EMP Threat - Cuba Ships North Korea Missile Components: Is a SCUD in a Bucket Next?

Published: Fri, 07/19/13

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In This Issue:
150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: #4 By Richard C. Young
“Stand Your Ground” played no Part in the Zimmerman Case By Richard C. Young
Insurers: Too Big to Fail? By E.J. Smith
EMP Threat: Cuba Ships North Korea Missile Components: Is a SCUD in a Bucket Next? By E.J. Smith
The Weakest Economic Recovery from Any Recession since WWII By Richard C. Young
Funding for La Raza? By E.J. Smith
Why Would You Ever Need a 30 Round Magazine? By E.J. Smith
U.S. Navy Ships are in Serious Jeopardy from “Newly Discovered Threat” The Editors
Dateline Syria: Let’s Get Over the False Notion That the Enemy of Our Enemy Is Our Friend By Richard C. Young
Are White Vigilantes and White Cops Black America’s Problem? By Richard C. Young
Arm Yourself: Detroit Rock (bottom) City By E.J. Smith

Young Investments Client Letter: Sign up to get the letter emailed directly to you by clicking here .
May Client Letter: Investing with Risk in Mind Companies operating in generally safe industries are not always a safe investment. Enron, after all, was classified as a boring pipeline company. Fannie Mae carried the implicit backing of the full faith and credit of the United States. Both companies cost many investors their fortunes. Read more here!

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150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: #4

Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., has created one of the most vital books on the health of your family you will ever find. The lavishly illustrated, 358-page weighty tome gives you more vital information on foods that can keep your family healthy than any other publication I have ever come across. And I am always on the look out. I have given the book to family members and often advise it for others. I have now selected a “Great 10” list of food choices to share with you. My goal here is pass on ideas that perhaps you did not previously know about.

Broccoli: Jonny writes that Broccoli “has been lauded for its cancer-fighting power so many times that it’s a celebrity in the nutritional world.” Members of the brassica family are an excellent source of a family of anticancer phytochemicals called isothiocyanates, which fight carcinogens. Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli also contain high levels of a phytochemical called sulforaphane. Sulforaphane increases the activation of enzymes known as phase-2-enzymes, which help fight carcinogens. As Jonny notes, “It’s believed that phase-2-enzymes may reduce the risk of prostate cancer.”

As Allen Ginzburg correctly writes at National Review, the so-called “stand your ground” law of Florida was never part of George Zimmerman’s defense, and didn’t need to be. Progressive pillorying of the law is a head-fake.

Wonkbook’s second reference to Florida’s laws is clearly referring to the state’s self-defense statute, §776.013(3). Countless members of the media, including the New York Times editorial board, have incorrectly claimed that Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law was responsible for Zimmerman’s acquittal. However, as Reason’s Jacob Sullum pointed out, this law actually had no impact on the case. Zimmerman’s defense invoked only the regular self-defense portions of the statute listed above, which is very similar to the self-defense requirements of almost every other state. In other words, if this case had been tried elsewhere and the jury considered similar factual findings, the outcome would probably have been the same.

There is one legal concept that many of the media critics seem to be taking issue with: the requirement that the prosecution prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This requirement, of course, is in no way limited to Florida’s laws. The American legal system adopted that standard based on the assumption that it is better that a guilty person go free than an innocent one go to jail. These journalists are free to argue that this standard, which has been central to our criminal-justice system since at least 1798, should be changed in the aftermath of one outcome they do not support. But rejecting this standard should not be confused with exposing a deficiency in Florida’s laws.

>> read more

Insurers: Too Big to Fail?

Insurers are now being added to the “too big to fail” list by Financial Stability Oversight Council created by Dodd-Frank. The Editors of The Wall Street Journal explain how ridiculous the idea is. Why would government put taxpayers’ dollars at risk like this?

Insurers, by contrast, match long-term liabilities with long-term assets. Premiums to cover some event likely to occur decades in the future are invested in assets of a similar duration. There is little risk of a “run on the bank” because policyholders, unlike depositors, typically cannot demand the face value of their policies in cash. Tornadoes, car accidents and terminal cancer do occur, but they don’t occur everywhere at once, and they are not triggered by a panic in financial markets.

Insurers can fail, but since customers cannot immediately demand their money the way bank depositors can, the failures tend to play out slowly over many years. States also typically require insurers to contribute to a fund to make up for the shortfall if one of them fails and its assets and liabilities don’t match. Without the same immediate demands for cash as at a bank that’s heading south, there is less risk of an asset fire sale that could roil markets.

The nightmare scenario for an EMP attack on the U.S. is the “SCUD in a bucket.” The phrase refers to an attack in which a relatively unsophisticated missile is launched from a small ship, carrying a nuclear payload into the atmosphere above the U.S. Such a cheap option exists, and without diligence by America’s intelligence community, bad actors could exploit it successfully to damage the core of America’s infrastructure, meaning the possibility of deaths ranging from the hundreds of thousands to millions.

In the news today is the revelation that Cuba was shipping North Korea missile guidance systems on a cargo ship carrying sugar. As most Americans know Cuba sits only 90 miles off the coast of the U.S. What’s scary is that these components were shipped and were only found once they got to Panama. If these components had been a nuclear weapon attached to a missile, they would have been near American waters without anyone’s knowledge. Close enough perhaps to launch an EMP attack. Start your preparations by clicking here to find out more.

The Christian Science Monitor explains the details of the discovery.

Cuba acknowledged Tuesday night that it is the owner of the Soviet-era weapons confiscated by Panamanian officials on a ship flying a North Korean flag, the discovery of which has raised concern over a potential bilateral arms trade.

The ship Chong Chon Gang’s cargo consisted of about 240 tons of what Cuba called “obsolete defensive weapons” that it said were being sent to North Koreafor repair, according to The Associated Press. The arms, including missiles, were found buried under about 200,000 sacks of Cuban sugar, reports the Financial Times.

I have been writing in Richard C. Young’s Intelligence Report for many months that the U.S. economy is far from on sound footing. I have also been advising on the bubble condition in the stock and bond markets. Most of the blame lies at the feet of the Marxist-influenced policies of the Obama administration. As time passes, conditions continue to erode, and yet the government continues to borrow from abroad a big portion of what it spends. The debt burden on Americans continues to balloon as the Fed continues to debase the currency with its money printing excess. All of this will come to an unpleasant end. It is simply a matter of who is going to be left holding the bag when the charade ends. Mort Zuckerman correctly writes that this recovery is a phony.

In recent months, Americans have heard reports out of Washington and in the media that the economy is looking up—that recovery from the Great Recession is gathering steam. If only it were true. The longest and worst recession since the end of World War II has been marked by the weakest recovery from any U.S. recession in that same period.

The jobless nature of the recovery is particularly unsettling. In June, the government’s Household Survey reported that since the start of the year, the number of people with jobs increased by 753,000—but there are jobs and then there are “jobs.” No fewer than 557,000 of these positions were only part-time. The survey also reported that in June full-time jobs declined by 240,000, while part-time jobs soared by 360,000 and have now reached an all-time high of 28,059,000—three million more part-time positions than when the recession began at the end of 2007.

That’s just for starters. The survey includes part-time workers who want full-time work but can’t get it, as well as those who want to work but have stopped looking. That puts the real unemployment rate for June at 14.3%, up from 13.8% in May.

>> read more

Funding for La Raza?

Hidden within pending immigration legislation are slush funds for far left leaning groups such as La Raza as M. Stanton Evans explains at Investors.com.

Laundry List Of Services

As to the services to be provided by such groups, the legislation lists:

• Supplying information to illegals and the public on “the eligibility and benefits of registered provisional immigrant status.”

• Completing application forms and petitions for immigrants, obtaining documents and other relevant data.

• “Applying for any waivers” from restrictions on illegals and qualifying family members.

• Helping individuals seeking to “adjust their status” to permanent residence.

• “Applying for United States citizenship …”

Among the features of the bill in terms of immigration enforcement are provisos concerning drunken driving in the U.S. Two prior convictions for this offense would not disqualify an immigrant for legalization, but a third offense, after the bill is passed, may disqualify a migrant from becoming a citizen.

Similar rules apply to counterfeiting or altering passports: three such instances are forbidden, meaning two would be permitted. As to selling or forging materials used in making passports, the bill says 10 such instances are verboten, that nine won’t be a problem.

Another provision would protect aliens who have been “ordered excluded, deported or removed” from the country. Such aliens, under the bill, “may apply for registered provisional status,” and, by this one step, avoid removal.

Pending approval of their applications, the aliens “shall not be considered unlawfully present unless the Secretary of Homeland Security personally intervenes to order their removal.” This is unlikely, at best.

The secretary, or an immigration judge, could stop deportation of illegals on humanitarian or family-unity grounds or simply in “the public interest” if they decide to do so. “Public interest” is essentially undefined in the legislation.

As if in an effort to answer the liberal question about why anyone would ever need a firearm with a 30-round magazine, packs of youths roamed Hollywood on Tuesday night assaulting pedestrians, vandalizing property, and robbing shops. The Associated Press details the criminal behavior here.

Los Angeles police were combing through cellphones and security footage Wednesday trying to identify dozens of young people who’d rampaged through Hollywood the night before, knocking down people, stealing their cellphones and grabbing souvenir trinkets from shops before a police sweep and arrests ensued.

Calls reporting packs of as many as 40 marauding young people began coming in at around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday from stores near the famed Hollywood and Vine intersection. The youths — possibly organized through social media — ran through the streets, stole T-shirts and other goods, including food, from businesses mainly on Hollywood Boulevard.

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRO) was recently granted urgent approval to bypass the usual course of action when upgrading military systems through competitive contracts. The sense of urgency was due to a “newly discovered threat” against the Navy’s faulty AN-SQL-32, an embarkable prototype electronic warfare (EW) system. The SLQ-32 “Slick-32″ is the Navy’s primary electronic warfare system to protect ships against the threat of missile attack.

There’s an imminent threat to U.S. Navy surface warships, which evidently has Navy leaders worried.

Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington are working fast to develop a new kind of electronic warfare (EW) module that can be fitted quickly onto ships to meet these threats. They are working with EW experts at the ITT Exelis Electronic Systems division in Van Nuys, Calif., who will help manufacture and install the new EW system.

Although Navy officials are not spelling out what this newly discovered threat to shipping is, we can assume it has something to do with advanced radar-guided anti-ship cruise missiles , or something similar.

The Navy’s current Raytheon AN/SLQ-32 shipboard EW system was conceived in the early 1970s in part from lessons learned from an incident during the Six-Day War in 1967 when Egypt sank the Israeli destroyer Elath using a Soviet SS-N-2 STYX anti-ship missile. Upgrades are being made to the SLQ-32 system under the Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program (SEWIP).

Read the full article here.

Cato’s Chris Preble outlines this theme in detail for you and makes it clear how few Americans want anything to do with getting America involved in the Syrian imbroglio.

As to the substance of the legislation, one can sympathize with the premise behind it without agreeing with co-sponsor Michele Bachmann (R-MN) that the Syrian rebels are “enemies” of the United States who could “defeat us and our way of life” (though a few might aspire to such grandiose aims). On policy grounds, limited military intervention in Syria is unlikely to turn the tide in favor of our prefered group (one that is presumably secular, pro-U.S., and capable of governing Syria), which means that arming the rebels is likely to extend the conflict and drag the United States more deeply into another civil war in the region. As Rep. Mike Nolan (D-MN) noted, “This matter, however tragic and sad, will not be resolved by the US’s involvement or intervention and will only invite resentment from both sides, as has been proven time and time again. We must get over the false notion that the enemy of our enemy is our friend.”

Pat Buchanan doesn’t think so. Nor apparently, as Pat notes, does President Obama, who is considering Ray Kelly (a great selection) for chief of homeland security. Pat writes:

Though blacks are outnumbered 5-to-1 in the population by whites, they commit eight times as many crimes against whites as the reverse. By those 2007 numbers, a black male was 40 times as likely to assault a white person as the reverse.

If interracial crime is the ugliest manifestation of racism, what does this tell us about where racism really resides — in America?

And if the FBI stats for 2007 represent an average year since the Tawana Brawley rape-hoax of 1987, over one-third of a million white women have been sexually assaulted by black males since 1987 — with no visible protest from the civil rights leadership.

Today, 73 percent of all black kids are born out of wedlock. Growing up, these kids drop out, use drugs, are unemployed, commit crimes and are incarcerated at many times the rate of Asians and whites — or Hispanics, who are taking the jobs that used to go to young black Americans.

Are white vigilantes or white cops really Black America’s problem?

Obama seems not to think so. The Rev. Sharpton notwithstanding, he is touting Ray Kelly as a possible chief of homeland security.

In Detroit it takes an hour for police to respond to calls and less than 10% of its cases are solved. When government can’t make good on its promises, such as public safety, then it’s up to you. Pension promises were the straw that broke the camel’s back in Detroit. Government over promising and under delivering is what it does best. Unfortunately it’s those left behind that have to pay the price because a huge chunk of the wealthy folk from Detroit live in the burbs or somewhere warm like Florida. There is no downside to making sure you can protect yourself. Here are some depressing facts about Detroit’s bankruptcy in today’s Wall Street Journal.

A Long, Sad Decline

• Detroit’s population fell more than 26% from 2000 to 2012 and totals about 700,000—down from almost two million in 1950, according to the census.

• An estimated 40,000 structures or land parcels sit vacant or empty.

• The city spent $100 million more than it took in every year since 2008, on average—borrowing the rest.

• Some 36% of Detroiters lived below the poverty level between 2007 and 2011, the census found.

• In 2012, Detroit had the highest violent crime rate for a city with more than 200,000 residents, the FBI says.