Aggregating News from the World Wide Web

By Ted Roberts

Our G-d is a jealous god, as He repeats many times in his book. I intend not to denigrate his mercy. Don’t argue with me – argue with Moses, who wrote Exodus 20:5. And he is a god of punishment. You wanta debate me? Don’t waste your time. Read Isaiah 13:11. “I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity.” It is clear our G-d, contrary to Christianity, is a g-d who is passionate about justice, but dispenses mercy in carefully measured doses. And when I consider the many quotes announcing his celestial disciple – how else can mankind be civilized – I think of the real world from Sodom and Gomorrah to the 40′s of our generation when we fought the evil threat of Naziism. Like Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, “there’s nothing new under the sun”.

Consider Sodom and Gomorrah. Merciful Abraham pleas for a reprieve if even five good people exist in that stew of iniquity. Evidently, they can’t be found. G-d nukes the two cities of the plain. He either couldn’t find five moral people or he ignored his debate with Abraham and eliminated a few innocents with the sinners.

Oddly, World War II – two millennia later – the debate reopened . The highest levels of allied leadership debated the bombing of German cities. (By now, man had almost the destructive power of G-d.) Dresden, Hamburg, and Berlin not only possessed railroad junctions and armament plants, but innocent men, women, and children. The discussion didn’t last long. We pulverized those cities like radiation therapy destroys healthy flesh along with the cancer.

If we believe in the epiphany at Sinai, we must believe that our creator destroyed thousands in the cities on the plain. Qualifications on both sides, though not stated, could be postulated. You might say: He couldn’t find those five righteous people, the basis of his agreement with Abraham. Evil must be eliminated.

Opposing view: isn’t it possible that some of the evil would change; eventually mend their ways? Were the children evil? Consider also some 2-3 millennia before. The flood obliterated mankind. Remember HE wiped out humanity except righteous Noah and his brood and a few animals so we’d have a zoo to amuse us.

These are difficult ethical conundrums for biblical scholars to reconcile with the goodness and mercy Judaism now believes G-d to possess. Do we dare ask: Did HE change or did WE change? Or must we painfully accept that our G-d, who provides goodness, not only hates, but stands ready to enthusiastically eliminate evil as we eradicate the malaria germ. This is a question not for me or three millennia of rabbis to answer. It is beyond our ken. But the question still hangs in the air like a cloud over Guantanamo, where innocent thousands were saved by merciless punishment to a few. But those harsh methods must have punished some small measure of innocence. What’s the rationalizing arithmetic? 10,000 saved – 4 “innocents” put to pain? Let’s face it, the Chumash would never hesitate on that tradeoff.

Israeli missiles often destroy the terrorist home or car, even if his pals or family go with him to that libidinous Islam heaven. There’s nothing new under the sun, said Solomon – even convoluted moral questions. is there a calculus? Or even a simple arithmetic? One potential killer and three innocents require death to save the lives of fifty other innocents. Is that the deal? Or is it twenty – or a thousand? Who knows?

I would say the faithful believers of G-d’s lecture on Sinai would destroy 10,000 sinners – some innocent – to save five of his people. Do you think the Maloch Hamoves, cruising the skies of 1350 BC Egypt checked the ethical character of his victims? No, says the book. He only looked for the lamb’s blood on the door. He has mercy, but also a plentiful supply of wrath.

After consideration of the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the plagues, even Guantanamo; that saved thousands of our fellow citizens, we mourn the innocents, but do not let their peril paralyze our defense of goodness.

Again consider World War II. Military leaders of US and Britain, along with their Air Force chieftains, sat in a highly secured meeting room in London. Their topic was Genesis, especially the Creator’s decision of Sodom and Gomorrah. An awesome decision – made more for G-d than man – faced them. Whether to punish the innocent with the guilty or prolong indefinitely the struggle with the current evil, Nazi Germany. Whether to pinpoint by aerial bombardment tactical military targets or the cities of Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Dresden, Cologne, which contained military targets as well as women and children who did not build aircraft, tanks, or artillery. But the decision makers followed the theme of Genesis and pulverized the German cities. Man has always been less merciful than his creator. The same could be said of the Strategic Air Command – when G-dlike – they chose Hiroshima and Nagasaki for destruction.

We know nothing of G-d. I choose my woods carefully because we do know his desires of us. A thousand rabbis (and clergymen, too) tell you of his book and prattle of his desires. But he, himself, tells us his ways are hidden to us. “Who”, “what”, “why”, even “when”, are as obscured in the same smoke with which he crowns his mountaintops. Metaphorically, he tells us as much in the Chumash. Our Book abounds in mystery of good and evil, justice and mercy. According to his book, he will shelter us in the palm of his hand and obliterate us with a clench of that palm if he chooses.

He hates evil. That’s clear even to Sunday School children. And he punishes those that harm his people, as he repetitively states in his book. Therefore, I await the earthquake that will devastate the nuclear labs of Iran. Believe Torah? Then believe that. You say innocents will die. Remember the flood. Remember Sodom and Gomorrah. The calculus is unknown.

Israpundit

Ernest Bai Koroma Eternal Kim Il sung Evo Morales Faure Gnassingbe Faustin Archange Touadera

HuffPost’s QuickRead…

Loading…

The Blog

Heinz Fischer Hifikepunye Pohamba Hosni Mubarak Hu Jintao Hubert Ingraham

In the United States, we rightly pride ourselves on many things. Yet it turns out that the United States is behind countries such as Namibia, Mali, Estonia, and Papua New Guinea in one very important area.

Reporters Without Borders have recently released their Press Freedom Index for 2011-2012, and the U.S. is 47^th, just below Taiwan and tied with Argentina. For a country that gave birth to the Bill of Rights this ought to be at the very least embarrassing, and at the worst, shameful.

The report cites the response to protests in 2011 as justification for the United States? poor ranking. In the space of two months more than 25 journalists were  arrested, escorted off premises, or beaten for ?inappropriate behavior?, ?public nuisance?, and lacking accreditation.  Instances like this are now easy to document thanks to modern technology, and some of the videos of such instances are depressing and bemusing in equal measure. These infringements would be worrying enough for First Amendment advocates, but the recent fiasco with SOPA and PIPA are also cause for concern.

The last decade has seen an unacceptable number of abuses of U.S. citizen?s rights. The right to privacy and the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures as codified in the Fourth Amendment is being slowly chipped away through invasive legislation such as the Patriot Act (renewed by President Obama) and NDAA. The right to keep and bear arms is being turned into an almost prohibitive bureaucratic nightmare in some parts of the country, as Emily Miller of the Washington Times has been chronicling. The Fifth Amendment has seen its own fair share of wear and tear, being ignored or treated as an obstacle by overbearing politicians in the name of security.

The Constitution of the United States is a piece of political genius, and it is a shame to see the rights it establishes being so brazenly reduced. Countries that until recently were ruled by dictators that often killed journalists are considered a more open environment in which to practice journalism than the U.S. Perhaps we should be doing a better job at reclaiming our intellectual and political heritage, and reminding the politicians of the document they swore to uphold and protect.

Image from Shutterstock/Scott Rothstein

The American Conservative

Islam Karimov Ismail Haniyeh Ismail Omar Guelleh Ivan Gasparovic Iveta Radicova

Long before Facebook made it possible to share photos of your breakfast with hundreds of friends and let them know just how you feel about your latest parking ticket, humans were forming social networks with essentially the same structure people use today.

A team of researchers has mapped out the relationships among a remote group of 205 hunter-gatherers in Tanzania who live as humans did about 10,000 years ago and found that their social networks are very much like ours, even in the absence of the complicating factors of megacities, cellphones and the Internet.

The researchers found that individuals who are willing to cooperate prefer the company of other cooperative people and that free riders tend to stick to their own kind as well. The results appear in Thursday’s edition of the journal Nature.

“These networks of primitive cultures are not that different from the kinds of networks that exist in modern society,” said Stanley Wasserman, a statistician at Indiana University who was not involved in the study. “This is great stuff.”

The findings offer an answer to the much-debated question of why humans cooperate with one another.

Natural selection would dictate that free riders in a community ? those selfish individuals who take advantage of other people’s generosity ? would outcompete their more selfless brethren. Social networks may have been very useful in making sure that the cooperative individuals were able to work together successfully.

Recent work linking genetic variation to social network structure lent further credence to the idea that social networks may have evolved for purposes of survival. For instance, scientists have found that the social networks of identical twins are more similar than those of fraternal twins, suggesting that genes play a role.

“If these properties are written in our genes, is this something we would find in humans who lived like we would have lived thousands of years ago?” asked UC San Diego social scientist James Fowler, one of the study’s coauthors.

To test the theory, Harvard Medical School researcher Coren Apicella traveled to remote regions of Tanzania to study members of a tiny group of hunter-gatherers known as the Hadza. The Hadza live as ancient humans in the Pleistocene are thought to have lived: no agriculture, carrying few or no possessions, setting up camp to forage and hunt, and relocating every four to six weeks after stripping the bushes and baobab trees within walking distance.

“They provide a kind of window into the past,” said study senior author Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a physician and social scientist at Harvard University who studies how social networks affect health.

The Hadza travel in wandering bands spread out around Lake Eyasi. If individuals don’t like their current band, they can leave and join another one, setting up an interesting opportunity for the researchers to probe their social network.

First, Hadza in 17 different bands were shown what could be considered a primitive version of Facebook ? a printout with head shots of all the Hadza in all bands ? and asked to identify who they’d like to be with in the next band they joined. (Men were shown only men and women shown only women, so that romantic aspirations would not complicate the results.)

The Hadza were also given three sticks of honey, a prized possession, and asked to choose three people to whom they would give each honey stick. These two tests enabled the researchers to map out the Hadza’s social networks.

For the third exercise, the Hadza were given four honey sticks. They could keep all four, but they were told that each stick they contributed anonymously to a common pile would be tripled by the researchers and redistributed later. This game was a test to see which individuals were more cooperative and which were free riders, opting to secretly keep their sticks while also benefiting from the redistribution of sticks in the common pile.

When the researchers put this information together, they found that Hadza who contributed more to the common good were more likely to be friends with other cooperative people. These connections formed clusters that were often near the center of the social networks. That, in turn, made the group more successful and better able to compete with other groups for scarce resources, Christakis said.

The researchers were surprised to find that the free riders were more likely to be friends with other free riders, and they aren’t quite sure why that is. It could be that those who cooperate choose to be friends with people like themselves, leaving no space for free riders, or that the former influence those around them to become more cooperative. Another possibility is that free riders actively prefer the company of other free riders because they’re less likely to be sanctioned for their behavior, said Joseph Henrich, an evolutionary researcher at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver who was not involved in the study.

amina.khan@latimes.com

World – latimes.com

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Emil Boc Emmanuel Nadingar Emomalii Rahmon Emperor Akihito

The Security Council could vote as early as next week on a Western-Arab draft resolution, council diplomats said.

A group of Arab monitors planned to visit the troubled Damascus suburb of Irbin, one of them said. It would be their first outing since Friday. The mission had put its activities on hold until Arab foreign ministers met to decide its future.

Gulf Arab states have since withdrawn their 55 observers from the 165-strong team, saying they were sure “the bloodshed and killing of innocents would continue”. Arab League officials said they would be replaced and work would go on.

An Algerian observer in the team heading to Irbin said he was nervous because some opposition groups had said they would not co-operate with the mission. “We don’t know what to expect,” he told Reuters, declining to be named.

Another monitor said he was confused about the purpose of prolonging the mission for another four weeks. “The report has been written and the (Arab League) decisions have been taken, so another month to do what? We are not sure,” he said.

Syrian opposition groups have accused the observer mission, which deployed on Dec. 26, of giving Assad diplomatic cover to pursue a crackdown on protesters and rebels in which more than 5,000 people have been killed since March, by a UN tally.

The head of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent in the northern town of Idlib was shot dead on Wednesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said, in an attack which Damascus blamed on “terrorists”.

The Arab League has suspended Syria and called for Assad to hand over to his deputy, pending the formation of an unity government, constitutional and security reform, and elections.

World news

King Carl XVI Gustaf King George Tupou V King Harald V King Juan Carlos I King Letsie III

How life imitates art — or graphic art, at least. In DC Comics’ new series, Justice League International, governments are going bankrupt, the masses are out in the street protesting, terrorists are blowing up state institutions, and the United Nations’ credibility is in tatters.

Sound familiar? It’s only natural that comic strips reflect the real world, or at least our worst fears about it. This comic version of life at Turtle Bay provides a glimpse of a future where the world’s declining superpower, the United States, appears to have lost its seat on the Security Council and a triumvirate headed by Britain, China, and Russia are calling the shots — but the rest of the world isn’t listening.

Even the superheroes follow a moral compass that routinely swerves off course. “People have lost faith in their own governments, and by extension, us,” Andre Briggs, the comic strip head of U.N. intelligence, tells the Global Security group — a three-person Security Council headed by Chinese, Russian, and British officials.

“Confidence in every level of authority is at an all-time low. Every government, and by extension, every law enforcement agency and security forces, is woefully under-funded and lacking resources,” says Briggs. “We believe it’s time for the United Nations to assemble its own team, representing select nations, uniquely equipped to overcome those issues.”

The United Nations has had a long, though intermittent, history in the world of action heroes, providing comic book artists with a symbol for breaking with the propagandistic and nationalist themes that marked the Golden Age of war comics during World War II, says Laura Hudson, the editor in chief of ComicsAlliance, a major online magazine on comic culture. “Modern comic book writers tend to be a progressive lot, and less inclined to infuse superhero books with the idea of American exceptionalism.”

The U.N. formed a backdrop for many of the themes of nuclear holocaust at the height of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry and the post-Cold War proliferation of nuclear weapons. In the late 1980s, the Batman’s nemesis, the Joker, acquired a nuclear weapon and sold it to Arab terrorists. He then established contact with the Ayatollah Khomeini, who appointed him as his U.N. envoy, granting him diplomatic immunity for his crimes. “He subsequently gives a speech to the General Assembly about how the world fails to show enough respect for Iran while filling the room with toxic laughing gas,” said Hudson. “His plan is foiled by Superman and Batman, and he later disappears. I am making none of this up.”

But it was The Justice League International, which got its start in the late 1980s as an offshoot of the Justice League — the latter led by All-American superheroes like Superman (though he was born in Krypton), Batman, and Wonder Woman — that placed the U.N. at the center of the action. Acting under the auspices of the United Nations, a new multinational corps of superheroes tapped into the possibilities for international cooperation unleashed by the demise of the Soviet Union. It even included a Soviet superhero, Rocket Red.

Foreign Policy

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Malam Bacai Sanha Manmohan Singh Manny Mori Marcus Stephen

Obama?s State of the Union Speech: My Response Discovers Some Curious Insights and Strange Formulations

By Barry Rubin

In his State of the Union message, President Barack Obama began by wrapping himself in the flag, patriotism, and love of the armed forces while trying to highlight his foreign policy achievements. Among his points:

??The United States [is] safer and more respected around the world.?

Presumably, a lot of Americans will believe this. The United States may be said to be safer in terms of facing direct terror attacks but that was basically true in 2002. As for ?more repected??a phrase no doubt chosen to seem more statesmanlike than saying ?more popular,? that is a joke. If there?s one thing that should be obvious (and this is often revealed even by international public opinion polls) the United States is not more respected at all.

Moreover, while individual Americans may be relatively safe from terrorist attacks in their homes, neighborhoods and workplaces within the territory of the United States?a perception partly reinforced by redefining terrorist attacks as something else?U.S. interests abroad are far less safe.

Continue reading Obama?s State of the Union Speech: My Response Discovers Some Curious Insights and Strange Formulations

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, to be published by Yale University Press in January 2012. You can read more of Barry Rubin’s posts at Rubin Reports, and now on his new blog, Rubin Reports, on Pajamas Media

Technorati Tag: Election 2012 and Obama and State of the Union.

Daled Amos

Jigme Thinley Joan Enric Vives Sicilia Johanna Siguroardottir John Atta Mills John Key

Silly things like jobs, the economy, energy, and so forth rate a bit higher

(The Hill) The nation?s economy and its job market remain Americans? top concerns, a new poll has found.

The Pew Research Center found that strengthening the economy (86 percent) and the job market (82 percent) were the only two issues that at least seven out of 10 Americans called a top priority.

Those two areas have been Americans? top concerns throughout President Obama?s time in the Oval Office, Pew reported.

Well, it’s no wonder they come up on top, because Obama and Congressional Democrats took an economic downturn, something that happens, and made it much, much worse.

A quarter of Americans now find climate change a top concern, down from almost four in 10 in 2007. More than half of Americans named illegal immigration a priority that same year, a figure that has now fallen to 39 percent.

Let’s look at the breakdown (graphic via Watts Up With That?)

It’s actually a shame that the environment has taken a hit, which I blame on Warmists folding real world environmental issues under the banner of “climate change”, causing many people to turn off and tune out. As Anthony Watts writes

It appears that only the zealots care much about global warming anymore, yet it doesn?t stop them from making grand pronouncements of gloom and doom or taking fossil fueled publicity stunt boat trips to Antarctica.

Perhaps all the Warmists should go live in sustainable communities which rely on no modern conveniences that put out CO2. Which pretty much means freezing to death in caves.

Pirate’s Cove

Manmohan Singh Manny Mori Marcus Stephen Mari Kiviniemi Mark Rutte

From DG:

1) What the Diehl? 

Lately Jackson Diehl has been one of the better analysts of the Middle East. His most recent, Turkey’s government is the new normal in the Middle East, unfortunately, was disappointing. Diehl started off by blasting former Republican presidential candidate, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas.

Perry responded: ?Well, obviously when you have a country that is being ruled by what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists .?.?.? 

Islamic terrorists? This, mind you, is about a government that has just stationed an advanced radar on its territory that could be used to track and shoot down missiles from Iran; that joined the NATO operation against Moammar Gaddafi in Libya; that has become the host of the opposition to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad; and that, having repeatedly won free democratic elections, amended Turkey?s constitution to expand rights for women, ethnic minorities and unions.
…

The reality is that, like it or not, ?Islamist-oriented? governments are about to become the new normal in a region dominated for decades by secular autocrats and pro-American generals. So the crude bias about Muslim movements that is baked into the worldview of many U.S. conservatives ? that they are inevitably fundamentalist, anti-democratic, anti-Israel and anti-American, if not explicitly ?terrorist? ? has become a serious liability. If heeded, it will make it impossible for this administration and future ones to navigate the region?s new politics and preserve crucial alliances.

Left out, of course, is that Turkey aided the IHH, an international terrorist organization  with the Mavi Marmara, which led to  a clash with Israel. Here’s how the The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center describes the relationship between the government of Turkey and the IHH. (.pdf)

1) In the political-strategic realm, the Erdogan regime collaborates closely with IHH.Their collaboration is based on a common Islamic worldview, the concept that IHH can be used as a tool to implement Turkish foreign policy and IHH’s readiness to serve the current government’s strategy of turning Turkey into an influential regional power, including at the expense of its relations with Israel. That strategy was manifested by the political and practical support received by Hamas (the transfer of funds and other aid to Hamas, support for convoys and flotillas, and hosting Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood activities on Turkish soil. 

2) In the realm of internal Turkish politics, IHH is a socio-political powerbase for the AKP, Turkey’s ruling party and, according to several reports, helped it get elected. Their close relations have led to the AKP’s appointing senior members of IHH to government positions, (about a quarter of the IHH senior leadership holds or held positions or were candidates for AKP positions!). The AKP gave the flotilla propaganda and moral support and the Turkish media also reported that AKP parliament members intended to board the Mavi Marmara. However their participation was canceled at the last minute. 

3) On the personal level, IHH leader Bülent Yildirim maintains close relations with the heads of the Turkish regime and is warmly supported by Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan. According to statements from passengers aboard the Mavi Marmara, corroborated by ITIC information, the flotilla set out with Erdogan’s full knowledge and agreement, despite the fact that it was clear Israel would not allow the flotilla to reach the Gaza Strip.

Perhaps Perry overstated the case a bit, but he wasn’t far off. The problem is that just because Islamists are the “new normal” doesn’t make that development a good thing. It’s one thing saying that the government needs to deal with a new reality; it’s another to do as President Obama did and embrace that reality as a positive development.

Yesterday Robert Satloff and Eric Trager outlined How the U.S. Should Handle the Islamist Rise in Egypt.

Yet Washington has assets to preserve its equities in Egypt. At $ 1.2 billion, U.S. military assistance is essentially the procurement budget for the Egyptian armed forces. While the Islamists may want the military out of politics, they also don’t want to be accused of materially weakening the country. Direct U.S. economic support is much smaller, at $ 250 million, but America has a substantial voice in international financial institutions to which Egypt almost surely will turn for help. In the coming period, when Egypt’s Islamist politicians will test just how far the U.S. will bend to accommodate a new political reality, the U.S. should be willing to use both these tools to advance its interests. 

Washington’s message to Cairo’s emerging leaders should be that U.S. support — both direct and indirect — is conditional on their cooperation in maintaining peace with Israel and preserving political pluralism and religious and minority rights. America should determine its relationship based on what Egypt’s new rulers actually do on these issues, not the cooing sounds that their English-language spokesmen offer visiting American journalists, diplomats and politicians.

It isn’t clear that this will work, but Satloff and Trager tell the administration to take a skeptical approach to the Islamists. That’s a far cry from what Obama has done as he (if Turkey is any guide) embraced them uncritically.

2) The continuing Palestinian diplomatic war against Israel

In his op-ed in the New York Times last year, The long overdue Palestinian state, Mahmoud Abbas clearly expressed his intent for dealing with Israel.

Palestine?s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.

Abbas’s attempt to get support for statehood from the UN fizzled. However his effort to use the UN to wage diplomatic war against Israel is continuing. Jonathan Schanzer and David Barnett write in The Palestinian Campaign to Delegitimize Israel:

Specifically, Abbas is threatening to form a political union with rival faction Hamas, the terrorist group that controls the Gaza Strip. Palestinians view unity as a necessary step toward independence, so his rhetoric has been very popular on the “Palestinian street.” But the likelihood of a merger is unlikely. Rather, the PLO is using the prospect of a government partially constituted by unrepentant terrorists to pressure Israel into making concessions. 

The message is simple: If the Israelis don’t give the PLO what it wants, it could join hands with Hamas, which repeatedly refuses to renounce “armed resistance,” making it virtually impossible for Israel to achieve the peace that it craves.
…
With all of these moving parts, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture: Palestinian leaders seem to have no interest in talking to Israel this year. Instead, they may be gearing up for a full-scale diplomatic campaign to delegitimize it.

What’s astonishing is that Abbas is carrying out a campaign – that he publicly outlined in a prestigious American newspaper – to avoid negotiations with Israel and it has elicited no outrage. Netanyahu is still the obstacle to peace and to the Secretary of Defense, both sides won’t come to the “damn table.”

Abbas’s refusal to negotiate is exacerbated by his embrace of Hamas, which is a rejection of the PLO’s disavowal of terror, a premise of the very peace negotiations that are now “stalled.” Peace won’t come to the Middle East as long as Abbas’s obstructionism is tolerated and encouraged.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Abbas and Media Bias and Turkey.

Daled Amos

Joseph Kabila Juan Manuel Santos Julia Gillard Jurelang Zedkaia Kamla Persad Bissessar

There is no nuance, no balance, no justice in the plethora of anti-Israel pieces in the NYT. But there is another agenda as well – normalizing Islam, especially in North America and Europe. See the evidence below.
By Prof. Phyllis Chesler, INN

On a single day, the New York Times has been known to publish anywhere from two to six anti-Israel articles, editorials, op-ed pieces, and letters. Today, I see a new danger arising in their pages.

After spending a year proclaiming the triumph of democracy and the miracle of the Arab Spring and, as PM Netanyahu has just noted, refusing to document the existential danger in which Israel finds herself, the Newspaper of Record has now begun the process of normalizing Islam in North America and Europe. Its pro-Muslim ?multicultural? agenda is, paradoxically, another form of racism, but I quibble.

Yesterday, there were at least three articles (3,200 words, four photos, one illustration), devoted to Islam in America and Europe. A 934-word op-ed article titled ?How to Integrate Europe?s Muslims? by a Boston College professor is a veritable manifesto of appeasement and racism disguised as a rational call for integration and fairness. Jonathan Laurence suggests that Muslims will be ?integrated? into Europe if they are allowed to study Islam at state-sponsored schools, continue their Muslim religious practices, veil women, speak Arabic, Persian, Dari, etc. In his view, this will fend off ?fundamentalism? and magically lead to reciprocity in terms of tolerance towards infidels and apostates and to the abolition of Islamic gender and religious apartheid.

According to Canadian professor and author, Dr. Salim Mansur, multiculturalism and the appeasement of tribalism defeats the possibility of citizenship and amounts to a form of ?soft bigotry.? As Pascal Bruckner has phrased it: ?Multiculturalism is the racism of the anti-racists; it chains people to their roots.? Immigrants are kept confined to their ?group? and not encouraged or expected to become ?individuals? and ?citizens? of a modern democracy.

As we may all recall, the 2011 Goldstone recantation did not make the front page of the NYT; it was buried on page 8. But today, a 1,200 word article, entitled ?In Police Training, a Dark Film on U.S. Muslims? is on page one. It continues on page 23 with two photos and it takes up 3/4th of the second page. The article condemns the use of the film, The Third Jihad, as a ?training? device for 1,489 police officers. What is so offensive about this film, which is narrated by a (truly) moderate Muslim, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a physician and former American military officer? First the film has been funded by Orthodox Jews and Zionists (horrors!). Second, it dares suggest that Muslims have launched a war against the West, a ?third jihad.? And, there is ?ominous? music. Then ?Muslim terrorists shoot Christians in the head, car bombs explode, children lie covered by sheets??

Is this reporter unfamiliar with the persecution of Christians in Muslim-majority countries and with the Islamic terrorist attacks against Muslim and infidel civilians and against Western military and civilian targets?

There is an Islamic/Islamist war declared against the West, but it is one that the Paper of Record refuses to acknowledge, or to fight or win.
In the last four months of 2011, there?s this: In the fall, a 12 year-old Christian girl living in Pakistan was gang-raped, converted, and then forced to marry her Muslim rapist. The incident was by no means a unique occurrence but part of a series of rapes, forced conversions, and forced marriages carried-out by Islamic extremists against female members of Pakistan?s Christian communities. In October of 2011, twenty-two Egyptian Coptic Christians were murdered in clashes with the military government forces during protests. Thugs were directed to target and attack Copts. On November 5th of 2011, the New York Times itself reported that at least 67 people had been killed in a terrorist attack in Nigeria carried out by the Islamist Boko Haram. The area of Lagos is well-known as a predominantly Christian territory.

But apparently these incidents?and there are many more–do not count as much as the film?s ?doctored photograph (which shows) an Islamic flag flying over the White House.? Here, I will venture no cheap comment.

This reporter, Michael Powell, and his newspaper seems to forget 9/11; Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed thirteen and wounded 29 soldiers at Ft Hood, Texas (2009); Abdul Hakim Mohamed (formerly Carlos Bledsoe), who opened fire with an assault rifle targeting soldiers in front of a military recruiting office in Little Rock, Arkansas (2009); on Christmas Day, Umar AbdulMutallab tried to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight #253 in Amsterdam destined for Detroit (2009); Faisl Shahzad, tried to blow up Times Square (2010). All four Muslim/Islamist terrorists were influenced by the infamous Anwar al-Awlaki who died in Yemen in 2011 in a targeted military assassination.

But this is all so recent. The NYT reporter seems to have forgotten all about the first Islamist-Muslim World Trade Center bombing in 1993; the truck bombing which killed 19 American servicemen in Saudi Arabia in 1996; the Al Qaeda detonation of two car bombs which destroyed the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salam simultaneously, killing 224 and wounding thousands; and the 2000 Al Qaeda bombing attacks on the U.S.S. Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden, killing 17 sailors. Even I was about to move on without mentioning the 1979 Iranian Islamist kidnapping of American diplomats in the Embassy in Teheran and their being held hostage for 444 days.

I really could go on but I think I have made my point. There is an Islamic/Islamist war that has been declared against the West as well as against both Muslim and infidel civilians, but it is one that the Paper of Record refuses to acknowledge, or to fight or win.

Finally, in the same issue, (1/24/12) there was also a 1,200-word book review of a new anthology: Love, Inshallah: The Secret Lives of American Muslim Women, which Neil MacFarquhar handles as if it is a news story or an interview. This piece is titled ?Lifting Veil on Love and Islam.? This is a new anthology which hopes to dispel stereotypes and to depict American Muslim women as normal, average, and American in terms of love, sex, and marriage.

Many of the contributors are writing under pseudonyms. Most were found through Facebook and Twitter. MacFarquhar describes these women as grappling with ?universal issues.? Perhaps the contributors to this anthology really do so. I hope they do. But the reporter?s examples include how to tell your date that you can?t drink Champagne because you are a religious Muslim; ?a Jewish convert to Islam (who) detailed the pain of alienating her father, while another spoke with rapture about joining a polygamous family.? The only contributor who is quoted here and who writes under her own name is an Iranian comedienne, (Zahra Noorbakhsh), who voices the pathos of the self-censorship that Muslim women engage in. ?You leave yourself vulnerable to people using your voice to attack your community, so we kind of censor our own voices.?

Of course, the danger is also from one?s own tribal/ethnic community who will treat you as a traitor and act accordingly.

In this very issue, (1/24/12) there are seven additional articles which are set in Jerusalem, (concerning ?Palestinian? demonstrators), Islamabad, Cairo, Baghdad, Homs (Syria), Iran, and Saudi Arabia.Clearly, the Times understands that the Islamic world is important to the survival of Western democracies and to their own civilians as well. What is relatively new?and I predict we will see a lot more of this?is their focus on Islam in the West, particularly in America.

In general, journalism has changed in the last decade. Publications like the New York Times emphasize ?opinion pieces? more than objective journalism. And, the opinion columns are universally written by single-minded leftist and Islamist apologists. There is no nuance, no balance, no justice. The journalists who dedicate numerous words and hours to such dismal reportage seem psychologically driven to apologize for North American and European (Israeli too, of course), ideals of social equality, magnanimity, scientific inquiry, tolerance, self-criticism, and economic prosperity.

Why have papers likes the Times become so obsessed with protecting the religious rights of one single minority group at the expense of every other religious group, including members of moderate and anti-Islamist Islam, and at the expense of women, who represent approximately 53% of the world?s population? Are they, too, possibly being funded by leftists and by Arab oil magnates? Or, do they simply hope to be?

Just wondering.

Israpundit

David Cameron David Johnston Dean Barrow Denis Sassou Nguesso Denzil Douglas

His Wikipedia profile was instantly updated to describe him as a “pioneer of time travel” following his curious D-Day claim.

Internet jesters quickly homed in on the nickname of Morin McFly, after Marty McFly, the hero of the 1980s time travelling film Back to the Future starring Michael J Fox.

It spawned a raft of internet parodies. “I was there at the Big Bang, it was overrated,” wrote one.

“I was in Rouen when Joan of Arc was burned,” claimed a second.

“You should have seen the Trojans’ face when the Greeks came out of that horse,” said a third.

Faced with the deluge of ridicule, Mr Morin stood by his remark today, saying it wasn’t a mistake but a semantic “shortcut”.

“It wasn’t a blunder at all but simply a shortcut to something deeply anchored in the eye of every Norman. It’s our DNA, our genetic code,” he told RMC radio.

“I was brought up with the white crosses of Canadian and American soldiers in the (war) cemeteries, of these children who died for our freedom and thus it’s a part of our common history, that’s all,” he said.

Taking the jokes at his expense on the chin, he wrote on Twitter: “Well done for your humour! I always said the French were full of creative talent!”

Mr Morin has little to laugh about from a political perspective, however, as two key party allies deserted him on Wednesday to come out in support of Nicolas Sarkozy, the incumbent conservative.

Mr Morin dismissed calls for him to throw in the towel.

“I intend to go all the way,” he said, predicting he would “not stay on one per cent”.

World news

King Abdullah King Abdullah II King Albert II King Carl XVI Gustaf King George Tupou V

By Andrew Bolt ~

Well, this news in Queensland is a surprise to some warmists:

DOZENS of people have been evacuated from their homes, hundreds of streets closed and Australia Day celebrations cancelled as drenching rain continues to fall across the state.

Conditions are expected to worsen with creeks already breaking their banks, sending floodwaters into homes and businesses.

More surprises in NSW:

Widespread rainfall of 50-150mm has caused major flooding in parts of NSW? These very high rain totals have led to major flooding on the Bellinger River at Thora, with river levels continuing to rise this morning.

Still more surprises:

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed 2011 was Australia?s third-wettest year on record and the wettest year since 1970.

And, look, no real shortage of rain anywhere:

How strange. I mean, remember the claims that we faced a ?permanent drought?, thanks to man-made global warming? Here?s just some of those warnings:

Greens leader Bob Brown in 2006:

From melting polar ice to the spectre of permanent drought in previously productive farmlands, the (World Meteorological Bureau?s) report makes clear that climate change is not just a future threat, it is damaging Australia now.

Brown in 2008:

Already, (Rudd government adviser Ross Garnaut?s) daunting data of a 10 per cent chance of no flow at all in the Murray-Darling river system in future years is being overtaken by data indicating that drought is the new norm across Australia?s greatest food bowl.

The Sydney Morning Herald in 2008:

This drought may never break

IT MAY be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent, one of the nation?s most senior weather experts warned yesterday.

?Perhaps we should call it our new climate,? said the Bureau of Meteorology?s head of climate analysis, David Jones….

?There is a debate in the climate community, after ? close to 12 years of drought, whether this is something permanent. Certainly, in terms of temperature, that seems to be our reality, and that there is no turning back….?

Jones to the University of East Anglia in 2007:

Truth be know, climate change here is now running so rampant that we don?t need meteorological data to see it. Almost everyone of our cities is on the verge of running out of water and our largest irrigation system (the Murray Darling Basin is on the verge of collapse…

The Age in 2009:

A three-year collaboration between the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO has confirmed what many scientists long suspected: that the 13-year drought is not just a natural dry stretch but a shift related to climate change?

??It?s reasonable to say that a lot of the current drought of the last 12 to 13 years is due to ongoing global warming,?? said the bureau?s Bertrand Timbal.

??In the minds of a lot of people, the rainfall we had in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was a benchmark. A lot of our [water and agriculture] planning was done during that time. But we are just not going to have that sort of good rain again as long as the system is warming up.??…

Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery in 2007:

Flannery predicted cities such as Brisbane would never again have dam-filling rains, as global warming had caused ?a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas? and made the soil too hot, ?so even the rain that falls isn?t actually going to fill our dams and river systems ? ?.

But here?s the rainfall data from the Bureau of Metereology:

And rainfall data for the supposedly stressed Murray Darling River Basin:

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Andrew Bolt?s columns appear in Melbourne?s Herald Sun, Sydney?s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide?s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10?s The Bolt Report each Sunday at 10am. He is also heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of radio station MTR 1377, and his book  Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt?s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/

PA Pundits – International

Gilbert Ake Gilbert Houngbo Giorgio Napolitano Giovanni Lajolo Girma Wolde Giorgis

WASHINGTON ? The U.S. Congress, in a rare show of unity, gave an emotional sendoff Wednesday to Gabrielle Giffords, the lawmaker who was critically injured after being shot by a deranged gunman, and who is leaving office to focus on her recovery.

Amid extraordinary scenes belying the almost-constant bitter partisanship of recent years, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle paid tribute to the congresswoman, who has made remarkable progress after her near-fatal shooting a little more than a year ago.

Giffords, who had been shot at point-blank range in the head, has made what many call a miraculous recovery, but continues to speak haltingly and walks with a pronounced limp.

The Arizona lawmaker, who vows she will return to public service when she is fully recovered, was hailed by Democratic minority leader Nancy Pelosi as “an inspiring symbol of determination and courage to millions of Americans.”

“You will be missed in the House of Representatives, but your legacy in this Congress and your leadership in our nation will certainly endure,” Pelosi said.

Elegantly coiffed and wearing a polished suit but walking with difficulty, Giffords was kissed and embraced in the chamber by scores of by well-wishing representatives from her state of Arizona and elsewhere.

In a tender moment, aided by her close friend and fellow Democratic lawmaker Debbie Wasserman Schultz, she stepped up to podium where House Speaker John Boehner stood and handed him her letter of resignation ? prompting a three-minute-long standing ovation before she walked off the House floor.

Several tearful lawmakers paid warm tributes to Giffords, who was left fighting for her life after the January 2011 shooting, when a gunman sprayed the parking lot where she was meeting with constituents in Tucson, killing six of them.

“Gabby, we love you. We have missed you,” said Representative Steny Hoyer, who is one of the top Democrats in the Republican-led House.

“And I miss you,” Giffords said from her seat, to rousing applause.

A senior Republican lawmaker, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, praised her “courage, her strength, and her downright fortitude.”

In a sign that Giffords still has much of her rehabilitation ahead of her, she opted to have Wasserman Schultz read aloud her resignation letter.

In it, she expressed “hope and faith that even as we are set back by tragedy or profound disagreement, in the end we come together as Americans to set a course toward greatness.”

“From my first steps and first words after being shot to my current physical and speech therapy, I have given all of myself to being able to walk back onto the House floor” and resume her work as a legislator, she said.

“However, today I know that now is not the time. I have more work to do on my recovery before I can again serve in elected office,” Giffords said in her written remarks.

“I will recover and will return, and we will work together again, for Arizona and for all Americans,” she said.

© Copyright (c) AFP

Vancouver Sun – News / World

Bernard Makuza Bharrat Jagdeo Bhumibol Adulyadej Bingu wa Mutharika Blaise Compaore

News From Antiwar.com

Francois Fillon Frank Bainimarama Frederick Ballantyne Fredrik Reinfeldt Freundel Stuart

Out of 3,000 years Jerusalem was divided for only 19 years:

The history of Jerusalem did not start in 1967. Thousands of years of Jewish history took place in what is now called ‘Arab East Jerusalem.’

Only when the Jewish residents were driven from their homes in 1948 was the city divided between East and West.

The 19 year division of Jerusalem is being exploited as a reason to divide Israel’s capital today.

Here is the video:

Technorati Tag: Israel and Jerusalem and Arab East Jerusalem.

Daled Amos

Marcus Stephen Mari Kiviniemi Mark Rutte Abbas El Fassi Abdelaziz Bouteflika

By Ruthie Blum, ISRAEL HAYOM

Last week, on Jan. 19, U.S. President Barack Obama released a video called “America and Israel: An Unbreakable Bond.”

The seven-minute clip is an amalgamation of sound bites from the president’s own speeches, interspersed with statements made by different prominent Israeli leaders, among them Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Its apparent purpose is to refute claims on the part of the Republicans that the Obama administration is anti-Israel. Its true goal is to keep the president’s campaign afloat with Jewish cash.

To achieve this objective, the video features the voices of President Shimon Peres, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, and Netanyahu himself waxing poetic about Obama.

It’s a neat trick.

In his first three years in office, Obama has emerged as the most openly hostile U.S. president Israel has ever known. This is no surprise, given his oft-stated commitment to “outreach and dialogue” with sworn enemies across the globe, chief among them Iran.

Nor is it peculiar that, in spite of the above, Obama continued to take the Jewish vote for granted. After all, it is no secret that American Jews — even many who do care about Israel’s fate and survival — would rather be nuked by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s mullahs than cast their ballots for a Republican candidate.

What Obama didn’t bank on, however, was getting a cold financial shoulder from Jewish backers he assumed he would have in his pocket, along with their millions. Imagine his horror when figures like TV and media magnate Haim Saban, of ?Power Rangers? fame, decided to cut a substantial amount of his support for the very president he had helped usher into the White House. Nor was Saban the only Jew to grow uncomfortable with Obama’s blatant aggression against Israel in word and deed.

What Obama and his team came to grasp was that, of all the factors which had handed him a landslide into the Oval Office, an empty till was not one of them.

With fiasco after disaster under his belt by now — and a Middle East on fire not with democracy, but with increased anti-Western radicalism — the inept incumbent can ill afford, both literally and figuratively, to lose Jewish money.

This predicament is compounded by the fact that, like his sycophants in the liberal mainstream media, Obama has been only too happy to blame Wall Street, not his own socialist policies, for the economic woes of the American people. Nevertheless, he still has to hedge his bets on hedge-fund bucks.

It remains to be seen whether his campaign managers’ transparent attempt at assuring rich Jews that Obama is Israel’s best friend will have the desired effect. It will certainly be welcomed by the Peace Now-niks and JStreeters who want Obama to win, precisely so that he will continue to pressure Israel to make concessions in exchange for nothing.

But it should also serve as a lesson to Netanyahu and co. for being so foolish as to have made public statements about Obama’s undying loyalty and friendship which they knew to be patently false.

Though it is, and always has been, par for the course for Israeli leaders to behave with deference to the U.S. administration, it is neither necessary nor desirable for them to bend over backwards to defend American moves that run contrary to Israeli interests. Netanyahu’s tight spot with a president who was caught on tape commiserating with counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy about having to “deal with” Netanyahu on a regular basis deserves no small degree of empathy.

But his response to it has been worse than counter-productive. Going out of his way (with the help of Oren) to laud Obama at synagogues and AIPAC conferences is taking the need to stress the U.S.’s friendship way beyond the call of duty. And all it has accomplished is to provide the president with grist for his PR mill.

Ruthie Blum is a former senior editor and columnist at The Jerusalem Post. She is currently writing a book about the radicalization of the Middle East, to be published by RVP Press in the spring.

Israpundit

Ma Ying jeou Mahamadou Danda Mahinda Rajapaksa Mahmoud Abbas Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

By Ted Roberts

Our G-d is a jealous god, as He repeats many times in his book. I intend not to denigrate his mercy. Don’t argue with me – argue with Moses, who wrote Exodus 20:5. And he is a god of punishment. You wanta debate me? Don’t waste your time. Read Isaiah 13:11. “I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity.” It is clear our G-d, contrary to Christianity, is a g-d who is passionate about justice, but dispenses mercy in carefully measured doses. And when I consider the many quotes announcing his celestial disciple – how else can mankind be civilized – I think of the real world from Sodom and Gomorrah to the 40′s of our generation when we fought the evil threat of Naziism. Like Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, “there’s nothing new under the sun”.

Consider Sodom and Gomorrah. Merciful Abraham pleas for a reprieve if even five good people exist in that stew of iniquity. Evidently, they can’t be found. G-d nukes the two cities of the plain. He either couldn’t find five moral people or he ignored his debate with Abraham and eliminated a few innocents with the sinners.

Oddly, World War II – two millennia later – the debate reopened . The highest levels of allied leadership debated the bombing of German cities. (By now, man had almost the destructive power of G-d.) Dresden, Hamburg, and Berlin not only possessed railroad junctions and armament plants, but innocent men, women, and children. The discussion didn’t last long. We pulverized those cities like radiation therapy destroys healthy flesh along with the cancer.

If we believe in the epiphany at Sinai, we must believe that our creator destroyed thousands in the cities on the plain. Qualifications on both sides, though not stated, could be postulated. You might say: He couldn’t find those five righteous people, the basis of his agreement with Abraham. Evil must be eliminated.

Opposing view: isn’t it possible that some of the evil would change; eventually mend their ways? Were the children evil? Consider also some 2-3 millennia before. The flood obliterated mankind. Remember HE wiped out humanity except righteous Noah and his brood and a few animals so we’d have a zoo to amuse us.

These are difficult ethical conundrums for biblical scholars to reconcile with the goodness and mercy Judaism now believes G-d to possess. Do we dare ask: Did HE change or did WE change? Or must we painfully accept that our G-d, who provides goodness, not only hates, but stands ready to enthusiastically eliminate evil as we eradicate the malaria germ. This is a question not for me or three millennia of rabbis to answer. It is beyond our ken. But the question still hangs in the air like a cloud over Guantanamo, where innocent thousands were saved by merciless punishment to a few. But those harsh methods must have punished some small measure of innocence. What’s the rationalizing arithmetic? 10,000 saved – 4 “innocents” put to pain? Let’s face it, the Chumash would never hesitate on that tradeoff.

Israeli missiles often destroy the terrorist home or car, even if his pals or family go with him to that libidinous Islam heaven. There’s nothing new under the sun, said Solomon – even convoluted moral questions. is there a calculus? Or even a simple arithmetic? One potential killer and three innocents require death to save the lives of fifty other innocents. Is that the deal? Or is it twenty – or a thousand? Who knows?

I would say the faithful believers of G-d’s lecture on Sinai would destroy 10,000 sinners – some innocent – to save five of his people. Do you think the Maloch Hamoves, cruising the skies of 1350 BC Egypt checked the ethical character of his victims? No, says the book. He only looked for the lamb’s blood on the door. He has mercy, but also a plentiful supply of wrath.

After consideration of the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the plagues, even Guantanamo; that saved thousands of our fellow citizens, we mourn the innocents, but do not let their peril paralyze our defense of goodness.

Again consider World War II. Military leaders of US and Britain, along with their Air Force chieftains, sat in a highly secured meeting room in London. Their topic was Genesis, especially the Creator’s decision of Sodom and Gomorrah. An awesome decision – made more for G-d than man – faced them. Whether to punish the innocent with the guilty or prolong indefinitely the struggle with the current evil, Nazi Germany. Whether to pinpoint by aerial bombardment tactical military targets or the cities of Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Dresden, Cologne, which contained military targets as well as women and children who did not build aircraft, tanks, or artillery. But the decision makers followed the theme of Genesis and pulverized the German cities. Man has always been less merciful than his creator. The same could be said of the Strategic Air Command – when G-dlike – they chose Hiroshima and Nagasaki for destruction.

We know nothing of G-d. I choose my woods carefully because we do know his desires of us. A thousand rabbis (and clergymen, too) tell you of his book and prattle of his desires. But he, himself, tells us his ways are hidden to us. “Who”, “what”, “why”, even “when”, are as obscured in the same smoke with which he crowns his mountaintops. Metaphorically, he tells us as much in the Chumash. Our Book abounds in mystery of good and evil, justice and mercy. According to his book, he will shelter us in the palm of his hand and obliterate us with a clench of that palm if he chooses.

He hates evil. That’s clear even to Sunday School children. And he punishes those that harm his people, as he repetitively states in his book. Therefore, I await the earthquake that will devastate the nuclear labs of Iran. Believe Torah? Then believe that. You say innocents will die. Remember the flood. Remember Sodom and Gomorrah. The calculus is unknown.

Israpundit

King Albert II King Carl XVI Gustaf King George Tupou V King Harald V King Juan Carlos I

Reporting from Seoul?

In mid-December, U.S. negotiators came the closest they’d come in two years to resuming humanitarian food aid for millions of undernourished North Koreans.

They pressed North Korean officials in Beijing one day for assurances that any assistance would not be siphoned off by the North’s military. In return, experts say, Washington hoped to draw the government in Pyongyang back to negotiations over an uranium enrichment program North Korea revealed to outsiders in 2010.

The next day, Dec. 17, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il died of a heart attack, casting developments into limbo as his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, 28, assumed control of the repressive regime.

More than a month later, the U.S. remains cautious about the potential changes in Pyongyang’s relationship with the international community, experts say. North Korea, meanwhile, is ready to receive much-needed aid from elsewhere.

Both China and South Korea have made overtures to help North Korea combat the famine and malnutrition that have followed years of failed policies and international sanctions.

The South Korean government last week approved the first shipment of food aid to the North since Kim’s death, giving the go-ahead for a nonprofit group to provide 180 tons of flour to elementary schools and daycare centers. The food is scheduled to ship this month.

Days earlier,Seoul’snew unification minister, Yu Woo-ik, had said officials would provide large-scale food aid even if Pyongyang did not apologize for two deadly military attacks in 2010, reversing the government’s previous stance.

China, North Korea’s staunchest ally, suggested it would also provide hundreds of thousands of tons of food aid, calling for other nations to do the same. “We want the international community to offer aid to North Korea, just like China” is doing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said recently.

North Korea experts say they expect Washington to work out its own food aid deal regardless of concern about Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons.

In November 2010, North Korea unveiled to a visiting team of former U.S. officials and academics a large uranium-enrichment plant that was making low-level reactor fuel but could be converted to produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. North Korea now appears prepared to discontinue the program in exchange for an estimated 240,000 tons of U.S. food assistance, experts say.

Several nonprofit organizations whose representatives visited North Korea last year reported that as many as a quarter of the nation’s 24 million residents required urgent food aid.

“The ball is in North Korea’s court; they asked to postpone the negotiations when Kim Jong Il died,” said Ralph A. Cossa, president of Pacific Forum CSIS, a Honolulu-based think tank.

In 2008, the U.S. pledged 500,000 tons of rice to North Korea but discontinued the aid program the following year amid suspicion that the food was going to the military. Now Washington is offering high-energy biscuits and vitamin supplements, less likely targets for soldiers and elites.

A recent statement by North Korea’s state-run news service criticized Washington for changing the nature of its promised aid. But Pyongyang also left the door open to seal the pending aid deal, adding, “We will watch if the U.S. truly wants to build confidence.”

Some experts said they don’t expect U.S. food assistance to result in improved relations with Pyongyang for the long term. Kim Jong Un might still try to rally military support in the secretive regime through a nuclear missile test or attack against Seoul, experts said. And even if the North Koreans agree to close known uranium enrichment sites, there are probably other facilities that will remain open.

The Obama administration wants to secure a food deal that won’t backfire, said Daniel Pinkston, Northeast Asia deputy project director for the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization.

“Obama can’t take the risk of a North Korean nuclear test a month before the election,” Pinkston said.

john.glionna@latimes.com

World – latimes.com

Danny Philip David Cameron David Johnston Dean Barrow Denis Sassou Nguesso

VIDEO: Cops Stop Burglary In Progress & Arrest Suspect On 57th Street

(Wednesday, January 25th, 2012)

Yeshiva World News

Alpha Conde Alvaro Colom Amadou Toumani Toure Andrea Zafferani Andrius Kubilius

Silly things like jobs, the economy, energy, and so forth rate a bit higher

(The Hill) The nation?s economy and its job market remain Americans? top concerns, a new poll has found.

The Pew Research Center found that strengthening the economy (86 percent) and the job market (82 percent) were the only two issues that at least seven out of 10 Americans called a top priority.

Those two areas have been Americans? top concerns throughout President Obama?s time in the Oval Office, Pew reported.

Well, it’s no wonder they come up on top, because Obama and Congressional Democrats took an economic downturn, something that happens, and made it much, much worse.

A quarter of Americans now find climate change a top concern, down from almost four in 10 in 2007. More than half of Americans named illegal immigration a priority that same year, a figure that has now fallen to 39 percent.

Let’s look at the breakdown (graphic via Watts Up With That?)

It’s actually a shame that the environment has taken a hit, which I blame on Warmists folding real world environmental issues under the banner of “climate change”, causing many people to turn off and tune out. As Anthony Watts writes

It appears that only the zealots care much about global warming anymore, yet it doesn?t stop them from making grand pronouncements of gloom and doom or taking fossil fueled publicity stunt boat trips to Antarctica.

Perhaps all the Warmists should go live in sustainable communities which rely on no modern conveniences that put out CO2. Which pretty much means freezing to death in caves.

Pirate’s Cove

Jose Ramos Horta Jose Socrates Joseph Kabila Juan Manuel Santos Julia Gillard

Pat Dollard » Politics

Emomalii Rahmon Emperor Akihito Epeli Nailatikau Ernest Bai Koroma Eternal Kim Il sung

By Andrew Bolt ~

Well, this news in Queensland is a surprise to some warmists:

DOZENS of people have been evacuated from their homes, hundreds of streets closed and Australia Day celebrations cancelled as drenching rain continues to fall across the state.

Conditions are expected to worsen with creeks already breaking their banks, sending floodwaters into homes and businesses.

More surprises in NSW:

Widespread rainfall of 50-150mm has caused major flooding in parts of NSW? These very high rain totals have led to major flooding on the Bellinger River at Thora, with river levels continuing to rise this morning.

Still more surprises:

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed 2011 was Australia?s third-wettest year on record and the wettest year since 1970.

And, look, no real shortage of rain anywhere:

How strange. I mean, remember the claims that we faced a ?permanent drought?, thanks to man-made global warming? Here?s just some of those warnings:

Greens leader Bob Brown in 2006:

From melting polar ice to the spectre of permanent drought in previously productive farmlands, the (World Meteorological Bureau?s) report makes clear that climate change is not just a future threat, it is damaging Australia now.

Brown in 2008:

Already, (Rudd government adviser Ross Garnaut?s) daunting data of a 10 per cent chance of no flow at all in the Murray-Darling river system in future years is being overtaken by data indicating that drought is the new norm across Australia?s greatest food bowl.

The Sydney Morning Herald in 2008:

This drought may never break

IT MAY be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent, one of the nation?s most senior weather experts warned yesterday.

?Perhaps we should call it our new climate,? said the Bureau of Meteorology?s head of climate analysis, David Jones….

?There is a debate in the climate community, after ? close to 12 years of drought, whether this is something permanent. Certainly, in terms of temperature, that seems to be our reality, and that there is no turning back….?

Jones to the University of East Anglia in 2007:

Truth be know, climate change here is now running so rampant that we don?t need meteorological data to see it. Almost everyone of our cities is on the verge of running out of water and our largest irrigation system (the Murray Darling Basin is on the verge of collapse…

The Age in 2009:

A three-year collaboration between the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO has confirmed what many scientists long suspected: that the 13-year drought is not just a natural dry stretch but a shift related to climate change?

??It?s reasonable to say that a lot of the current drought of the last 12 to 13 years is due to ongoing global warming,?? said the bureau?s Bertrand Timbal.

??In the minds of a lot of people, the rainfall we had in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was a benchmark. A lot of our [water and agriculture] planning was done during that time. But we are just not going to have that sort of good rain again as long as the system is warming up.??…

Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery in 2007:

Flannery predicted cities such as Brisbane would never again have dam-filling rains, as global warming had caused ?a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas? and made the soil too hot, ?so even the rain that falls isn?t actually going to fill our dams and river systems ? ?.

But here?s the rainfall data from the Bureau of Metereology:

And rainfall data for the supposedly stressed Murray Darling River Basin:

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Andrew Bolt?s columns appear in Melbourne?s Herald Sun, Sydney?s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide?s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10?s The Bolt Report each Sunday at 10am. He is also heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of radio station MTR 1377, and his book  Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt?s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/

PA Pundits – International

Jose Mujica Jose Ramos Horta Jose Socrates Joseph Kabila Juan Manuel Santos

A fortnight ago, the sergeant had faced a possible jail sentence of 152 years on charges of manslaughter, assault and dereliction of duty. But as the prosecution case against him collapsed, the judge ordered lawyers to make a plea deal, that saw the 31-year-old admitting guilt on only the last, least consequential count.

The plea means that not one of the eight US soldiers originally charged with involvement in the killings has been convicted in open court, a fact which yesterday prompted disbelief and anger in Haditha.

“This sentence gives us the proof, the solid proof that the Americans don’t respect human rights,” Ali Badr, a relative of one of the victims, told Reuters. “This is an insult to the victims and an insult to all Iraqis.”

What exactly happened in Haditha is now never likely to be known.

For critics of the Iraq war it represented one of the deepest stains on the honour of the American armed forces, already tarnished by the scandal at Abu Ghraib prison that had come to light the previous year. There were comparisons with the My Lai massacre of 1968, when US soldiers killed 500 Vietnamese nationals.

But many defenders of the US military, particularly on the right, say the allegations against Wuterich and his men were deliberately exaggerated and politically exploited in order to smear the credibility of the American war effort.

Some facts are not in question. At 0700 that morning, a roadside bomb detonated as a four-Humvee patrol carrying Sgt Wuterich and fellow members of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment drove through the streets of Haditha. The driver of one Humvee, Miguel Terrazas was killed; two other men were wounded.

Shortly afterwards, Wuterich opened fire on five men in a white sedan, apparently suspecting that they could have planted the bomb. He claimed that the men, who were later shown to have been unarmed, refused orders to halt. His version has been disputed by witnesses.

Wuterich’s men later stormed four nearby houses, saying they believed they had come under fire from one and then entered the others as they chased suspected gunmen. Neighbours say the marines were never shot at, and that over the space of several hours the Americans went round effectively executing unarmed civilians, among them a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair, as they begged for their lives.

Leading to allegations of a cover-up, the US military initially claimed that the most of the Iraqis were killed by the roadside bomb, only admitting they had been shot when presented with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. The military still insists that six of the dead were insurgents, a claim given weight by Haditha’s reputation as a militant stronghold.

In the end, there was insufficient evidence of murder, and the question boiled down not to one of war crimes but one of rules of engagement. By his own admission, Wuterich was in breach of these; he told his men to “shoot first and ask questions later”.

It was a phrase which The Daily Telegraph had also heard while embedded with Kilo Company near the city of Falluja the year before. Camped out during an overnight patrol, one non-commissioned officer approached the company’s captain to express his concern about the behaviour of some of his colleagues.

He pointed out that during the company’s first tour of Iraq as part of the 2003 invasion, some of the men had adopted a “shoot first, ask questions later” attitude. “Now, they are at it again and something has to be done because otherwise something really bad is going to happen.”

Whether anything was done to rein in what the NCO referred to as Kilo Company’s “bad apples” is unclear, and even if it had the Haditha killings might still have taken place.

Meanwhile the anger in the town marked by death is likely to endure.

Khalid Salman, a lawyer for the victims’ relatives, said the sentence “undervalues Muslim blood” and said that an appeal would be made to a US court to overturn the verdict.

“This is not a traffic felony,” he said.

World news

Laura Chinchilla Laurent Gbagbo Lawrence Gonzi Lee Hsien Loong Lee Myung bak

HuffPost’s QuickRead…

Loading…

The Blog

Mari Kiviniemi Mark Rutte Abbas El Fassi Abdelaziz Bouteflika Abdelkader Taleb Oumar

HuffPost’s QuickRead…

Loading…

The Blog

George Maxwell Richards George Papandreou Georgi Parvanov Gilbert Ake Gilbert Houngbo

Where in the world did the State of the Union take us? Here are the highlights from what President Obama said about all things international in his prepared remarks Tuesday night:

For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq. For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country. Most of Al Qaeda?s top lieutenants have been defeated. The Taliban?s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home….

We can?t bring back every job that?s left our shores. But right now, it?s getting more expensive to do business in places like China. Meanwhile, America is more productive. …

We?re also making it easier for American businesses to sell products all over the world. Two years ago, I set a goal of doubling U.S. exports over five years. With the bipartisan trade agreements I signed into law, we are on track to meet that goal — ahead of schedule. Soon, there will be millions of new customers for American goods in Panama, Colombia, and South Korea. …

We?ve brought trade cases against China at nearly twice the rate as the last administration — and it?s made a difference. Over a thousand Americans are working today because we stopped a surge in Chinese tires. But we need to do more. ? Tonight, I?m announcing the creation of a Trade Enforcement Unit that will be charged with investigating unfair trade practices in countries like China. There will be more inspections to prevent counterfeit or unsafe goods from crossing our borders. And this Congress should make sure that no foreign company has an advantage over American manufacturing when it comes to accessing finance or new markets like Russia. …

Ending the Iraq war has allowed us to strike decisive blows against our enemies. From Pakistan to Yemen, the Al Qaeda operatives who remain are scrambling, knowing that they can?t escape the reach of the United States of America. From this position of strength, we?ve begun to wind down the war in Afghanistan.? This transition to Afghan lead will continue, and we will build an enduring partnership with Afghanistan, so that it is never again a source of attacks against America.

As the tide of war recedes, a wave of change has washed across the Middle East and North Africa, from Tunis to Cairo; from Sana?a to Tripoli. A year ago, Kadafi was one of the world?s longest-serving dictators — a murderer with American blood on his hands. Today, he is gone. And in Syria, I have no doubt that the Assad regime will soon discover that the forces of change can?t be reversed, and that human dignity can?t be denied.

How this incredible transformation will end remains uncertain. But we have a huge stake in the outcome. And while it is ultimately up to the people of the region to decide their fate, we will advocate for those values that have served our own country so well. We will stand against violence and intimidation. We will stand for the rights and dignity of all human beings — men and women; Christians, Muslims, and Jews. We will support policies that lead to strong and stable democracies and open markets, because tyranny is no match for liberty. …

Look at Iran. Through the power of our diplomacy, a world that was once divided about how to deal with Iran?s nuclear program now stands as one. The regime is more isolated than ever before; its leaders are faced with crippling sanctions, and as long as they shirk their responsibilities, this pressure will not relent. Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal. But a peaceful resolution of this issue is still possible, and far better, and if Iran changes course and meets its obligations, it can rejoin the community of nations.

The renewal of American leadership can be felt across the globe. Our oldest alliances in Europe and Asia are stronger than ever. Our ties to the Americas are deeper. Our iron-clad commitment to Israel?s security has meant the closest military cooperation between our two countries in history. We?ve made it clear that America is a Pacific power, and a new beginning in Burma has lit a new hope. From the coalitions we?ve built to secure nuclear materials, to the missions we?ve led against hunger and disease; from the blows we?ve dealt to our enemies; to the enduring power of our moral example, America is back.

Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn?t know what they?re talking about. That?s not the message we get from leaders around the world, all of whom are eager to work with us. That?s not how people feel from Tokyo to Berlin; from Cape Town to Rio; where opinions of America are higher than they?ve been in years. Yes, the world is changing; no, we can?t control every event. But America remains the one indispensable nation in world affairs — and as long as I?m president, I intend to keep it that way.

LAT

Ya Libnan

Grand Duke Henri Guillaume Soro Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow Hamid Karzai Hashim Thaci

Barry Rubin

Jackson Diehl is by far the best journalist writing in the mass media about the Middle East. In a recent column he tries to find some middle ground between the dominant ideas–that Islamist regimes are no problem at all and that the Muslim Brotherhood is really moderate?and what he defines as an excessively extreme conservative and Republican analysis.

While I don?t quite agree with him, there is much of merit in his dichotomy. We should all learn from it even though I?m going to suggest that it needs to be adjusted. Even if Obama’s critics are on the right side about the Middle East and generally understand what’s happening, many of them also make factual and analytical mistakes that undermine their credibility and may sometimes subvert their policies if they win office.

In addition, Diehl reminds us (how rarely that happens nowadays!) how good it feels to debate with people who actually think about the issues and cite evidence even if we disagree with them. He actually believes that there is merit on both sides of the argument, again an attempt at balance that often seems to be close to extinction in this sad era. Diehl begins with a highly critical account of a Fox news host and Governor Rick Perry?s hard-hitting but flawed account of contemporary Turkey.

The former said of Turkey?in Diehl?s view, a ?mostly accurate but extremely one-sided description??that since an ?Islamist-oriented party took over .?.?. the murder rate of women has increased 1,400 percent. Press freedom has declined to the level of Russia. [Prime Minister Recep Erdogan] has embraced Hamas, and Turkey has threatened military force against both Israel and Cyprus.?

Diehl provides what he sees to be the other side, that the Turkish government:

?has just stationed an advanced radar on its territory that could be used to track and shoot down missiles from Iran; that joined the NATO operaiton against Moammar Gaddafi [sic] in Libya; that has become the host of the opposition to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad; and that, having repeatedly won free democratic elections, amended Turkey?s constitution to expand rights for women, ethnic minorities and unions.?

Diehl, to his credit (it?s amazing how rare any balanced account is in the mass media nowadays!) continues, ?that, too, was a one-sided account of the Erdogan record. But that is precisely the point: Turkey has become a complex, dynamic, difficult, sometimes infuriating, sometimes very helpful and indisputably important ally of the United States.?

Now Diehl presented five items as being to the credit of Erdogan?s regime. But let?s take them one at a time:

?Advanced radar. True, but it was with extreme reluctance, statements that it would not be used against Iran, and the demand that no information from this installation be supplied to Israel. Arguably a plus but less of one than it might seem.

?Libya operation. True but the Turkish regime?s goal was to have an Islamist regime installed in Libya, a government whose anti-Western policy would not bother Erdogan a bit. Hence, not exactly a wonderful gesture.

?Syria. Same as above, only worse. This is not a pro-democratic policy but a pro-Islamist policy.

?Repeatedly won free elections. Absolutely true but how does this undermine the Fox journalist, Bret Baier?s, analysis?

?Expanded rights. It is true that the constitutional reform offered some real alleviations of historic Turkish statism but, as many liberal critics in Turkey pointed out, the candy coating concealed major steps to subordinate the judiciary to the current government. Arguably, these changes are resulting in diminished rights for Turks.

In other words, if the case against the Turkish regime isn?t 100 percent, it?s far closer to that than half-and-half.

Diehl continues:

?The reality is that, like it or not, `Islamist-oriented? governments are about to become the new normal in a region dominated for decades by secular autocrats and pro-American generals. So the crude bias about Muslim movements that is baked into the worldview of many U.S. conservatives?that they are inevitably fundamentalist, anti-democratic, anti-Israel and anti-American, if not explicitly ?terrorist??has become a serious liability. If heeded, it will make it impossible for this administration and future ones to navigate the region?s new politics and preserve crucial alliances.?

Unfortunately, Diehl did not repeat here his discussion of how both sides are too ?one-sided? in this debate. After all, while I and a lot of pro-Western forces in the Middle East don?t like what?s happening, the Obama Administration does. It?s one thing to say that we have no choice?that is often a valid point in policy debates?and quite another to show that the Western political establishment is helping create a bad situation.

Leaving that aside, it is true that much of the analysis of Islam, Islamism, and Middle East politics on the right is too crude. Yet in part this is a reaction to the failure of the mass media, experts, the government, and the policy establishment to offer a reasonable picture. By portraying Islam as a perfect ?religion of peace? and revolutionary Islamism as moderate, these institutions have created a suspicious opposition ready to go to another extreme.

But the truth does not lie completely in the middle either. Diehl continues:

?Some Islamic movements may turn out like Hamas and Hezbollah ? implacably hostile. But others, like Egypt?s Muslim Brotherhood, are likely to weave through an ambiguous middle ground, trying to balance the need for Western investment and the secular aspirations of their populations with their religious ideology. The right way to respond to them is to be nimble: tolerate some turbulence, roll with some punches, push back against others and keep pressing leaders to stick to democratic principles.?

His last sentence is quite correct. What?s needed is a policy of maneuver and pressure, not one of sledgehammer negativity. At the same time, though, it is quite reasonable to doubt that the Brotherhood will weave through a middle ground. How can one say their populations have ?secular aspirations? when they don?t vote that way? Of course, Tunisia is different from Libya or Egypt but unfortunately the last two are the strategically significant countries.

There are two things that the Western establishment simply cannot seem to admit:

?There can be democratic elections in which a majority votes for what is in effect a dictatorial government.

?There can be populations where a majority or a sector large enough to dominate have radical Islamist, not secular, aspirations.

Can the Brotherhood be constrained by a combination of tough Western policies, a nationalist president in Egypt, the carrots of military aid and investment? Maybe. But one thing for sure: Obama policy, with its apologies, concessions, and coddling can?t do it.

In addition, one should add into that alternative policy the following elements: Alliance with regional anti-Islamist forces (Israel, Saudi Arabia and the GCC states, Jordan, and Algeria); strong support for democratic opposition movements (in Turkey, Lebanon, Iran, and Syria); figuring out how to help real moderate forces (Egypt, Tunisia, Libya); and an energetic strategy to counter the radicals? aggressive and subversive foreign policy efforts.

At least one can have a serious dialogue with Diehl, who is actually thinking about the complexities of the issues involved. I simply cannot think of a single other mass media journalist?not one?who either thinks or writes as he does. That?s pretty devastating.

Moreover, since the columns and airtime of the mass media is basically closed for contrasting views, how can one possibly reach the same audience, especially since part of the mass media?s propaganda mission is to caricature the critics by highlighting the dumbest statements (and painting dissent as Islamophobia)?

Equally, though, Diehl?s challenge to the critics of the mainstream thinking on the Middle East is also very serious. Unless Republican presidential candidates, conservative thinkers, and those holding alternative views can develop an accurate and sophisticated analysis, they are not going to win this debate or develop a better strategy.

RSS 2.0: http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Doc’s Talk

Jhala Nath Khanal Jigme Thinley Joan Enric Vives Sicilia Johanna Siguroardottir John Atta Mills

Business Times – 25 Jan 2012

Republican race gets wide open and more divisive

It’s possible the nominee to challenge Obama won’t be decided till Republican convention

By LEON HADAR
WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT

FORMER Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has lost his earlier designation as his party’s presumptive presidential nominee after his electoral defeat in the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina on Saturday.

His margin of defeat of about 14 per cent against Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, was quite devastating for him and came at the end of a week during which the former business executive seemed to be losing his political momentum.

First came the news that after a recount of the votes in the first Republican presidential contest this year, the caucuses in Iowa, Republican officials reversed their earlier estimate – that Mr Romney had come in first – and announced that former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum had won that race.

Then came the decision by Texas Governor Rick Perry and his endorsement of Mr Gingrich.

Republicans were expecting the social and cultural conservative Perry to do well among the rank and file of the party, especially in southern states such as South Carolina. But Mr Perry’s poor performance in the televised debates disappointed many conservative Republicans – including the large contingency of Tea Party members. They also suspect Mr Romney of being a closet liberal.

These conservative Republicans divided their vote between Mr Santorum, the fiery crusader against abortion and gay rights; the veteran libertarian activist Ron Paul, a Congressman from Texas; and Mr Gingrich.

For a while, it seemed that Mr Santorum who came in second place in New Hampshire would be the main beneficiary of the anti-Romney vote. After all, it did not seem likely that the 67-year old thrice married serial adulterer Gingrich – his second wife told reporters last week that Mr Gingrich had suggested that they have an ‘open marriage’ while continuing an affair with the woman who would eventually become his third wife – would win the hearts and minds of the conservative Christian voters in the Bible Belt in the South.

But the rotund Mr Gingrich defied these low expectations. His oratorical skills and his savage attacks against the ‘elite media’ and ‘secular liberals’, spiced with racist innuendos aimed at President Barack Obama – calling him ‘the greatest food-stamp president in American history’ who exhibits ‘anti-American’ tendencies – appealed to many conservative Republicans in this former slave state.

According to opinion polls, close to a third of all Republican voters believe that President Obama is a Muslim.

In fact, Mr Gingrich turned around the accusations of adultery against him and exploited the interview with his ex-wife as an opportunity to blast the mainstream media that Republicans love to hate.

Moreover, both Mr Gingrich and Mr Santorum have continued to attack Mr Romney of not being a ‘real’ conservative. He has changed his earlier views on abortion and gay rights – he had supported both in the past – and, as the governor of Massachusetts, crafted government-backed health care insurance plan that served as a model for the one embraced by the president (Obamacare) that Republicans loath.

And then there have been the accusations by Mr Gingrich and Mr Santorum that working in Bain Capital, a company that helped restructure and refinance faltering businesses, Mr Romney engaged in so-called ‘vulture capitalism’ – making loads of money on the backs of laid off American workers.

Indeed, at a time when more and more Americans are becoming concerned over the widening economic gap in the US, these attacks against Mr Romney – a millionaire and a son of a billionaire and by definition, a member of the wealthiest one per cent of Americans – have clearly been hurting the former business executive in states like South Carolina where the unemployment rate is even higher than the (high) average.

Mr Romney has rejected the criticism of his work at Bain Capital and accused his Republican and Democratic attackers of engaging in the ‘politics of envy’ and in ‘class welfare’. But Mr Romney’s resistance to releasing his tax returns and reports that he maintains banking accounts in the Cayman Islands – coupled with comments that reflect a lack of concern about the plight of the poor – have raised concerns that he may be ‘out of touch’ with the economically distressed majority of Americans.

So it is not surprising that even members of the Republican Party’s establishment who tend to feel comfortable with Mr Romney’s centrist positions are getting worried that their favourite candidate would be vulnerable to the kind of populist us-against-them that President Obama is planning to launch against the Republicans.

The Democratic message is expected to depict the Republicans generally and their presidential candidate as political allies of Big Business who want to reduce taxes for their buddies in Wall Street while slashing social-economic programmes that help blue collar workers and the middle class.

Mr Romney’s second place in South Carolina does not mean that he is not going to become the presidential nominee. Nor does Mr Gingrich’s victory solidify his position as a front runner. The Republican bosses may be less excited about Mr Romney but they have even less confidence in the ability of the temperamental Mr Gingrich to win the votes of centrist independent voters and may conclude that they have no choice but to mobilise all organisational and financial resources behind the more moderate and telegenic Mr Romney.

In addition, Mr Santorum and Mr Paul are not planning to withdraw from the race anytime soon and will continue to compete with Mr Gingrich over the conservative and the Tea Party vote.

While Mr Romney may have an organisational advantage and the support of the Republican establishment in Florida where the next primary will take place, Mr Gingrich is benefiting from a growing political momentum and Republican sentiment in this southern state where the Republican convention which selects the presidential nominee will take place in the summer.

It is not inconceivable that Mr Romney, Mr Gingrich, Mr Santorum and Mr Paul will each arrive to the convention with their delegates and that the choice of the party’s presidential nominee will be made there.

Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Realpolitiker: Global Paradigms

Bamir Topi Barack Obama Barnabas Sibusiso Dlamini Bashar al Assad Benigno Aquino III

World news

Ignacio Milam Tang Igor Luksic Ilham Aliyev Iolu Abil Irsen Kucuk

Pat Dollard » Politics

King Carl XVI Gustaf King George Tupou V King Harald V King Juan Carlos I King Letsie III

IBD:

The last time the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate passed a budget was April 29, 2009 ? 1,000 days ago. It’s no mystery why: They don’t want taxpayers to know about the trillions they’re wasting.

A published budget would be an election-year death warrant for Senate Democrats, because Republican Senate candidates would stuff its highlights into every mailbox they could.

As Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., points out, going budget-less for so long has devastated our economy as Democrats have spent “$ 9.4 trillion and added $ 4.1 trillion to the national debt,” plus over $ 1 trillion in deficits.

…

It is part of their politics of fraud.  Hide the debt until the last minute and then accuse the Republicans of shutting down the government if they object.  It has worked so well the last couple of years, expect them to do the same thing again.

PrairiePundit

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner Dalia Grybauskaite Dame Louise Lake Tack Dame Pearlette Louisy Daniel Ortega

Michael Yon has written a short note entitled Time To Leave Afghanistan.  I concur, but for somewhat different reasons, or at least, I will state my reasons somewhat differently.  I had been pondering going public with my counsel to withdraw from Afghanistan, and then I read possibly the most depressing entry on Afghanistan I have ever seen, from Tim Lynch.  Some of it is repeated below.

Ten years ago, Afghans were thrilled to see us and thought that finally they could live in peace and develop their country …

Five years ago they watched us flounder – we stayed on FOBs and shoveled cash by the billions into the hands of a corrupt central government that we insisted, despite clear evidence to the contrary, was a legitimate government – one that had to be supported at all costs. We raided their homes at night and shot up civilians who got too close to our convoys, we paid for roads that did not exist and, because of the “force protection” mentality, most Afghans thought our soldiers were cowards because they never came to the bazaar off duty and unarmored to buy stuff like the Russians did. In fact, every bite of food our soldiers consumed was flown into country at great expense, so in a land famous for its melons and grapes our troops ate crappy melon and tasteless grapes flown in by contractors from God knows where.

Now, they want to shoot us in the face. Except for the klepocratic elite who want us to give them billions more and then shoot us in the face.

There it is; Afghanistan is toast, and what the last 10 years has taught us is we cannot afford to deploy American ground forces.  Two billion dollars a week (that?s billion with a B) has bought what?  Every year we stay to ?bring security to the people,? the security situation for the people gets worse and worse, deteriorating by orders of magnitude.  Now the boy genius has announced a ?new strategy?.  A strategy that is identical to the ?strategy? that resulted in a hollow ground force getting its ass kicked by North Korea in 1950; a mere five years after we had ascended to the most dominant military the world had ever known.

Tim goes on to say things about Iraq and national defense policy with which I don’t entirely agree.  My views on Iraq are complicated, as my readers know, and I will recapitulate (and summarize) them soon.  But if anyone would know that Afghanistan is toast, Tim Lynch would.

Listen well.  This is no anti-war cry.  I have argued virtually non-stop for increasing troop levels, staying the course, and increased (and different) lines of logistics for support of our troops.  But I have watched with dismay and even panic over the course of the last six years as we haven’t taken the campaign seriously, and good men have suffered and perished because of it.

I have watched as different members of NATO carried different strategies into the campaign without being united at the top level.  I have argued for recognizing the resurgence of the Taliban, while General Rodriguez argued against even the possibility of a spring offensive in 2008.  I watched as that same general micromanaged the Marines as they surged into the Helmand Province, issuing an order requiring that his operations center clear any airstrike that was on a housing compound in the area but not sought in self-defense.

We have seen General McChrystal issue awful and debilitating rules of engagement, along with personal stipulations that modified them to be even more restrictive.  ?If you are in a situation where you are under fire from the enemy? if there is any chance of creating civilian casualties or if you don?t know whether you will create civilian casualties, if you can withdraw from that situation without firing, then you must do so,? said McChrystal.

Those disastrous rules and McChrystal’s disastrous management played a critical role in the shameful and immoral deaths of three Marines, a Navy Corpsman and a Soldier at Ganjgal, the firefight where Dakota Meyer earned his MoH.  Read the comments of the families of those warriors who perished at Ganjgal, and let the sentiments wash over you.

Study again my writing on Now Zad.  I was the only writer or blogger anywhere who was following the Marines at Now Zad – how they brought more trauma doctors with them than usual due to the massive loss of limbs and life that Marine command knew they would sustain, how they lived in so-called Hobbit holes in Now Zad, two or three Marines to a hole in distributed operations, hunting for Taliban fighters who had taken R&R in Now Zad because we didn’t have enough troops to prevent them from doing so.

While I was arguing for more Marines in Now Zad, I watched as a Battalion of infantrymen at Camp Lejeune (the class entering after my own son returned from his combat deployment in Iraq) entered the Marines expecting to go to Afghanistan or Iraq.  At that time we were heading for the exits in the Anbar Province of Iraq, and instead of focusing on Marines losing their legs and screaming for help in Now Zad, Afghanistan, that Battalion went on a wasteful MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit).  No MEU has ever been used by a President for anything in the history of doing MEUs except for humanitarian missions.

So that Battalion didn’t deploy to Iraq, went on a MEU, and then weren’t on rotation for Afghanistan.  Instead of helping their brothers in Now Zad, the Marine Corps Commandant had them playing Iwo Jima, as if we’re ever going to launch a major, sea-based forcible entry again.  A full Battalion of infantry Marines with two wars going on – and no deployment to Iraq, and no deployment to Afghanistan in a four year enlistment.

I argued against night raids by the so-called “snake eaters,” with them flying back to the FOBs that night, totally absent from the locals to explain what happened and why.  In addition to pointing out the wrong way to do it, I pointed out the right way to do it in lieu of night time raids by snake eaters.  I have argued for following and killing every single Taliban fighter into the hinterlands of Afghanistan, while the strategists under General McChrystal withdrew to the population centers just like the Russians did.

I pointed out that withdrawal from the Pech River Valley would invite the return of of al qaeda, Haqqani and allied fighters, and that’s exactly what happened.  I have been in the thick of this with my advocacy for the campaign, but again and again, it has become clear that we aren’t going to take this campaign seriously.  I have advocated against nation building, and by now I think it has become clear that population-centric counterinsurgency and nation building won’t ever work in Afghanistan.  Staying long enough with enough troops to find and kill the enemy has its problems, of course, including the fact that we may have to go back in eight or ten years later and do it all over again.

But that’s the Marine way.  Do now what has to be done, do it quickly and violently, achieve the mission, and leave.  At least I have been consistent, while always acknowledging that we cannot possibly achieve anything permanent, and will probably have to return at some point.  As it is, it isn’t clear that we’ve achieved anything at all.

The Wise family from Arkansas has lost their second son in Afghanistan.  For all those warriors who have given their all, and those families still suffering today because of that, America isn’t worthy of their sacrifices.  To be sure, if we continue the campaign there will still be magnificent warriors who answer the call.  But it’s our duty to take seriously the war to which we’re calling them if we let them go.  We’re heading for the exits, releasing insurgents from prisons in Afghanistan, and instead of trying to develop better lines of logistics, we’re trying to figure out how to get all of our equipment out of Afghanistan.

Regardless of who calls for what, the President will ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff what can be done to withdraw.  They will ask the flag and staff officers, and the staff officers will ask the logistics officers.  Logistics will decide how and when we can withdraw from Afghanistan.  No one else.

But within that framework, I am calling for the full, immediate and comprehensive withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan, and that we focus exclusively on force protection until that can be accomplished.  It’s time to come home.

UPDATE: Many thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the attention.

UPDATE #2: Thanks to Michael Yon for the attention.

The Captain’s Journal

Christian Wulff Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner Dalia Grybauskaite Dame Louise Lake Tack Dame Pearlette Louisy

GIGLIO ISLAND, Italy ? Rescuers found the bodies of two women in the wreck of an Italian ship on Monday bringing the death toll to 15, as a Dutch company was given the go-ahead to pump out its 2,380 tons of fuel.

The grim discovery near the Costa Concordia cruise liner’s Internet cafe came after navy frogmen used explosive to blew open more access points for divers.

“Two more bodies, two women, were found,” said Franco Gabrielli, who is overseeing search and rescue operations on the Tuscan island of Giglio.

“We cannot tell what nationality they were. They haven’t been extracted” from the half-submerged vessel, he told reporters on the scene.

Gabrielli said that DNA from the corpses would be compared to that of relatives of the missing, some of whom are awaiting anxiously on the shore with no news of their loved ones 10 days after the night-time disaster.

Seventeen people are officially still missing, although officials have emphasized there could have been at least one stowaway, a Hungarian woman, who was not on the list of people on board and is unaccounted for.

Gabrielli said the search of the 114,500-ton ship would continue “until all parts of the vessel that can be inspected have been checked out” and that a complex operation to empty the fuel tanks could be carried out at the same time.

“We have given authorization for the pumping to begin,” he said.

Bart Huizing, a representative of Smit Salvage on the island, said: “We are ready to go. We are ready to start working. If possible tomorrow.”

The operation, known as “hot-tapping”, involves pumping the fuel out into a nearby ship and replacing it with water so as not to affect the ship’s balance.

Environmentalists say the fuel tanks have to be emptied as soon as possible to avert an environmental catastrophe in Europe’s biggest marine sanctuary.

Gabrielli said there has already been some contamination of the sea from toxic substances on board although tests carried out by the environmental agency on samples of sea water near the wreck showed no hydrocarbon pollution.

The coastguard said that emptying the fuel tanks would take 28 days and was expected to start as early as Tuesday. There will be three lines of booms around the ship while the operation is going on to avoid possible spills.

Gabrielli also said that emergency workers were trying to clear out the inside of the wreckage, saying that the decomposition of food products, the clutter of furniture and the turbid waters were complicating the work.

“The ship is stable so there is no need for outside intervention. There is no problem,” he added, in response to fears that the vessel, lying on its side, was slowly slipping into the open sea.

Navy divers set off small quantities of explosives at depths of up to 18 metres to allow access to decks four and five of the luxury cruise ship.

Italian media meanwhile reported that the ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, who faces charges of multiple manslaughter, had tested negative for drugs, while his lawyer said there could be other suspects in the tragedy.

“The investigations are in full flow also to determine possible other responsibilities of third parties who could at least have had a role” in causing the shipwreck, Bruno Leporatti was quoted as saying.

Schettino has claimed that the risky route he took close to Giglio in what he admitted was a showboating manoeuvre was agreed beforehand with his superiors at Costa Crociere ? a subsidiary of U.S.-based giant Carnival Corp.

He has also said that he kept the company’s crisis officer fully informed about the scale of the disaster within minutes of hitting rocks, while the order to abandon ship was only given more than an hour later.

The shipping line declined to comment when contacted by AFP.

Navy spokesman Alessandro Busonero also said an oceanographic ship, the Galatea, had arrived on Giglio to help search for more bodies on the sea bed with the help of high-resolution imaging equipment.

The Costa Concordia had 4,229 people on board from more than 60 countries when it hit rocks and keeled over, prompting a chaotic evacuation.

Confusing reports also emerged over Schettino’s actions in the hours after the crash as the owner of a hotel on the island said he saw him hand over what looked like a personal computer to an unknown blonde woman.

Paolo Fanciulli, 45, who owns the Hotel Bahamas, said the woman swept into the lobby, took the bag and ushered Schettino away from journalists at around 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, the morning after the shipwreck.

© Copyright (c) AFP

Vancouver Sun – News / World

Ali Bongo Ondimba Ali Mohammed Mujur Almazbek Atambayev Alpha Conde Alvaro Colom

Ordinary Iranians have been struggling with accelerated inflation as sanctions begin to bite.

Tehran, Iran (CNN) — Many in the West would like to see Iran punished for its nuclear ambitions. Tehran’s residents would like those people to take a glimpse into their lives.

The European Union announced Monday it is banning the import of Iranian crude oil and blocking trade in gold, diamonds, and precious metals, among other steps, adding to sanctions already imposed by the United States and the United Nations. The measures take a big toll on Iran’s lifeblood oil revenues.

The lives of ordinary Iranians have been deeply touched in recent weeks by the Western sanctions. Several spoke to CNN about how they are coping with staggering inflation and a plunging national currency, although none felt comfortable being fully identified, fearful of the Islamic Republic’s long reach into private lives.

Farhad, 47, was once comfortable, but things began sliding downhill when sanctions came and the foreign oil firm that employed him packed up and left.

As a taxi driver, he works hard but saves little money. With the latest round of U.S. sanctions imposed on Iran’s Central Bank last month, he has seen staggering inflation; the price of meat and milk have skyrocketed by as much as 50 percent.

He and his wife have stopped having guests at their home or going out to eat. They can’t remember when they bought new clothes and no longer send their suits to the cleaners.

“I feel bad for the cleaners,” he says. “They must be suffering as a result of people like me not using their services.”

Farhad has a savings account that is shrinking fast as he dips into it to make ends meet.

His 21-year-old son works two part-time jobs while he earns a degree in computer science. Farhad feels bad that he can’t afford to buy him the computer equipment he needs.

“I wait and pray for something to spark the economy and get it going, but I am not holding my breath,” he says. “Life must go on. We can only wait and see what the future has in store for us.”

In the meantime, he says, the only way for his sons to live a decent life is to fall in with influential people or make shady business deals like trading foreign currency on the black market.

The United States and other Western powers argue sanctions that target Iran’s central bank, oil exports and foreign trade are designed to push Iran to cooperate at the nuclear negotiating table. They believe the Islamic Republic is developing nuclear weapons, although Tehran insists its program is reserved strictly for civilian energy purposes.

Prospects for talks have been dimmed by recent bellicose talk and actions aimed at destabilizing the Tehran government.

It’s doubtful, most analysts say, that punitive measures will bring Iran to its knees. Doubtful, too, is that Tehran residents will suffer the same fate as their Baghdad counterparts, who for years, under international sanctions against Saddam Hussein’s regime, faced dire shortages of basic goods.

But as Iranian-American scholar Haleh Esfandiari put it, the latest sanctions have been back-breaking, not just for the less affluent but also for the middle class.

“People are buying less because the prices have gone up,” she said. “That affects the shopkeepers. It’s a vicious cycle.”

For many people, monthly government subsidies of $ 40 or $ 50 are no longer enough to get by, Esfandiari said.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told parliament recently that the most recent sanctions — imposed after an International Atomic Energy Agency report that said Tehran appeared to have worked on developing a nuclear bomb — were “the most extensive … sanctions ever.” Ahmadinejad called the sanctions “the heaviest economic onslaught on a nation in history … every day, all our banking and trade activities and our agreements are being monitored and blocked.”

With the punitive measures came the downward spiral of the Iranian currency, the rial, severely devalued in the past few months against the U.S. dollar. That plunge, said CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, is a key indication of Iran’s instability.

“When Barack Obama became president, you could buy 9,700 rials with one dollar,” he wrote in a column. “Since then, the dollar has appreciated 60 percent against the rial, meaning you can buy 15,600 rials. Tehran’s reaction to the prospect of sanctions that affect its oil exports shows its desperation.”

The higher dollar, of course, has made imported goods unaffordable for most Iranians.

Farhad says he eyed a refrigerator several months ago. It was made in Iran and affordable. But when he returned to buy it, the price had gone up 20 percent. The salesman informed him that parts of the fridge were made in South Korea.

The soaring prices and declining currency values come at a time when Iran is already facing “huge challenges” created partly by government mismanagement and failures in foreign policy, said one economist in Iran.

“I think the situation will be aggravated in the coming months,” he told CNN. “We will witness higher inflation and unemployment rates with less economic growth.”

Those who study the impact of sanctions argue that they must hurt in order to be effective, but not to the point where they break the economy, like they did in Iraq.

That does not bode well for Iranians trying to make ends meet.

Yaqoub, 59, fancies himself a retired tea man. That is, financial losses forced the office where he worked to close three years ago. He now does odd jobs. He manages to make about $ 200 a month and receives another $ 135 from the government. The youngest of his three daughters is not married yet and still lives with her parents.

He says the family gave up eating fruit — it’s too pricey and now is just a treat when guests come over.

Red meat went up from about $ 6 a kilogram to $ 9. Dinner at his house means vegetarian rice and beans.

“When I ask the shopkeepers why the prices keep going up, (they) say the government sets the prices and they have to do as they are told,” he says. “People are hungry and this is why crime has gone up.”

He says his son-in-law’s motorcycle was stolen in front of his house. Theft was not something he worried about before.

It’s not just the price of food and consumer goods that are hurting Iranians. Services like electricity and water are costing more, too. Yaqoub’s monthly utility bill has almost doubled to $ 19 a month.

Add it all up, he says, and it’s tough to make it on his income.

His wife tells him to stop worrying or he’ll have a heart attack.

“I guess if we get really stuck for our daily expenses, I would have to move to a cheaper apartment or, in the worst case scenario, there will be no choice but to go to the north and live with my wife’s parents. At least I won’t have to worry about the rent there,” he says.

Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian-American Council, says sanctions are putting far more pressure on Iran’s citizenry than on the regime they are intend to punish.

“The government always has the ability to circumvent sanctions and shift the burden onto the population,” Parsi says.

Davood, 39, says he and his wife both have college degrees, but he earns money doing chores at an office — making lunch, running errands, even cleaning.

He worries for Assal, his 5-year-old daughter. Perhaps a day will come when he has to move to a less expensive city in order to pay for her education.

“I see no chance for me to ever find a job where I can use my university degree,” he says. “I am almost 40 now and as time goes by and I get older, no one will hire me. As it is, I am always worried that I may lose my job.”

Some Tehran residents are stocking up on things while they can afford it, and while they are still on the shelves.

Rose, a retired nurse who survives solely on her government pension, bought a supply of grains and canned foods, just in case. She also feels lucky to own her apartment, so she doesn’t have to worry about making rent.

She says a friend recently was hospitalized for two weeks. It cost her more than $ 11,000.

“Of course you cannot blame the doctors and hospitals because they have to pay for high-priced foods, materials and equipment,” the nurse says. “Everything is related. High prices of food affect everything.”

Analysts say the government ought to be fearful of too much discontent. Unemployment and stagflation helped fuel the 2009 mass demonstrations that at times appeared on the brink of bringing change to Iran’s authoritarian rule.

Farhad says he understands he is caught up in global politics.

“I don’t know what must be done to correct the economic condition, but I don’t blame the Americans and their sanctions,” he says.

Washington has to watch out for its own interests. And Iran, he says, must do what it can to safeguard its own.

CNN’s Shirzad Bozorgmehr reported from Tehran, Iran, and Moni Basu from Atlanta. CNN’s Josh Levs contributed from Atlanta.

CNN.com – World

Acting Jakup Krasniqi Acting Marian Lupu Adolphe Muzito Ahmed Ouyahia Ahmed Shafik

Rowan Scarborough:

If Syria?s regime falls, the U.S. will be in a better position to answer one of the lingering questions from the long Iraq War: Did Baghdad ship weapons of mass destruction components toSyria before the 2003 American-led invasion?

An opposition leader tells The Washington Times that a new, secular democracy in Syria would allow outside inspectors to survey and ensure destruction of what is believed to be one of the largest stockpiles of chemical weapons in the Middle East.

Western and Israeli intelligence suspect thatBashar Assad?s regime in Syria also owns weaponized nerve agents.

Spy satellites tracked a large number of truck convoys moving from Iraqto Syria in the weeks before the 2003 invasion, raising suspicions that some carried weapons of mass destruction.

The invading Americans never found stocks of such weapons in Iraq, despite two years of searching by the Iraq Survey Group.

The result spurred the political left to attack President Bush with slogans such as ?Bush lied, troops died,? but nonpartisan national security figures said there was evidence that material may have been moved toSyria. There was just no way to get inside the Iranian-supported dictatorship to take a look.

Zuhdi Jasser, a Syrian-American physician who co-founded the groupSave Syria Now, is working to bring an elected secular government to Damascus. He said the Assad regime, which has used brutal repression to remain in power, can fall within a year if the popular uprising comes to the capital.

?As far as making sure there is a public transparent disposal of [weapons of mass destruction], I believe so,? Dr. Jasser told The Times.

He said an emerging group, the Syrian Democratic Coalition, is preparing a pledge by pro-democracy members.

?Many of us are banking on the fact they will not protect any arsenals there and allow a transparent change so they can be welcomed into the world community and not simply exchange one fascist government for another,? he said.

Disposing of Syria?s chemical weapons ?has to be part of the transition,? he said.

Research groups say the Assad regime maintains large stocks of chemical weapons, including mustard gas.

… 

This is one of many mysteries of the Iraq war that could be resolved.  But, I have also seen reports that the weapons were taken into Lebanon and hidden by Hezballah, so Assad’s demise may not solve the mystery right away.   Syria was also a major transit point for al Qaeda into Iraq.  Discovering how that transit worked and who facilitated the transits would also be useful.  Then there is all the other terrorists that have been given sanctuary in Syria.  What were the regime’s ties with North Korea on building nukes?  What are their ties to Iran?

PrairiePundit

Bruce Golding Carlos Gomes Junior Choummaly Sayasone Christian Wulff Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner

Reporting from Cairo and Sana, Yemen?

Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh left his battered nation Sunday for medical treatment in the U.S., asking his countrymen to forgive him for years of turmoil and vowing to return to the Arabian Peninsula state he has ruled for decades.

It was not immediately evident what effect Saleh’s absence from Sana would have on a government weakened by protests, resurgent Al Qaeda militants, secessionist rumblings in the south and a rebellion in the north. The president’s departure was characteristic of his brash, often unpredictable nature that has long kept his friends and enemies off balance.

“I will leave for treatment in the United States and I will return to Sana as head of the General People’s Congress party,” Saleh was quoted by the state news agency as telling party officials in the capital. “I ask for pardon from all Yemeni men and women for any shortcoming that occurred during my 33-year rule and I ask forgiveness and offer my apologies.”

The State Department confirmed that Saleh’s request to travel to the United States had been approved. “As we have indicated, the sole purpose of this travel is for medical treatment and we expect that he will stay for a limited time that corresponds to the duration of this treatment,” a spokesman said.

Saleh, who was severely wounded in a bomb attack on his compound in June, flew to Oman on his way to the U.S. The trip came one day after parliament granted him immunity from prosecution. The president left behind a family he has shrewdly kept at the center of power, including his son, Ahmed, and nephews and a brother who oversee military and intelligence agencies.

“His son still controls the Republican Guard and his brother and nephews control Central Security and Special Forces,” said Basheer Samawi, an antigovernment activist. “We will still be ruled by Saleh, but only by different faces.”

Saleh handed much of his authority to Vice President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi in December after an immunity deal that was backed by the U.S., Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries. On Sunday, Saleh vowed to return to Yemen before presidential elections in February, which Hadi, the only candidate thus far, appears certain to win.

Saleh spent months in Saudi Arabia recuperating from injuries from the assassination attempt. Many thought the president would be outmaneuvered by his political opponents and other enemies but Saleh returned home defiant. The nation’s problems, however, have escalated as Saleh has been unable to defeat rival tribes, mutinous soldiers and Al Qaeda fighters who have overrun towns and villages.

International pressure against him has intensified since protests against his rule began early last year as part of a wave of uprisings that swept the Middle East and North Africa. Saleh had been a close U.S. ally against Al Qaeda but the Obama administration grew critical of him after Yemeni security forces repeatedly attacked peaceful protesters across the country.

Tens of thousands of protesters were outraged by the immunity deal, saying Saleh should be held accountable for the deaths of hundreds of street demonstrators. Many of them chanted, “It is our duty to execute the butcher,” as Saleh was preparing to leave Sunday.

A former tank commander, Saleh first announced in December that he would seek medical treatment in the U.S. He abruptly canceled weeks later after Washington appeared skittish at the prospect of greeting an autocrat at a time of dramatic regional upheaval.

“Saleh will be weakened by his leaving. Those around him will also be weakened,” said Gamal Hanesh, an antigovernment activist. “He won’t be in the media. He won’t have influence. It’s very important that he be gone so this coming election will go smoothly. Yemen will get better, not soon, but it will get better.”

Much of the country ? the poorest in the Arab world ? has been carved into battle zones: Secessionists are plotting in the south, Al Qaeda militants have seized a town about 150 miles from the capital, Houthi rebels are fighting in the north, and tribal militias and forces loyal to a general who defected have been battling government troops.

“Saleh has left, but his family, tribe and party are still here. This is positive because it will keep a balance of power in Sana,” said Ali Saif Hassan, head of the Political Development Forum in the capital. “But the problems will come later. We need to solve the country’s deeper problems of the secessionists, the Houthis and Al Qaeda.”

On Sunday, in what was billed as a farewell speech, Saleh told his supporters, “Today, I leave the country in your hands.”

He said Vice President Hadi “is the one responsible now” and he urged the fragile unity government to find “reconciliation” among the nation’s many factions. He added, “We need now to take care of our martyrs and our wounds.”

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

Times staff writer Fleishman reported from Cairo and special correspondent Al-Alayaa from Sana. Staff writer Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

World – latimes.com

King Juan Carlos I King Letsie III King Mswati III King Muhammad VI King Norodom Sihamoni

The Daily Caller:

BALTIMORE, Md. ? During a House GOP retreat in Baltimore on Friday, press secretaries for Speaker of the House John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor balked when asked if their bosses believe Attorney General Eric Holder should resign over Operation Fast and Furious.

Sixty-three congressmen, two senators, two sitting governors and every major Republican presidential candidate have demanded Holder?s ouster over the resulting scandal. And 89 congressmen have signed a House resolution of ?no confidence? in Holder as the nation?s top law enforcement officer. Between the two lists, which don?t perfectly overlap, 101 members of the House have ?no confidence? in Holder, believe he should resign or both.

Though that number ? 101 Congressmen ? is nearly half of the 242-member Republican caucus in the House, and the surge continues to grow, the press secretaries for Boehner and Cantor refused to answer the question.

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel has ignored emails on the subject for months, but when TheDC caught up with him at the retreat and again asked if his boss thinks Holder should resign for the gunrunning operation that killed U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and at least 300 Mexican civilians, Steel replied, ?I don?t think he has said anything on that.?

TheDC followed up with Steel in the lobby of the Waterfront Marriott and asked him if he?d just ask Boehner the question. ?Yeah, maybe,? Steel replied.

As of 5 p.m. on Sunday, Steel still hasn?t answered whether Boehner agrees with the 101 members in the House GOP caucus about Holder. Instead, Steel said, ?The speaker appreciates the hard work that Chairman Issa and many others have done to expose this scandal. President Obama?s Department of Justice needs to be accountable.?

Cantor?s press secretary, Laena Fallon, deflected questions in a similar way, telling TheDC that Cantor ?doesn?t sign onto legislation, as a rule, as majority leader?

Fallon was referencing House Resolution 490, the bill that expresses ?no confidence? in Holder because of Fast and Furious. When asked if Cantor agreed ?with the concept,? Fallon replied, ?I don?t know.?

TheDC: Can you ask him for me?
FALLON: I?ll see, he?s in meetings.
TheDC: I can take an answer whenever. It?s just a ?yes? or ?no.?
FALLON: I?ll ask and see if I can get you something, but I don?t know what he?ll say.?

By Sunday at 5 p.m., Fallon has still not responded.

Fast and Furious was a program of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, overseen by Holder?s DOJ. It sent thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels via straw purchasers ? people who legally purchased guns in the United States with the known intention of illegally trafficking them somewhere else.

At least 300 people in Mexico were killed with Fast and Furious weapons, as was Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. The identities of the Mexican victims are unknown. Allegations have surfaced that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata was also killed with Fast and Furious weapons.

Pat Dollard » Politics

Danilo Turk Danny Philip David Cameron David Johnston Dean Barrow

Reuters:

A U.S. aircraft carrier sailed through the Strait of Hormuz and into the Gulf without incident on Sunday, a day after Iran backed away from an earlier threat to take action if an American carrier returned to the strategic waterway.

The carrier USS Abraham Lincoln completed a “regular and routine” passage through the strait, a critical gateway for the region’s oil exports, “as previously scheduled and without incident,” said Lieutenant Rebecca Rebarich, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fifth Fleet.

The Lincoln, accompanied by strike group of warships, was the first U.S. aircraft carrier to enter the Gulf since late December and was on a routine rotation to replace the outgoing USS John C. Stennis.

The departure of the Stennis prompted Iranian army chief Ataollah Salehi to threaten action if the carrier passed back into the Gulf.

“I recommend and emphasize to the American carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf. … We are not in the habit of warning more than once,” he said.

The threat led to a round of escalating rhetoric between the two sides that spooked oil markets and raised the specter of a military confrontation between Iran and the United States.

… 

About all Iran did with its bellicose threats was drive up the price of oil, which may have been their main objective to begin with.  It appears this crisis ended with a whimper of acceptance by Iran.

PrairiePundit

Bhumibol Adulyadej Bingu wa Mutharika Blaise Compaore Boris Tadic Borut Pahor

A view of the stricken luxury liner Costa Concordia off the Isola del Giglio on January 22, 2012.