Saturday, March 19, 2016

Coming to Tallahassee...soon!



 

Coming to Phoenix...soon!


 

Coming to Las Vegas...soon!



 

Coming to San Antonio...soon!



 

Coming to Austin...soon!



 

Coming to Mobile...soon!



 

Coming to Panama City...soon!


Coming to Worcester...soon!



 

Coming to Shrewsbury...soon!



 

Coming to Montgomery...soon!



 

Coming to Quincy...soon!



 

Coming to Ozark...soon!



 

Coming to Fall River...soon!


Coming to Taunton...soon!



 

Coming to Cape Cod...soon!




 

Pope Frances: "Europe is the only continent that can bring about a certain unity to the world" Huh? Is this guy for real?


Disturbing to say the least…  Actually I just don’t know how to begin, so I just start typing whatever words flow out of this keyboard.  It all started with a headline at one of the numerous websites that permeates cyberspace.  At JewsNews.co.il in large bold print it read, “He’s Lost It! Pope Francis Says ‘Arab Muslim Invasion’ Will Bring UNITY To The World”.

Now let that sink in for a moment and ask yourself, “Does this Pope have any idea what’s going on in the world?”  Does he know anything about history?

Well it’s obvious from the comment section that more of the average folks have a better handle on the situation than the leader of over one billion Catholics.  (I should point out that I’m a Catholic but as I’ve said before, “I may be a sinner, but I’m a better Catholic than this Pope.)

As with so many stories on the Internet the headline may change from its original source and each subsequent writer will provide links so that proper credit may be given. 

So I went from JewsNews to SupremePatriot which lead me to Bloomberg News with the author’s headline “Pope Francis Refers To `Arab Invasion' as a Social Reality”.   So after reading the previous comments and opinions I was ready for my own, “Is this guy for real or what?”

So rather than repeat Winston Churchill’s observations of the Muslims (See  “The River War,” Volume II, pages 248-250, published by Longmans, Green & Company, 1899. and  Winston Churchill warned about dangers of  Islam over 100 years ago) I focused on the following misconception of the Pope…he said, “Today we can talk about an Arab invasion. It is a social fact that Europe has always been able to go forward and find itself enhanced by the exchange among cultures.  Europe is the only continent that can bring about a certain unity to the world.”

So Europe is the place to be…“The only continent that can bring about unity to the world.”  Sorry to inform you Mr. Pope, have you not heard of America?  America is the reason why so many people left Europe.  And until the government stuck their dirty hands into the melting pot, America was the place to be…where unity was melding naturally among the population.  Alistair Cooke wrote about this as did Ernie Pyle; their observations mirrored one another, where an Italian would marry an Irish, a Jew with a Catholic, the French and the Irish and on and on.

Returning to that first headline, “He’s Lost It!...” maybe this Pope needs to see what happens  when Muslims bring unity to the world.  In the words of Sir Winston Churchill, “The effects are apparent in many countries: improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.” And from the same book, “How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism  lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.”

So one more question for the misinformed Pope, “How many heads will roll when the Arab Muslim invasion is completed?” …hint, hint,  they love to decapitate Catholics! ~ Norman E. Hooben
 
Hey Frances, Have you seen this video?  Wake the hell up!
 

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Hillary Clinton will not disavow virulently anti-black, anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic KKK leader...Instead, she praises him! (caught on video)

 "Byrd says he viewed the Klan as a useful platform from which to launch his political career."
By the time Byrd began organizing for the Klan during World War II, the organization had largely morphed into a money-making fraternal organization that was virulently anti-black, anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic. "

A Senator's Shame
Byrd, in His New Book, Again Confronts Early Ties to KKK
By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 19, 2005 In the early 1940s, a politically ambitious butcher from West Virginia named Bob Byrd recruited 150 of his friends and associates to form a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. After Byrd had collected the $10 joining fee and $3 charge for a robe and hood from every applicant, the "Grand Dragon" for the mid-Atlantic states came down to tiny Crab Orchard, W.Va., to officially organize the chapter.
As Byrd recalls now, the Klan official, Joel L. Baskin of Arlington, Va., was so impressed with the young Byrd's organizational skills that he urged him to go into politics. "The country needs young men like you in the leadership of the nation," Baskin said.
The young Klan leader went on to become one of the most powerful and enduring figures in modern Senate history. Throughout a half-century on Capitol Hill, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) has twice held the premier leadership post in the Senate, helped win ratification of the Panama Canal treaty, squeezed billions from federal coffers to aid his home state, and won praise from liberals for his opposition to the war in Iraq and his defense of minority party rights in the Senate.
...See full story here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/18/AR2005061801105_pf.html

Monday, March 14, 2016

Obama and Hillary Clinton...Their objectives are money, power and oil. ...and power, and power, and power!

An "Up-date" to this commentary is published below (from CounterPunch.org).

Extra commentary by me...the real story follows.

Ellen Brown has been sending me her latest articles for several years and over that period of time I’ve begun to rely on her expertise (not always agreeing) in matters of finance and banking.  She is the author of several books including a best seller, “The Web of Debt”; she is also an attorney and the founder of the Public Banking Institute.   Her latest article, “Exposing the Libyan Agenda:  A Closer Look at Hillary's Emails” does not surprise me, albeit I have not previously thought about the connection between Hillary Clinton’s infamous e-mails and Muammar el-Qaddafi’s gold.  It does, however, bring to mind another story that may at the outset appear to have no relation to this one…but it does expose the corruption of the Obama White House and his entire administration which whom Hillary Clinton is part and parcel to…I should also add, the main stream media (MSM) as a co-conspirator to Obama’s House of Lords…Czars, he calls them.

That other story is all about Obama; a story not covered by the MSM.  The validity of the story may be in question but no-one has yet to deny it.  The title, “Russia “Shocked” Over $18 Billion Iran Payment To Obama After Failed US-Backed Saudi Coup” was published back in 2009. 

So why should anyone make a big deal out of Iran giving Obama eighteen billion dollars when it is widely known (outside the MSM) that Obama is one of Iran’s best friends.  The reason I brought this up was that supposedly, then President Medvedev of Russia, let it be known that the $18 billion was transferred to Obama’s “personal account”… Wow! That should be enough to at least make the late night news casts over at CNN or NBC… Even if it wasn’t true, they at least could have made a denial or some other explanation. ~ Norman E. Hooben

See also: Hillary Clinton’s Globalism – Get Rich Off the World
See also:  QOTD at bottom of this page.
Provided by Storm'n Norm'n
The following from Op Ed News
 
Exposing the Libyan Agenda:  A Closer Look at Hillary's Emails
By Ellen Brown

Critics have long questioned why violent intervention was necessary in Libya. Hillary Clinton's recently published emails confirm that it was less about protecting the people from a dictator than about money, banking, and preventing African economic sovereignty.

Critics have long questioned why violent intervention was necessary in Libya. Hillary Clinton's recently published emails confirm that it was less about protecting the people from a dictator than about money, banking, and preventing African economic sovereignty.

The brief visit of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Libya in October 2011 was referred to by the media as a "victory lap." "We came, we saw, he died!" she crowed in a CBS video interview on hearing of the capture and brutal murder of Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi.

But the victory lap, write Scott Shane and Jo Becker in the New York Times, was premature. Libya was relegated to the back burner by the State Department, "as the country dissolved into chaos, leading to a civil war that would destabilize the region, fueling the refugee crisis in Europe and allowing the Islamic State to establish a Libyan haven that the United States is now desperately trying to contain."

US-NATO intervention was allegedly undertaken on humanitarian grounds, after reports of mass atrocities; but human rights organizations questioned the claims after finding a lack of evidence. Today, however, verifiable atrocities are occurring. As Dan Kovalik wrote in the Huffington Post, "the human rights situation in Libya is a disaster, as 'thousands of detainees [including children] languish in prisons without proper judicial review,' and 'kidnappings and targeted killings are rampant'."

Before 2011, Libya had achieved economic independence, with its own water, its own food, its own oil, its own money, and its own state-owned bank. It had arisen under Qaddafi from one of the poorest of countries to the richest in Africa. Education and medical treatment were free; having a home was considered a human right; and Libyans participated in an original system of local democracy. The country boasted the world's largest irrigation system, the Great Man-made River project, which brought water from the desert to the cities and coastal areas; and Qaddafi was embarking on a program to spread this model throughout Africa.

But that was before US-NATO forces bombed the irrigation system and wreaked havoc on the country. Today the situation is so dire that President Obama has asked his advisors to draw up options including a new military front in Libya, and the Defense Department is reportedly standing ready with "the full spectrum of military operations required."

The Secretary of State's victory lap was indeed premature, if what we're talking about is the officially stated goal of humanitarian intervention. But her newly-released emails reveal another agenda behind the Libyan war; and this one, it seems, was achieved.

Mission Accomplished?

Of the 3,000 emails released from Hillary Clinton's private email server in late December 2015, about a third were from her close confidante Sidney Blumenthal, the attorney who defended her husband in the Monica Lewinsky case. One of these emails, dated April 2, 2011, reads in part:

Qaddafi's government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver . . . . This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).

In a "source comment," the original declassified email adds:

According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to commit France to the attack on Libya. According to these individuals Sarkozy's plans are driven by the following issues:

A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,
Increase French influence in North Africa,
Improve his internal political situation in France,
Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,

Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi's long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa

Conspicuously absent is any mention of humanitarian concerns. The objectives are money, power and oil.

Other explosive confirmations in the newly-published emails are detailed by investigative journalist Robert Parry. They include admissions of rebel war crimes, of special ops trainers inside Libya from nearly the start of protests, and of Al Qaeda embedded in the US-backed opposition. Key propaganda themes for violent intervention are acknowledged to be mere rumors. Parry suggests they may have originated with Blumenthal himself. They include the bizarre claim that Qaddafi had a "rape policy" involving passing Viagra out to his troops, a charge later raised by UN Ambassador Susan Rice in a UN presentation. Parry asks rhetorically:

So do you think it would it be easier for the Obama administration to rally American support behind this "regime change" by explaining how the French wanted to steal Libya's wealth and maintain French neocolonial influence over Africa -- or would Americans respond better to propaganda themes about Gaddafi passing out Viagra to his troops so they could rape more women while his snipers targeted innocent children? Bingo!

Toppling the Global Financial Scheme

Qaddafi's threatened attempt to establish an independent African currency was not taken lightly by Western interests. In 2011, Sarkozy reportedly called the Libyan leader a threat to the financial security of the world. How could this tiny country of six million people pose such a threat? First some background.

It is banks, not governments, that create most of the money in Western economies, as the Bank of England recently acknowledged. This has been going on for centuries, through the process called "fractional reserve" lending. Originally, the reserves were in gold. In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt replaced gold domestically with central bank-created reserves, but gold remained the reserve currency internationally.

In 1944, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were created in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to unify this bank-created money system globally. An IMF ruling said that no paper money could have gold backing. A money supply created privately as debt at interest requires a continual supply of debtors; and over the next half century, most developing countries wound up in debt to the IMF. The loans came with strings attached, including "structural adjustment" policies involving austerity measures and privatization of public assets.

After 1944, the US dollar traded interchangeably with gold as global reserve currency. When the US was no longer able to maintain the dollar's gold backing, in the 1970s it made a deal with OPEC to "back" the dollar with oil, creating the "petro-dollar." Oil would be sold only in US dollars, which would be deposited in Wall Street and other international banks.

In 2001, dissatisfied with the shrinking value of the dollars that OPEC was getting for its oil, Iraq's Saddam Hussein broke the pact and sold oil in euros. Regime change swiftly followed, accompanied by widespread destruction of the country.

In Libya, Qaddafi also broke the pact; but he did more than just sell his oil in another currency.

As these developments are detailed by blogger Denise Rhyne:

For decades, Libya and other African countries had been attempting to create a pan-African gold standard. Libya's al-Qadhafi and other heads of African States had wanted an independent, pan-African, "hard currency."

Under al-Qadhafi's leadership, African nations had convened at least twice for monetary unification. The countries discussed the possibility of using the Libyan dinar and the silver dirham as the only possible money to buy African oil.

Until the recent US/NATO invasion, the gold dinar was issued by the Central Bank of Libya (CBL). The Libyan bank was 100% state owned and independent. Foreigners had to go through the CBL to do business with Libya. The Central Bank of Libya issued the dinar, using the country's 143.8 tons of gold.

Libya's Qadhafi (African Union 2009 Chair) conceived and financed a plan to unify the sovereign States of Africa with one gold currency (United States of Africa). In 2004, a pan-African Parliament (53 nations) laid plans for the African Economic Community -- with a single gold currency by 2023.

African oil-producing nations were planning to abandon the petro-dollar, and demand gold payment for oil/gas.

Showing What Is Possible

Qaddafi had done more than organize an African monetary coup. He had demonstrated that financial independence could be achieved. His greatest infrastructure project, the Great Man-made River, was turning arid regions into a breadbasket for Libya; and the $33 billion project was being funded interest-free without foreign debt, through Libya's own state-owned bank.

That could explain why this critical piece of infrastructure was destroyed in 2011. NATO not only bombed the pipeline but finished off the project by bombing the factory producing the pipes necessary to repair it. Crippling a civilian irrigation system serving up to 70% of the population hardly looks like humanitarian intervention. Rather, as Canadian Professor Maximilian Forte put it in his heavily researched book Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO's War on Libya and Africa:

[T]he goal of US military intervention was to disrupt an emerging pattern of independence and a network of collaboration within Africa that would facilitate increased African self-reliance. This is at odds with the geostrategic and political economic ambitions of extra-continental European powers, namely the US.

Mystery Solved

Hilary Clinton's emails shed light on another enigma remarked on by early commentators. Why, within weeks of initiating fighting, did the rebels set up their own central bank? Robert Wenzel wrote in The Economic Policy Journal in 2011:

This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences. I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising.

It was all highly suspicious, but as Alex Newman concluded in a November 2011 article:

Whether salvaging central banking and the corrupt global monetary system were truly among the reasons for Gadhafi's overthrow . . . may never be known for certain -- at least not publicly.

There the matter would have remained -- suspicious but unverified like so many stories of fraud and corruption -- but for the publication of Hillary Clinton's emails after an FBI probe. They add substantial weight to Newman's suspicions: violent intervention was not chiefly about the security of the people. It was about the security of global banking, money and oil.

Submitters Bio:
Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling WEB OF DEBT. In THE PUBLIC BANK SOLUTION, her latest book, she explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her websites are http://EllenBrown.com, http://PublicBankSolution.com, and http://PublicBankingInstitute.org.
___________________________________________
Up-date : Source CounterPunch.org
The brief visit of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Libya in October 2011 was referred to by the media as a “victory lap.” “We came, we saw, he died!” she crowed in a CBS video interview on hearing of the capture and brutal murder of Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi.
But the victory lap, write Scott Shane and Jo Becker in the New York Times, was premature. Libya was relegated to the back burner by the State Department, “as the country dissolved into chaos, leading to a civil war that would destabilize the region, fueling the refugee crisis in Europe and allowing the Islamic State to establish a Libyan haven that the United States is now desperately trying to contain.”
US-NATO intervention was allegedly undertaken on humanitarian grounds, after reports of mass atrocities; but human rights organizations questioned the claims after finding a lack of evidence. Today, however, verifiable atrocities are occurring. As Dan Kovalik wrote in the Huffington Post, “the human rights situation in Libya is a disaster, as ‘thousands of detainees [including children] languish in prisons without proper judicial review,’ and ‘kidnappings and targeted killings are rampant’.”
Before 2011, Libya had achieved economic independence, with its own water, its own food, its own oil, its own money, and its own state-owned bank. It had arisen under Qaddafi from one of the poorest of countries to the richest in Africa. Education and medical treatment were free; having a home was considered a human right; and Libyans participated in an original system of local democracy. The country boasted the world’s largest irrigation system, the Great Man-made River project, which brought water from the desert to the cities and coastal areas; and Qaddafi was embarking on a program to spread this model throughout Africa.
But that was before US-NATO forces bombed the irrigation system and wreaked havoc on the country. Today the situation is so dire that President Obama has asked his advisors to draw up options including a new military front in Libya, and the Defense Department is reportedly standing ready with “the full spectrum of military operations required.”
The Secretary of State’s victory lap was indeed premature, if what we’re talking about is the officially stated goal of humanitarian intervention. But her newly-released emails reveal another agenda behind the Libyan war; and this one, it seems, was achieved.
Mission Accomplished?
Of the 3,000 emails released from Hillary Clinton’s private email server in late December 2015, about a third were from her close confidante Sidney Blumenthal, the attorney who defended her husband in the Monica Lewinsky case. One of these emails, dated April 2, 2011, reads in part:
Qaddafi’s government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver . . . . This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).
In a “source comment,” the original declassified email adds:
According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya. According to these individuals Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues:
1  A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,
2 Increase French influence in North Africa,
3 Improve his internal political situation in France,
4 Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,
5 Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi’s long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa
Conspicuously absent is any mention of humanitarian concerns. The objectives are money, power and oil.
Other explosive confirmations in the newly-published emails are detailed by investigative journalist Robert Parry. They include admissions of rebel war crimes, of special ops trainers inside Libya from nearly the start of protests, and of Al Qaeda embedded in the US-backed opposition. Key propaganda themes for violent intervention are acknowledged to be mere rumors. Parry suggests they may have originated with Blumenthal himself. They include the bizarre claim that Qaddafi had a “rape policy” involving passing Viagra out to his troops, a charge later raised by UN Ambassador Susan Rice in a UN presentation. Parry asks rhetorically:
So do you think it would it be easier for the Obama administration to rally American support behind this “regime change” by explaining how the French wanted to steal Libya’s wealth and maintain French neocolonial influence over Africa – or would Americans respond better to propaganda themes about Gaddafi passing out Viagra to his troops so they could rape more women while his snipers targeted innocent children? Bingo!
Toppling the Global Financial Scheme
Qaddafi’s threatened attempt to establish an independent African currency was not taken lightly by Western interests. In 2011, Sarkozy reportedly called the Libyan leader a threat to the financial security of the world. How could this tiny country of six million people pose such a threat? First some background.
It is banks, not governments, that create most of the money in Western economies, as the Bank of England recently acknowledged. This has been going on for centuries, through the process called “fractional reserve” lending. Originally, the reserves were in gold.  In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt replaced gold domestically with central bank-created reserves, but gold remained the reserve currency internationally.
In 1944, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were created in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to unify this bank-created money system globally. An IMF ruling said that no paper money could have gold backing. A money supply created privately as debt at interest requires a continual supply of debtors; and over the next half century, most developing countries wound up in debt to the IMF. The loans came with strings attached, including “structural adjustment” policies involving austerity measures and privatization of public assets.
After 1944, the US dollar traded interchangeably with gold as global reserve currency. When the US was no longer able to maintain the dollar’s gold backing, in the 1970s it made a deal with OPEC to “back” the dollar with oil, creating the “petro-dollar.”  Oil would be sold only in US dollars, which would be deposited in Wall Street and other international banks.
In 2001, dissatisfied with the shrinking value of the dollars that OPEC was getting for its oil, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein broke the pact and sold oil in euros. Regime change swiftly followed, accompanied by widespread destruction of the country.
In Libya, Qaddafi also broke the pact; but he did more than just sell his oil in another currency.
As these developments are detailed by blogger Denise Rhyne:
For decades, Libya and other African countries had been attempting to create a pan-African gold standard.  Libya’s al-Qadhafi and other heads of African States had wanted an independent, pan-African, “hard currency.”
Under al-Qadhafi’s leadership, African nations had convened at least twice for monetary unification.  The countries discussed the possibility of using the Libyan dinar and the silver dirham as the only possible money to buy African oil.
Until the recent US/NATO invasion, the gold dinar was issued by the Central Bank of Libya (CBL).  The Libyan bank was 100% state owned and independent.  Foreigners had to go through the CBL to do business with Libya.  The Central Bank of Libya issued the dinar, using the country’s 143.8 tons of gold.
Libya’s Qadhafi (African Union 2009 Chair) conceived and financed a plan to unify the sovereign States of Africa with one gold currency (United States of Africa).  In 2004, a pan-African Parliament (53 nations) laid plans for the African Economic Community – with a single gold currency by 2023.
African oil-producing nations were planning to abandon the petro-dollar, and demand gold payment for oil/gas.
Showing What is Possible
Qaddafi had done more than organize an African monetary coup. He had demonstrated that financial independence could be achieved. His greatest infrastructure project, the Great Man-made River, was turning arid regions into a breadbasket for Libya; and the $33 billion project was being funded interest-free without foreign debt, through Libya’s own state-owned bank.
That could explain why this critical piece of infrastructure was destroyed in 2011. NATO not only bombed the pipeline but finished off the project by bombing the factory producing the pipes necessary to repair it. Crippling a civilian irrigation system serving up to 70% of the population hardly looks like humanitarian intervention. Rather, as Canadian Professor Maximilian Forte put it in his heavily researched book Slouching Towards Sirte: NATO’s War on Libya and Africa:
[T]he goal of US military intervention was to disrupt an emerging pattern of independence and a network of collaboration within Africa that would facilitate increased African self-reliance. This is at odds with the geostrategic and political economic ambitions of extra-continental European powers, namely the US.
Mystery Solved
Hilary Clinton’s emails shed light on another enigma remarked on by early commentators. Why, within weeks of initiating fighting, did the rebels set up their own central bank? Robert Wenzel wrote in The Economic Policy Journal in 2011:
This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences. I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising.
It was all highly suspicious, but as Alex Newman concluded in a November 2011 article:
Whether salvaging central banking and the corrupt global monetary system were truly among the reasons for Gadhafi’s overthrow . . . may never be known for certain – at least not publicly.
There the matter would have remained – suspicious but unverified like so many stories of fraud and corruption – but for the publication of Hillary Clinton’s emails after an FBI probe. They add substantial weight to Newman’s suspicions: violent intervention was not chiefly about the security of the people. It was about the security of global banking, money and oil.

___________________________________________
 
Quote of the day...from Doug Ross Journal
 
QOTD: "If you think you are smarter than every foreign-policy expert in the room, any room, then it is tempting to make up your own grand strategy. That is what Obama has done, to an extent that even his critics underestimate. There is no “Obama doctrine”; rather, we see here a full-blown revolution in American foreign policy. And this revolution can be summed up as follows: The foes shall become friends, and the friends foes.

In the Middle East, Israel and Saudi Arabia are out, Iran is in. Similarly, in the Far East, China is out, Vietnam is in. As for a special relationship, the president would rather have one with Cuba than Britain. Nothing could better illustrate the extent of Barack Obama’s repudiation of the “foreign-policy establishment.”

Yet grand strategies are judged by their consequences, not by their intentions, and in the Middle East—not to mention North Africa and parts of South Asia—the consequences are not looking pretty.

If the arc of history is in fact bending toward Islamic extremism, sectarian conflict, networks of terrorism, and regional nuclear-arms races, then the 44th president will turn out to have been rather less smart than the foreign-policy establishment he so loftily disdains." --Niall Ferguson