Where will the money come from?
Spain is to get up to 100bn euros ($125bn; £80bn) in loans from eurozone funds to try to help shore up its struggling banks.
The move was agreed during emergency talks with eurozone finance ministers.
Spain's Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said his country would shortly make a formal request for assistance. He emphasised that the help would be for the financial system, not the economy as a whole. "This is not a rescue," he said.
"This is a loan which is given in very favourable conditions, which will be determined in the next few days. But they are very favourable - much more favourable than the market ones," Mr de Guindos told a news conference.
The Spanish government had been reluctant to ask for a bailout like the one given to Greece, Ireland and Portugal, as these rescue packages came with demands for spending cuts and stringent spending cuts.
#3
Where did the money come from?
As far as can be made out by the best experts, it appears the Tooth Fairy is the culprit.
No one else would be stupid enough to toss their hard earned money into a bottomless pit, never to be seen again.
The United States offers millions for information leading to the capture of the world's most wanted terrorists. If the government would drop that to $10,000 I feel they'd get more action because it's a number they can understand.
A Somali militant group has purportedly countered with an offer of camels for U.S. officials. On second thought, maybe we should offer camels insted. For sure they'd understand that.
Al-Shabaab has placed a bounty of 10 camels for President Barack Obama and two camels for information on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Isn't that a bit sexist? Besides, Hillary is way more valuable than The One.
An audio statement posted on jihadist websites purportedly from Al-Shabaab jeered news that the United States is offering millions of dollars for information on seven key members of al-Shabaab through its Rewards for Justice program.
The man on the audio claimed to be Fuad Mohamed Khalaf, considered by the State Department to be Al-Shabaab's leading fundraiser. The United States has offered $5 million for information of his whereabouts. He's probably in Pakistain somewhere. Can I get my reward now?
"Whoever brings the mujahidin information about the whereabouts of infidel Obama and the lady of Bill Clinton, the woman named Hillary Clinton, I will give a reward," the man said.
A study by Galkayo University, which looked at the effects of drought on livestock, said the average cost of a camel in Somalia is $700.
CNN can not independently verify the authenticity of the audio recording, which was purportedly made by Khalaf during a speech to followers in the southern port city of Merca. Who cares. The guy obviously has a future in stand-up comedy. Except terrorists, who aren't intelligent enough to figure out not to take him seriously.
The U.S. State Department's Rewards for Justice program is offering $7 million for information on the location of Ahmed Abdi Aw-Mohamed, the founder of the Islamist group in Somalia. He's probably in Pakistain somewhere, too. Check around the big military bases and in the government guest house. When can I get my reward?
This year, he and al Qaeda's leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, released a joint video formally announcing a merger between the terror groups. Yeesh. You'd think someone from the committee negotiating the merger would get upset enough to leak something. Perhaps someone from Obean's administration ought to infiltrate the group.
In announcing the bounties on Mohamed and his key associates Thursday, the State Department called al-Shabaab "a threat to the stability of East Africa and to the national security interests of the United States."
The State Department said it is also offering up to $5 million each for information leading to the location of four of Aw-Mohamed's associates, including Khalaf. In addition, it is offering up to $3 million each for two of the terror group's other leaders. I'm beginning to suspect that they just name someone they don't like as one of their leaders, then have one of their own "turn him in".
#1
Info about Obama isn't worth a camel.
You get it for free here.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
06/09/2012 19:20
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#2
My father used to say that among the Beduin ten camels was a very respectable bride price. Of course that was two generations ago, so perhaps inflation has changed things.
#5
So-o-o-o IIUC, AS wants the Bammer captured or whacked for the Somali equivalent of US$7000.0; but offer the equivalent of only US$1400.0 for Hillary becuz they aren't sure yet what to do once they get her [Hillary = hostage, for time being]???
Yasser Arafat's former financial lover advisor, Mohammed Rashid, revealed over the weekend that Fatah has a secret bank account in Jordan with $39 million.
Rashid said that the original sum was $44 million, but dropped after the Fatah leadership spent $5 million on the faction's sixth annual conference.
Rashid, who was Arafat's "moneyman" for many years, said he had all the necessary documents to prove the existence of the bank account. He said that only PA President Mahmoud Abbas and two of his associates were authorized to deal with the secret account.
"According to my documents, $13 million was stolen from came for the US, while the remaining sum came from friendly Arab countries," Rashid said. He challenged Abbas to deny the existence of the account, saying he would then reveal the identity of the two associates and the name of the bank and the Arab countries that deposited the money.
Rashid pointed out that Abbas had long been denying the existence of such a bank account for Fatah.
Pakistan has paid a heavy price in its war on terror, its high commissioner Abdul Malik Abdullah has said, including enduring its first ever suicide bombings and the losses of billions of dollars to its economy.
However, the nation appeared to receive little international acknowledgement for its contributions, he said.
''We are talking about 43,000 Pakistani people who have lost their lives, and that's not including the number of those who have been maimed, crippled, incapacitated,'' he said. ''No other country - not even Afghanistan - has suffered as much.''
How much of the suffering has come from the hands of Paks?
Abdullah said the World Bank estimated that the impact on Pakistan's economy of the war to June 2010 was almost $US69 billion and was expected to rise to $US85 billion ($A86 billion) this month.
Abdullah's comments came just days before US defence secretary Leon Panetta made a public statement warning that the US was ''reaching the limits of our patience'' with Pakistan for failing to tackle its Taliban safe havens.
Panetta told reporters in Kabul that it was ''intolerable'' that fighters from the Haqqani Network faction could attack American troops in Afghanistan and then slip back across the border to safety.
If it's 'intolerable' why have we been tolerating it?
Tomorrow we'll review two books about culture, economics and competition.
You probably were taught that the Roman empire fell to barbarians. Emmet Scott thinks so too - but you might be surprised at just which barbarians he thinks were responsible and who their indispensible allies were. Mohammed & Charlemagne Revisted: The History of a Controversy
From 1600 through the late 19th century, Europe grew rich while Asia did not - the so-called Great Divergence between China and the West. Some attribute this to greater rationality, science, markets or institutions in the West. Prasannan Parthasarathi re-examines the issue with a close look at India during this period. Do his conclusions shed light on current economic issues? Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600-1850
#2
For one of the books Amazon offers a free sample download if one has the Kindle app (available as a free download for most computer-like devices, including my iPad); for the other, one can read the first chapter free online, which I find less satisfactory. Nonetheless, I'll read both tonight to prepare for tomorrow's Coffeepot.
Yemeni troops battled Islamist militants in overnight clashes and air strikes that continued into Saturday, local officials and residents said, as part of a a U.S.-backed drive to retake territory held by insurgents.
The Yemeni army is trying to recapture towns in the southern province of Abyan that were seized by al Qaeda-linked militants last year during a popular uprising against President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who formally stepped down in February.
The month-old offensive has cut off supplies of food and medicine and forced thousands to flee their homes, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Wednesday.
There's something troubling about the recent leaks to the New York Times about President Barack Obama's involvement in authorizing the targeted killings of suspected terrorists and launching cyberattacks against an Iranian nuclear enrichment facility: they're coming from the same administration that has prosecuted more government officials under the Espionage Act of 1917 for sharing classified information with the media than all previous administrations combined. (As Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote in a 2010 memo, "People in the intelligence business should be like my grandchildren -- seen but not heard.")
Just this week, an American general who suggested that U.S. and South Korean Special Forces were parachuting into North Korea to conduct espionage was replaced in what the military insisted, amid murmurs of disbelief, was a routine personnel change. Sure, happens all the time...
This contradictory posture toward national security leaks has exposed the White House to accusations this week that it clamps down on whistleblowing when the disclosures undermine its agenda but eagerly volunteers anonymous "senior administration officials" for interviews when politically expedient.
Salon's Glenn Greenwald condemned the "administration's manipulative game-playing with its secrecy powers," Both his readers applauded...
the Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer called the report on Obama's targeted killings a "White House press release" (the report's authors dispute that claim), and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle decried the "accelerating pace of such disclosures," calling for an investigation and new legislation to address the problem. "They're intentionally leaking information to enhance President Obama's image as a tough guy for the elections," Senator John McCain (R-AZ) charged on Tuesday. Worst part about it is that despite the leaks, no one in the world intelligence, military and political community thinks that Champ has any toughness whatsoever...
The White House, for its part, has dismissed this allegation as "grossly irresponsible" and argued that, in fact, it seeks to plug leaks that could jeopardize counterterrorism or intelligence operations. But as the examples below suggest, the Obama administration hardly has dealt consistently with counterterrorism and intelligence leaks over the past three-and-a-half years. The author continues to list 8 "leaks' with facts in each -- which were prosecued and which aren't.
KILL LIST
Prosecution? No.
WIKILEAKS
Prosecution? Yes
STUXNET
Prosecution? No.
TRAILBLAZER PROJECT
Prosecution? Yes
BIN LADEN RAID
Prosecution? No.
OPERATION MERLIN
Prosecution? Yes.
AWLAKI MEMO
Prosecution? No.
TERRORIST INTERROGATION
Prosecution? Yes. He ends with: "Administration officials, of course, have at times brought highly sensitive, classified stories to the American people -- when they had good stories to tell, that is."
#1
IIRC FREEREPUBLIC > SOMALI ISLAMISTS OFFER TEN CAMELS AS BOUNTY FOR OBAMA [SecState Hillary = chicken hens].
OOOOOOOOO, you can just hear self-centered, upper-class Socialite Bette Middler's character in "RUTHLESS PEOPLE" sobbing uncontrollably,
"ZOOOMG, I'VE BEEN KIDNAPPED BY KMART"!, can't ye???
On a serious note, its more proof or indicia once again again again that Radical Islam doth desire revenge on the Bammer = US Govt, + may initiate assassination attempt(s) agz him, MORESO GIVEN THE FAILING IRAN NUKE TALKS + NOW RISING INSTABILITY IN PAKISTAN.
FYI FREEP = separate Artic says the USDOD will be expanding the US Fifth Fleet Base at Bahrain, which throws a monkeywrench into Iran's plans to isolate any US = US-led Coalition invasion force to the Sea of Oman + beyond, espec iff the USDOD emplaces PATRIOT + RELATED AIR, MISSLE DEFENSES THERE.A THIRD-PARTY ASSASSINATION OP WOULD A COVERT, BUT LOGICAL COUNTER-RESPONSE TO A MAJOR "DEFENSIVE" US BUILDUP IN BAHRAIN IN CASE OF BREAKOUT OF US-IRAN WAR???
It's Debka, so a second, confirmatory source on the story would be helpful.
A confessed Islamist stabbed two coppers Friday at an underground station in a Brussels neighborhood.
The two victims, a man and a woman did not sustain life-threatening wounds.
The attacker was quickly subdued and was found to be carrying documents connected to Shariah4Belgium, an beturbanned goonMohammedan group active in Belgium. He confessed to wanting to attack the police because of Belgium's attitude towards Mohammedans. Brussels recently outlawed the niqab for women in public.
A 'revolution' may not punish the PPP and bring PMLN to power. It may bring Al Qaeda closer to ruling Pakistain
...Three developments must be noted in the move of the PMLN: a gradual reconciliation with the Army, a steady support to the 'independent' judiciary, and a convergence with the nonstate actors of Punjab. Add to this the ingredient of 'revolution' and you have the contours of how the PMLN wants to shorten the days of the PPP in power.
Shahbaz Sharif has been known to meet the Army Chief to feel the pulse of any toppling plans. He accompanies this act of nationalism with 'selfless' devotion to the Supreme Court currently busy subjecting the federal government to intense critical scrutiny. The other strand in the strategy comprises change of policy on nonstate actors and banned jihadi organizations and pitting them against the PPP in South Punjab.
Jihadi publication Daily Islam (23 Feb 2010) reported that Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah visited Jhang and paid his respects at the tomb of the founder of the greatest banned sectarian-terrorist Deobandi organization, Sipah-e-Sahaba: Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi. He led a delegation of the PMLN which also counted parliamentary secretary Iftikhar Baloch and party MPA from Jhang, Sheikh Yaqub. He visited the tombs of other Sipah-e-Sahaba martyr-leaders like Maulana Isarul Qasimi and Allama Azam Tariq.
The News (27 Feb 2010) in a report titled PMLN sees no harm in seeking banned outfit's blessing observed: 'Sipah-e-Sahaba is rearing its head again and its leaders' participation in an election rally in PP-82 constituency, along with Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah, has sent shivers down the spines of citizens here'.
But the 'revolution' may not be to the advantage of the PMLN. In 1999, Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... nearly got killed through in an bomb reported planted by the Sipah on the road to his residence in Raiwind. Killer Riaz Basra also got himself photographed standing next to him without the latter noticing it. In 2002 after Basra was finally killed, he was buried wrapped in a Sipah Sahaba flag. Today a Sipah franchise Lashkar-e-Jhangvi ... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ... is said to be in touch with Tehrik Taliban Pakistain. Therefore the 'revolution' may not punish the PPP and bring PMLN to power. It may bring Al Qaeda closer to ruling Pakistain.
Just as no one can convince Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who isn't your heaviest-duty thinker, maybe not even among the top five... that he should not use 'tsunami' as the informal emblem of his party, it is futile to remind Shahbaz Sharif that 'bloody revolution' is an inapt simile to use for the victory of the PMLN in the coming election. His party doesn't have the ideology suited for a revolution; its overtures to the Death Eaters do not transform his party into an organization willing to indulge in mass extermination of the 'exploiting classes'.
What kind of order will come into existence after the 'bloody revolution'? The truth is that revolution comes first and then makes itself bloody by killing the enemies of the people. The following is the pattern recognised in history: The state turns authoritarian, producing a utopian alternative among the intellectuals of the coercive state, followed by popular uprising, elimination of the elite through a reign of terror, and the installation of directly participatory institutions.
Pakistain is habituated to a pattern of its own. First the politicians fight among themselves and bring the country to a standstill till the people start complaining about being economically squeezed. Then Army - reputed for producing intellectually average officers - starts thinking that it can run the country far better by interrupting the tenure of the incumbent government and grabbing power. We all know what happens for more or less a decade after that.
In the present case, the PPP threatens to complete its tenure after four years of pathetic governance. (When was governance non-pathetic in Pakistain?) Strange to say, the Army is no longer quivering with expectation; it is the opposition leaders wringing their hands at the threat of a break in the pattern. Therefore, if not the Army, who?
Everybody in Pakistain has his ducks in a row for the coming revolution and they are remarkably identical ducks: hate America and hope Al Qaeda will be appeased by that and somehow go away. In fact, Al Qaeda may see the decks being cleared for its own 'revolution' in two countries simultaneously: Afghanistan and Pakistain. It has the classical ingredients in place: an ideology that has appeal and an indoctrinated cadre willing to kill for the revolution.
But revolutions eat their children. The leaders who initiate it usually get killed in the process of establishing a revolutionary order. It is especially cruel to its harbingers.
President Obama on Friday sought to deploy the game-changing powers of his office against a grim political week during which the economy, the polls and even some of his Democratic allies seemed to conspire against him.
But the bully pulpit failed him, as well.
Laying out his economic argument at a morning news conference, Obama said that cutbacks in state and local government spending have slowed the nation's recovery and that Congress has "no excuse" for not supporting his jobs bill that would provide funding to retain public workers.
"The private sector," the president added as a point of comparison, "is doing fine." But O copied the idea from Harry Reid.
The remark struck a discordant political note in the current economic climate, and Republican adversaries pounced on the assertion to lampoon him for being out of touch. And at least politically, Obama played directly into the GOP argument that he does not understand the depths of the economic crisis and that he is too dependent on government to solve the economy's problems.
The episode reinforced the impression that the White House and the Obama campaign were struggling to regain their footing after a difficult week, and that they clearly remained off balance.
Over the course of seven days, Obama endured the Labor Department's dismal May jobs report, Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's victory in a recall election against an Obama-endorsed challenger, and former president Bill Clinton arguing in favor of temporarily extending the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy, which Obama opposes.
In addition, the Romney campaign for the first time raised more money, reporting a $77 million haul in May compared with the Obama campaign's $60 million. See the writing on the wall?
The president's setbacks have coincided with a tightening of the polls in the presidential race as Romney has closed the gap with the president at a faster clip than even some GOP political analysts had envisioned.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/09/2012
09:22 ||
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#1
I believe that there are a lot of Americans who are hurting right now, which is what Ive been saying . . . since I came into office. And the question then is, what are we going to do about it?
No seriously folks...whatta we gonna do bout it? 'Cause I got nuttin' over here.
#2
One of the most clueless gaffes in history. He is totally detached from everyday reality for Americans (who are not over-achieving thin-skinned affirmative action narcissist babies with a teleprompter). The ads will write themselves and he needs this hung around his neck every day til November
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/09/2012 9:39
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#3
The Pres must still be smoking weed with his Choom Gang.
#4
The most amazing thing to me is the push for the public sector:
"Obama said that cutbacks in state and local government spending have slowed the nations recovery and that Congress has no excuse for not supporting his jobs bill that would provide funding to retain public workers.
two days after the whole concept of public employees as saviors was bitch slapped in WI.
Out of touch? He is so inflated with his own ego that he floated off the planet and is now approaching Jupiter.
#5
Romney and company need to keep up the daily pressure, using Bambi's own words and this buffoon will self-destruct. He is already showing signs of teetering, just need to keep the heat on. So many targets, economy, 'green job' bailouts, fast and furious, Arizona and Florida states rights. More to choose from than a Baskin-Robbins menu.
#6
I know things are really tough out there. Have you seen the price of arugula?
Posted by: Jefferson ||
06/09/2012 11:30
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#7
Historically, young startup firms have been a major job engine for the economy, particularly as the nation has emerged from recessions. But new federal data show the rate of business startups continues to fall in this recovery.
According to the Census Bureau, the startup rate, measured as a share of all firms, has plunged to 7% from 9% in 2008 and from 11% in 2006. The pace, moreover, is almost half the 1980s' peak of 13%... in the 1980s, these young entrepreneurial firms accounted for 20% of total private-sector U.S. employment vs. just 12% now. Entrepreneurs created two-fifths of all new jobs during the 1980s recovery compared with under a third during this recovery...
In just one month September 1983 more jobs were created than in the past six months under Obama.
#8
As Zero implodes and his polls move to neutral, his media allies back away, his political allies build new alliances to protect themselves, and his financial allies conserve their powder. Worse, for him, it's a spiral, now downward and tightening.
Watch Slick Willie - his comments of late are no accident. The goal may be to crash Zero just before the nomination, have him withdraw, and have Hillary be nominated to save the day for the Party.
#9
If the private sector was really doing so well we wouldn't need the phony, make work, taxpayer funded, debt creating jobs that his jobs bill would create.
But he says these things as if he expects people to believe him. We really are in trouble if they do.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
06/09/2012 14:39
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#10
"Let me be clear. The economy has gone down further than my wife."
#13
"Shovel Ready" jobs. I haven't seen very many people on the side of the road digging in ditches with thier shovels lately, except in a couple of third world countries.
Now when taxes skyrocket in 6 months, even the high tech sector jobs will be gone, when the tech companies move whole heartedly out of the country and give "non-Shovel Ready" high tech jobs to foreigners.
#14
There's NO way Emperor Zero would voluntarily give up the Presidential trappings and due adulation (PBUH). He'd likely push for a third term if he won this fall. We are indeed fortunate to have him, we are not worthy.
/barf
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/09/2012 16:34
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#15
There's NO way Emperor Zero would voluntarily
Yeah, there is a way. He IS just a puppet and always has been. Look at how the skids have been greased for him at every step of his career - heck, every step of his 'adult' life - I don't believe that was just luck. But who is the puppetmaster and will he cut the strings?
#2
So where did these Reagan Democrats run off to when times got tough? And where will they run off to when times get tough again? They're like muslims, they'll hide behind whoever is in power, using the D after their name as camoflage.
The argentine populace can see Cristina "Evita" Fernandez's policy aims:Gov't central economy control and nationalizing foreign-owned industry. They're cashing in their pesos (25% inflation) for dollars as fast as they can, and stashing it - $80-$120 million per day - while they still can Won't be enough to hide it from crooks like the Kirchners...
Argentine banks have seen a third of their U.S. dollar deposits withdrawn since November as savers chase greenbacks in response to stiffening foreign exchange restrictions, local banking sources said on Friday.
Depositors withdrew a total of about $100 million per day over the last month in a safe-haven bid fueled by uncertainty over policies that might be adopted as pressure grows to keep U.S. currency in the country.
The chase for dollars is motivated by fear that the government may further toughen its clamp down on access to the U.S. currency as high inflation and lack of faith in government policy erode the local peso. whoops!
"Deposits keep going down," said one foreign exchange broker who asked not to be named. "There is a disparity among banks, but in total it's about $80 million to $120 million per day."
U.S. dollar deposits of Argentine banks fell 11.2 percent in the preceding three weeks to $11.5 billion, according to central bank data released on Friday. The run on the greenback has waxed and waned since November, after President Cristina Fernandez won a second term on promises of deepening the state's role in the economy. Expect to see more saber-rattling against the Falklands - to distract - and to try and get some of that oil revenue. She can't afford war, but may get into one, because she has to - otherwise, her Gov't and economy collapses
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/09/2012
09:08 ||
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#1
They'd have to be able to land enough people on the Falklands to overwhelm the defenders, and they'd have to be able to do it without air cover, and they'd have to not get noticed at sea where they'd be sitting ducks.
#2
BP, you're assuming the Brit force on the Falklands would react. I would hope that they would, but they might be under orders to get permission from Whitehall before doing so, which means the Argies will walk up and arrest all the British personnel on the islands...
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/09/2012 11:14
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#3
...unless, someone in the chain of commands decides to act first, then request permission after. The question in that mind is whether the pols will simply ratify the act rather than to admit to cowardice.
Lacking two pieces of brain matter, the pols can't extrapolate that if you allow the Argies to do that, what would really stop a Cromwell from marching in and doing the same to Parliament.
#4
And Obama sure as hell won't help the Brits. He might even provide air cover for the Argies.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
06/09/2012 11:58
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#5
He'll wait a month first before checking the polling numbers to order that Rambler.
Posted by: Charles ||
06/09/2012 12:40
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#6
And Obama sure as hell won't help the Brits. He might even provide air cover for the Argies.
I dunno, Rambler. I could just as easily imagine such an order from Ogabe as the last straw that finally makes our military's flag/general officer leadership collectively grow a pair. Not to the point of an actual military coup (don't want to jeopardize that nice post-retirement gig at General Dynamics, after all), but to the point of publicly refusing to obey such an order on the basis of gross illegality. Possibly accompanied with discreet but pointed suggestions to Congressional leadership that Teh Won has finally crossed the line into "impeachable act" territory.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
06/09/2012 13:27
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NATO forces in Afghanistan say four international service members have been killed in an insurgent attack in the country's east.
The military coalition says the attack happened on Saturday. It did not provide further details.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack in an email, saying that a suicide bomber attacked the troops in Kapisa province.
The majority of troops in Kapisa province are French, but there are also other nations with forces there, including the United States. UKPA reports the boomer was wearing a burka.
#2
France speeds up Afghan pull out French President Francois Hollande said France would pay a "national homage" to the men killed in a Taliban suicide attack in eastern Afghanistan yesterday and that the five other wounded would be repatriated rapidly.
The withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan was one of Mr Hollande's presidential electoral promises. It "will begin in the month of July, will be carried out and be completed at the end of 2012," he said.
#1
Bull. Most Ivy League alumni are children of Ivy League alumni. And the few co-opted from outside that group, advanced due to factors other than intelligence (fauxahontas, anyone?). For that matter, academic prowess =/= intelligence (unless you define intelligence as good memory + sucking up ability).
#4
Off topic, but on the same Telegraph page: a short article about a UK Labour Peer, a nasty piece of work named Lord Foulkes. Back in 1993 he had one drop too many at a get-together with the Scotch Whisky Association. 'Is Lordship wound up staggering down the street, eventually attempting to dance with a passing 70 y/o lady, the end effect being both of them falling onto the pavement. The article refers to the noble Peer as having "suffered a nasty fall on the slopes of Glenfiddich."
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
06/09/2012 11:44
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By night, the lights of dozens of ships anchored off this eastern Emirati port create the mirage of a far-off city at sea. The crowded anchorage reflects Fujairah's rise as one of the world's busiest maritime refueling stations. Soon it will also become a vital new exit route for Arabian crude oil destined for world markets.
The United Arab Emirates is nearing completion of a pipeline through the mountainous sheikdom that will allow it to reroute the bulk of its oil exports around the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf, the path for a fifth of the world's oil supply.
Iran has repeatedly threatened to close the strategically sensitive waterway, which is patrolled by Iranian and US warships, in retaliation for ramped-up Western sanctions over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
That threat has raised worries among Gulf countries that conflicts could block the route to market for their most lucrative resource. But only the UAE and Oman have coastlines on Indian Ocean side of the strait that would enable them to go around the chokepoint by land. Saudi Arabia also can avoid Hormuz by shipping its Gulf fields' oil production out of its Red Sea ports, but it would have to increase the capacity of those ports and of pipelines running across the breadth of the country to handle its total output.
With the Emirates' new pipeline, oil from fields deep in the Abu Dhabi desert would travel 236 miles (380 kms) overland and across the barren Hajar mountains to this fast-growing port on edge of the Indian Ocean.
At the moment, Emirati oil exports are loaded in the Gulf and must pass through Hormuz. Once it's running at full volume, the pipeline will let the UAE get two-thirds of its peak oil production to market even if the strait is shut. That's about 10 percent of the total 17 million barrels of oil a day that currently goes through Hormuz.
A mob of hundreds of men have assaulted women holding a march demanding an end to sexual harassment, with the attackers overwhelming the male guardians and groping and molesting several of the female marchers in Cairo's Tahrir Square.
From the ferocity of Friday's assault, some of the victims said it appeared to have been an organized attempt to drive women out of demonstrations and trample on the pro-democracy protest movement.
The attack follows smaller scale assaults on women this week in Tahrir, the epicenter of the uprising that forced Hosni Mubarak to step down last year. Thousands have been gathering in the square this week in protests over a variety of issues mainly over worries that presidential elections this month will secure the continued rule by elements of Mubarak's regime backed by the ruling military.
Earlier in the week, an Associated Press reporter witnessed around 200 men assault a woman who eventually fainted before men trying to help could reach her.
Friday's march was called to demand an end to sexual assaults. Around 50 women participated, surrounded by a larger group of male supporters who joined to hands to form a protective ring around them. The protesters carried posters saying, "The people want to cut the hand of the sexual harasser," and chanted, "The Egyptian girl says it loudly, harassment is barbaric."
After the marchers entered a crowded corner of the square, a group of men waded into the group of women, heckling them and groping them. The male supporters tried to fend them off, and it turned into a melee involving a mob of hundreds.
#2
Muslim men, particularly Arabs, it seems, have a real sense of inferiority and failure. They need their wymyns beaten and subservient, otherwise they have nobody else to feel superior to.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/09/2012 9:41
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#3
The amazing thing, to me, is the men PROTECTING the women. And that they started a all-out brawl to do so. It appears that a Minority of men might have some sense over there.
Posted by: Charles ||
06/09/2012 12:29
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#4
"particularly Arabs, it seems, have a real sense of inferiority and failure"
And they have much to feel inferior and failed about, Frank....
Posted by: Barbara ||
06/09/2012 15:02
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A military judge delayed a pretrial hearing Friday after Maj. Nidal Hasan, accused in the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood, appeared in a military courtroom sporting a full beard that his attorneys said he grew for religious reasons.
Col. Gregory Gross called the beard, which violated Army grooming regulations, a disruption to court proceedings and halted the hearing, Fort Hood officials said. Gross said a new hearing would be held soon - possibly next week - and that Hasan would have to watch proceedings outside the courtroom on closed-circuit television unless he complied with an order to "appear with proper military grooming standards," Fort Hood officials said.
Over the past two years, Hasan, who remains an active duty service member, has appeared in court clean-shaven and with closely cropped hair. Hasan appeared Friday with a full beard and longer hair.
Defense attorneys cited cases of other soldiers who were granted permission to grow their beards during a court-martial for religious reasons and indicated they would file an exception to the grooming policy based on religious accommodation, Fort Hood officials said. Hasan is Muslim.
Army Regulation 670-1-8 allows neatly trimmed mustaches, but prohibits beards, goatees and handlebar mustaches.
#7
His aim might have been right-on Tu, since Hasan is paralyzed. He'll always be "beneath' everyone, including women, for the rest of his miserable days.
Posted by: Charles ||
06/09/2012 12:37
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#8
He may be paralyzed but he can still see. He can still hear. These problems are . . . fixable.
#10
If I recall correctly, it was "her" aim that paralyzed this piece of human trash. I'm so looking forward to a firing squad for this pig. Maybe we can prolong the initiation of of the trial to correspond with the first year of a Romney administration.
h/t Instapundit
The United States has been shaped by three far-reaching political revolutions: Thomas Jeffersons revolution of 1800, the Civil War, and the New Deal. Each of these upheavals concluded with lasting institutional and cultural adjustments that set the stage for new phases of political and economic development. Are we on the verge of a new upheaval, a fourth revolution that will reshape U.S. politics for decades to come? There are signs to suggest that we are. In fact, we may already be in the early stages of this twenty-first-century revolution.
...Notwithstanding its reputation for stability and continuity, the U.S. political system seems to resolve its deepest problems in relatively brief periods of intense and potentially destabilizing conflict. These events are what some historians have called our surrogates for revolution because, rather than overthrowing the constitutional order, they adjust it to developing circumstances.
...The question today, then, is whether or not the party system formed in the 1930s and 1940s is about to exhaust itself in a new upheaval that will lead to some new political alignment around a new constellation of issues. There is little doubt that many of the political signs present in earlier upheavals are increasingly in play today.
#1
Are we on the verge of a new upheaval, a "fourth revolution"
Yes, I believe we are. It will take a village revolution to free us from Obama.
Posted by: Besoeker in New Harmony ||
06/09/2012 7:23
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#2
There is a great deal of deliberately built-in inertia in the political system. We are a two-party system. Committee structures, committee leadership, Congressional perks, seniority, all are designed to keep things the way they are for a long time. Popular movements such as the teaparty take a long time to change things through the election process. I say they are "popular" but they tend to be hated by the leadership of both parties.
#3
The point of the article is that we're not a two-party system, we're a one and a half party system: the minority party has to go along and allow itself to be co-opted (see also, 'RINO'). The Democrats have pretty much called how our society will be organized from 1932 to the present day, Reagan not withstanding. Before that it was the Republicans from about 1860, and the Democrats from about 1800.
So if we're going to have a 'fourth revolution', not only would the Republicans have a long-term ascendency and have its agenda broadly implemented in our society, but the Democrats would become the co-opted party. We'd start to hear about 'DINOs', and 'Blue Dogs' would run that party.
It could happen, I suppose, and the writer points out that these revolutions have occurred over short periods of time.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/09/2012 11:18
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#4
There is a chance we could have a fourth revolution. Besides having a two-party system (or 1-1/2 party system) there is much inertia to overcome there are lobbyists and special interest groups. Public sector unions have a strangle-hold on state governments and have usurped citizen votes. There are about as many taxpayers and tax users. That said, there is hope and movements in the direction of a 4th revolution. It may be at a nascent point.
#5
IIRC, the New Deal began at a point in US history where all US banks had closed. THAT seemed to eliminate 'political inertia' rather quickly.
There are many possible outcomes of the world economic crisis that might accomplish a similar feat.
#6
I can see a third party of sane libertarians ripped out of both parties. If such a party replaced dems all would be good. If it replaced repubs we might not see much difference.
Iran needs to buy some 2 million tons of milling wheat in the next few months after having already imported 3 million so far this year, a member of the French grain exporters' lobby said, as the country dodges sanctions to shop for wheat at a frantic pace. Hope pigs in China are hungry
(Sh.M.Network)-- Jihadi fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistain are training Islamist groups in northernMali,Niger's President Mahamadou Issoufou warned Thursday, as world powers discussed military intervention.
"We have information on the presence of Afghans and Paks in northernMali... They are believed to be working as instructors," he told theLa Belle France24 news channel.
"They are the ones who are training those who have been recruited across various west African countries," said Issoufou, whose country shares a long and porous desert border withMali.
Mali, once considered a beacon of democracy in western Africa, has plunged into chaos since the collapse of Moamer Qadaffy's regime in Libya last year scattered mercenaries and weapons across theSahel.
Tuareg rebels rekindled their decades-old struggle for independence in January and conquered the entire northern half of Mali virtually unopposed in March, after renegade soldiers who accused then-president Amadou Toumani Toure of failing to do enough to fight the rebellion toppled his regime.
The Tuareg rebels fought alongside a previously unknown Islamist group called Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith), which is believed to be backed by Al Qaeda's North African branch.
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has been active for years in northernMali, where it has launched attacks against government army positions, kidnapped foreigners and allegedly benefitted from drug running.
La Belle France TF1 channel aired amateur footage shot in the fabled northern Malian town ofTimbuktuthat purportedly shows Abou Zeid, an Algerian considered one of the top AQIM leaders driving a pick-up truck.
Issoufou said the Islamist groups are part of a global network spanning much of Africa and reaching all the way to Afghanistan.
"I think all these organizations cooperate amongst themselves, whether the Shebab in Somalia, Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... in Nigeria, AQIM in Algeria and in the Sahel in general, all the way to Afghanistan," he said.
"Our concern is that the Sahel not becomes a new Afghanistan."
The comments came as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ... sometimes described as For a good time at 3 a.m. call Hillary and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another Al Haig ... sounded the alarm Thursday over the continuing threat posed by Al Qaeda even in the wake of the killing of its criminal mastermind, the late Osama bin Laden ... who is no more...
"The core of Al-Qaeda that carried out the 9/11 attacks may be on the path to defeat, but the threat has spread, becoming more geographically diverse,"Clintonsaid in an opening address to the Global Counterterrorism Forum in Istanbul.
Government troops have no control overMali's north, a territory larger thanLa Belle France, heightening fears in the region and beyond that the landlocked country could become a new global haven for Al Qaeda.
Talks on a possible military intervention inMaliopened Thursday inAbidjanbetween officials from the United Nations ...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks... , the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Participants at the talks will discuss whether to ask the UN Security Council to authorise military action in Mali, said Ivory Coast Foreign Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan, whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of West African regional bloc ECOWAS.
Issoufou said he feared the hardline Islamist groups regrouping in northern Mali could spread to his country, which has also been hit by AQIM attacks in recent years.
"These groups in northern Mali are continuing to get their supply of weapons from southwestern Libya," he said.
He also said he could not rule out a military intervention in Mali, stressing however that it should be "a last resort."
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06/09/2012
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[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Malawi said on Friday it will not host the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... summit in July because the bloc insisted on inviting Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir Head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself president-for-life. He has fallen out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its secessesion, and attempted to Arabize Darfur by unleashing the barbaric Janjaweed on it. Sudan's potential prosperity has been pissed away in warfare that has left as many as 400,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. Omar has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court but nothing is expected to come of it. , wanted on international war crimes charges.
"After considering the interests of Malawians, I want to inform Malawians that the Cabinet met today and decided it was not interested to accept the conditions by the African Union, therefore Malawi is not hosting the summit," Vice President Khumbo Kachali said on state radio.
Kachali said the country had received a communication from the AU commission that as a host country Malawi was required to invite all presidents including Bashir.
"The commission said if Malawi was not willing to host al-Bashir, the venue should be shifted to another country," he said, adding that the summit would be hosted by Æthiopia.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/09/2012
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[An Nahar] Rebel Tuareg fighters of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) clashed with Islamist fighters from the Ansar Dine groups overnight in northern Mali, witnesses said Friday. "Fighters of the MNLA and those of Ansar Dine clashed overnight Thursday to Friday on the outskirts of Kidal," an official from the rebel-held town told Agence La Belle France Presse by phone.
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06/09/2012
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[Dawn] A Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... government's fact-finding mission on Thursday visited Kohistan ...a backwoods district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa distinguished by being even more rustic than is the norm among the local Pashtuns.... and secured an assurance from a local jirga (council of elders) about the safety of five girls, who are at the centre of a controversy.
The mission led by information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain attended the jirga and visited the village of two of the five girls alleged to have been killed in an honour-related crime.
"We took a promise from the jirga that it is its responsibility to provide protection to the girls, their families and houses," Mr Hussain told a news conference here on return from Kohistan.
He said a fact-finding mission of the provincial government and four female representatives of women rights groups on Thursday flew in helicopters to Beech Bela, a village in district Kohistan, to ascertain the status of the girls.
All five girls, he added, had been found to be alive and the reports about a holy man having issued a fatwa (religious decree) for their murder in the name of honour had been found to be false and misleading.
Mr Hussain also took to task media for 'blowing out of proportion' the controversy.
The controversy, he added, started making rounds after an 'engineered video' surfaced showing Kohistani girls cheering and two youth dancing in a supposedly private gathering.
The minister said the four civil society members, including Dr Farzan Bari, Dr Fozia Saeed, Shabeena Ayaz, and Riffat Butt, met two of the five girls, Shereen and Robina, in their mud houses and made their video with the consent of their families.
"Both the girls were found to be alive and in good mood. They informed the civil society members that the three other girls, including Baazgha, Aamna and Begum Jan, were also alive. However, alcohol has never solved anybody's problems. But then, neither has milk... they have already moved away along with their families," said the minister.
Mr Iftikhar said the population at that remote area kept moving on seasonal basis so it was understandable when people said the other three girls had moved out to some other place. He added that the civil society members couldn't have been reached on Thursday because they had moved to a far-off place.
He said the fact-finding mission collected evidence from four local witnesses, including Safeer Salaar Khan, Qadam Khan, Zabeeh Hayat and Sajeeda Khan.
"Witnesses told the jirga under oath that all five girls are alive and no harm has been caused to them after the surfacing of the video and the controversy it brewed," said the minister.
He said Maulvi Jawed, a central character of the controversy, told the jirga that he neither issued fatwa calling for the girls' killing nor did he attend any jirga alleged to have taken place where girls were ordered to be killed.
Mr Iftikhar said the controversy took serious turn after the media blew it out of proportion, showing a lack of responsibility.
He said the government's repeated clarifications and explanations rejecting the murder of the girls were not heeded by the electronic media,
which kept airing debates and talk shows without verifying information.
The minister said Afzal Khan, brother of the two youth shown dancing in the video, befooled all and created confusion by spreading false information.
"The media didn't believe in our words and kept causing humiliation to the country in general and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in particular. No one asked Afzal Khan to provide evidence of the girls' killing," he said.
Mr Iftikhar thanked the Supreme Court for taking a suo motu ...a legal term, from the Latin. Roughly translated it means I saw what you did, you bastard... notice of the incident and removing doubts about the girls' status. "It's the Supreme Court's responsibility to fix the responsibility and punish those who lied," said the minister, adding that the provincial government would also act against those spreading misleading information.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/09/2012
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The swarming desert locusts, which can eat their own weight in fresh food every day, threaten to devastate crops in a region where millions of people are already menaced by food shortages. In some stretches of northern Mali and Niger, some people have resorted to eating plant leaves, the International Committee of the Red Thingy and the World Food Program have said.
Locusts are usually managed by spraying chemicals that stop the swarms from spreading. Algeria and Libya ordinarily attack the swarms, preventing them from hitting Mali or Niger.
But in the last year, as Libya was wracked by fighting between rival militias in the aftermath of the ouster of Muammar Kadafi and Algeria suffered insecurity along its border, local teams and international experts have been blocked from stopping the swarms, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said.
The onslaught is especially alarming in Mali because the unrest has crippled its ability to fight them off. Bloomberg News reported Thursday that the equipment Mali needs to stop the swarms was destroyed during the Tuareg rebellion, quoting an interview with a locust control official broadcast on state radio.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
06/09/2012
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[An Nahar] Peace talks between Khartoum and Juba to set up a demilitarized buffer zone have ended with Sudan accusing South Sudan of seeking to create "10 disputed areas," state media reported on Friday.
The defense ministers of Sudan and South Sudan met this week in Addis Ababa to discuss border security, including a cessation of hostilities and the establishment of a demilitarized area along their common frontier.
But the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... -mediated talks ended on Thursday with the two sides unable to agree on the line from which the safe demilitarized border zone would be drawn, Abdelrahim Mohammed Hussein was quoted as saying by the official SUNA news agency.
"The map which South Sudan has adopted, and which it wants to be the basis of the demilitarized buffer zone, is considered hostile, and does not reflect the spirit of friendship or seek to achieve peace between the two sides."
"Instead (the South) wants to create 10 disputed areas between the two countries, like Abyei," Hussein said, referring to the contested border region where negotiations are currently deadlocked.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/09/2012
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The Palestinians, who saw their full United Nations membership bid rejected by the Security Council, may accept non-member state status, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said Friday.
Apparently there is no status for 'laughing stock'...
He told reporters during a Paris visit that if Israel did not resume peace negotiations, we will of course go to the (UN) General Assembly to obtain non-member status, as was the case for Switzerland and the Vatican.
The Palestinians applied for full membership of the UN last September but application hit deadlock at the Security Council where the United States threatened to veto any recommendation in support of the Palestinian bid. The United States and Israel argue that only direct Palestinian-Israeli talks can produce a definitive peace accord.
French President Francois Hollande, who met Abbas during his Paris visit, said on Friday that we must do everything to facilitate the recognition of a Palestinian state via a negotiated process.
Since as a Socialist he'll do whatever he can to muck things up...
Direct talks between the Israelis and Palestinians on a peace deal remain in deep freeze after grinding to a halt in late 2010 over the issue of Jewish settlement construction.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/09/2012
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[Dawn] A Pak confidence trickster was tossed in the clink Please don't kill me! for posing as an FBI agent and defrauding unwitting customers in Islamabad of $21,000, police said Friday.
Hayat Khan, 48, was set to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'! in a sting operation on Thursday following a number of complaints in the capital, police official Suhail Akram told AFP.
"The fake FBI agent grabbed millions of rupees. He is now under arrest," he said.
Khan, who also went by the alias Riaz Khan, claimed to have worked for the FBI and trapped his victims by offering to sell US dollars at a lower rate than on the market.
He reeled them in by offering favourable exchange rates for relatively small amounts of money, say $500 or $1,000, and then overcharging them for much larger amounts.
It was not immediately clear why he pretended to work for the FBI -- the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
"We have recovered two million rupees ($21,000) from his possession and are investigating," Akram said.
Currency exchange is an attractive business in Pakistain, where the rupee has lost 4.1 per cent of its value this year and last week sank to its lowest level against the dollar.
Yaseen Anwar, the governor of Pakistain's central bank, said last week that the fiscal deficit and lack of external financing would continue to challenge Pakistain.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[Dawn] At least 16 people were killed on Friday in a clash between two tribes in the Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... 's Chaghi area, DawnNews reported.
The two rival tribes, in Zardakan area of Chaghi, clashed with each other on Friday morning, Levis sources said.
To control the situation, administration has deployed additional Levis troops in the area.
Several people were maimed by the intense firing from both sides but the exact number of the maimed was unknown, sources said.
The tension still prevailed in the area as hundreds of armed rustics held positions against each other.
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[An Nahar] New talks with Iran failed to result in a deal allowing greater access to its contested nuclear program, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Friday.
"There has been no progress," the ineffective International Atomic Energy Agency's chief inspector Herman Nackaerts told journalists after a day of talks with Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh.
"This is disappointing. A date for a follow-on meeting has yet to be fixed," he said, reading out a prepared statement at a joint briefing with Soltanieh.
The Iranian envoy meanwhile insisted that Tehran was dedicated to alleviating fears about its nuclear drive.
"We are ready to remove all ambiguities and prove to the world that our activities are exclusively for peaceful purposes and none of these allegations (of seeking a bomb) are true," he told the media.
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#1
Was there ever any expectation of any "progress"?
[The Guardian] Across the world, blue-collar voters ally themselves with the political right -- even when it appears to be against their own interests.
Why on Earth would a working-class person ever vote for a conservative candidate? This question has obsessed the American left since Ronald Reagan first captured the votes of so many union members, farmers, urban Catholics and other relatively powerless people -- the so-called "Reagan Democrats". Isn't the Republican party the party of big business? Don't the Democrats stand up for the little guy, and try to redistribute the wealth downwards?
Many commentators on the left have embraced some version of the duping hypothesis: the Republican party dupes people into voting against their economic interests by triggering outrage on cultural issues. "Vote for us and we'll protect the American flag!" say the Republicans. "We'll make English the official language of the United States! And most importantly, we'll prevent gay people from threatening your marriage when they ... marry! Along the way we'll cut taxes on the rich, cut benefits for the poor, and allow industries to dump their waste into your drinking water, but never mind that. Only we can protect you from gay, Spanish-speaking flag-burners!"
One of the most robust findings in social psychology is that people find ways to believe whatever they want to believe. And the left really want to believe the duping hypothesis. It absolves them from blame and protects them from the need to look in the mirror or figure out what they stand for in the 21st century.
Here's a more painful but ultimately constructive diagnosis, from the point of view of moral psychology: politics at the national level is more like religion than it is like shopping. It's more about a moral vision that unifies a nation and calls it to greatness than it is about self-interest or specific policies. In most countries, the right tends to see that more clearly than the left. In America the Republicans did the hard work of drafting their moral vision in the 1970s, and Ronald Reagan was their eloquent front man. Patriotism, social order, strong families, personal responsibility (not government safety nets) and free enterprise. Those are values, not government programmes.
The Democrats, in contrast, have tried to win voters' hearts by promising to protect or expand programmes for elderly people, young people, students, poor people and the middle class. Vote for us and we'll use government to take care of everyone! But most Americans don't want to live in a nation based primarily on caring. That's what families are for.
One reason the left has such difficulty forging a lasting connection with voters is that the right has a built-in advantage -- conservatives have a broader moral palate than the liberals (as we call leftists in the US). Think about it this way: our tongues have taste buds that are responsive to five classes of chemicals, which we perceive as sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and savoury. Sweetness is generally the most appealing of the five tastes, but when it comes to a serious meal, most people want more than that.
In the same way, you can think of the moral mind as being like a tongue that is sensitive to a variety of moral flavours. In my research with colleagues at YourMorals.org, we have identified six moral concerns as the best candidates for being the innate "taste buds" of the moral sense: care/harm, fairness/cheating, liberty/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. Across many kinds of surveys, in the UK as well as in the USA, we find that people who self-identify as being on the left score higher on questions about care/harm. For example, how much would someone have to pay you to kick a dog in the head? Nobody wants to do this, but liberals say they would require more money than conservatives to cause harm to an innocent creature.
But on matters relating to group loyalty, respect for authority and sanctity (treating things as sacred and untouchable, not only in the context of religion), it sometimes seems that liberals lack the moral taste buds, or at least, their moral "cuisine" makes less use of them. For example, according to our data, if you want to hire someone to criticise your nation on a radio show in another nation (loyalty), give the finger to his boss (authority), or sign a piece of paper stating one's willingness to sell his soul (sanctity), you can save a lot of money by posting a sign: "Conservatives need not apply."
In America, it is these three moral foundations that underlie most of the "cultural" issues that, according to duping theorists, are used to distract voters from their self-interest. But are voters really voting against their self-interest when they vote for candidates who share their values? Loyalty, respect for authority and some degree of sanctification create a more binding social order that places some limits on individualism and egoism. As marriage rates plummet, and globalisation and rising diversity erodes the sense of common heritage within each nation, a lot of voters in many western nations find themselves hungering for conservative moral cuisine.
Despite being in the wake of a financial crisis that -- if the duping theorists were correct -- should have buried the cultural issues and pulled most voters to the left, we are finding in America and many European nations a stronger shift to the right. When people fear the collapse of their society, they want order and national greatness, not a more nurturing government.
Even on the two moral taste buds that both sides claim -- fairness and liberty -- the right can often outcook the left. The left typically thinks of equality as being central to fairness, and leftists are extremely sensitive about gross inequalities of outcome -- particularly when they correspond along racial or ethnic lines. But the broader meaning of fairness is really proportionality -- are people getting rewarded in proportion to the work they put into a common project? Equality of outcomes is only seen as fair by most people in the special case in which everyone has made equal contributions. The conservative media (such as the Daily Mail, or Fox News in the US) is much more sensitive to the presence of slackers and benefit cheats. They are very effective at stirring up outrage at the government for condoning cheating.
Similarly for liberty. Americans and Britons all love liberty, yet when liberty and care conflict, the left is more likely to choose care. This is the crux of the US's monumental battle over Obama's healthcare plan. Can the federal government compel some people to buy a product (health insurance) in order to make a plan work that extends care to 30 million other people? The derogatory term "nanny state" is rarely used against the right (pastygate being perhaps an exception). Conservatives are more cautious about infringing on individual liberties (eg of gun owners in the US and small businessmen) in order to protect vulnerable populations (such as children, animals and immigrants).
In sum, the left has a tendency to place caring for the weak, sick and vulnerable above all other moral concerns. It is admirable and necessary that some political party stands up for victims of injustice, racism or bad luck. But in focusing so much on the needy, the left often fails to address -- and sometimes violates -- other moral needs, hopes and concerns. When working-class people vote conservative, as most do in the US, they are not voting against their self-interest; they are voting for their moral interest. They are voting for the party that serves to them a more satisfying moral cuisine. The left in the UK and USA should think hard about their recipe for success in the 21st century.
Jonathan Haidt is a professor of psychology at New York University's Stern School of Business. He is the author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. To take the survey described in this essay, visit www.yourmorals.org/express_welcome_sacredness.php
#2
"In sum, the left has a tendency to place caring for the weak, sick and vulnerable above all other moral concerns. It is admirable and necessary that some political party stands up for victims of injustice, racism or bad luck."
Except.. traditionally, the democrat party has been of opposite peer.
Were not the Northern States all Red States under Lincoln, and now both parties have reversed state-wise? Why?
Southern states are now red and northern blue. Why has not writ of this subject even crept into journalistic history?
I find it fascinating what may be learnt by the shifting of the parties through the political arena. Start Civil War and move forward - Wilson, Johnson,FDR ... "progressively worse" and surely lack of quality.
Any takers? I really should have prose this to Small Wars Journal, but after their Sherman Coin thing, I hit overload FAwesomes.
Don't the Democrats stand up for the little guy, and try to redistribute the wealth downwards?
No. What they want is the sob story. The cost of democrat empowerment is the abdication of self authority. Its the collectivism of ants, with the foresight of grasshoppers.
#4
Don't the Democrats stand up for the little guy, and try to redistribute the wealth downwards?
Sort of along the lines of 'If it weren't for the masters up in the Plantation House, how would those poor slaves cope?' Those up in the House and their most favored seem not to go without during all the 'redistribution'. All animals may be equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
#5
I've read many such articles in my time and this one actually seems to do a pretty good job.
The one flaw that it has is a common one. It defines "self-interest" purely in terms of what the gov't (aka liberals) will give me.
People are smarter than that and realize that while a hand out may help in the short term it won't teach me to fish (to mix metaphors). Also, perhaps unconciously, people realize that a dynamic economic environment, with people moving up and down the ladder is more conducive to growth and prosperity for the individual as well as society as a whole. The entropy of "fairness", defined as equality of outcome, leaves nothing but boredom and stasis, except for those up in the Plantation House (thx P2K).
In general people don't want to return to the middle ages where the nobility tell you what to do and when to do it and how to do it so that everyone is "equal" except, of course, the nobility.
#6
Blue collar workers identify with the right? Something like 38% of the public union voter households said they voted for Walker in exit polls in Wisconsin. Not a majority but surprising considering how much money and effort the left and unions threw at this election. In practice, it may be that people on the left just don't like their leadership and what they stand for and what they do. Union leadership like government leadership is just one more elitist group trying to take more tax money, over-regulate, and intrude in their lives. We may all become unified in our dislikes rather than out likes.
#7
Ahhh...the Egg-Head version of Obamas' "Cling" comments. They just can't bring themselves to admit that there's almost zero distinction between self-intrest and moral-intrest. It's because they loathe the notion that the people who don't share their beliefs can somehow be considered rational.
#8
A basic flaw in this guy's approach is to equate "caring" with a "creating a giant federal bureaucracy charged with administering care". When the church ladies bring food to a sick neighbor, that doesn't really count as "caring" to the left. (Why, the ladies shouldn't be going to church to begin with.)
Posted by: Matt ||
06/09/2012 11:05
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#9
All of us who bend/shape/join metal for a living are supposed to bend over backwards for the party that's been implementing a Morgenthau Plan of a thousand cuts on American industry?
Posted by: Barbara ||
06/09/2012 15:13
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#13
I posted the piece because of the last paragraph, which I read as the author's data-based warning to those on the left that they are badly misreading a situation which is going to get steadily worse for them:
In sum, the left has a tendency to place caring for the weak, sick and vulnerable above all other moral concerns. It is admirable and necessary that some political party stands up for victims of injustice, racism or bad luck. But in focusing so much on the needy, the left often fails to address -- and sometimes violates -- other moral needs, hopes and concerns. When working-class people vote conservative, as most do in the US, they are not voting against their self-interest; they are voting for their moral interest. They are voting for the party that serves to them a more satisfying moral cuisine. The left in the UK and USA should think hard about their recipe for success in the 21st century.
I also thought it might amuse some of our gentle readers to go to the link at the bottom of the page and supply the author with additional data, data being the sum of sufficient anecdotes.
#14
"It is admirable and necessary that some political party stands up for victims of injustice, racism or bad luck."
You're equating "bad luck" with the other two?
a. You're an idiot.
b. Too bad the liberals don't actually give a rat's ass about these "victims," except for how the libs can use said victims to their own ends (i.e., for getting power and money for themselves). >:-(
Posted by: Barbara ||
06/09/2012 20:48
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[Yemen Post] The UN envoy to Yemen Jamal Beomar has said there are no guarantees for those who committed crimes in the country, few days after the UN Security Council threatened to sanction the obstructers of power-transfer deal sponsored by the international community after the 2011 unrest.
In a show aired on a Dubai TV late on Thursday, Benomar held ex-leader, President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it... , responsible for the worsening situation in Yemen and urged the power-sharing government to issue the transitional justice law soon.
"It is regrettable to object to such law, at a time when Yemen is experiencing a 'model wide political and civil partnership' for the first time in its history," he said. "I regret that the ministers of the General People's Congress, whose head is Saleh, were behind the delay to issue the transitional justice law in Yemen".
On May 29, Benomar submitted his report on the situation in Yemen to the UN Security Council which hailed progress so far on the political reconciliation process, but warned of all attempts affecting the democratic transition.
The obstruction attempts have triggered the concerns of the countries sponsoring the deal, some of which have already started to take measures to sanction those behind such attempts.
Benomar said the democratic transition is facing big challenges in Yemen including the rebellion of some military officers against presidential decrees replacing them.
The officers included Tariq Saleh, a nephew of the ex-president, who has refused to give up his post as the commander of the third elite republican guard brigade.
Saleh, who signed the deal in November to relinquish power after 33 years in office in return for immunity from prosecution, has earlier demanded assign this brigade to guard him.
The demand was unwelcome.
The Security Council will send a strongly-worded letter to those obstructing the political transition in Yemen at a time when the GCC countries are discussing a decision over the issue, he said.
Benomar also urged all Yemenis to participate in a comprehensive dialogue expected in the few coming months according to the deal, saying dialogue remains the best solution to resolve all problems in the country.
He reiterated full support to Yemen's president Abdrabu Mansour Hadi as he hailed the battles killing and injuring hundreds of Al-Qaeda Orcs and similar vermin and clearing them from areas in the south.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/09/2012
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[An Nahar] Iraqi holy manMoqtada Tater al-Sadr ... the Iranian catspaw holy man who was 22 years old in 2003 and was nearing 40 in 2010. He spends most of his time in Iran, safely out of the line of fire, where he's learning to be an ayatollah... on Friday insisted that claims his supporters were involved in fighting in Syria were false, but said members of "splinter" groups could be involved in the violence.
"All these claims are lies," Sadr, a powerful Shiite holy man, said in a written response to a question from one of his followers over allegations that Sadrists are taking part in the violent suppression of the ongoing uprising against the Syrian regime.
He added that any purported video evidence of involvement of one of his loyalists are "fabricated and not real".
"They do not belong to me," Sadr said of fighters in Syria, adding that it was possible that members of "splinter" groups supported by external parties were involved the violence.
Sadr did not specify which splinter groups he was referring to, or give details on which external parties may be supporting them.
The holy man promised to punish any of his supporters who were proved to be involved in the Syrian unrest.
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06/09/2012
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[Tripoli Post] Libya's Ministry of Economy has issued a new decree allowing foreign companies to enter joint ventures and open a representative office to study the Libyan market. It is aimed at reorganising and facilitating the process of foreign-local partnership.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/09/2012
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[Al Ahram] Salafist Nour Party MP Ali Wanis has denied news reports that he was caught performing an indecent act with a teenage girl on Thursday night.
The Al-Ahram Arabic news portal, along with several other online news websites, reported that a police patrol found Wanis in a car parked on a highway near the city of Toukh in Benha -- which Wanis represents in parliament -- engaging in an indecent act with a 19-year-old college student.
According to Al-Ahram, which contacted Wanis Friday morning, his son vehemently denied the allegation on behalf of his father and said the latter had gone out to perform his Friday sermon.
Wanis issued an online statement early Friday morning denying the allegation.
He said he had earlier been involved in an altercation with a low-ranking police officer and accused the police of fabricating a scandal to get back at him.
He did not know the details of the allegation, he added.
Wanis concluded by stating that the allegation was part of a blackmail campaign aimed at smearing his reputation and the image of the Islamist political current.
News reports claimed Wanis was permitted to leave the cop shoppe due to his political immunity, as the prosecution requires parliamentary permission before they can fully investigate the case.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/09/2012
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NEW YORK -- The United Nations is increasingly worried about the unarmed observers it has sent into Syria to monitor the situation in the country. The UN Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) is caught between troops accused of firing at its patrols and increasingly bitter Syrians who cannot understand why it has not halted the bloodshed, officials said.
Susan Rice, US ambassador to the United Nations, likened the monitors to "300 sitting ducks in a shooting gallery, one IED from a disaster", at a recent UN Security Council meeting.
You can either defend your monitors or pull them out. Leaving them sit there as targets is dishonorable...
An Iraq-style Improvised Explosive Device, or roadside bomb, exploded in front of a convoy of UN ceasefire monitors last month, without wounding anyone. On Thursday, shots were fired at another UN patrol as it tried to get to a village near Homs where a fresh massacre reportedly left dozens dead. No monitors were wounded.
The Security Council has ordered a review of the mission to be ready before its 90 day mandate ends on July 20. According to diplomats and UN officials, options being studied range from sending more observers with armed protection to a complete withdrawal if UNSMIS suffers casualties. All stressed that no decision has yet been taken.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/09/2012
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#1
Ever heard the expression "Mind own business."?
#4
If the UN is going to send armed troops, who should they send? America would not be acceptable of course, plus we're kind of busy in Afghanistan right now. (Although we would be the best prepared, best armed and ready). None of the NATO countries can go, either. How about Saudi Arabia or one of the other Muslim countries? Oh yeah - right. It is immoral to kill another Muslim (ignoring the fact that Assad is killing Muslims by the dozen). The Russians and Chinese aren't interested, and seem to think that Assad is just ducky as a leader.
So who will bell the cat?
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
06/09/2012 14:17
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#5
I'd volunteer Venezuela and Cuba, but they would likely show up armed with sprockets and notepads.
#6
"The United Nations is increasingly worried about the unarmed observers it has sent into Syria to monitor the situation in the country."
You sent unarmed people to a war zone?
You're IDIOTS. But we knew that....
Howzabout just butting out? You're not helping with your hectoring and strongly worded memos.
"increasingly bitter Syrians who cannot understand why [the UN] has not halted the bloodshed"
Then they're idiots, too.
The only thing you can depend on the Useless Nitwits to do is screw over you while enriching themselves. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara ||
06/09/2012 15:11
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#7
Its statements like that which makes me give thanks that my life does not depend upon coffee annon brokering a deal.
And where is moon? Golfing with the champ?
Personally, I think the monitors are there to get killed, to give some sort of cover for an operation...a call to arms nobody will answer. So agree with Steve. Still, its more than they did with Myanmar. It really is a trading tent and band camp.
[An Nahar] Tunisia's decision to extradite Libya's former prime minister Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi back to his home country is definitive, Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali told Agence La Belle France Presse on Friday.
"The decision to hand over Mr. Mahmoudi is irrevocable," he said, without providing a date for the extradition of the former premier, a stalwart of slain Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffy ...whose instability was an inspiration to dictators everywhere, but whose end couldn't possibly happen to them... 's fallen regime.
Lawyers for Mahmoudi, who was placed in long-term storage Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'! in September, and rights groups have argued he will be executed if he returns to Libya, where a February 2011 uprising ended more than four decades of Qadaffy's dictatorship.
Libyan authorities have guaranteed that former premier will get a fair trial, meeting Tunisia's final condition for his extradition, the Tunisian president's office said last month.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/09/2012
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[An Nahar] A bomb killed one person early Friday in the northern city of Maiduguri where Islamist sect Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... has carried out series of deadly attacks, the army and residents said.
The improvised bomb (IED), concealed in a bag kept under a public shed, went kaboom! around 6:00 am (0500 GMT) in the Gidan Dambe district of the volatile city, they said.
The army said victim was a suspected Boko Haram member trying to plant an bomb. Residents however said they thought he was a drug addict who had been trying to find out what was in the bag.
"There was an kaboom in an area of Maiduguri this morning and our men immediately deployed to the area," Colonel Victor Ebhaleme, commander of the Joint Task Force (JTF) operating in the city, told Agance La Belle France Press.
"They found a man we believe to be a member of Boko Haram, dismembered by the kaboom".
"Preliminary investigation has shown that he was killed when he was trying to plant the device," he stated.
A resident said: "a resident known to be a drug addict, named Dalwa, went into the shed and tried to open the bag to see what was inside it. The device went kaboom! and killed him on the spot. His body was blown into pieces."
Posted by: Fred ||
06/09/2012
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[Yemen Observer] Some 50 Somalis arrived in the al-Qaeda stronghold district of Ja'ar to back the gunnies against military troops surrounding the area.
A military colonel in Abyan ...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an Islamic Emirate after seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues... capital, Zinjubar, said on anonymity condition, that the Somalis came by boat to Ja'ar district, which is now surrounded by military reinforcements in order to recapture the area.
Linked al-Qaeda gunnies are battling the government's troops in three different fronts including Zinjubar, the capital of the province, which fell to the thugs' hand last year amid the security vacuum.
The military source said that a couple of military brigades have been around Zinjubar since last month in order to retake the area. "But they could not make any progress fearing that they could be shot by al-Qaeda. They are using a hit-and-run tactic and guerrilla war. The same thing is happening in the neighboring Ja'ar district," The source said.
The United States is baking the government troops in the offensive against al-Qaeda, setting up a drone campaign that has already killed a number of gunnies including leading al-Qaeda members.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/09/2012
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#1
Sounds like a target rich environment.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/09/2012 0:25
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[Daily Nation (Kenya)] The remnants of Mali's junta have completed a pullout from the headquarters of the state broadcaster in Bamako, a symbol of their claim to power since a March coup.
Roadblocks and checks around the radio-television building were removed and two tanks guarding the entrance pulled back, an AFP correspondent reported Friday.
A journalist working at the state broadcaster's headquarters said the last armoured vehicles had left by late Thursday and added that only a few soldiers remained inside the compound.
A group of renegade soldiers led by Captain Amadou Sanogo took control of the compound on March 21, a key step in the coup that ousted president Amadou Toumani Toure the next day.
Sanogo and his junta officially handed power back to a civilian administration on May 20 but did not fully return to their barracks and remained involved in the country's political life.
Regional powers met UN and African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... leaders in Abidjan Thursday and urged the former junta to immediately dissolve.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[Dawn] A kaboomdestroyed a bus on Friday, killing 19 people, including seven women and a child, on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Beautiful Downtown Peshawar, police said.
More than 40 others were maimed in the attack on a bus rented by the government to take staff home after work in the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... It was the deadliest attack in months on Peshawar, which has long been a flashpoint for a local Taliban insurgency targeting government officials, security forces and ordinary civilians.
The city runs into the semi-autonomous tribal belt that US officials consider a safe haven for Al-Qaeda and snuffies fighting both in Pakistain and across the border in Afghanistan.
The kaboom went off in the Daudzai area, killing government employees and other private passengers riding the same bus, officials said.
"The bomb was planted under the bus," provincial information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain told news hounds.
"We still can't say how many government employees and private passengers were killed, but there were heavy human losses," he added.
Police official Tahir Ayub told AFP 19 people were killed and more than 40 maimed. Another police official, Shafiullah Khan, said seven women and a girl, aged seven, were among the dead.
The kaboom destroyed the back end of the bus. Bloodied pieces of human flesh littered the seats, along with blood-stained clothes on the road lined with juniper trees, an AFP news hound said.
Muhammad Ullah, 48, a police official on the bus, said there was a deafening blast.
"The kaboom triggered massive smoke inside the bus but even then we could feel soft and bloody pieces of human flesh hitting our bodies," Ullah told AFP while being treated for head and shoulder injuries.
Arsalan, a junior clerk in the provincial auditor general's office, said he remembered asking the driver to stop at a mosque on the road for main Friday prayers then the kaboom took place.
"I don't remember what happened next because I fainted and came round in a hospital bed," the 28-year-old, also with head and neck injuries, told AFP.
The attack came one day after a remote-controlled bomb killed at least 15 people outside a madrassa in Pakistain's southwestern city of Quetta.
The country of 180 million sits on the frontline of the US-led war on al Qaeda and since July 2007 has been gripped by a local Taliban-led insurgency, concentrated largely in the northwest.
In the last five years, attacks blamed on beturbanned goon bombers have killed more than 5,000 people according to an AFP tally.
Pakistain's relations with the United States are in disarray and for the last six months, since US air strikes killed 24 Pak soldiers along the border, it has imposed a blockade on NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and organization.... supplies crossing overland into Afghanistan.
On Thursday, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ...current SecDef, previously Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta served as President Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997 and was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993.... warned Pakistain that the United States was running out of patience over Islamabad's refusal to do more to eliminate safe havens for snuffies who attack US troops fighting a 10-year war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Panetta made the strong remarks after talks with Afghan Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak on the latest leg of an Asian tour that took him to Pakistain's arch-rival India, but not Islamabad in a sign of dire US-Pakistain relations.
He singled out the Haqqani network, a Taliban and al Qaeda-linked faction that has bases in Pakistain's tribal district of North Wazoo and which has been blamed for some of the deadliest attacks of the 10-year war in Afghanistan.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/09/2012
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[An Nahar] Russia said Friday after talks with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ... sometimes described as The Woman to Call at 3 a.m. and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another James Baker ... 's Syria envoy that it was unaware of any plans by Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Despoiler of Deraa... to leave power.
Senior Russian diplomats said they also told special envoy Fred Hof that Moscow was willing to agree changes to international envoy Kofi Annan ...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo... 's peace plan for Syria as long as they kept the tattered initiative alive.
"I do not know anything about such plans by the Syrian president," Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov told the state news agency RIA Novosti when asked after the meeting if Moscow was aware of any intention of Assad to step down.
Hof's visit came as pressure mounted on Russia - a Soviet-era ally of Syria believed to have the world's greatest remaining influence on the regime - to back a political transition that would ultimately see Assad go.
Moscow has publicly distanced itself from Assad in recent weeks while still supplying his army with weapons and adamantly vowing to resist all calls for foreign military intervention aimed at halting the 15-month crisis.
Russia has made a counter-proposal - met with great skepticism by the United States - that would see regional players such as Iran sit down with world powers and try to negotiate a joint strategy suitable to all Syrians.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/09/2012
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[An Nahar] Rebels and regime troops clashed in a district of the Syrian capital as scores of protests were held across the strife-torn country and more than 20 people killed on Friday, monitors said.
Clashes broke out in Kfar Sousa, a Damascus ...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world... district where anti-regime sentiment is strong, while kabooms rocked the Mazzeh and Al-Qadam neighborhoods, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Protesters, meanwhile, erupted into the streets in flashpoints across the country, including Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo ...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins... , where regime forces used live rounds and tear gas, the NGO added.
Anti-regime activists had called for fresh protests under the slogan "Revolutionaries and traders, hand in hand until victory," aiming to draw in the middle classes in Syria's two largest cities to join the uprising.
"Damascus and Aleppo play a central role in the revolt now," anti-regime activist Deeb Dimashqi (not his real name) told AFP via Skype.
People emerged from mosques to demonstrate in Kfar Zita, in Hama province of central Syria, chanting: "We don't want peaceful (revolt). We have bullets and Kalashnikovs!"
"Meetings, decisions, sanctions...initiatives, and still the Syrian people is being slaughtered," read a hand-written poster held up by a Kfar Zita protester, according to amateur video posted on YouTube by activists.
Amid the protests, violence continued across the country.
The rebel district of Khaldiyeh, in the restive city of Homs, underwent "the most violent shelling it has seen since the revolt began" in March 2011, said the Observatory, "at a rate of five shells a minute."
According to video uploaded on YouTube by anti-regime activists, thick clouds of smoke rose above residential buildings and mosques in Khaldiyeh, where loud blasts were heard as the district, much of it deserted, was violently shelled.
The opposition Syrian National Council in a statement called on U.N. military observers to set up a base in the city, "which suffers daily shelling and killings by regime snipers."
The Observatory said a man was killed in the province of Homs when unidentified gunnies opened fire on a small convoy of vehicles.
An kaboom in front of a cop shoppe in the northwestern city of Idlib killed five people, including two more members of the security forces, said the Britannia-based monitoring group.
"It was a powerful kaboom that destroyed the facade of the building," said the watchdog, which also reported that a civilian was rubbed out at Kfar Nabel in the same province.
A deadly blast also rocked a Damascus suburb, killing two security forces members, said the Observatory.
An AFP photographer said the blast in the capital's Qudssaya neighborhood tore a car to shreds and damaged a military bus -- the reported target -- as well as some nearby residential buildings.
Four others were killed in the suburbs of Damascus, one of whom was rubbed out by a sniper in the town of Douma, the watchdog said.
In the southern province of Daraa, cradle of the uprising, the head of a rebel "brigade" was killed at Basr al-Sham and a sniper rubbed out a civilian in Mahajja, said the Observatory.
In Latakia on the Mediterranean, two rebel fighters were killed in festivities in Al-Hafa, a mountainous area where "regime troops have lost dozens of soldiers over the past 72 hours," the Observatory said.
In Deir Ezzor, eastern Syria, three non-combatants were killed in shelling at dawn, while two regime troops were killed in festivities.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[An Nahar] Britannia, La Belle France and the United States will quickly draw up a U.N. Security Council resolution proposing sanctions against Syria over the worsening conflict, diplomats said Friday.
"We will move fast to press for a resolution," a U.N. diplomat told AFP.
"There will be action in the coming days to get a vote on a resolution which includes measures under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter -- which would mean sanctions," the diplomat added in comments confirmed by other Security Council envoys.
The three Western permanent members of the Council want a new campaign for sanctions after U.N.-Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... envoy Kofi Annan ...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo... said Thursday that the international community must warn Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Trampler of Homs... of "clear consequences" if he does not carry out an international peace plan.
Russia, Syria's main international ally, and China have twice used their veto powers as permanent members to block resolutions which had just hinted at sanctions against Assad.
But Annan's call for substantial new pressure on Assad and two recent massacres in Syria have heightened international demands for the Security Council to act against the Syrian leader.
The resolution will be drawn up alongside international lobbying for action at the Group of 20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico on June 18-19 and other key meetings.
Britannia and Germany, a temporary member of the council, made clear calls for sanctions at Thursday's briefings on Syria by Annan and U.N. leader the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon ... of whom it can be said to his credit that he is not Kofi Annan...
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#1
I say quarantine Syria's ports.
Nothing in-or-out other than Russian vessels, who will then be the subjects of intense scrutiny, every trip. Let the Russians put their money where their mouth is.
..also if we get a clear shot by drone on Syria's leadership, then do so! My prayers go out to the brave Syrian people.
Deafening silence from North Korea greeted the first repayment date on Thursday for loans given by the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations. The Export-Import Bank of Korea faxed a notice to North Korea's Foreign Trade Bank on behalf of the South Korean government on May 4 informing them of the date of maturity and amount, but Pyongyang ignored it.
North Korea was supposed to repay US$5.83 million including principal and interest by Thursday. The amount is the first tranche of maturing loans extended in 2000 of $88.36 million in the form of 200,000 tons of corn and 300,000 tons of rice. Between 2000 to 2007, the South gave the North 2.6 million tons of food worth $720 million. North Korea must repay $875.3 million by 2037 at an annual interest rate of 1 percent.
The South Korean government already included the $5.83 million the North was scheduled to repay in its budget for this year. "If North Korea does not respond by Friday, we will notify it again of the repayment date and take additional measures," a Unification Ministry official said.
But the chances are slim that the cash-strapped North will repay the debt amid chilly inter-Korean relations. North Korea has been hurling abuse and threats at South Korea since mid-April. The North's official KCNA news agency on Wednesday called President Lee Myung-bak a "rat" and compared him to Adolf Hitler.
The Kim and Roh administrations failed to make back-up plans in case the North fails to pay back what it owes except for a penalty clause in case of default boosting the interest to 2 percent.
In 2007 and 2008, South Korea also gave the North $80 million worth of raw materials to produce textiles, shoes and soap. At the time, North Korea repaid 3 percent of the loan with $2.4 million worth of zinc ingots. Repayments of the remaining $77.6 million become due after a five-year grace period, so North Korea must start repaying $8.6 million a year every year for 10 years starting in 2014.
Seoul also loaned Pyongyang W585.2 billion (US$1=W1,172) from the Inter-Korean Cooperation Fund so it could re-connect railways and roads with the South that were severed in the 1950-53 Korean War. And it provided W149.4 billion worth of equipment to the North. The North must repay that loan in 20 years with a 10-year grace period at an annual interest of 1 percent.
It also seems unlikely that South Korea will be able to recoup W1.37 trillion plus around W900 billion in interest it provided North Korea through an abortive project by the Korean Energy Development Organization to build a light-water reactor.
The loans amount to a total of around W3.5 trillion, which the South will probably have to write off.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/09/2012
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SO, deadbeats as well as evil.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/09/2012 0:49
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#2
The ba$tards will probably just counterfeit the payment in US dollars and pretend to pay for it that way. Oh, wait a minute, seems to me that's already been done before ....
(Sh. M. Network)-The command of African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), declared their next military plan against the remained Al shabab controlled regions in southern Somalia.
Speaking at a presser at Buula-Low area, 5 Km west of Afgoye town, General Ugadi Kiki, the commander of AMISOM operations in locations between Mogadishu and Afgoye district in Lower Shabelle region of southern Somalia, said that Somali and AU soldiers are preparing an offensive against Bal-ad town, 30 Kilometers north of Mogadishu.
"After securing Afgoye corridor, crowded with internally displaced people, we are just setting up another major attack against the faceless myrmidons remained in Lower Shabelle region- that is our next step of our 'free Shabelle operation'," said the commander.
The Afgoye corridor, northwest of Mogadishu is believed to hold 400,000 internally displaced people, the largest such concentration in the world, with some access to aid during Al shabab rule in the past.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/09/2012
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[An Nahar] Germany said Friday it was "horrified" by the latest Syrian massacre and urged Russia to throw its support behind a tougher condemnation of Damascus ...Capital of the last remaining Baathist regime in the world... by the United Nations ...an idea whose time has gone... Security Council.
Government front man Steffen Seibert said at a regular briefing that Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Supressor of the Damascenes... had lost all "legitimacy" and that a political solution was "unthinkable."
"Two weeks after the massacre in Houla, it appears a similar massacre in the town of al-Kubeir near Hama was committed," Seibert said, adding that dozens of civilians had been "savagely killed."
"The position taken by the U.N. Security Council will be decisive for further developments and Russia, as Chancellor (Angela) Merkel stressed last week during the visit of President Vladimir Putin ...Second President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Because of constitutionally mandated term limits he is the current Prime Minister of Russia. His sock puppet, Dmitry Medvedev, was installed in the 2008 presidential elections. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law. During his eight years in office Russia's economy bounced back from crisis, seeing GDP increase, poverty decrease and average monthly salaries increase. During his presidency Putin passed into law a series of fundamental reforms, including a flat income tax of 13%, a reduced profits tax, and new land and legal codes. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile... , has a particular responsibility here."
Seibert said Germany called on Assad to step aside.
"Leadership that allows such actions has lost all legitimacy," he said of Assad's regime in light of the latest bloodshed.
"It is actually unthinkable that a political solution, an end to the conflict, could be brought about with Mr. Assad at the helm. That is why the German government again urges him to clear the way for a peaceful transformation in Syria."
Posted by: Fred ||
06/09/2012
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Two villagers were killed and five were injured in a shooting in a house in Narathiwat province Wednesday night.
Suchart Chaisuwan, a security guard at Sungai Padi secondary school, and Jarunee Sukpin were killed when six gunmen on three motorcycles fired AK-47's at the group sitting outside a house of Paiboon Kaewharn. Five people, including Mr Paiboon and three defense voluteers were injured in the incident.
A defense volunteer shot back at the gunmen, who fled the scene, but it is unknown if any of the attackers were hit.
A soldier in a teacher security team was seriously injured by a bomb in Yala province on Thursday afternoon. Police said the home-made bomb was planted in a shelter on Highway 410. It was remotely detonated when the soldiers from Yala Task Force 13 went into the shelter to escape the rain.
Cpl Vitvas Niamrod, 28, was seriously wounded and admitted to the hospital.
[An Nahar] A suicide kaboom at the police headquarters in Nigeria's restive city of Maiduguri Friday killed at least two coppers and maimed six other people, authorities and witnesses said.
It was the latest violence to hit the tense northeastern city that has been at the center of Islamist group Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... 's insurgency, which has killed more than 1,000 people since mid-2009.
"A jacket wallah tried to force his way into the police headquarters... However, some people cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go... he rammed the car into sand-filled drums outside headquarters and his car went kaboom!," a police source said.
"We have some casualties, but we're trying to sort out the extent of fatalities and the injured."
A witness reported seeing the bodies of two coppers.
Another witness said he saw five maimedcoppers and what appeared to be an injured pregnant woman being taken away to hospital.
A hospital source confirmed that the bodies of two coppers had been brought in as well as the six maimed mentioned by the witness.
"At the moment, we have two bodies of coppers brought to the hospital from the suicide kaboom at the police headquarters," the nurse said on condition of anonymity.
"Six people, comprising five coppers and a pregnant woman, were brought with injuries from the kaboom."
The state police commissioner confirmed the kaboom, but declined to provide further details, saying he was at the hospital where maimed had been taken.
The bloody attack was the latest to hit Maiduguri, the city where Boko Haram's mosque and headquarters were located until they were destroyed in a 2009 military assault.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/09/2012
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(Sh.M.Network)- Two brothers have been tossed in the slammer Into the paddy wagon wit' yez! in Denmark on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack.
The Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) confirmed that the men, who are thought to have links with a Somali myrmidon Islamic group, were tossed in the slammer Into the paddy wagon wit' yez! on Monday, May 28.
According to PET, the arrests of the 18 and 23-year-old have "prevented a specific act of terrorism", as the men allegedly discussed the target, method and weapons for an attack. It also says one of the suspects attended an al-Shabaab ... Harakat ash-Shabaab al-Mujahidin aka the Mujahideen Youth Movement. It was originally the youth movement of the Islamic Courts, now pretty much all of what's left of it. They are aligned with al-Qaeda but operate more like the Afghan or Pakistani Taliban... training camp in Somalia.
One of the brothers was tossed in the slammer Into the paddy wagon wit' yez! in Aarhus, while the other was intercepted as he returned to Denmark throughCopenhagenAirport. Both have lived in Aarhus for 16 years, according to reports.
"A specific act of terrorism has been averted, and as such the perceived threat level against Denmark is not affected, although it remains high," PET said in a statement, adding that the men will appear in court the following week.
Denmarkhas been the target of several Islamists attacks since Jyllands-Posten newspaper published controversial cartoons of the holy Moslem Prophet Muhammad in 2005.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/09/2012
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[Dawn] More than a dozen prisoners, including criminals and members of the Taliban, have beat feet from a jail in northern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said.
Abdul Jabar Haqbeen, the governor of Sar-e-Pul province, said a bomb exploded on the outside of one of the prison walls on Thursday night, and the prisoners escaped through the rubble.
He said guards opened fire, killing three prisoners. They're not gonna escape again.
Many were recaptured but authorities are still looking for 14 prisoners who managed to escape.
A member of the provincial council, Abdul Ghani, said inmates made the bomb inside the compound and blew up a prison tower. This sort of thing never happened back when Dostum stored the bastards in shipping containers.
He said he feared the jail break would mean deteriorating security in the province.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/09/2012
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Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of the capital of Bahrain on Friday. In a bid to disperse the crowds, police resorted to tear gas and flash grenades. The protesters are displeased with yet another arrest of prominent human rights activist Nabeel Rajab, The Voice of Russia reported.
In early May he was arrested on charges of organizing an unauthorized rally. He was released on bail, but in early June they detained him again for his outspokenness in the social networks.
Rajab advocates equal rights for all ethnic and religious denominations.
Until the Shi'a win and take over, that is...
The authorities in the Kingdom of Bahrain are Sunnis. However, only a quarter of the population are followers of this branch of Islam, while a majority are Shiite Muslims.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/09/2012
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How come nobody discusses an intervention in Bahrain?
Violent festivities broke out Thursday between Al-Qaeda bully boyz and rustics of the Popular Resistance Committees in Abyan ...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an Islamic Emirate after seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues... governorate amid fears of Al-Qaeda's control on a small town, Ba-Tais, local sources said. The sources said that the bully boyz raided Ba-Tais, about 10 kilometers in the north of Jaar, a main stronghold of Al-Qaeda in Abyan. The sources said that the bully boyz are about to take control on the town, reiterating that the rustics have not enough military equipment in comparison with Al-qaeda bully boyz who captured some parts of the town. They said that five fighters of the Popular Resistance Committees that were formed in various areas of Abyan to back the Yemeni army and three Al-Qaeda bully boyz were killed and three others of the committees were maimed. Yemen's air fighters launched strikes on positions of Al-Qaeda in Ba-Tais, but it was not known whether there were casualties or not, the sources added. Al-Qaeda bully boyz still take control on several towns in Abyan, particularly Zinjibar, Jaar and Shaqra, and they have large quantities of arms they had took over during their festivities with the army.
The Yemeni army has been carrying out an offensive against Al-Qaeda strongholds in some towns of Abyan since May 12. It aimed at reclaiming Zinjibar and other localities in Abyan lost to Al-Qaeda during the past year.
Meanwhile, ...back at the sandwich shop, Caroline was experimenting with ingredients of increasing volatility... the First Armored Division led by Ali Mohsin Al-Ahmar who supported the Yemeni revolution against the former president President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it... dispatched a battalion today, Thursday, to fight al-Qaeda. Local sources said that the Popular Resistance Committees foiled on Thursday a suicide kaboom of Al-Qaeda as an Al-Qaeda operative attempted to pass a checkpoint in Lawdar while he was carrying explosives on his car.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/09/2012
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(Sh. M. Network)-Fierce fighting between Somali soldiers backed by Æthiopian troops and Al shabab fighters took place on Friday in villages near Garbaharay town, killing four combatants, witnesses and officials said.
Local residents told Shabelle Media that the battle erupted when the coalition forces [Somali and Æthiopian], attacked at about 10:15 am local time on several military bases controlled by Al shabab beturbanned goons on the outskirts of Garbaharey town.
Lieutenant colonel Aden Ahmed Hirse, the front man of Somali government troops in Gedo, confirmed to Shabelle Media that at least four Al shabab fighters were killed in the fighting and many other injured.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/09/2012
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[An Nahar] United Nations ...Parkinson's Law on an international scale... observers on Friday reached the Syrian village of Al-Kubeir where dozens of residents were massacred two days ago, activists told Agance La Belle France Press.
The monitors on Thursday were fired at by gunnies and forced to turn back as they tried to reach the village located in a farming region in the central province of Hama.
"The observers first headed to the village of Maarzaf where the victims were buried and then to Al-Kubeir to survey the damage from army shelling," activist Abdel Karim al-Hamwi said.
He said soldiers at a checkpoint in Maarzaf ordered residents not to speak to the observers or face reprisals.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 55 people, including women and kiddies, were massacred in Al-Kubeir on Wednesday by pro-regime Islamic fascistiknown as shabiha.
The government has denied involvement while the international community has denounced the killings with U.N. chief Ban Ki-Moon warning that Syria stood on the brink of full blown civil war.
Paul Danahar, a BBC correspondent travelling on Friday with the U.N. convoy, reported seeing gutted buildings in Al-Kubeir and no sign of life.
"The largest of the two houses on a hilltop in Al-Kubeir has been gutted by fire. The stench of burnt flesh is still strong," he wrote in a message on Twitter.
He quoted activists as saying that government forces had removed the bodies of the victims on Thursday while the observers were being hindered from reaching the village.
Danahar said Al-Kubeir consists of just a few single-storey flat-roofed buildings set in the middle of corn fields.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/09/2012
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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.
The United States offers millions for information leading to the capture of the world's most wanted terrorists.
Nawaz Sharif
President Obama on Friday sought to deploy the game-changing powers of his office against a grim political week during which the economy, the polls and even some of his Democratic allies seemed to conspire against him.
NATO forces in Afghanistan say four international service members have been killed in an insurgent attack in the country's east.
Hillary Clinton
[An Nahar] Rebel Tuareg fighters of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) clashed with Islamist fighters from the Ansar Dine groups overnight in northern Mali, witnesses said Friday. "Fighters of the MNLA and those of Ansar Dine clashed overnight Thursday to Friday on the outskirts of Kidal," an official from the rebel-held town told Agence 
[Dawn] A Pak confidence trickster was 
At least 16 people were killed on Friday in a clash between two tribes in the 
New talks with Iran failed to result in a deal allowing greater access to its contested nuclear program, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Friday.
Moqtada 
Salafist Nour Party MP Ali Wanis has denied news reports that he was caught performing an indecent act with a teenage girl on Thursday night.
A 
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...
[An Nahar] Rebels and regime troops clashed in a district of the Syrian capital as scores of protests were held across the strife-torn country and more than 20 people killed on Friday, monitors said.
Deafening silence from North Korea greeted the first repayment date on Thursday for loans given by the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations. The Export-Import Bank of Korea faxed a notice to North Korea's Foreign Trade Bank on behalf of the South Korean government on May 4 informing them of the date of maturity and amount, but Pyongyang ignored it.
(Sh. M. Network)-The command of 
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
...Second President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Because of constitutionally mandated term limits he is the current Prime Minister of Russia. His sock puppet, Dmitry Medvedev, was installed in the 2008 presidential elections. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law. During his eight years in office Russia's economy bounced back from crisis, seeing GDP increase, poverty decrease and average monthly salaries increase. During his presidency Putin passed into law a series of fundamental reforms, including a flat income tax of 13%, a reduced profits tax, and new land and legal codes. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile...
More than a dozen prisoners, including criminals and members of the Taliban, have 
Violent 
(Sh. M. Network)-Fierce fighting between Somali soldiers backed by Æthiopian troops and Al shabab fighters took place on Friday in villages near Garbaharay town, killing four combatants, witnesses and officials said.
