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Friday 905P Eastern Time:   Joseph Brusuelas,  Senior economic analyst, Bloomberg, in re:  9.8% unemployment is a sort of political construction; the real unemployment rate is 10+.  As people stay unemployed for weeks and months, their work skills deteriorate. The underlying data in the report don't comport with an improved economy. In a few months, the numbers will be revised upward and look good. If you add 15K jobs/mo, that's enough to stabilize; need 200K job/mo to make a dent in unemployment. A 4, 5 or 6 % increase in GDP, familiar in the Twentieth Century, is not in the cards for 2011.  EU: smart guys think there's enough money tobail out Spain and Portugal. See also Austria: spreads (between Austrian bonds and German bonds) and Credit Default Swaps (which function as insurance) have increased sharply in recent weeks - hedgies at play - to force the Germans to decide if they'll bail out the ECB or not. Eastern European banks: exposed in Germany, France, 

Switzerland, the UK. The house of cards that'll tumble that no one will speak about.

Friday 920P Eastern Time:  Therese Polleti, Marketwatch, in re: Steve Jobs called Bill Hewlett when he was twelve years old, the beginning of the HP-Apple relationship in Cupertino CA. 

Friday 935P Eastern Time: Mary O'Grady, WSJ, in re: Haitian elections; cholera, corruption, indifference

Friday 950P Eastern Time:  Caroline VanHesselt, DowJones, WSJ, in re: Canada lacks a leader's voice

(left) Toussaint Barbot, Haiti

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Friday 1005P (705P Pacific Time):  Sebastian Gorka, FDD, in re:  Gülenists -- for fifty years, we hoped that Turkey was the model for a secularist Muslim country; now we see this mysterious bachelor, Muhammed Fethullah Gülen, based in the US undermining the entire construct. His penetration in Turkey, alone, of the national media, or the military - even Jane's sees his organization as a state within a state. A new model of how skillfully over years to undermine the constitutional  operation of an entire state.  Similarly, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: use the democratic mechanism to take power, then never relinquish it.  In the  Gülen movement, however: "You must move in the arteries of the system without notice until you control the entire system."

Muhammed Fethullah Gülen is a Turkish preacher, author, and educator living in self-imposed exile in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania (USA).

The Gülen movement is a transnational civic society movement inspired by the teachings of Turkish Islamic theologian Muhammed Fethullah Gülen [in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania]. His teachings about hizmet (altruistic service to the "common good") have attracted a large number of supporters in Turkey and Central Asia and increasingly in other parts of the world. The exact number of supporters of the Gülen movement is not known, as there is no membership system, but estimates vary from hundreds of thousands to 4 million. The movement consists primarily of students, teachers, businessman, journalists and other educated professionals, arranged in a flexible organizational network. It has founded schools, universities, an employers' association, as well as charities, real estate trusts, lobby groups, student bodies, radio and television stations, and newspapers. The schools and businesses organize locally, and link into networks on an informal rather than legal basis

Friday 1020P (720P Pacific Time):  continued. Are they operating here? Undeniably yes. A fellow who's mapping the Gülenist structure in the US reports that it has an extremely impressive network of private schools: spotless, very high-tech, luxurious, more than almost any other in the US. Have neutral names like Harmony, or Peace. They never mention Gülen anywhere. You have to check into the Boards for Turkish names. This is a worldwide organization. A unique hybrid to win back the geostrategic power of the Ottoman Empire; it recognizes that in this age you do it in the garb of Western, modern dress. At Muhammed Fethullah Gülen's estate in Western PA, men have to wear Western dress; men may not marry till they're fifty, and wives must wear headscarves but no other identifying clothes.  "Educate people, penetrate into the system, and don't move till you have control."

Gulen's grandiose vision is the restoration of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of a universal caliphate.  In his public statements, Gulen espouses a liberal version of Sunni/Hanafi Islam and promotes the Muslim notion of hizmet - - altruistic service to the common good.  In private, Gulen has stated that "in order to reach the ideal Muslim society 'every method and path is acceptable, [including] lying to people.'"  With assets in excess of $30 billion, Gulen has wielded political allegiances in Washington that have resulted in the placement of Turkish Muslims in the CIA, NSA, FBI, and other national security organizations.  He has created well-heeled lobbies to promote the cause of Islam and to develop Islamic candidates for political office.  He has formed close friendships with Bill and Hillary Clinton, former Secretaries of State James Baker and Madeleine Albright, and George W. Bush.

See also: http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/fethullah-gulen-infiltrating-the-us-through-our-charter-schools-the-fgc-charter-schools-in-a/question-310317/

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Friday 1035P (735P Pacific Time):  Rufus Phillips, author of Why Vietnam Matters;   Bill Roggio, FDD; Arif Rafiq, Pakistan Policy blog, in re: WikiLeaks? The outrageous, larcenous government in Kabul is shown to be what everyone knows it is. [guffaw] Petraeus set up a corruption task force . . .  Kiyani is a stand-up guy but he's surrounded by vipers. . . . Laskar-i-Jangi: nasty street thugs, muscle for hire; hate the Shia and other religious minorities, whom they attack with bombs

Friday 1050P (750P Pacific Time):   continued

 

Friday 1105P (805P Pacific Time): Michael Vlahos, Naval War College, in re: Assange, WikiLeaks. American exceptionalism held that we would reform the human race and cast out devils; uplift God and redeem humanity.  As the devils change, the mission perforce changes, which is what we're facing now: our exceptionalism must consist in our defending ourselves from devils. Assange, the 39-year-old genius, doesn't like the notion that America is exceptional.  [Radio clip of Col Marion C Cooper, Chennault's chief of staff and just returned from China Air Task Force; he also produced King Kong.]

Friday 1120P (820P Pacific Time): continued. Afghanistan is rotten. Iraq has gone rotten. We've got to get to a big narrative where we see that America took a wrong turn; before it's too late, we need to turn it around. Unfortunately, all we get is lovely Hollyword fantasies like Avatar, while Washington is mired in delusion and  [incompetence]. 

Friday 1135P (835P Pacific Time): Terry Easton, author, Refounding America, RefoundingAmerica.com

Friday 1150P (850P Pacific Time):  Amir Aczel, in re:  subatomic physics, anti-matter. Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Antimatter atoms; quark gluon, pursuit of the Higgs boson. Higgs boson gave mass to the quark; gluons were holding them together, then later became protons and neutrons. 

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Friday/Sat 1205A (905 Pacific Time):  Ed Meese, Heritage, in re: no New Start in the Lame Duck  

Friday/Sat  1220A (920 Pacific Time): Henry Miller, Hoover, in re: cholera; pandemics, 

Friday/Sat  1235A (935P Pacific Time):  Daniel Franklin, The Economist, in re: The World in 2011  

Friday/Sat  1250A  (950P Pacific Time): Exeunt. Inspector Bliss, the Bliss Index, in re: Ronnie Chasen murder case. 

François-Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture (May 20, 1743 - April 6, 1804) was the leader of the Haitian revolution. Born in Saint-Domingue, Toussaint led enslaved blacks in a long struggle for independence over French colonizers, abolished slavery, and secured native control over the colony, Haiti. In 1797 while nominally governor of the colony, he expelled the French commissioner as well as the British armies; invaded Santo Domingo to free the slaves there, and wrote a Constitution naming himself governor-for-life that established a new polity for the colony.Toussaint L'Ouverture tried to rebuild the collapsed economy of Haiti and reestablish commercial contacts with the United States and Britain. His rule permitted the colony a taste of freedom which, after his death in exile, was gradually destroyed during the successive reigns of a series of despots. The name Toussaint L'Ouverture is French for "all saints [or souls] opening".