If you read this WaPo piece in isolation you'd think that it was Kenya that shot up a Somalia university...
The world’s chokehold on Somalia’s key financial lifeline is getting even tighter.
As of February, many banks in the United States have largely stopped servicing the accounts used by money transfer operators to help Somalis in the country send money to their families and networks back in Somalia, often for basic needs such as food, medicine and school fees. The country, which has been ravaged by civil war, famine and lacks a central banking system, heavily relies on these remittances. Some organizations estimate that remittances represent 25 percent to 45 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Somalia, which barely has a functioning government, is also plagued by the Islamist terrorist group Al-Shabab. Consequently, the threat of heavy fines for failure to comply with U.S. anti-terrorism regulations has many banks choosing to flee the market altogether.
Unfortunately, more banks in other countries are doing the same. Westpac, the last bank in Australia to handle remittances to Somalia announced at the end of March that it was shutting down servicing these accounts. The United Kingdom has also restricted these transfers. Global remittances to Somalia are estimated at $1.3 billion, dwarfing the combined amount of global humanitarian aid and foreign direct investment to Somalia.
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Posted by: Steve White ||
04/11/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
Geez, does this idiot live under a rock or at the bottom of a well?
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
04/11/2015 12:04 Comments ||
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A French intelligence official told a French National Assembly committee March 25th that he saw no evidence that Russian military forces have been planning an invasion of Ukraine, according to an official transcript and Russian language press reports.
With all respect to the French intel officer who I am sure is a good and smart man, the Russians are masters at hiding what their military is going to do...
General Christophe Gomart, speaking at a session of the Committee on National Defence and Armed Forces, said that normal logistical centers and follow on troops had not deployed close enough to the border with Ukraine to indicate preparations for an invasion.
Gomart said that the US and NATO hypothesis of a Russian military invasion was not supported by the usual indications.
According to the translation of the minutes of the meeting, speaking to the ongoing mystery of the presence of Russian troops inside of Ukraine, Gomart said: "...if Russian soldiers were actually seen in Ukraine, it was more of a ploy to put pressure on Ukrainian President Poroshenko than an attempted invasion."
This story broke in the Russian press and in Russian supported press less than four hours ago. But for the minutes of the meeting in the National Assembly, and the fact that Russia Today had still not picked it up, I would not have believed the story.
Chris Covert writes about foreign military issues for Rantburg.com. He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com and on Twitter. You can read past articles about the 2014 war in southeastern Ukraina by clicking here.
#2
It's sort of a three pronged concept:
(1) Russkiya have always been big on maskirovka (misleading).
(2) The sons of Rus also have a legendary reputation for disorganization.
(3) They are also legendary for throwing the best 'come as you are' wars.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
04/11/2015 16:00 Comments ||
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#3
4) Russians are consummate bullsh*t artists, without a doubt the best on the planet.
"No, Adolf, your bristles don't prickle!
Not even a notional tickle!
And roses ain't gallin'
So I'll just be stallin',
Not sharpening my Bolshevik sickle."
He's both right.
But once this mediocre authoritarian was pitted against the real thing he would be overmatched by the pros. They would see through his amateurish plots in an instant. To his lies they would reply one better. Lawfare and the race card would bounce off Rouhani or Putin like peas off the frontal armor of a King Tiger Tank.
Most of Obama's predecessors were smart enough to know that an American president fights asymmetrically against foreign despots. President do not out-despot or out-conspire them. To win they just let America do its thing. And America typically responds to challenges by smothering its foes in a burst of productivity and creativity. That's what happened to the USSR: Ronald Reagan was not smarter than the Soviet Politburo. He was only smart enough to let America be America. I am so stealing that. Of course, Reagan actually liked America.
Barack Obama on the other hand is not smart enough to let America be America. But he is dumb enough to try and outwit Putin or the Iranians. While America will almost always beat Russia, Obama will almost always lose to Putin. Change the game from America versus Iran to Obama versus the Ayatollahs and the dynamic changes. Once you play the authoritarian game, you will lose. Consequently Obama is getting his ass handed to him on a platter.
Obama's mistake was to doubt the greatness of his country and instead trust in the greatness of himself.
Posted by: Matt ||
04/11/2015 11:04 ||
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Toxic narcissist meet religious fanatic/KGB trained Machiavellian...
Too bad whatshisbutt didn't read Machiavelli instead of Chomsky.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
04/11/2015 12:03 Comments ||
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Does Obama actually want God Damn America to win?
#3
I'm afraid the evidence of malice is strong, but Obama can be very competent when he wants to be:
When Obama objected to Netanyahu's attack on Gaza, the FAA banned flights to Ben Gurion airport. Then WH lawyers tied up a routine request by Israel for more ammunition. It was finally granted over a month after the Israelis pulled out. Then there was the declassifying of Israel's nuclear program...
These are not incompetent mistakes. They are carefully thought out crimes against America and its allies.
Al
Posted by: frozen al ||
04/11/2015 14:21 Comments ||
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Frozen Al ~ He exercises the same malice and punitive techniques against U.S. citizens. It's the thuggish, Chicago way.
The plight of Americans abandoned in Yemen by the Obama administration is a gigantic national scandal, studiously ignored by the same media that invent various "outrages" to hit Republican presidential candidates with. Despite the lack of adequate coverage in the mainstream media, at least one journalist felt baffled enough by State Department tactics to ask just how Americans trapped in Yemen are expected to escape: "Swim?"
There might not be any Big Media Narratives forming, but some individual journalists know a train wreck when they see one. At a State Department press briefing on Monday, spokeswoman Marie Harf's evasive non-answers about the escape "opportunities" available to stranded Americans led one reporter to ask, "What are those opportunities? Swim?"
Obama touted Yemen as a counter-terrorism success only a few months before the nation's stability imploded at the hands of Shiite Houthi rebels. Was the State Department unprepared to help Americans trapped in Yemen because they believed the White House's idiotic political narrative or because they were trying to avoid making any preparations that would threaten it?
The State Department has resorted to telling Americans under fire in a foreign land to call India for help. Desperate U.S. citizens are jumping into motorboats and seeking refuge on the far side of the Red Sea. One State Department brainstorm involved telling trapped Americans to try hopping a French frigate bound for Djibouti; they had to pull this message down because following State's advice could put your life in danger. Those who make it home express their anger at being abandoned by the Obama administration to every reporter they can find.
Despite the catastrophe unfolding, there is no precious media narrative taking shape. No one in the press looks back to Benghazi and notes the similarities. No one asks if Obama is too busy seizing unconstitutional powers to implement his agenda at home, at the expense of attending to his actual duties as President. The mainstream media is not asking if the bumbling administration, so obviously flummoxed by events in Yemen, can be trusted to strike and enforce a complex nuclear arms deal with Iran. Saudi Arabia led a multi-national coalition into air strikes across Yemen's borders, Obama's State Department does nothing but watch in dumb amazement, and the American media finds nothing controversial or scandalous about it.
[COMMENTARYMAGAZINE] After State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf dismissed Henry Kissinger and George Shultz's critique of the Iran framework deal as "a lot of big words and big thoughts," David Brooks responded by asking, "Are we in nursery school?" The evidence for answering that question in the affirmative continued to mount yesterday. Following on last month's Twitter trolling of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (broadly criticized as mortifyingly undignified), the B.O. regime did it again, proving once again the administration's embarrassing immaturity and the fact that it is Obama who is keeping the public feud with Israel alive.
This time the White House tweeted out a picture that was expressly intended to mock Netanyahu's famous bomb diagram at the UN in September 2012. At that time, Netanyahu used the picture to illustrate Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapon. The cartoon bomb appeared to backfire because it looked like something out of a Warner Bros. cartoon, no doubt leading the White House to hope an Acme anvil would drop out of the sky and onto the podium at that moment. But the illustration did at least draw attention to Netanyahu's message, and succeeded in driving the conversation in the media.
The “facts” in the diagram are mostly spin, though I don’t think anyone expects anything accurate out of the Obama administration’s press shop. The point of the diagram–the only point, since the picture isn’t actually informative and the president could have put out this information any number of ways–was to mock the Israeli prime minister on Twitter for something that happened in 2012.
Obama is essentially George Castanza finally coming up with what he believes is a great, though hilariously delayed, response to an earlier insult. Obama’s message to Bibi is: “The jerk store called, they’re running out of you!”
On a more serious note–though at this part we’ll surely lose the president and his spokespersons–does the Obama administration consider how this looks to the world? I doubt it. For example, the Russians just loved it–not because it was funny, but because the Kremlin-directed media expressed what appears to be Vladimir Putin’s uncontainable glee at watching the supposed leader of the free world (or at least Stephen Harper’s deputy leader of the free world, at this point) throw food at the Israeli prime minister in public.
If you’re an American adversary, you don’t even really have to do anything at this point. You can just sit and watch the Obama administration melt down under the weight of its own childish ignorance.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/11/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
When Captain Pants Crease is criticizing you, you know you have a problem. Like they care...
#4
The logical and absurd end point of liberalism.
When you can't discuss/argue facts, you call names and assassinate character. The name calling has escalated to its ultimate development, cartoonish behavior and embarrassing terminally obvious silly childish activities.
I wonder why most people on the street who voted for this collection of clowns isn't more embarrassed than they are...I still see Obama 2012 stickers on cars around here.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
04/11/2015 12:08 Comments ||
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#5
On Halloween, Obama is planning to TP the Israeli embassy.
Posted by: frozen al ||
04/11/2015 13:37 Comments ||
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#6
Between Obama and Harf and occasionally Jen Psaki, the rest of the world must think we have juvenile morons in charge. It is insult to the American people to see these abject idiots parade out and trash the U.S. just by opening their pie holes. What happens when "Idiocracy" intersects with Washington via this administration.
[ARABNEWS] In countries that have to live with terrorism, suicide kabooms, raids on government offices and ambushes of soldiers in rural areas are not uncommon sights. However, those who apply themselves too closely to little things often become incapable of great things... every time these things happen, society is shaken once again like the first time. Those countries that have to live with terrorism are more sensitive about their people, principles and values.
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.
[COMMENTARYMAGAZINE] After State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf dismissed Henry Kissinger and George Shultz's critique of the Iran framework deal as "a lot of big words and big thoughts," David Brooks responded by asking, "Are we in nursery school?" The evidence for answering that question in the affirmative continued to mount yesterday. Following on last month's Twitter trolling of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (broadly criticized as mortifyingly undignified), the 
