 318 groups have raised nearly $99 million as of early February. They’ve spent nearly $47 million in the 2012 cycle.

 The campaign finance free-for-all has raised pressing questions all along about whether the new system is a boon for free speech — speech, that is, in the form of monetary donations and ads — or a barrier for candidates who might not have the behind-the-scenes support of such wealth.

 Gingrich, despite the support of his Las Vegas benefactors, has complained that the glut of negative advertising by Romney’s supporters has damaged his candidacy.

In Congress, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and others are pushing for a new bill that would, among other provisions, require TV ads to name top donors.

 Yet Obama’s campaign this past week seemed to embrace the new Super PAC reality. The campaign said Obama officials would speak at Priorities USA events.

Romney reportedly has sanctioned the same kind of interaction.

 http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/02/11/battle-billionaires-super-pacs-offer-chance-for-high-rollers-to-sway-2012-race/#ixzz1mDfWY5IE

 

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Whitney Houston Dies

whitney houston dies

By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY AP Music Writer The Associated Press

 Saturday, February 11, 2012 10:14 PM EST

 LOS ANGELES (AP) — Whitney Houston, who ruled as pop music’s queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, died Saturday. She was 48.

Beverly Hills police Lt. Mark Rosen told reporters outside the Beverly Hilton that Houston was pronounced dead at 3:55 p.m. in her room on the fourth floor of the hotel. Her body remained there and Beverly Hills detectives were investigating.

“There were no obvious signs of any criminal intent,” Rosen said.

Houston’s publicist, Kristen Foster, said the cause of death was unknown.

Rosen said police received a 911 call from hotel security about Houston at 3:43 p.m. Saturday. Paramedics who were already at the hotel because of a Grammy party unsuccessfully tried to resuscitate the singer, he said.

Houston’s end came on the eve of music’s biggest night — the Grammy Awards. It’s a showcase where she once reigned, and her death was sure to cast a heavy pall on Sunday’s ceremony.

Her longtime mentor Clive Davis was to hold his annual concert and dinner Saturday, and a representative of the show said it would proceed.

Producer Jimmy Jam, who had worked with Houston, said he anticipated the evening would become a tribute to her, and he expected there to be one at the Grammys as well.

Houston was supposed to appear at the gala, and Davis had told The Associated Press that she would perhaps perform: “It’s her favorite night of the year … (so) who knows by the end of the evening,” he said.

Houston had been at rehearsals for the show Thursday, coaching singers Brandy and Monica, according to a person who was at the event but was not authorized to speak publicly about it. The person said Houston looked disheveled, was sweating profusely and liquor and cigarettes could be smelled on her breath.

Two days ago, she performed at a pre-Grammy party with singer Kelly Price.

The Rev. Al Sharpton said he would call for a national prayer Sunday morning during a service at Second Baptist Church in Los Angeles.

The morning of the Grammys, the world should pause and pray for the memory of a gifted songbird,” Sharpton said in a written statement.

In a statement, Recording Academy President and CEO Neil Portnow said Houston “was one of the world’s greatest pop singers of all time who leaves behind a robust musical soundtrack spanning the past three decades.”

“Her powerful voice graced many memorable and award-winning songs,” Portnow said. “A light has been dimmed in our music community today, and we extend our deepest condolences to her family, friends, fans and all who have been touched by her beautiful voice.”

 

At her peak, Houston was the golden girl of the music industry. From the middle 1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world’s best-selling artists. She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful, and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.

 

Her success carried her beyond music to movies, where she starred in hits like “The Bodyguard” and “Waiting to Exhale.”

 

She had the perfect voice and the perfect image: a gorgeous singer who had sex appeal but was never overtly sexual, who maintained perfect poise.

 

She influenced a generation of younger singers, from Christina Aguilera to Mariah Carey, who when she first came out sounded so much like Houston that many thought it was Houston.

 

But by the end of her career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had during her prime.

“The biggest devil is me. I’m either my best friend or my worst enemy,” Houston told ABC’s Diane Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with then-husband Brown by her side.

It was a tragic fall for a superstar who was one of the top-selling artists in pop music history, with more than 55 million records sold in the United States alone.

She seemed to be born into greatness. She was the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, the cousin of 1960s pop diva Dionne Warwick and the goddaughter of Aretha Franklin.Houston first started singing in the church as a child. In her teens, she sang backup for Chaka Khan, Jermaine Jackson and others, in addition to modeling. It was around that time when music mogul Clive Davis first heard Houston perform.

“The time that I first saw her singing in her mother’s act in a club … it was such a stunning impact,” Davis told “Good Morning America.”

“To hear this young girl breathe such fire into this song. I mean, it really sent the proverbial tingles up my spine,” he added.

Before long, the rest of the country would feel it, too. Houston made her album debut in 1985 with “Whitney Houston,” which sold millions and spawned hit after hit. “Saving All My Love for You” brought her her first Grammy, for best female pop vocal. “How Will I Know,” “You Give Good Love” and “The Greatest Love of All” also became hit singles.

Another multiplatinum album, “Whitney,” came out in 1987 and included hits like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” and “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.”

The New York Times wrote that Houston “possesses one of her generation’s most powerful gospel-trained voices, but she eschews many of the churchier mannerisms of her forerunners. She uses ornamental gospel phrasing only sparingly, and instead of projecting an earthy, tearful vulnerability, communicates cool self-assurance and strength, building pop ballads to majestic, sustained peaks of intensity.”

Her decision not to follow the more soulful inflections of singers like Franklin drew criticism by some who saw her as playing down her black roots to go pop and reach white audiences. The criticism would become a constant refrain through much of her career. She was even booed during the “Soul Train Awards” in 1989.

“Sometimes it gets down to that, you know?” she told Katie Couric in 1996. “You’re not black enough for them. I don’t know. You’re not R&B enough. You’re very pop. The white audience has taken you away from them.”

Some saw her 1992 marriage to former New Edition member and soul crooner Bobby Brown as an attempt to refute those critics. It seemed to be an odd union; she was seen as pop’s pure princess while he had a bad-boy image, and already had children of his own. (The couple had a daughter, Bobbi Kristina, in 1993.) Over the years, he would be arrested several times, on charges ranging from DUI to failure to pay child support.

But Houston said their true personalities were not as far apart as people may have believed.

“When you love, you love. I mean, do you stop loving somebody because you have different images? You know, Bobby and I basically come from the same place,” she told Rolling Stone in 1993. “You see somebody, and you deal with their image, that’s their image. It’s part of them, it’s not the whole picture. I am not always in a sequined gown. I am nobody’s angel. I can get down and dirty. I can get raunchy.”

It would take several years, however, for the public to see that side of Houston. Her moving 1991 rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl, amid the first Gulf War, set a new standard and once again reaffirmed her as America’s sweetheart.

 

In 1992, she became a star in the acting world with “The Bodyguard.” Despite mixed reviews, the story of a singer (Houston) guarded by a former Secret Service agent (Kevin Costner) was an international success.

It also gave her perhaps her most memorable hit: a searing, stunning rendition of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” which sat atop the charts for weeks. It was Grammy’s record of the year and best female pop vocal, and the “Bodyguard” soundtrack was named album of the year.

She returned to the big screen in 1995-96 with “Waiting to Exhale” and “The Preacher’s Wife.” Both spawned soundtrack albums, and another hit studio album, “My Love Is Your Love,” in 1998, brought her a Grammy for best female R&B vocal for the cut “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay.”

But during these career and personal highs, Houston was using drugs. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2010, she said by the time “The Preacher’s Wife” was released, “(doing drugs) was an everyday thing. … I would do my work, but after I did my work, for a whole year or two, it was every day. … I wasn’t happy by that point in time. I was losing myself.”

She returned to the big screen in 1995-96 with “Waiting to Exhale” and “The Preacher’s Wife.” Both spawned soundtrack albums, and another hit studio album, “My Love Is Your Love,” in 1998, brought her a Grammy for best female R&B vocal for the cut “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay.”

 

But during these career and personal highs, Houston was using drugs. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2010, she said by the time “The Preacher’s Wife” was released, “(doing drugs) was an everyday thing. … I would do my work, but after I did my work, for a whole year or two, it was every day. … I wasn’t happy by that point in time. I was losing myself.”

 

In the interview, Houston blamed her rocky marriage to Brown, which included a charge of domestic abuse against Brown in 1993. They divorced in 2007.

 

Houston would go to rehab twice before she would declare herself drug-free to Winfrey in 2010. But in the interim, there were missed concert dates, a stop at an airport due to drugs, and public meltdowns.

She was so startlingly thin during a 2001 Michael Jackson tribute concert that rumors spread she had died the next day. Her crude behavior and jittery appearance on Brown’s reality show, “Being Bobby Brown,” was an example of her sad decline. Her Sawyer interview, where she declared “crack is whack,” was often parodied. She dropped out of the spotlight for a few years.

Houston staged what seemed to be a successful comeback with the 2009 album “I Look To You.” The album debuted on the top of the charts, and would eventually go platinum.

Things soon fell apart. A concert to promote the album on “Good Morning America” went awry as Houston’s voice sounded ragged and off-key. She blamed an interview with Winfrey for straining her voice.

A world tour launched overseas, however, only confirmed suspicions that Houston had lost her treasured gift, as she failed to hit notes and left many fans unimpressed; some walked out. Canceled concert dates raised speculation that she may have been abusing drugs, but she denied those claims and said she was in great shape, blaming illness for cancellations.

http://start.toshiba.com/news/read.php?rip_id=%3CD9SRGTD81%40news.ap.org%3E&ps=1016&page=1

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Is the Obama Administration given bogus job data?

Obama is putting down the Road to recovery

 

The White House hyped the news Friday that January payrolls had risen by 243,000. The hitch is the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) also dropped 1.2 million from the calculated workforce. Somehow this net loss of a million workers in a single month was transformed into an improvement in the unemployment rate. As the old saying goes, figures don’t lie, but liars can figure.

“Job growth was widespread,” the BLS reported, but most Americans sense that something isn’t quite right with the numbers. The most important change was the deep decline in the workforce. While the overall population jumped an 1.6 million in January, the workforce declined a record-setting 1.2 million. This figure represents those who out of sheer frustration or for other reasons have dropped out of what the government defines as the active labor pool. They are worse than simply unemployed; they are both jobless and hopeless.

The good news for Obama administration statisticians is that these unfortunates don’t factor into the official unemployment rate, which only counts those thought to be looking for work. So while five people drop out of the system in despair for every new job created, the official unemployment rate declines and the White House enjoys a good news day.

“The recovery is speeding up,” President Obama declared. However, the broader measures tell a different story. The employment-to-population ratio, the most comprehensive jobs number, remained flatlined at 58.5 percent, around where is has been for at least a year. The number lacking jobs has likewise remained steady at 41.5 percent. The overall participation rate, the percentage making up the workforce in the population, accelerated an already steep decline to a 30-year low of 63.7 percent. In short, the recovery is not speeding up – people are simply giving up.

The participation rate is a subjective measure and highly subject to manipulation. The lower it goes and the more people are dropped from the unemployment equation, the better the numbers will look for the White House. This figure has been dropping sharply since Mr. Obama took office. Last month, an analysis at the Zero Hedge financial website noted that by extending the logic of reporting progressively fewer labor-force participants, “America will officially have no unemployed when the Labor Force Participation rate hits 58.5 percent, which should be just before the presidential election.” Maybe that’s the plan.

A year ago, there were 99 million people either officially unemployed or otherwise not working, and the official unemployment rate was 9.1 percent. Now, unemployment reported by the government is down to 8.3 percent, but the number without jobs has topped 100 million. The disconnect between increasing joblessness in America and the rosy White House official statistics should be the subject of a congressional investigation. Something does not add up.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/3/obamas-bogus-jobs-data/

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Obama’s Administration is making up jobless numbers

Obama Has Broken the Economy

When it comes to the unemployment rate, it’s nice to be president.

Sure, it wasn’t so nice for President Obama in October 2009, when the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics declared the rate was 10 percent. But exactly a year from Election Day 2012, the rate began a precipitous plunge, first to 8.9 percent, then the next month, to 8.7, then to 8.5. And just last week, the BLS said the rate had fallen all the way down to 8.3 percent.

If the spectacular “recovery” keeps up at the same pace, the rate will be 6.3 percent by Nov. 6. It hasn’t been that low since — well, all but four of the 96 months George W. Bush was in office. But you get the point. America is back!! Woo-hoooo!!

So, spectacular news for the president, yes? And fantastic news for America, right? Uh, yes. And absolutely no.

See, the BLS boys, no doubt at the president’s direction, are busy rewriting the rules, and they’re in uncharted, and unchecked, territory. The federal government Friday declared that the U.S. had created — not “saved,” mind you, “created” — 243,000 jobs. Amazing, right?

But wait, what’s that little asterisk here? A record 1.2 million Americans left the labor force? 1.2 million?! Well, where’d they go? Oh, just left? Well, OK. But no, wait. What does that even mean?

Zerohedge.com’s Tyler Durden (the first rule of … eh, you know the rest) precisely spelled out the government version of “Project Mayhem”:

“A month ago, we joked when we said that for Obama to get the unemployment rate to negative by election time, all he has to do is to crush the labor force participation rate to about 55 percent. Looks like the good folks at the BLS heard us: It appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million. No, that’s not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non-institutional population increased to 242.3 million, meaning those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30-year low of 63.7 percent as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation.”

The labor force rate — all workers more than 16 years old — climbed above 66 percent in October 1988. It stayed there throughout the term of President George H.W. Bush, and topped 67 percent for 40 consecutive months during President Clinton’s two terms. The rate stayed above 66 percent for almost all of President George W. Bush’s two terms.

But the month Mr. Obama was elected, the rate dropped to 65.8 percent. By the end of his first year in office, the BLS said the labor participation rate was just 64.6 percent. And last month, for the first time in nearly 30 years, the rate dropped all the way down to 63.7 percent.

Still, month after month, the mainstream media laps up reports of a falling unemployment rate. “U.S. Jobless Rate Falls to 8.3 Percent, a 3-Year Low,” blared the New York Times. “The nation’s unemployment rate dropped for the fifth straight month, to 8.3 percent, its lowest level in three years, the Labor Department reported Friday, with widespread hiring across the economy,” declared the Washington Post.

Clearly, they hadn’t read the major financial papers the month before. When the unemployment rate dropped to 8.5 percent in December, the Financial Times wasn’t convinced. “According to government statistics, if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11 percent.”

And they must have ignored the Gallup write-up the month before: “The sharp drop in the government-reported unemployment rate for November and the sharp drop in jobless claims during the most recent reporting week have combined to create the perception that the job market may be improving … . In contrast, Gallup’s data suggest little improvement in the jobs situation.” The organization concluded: “It may be wise to exercise caution in interpreting the drop in the government’s most recent jobless claims numbers.”

No one in the mainstream media, busy rewriting the government’s press release on Friday, will bother to question the newest number, or explore what trimtabs.com CEO Charles Biderman said that very day: “Actual jobs outstanding, not seasonally adjusted, are down 2.9 million over the past two months. It is only after seasonal adjustments — made at the sole discretion of the Bureau of Labor Statistics economists — that 2.9 million less jobs gets translated into 446,000 new seasonally adjusted jobs for January and December.

“No one I know has any idea as to how the BLS does this seasonal adjustment,” he said.

When Project Mayhem has run its course, Tyler Durden (the other one), looking out across the city, where banks and financial institutions are about to implode, says: “Out these windows, we will view the economic collapse. One step closer to global equilibrium.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/5/curl-obamas-made-up-jobless-numbers/?page=all#pagebreak

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Did U.S. lose $1.3 billion Chrysler Bailouts?

Big Daddy Obama (Pimping Ain't Easy)

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — U.S. taxpayers likely lost $1.3 billion in the government bailout of Chrysler, the Treasury Department announced Thursday.

The government recently sold its remaining 6% stake in the company to Italian automaker Fiat. It wrapped up the 2009 bailout that was part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program six years early.

“The fact that the company has done so well — that they were able to go out and raise private capital to repay us the loan so quickly, is really the big story,” said Tim Massad, Treasury assistant secretary for financial stability.

Fiat paid the Treasury a total of $560 million for the remaining shares, as well as rights to shares held by the United Auto Workers retiree trust. Fiat now owns a 53.5% stake in the company.

Originally, the government committed a total of $12.5 billion to the struggling automaker, Old Chrysler, and the company’s newly formed Chrysler Group. Of those funds, $11.2 billion have been returned through principal repayments, interest and cancelled commitments, the Treasury said. The new Chrysler Group paid back $5.1 billion in loans in May.

As part of the loan agreement, Chrysler was given until 2017 to return the bailout funds. If it had taken the full term, the interest accrued on the loans could have significantly reduced the government’s losses.

Overall, $1.3 billion will not be recovered from the bankrupt Old Chrysler, but Massad still called it a “major accomplishment.”

That’s because the government originally expected it would lose much more on the auto bailout. Initial estimates from the Congressional Budget Office in 2009, predicted the government would lose $40 billion on the overall auto bailout.

Now it estimates, by the time the $80 billion program is completely wrapped up, taxpayers will have lost $14 billion.

The Treasury Department also considers the auto bailout a success because the industry has recently shown signs of a recovery.

In the year leading up to the Chrysler and General Motors’ bankruptcies, the auto industry lost 400,000 jobs. Since the bailout, about 113,000 of those jobs have been recovered.

“We didn’t make the auto interventions to make money, we made them to save jobs — and on that front, we dramatically succeeded,” Massad said.

General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) has already repaid loans it received from the bailout, but the Treasury still owns about one-third of GM’s shares, worth approximately $16 billion.

TARP overall, was originally authorized to cost $700 billion, but the Treasury Department has only paid out $411 billion.

Of that amount, $101 billion have yet to be paid back, mostly due to losses from assistance to AIG and mortgage modification programs.

The bank bailout part of TARP is expected to turn a profit of $20 billion, making up for some of those losses.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/07/21/autos/chrysler_government_exit/index.htm

 

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Iranian Ayatollah wants Israel Annihilated

Israel Must Be Annihilated

By: Reza Kahlili

The Iranian government, through a website proxy, has laid out the legal and religious justification for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of its people.
The doctrine includes wiping out Israeli assets and Jewish people worldwide.
Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a “‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”
The article, written by Alireza Forghani, an analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine.
Because Israel is going to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran is justified in launching a pre-emptive, cataclysmic attack against the Jewish state, the doctrine argues.
On Friday, in a major speech at prayers, Khamenei announced that Iran will support any nation or group that attacks the “cancerous tumor” of Israel. Though his statement was seen by some in the West as fluff, there is substance behind it.
Iran’s Defense Ministry announced this weekend that it test-fired an advanced two-stage, solid-fuel ballistic missile and boasted about successfully putting a new satellite into orbit, reminding the West that its engineers have mastered the technology for intercontinental ballistic missiles even as the Islamic state pushes its nuclear weapons program.
The commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Seyyed Mehdi Farahi, stated in August that the Safir missile, which is capable of transporting a satellite into space, can easily be launched parallel to the earth’s orbit, which will transform it into an intercontinental ballistic missile. Western analysts didn’t believe this would happen until 2015. Historically, orbiting a satellite is the criterion for crediting a nation with ICBM capability.
Forghani details the Islamic duty of jihad as laid out in the Quran for the sake of Allah and states that “primary jihad,” according to some Shiite jurists, can only occur when the Hidden Imam, the Shiites’ 12th Imam Mahdi, returns. Shiites believe Mahdi’’s return will usher in Armageddon.
In the absence of the hidden Imam, Forghani says, “defensive jihad” could certainly take place when Islam is threatened, and Muslims must defend Islam and kill their enemies. To justify such action, Alef quotes the Shiites’ first imam, Ali, who stated “Waging war against the enemies with whom war is inevitable and there is a strong possibility that in near future they will attack Muslims is a must and the duty of Muslims.” In this regard, Ayatollah Khamenei has issued a fatwa in which he has even authorized carrying out primary jihad in the age of the absence of the Hidden imam under the authorization of Vali Faghih.
The article then quotes the Quran (Albaghara 2:191-193): “And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution [of Muslims] is worse than slaughter [of non-believers] … and fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah.”
It is the duty for all Muslims to participate in this defensive jihad, Forghani says. A fatwa by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini made it clear that any political domination by infidels over Muslims authorizes Muslims to defend Islam by all means. Iran now has the ICBM means to deliver destruction on Israel and soon will have nuclear warheads for those missiles.
In order to attack Iran, the article says, Israel needs the approval and assistance of America, and under the current passive climate in the United States, the opportunity must not be lost to wipe out Israel before it attacks Iran.
Under this pre-emptive defensive doctrine, several Ground Zero points of Israel must be destroyed and its people annihilated. Forghani cites the last census by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics that shows Israel has a population of 7.5 million citizens of which a majority of 5.7 million are Jewish. Then it breaks down the districts with the highest concentration of Jewish people, indicating that three cities, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa, contain over 60 percent of the Jewish population that Iran could target with its Shahab 3 ballistic missiles, killing all its inhabitants.
Forghani suggests that Iran’s Sejil missile, which is a two-stage rocket with a trajectory and speed that make it impossible to intercept, should target such Israeli facilities as: the Rafael nuclear plant, which is the main nuclear engineering center of Israel; the Eilun nuclear plant; another Israeli reactor in Nebrin; and the Dimona reactor in the nuclear research center in Neqeb, the most critical nuclear reactor in Israel because it produces 90 percent enriched uranium for Israel’s nuclear weapons.
Other targets, according to the article, include airports and air force bases such as the Sedot Mikha Air Base, which contains Jericho ballistic missiles and is located southwest of the Tel Nof Air Base, where aircraft equipped with nuclear weapons are based. Secondary targets include power plants, sewage treatment facilities, energy resources, and transportation and communication infrastructures.
Finally, Forghani says, Shahab 3 and Ghadr missiles can target urban settlements until the Israelis are wiped out.
Forghani claims that Israel could be destroyed in less than nine minutes and that Khamenei, as utmost authority, the Velayete Faghih (Islamic Jurist), also believes that Israel and America not only must be defeated but annihilated.
The radicals ruling Iran today not only posses over 1,000 ballistic missiles but are on the verge of ICBM delivery and have sufficient enriched uranium for six nuclear bombs even as they continue to highly enrich uranium despite four sets of U.N. sanctions.
WND previously reported when Iran was warning of a coming great event.
The Iranian secret documentary “The Coming Is Upon Us” clearly indicates that these radicals believe the destruction of Israel will trigger the coming of the last Islamic Messiah and that even Jesus Christ, who will convert to Islam, will act as Mahdi’s deputy, praying to Allah as he stands behind the 12th Imam.
http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/ayatollah-kill-all-jews-annihilate-israel/