The Chart that Could Undo the Healthcare System: Skyrocketing costs are being driven by bureaucracy

/in , , , , /by

For a larger view click on the image.

This chart looks remarkably similar to a chart that tracks the growth of the administrative class in higher education. And that’s no accident. As the physician who shared the chart writes:

[The chart] outlines the growth of administrators in healthcare compared to physicians over the last forty years. And, it includes an overlay of America’s healthcare spending over that same time. Take a look at the yellow color. A picture is worth a thousand words, isn’t it?

You see, when you have that much administration, what you really have is a bunch of meetings. Lots of folks carrying their coffee from place to place. They are meeting about more policies, more protocols to satisfy government-created nonsense. But, this type of thing in healthcare isn’t fixing things. It’s not moving the needle.

What moves things is innovation.

Innovation, indeed. But it’s not easy to innovate in stagnant, hyper-regulated, captured sectors.

In Tyler Cowen’s 2011 book the Great Stagnation, he argued that the areas that were stagnating the most are education, healthcare, and government. Writing about Cowen’s book in his Wall Street Journal blog, Kelly Evans says:

A particular challenge we confront is that our progress as a society — chiefly, in extending and improving lives — is now at a point in which it appears to be undercutting our potential for further advancement. Part of this, Mr. Cowen observes, stems from well-meaning efforts to do more with education, government, and health care that instead seem to have backfired and left us with noncompetitive institutions closer to failing us than to serving us well.

With respect to healthcare, this chart gives us an indication of why these efforts are backfiring: The more an industry becomes like a regulated utility, the more administrators are required to enforce the regulations and administer the programs. And they, as well as the programs they administer, are expensive. All manner of distortions follow, and the costs of healthcare go up proportionally.

There also seems to be perverse incentives associated with subsidy: The more resources you dump in, the more expensive that industry becomes. You might shift the costs around on unsuspecting groups (like taxpayers), but in almost every case we see premium hikes and tuition increases in both of these industries, despite (or rather because of) the truckloads of federal largesse.

But they will have to stop at some point — one way or the other.

The US healthcare system has become something of a Frankenstein monster, with pieces stitched together ad hoc by regulators and special interests. The ACA seems to have ignored most of what really needed fixing and doubled down on the worst aspects of our system. Price transparency, affordability, innovation and competitive entrepreneurship have all gotten worse, not better. And the beast has grown to take over more than 17 percent of GDP.

(And if you think 17 percent is about right, consider that in Singapore healthcare takes up less than 3 percent of GDP.)

The trouble with any further healthcare reform is that a massive coalition of special interests in multiple sectors has formed as a husk around the entire industry — a care-tel, if you will — and they will be very difficult to dislodge.

Max Borders

Max Borders is the editor of the Freeman and director of content for FEE. He is also co-founder of the event experience Voice & Exit and author of Superwealth: Why we should stop worrying about the gap between rich and poor.

The Other Half of the Inflation Story

/in , , , /by

Credit expansion adds noise to price signals by Sandy Ikeda.

More money means higher prices. It’s too bad not everyone understands that connection. Even some economists don’t get it. Readers of the Freeman do, I’m sure. And they also understand why that’s a bad thing.

Increasing the supply of money and credit, other things equal, will cause a general rise in wages and prices across an economy. When the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, excessively “prints money,” the result is “inflation” as it’s now commonly called. For those who get the new money after everyone else has spent theirs, inflation means incomes will now buy fewer goods, and every dollar lent before prices rose will be worth less when it’s returned.

If inflation continues, people will eventually learn to demand more for what they sell and lend in order to compensate for the purchasing power that inflation keeps eating away. That, in turn, will cause prices to rise faster, which makes planning for households and businesses even more difficult. In the past, that difficulty has led to hyperinflation and a breakdown of the entire economic system.

But as awful as all this may be, it’s really only half the story, and perhaps not even the worse half. What follows is a highly simplified story of what happens.

The structure of production

If you’d like to build a sturdy house, you’ll need to have some kind of blueprint or plan that will tell you two things:

  1. how the frame, floor, walls, roof, plumbing, and electrical system will all fit together; and
  2. the order in which to put these components together.

Even if the house was made entirely of identical stones, you would need to know how to fit them together to form the floor, walls, chimney, and other structural components. No two stones would serve exactly the same function in the overall plan.

The economy is like a house in the sense that each of its parts, which we might call “capital,” needs to mesh in a certain way if the eventual result will be order and not chaos. But there are two big differences between a house and an economy. The first is that the economy is not only much bigger, but it consists of a multitude of “houses” or private enterprises that have to fit together orcoordinate, and so it’s an unimaginably more complex phenomenon than even the most elaborate house.

The second major difference is that a house is consciously constructed for a purpose, typically for someone to live in it. But an economic system is neither consciously designed by anyone nor intended to fulfill any particular purpose, other than perhaps to enable countless people with plans to do the best they can to achieve success. It’s a spontaneous order.

The way all the pieces of capital, from all the diverse people in the economy who own them, fit together is called the capital structure of production.

Credit expansion distorts the structure of production

When people decide to spend a certain portion of their incomes on consumption today, they are at the same time deciding to save some portion for consumption for the future. The amount that they save then gets lent out to borrowers and investors in the market for loanable funds. The rate of interest is the price of making those transactions across time. That is, when you decide to increase your saving, other things equal, the rate of interest (what some economists call the “natural rate of interest”) will fall. The falling interest rate makes borrowing more attractive to producers who invest today to produce more goods in the future.

That’s great, because when the market for loanable funds is operating freely without distortions, that means when people who saved today try to consume more in the future, there actually is more in the future for them to consume . Businesses today invested more at the lower rates precisely in order to have more to sell in the future when consumers want to buy more.

Now, if the Federal Reserve prints more money and that money goes into the loanable funds market, that will also increase the supply of loans and lower the interest rate and induce more borrowing and investment for future output. The difference here is that the supply of loans increases not because people are saving more now in order to consume more in the future, but only because of the credit expansion. That means that in the future, when businesses have more goods to sell, consumers won’t be able to buy them (because they didn’t save enough to do so) at prices that will cover all of the businesses’ costs. Prices will have to drop in order for markets to clear. Sellers suffer losses and workers lose their jobs.

And, oh yes, all that credit expansion also causes inflation.

While this process sounds rather involved, it’s still a highly simplified version of what has come to be known as the Austrian business cycle theory. (For a more advanced version, see here.) Of course, each instance in reality is significantly different from any other, but the narrative is essentially the same: credit expansion distorts the structure of production, and resources eventually become unemployed.

The explanation is more involved than the typical inflation-is-bad story that we’re more familiar with. Indeed, that probably explains why it’s the less-well-known half of the story. Even Milton Friedman and the monetarists pay little attention to the capital structure, choosing instead to focus on the problems of inflationary expectations.

Again, for Austrians, the problem arises when credit expansion artificially lowers interest rates and sets off an unsustainable “boom”; the solution is when the structure of production comes back into alignment with people’s actual preferences for consumption and saving, which is the “bust.” Most modern macroeconomists see it exactly the opposite way: the bust is the problem, and the boom is the solution.

An intricate, dynamic jigsaw puzzle

To close, I’d like to use an analogy I learned from Steve Horwitz (whom I heartily welcome back as a fellow columnist here at the Freeman).

The market economy is like a giant jigsaw puzzle in which each piece represents a unique unit of capital. When the system is allowed to operate without government intervention, the profit-and-loss motive tends to bring the pieces together in a complementary way to form a harmonious mosaic (although in a dynamic world, it couldn’t achieve perfection).

Credit expansion, then, is like someone coming along and making too many of some pieces and too few of others — and then, during the boom, trying to force them together, severely distorting the overall picture. During the bust, people realize they have to get rid of some pieces and try to discover where the others actually fit. That requires challenging adjustments and may take some time to accomplish. But if the government tries to “help” by stimulating the creation of more superfluous pieces, it will only confuse matters and make the process of adjustment take that much longer.

Inflation is bad enough. Unfortunately, it’s only half the story.

Sandy Ikeda

Sandy Ikeda is a professor of economics at Purchase College, SUNY, and the author of The Dynamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism.

Dutch MP Geert Wilders’ Warning on CAIR’s abuse of the First Amendment

/in , , /by

Geert Wilders was on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on April 30, 2015 at a press conference with Rep. Steve King (R-IA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Scott Perry (R-PA).  He  warned  Americans  about the dangers of  mass  Muslim immigration  and  suggested letting  Americans who volunteer   leave and   join  the Islamic State but be denied  return  to this country. He said:

I am warning America. Don’t think that what’s happening in Europe today will not happen in America tomorrow because it will. Islamic immigration has proven to be a Trojan horse, the jihadists are among us,” he added, warning of “enormous security problems” in the United States if Muslim immigrants are allowed to stay. Let them go, but never let them return.

The Congressmen praised Wilders exercise of free speech vis a vis his criticism of Islam, defense of Judeo-Christian values and Israel. Wilders paid court to this” beautiful land” with its protection of free speech rights and expressed “the wish that the he and other citizens of the EU” had the equivalent protection.  Wilders is once again the target of investigations by the Dutch police as the behest of Public Prosecutors in the Hague over his alleged hate speech remarks at a Freedom Party rally during the May, 2014 European Parliament elections in the Hague, over “ fewer Moroccans”.   Wilders has criticized Islam for being an ideology and the Qur’an for being the equivalent of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.  His most recent book, Marked for Death, presented that and more fundamental arguments referencing    Qur’anic doctrine, Hadith, Sunna and Shariah Islamic Law. Wilders defeated an earlier hate crime charge brought against him in the Amsterdam district court in 2011.

Watch the Wilders Capitol Hill press conference with Reps. King, Gohmert and Perry:

Prior to his Capitol Hill press conference, Wilders gave a speech on April 29, 2015 at the Washington, D.C., Conservative Opportunity Society.  Two Muslim U.S. Representatives, Keith Ellison (D-MN) and  Andre Carson sent a letter  on April 23, 2015 to Secretary of State Kerry and Department of Homeland Security Chief Jae Johnson seeking to bar Wilders entry to the US on the grounds that his speech violated provisions of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. They wrote:

In the past, the United States has denied entry to international leaders under the authority of the International Religious Freedom Act which allows the Department of State to deny entry to a foreign leader who is responsible for severe violations of religious freedom. This precedent is applicable to Mr. Wilders.

[…]

In the U.S., freedom of speech is a bedrock principle that distinguishes free societies from ones living under oppressive regimes. Freedom of speech, however, is not absolute. It is limited by the legal and moral understanding that speech that causes the incitement of violence or prejudicial action against protected groups is wrong. As Mr. Wilders continues his pursuit of political power, granting him entry will embolden him to engage in further incitement of violence and discrimination against Muslims.

Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are sweeping through Europe. Mr. Wilders is among the hateful leaders responsible for perpetuating prejudice. Allowing him to enter the United States will cause harm to our nation that values religious freedom and respects pluralism.

Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor and expert on free speech and religious freedom law in a “Volokh Conspiracy” column in the Washington Post, examined the arguments of the two Representatives, referencing Supreme Court case rulings, notably, Brandenburg v. Ohio and Hess v. Indiana, regarding “incitement. Volokh concluded:

Whether “Christian culture is superior to other cultures,” which groups should be allowed to immigrate into a country, and even whether Islam should be viewed as an ideology rather than a religion (an unsound distinction, in my view) are matters that the First Amendment allows us all to debate. The Congressmen quite clearly don’t want to allow Rep. Wilders to debate such matters here in the U.S. But their “In the U.S.” paragraph suggests that they view even such debates by Americans as constitutionally unprotected.

CAIR, the self styled Muslim civil rights group affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood,  sent  Government  Affairs Manager, Robert McCaw, to question Wilders and the Congressional Representatives who participated in Capitol Hill press conference.  The CAIR press release noted the exchange:

CAIR Government Affairs Manager Robert McCaw pressed Rep. Gohmert as to whether he stood by “Wilders’ statement that Islam is an ideology of a retarded culture.” Congressman Gohmert avoided the question only stating that he “proudly stands by Wilders” and that he may not always agree with him but will defend his right to make such comments.

McCaw also pressed Wilders on whether or not the Republican Party should adopt his Dutch Freedom Party’s proposal of “banning the Quran and the building of new mosques.” Wilders sidestepped the question by stating that he is “not trying to unify the two parties” and comparing the Quran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

[…]

“By endorsing and promoting Geert Wilders’ anti-Muslim hate, these elected officials tarnish the Republican Party’s reputation and harm our nation’s international image,” said McCaw.

CAIR arranged for a counter press with the authors of the letter, Reps. Ellison and Carson, joined by Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-NY) protesting Wilders anti-Islam stands and promoting inter-faith unity.

Watch the CAIR YouTube video of McCaw’s questioning of Wilders and Rep. Gohmert:

Tomorrow, May 3, 2015 Wilders will next appear at an event in Texas.  According to a Breitbart News report Wilders Will speak at the First Annual Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest. The event will be held May 3rd at the Curtis Caldwell Center, which is owned and operated by the Garland Independent School District, and hosted by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI). The Curtis Caldwell Center was the site of an “Honor the Prophet” rally in January. About two thousand Texans came out to protest that event.

 Pam Geller and Robert Spencer of AFDI will also be speaking at the event.  For those interesting in watching this event. It will be live streamed at 5-7 (CST) and 6-8PM (EST). Read more, here.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of Geert Wilders at a press conference near Capitol building April 30, 2015 in Washington, DC (AFP Photo/Brendan Smialowski).

NIGHTMARE ON MONROE STREET: Florida Student Assessment Tests

/in , , , , /by

Someone please wake me up from this bad dream!  Did our state and federal government just resurrect Dr. Mengele and unleash him on our kids?

This has got to be the cruelest hoax of the century.  Let me get this straight.

There is a social engineering testing company we have paid $220 million to experiment on our kids and they can, and will be, selling the data they mine from our kids to others to track and manage their future?

We are forced to give our children to them for WEEKS of time they could have spent learning, and we don’t even know what’s in the tests?  And our kids will be punished if they tell us?

These tests were supposed to help us grade the teachers and schools, but we’re not even going to use this data because we know it’s invalid but we’re still testing anyway?

And we have to pay $Billions for specialized computers, software, networking, technicians and testing facilities to corporate cronies who have spent tens of millions lobbying our legislatures just to do this testing?

And these tests must be given to all our kids in public school no matter if they have been in special ed or are sick or the federal government will not give us our own tax money back we gave them for education?

And this company, AIR, has failed so badly in Utah, where WE PAID them $5 million to test it, that Utah is throwing it out, but we went ahead anyway?

And the tests failed in Florida’s roll out so badly that testing was repeatedly shut down for days and weeks all over the state, but we’re still using the results on children to make life changing decisions about them?

Please tell me this is just a bad dream and I will wake up and hear that our public schools are safe once again; That certified teachers are trusted to teach their students without government scripts, and grade their own students based on their mastery of the subjects taught on pencil and paper tests given in their own desks that we can share with parents.

Texas Muslim honor murderer had hit list of Christian victims

/in , , , /by

“Prosecutors say Irsan orchestrated both murders with assistance from his wife, son, and another daughter.” Apparently none of them stopped and said to him, “Wait! There is no compulsion in religion!”

More on this story. “Hit List Found In Honor Killing Of Iranian Activist,” RFE/RL, May 2, 2015 (thanks toThe Religion of Peace):

Texas investigators have disclosed that they found a hit list in a murder case involving the honor killing of an outspoken Iranian activist in Houston.

U.S. prosecutors last week charged a Jordanian immigrant and devout Muslim, Ali Awad Mahmoud Irsan, with shooting the anti-Tehran activist Gelerah Bagherzadeh out of rage that she persuaded his daughter to go ahead and marry a Texas Christian man.

The Texan, Coty Beavers, was later found shot to death.

Prosecutors say Irsan orchestrated both murders with assistance from his wife, son, and another daughter.

They found a hit list with other possible targets of the conspiracy, including witnesses such as homicide investigators, and Beavers’ relatives.

Irsan’s attorney called the charges “ludicrous.”

“He planned and executed the murder of his daughter’s husband and his daughter’s best friend” because he believed they had “violated his honor as a Muslim,” Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson said on May 1.

The indictment resolves speculation that the Iranian government was involved in the 2012 murder of Bagherzadeh, who spoke out publicly against Tehran’s repressive tactics after leaving Iran in 2008 and converting to Christianity.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Islamic State Sharia Court murders 600 Yezidis

Germany: Frankfurt professional bike race canceled over jihad plot

Oppression of Christians in U.S. Military is Triggering their Exodus

/in , , , , /by

America has a Judeo/Christian ethos; 90% of Americans believe in God and 50% of them go to church and synagogue every week.  Christian members of the U.S. military are wondering long and hard about joining and/or making the U.S. Armed Forces a career. This concern by Christians to possibly avoid a U.S. Armed Forces that oppresses Christians appears to fit in with Obama’s Social Experiment On Diversity, in order to minimize Christian influence in the U.S. military.  The Social Experiment On Diversity that has been changing the make-up of the US Armed Forces is seriously eroding unit cohesiveness, unit morale, and  the “Combat Effectiveness“ of the U.S. military.

Chaplains are having their sermons and even the places where they are allowed to pray controlled and censored to be sure their statements are “Politically Correct” and in keeping with the what the Obama civilian appointees in DOD want them to say. Chaplains have been prevented from reading letters from their Cardinals in the pulpit to their parishioners. Chaplains have been prevented from giving bibles to patients in their hospital rooms. Catholic Chaplains who don’t believe in the use of birth control pills and abortion are prevented from preaching their religious beliefs in the pulpit. Army Ranger Chaplain Joseph Lawton was punished and served with a “Letter of Concern” for referring to solace and comfort he receives in his darkest moments by reading the Psalms of King David in the Old Testament of the Bible, while he was conducting a suicide prevention seminar for Combat Veterans suffering from PTSD.

The Defense in Marriage Act, a Federal Law, has been violated and disobeyed by Obama, and Holder without repealing it. Chaplains who support that Federal Law because of their religious beliefs have been discriminated against. Obama’s civilian DOD appointees have been intolerant toward Chaplains who do not believe in same sex marriage, supposedly in the defense of tolerance, to make them comply, which is not only hypocritical, but is bigoted. So if a Chaplain’s well held religious beliefs don’t allow him to support same sex marriage, he is threatened with career ending punishment which would result in his failure to be promoted, and/or would result in his removal from the U.S. Armed Forces. That treatment of Chaplains and Christians who agree with their Chaplains beliefs have been discriminated against and oppressive by the civilian appointees of the Obama administration at DOD.

Military personnel are prevented from having bibles at their desks in their work place, and military base commanders have been instructed not to allow bibles to be placed in base hotel rooms.

Open homosexuality in the U.S. Armed Forces has been approved by Obama’s Executive Orders, in a major “CHANGE” to General George Washington’s 238 year old U.S. Military Regulations. Last year because of the “CHANGE” of General George Washington’s Military Regulations, the U.S. Armed Forces authorized the recruiting of a large influx of gay males and women to join the U.S. military for the first time in U.S. history.  Last year 10,400 straight members of the US Armed Forces were sexually assaulted in their barracks and aboard their ships. The Navy has had straight female enlisted women sexually assaulted in their barracks and aboard their ships by lesbian crew members; and nearly 9, 000 female members of the US Armed Forces were sexually assaulted last year.

Gay Rights Political Events and gatherings are now being held on U.S. Military bases and in the Pentagon in violation of U.S. Military Regulations which prohibit political events of any kind. U.S. Military Color guards and military personnel in uniform are now being ordered to march in Gay Rights Parades (a political event) in violation of U.S. Military Regulations, while at the same time, members of the U.S. Armed Forces have been prevented from attending Christian events in their uniforms.

In 2014, at the Iron Mountain VA Hospital in Wisconsin, Chaplain Bob Mueller, relayed an unsettling experience he experienced in a conversation he had with one of Obama’s civilian appointee in the Veterans Administration, when he said “a couple of months ago, an order came down from Washington, D.C. to all Chaplains in VA Hospitals across the nation, ordering them to cover all icons associated with Christianity in VA Hospitals, like photos of Christ, crosses, and stained glass windows, because there are Christian symbols in stained glass.” Chaplain Mueller was told to “stop talking about Jesus, and to stop reading the scripture out loud.”  He said that the Obama administration has issued the same orders “to cover all things associated with Christianity” to all VA Chapels across the country.”  Click here to read Chaplain Mueller’s report.

The Flag and General Officer, who have always practiced and supported Judeo/Christian ethics, who opposed the hollowing out of the U.S. Armed Forces, and policies that degraded the “Combat Effectiveness” of the U.S. military by the occupant in the Oval Office, have been systematically eliminated over the last 6 years. A total of 195 Flag, General, and Senior Military Officers, who disagreed with Obama’s “Politically Correct” destructive military policies, and his executive Order that changed the U.S. Military into first major military force in the world that openly gay, a new and destructive policy that has negatively affected unit cohesiveness, the morale, and the “Combat Effectiveness” of the U.S. Armed Forces, have been purged by General Dempsey—those that remain have been conditioned not to defend Christianity.  Those 195 purged Senior Officers would have opposed the on-going attack on Christians in the U.S. Armed Forces, but they are no longer there to defend the Chaplains and the enlisted Christian personnel.  Senior enlisted military personnel who also practiced and supported Judeo/Christian ethics, and disagreed with an openly gay military, tried to utilized their right to complain thru the chain of command, and to express their concerns about the “Social Experiment on Diversity”, have also been purged, and in some cases have been court martialed and dishonorably discharged.

Although the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution guarantees Freedom of Religion, Christian members of the U.S. Armed Forces have had their religious rights systematically violated and oppressed, as previously discussed above and in the below listed article.  The suppression of Christianity in the U.S. Armed Forces is triggering an exodus from the U.S. military of many Christians who wanted to make the U.S. military a career when they joined.  After their first tour of duty, while witnessing how Chaplains and their Christian religious beliefs were oppressed, they have turned against making the U.S. Armed Forces a career.  The elimination of thousands of Christian personnel from the U.S. Armed Forces with their well held religious beliefs and ethics in the ranks, and having them replaced will personnel with a different set of beliefs in keeping with Obama’s beliefs, will change the nature of the U.S. Armed Forces.

WND RADIO

CRACKDOWN ON CHRISTIANS TRIGGERS EXODUS FROM MILITARY

‘They’re starting to wonder, is this going to be a place where I’m welcomed?’

GREG COROMBOS

Greg Corombos is news director for Radio America.

A leading defender of Christians in the military says the crackdown on the free religious expression of Christians in uniform is increasing despite Pentagon assurances to the contrary, leading active-duty personnel to re-evaluate their careers and young Americans and their parents to reconsider service at all.

Recent discipline for military chaplains dispensing biblical counsel have made national headlines, but a recent piece in the Washington Times suggests enlistment numbers are in danger of dropping as well.

Liberty Institute represents chaplains in two high-profile cases as well as several other personnel reprimanded for their free expression of Christian beliefs. Senior counsel Michael Berry said the American people are paying attention and getting increasingly worried about what’s happening in the military.

“A great deal of Americans of faith, which is still a majority of our country, are looking at the environment and climate within our federal government and military more specifically and seeing case after case, report after report,” Berry said in an interview with WND and Radio America.

He said the growing number of stories is causing committed Christians to ask some uncomfortable questions.

“They’re starting to wonder, ‘Is this going to be a place where I’m welcomed? Is this going to be a place where I’m tolerated? Am I going to be required to keep my faith in the closet, so to speak?’ Or are they going to be allowed, which has always been the practice in our country up until this point, to freely exercise their religion in accordance with their sincerely held beliefs as the Constitution allows?” asked Berry, a military vet who made his own difficult decision to leave the armed forces as he saw religious liberties eroding.

“I was on active duty, and I began to see the writing on the wall,” he said. “I realized this is not the military I grew up in. This is not the military that I was raised to believe in and to support. It’s changing, and I realized it was time for me to make a move.”

And Berry is not the only one thinking long and hard about military service as the right career path.

“I’ve had a lot of mothers and fathers ask me. They say, ‘Mike, I served and my son or daughter wants to follow in my footsteps. But, as proud as I am of my military service, I’m not sure I want my son or daughter to be serving in our military anymore, given what’s going on,’” Berry said. “That’s very scary for our country if that kind of conversation and dialogue is now happening.”

It’s difficult to get solid numbers on the impact religious freedom restrictions are having on recruiting and retention. Berry said the military almost always keep mum about drops in recruiting and retention and it never breaks down the reasons for the declines.

“It doesn’t behoove the military to report that they’re having problems with retention,” he said. “A group like a chaplain’s corps is not going to say, ‘We’re having a hard time attracting new chaplains’ because that doesn’t present them in a very favorable light.”

Read more.

Iranian Regime Disregards International Law

/in , , /by

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is releasing a new resource documenting Iran’s violations of its treaty obligations and multilateral agreements. This week Iranian forces fired on and unlawfully seized the Maersk Tigris, a Marshall Islands-flagged and reportedly American-owned commercial vessel transiting the Strait of Hormuz.Four days earlier, Iranian patrol boats aggressively encircled the Maersk Kensington, a U.S.-flagged cargo ship.

Given that “the United States has full authority and responsibility for security and defense of the Marshall Islands,” the seizure of the vessel has been viewed as both a provocation against the U.S. and as jeopardizing freedom of navigation in an internationally recognized shipping lane vital to global commerce.

In addition, according to reports, a United Nations sanctions panel was recently informed that “an Iranian nuclear procurement network linked to two blacklisted firms” is active and operating in violation of UN Security Council Resolutions sanctioning Iran’s illicit nuclear program.

Tehran has consistently refused to act as a responsible member of the international community. Its disregard for international norms and principles, as well as for the provisions enshrined in the multilateral treaties to which it is party and signatory, raise serious doubt about the regime’s intentions with respect to its commitments and obligations under the terms of any nuclear agreement reached with the P5+1.

UANI’s comprehensive resource of Iran’s violations of its treaty obligations and multilateral agreements on key matters such as disarmament and weapons of mass destruction, human rights, and governance underscores the Iranian regime’s disregard for international law and treaty obligations:

Violations

Treaty/Organization
Illicitly developing its nuclear program Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), UN Security Council Resolutions
Assisting in the Assad regime’s development and use of chemical weapons in Syria Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)
Seizing the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in the Iran Hostage Crisis (1979-1981), storming the British embassy in Tehran in 2011 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations
Taking hostages, including the four Americans currently being held in Iran International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages
Publicly calling for the destruction of Israel Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Violating the rights of national Arab, Azeri, Baloch and Kurdish communities International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
Limiting the Baha’i community’s access to education and subjecting them to mass imprisonment and systematic persecution International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
Codified discrimination against women, whose testimony in court, for example, is worth half that of a man’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW)
Executing more child offenders than any other country in the world Convention on the Rights of the Child
Violently repressing freedom of speech and assembly, as in the 2009 elections protests International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)
Blocking millions of websites and jamming satellites to prevent foreign broadcasts International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
Shutting off ship transponders and smuggling weapons by sea in civilian vessels International Maritime Organization (IMO)

ABOUT UNITED AGAINST NUCLEAR IRAN

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

The Objectives of United Against Nuclear Iran
  1. Inform the public about the nature of the Iranian regime, including its desire and intent to possess nuclear weapons, as well as Iran’s role as a state sponsor of global terrorism, and a major violator of human rights at home and abroad;
  2. Heighten awareness nationally and internationally about the danger that a nuclear armed Iran poses to the region and the world;
  3. Mobilize public support, utilize media outreach, and persuade our elected leaders to voice a robust and united American opposition to a nuclear Iran;
  4. Lay the groundwork for effective US policies in coordination with European and other allies;
  5. Persuade the regime in Tehran to desist from its quest for nuclear weapons, while striving not to punish the Iranian people, and;
  6. Promote efforts that focus on vigorous national and international, social, economic, political and diplomatic measures.

UANI is led by an advisory board of outstanding national figures representing all sectors of our country.

The Sweet, Sweet Privilege of the Maple Syrup Federation

/in , , , /by

“Quebec is the Saudi Arabia of maple syrup.”

That’s the money quote from an exposé on the provincial maple syrup cartel.

Quebec’s maple syrup “marketing board” first made big news in 2012 when the culprits of an $18 million maple syrup heist (really) from the Global Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve (really) were caught by provincial police. (See the whole story in a feature film, coming soon, starring Jason Segel — …really.) The board is making news again thanks to recent crackdowns on producers who want to sell syrup outside its control.

Quebec’s maple syrup is managed by the Federation of Maple Syrup Producers, a legal cartel that has been given special privileges under provincial law — including the power to enforce a monopoly in syrup sales — since 1966. All syrup goes through the Federation, which withholds enough from the market to keep the price high, takes a 12% cut of sales, and then (eventually) passes the remainder on to producers.

This month, the Federation stationed security guards in several sugar shacks to ensure that producers don’t sell their own syrup because some of them have begun to fight back.

In defiance of the rules, [Angèle] Grenier exported hundreds of barrels of maple syrup to New Brunswick from 2002 through 2014 — just so she could collect the money she earned.

Last year she knew she was being watched. Her brother and her neighbour each brought a tractor. In under an hour, with three tractors, the team loaded 40 barrels of syrup on a truck.

“All the children came and we did it quick, quick,” she says. The truck sped off down her dirt road.

The federation has now shut down Grenier’s exports.

Last month Justice Clément Sampson of Superior Court in Ste-Joseph-de-Beauce wrote an order permitting “a sheriff to penetrate into the sugar shack of [Grenier], without notice, at any time judged reasonable and as frequently as they judge appropriate … to verify the inventory of maple syrup, take photos and videos of the locale and the inventory, and put a mark, a seal, a tag or any other necessary identifying label on every maple syrup container.”’

Advocates for the syrup quota say it’s needed because prices aren’t enough to keep supply stable for a crop with a harvest that fluctuates from year to year. But if bad seasons are the danger, what syrup producers need is insurance (or futures markets). That could be accomplished simply and cheaply by setting aside money, rather than warehouses full of syrup guarded by state-of-the-art security to prevent Mission Impossible-esque heists.

The marketing board doesn’t protect producers from a bad harvest. It protects big producers from consumers — from you, me, and our dollars that could tempt sellers to compete with them outside the system.

The Federation estimates that only 75% of producers support its fixed prices, but it has the legal power to strong-arm the 25% who don’t. Dissenting producers don’t — can’t — have the same rights under the law if it’s to be enforced. Without equal rights under the law, there cannot be secure rights to property.

One rebellious seller remarks that since he defied the Federation, “They can come into my house anytime they want.” Perhaps that’s why producers in Ontario and New Brunswick, who still benefit from the price supports, have declined to join Quebec’s Federation.

How did this happen? Quebec producers sought legal privileges for themselves by organizing into the Federation. Now that that privilege exists, it’s been seized not only by maple syrup producers, but by a specific contingent who benefit most from it. Special powers, once created, benefit the especially powerful.

The good news is that prices still work. High prices have tempted others to enter the market, and as a result Quebec’s share of global production has fallen from 78% ten years ago to 69% today. If the trend continues, the cartel may become unstable — or it may try to convince (or, failing that, force) others to join in the racket.

In the end, it’s not just those who love maple syrup on a warm stack of flapjacks or that sweet, messy maple taffy who lose out when Big Syrup gets special privileges. Rather, it’s the people who want to act and innovate without permission. Innovation is the great enemy of the status quo, and those who benefit from that status quo, like the Syrup Federation, know this. Their message is clear: conform, syrup slingers, or find yourself in a sticky situation.

Janet Neilson

Janet Neilson is a founding member and program developer for the Institute for Liberal Studies and a contract researcher in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Bitcoin Truly “Disrupts” Argentina

/in , , /by

Bitcoin is supposed to be the latest disruptive technology. But whenever you hear someone use the buzzword “disruptive,” turn on your B.S. detector. Sure, technologies can be vaguely transformative, and that’s fine as far as it goes.

But the original concept of disruptive innovation is narrower. This term of art came from Harvard Business School guru Clayton Christensen, who meant something very specific.

“Disruptive innovation,” according to Christensen, “describes a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up-market, eventually displacing established competitors.”

Remember, that’s the “bottom” of a market, and by that, Christensen means not wealthy. (This distinguishes a disruptive tech from other transformative innovations, like computers and cell phones, which started at the top.) And the not-wealthy can sometimes be desperate to escape to a better system.

When it comes to Bitcoin, even the New York Times Magazine has figured this out:

Bitcoin proponents like to say that the currency first became popular in the places that needed it least, like Europe and the United States, given how smoothly the currencies and financial services work there.

It makes sense that a place like Argentina would be fertile ground for a virtual currency. Inflation is constant: At the end of 2014, for example, the peso was worth 25 percent less than it was at the beginning of the year. And that adversity pales in comparison with past bouts of hyperinflation, defaults on national debts and currency revaluations.

Less than half of the population use Argentine banks and credit cards. Even wealthy Argentines fear keeping their money in the country’s banks.

And the disruption is already happening: “Argentina has been quietly gaining renown in technology circles as the first, and almost only, place where Bitcoins are being regularly used by ordinary people for real commercial transactions.”

That satisfies the bottom of the market criterion. Whether it’s Argentines struggling with hyperinflation, or sub-Saharan Africans living under dictators and warlords, the developing world is likely to embrace bitcoin simply because it’s so much better than the failed banking and currency systems they’ve been locked in for so long.

“There are an estimated 2 billion ‘unbanked’ in the world,” says Bitnation CEO Susanne Tarkowski Templehof, “who don’t have access to global financial markets. To set up a bank account is difficult and expensive. Just like the developing world have leapfrogged in many other technologies, like mobile, etc., they’re likely to leapfrog in when it comes to financial technologies, as well — why shouldn’t they?”

Why shouldn’t they, indeed?

The beauty of the market process is that its gales of creative destruction almost always leave the world better off. And nowhere is it more important than for the people of the world who are longing for a chance at the freedom to build a better life for themselves.

Max Borders

Max Borders is the editor of the Freeman and director of content for FEE. He is also co-founder of the event experience Voice & Exit and author of Superwealth: Why we should stop worrying about the gap between rich and poor.

‘Risking Life and Limb for Liberty’ Real Heroes: Harriet Tubman

/in , , /by

When the day arrives that a woman’s image adorns Federal Reserve currency for the first time, it might well be that of Harriet Tubman. She’s reportedly on the short list. It may, however, be a dubious honor to appear on something that declines so regularly in value. Without a doubt, this woman would impart more esteem to the bill than the bill would to her. Her value is far more solid and enduring.

Slavery was once ubiquitous in the world — and even intellectually respectable. That began to change in the late 18th century, first in Britain, which ended its slave trade in 1807 and liberated the enslaved throughout its jurisdiction in 1834. Before the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in America in 1865, American blacks risked everything attempting to escape from their masters, who sometimes pursued them all the way to the Canadian border. Tubman, herself a fugitive slave, became the most renowned “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, a network of trails for escapees from the antebellum South to the North. As many as 100,000 slaves risked life and limb traveling its routes. It was the most dangerous “railroad” in the world.

Born Araminta Harriet Ross in 1820 in Maryland, Tubman survived the brutalities of bondage for 29 years. Three of her sisters had been sold to distant plantation owners. She herself carried scars for her entire life from frequent whippings. Once, when she refused to restrain a runaway slave, she was bashed in the head with a two-pound weight, causing lifelong pain, migraines, and “buzzing” in her ears. She bolted for freedom in 1849, making her way to the neighboring free state of Pennsylvania and its city of brotherly love, Philadelphia.

“I had crossed the line of which I had so long been dreaming,” she later wrote.

I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land, and my home after all was down in the old cabin quarter, with the old folks and my brothers and sisters. But to this solemn resolution I came: I was free, and they should be free also; I would make a home for them in the North, and the Lord helping me, I would bring them all there. Oh, how I prayed then, lying all alone on the cold damp ground! ‘Oh, dear Lord’, I said. I haven’t got no friend but you. Come to my help Lord, for I’m in trouble! Oh, Lord! You’ve been with me in six troubles, don’t desert me in the seventh!

Tubman bravely ventured 13 times back into slave states to personally escort at least 70 escapees to Northern states and to Canada. “I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years,” she famously recounted, “and I can say what most conductors can’t say: I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.” Those passengers included her aging parents, her three brothers, their wives, and many of their children.

Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse during the Civil War, Tubman morphed quickly into an armed scout and spy. She became the war’s first woman to lead an armed expedition when she guided the Combahee River Raid, an expedition that liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.

For her service to the government — tending to newly freed slaves, scouting into enemy territory, and nursing wounded soldiers — she was treated shamefully and shabbily. She was denied compensation and didn’t receive a pension for her war duties until 1899. She took in boarders and worked long hours at odd jobs to make ends meet.

In an August 1868 letter to Tubman, famous abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass paid tribute to her heroism:

Most that I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way. I have wrought in the day — you in the night. I have had the applause of the crowd and the satisfaction that comes of being approved by the multitude, while the most that you have done has been witnessed by a few trembling, scarred, and foot-sore bondmen and women, whom you have led out of the house of bondage, and whose heartfelt “God bless you” has been your only reward. The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses of your devotion to freedom and of your heroism.

Tubman spent her last decades caring for others, especially the sick and aged. She often spoke publicly on behalf of women’s right to vote. For relief from that head injury mentioned earlier, she endured brain surgery in Boston in the late 1890s. She refused anesthesia, preferring instead simply to bite down on a bullet. In her words, the surgeon “sawed open my skull, and raised it up, and now it feels more comfortable.” She died in 1913 at the age of 91 — a real hero to the very end.

In 2014, an asteroid was named for Tubman. In my book, that beats a Federal Reserve note hands down.

For additional information, see:

Lawrence W. Reed

Lawrence W. (“Larry”) Reed became president of FEE in 2008 after serving as chairman of its board of trustees in the 1990s and both writing and speaking for FEE since the late 1970s.

EDITORS NOTE: Each week, Mr. Reed will relate the stories of people whose choices and actions make them heroes. See the table of contents for previous installments.

The Surge of Deadly Illegal Migration Across the Mediterranean

/in , , , /by

The EU is in the midst of another refugee crisis in the Straits that separates Sicily from North Africa. The flash point of the humanitarian crisis is the Island of Lampedusa 297 kilometers offshore of Tripoli, Libya. 168 kilometers north of Lampedusa is the Island Republic of Malta which is also in the crosshairs of this crisis. Refugees from the Jihadist conflicts throughout the Middle East, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, even South Asia pack into a flotilla of overloaded vessels which make a bee-line for this Italian landfall with less than 5,000 full time residents, where heretofore they received a welcome. Off-shore of Lampedusa now sits a flotilla of EU coast guard vessels on rotating duty alert for distress calls escorting floundering vessels to port on the Italian island and hence to Sicily and the Italian mainland. Unfortunately, these days Italian and EU coast guard vessels also search for the bodies of illegal migrants washed overboard.

The illegal refugee crisis in the Mediterranean reached a new peak in late April 2015 when thousands of illegal ‘migrants’ attempted the perilous journey. They were seeking refuge and access to generous welfare and absorption benefits from the EU. In one tragic instance, an overloaded 66 foot fishing vessel capsized on Sunday, April 19th when migrants rushed to one side of the deck hailing a commercial vessel responding their distress call. The result was over 800 downed, less than 49 survived and 28 bodies have been pulled from the water so far. Another ship disaster last week claimed 400 lives off Tripoli. The picket line of Italian and other EU coast guard vessels were pressed into service endeavoring to recover the remains. That week, an estimated 8,500 made the crossing on questionable vessels arranged by human traffickers. In 2014 more than 1,600 died during turbulent crossings. So far this year more than 900 lives have been lost. Frontex data shows that migration across the Mediterranean in 2014 peaked to a level more than twice as high as its previous peak in 2011. 170,760 migrants crossed the Mediterranean in 2014, compared with 64,300 in 2011, 15,900 in 2012, and 40,000 in 2013.

Italian President Renzi and Maltese PM Muscat requested an emergency EU Summit to address these deadly illegal migrant ship disasters. It was quickly added to the agenda of the EU Foreign Ministers meeting in Luxembourg.  According to a USA Today report Renzi said, “How can it be that we daily are witnessing a tragedy?” Muscat seconded Renzi calling “it the “biggest human tragedy of the last few years.” The illegal migration problem was discussed at the Informal meeting of the Foreign Affairs Ministers of the EU and the Southern Mediterranean countries held in Barcelona on April 13th to discuss the future of the European Neighborhood Policy.

However, there was a new development. In one illegal crossing, 12 Christians from Nigeria and Ghana were thrown overboard from a sinking raft by Muslim compatriots, because they wouldn’t recite the Shahada – the profession of faith or other Qur’anic verses. The perpetrators were arrested by Italian police. Onshore, ISIS followers in Libya beheaded 30 Ethiopian Orthodox Christians seeking to make the illegal passage across the Mediterranean, yet another outrage. That sparked anger from the Obama Administration. However, in the 20 months remaining of President Obama’s final term in office, the priority is engagement with Iran over its nuclear program via the P5+1 process hoping to deprive the Islamic regime of nuclear weapons. That priority leaves a legacy for his successor to deal with, a welter of crises.

Danish psychologist Nicolai Sennels in a 10 NewsDK blog post noted the scandal of EU cooperation with North African human traffickers:

Last weekend the EU coast guard transported 8,500 people from North Africa to Italy alone. EU says that it “saves” the “refugees” (many of them turn out to be jihadis or fake refugees) from the dangerous travel across the Mediterranean. However, it is the EU that lures millions to do this potentially deadly trip by promising Western welfare to those willing to take the chance. The EU should either start offering free transport from Africa to Europe or start sending all refugees back to local camps. I advise the latter option, and not just because it would make us able to give safety to more people for the same amount of money – which is more compassionate. But also because it would dissuade people from taking the deadly chance. Thereby nobody would die in the attempt to reach EU shores. That is how Australia does it – and since Australia introduced this policy, the amount of drowned boat-refugees decreased to zero.

It is obvious that the situation is unsustainable, but as long as our politicians continue to obey the EU and the UN, the human tsunami of refugees seeking the help of European tax payers will continue. According to humanitarian agencies “up to half a million migrants may try to cross the Mediterranean this year – a figure that would dwarf the 170,000 who reached Italy last year.”

According to a report from Express, North African Human smugglers are alerting EU authorities they are sending illegal people across the Mediterranean:

Trafficking gangs ferrying immigrants into the European Union are tipping off officials so Italian and EU coast guard vessels   can pick up their boats. …

Gangs are so certain their boats will be picked up they’re even putting less fuel in the tank because naval vessels will pick them up, a former UK immigration manager has revealed.

Of the 270,000 migrants who arrived in Europe illegally last year, more than 220,000 of them came through North Africa.

Many of those attempting the dangerous crossing in overloaded un-seaworthy craft were propelled by sectarian conflicts in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Nigeria involving ISIS, Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, Al Shabaab and Boko Haram. Muslims among these illegal migrants are being welcomed into what the scholar Bat Ye’or called Eurabia: the Euro Arab Axis. In her book, Bat Ye’or warned about the consequences of EU bureaucracies engaged in outreach to Muslim countries on the periphery of the Mediterranean via the Barcelona Process of the 1990’s. That led to the establishment of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) in Paris on July 13, 2008 at a meeting of 43 heads of Euro-Mediterranean States. Subsequently, Foreign Ministers of the UfM met in Marseilles in November 2008 and established a headquarters in Barcelona. In 2010, senior member states of the UfM approved the Statues and Barcelona Headquarters in accordance with Spanish Law. According to the website of the UfM its vision and mission/mandate are:

The UfM is a multilateral partnership aiming at increasing the potential for regional integration and cohesion among Euro-Mediterranean countries. The Union for the Mediterranean is inspired by the shared political will to revitalize efforts to transform the Mediterranean into an area of peace, democracy, cooperation and prosperity.

The UfM was promoted by former French President Nicolas Sarkozy as a means of contending with the problems of rejectionist émigré Muslim communities engaged in internal disturbances attributable to mass immigration. Add to that are the contemporary problems of thousands of EU Muslims traveling to Syria to join the Islamic State to fight and build the self-declared Caliphate. A Caliphate engaged in ethnic cleansing of infidels: Christians, ancient religious minorities and what are deemed heterodox Muslims.

Fjordman, Norwegian blogger Peder Jensen, author of Defeating Eurabia  said in an email exchange:

While the Mediterranean is flooded with illegal immigrants, including Islamic Jihadists, the EU elites are creating a Union for the Mediterranean. Europe needs a Union for the Mediterranean just like it needs a beheading. This is, coincidentally, just what it might get. It is doubtful whether most Europeans want a Union with North Africa and the Middle East, but then the EU elites never cared about what ordinary Europeans think. There is no reason for them to start now.

The Syrian Civil war displaced nearly 4 million registered refugees. UN High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) administered camps in Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt hosting 3.2 million. 22 countries have agreed last December to accept 100,000 of the more than 320,000 Syrian refugees most at risk in 2016. The UNHCR has requested absorption of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees by major EU countries and even here in the US.

The consequences of these refugee and illegal migrant flows caused by sectarian Jihad warfare in the Muslim Ummah heartland are ironic. The Eurabian bureaucracies have in effect acquiesced to the Islamic doctrine of Dar al Hijrah – the land of immigration, a reflection of the Prophet Mohammed’s migration from Mecca to Medina that kick started the first grand Jihad. That has given rise to calls by center right parties in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Austria, France, Sweden and the UK to reject further mass Muslim migration, whether legal or illegal. This is a reflection of rising concern over Muslim citizens traveling to join the cause of the Islamic State or Al Qaeda only to have some return to commit massacres like the Charlie Hebdo mass shooting and the Hyper Cacher Kosher Supermarket in Paris that killed 17 in January 2015. As both Sennels and Fjordman have stated, the EU citizens will pay the price of this massive wave of illegal Muslim emigration across the Mediterranean spawned by Jihad.

Geert Wilders’, leader of the Freedom Party (PVV)  in the Netherlands, drew attention to this dilemma in a speech April 29, 2015 at the Washington, D.C. Conservative Opportunity Society:

The UN plan to resettle 1 million immigrants in Western nations will provide jihadis an opportunity to infiltrate Western countries, including the US. It will give terrorists the opportunity to settle in our countries without the extra scrutiny involved in obtaining a visa or a residence permit.

We should not do this. The vast majority of the European citizens disapprove of the way their governments are handling immigration. Moreover, there are plenty of other safe countries where immigrants bound for the West can go to, including the wealthy Gulf States that have almost zero asylum-seekers today.

Immigration, especially Islamic immigration, had devastating consequences. It has made our countries less safe.

Tunisian Captain and Syrian first mate of capsized fishing vessel off Libya, April 19, 2015.

Smuggler Profiteering of Illegal Migrant Trafficking

The massive surge in the deadly illegal migrant trade across the Mediterranean figured in the emergency meeting of EU Foreign ministers in Luxembourg. The loss of over 1,200 in two separate trafficking ship disasters spurred on deliberations requested by Italian President Renzi and Maltese PM Muscat. April 22, 2015 charges were brought in Italian courts against the 27 year old Tunisian captain and 25 year old Syrian mate of the 66 foot fishing boat that capsized off Libya with a loss of 800 crammed into the flimsy vessel. NBC news reported:

The Tunisian captain of the boat — 27-year-old Mohammed Ali Malek — was arrested along with a Syrian crew member, 25-year-old Mahmud Bikhit.

Sicilian prosecutors said Tuesday that Malek has been charged with culpable shipwreck, manslaughter and aiding and abetting illegal immigration. Bikhit has been charged with aiding and abetting illegal immigration, the statement from Catania’s prosecutors said.

The question is who benefits from this deadly smuggling business?

The answer is the jihadists in Libya who have profited from the turmoil in the region. A Wall Street Journal report revealed how profitable the business of trafficking illegal migrants is worth taking the risks involved as deadly as the results have been to their customers seeking refuge in the EU. This is the bottom line of the WSJ report: “Brazen, multi-million-dollar people-smuggling enterprise run by Libyan militias and tribesmen proves hard to combat.”

The WSJ wrote:

Various armed groups in Libya are aggressively advertising their services to would-be migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and Syrians fleeing conflict in their country, presenting the collapse of order in Libya as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to secure safe passage to Europe, says Arezo Malakooti, the director of migration research for Paris-based Altai Consulting, a consultancy that works with the International Organization for Migration and other migration-related groups.

“The profits from human trafficking have consolidated a new balance of power in the Sahel and Libya,” says Tuesday Reitano, head of the Geneva-based Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.

How a Saharan tribe profits:

The Saharan Tebu tribe, for instance, is now making “a killing,” according to Ms. Reitano, who estimates the tribe pockets some $60,000 a week by charging West African migrants for a seat on four-wheel-drive cars that take them to Agadez, a major city in Niger. From there, they ferry the migrants to the central Libyan city of Sabha and then proceed to northern Libya ahead of their sea journey to Italy and Malta.

The profits are such that tribes normally at war cooperate at times in getting migrants from one place to the next.

Mustapha Orghan, an activist who has worked with aid groups to track smuggler operations said:

Tebu and Tuaregs used to smuggle goods. The new alternative is human trafficking…and now both Tuaregs and Tebu are trying to get their share of the cake.

Mr. Orghan said Ghat, a southern Libyan town near the Algerian border where he lives, is the first entry point from Algeria for Africans. There, he said, “African migrants get sold from one smuggler to another.”

He said the trafficking business has become increasingly lucrative since chaos in Libya sharply reduced traditional sources of income in the region: heavily subsidized oil, food and other goods from Algeria.

“Farming” migrants to make profits:

In Sabha, African men typically spend months working as laborers, and women as housemaids, to earn the roughly $1,000 to pay for the crossing from Libya’s northern coast. If there is no demand for their services in Sabha, smugglers farm them out to cities further north and west for approximately 700 Libyan dinar, or about $500.

Discrimination among “customers” leads to deadly trips:

Ismail, an African migrant who declined to give his full name and nationality, tried to cross three times in recent weeks but was thwarted by overcrowding and breakdowns of the cheap plastic boat of the sort usually provided for Africans. Syrians, who can often pay more and aren’t discriminated against by the overwhelmingly Arab smugglers, typically make the crossing in sturdier wooden boats.

According to the Frontex agency the EU has arrested 10,000 involved in the illegal migrant trade, mainly truck drivers and many migrants involved in navigating the flimsy crafts. Italian authorities have arrested 1,000 smugglers since 2014. However of these, less than 100 have been convicted. They simply lack the resources in contending with the mushrooming human trafficking business as Libya devolves into a failed state.

Watch this WSJ video dramatizing the journey of an Eritrean illegal migrant across Africa to Libya and his perilous transit via smugglers to his ultimate destination in the Italian island of Lampedusa:

EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg may have surfaced calls for safe and secure channels to reduce the deadly toll of illegal migrants, but going after the lucrative smuggling trafficking business at its source means contending with warring militias and the criminal activities of tribal groups in Libya. Note this ironic comment from the UN Human Rights Commission head:

“Europe is turning its back on some of the most vulnerable migrants in the world, and risk turning the Mediterranean into a vast cemetery,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein Monday. “Migrant smugglers are the symptom, not the cause of this wretched situation.”

The European Commission Proposals

The Brussels meeting of the European Commission (EC) on April 23, 2015 proposed a number of temporary measures to deal with the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean. The EC recommended doubling of Southern European border–control missions of Spain, Malta and Italy from the present level of $3.2 million monthly to effectively “increase search and rescue operations.” The EC will also provide additional resources to Spain, Malta and Greece. Another EC proposal would provide assistance to Tunisia, Egypt and Niger in buttressing their land border controls. The EC proposed a pilot project to re-distribute 5,000 refugees who meet asylum requirements stranded outside the EU, as an attempt to fairly distribute the burden of asylees. That flies in the face of objections by major northern countries to further asylum quotas. In 2014, 626,065 refugees filed asylum claims, a 44% percent increase over 2013. As one example, Germany experienced a sharp rise is asylum requests over the first quarter of 2015 to 85,394, double over the same period in 2014. By contrast the U.S. received 47,500 asylum applications.

The majority of those asylum seekers hail from Kosovo, Syria and Albania. Germany currently has a backlog of over 200,000 applications. This has given rise to complaints by municipalities in Germany about the impact on facilities and community integration. In the most controversial proposal, the EC requested EU Foreign Relations Commissioner Federica Mogherini to develop rules of engagement enabling it to capture and destroy illegal smuggling vessels. Overall EC President Donald Tusk of Poland said the illegal migrant crisis is a” complex issue” that will “take time to tackle.”

However in the immediate future the southern tier of EU nations may yet see a further spike in illegal migrants. In the final Week of April 2015, more than 10,000 refugees from the conflict in Yemen fled in rickety boats across the Bab al Mandab to the Republic of Djibouti placing a further burden on the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Djibouti borders Eritrea where a number of migrants have followed the smuggler network to Libya and the dangerous passage to Italy and Malta on fleets of unseaworthy boats.

Conclusion

Jihad conflicts in the Middle East and Africa are driving hundreds of thousands annually in desperation to pay top dollar for a deadly ride on those rickety boats whose owners mage large profits. Nature abhors a vacuum when chaos creates rich opportunities to rake in enormous wealth from trafficking illegal migrants. The successful smugglers even alert EU officials that they are bringing another shipload of hapless migrants to fatten their margins from this deadly trade. The EU and the Union for the Mediterranean proposals for dealing with illegal mass immigration will surely cost billions of Euros. In the meantime, Italian and other EU coast guards continue to provide a picket line of vessels daily monitoring these dangerous trips in flimsy craft across the Mediterranean from the failed state of Libya.

 EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. Also see Jerry Gordon’s collection of interviews, The West Speaks.

Obama’s Communist Utopia: Exclusive Interview with Joel Gilbert

/in , , , , /by

Do not miss accomplished filmmaker Joel Gilbert’s in-depth analysis of President Obama’s radical communist background and his political dreams for America.

Joel and I discuss Obama’s heritage, whether his real father is Barack Sr. or Frank Marshall Davis and how Davis was indeed Obama’s communist mentor and adviser.

In addition, Joel weaves together a frightful RED mosaic of the Chicago Leftist Mob who picked up where David left off and trained him to become an artful orator able to tell people what they want to hear while doing the exact opposite of what he states!

This is one of those shows that is full of vital information for all American Patriots so watch and send to your friends…and to the Enemies of the State!

Senior female Islamic State recruiter is student from Seattle

/in , , , /by

She could still be in the country, and plotting to wage jihad here — or simply still recruiting for the Islamic State. In any case, from the description below, she doesn’t seem to have been suffering from notable poverty or deprivation or oppression. John Kerry, call your office!

“Senior female Isis figure who helped recruit women from Europe to Syria is revealed as student from Seattle,” by Heather Saul, Independent, April 29, 2015:

A senior female Isis figure who reportedly helped recruit women to join the extremist group in areas under its self-declared caliphate has been exposed as a student from Seattle, who may have been living in the city up until March this year.

The person behind the influential @_UmmWaqqas Twitter account has been revealed by Channel 4 as a woman in her 20s who lived and studied in the US.

Her Twitter account had a following of over 8,000 before it was suspended and shows that British recruits, such as Aqsa Mahmood, and other women from Europe were in contact with her in the days running up their departure. Mahmood goes by the name of ‘Umm Layth’ online and tweets from the @_UmmWaqqas account included: “Legit I talk to @ummlayth everyday” and “Umm Layth has more BALLS than most men & more heart/iman to have left her home for Allah’s sake.” She is also reportedly listed as a contact for recruits in a travel document explaining the best methods for reaching territories held by Isis in Syria.

The investigation found her Twitter account was accessed by someone in Seattle as recently as March, but her friends insist that she has since moved away. One told Channel 4 she may have relocated to Saudi Arabia, while another suggested she could be living in Denver, Colorado.

Some of her more extreme tweets justified the brutal killing of a Jordanian pilot and other atrocities committed by the group, including one that read: “I now get why they caged the man & then poured concrete on him… Whenever the muslims are bombed in their homes they have nowhere to run.”

However, her social media accounts also presented a passion for American football, the Super Bowl, eating takeout food with her friends and going to the gym, while photographs of her day-to-day life were found to show locations in and around Seattle….

 RELATED ARTICLES

AFDI challenges MTA ban on free speech

Georgian jihadi: “All Muslims believe that they have to go to jihad”

Women Making Waves Encouraging and Mentoring Young Girls

/in , , , /by

Women Making Waves CEO and Founder Ashley Le Grange makes her first appearance on The Show. This extraordinary young woman created an organization that encourages and mentors young girls on how to stay on the right path and avoid the all too common perils prevalent in the current societal environment.

Please assist Women Making Waves with a generous financial contribution BETWEEN 5:00 pm Tuesday May 5 and 5:00 pm Wednesday May 6, 2015.

Your contribution will be matched by 25% during this 24 hour period!

Ex-Muslim: Qur’an revealed a religion I did not like

/in , , /by

Mona Walter grew up a Muslim in Somalia. When she moved to Sweden, she started studying Islam, and found that she did not like what she was learning. Now she has left Islam and is called an “Islamophobe” and worse.

What should she have done? Stayed in a religion she disliked and believed to be false so as to avoid threats and opprobrium? What should she do now? Stay silent for fear of charges of “Islamophobia” that inevitably come to everyone who dares utter a critical word about Islam and jihad?

In the West today one must like Islam, or is considered to have some kind of moral defect. One need not like Christianity or Judaism, or socialism or capitalism or democracy or communism, but one must like and respect Islam, or you will be considered to be “hateful,” “bigoted,” and “racist,” as well as “Islamophobic.”

This is one reason why AFDI and Jihad Watch are co-sponsoring the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest in the Dallas area Sunday. The point is not mockery of Islam. The point is not poking religious people in the eye. The point is defending the principles of free speech and free inquiry, without which society and human beings are not free, but are slaves to the people in power. Those who wield the real power are not necessarily those who hold office. Those who wield the real power are those whom one dares not criticize, to say nothing of mocking, on pain of violent reprisal: if they’re allowed to frighten people into silence, then essentially they can do whatever they wish, knowing that no one will dare to cross them.

People might find drawing Muhammad to be distasteful. At this point it must be done — or the thugs and bullies will have free rein.

“Ex-Muslim: Koran Revealed a Religion I Did Not Like,” by Dale Hurd, CBN News, April 28, 2015 (thanks to Douglas):

GOTHENBURG, Sweden — Mona Walter is on a mission. Her mission is for more Muslims to know what is in the Koran. She says if more Muslims knew what was in the Koran, more would leave Islam.

Walter came to Sweden from Somalia as a war refugee when she was 19. She says she was excited about joining a modern European nation with equal rights for women. But as a young Muslim woman, that was not the Sweden she encountered.

A Real Introduction to Islam

It was in Sweden that she first experienced radical Islam on a daily basis.

“I discovered Islam first in Sweden. In Somalia, you’re just a Muslim, without knowing the Koran. But then you come to Sweden and you go to mosque and there is the Koran, so you have to cover yourself and you have to be a good Muslim.”

Walter says she grew up in Somalia never having read the Koran.

“I didn’t know what I was a part of. I didn’t know who Mohammed was. I didn’t know who Allah was. So, when I found out, I was upset. I was sad and I was disappointed,” she recalled.

And it was in Sweden that Walters says she discovered Allah is a god who hates, and that Islam is not a religion of peace.

“It’s about hating and killing those who disagree with Islam. It’s about conquering. Mohammed, he was immoral. He was a bloodthirsty man. He was terrible man, and Muslims can read that in his biography — what he did to Jews, how he raped women, how he killed people. I mean, he killed everyone who didn’t agree with him,” she explained.

Discouraged, Walter left Islam and became an atheist, until one day a family member encouraged her to read the Bible. She still remembers the first time she read Matthew 5:44, where Jesus said to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

Christianity, a New Perspective

“It was very strange for me to ‘love your enemy,’ because in Islam it is ‘kill your enemy.’ ‘Kill your enemy and anyone who refuses Islam.’ But Jesus Christ was all about love and peace and forgiveness and tolerance, and for some reason, I needed that,” she said.

She went to see Pastor Fouad Rasho of Angered Alliance Church, a Syrian immigrant who ministers to former Muslims in Sweden.

“She started to believe and she came to me. And that was the beginning of her trusting,” he said….

“I’ve been called an ‘Islamophobe,’ and yeah [they tell me], ‘You’ve been bought,’ ‘You’re a house nigger,’ and stuff like that, terrible things, ” she said.

She has also been called a racist. Walter warns that Islamic radicalism is a serious threat in Sweden, and says Swedish society should care more about women trapped in Islam.

“[Swedes] will think, ‘Oh, we’re in Sweden; we have freedom of religion,’ but Muslim women don’t have freedom of religion. They live under the law of Allah, not under Swedish law. So they will suppose everyone has freedom of religion. We don’t have freedom of religion. It’s not for Muslim women. It’s for everyone else,” Walter argued.

Walter lives under death threats and sometimes travels with police protection. She wanted to show us Muslim areas around Gothenburg, but had to first dress as a Muslim. She believes if she were to show her face, she would be attacked.

“I can never go to those areas just being me, flesh and blood Mona. I would never get out of there alive,” she said.

“I mean, Muslims are normally good people like everyone else,” she continued. “But then when they read the Koran, then they become a killing machine.”

“This so-called ISIS or el Shabab or Boko Haram, they’re not like extremists. They’re not fanatical. They’re just good Muslims, good Muslims who follow the teachings of Islam. The prophet Mohammed, he did that. They’re doing what he did,” she explained….

RELATED ARTICLES:

Muslim cleric: Jews “malignant tumor” that “can only be treated by eradication”

India’s spy agency warns of threat from Islamic State’s Af-Pak group

UK: Jealous Muslim chant verses from Quran while stabbing love rival to death in honor killing

Dutch Imam Slams Democracy: Europeans Have Yet To Get A Taste Of Its Woes