[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Prince Turki bin Abdulziz, a brother of Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... ’s king, has died aged 83 in Riyadh on Saturday.
His death was confirmed in a statement from the palace published on the official news agency Saudi Press Agency.
Prince Turki was born in 1934 and was a son of Saudi Arabia’s founder, King Abdulaziz bin Saud. He was deputy minister of defense from 1968 to 1978 and was to be buried later on Saturday.
Prince Sultan bin Salman told AlArabiya.net that Prince Turki's death marks a big loss for Saudi Arabia for the nationalistic and noble principles that he stood for.
Photos of an emotional King Salman ...either the largest species of Pacific salmon or the current Sheikh of the Burnin' Sands, Cutodian of the Two Holy Mosquesand Lord of Most of the Arabians.... leading funeral prayers for the late Prince Turki emerged online. He will be receiving condolences for three days from Saturday evening, the palace said.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/13/2016 00:00 ||
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North Korean authorities may have requested Beijing to block searches of a phrase that mocks Kim Jong Un, according to reports. Apparently Nork censors have given up trying to keep up with Dr. Steve's mockery of Kim Jong Nom.
Hong Kong news service Apple Daily had reported a derogatory nickname for Kim, "Kim Fatty III," was producing no results on Chinese social media networks and on search engine giant Baidu.
The report suggested Pyongyang might have protested the term. And shortly after the protest was lodged, the censor who filed the complaint disappeared out of fear he was introduced to the idea that Pudgy may not be perfect, after all.
That news article, however, has also been deleted from search results on Chinese networks, according to South Korean newspaper Herald Business.
Reports say the epithet for North Korea's leader was still searchable in September. By October and November, the results were being censored.
Chinese online commenters began making fun of Kim after December 2011, when he was seen mourning his father during a ceremony in Pyongyang, according to China Digital Times.
The search term was not available as recently as Tuesday, the report stated, but social media users were sharing screenshots of what appeared to be the Apple Daily headline which read, "North Korea Requests Chinese People Respectfully Address Kim Jong Un, Not Call Him Other Names or Kim Fatty III!"
Chinese commenters have frequently used the term on networks to air their frustrations at the North Korean ruler.
In August, Beijing was enforcing a new policy to curb anti-North Korea speech ridiculing Kim and in September an anti-Kim Jong Un rally was held in a Chinese city but photographs of the protest were promptly deleted by Chinese government censors.
[Dhaka Tribune] The election of climate change sceptic Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... as president is likely to end the US leadership role in the international fight against global warming and may lead to the emergence of a new and unlikely champion: China. Good idea. Put all your money into clean, renewable, climate-friendly energy. We'll mine all the coal and drill all the oil and natural gas we can find. If there's anyone, anyone you'd want to have in charge of a large, complicated, multi-national endeavor with a proven track record of environmental consciousness, why it'd be China, of course...
China worked closely with the administration of outgoing President Barack Obama I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody... to build momentum ahead of the 2015 Gay Paree Agreement on climate change. The partnership of the two biggest greenhouse gas emitters helped get nearly 200 countries to support the pact at the historic meet in La Belle France’s capital.
By contrast, Trump has called global warming a hoax created by China to give it an economic advantage and said he plans to remove the United States from the historic climate agreement, as well as reverse many of Obama’s measures to combat climate change.
He has appointed noted climate change sceptic Myron Ebell to help lead transition planning for the Environmental Protection Agency, which has crafted the administration’s major environmental regulations such as the Clean Power Plan and efficiency standards for cars and trucks.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/13/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
Is this the same China that is currently binging on building coal-fired power plants?
As some point - around the onset of the next ice age, I'd guess - Global Warming will be recognized as the biggest science scam since the Piltdown Man. But in the meantime, there is money to be made, gentlemen!
[Reuters] The Dow Jones industrial average ended at a record closing high on Friday, capping off its best week since 2011 after Donald Trump's unexpected victory in the U.S. presidential election.
Since his triumph on Tuesday, investors have been betting on Trump's campaign promises to simplify regulation in the health and financial sectors and boost spending on infrastructure.
"Wall Street is going to be watching a lot of (Trump's) appointments and policy announcements to see whether it validates the more optimistic tone we've seen in the markets in the past few days," said Alan Gayle, senior investment strategist and director of asset allocation at RidgeWorth Investments in Atlanta, Georgia.
The S&P 500 financial index .SPSY has gained 8 percent in the past three sessions and risen to levels not seen since 2008 during the financial crisis. The financial index has still not recovered to levels seen before the crisis.
Industrials .SPLRCI have surged 5 percent since the election and healthcare .SPXHC is up 3 percent.
Tempering sentiment among stock investors, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer said on Friday economic growth prospects appear strong enough for a gradual hike in interest rates, but the U.S. central bank is monitoring an increase in long-term government borrowing costs. Con't.
The Polish defence ministry is launching free nationwide classes for women to learn unarmed combat.
By George this is a brilliant idea. I wonder if we could do it here. Perhaps ROTC programs could do this on campuses. National Guard units could do this from their stations and armories. Combine this with a little PR on what our military does and who our outstanding men and women are in the services.
The classes will start at 30 military facilities, running from 19 November until 3 June. Polish army instructors will provide the training. The techniques will include defensive postures, how to break holds, and guards against kicks, strangulation and assaults with a weapon.
Some Poles see the initiative more as a way for the army to promote its image.
The ministry says it is the first time the military has offered such a nationwide programme. It is open to all Polish women aged 18 or above who are in good health.
A former special forces commander, Roman Polko, told the Dziennik Polski news website that it was not the army's job to teach citizens unarmed combat. He said it could be a way to spot potential recruits for the armed forces. But learning aikido or jujitsu moves "won't win a war," he said.
Another critic, Krakow journalist Marcin Ogdowski, said the lessons "have a propaganda dimension". He said women's self-defence classes should be run by the police, rather than the military.
Launching the programme, Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz said the aim was to teach women "basic fighting techniques and, above all, improve overall physical fitness". "We invite the ladies, there are still places - there are no age limits," he said.
Participants must have their own medical insurance and a letter freeing the defence ministry from any injury claims.
#1
If 'special interest' group studies are mandatory why isn't something like ROTC? I'd first have the ladies sit through Saving Private Ryan, Gettysburg, and the Crossing, to understand 'men's issues'. Welcome to equality. And the Polish and Baltic state governments should be handing the appropriate translated copies of this book to everyone.
The publisher of The New York Times penned a letter to readers Friday promising that the paper would "reflect" on its coverage of this year's election while rededicating itself to reporting on "America and the world" honestly. You'll have to changes to yourself at the DNA level. You'll need to fire the publisher, the editors, and the lunatic fringe reporters and consultants. Keep the token conservatives and hire a bunch more conservatives to balance the remaining "reasonable" liberals. You have all the typewriters, presses and delivery channels in place, you just need honest journalists in front of the typewriters. Aaaaand you'll have to acquaint everybody with what journalism's solemn role is supposed to be in a democracy, news ethics, etc.. Personally, I don't think anyone there has the political will for much more than token gestures towards this end. Instead, they will build some kind of facade and hope their readers don't figure it out. They probably won't. And they will limp forward to the next Democratic administration, scratching out paychecks, after which they will go back to full-moonbat mode over the course of a couple of years.
Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., the paper's embattled publisher, appealed to Times readers for their continued support.
"We cannot deliver the independent, original journalism for which we are known without the loyalty of our subscribers," the letter states. Known? How long into the past are you peering? How many of your present readers were paying attention to your content then?
New York Post columnist and former Times reporter Michael Goodwin wrote, "because it (The Times) demonized Trump from start to finish, it failed to realize he was onto something. And because the paper decided that Trump's supporters were a rabble of racist rednecks and homophobes, it didn't have a clue about what was happening in the lives of the Americans who elected the new president. Hey, it was an easy paycheck to feed the opinions of a bunch of delusional liberals looking for good feels in a tough world.
Sulzbergers letter was released after the paper's public editor, Liz Spayd, took the paper to task for its election coverage. She pointed out how its polling feature Upshot gave Hillary Clinton an 84 percent chance as voters went to the polls. Personally, they probably believed it was higher, they just wanted wiggle room in case things didn't go as planned.
She compared stories that the paper ran about President-elect Donald Trump and Clinton, where the paper made Clinton look functional and organized and the Trump discombobulated. Ha! Your chosen candidate got outmaneuvered by a moron! Good luck correcting that gracefully.
Spayd wrote, "Readers are sending letters of complaint at a rapid rate. Here's one that summed up the feelings succinctly, from Kathleen Casey of Houston: "Now, that the world has been upended and you are all, to a person, in a state of surprise and shock, you may want to consider whether you should change your focus from telling the reader what and how to think, and instead devote yourselves to finding out what the reader (and nonreaders) actually think." So why would Kathleen read or stand by this rag? Does Kathleen really exist?
She wrote about another reader who asked that the paper should focus on the electorate instead of "pushing the limited agenda of your editors." Ditto.
"Please come down from your New York City skyscraper and join the rest of us." Ditto.
Sulzberger--who insisted that the paper covered both candidates fairly-- also sent a note to staffers on Friday reminding the newsroom to "give the news impartially, without fear or favor." Said the frog to the scorpions.
"But we also approach the incoming Trump administration without bias," he said. We? You mean everyone turned on a dime? What supreme management skills you have there. How do you do it?
#3
Where are they going to find somebody who knows how?
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
11/13/2016 6:15 Comments ||
Top||
#4
...The Times, quite honestly, is in deep sh!t. They are rapidly approaching the point where the 'brand' is worth far more than the paper itself. So with a little luck, in the next year or so the Times will go online only or close altogether, it's name sold off to various products.
And there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and there will be many mournful post-mortems, not one of which will address the real reason it died - that it completely lost touch with the people it claimed to want to inform.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
11/13/2016 7:09 Comments ||
Top||
#5
They could start by publishing the Constitution and restating their editorial opinion based on what America is founded upon.
#7
It's just another NYC mid-town rag appealing to the stereotypical mid-town snob. Their audience has just become more selective over the generations. They don't know what the word 'honest' means anymore than real 'diversity'. It's diverse for mid-town NYC, but not for America as the just executed election demonstrated.
#10
A yuuuge upsurge in articles about how bad the economy is. Lots on how many homeless there are. Lots on how "scared" gays and illegal immigrants are.
Business as usual...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/13/2016 9:33 Comments ||
Top||
#11
Dan Rather is attempting a come-back as well. Good luck with that, trust is not easy to restore.
#12
The entire MSM is going to suddenly rediscover its role as the "loyal" opposition. Every single minor scandal, every homeless person, every illegal immigrant deported, will suddenly become front page news. They will once again rediscover their need to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
11/13/2016 11:25 Comments ||
Top||
#13
Personally, I've made my mind about NYT in 1984. In the 32 years since, they haven't given me reason to change my opinion.
#14
The publisher of The New York Times penned a letter to readers Friday promising that the paper would "reflect" on its coverage of this year's election while rededicating itself to reporting on "America and the world" honestly.
Every time I read something from the NYT, Boston Globe, etc., the first thing that pops into my mind is - "how are they fucking lying to me now?" This post is no different. I look forward to their Chapter 7 / Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.
#17
This was my main reason for voting Trump - the knowledge that the Times etc. would rediscover their mission of investigating political 'dirt,' and thus restrain possible Trump misbehavior, a situation that would not have happened if Clinton had won.
[Deutsche Welle} Public anger has been rising as Indian banks struggle to dispense cash after the government withdrew large-denomination bills. Nearly half of India's 202,000 ATMs were shut and those that worked quickly ran out of cash.
The government stunned the country on Tuesday when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in a televised address that the high-denomination bills would be withdrawn as part of a blitz on "black money" and fake notes.
Modi's move was aimed at shrinking the "black economy," the term widely used to describe transactions that take place outside formal channels and which could be as high as 20 percent of gross domestic product, according to investment firm Ambit.
The government has tried to reassure citizens that only tax evaders will suffer. But as these bills made up more than 80 percent of the currency in circulation, millions have been left without cash and large parts of the cash-driven economy have ground to a halt. Much of India's rural economy is powered by cash transactions, with few people having bank accounts or operating one even if they do.
Some are angry at the prime minister - currently on an official visit to Japan - for leaving the country during the turmoil. "He is taking bullet-train rides in Japan and here you have old people knocking on bank doors for cash," Prabhat Kumar, a college student who said he had spent six hours waiting in line, told the Reuters news agency. "He has made a terrible mistake."
The government has asked people to redeem the old 500 and 1,000 rupees notes by December 30. The central bank said there was enough cash available with banks and that it had made arrangements to deliver the new banknotes to branches across the country.
Already many are skeptical that the plan will do much good.
"Will it put an end to black money? Hardly. People with large amounts of black money will convert it into gold and foreign currency," the newspaper "Economic Times" said in an editorial earlier this week.
The BBC visited many ATMs of big banks in Delhi and Mumbai but found them either shut or not dispensing cash. ATMs opened at midnight after being shut for 48 hours and hundreds queued up early morning to make withdrawals.
The surprise government move is aimed at tackling corruption and tax evasion. But many low-income Indians, traders and ordinary savers who rely on the cash economy have been badly hit.
There are limits on cash withdrawals from ATMs and banks.
Thousands of panicked Indians have been flocking to banks since they reopened on Thursday as the two notes accounted for about 85% of the cash in circulation. Banks have extended working hours and deployed additional staff to deal with the rush. Some bank officials said they had also brought in extra cash to deal with the situation.
[DAWN] In its meeting scheduled to take place on November 14, the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) is going to debate the subject of Pak men’s rights and their protection, CII member Sahibzada Zahid M. Qasmi told Dawn.com.
In a letter written to CII Chairman Maulana Mohammad Sheerani, Qasmi, who is also the Secretary General of Pakistain Ulema Council, proposed that a bill be passed for the protection of men’s rights.
He had requested Sheerani that the subject of men's protection from women be made part of the agenda during the council’s November 14 meeting. Thereafter, debate upon the subject was included in the agenda for the forthcoming meeting.
The letter stated that "some women in Pakistain torture men, and force them out of their houses... Islam grants rights to men as well and in this society those rights are being violated."
Qasmi, who is based in Faisalabad ...formerly known as Lyallpur, the third largest metropolis in Pakistain, the second largest in Punjab after Lahore. It is named after some Arab because the Paks didn't have anybody notable of their own to name it after... , requested that the council discuss the matter and make recommendations for a men's protection bill similar to one for women.
When contacted regarding his motion, Qasmi told Dawn.com that when the women protection bill was passed he was contacted by men who said that while women should be given rights as is permitted in Islam and the Pak constitution, men should also be given their due rights.
Defending men's rights, he added that "some women call their brothers, fathers and other relatives to take violent measures against their husbands. In various districts of Punjab, several cases have come forth where men's nails have been pulled out or their hands and feet have been cut off. These cases have been lodged in various cop shoppes."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/13/2016 00:00 ||
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[HotAir] In some of the biggest news which will not come as "news" to anyone who follows the industry, the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality concluded a two year study this week into reports of ground water contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming. There had been reports of "foul smelling water" in two test wells drilled by the EPA near one of the many drilling sites in the gas field half a decade ago. The initial EPA report which was ready to blame fracking for the contamination immediately came under heavy criticism in the scientific community and was never released. Still the Wyoming DEQ went ahead with this extensive investigation. Their conclusion? There was no contamination of the ground water from the drilling sites and the EPA most likely caused the problem themselves.
A final state report released Thursday on foul-smelling well water in Wyoming contradicts an EPA report from five years ago that ignited a national backlash when it suggested hydraulic fracturing was the cause of the contamination.
Bacteria were more likely to blame for the problem in Pavillion than the oil and gas drilling process known as fracking, officials with the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality said after a two-year study that was hailed by fracking advocates.
"Today's announcement from the Wyoming DEQ doesn't just close the case on Pavillion, it's a knockout blow for activists who have tried to use Pavillion as a key talking point for their ban-fracking agenda," said Randy Hildreth, Colorado director of Energy in Depth, an advocacy arm of the Independent Petroleum Association of America.
Oh gee... the tyranical Obama EPA spun something for political gain? I'm SHOCKED!!
The AP story really doesn't go into the level of detail we need to fully grasp what a debacle this is for the EPA. To get those sorts of facts you'll want to see the analysis – complete with photos – over at Energy Indepth. Since the contaminants found in the test wells didn't match anything going into the ground at the fracking site, the DEQ finally sent a camera down into the wells. What do you suppose they found? First of all, the EPA well was drilled in a defective fashion. The artificial materials in the well almost certainly came from the drilling process when the EPA dug the wells. A government agency fucked up a relatively routine operation. Weird.
Second, the junk they allowed in there clogged the screens down at the base of the well. This allowed stagnant, standing water to build up at the bottom and it became infested with bacteria and biological agents. (As happens with any stagnant pools of water.) The bacterial infestation was what was causing the smell. The origin of the problem the EPA has been complaining about since 2011 was almost certainly caused by… you guessed it… the EPA. Randy Hildreth at Energy Indepth explains why this should close the books on these claims by anti-fracking activists once and for all. Sounds like they are just as good at drilling wells as keeping rivers free of poison.
The report is a devastating blow for the national environmental activist campaign against fracking, which has made Pavillion a key talking point in its effort to shut down oil and gas development across the country. For years, anti-fracking activists have misrepresented and exaggerated the EPA's initial conclusions to support their calls for a nationwide fracking ban. They have also ignored serious criticisms of the EPA's work by state environmental regulators and even other federal agencies, namely the U.S. Geological Survey and the Bureau of Land Management, in their desperate attempt to build a case for banning fracking.
Those criticisms from state and federal officials have focused on a pair of water-quality monitoring wells, drilled by the EPA, which were poorly constructed and likely introduced the very contaminants that some have tried to blame on fracking. Eventually, under the weight of these criticisms, the EPA backed down. The agency never submitted its draft report, released in late 2011, for peer review and handed the Pavillion case back to state regulators.
So there will be Fracking opened up on Federal lands immediately and a public apology put forth by the government? Yeah, I didn't think so either. I expect them to double down on stupid.
The actual results of the EPA monitoring well study (once you subtract out the bacteria introduced by their own mistake) were the same as other tests done across the country. In Pennsylvania the energy companies engaged in fracking there allowed the state DEQ to inject special chemical markers into their drilling fluid and then monitor test wells nearby for a period of years. Those special markers don't occur in nature, so if they showed up in the drinking water we'd know where they came from.
Not one single well ever tested positive for the markers over the entire period of study.
The sad but still hilarious part of this story is that once again the EPA caused their own problems when attempting to drill a well. Remember what happened when they starting boring into the ground at the Gold King mine? Perhaps the people at the Environmental Protection Agency shouldn't be allowed to play with any drilling equipment until they get some comprehensive training in how to use it from the energy industry. Maybe Trump can look into that as one of his first executive orders for the EPA. The EPA and most of its workers need to be fired and brought up on RICO charges for fraud, graft and obstruction.
#4
It's not like we have a monopoly on the technique, g(r)omgoru. But then consider the probability that at least one person at the EPA is Jewish. Q.E.D.
#8
Fracking can cause earthquakes - at least indirectly: Fracked fields tend to produce very large volumes of water (and a tiny bit of leftover frac fluid) along with their oil or gas. That water is usually re-injected into a large, deep (1-2 miles), permeable rock layer. If an earthquakable fault cuts the injection well or rock layer near the injection point the fluid pressure may counteract the pressure holding the rocks on either side of the fault together - think of an air hockey table and puck - and the fault may slip, to relieve the natural stresses on it. In general this is not 'creating' an earthquake, but it is 'triggering' one sooner than it would otherwise occur. I am familiar with one study 15 years or so ago of seismicity in the Barnett Shale gas play in the Dallas area (the first major fracked shale play): one small quake was definitively the result of fluid injection and a few others possibly, but the rest (90% IIRC) were clearly not related. (The recent - and unusually large - Oklahoma quakes were not in an area of fracking or other major wastewater injection.) For a while the concept (fluid injection into fault zones) was considered as a way of preventing large earthquakes, but liability issues and the fact that to prevent one large one it would take thousands of small ones, which people would not accept.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Prince Turki bin Abdulziz, a brother of 
North Korean authorities may have requested Beijing to block searches of a phrase that mocks Kim Jong Un, according to reports.
[Dhaka Tribune] The election of climate change sceptic 
The publisher of The New York Times penned a letter to readers Friday promising that the paper would "reflect" on its coverage of this year's election while rededicating itself to reporting on "America and the world" honestly.
[DAWN] In its meeting scheduled to take place on November 14, the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) is going to debate the subject of Pak men’s rights and their protection, CII member Sahibzada Zahid M. Qasmi told Dawn.com.
[HotAir] In some of the biggest news which will not come as "news" to anyone who follows the industry, the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality concluded a two year study this week into reports of ground water contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming. There had been reports of "foul smelling water" in two test wells drilled by the EPA near one of the many drilling sites in the gas field half a decade ago. The initial EPA report which was ready to blame fracking for the contamination immediately came under heavy criticism in the scientific community and was never released. Still the Wyoming DEQ went ahead with this extensive investigation. Their conclusion? There was no contamination of the ground water from the drilling sites and the EPA most likely caused the problem themselves.
