China pledged billions of dollars of financing to Venezuela and Ecuador, two South American energy exporters battered by falling oil prices, as Beijing moved to secure resources and allies in the region. Lebensraum and hot chicas
China has increased its diplomatic clout throughout Latin America by extending over $100 billion in credit to the region since 2005, according to figures from Boston University’s Global Economic Governance Initiative. which will never get paid back. They're buying on the cheap...
Beijing has become the biggest foreign financier of both Venezuela and Ecuador, two oil-rich, leftist allies eager to help counter U.S. sway in the region.
Following a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolás Maduro announced bilateral accords that would bring $20 billion in new investment to Venezuela. Ecuador said it secured $7.5 billion in financing.
Both Mr. Maduro and his Ecuadorian counterpart, Rafael Correa, were in Beijing along with officials from various Latin American nations to take part in a regional gathering.
Both Latin countries, highly dependent on oil exports to pay for heavy public spending, were in dire need of a helping hand as crude prices tumble to less than half of their level from several months ago. A barrel of oil sold for about $50 on Wednesday. Oops
Last week, Venezuela’s central bank released long-delayed figures, revealing the country entered a recession in 2014. and if you can't believe VZ's Central Bank...well, you can't, actually. It was worse
Venezuela needs oil to average around $117.50 a barrel to balance its 2015 budget, according to Deutsche Bank estimates. "buy our heavy sulferous crap! It's a bargain at twice the price of everyone else's oil!"
In Ecuador, officials have reported a slowing economy, with growth of 3.4% in the third quarter, down from 5.6% in the July-through-September period in 2013.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/08/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
Not what I've been reading. Maybe a last minute deal was struck, but the communique I read was full of happy words meaning nothing. Will check.
#2
Who knows? “The funds do not necessarily represent freely available cash that the government can use for imports or to make debt payments,” Grais-Targow said.
However Vzla bonds moved up, which indicates maybe they did get something.
#3
Good strategy to get the commies to suck up the basket cases of the world. Let them use their resources. Unlike the commies progressives here who are enthralled with using other peoples money and resources for the maintaining the redistribution plantation.
Yep. Make a little money. Buy a little influence. Gain some geo-political advantage. Hey, maybe Cuba, our new BFF, could rent out a naval base or something? It's all good, comrade!
North Korea has set up a new army corps near its northern borders to tighten border controls, the Defense Ministry here says in the 2014 Defense White Paper published Tuesday. It is presumably tasked with cracking down on defectors, guarding munitions facilities and reinforcing troop strength near the border with China and Russia.
Why? Are China and Russia threatening to attack?
The white paper also says the North is improving its capability to infiltrate South Korea with small submersibles and special-purpose vessels.
Intelligence authorities are citing something called a "Very Slender Vessel," a 30 m-long stealth ship with defenses against radar detection. The North is also continuing to build small submersibles such as a 120-ton salmon-class submarine and a 300-ton shark-class submarine.
The North also dug shelters for special troops along the frontline near the demilitarized zone.
South Korean military authorities were on the alert in November when there was a sudden increase in parachute jump exercises for special troops using AN-2 planes, the aircraft for low-altitude infiltration.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/08/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
They were planning on pulling the plug on Pudgys refrigerator.
Posted by: Steven ||
01/08/2015 3:21 Comments ||
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[IN.REUTERS] FBI Director James Comey said on Wednesday that hackers behind the cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment provided key clues to their identity by sometimes posting material from IP addresses used exclusively by the North Korean government.
The hackers, who called themselves "Guardians of Peace," sometimes "got sloppy" and failed to use proxy servers that would hide their identity, Comey said at the International Conference on Cyber Security in New York.
"The Guardians of Peace would send emails threatening Sony employees and post online various statements explaining their work. In nearly every case they would use proxy servers in sending those emails and posting those statements," Comey said.
"But several times they got sloppy. Several times, either because they forgot or they had a technical problem, they connected directly and we could see it," Comey said.
"We could see that the IP addresses they used ... were IPs that were exclusively used by the North Koreans. It was a mistake by them. It was a very clear indication of who was doing this. They would shut it off very quickly once they realized the mistake, but not before we saw them and knew where it was coming from," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/08/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
"These aren't the droids you're looking for..."
Excerpt:
Mr. Charbonnier, who had appeared on a list of Al Qaeda’s targets, was under police protection, though he told the French daily Le Monde that as a single man he did not fear retaliation, and that however pompous it might sound, he would rather “die standing than live on my knees." A "Pompous provocateur" to Le Monde possibly, but Le Monde has no problem portraying Jesus handing out condoms. Le Monde didn't ever worry about getting bombed or shot up. They made sure of it in fact...
#1
Hey! You'd better listen to the NYT, buddy! They know a thing or two about not provoking the barbs. There's no place for ideals or truth in their world when dealing with murderous thugs. Follow their example, go after someone, umm, let's say the Episcopalians.
Abu Dhabi: The UAE on Wednesday strongly condemned the heinous terrorist attack on the French weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris, in which scores of unarmed innocent civilians were killed and injured.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a statement, emphasised the UAE’s solidarity with the friendly government and people of France at this critical time and expressed its condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations as a phenomenon that targets international security and stability. The statement said that such appalling criminal acts require cooperation and solidarity at all levels to eradicate this menace which seeks to spread destruction, chaos and to destabilise security and stability.
The ministry said these criminal acts against innocent civilians violate all human principles and ethical values. The ministry expressed its sincere condolences and sympathies with the French government and families of victims and wished a swift recovery to the injured.
The Arab League, Qatar and Al Azhar, Islam’s most prestigious centre of learning, condemned the deadly attack.
“Arab League chief Nabil Al Arabi strongly condemns the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo newspaper in Paris,” the League said.
The Gulf state of Qatar expressed “strong” condemnation of the attack. “Such acts that target unarmed civilians contradict all principles and moral and human values,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Doha offered condolences to the French government and the families of the victims.
Al Azhar condemned the “criminal attack”, saying that “Islam denounces any violence”, in remarks carried by Egypt’s state news agency Mena.
In a separate statement, Al Azhar senior official Abbas Shoman said the institution “does not approve of using violence even if it was in response to an offence committed against sacred Muslim sentiments”.
France’s Muslim leadership also sharply condemned the shooting as a “barbaric” attack and an assault on Press freedom and democracy.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/08/2015 00:00 ||
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[HOSTED.AP.ORG] Two conflicting sides on whether there should be limits to the liberty of self-expression clashed violently Wednesday in a usually tranquil side street on the Right Bank of Paris.
When it was over, a dozen people lay dead -including some of the most prominent political cartoonists and satirists in France, and the police officers assigned to protect them.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo mourned the slain as "martyrs of freedom, of freedom of the press, the pillar of democracy," and called upon all freedom-loving people to hold a solemn march in their memory Thursday. Normally we'd ignore such drivel, but since the source is the Associated Press we might comment that it is in fact drivel. Either you're free or not free to say or publish what you want. What "clashed" -- a class usually implies both sides were fighting, if I remember my English language correctly -- was Western values with an alien, inimical culture. This sort of reaction is why the "clash" was able to happen.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/08/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
These are the same people who threw a hissy fit when anyone suggested that a women dressed like a prostitute/slut invited rape. We're getting a gauge on the victimhood hierarchy in the Leftist manuals.
#2
P2K, that's because the dead were on "their side." Were the assassinated a political cartoonist who showed any prominent Leftist and Mohammed in bed together, they wouldn't have mourned.
[REUTERS] Anti-immigrant groups in Germany seized on Wednesday's deadly attack in Gay Paree, with leaders of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and PEGIDA saying it showed the threat of Islamist violence.
Twelve people were killed when gunnies stormed the offices of a French satirical magazine known for lampooning radical Islam.
"This bloodbath proves wrong those who laughed or ignored the fears of so many people about a looming danger of Islamism," said Alexander Gauland, a regional AfD leader. "This gives new clout to PEGIDA demands."
PEGIDA, or Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West, itself reacted strongly to the Gay Paree attack.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/08/2015 00:00 ||
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[Ynet] Turkey's foreign minister says that a senior Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, official who was reportedly expelled from Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates... is free to come to Turkey.
Awwww... they're besties!
Mevlut Cavusoglu however, said Wednesday there was no formal request from Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal to travel to Turkey and that he had no information on any plans for him to come.
[Ynet] The Turkish far-left group DHKP-C has grabbed credit for a suicide kaboom at a cop shoppe in Istanbul's historic Sultanahmet district on Tuesday that killed one officer and maimed another.
A female jacket wallah entered the cop shoppe saying in English that she had lost her purse before blowing herself up inside the three-storey building, across the square from the Aya Sofya museum and the Blue Mosque, which are among the main sites for millions of visitors to Istanbul each year.
In a statement posted on "The People's Cry" website hours after the attack, the group said the bombing was against the ruling AK Party over the killing of 15-year-old Berkin Elvan, who died in March last year after nine months in a coma from a head wound sustained during an anti-government protest.
"It is the same state which shot Berkin Elvan and which protects the thief ministers," the statement said, in an apparent reference to a Monday ruling of a parliamentary commission not to commit four ex-ministers to a higher court over graft allegations.
[DAWN] Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him... on Tuesday warned the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... it should crack down on "Islamophobia" ...the irrational fear that Moslems will act the way they usually do... amid rising anti-Moslem protests instead of trying to teach Turkey lessons about democracy.
Erdogan told Turkey's ambassadors posted abroad in a speech in Ankara that they should pursue an assertive foreign policy to represent strong and self-confident ?new Turkey? under his rule.
In a new attack on the EU, Erdogan called on the 28-member bloc to "revisit its Turkey policy", accusing Europe of dragging its feet on Ankara's decade-old membership bid.
"Believe me it is regrettable that the EU is trying teach a lesson to Turkey instead of trying to tackle very serious threats it is facing," he said. Probably you can't google Charlie Hebdo on Turkey's controlled internet.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/08/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
That bitch Erdogan should just go in a corner with his little perverted deity.
#6
No different than how Presidente Enrique Peña Nieto lectures us on how to treat refugees from Mexico.
Posted by: regular joe ||
01/08/2015 11:27 Comments ||
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#7
If by Islamophibia he means the fear of pointing fingers at Islam no matter how obvious the connections I would agree. Otherwise its just ill timed foolishness.
The country announced Wednesday that it will be opening its borders to a total of 10,000 refugees from Syria and 3,000 from Iraq over the next three years, The Globe and Mail reports. Bad move, eh? Come now, what are the odds that one of these 10,000 would be a bad apple?
That figure is only a fraction of the people who have been displaced by conflicts in the Middle East: There are about 6.5 million internally displaced people or IDPs out of Syria and about 400,000 out of Iraq, according to the latest data from United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Still, the announcement is a welcome relief for other countries in the region, most of whom been hosting a near-constant flow of refugees since the Syrian civil war broke out four years ago.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/08/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
So that's the way it happens. "There are about 6.5 million internally displaced people or IDPs out of Syria and about 400,000 out of Iraq." It would seem that there are enough displaced people, that they could take their countries back from the thugs who are currently occupying them. Canada has no obligation to take 10,000 Syrian refugees into their country.
[Ynet] Republican Rand Paul files motion to halt American assistance to Paleostinian Authority until Abbas ends efforts to join ICC.
Republican Senator Rand Paul introduced a bill on Wednesday that would immediately halt US aid to the Palestinians until they halt their effort to join the International Criminal Court to pursue war-crimes charges against Israel.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said late Tuesday that the state of Palestine will join the International Criminal Court on April 1.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' recent turn to the international court at The Hague marked a major policy shift and transformed his relations with Israel from strained to openly hostile.
Abbas has been under heavy domestic pressure to take stronger action against Israel after a 50-day war in Gaza over the summer, tensions over holy sites in Jerusalem, and the failure of the last round of US-led peace talks.
While Palestinian membership in the court doesn't automatically incur US punishment, existing law says any Palestinian case against Israel at the court would trigger an immediate cutoff of US financial support. Paul's bill would ban assistance until the Palestinians stop their move to become a member of the court.
Paul is a likely Republican presidential contender in 2016, though his support in the party trails behind more recognizable party brands.
UN Secretary-General the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon ... of whom it can be said to his credit that he is not Kofi Annan... said late Tuesday that the state of Paleostine will join the International Criminal Court ... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ... on April 1. On Monday, the Obama administration said it was reviewing its annual $440 million aid package to the Palestinians because of the decision to join the ICC.
"We are currently sending roughly $400 million of US taxpayer dollars to the Palestinian Authority," Paul said. "Certainly, groups that threaten Israel cannot be allies of the US; I will continue to do everything in my power to make sure this president and this Congress stop treating Israel's enemies as American allies."
Paul, a conservative, generally favors a smaller American footprint in the world and in 2011 offered a budget plan that called for ending foreign aid to all nations, including Israel.
On a visit to Israel in 2013, Paul gave a speech calling for a gradual reduction of foreign aid ? despite Israel's status as one of the top recipients of American assistance. The country gets about $3 billion a year in military aid from the US. He says even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that he welcomes a day when Israel is independent of American aid.
[Ynet] Ahmed, a convenience store manager from Minneapolis, has launched AverageMohammed.com, a website offering homemade videos aimed at countering the messages and images bandidosfaceless myrmidons use to lure disaffected youths.
"I don't want my children fighting this war. Let's end this in my generation," said Ahmed, a married father of four young children.
Sitting in his sparsely furnished recording studio, Ahmed, 39, said he started his videos out of frustration.
"I've decided to take on one value at a time, one item at a time, to shoot down holy warrior ideology and philosophy," he said. Ahmed wants to make creating anti-terrorism videos his life's work.
"One thing I know is that an holy warrior is not made. They are not born that way. Somebody trained them to become an holy warrior," he said. "And somebody has to train people to become non-extremists. And that is my job. That is officially my job now."
[CNSNews] December, CBP released its apprehension statistics for 2014, which show that of the 486,651 apprehensions, 257,473 were from countries ?other than Mexico.? Of those apprehended from countries ?other than Mexico,? CBP provided CNSNews.com the countries of origin of those taken into custody.
Of those from countries ?other than Mexico,? 1,191 were from 12 countries ? Iran, Sudan, Cuba and Syria (state sponsors of terror), and Afghanistan, Algeria, Leb, Libya, Nigeria, Iraq, Pakistain, Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... , Somalia and Yemen (?countries of interest") ? designated by the federal government to have terrorist links.
The breakdown of the apprehension of individuals from 12 countries designated as ?countries of interest? is as follows, according to CBP: Afghanistan (4); Algeria (3); Cuba (1,061); Iran (4); Iraq (7); Leb (10); Nigeria (29); Pakistain (31); Saudi Arabia (16); Somalia (6); Syria (14); and Yemen (6).
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/08/2015 9:22 Comments ||
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#3
There's going to be enhanced screening of people coming from countries with terrorism problems by the TSA at the airports? But did the 1,191 illegals who were apprehended here come via airplane or did they slip across the borders? You've got to wonder how many didn't get apprehended from terrorist countries.
[DAWN] For the first time in Pakistain's history the health authorities have started administering polio ...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set... injections in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), officials said on Wednesday.
The injectable/inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) is said to be highly effective in preventing paralytic disease caused by all three types of poliovirus and is currently being used by a majority of the polio-free developed and advanced countries.
Officials in the Fata secretariat told Dawn.com that polio injections have been planned for 17,393 children in the frontier region of Bannu.
They said that so far about 5,906 children have been injected with anti polio vaccines and the five day drive will end on Friday.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/08/2015 00:00 ||
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[IsraelTimes] Following signing of Rome Statute, the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon ... of whom it can be said to his credit that he is not Kofi Annan... confirms state of Paleostine to become member of war crimes tribunal
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has accepted the request by the state of Paleostine to join the International Criminal Court ... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ... , UN front man Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday.
The move will allow the ICC to open cases as of April 1 on serious crimes allegedly committed in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gazoo Strip.
The Paleostinians on Friday submitted the documents ratifying the Rome Statute that established the court, the last formal step to becoming a member of the world’s permanent war crimes tribunal.
The move followed the Paleostinians’ failure to win a UN Security Council majority for a resolution imposing a three-year time limit for a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
In a statement posted on the UN’s treaty website earlier Wednesday, the secretary-general said “the statute will enter into force for the State of Paleostine on April 1, 2015.” He said he was acting as the “depositary” for the documents of ratification.
The Paleostinian move has drawn threats of retaliation from Israel and is strongly opposed by the United States as an obstacle to reaching an Israeli-Paleostinian peace deal.
On Tuesday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Paleostinian moves to apply for membership at the International Criminal Court and to seek statehood unilaterally via the UN had pushed the prospects of peace off the table, rendering the prospects of Paleostinian statehood irrelevant for the time being.
Speaking to Israel’s Channel 2 News, Netanyahu also discounted the likelihood that he would evacuate West Bank settlements in his next term if reelected, saying the Paleostinians had made it impossible to reach a peace deal.
“I don’t see [evacuating settlers] as practical at the moment because any territory we vacate will be grabbed… I don’t see it happening,” he said.
He indicated that he wanted an accommodation with the Paleostinians in principle, but that a two-state solution was impractical for now, given the Paleostinians’ strategy.
Netanyahu said last week that Paleostinian leaders were the ones who should be prosecuted in the ICC over their unification with rival faction Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,. “It is the Paleostinian Authority leaders – who have allied with the war criminals of Hamas – who must be called to account,” he said. “IDF soldiers will continue to protect the State of Israel with determination and strength, and just as they are protecting us we will protect them, with the same determination and strength.”u
The ISIS organization announced that a Faculty of Medicine had opened in Raqqa province; its main premises is in Syria, and the duration of the study is only 3 years. It includes both theoretical and practical sides in six levels. ISIS put some conditions for a student to be able to apply for the Faculty of Medicine. First, the student should not be less than 18 years and not more than 30 years old. Also, he/she must have a high school diploma (scientific department) at a rate of 80% or more, according to internet users in the city.
[Ynet] Democracy survey reveals conflicting viewpoints among Jewish and Arab Israelis, with majority of Jews saying they should not have greater rights than Arabs.
Some 65% of Arab-Israelis are proud to be Israeli, a new poll found, compared to only 49.8% last year. The Israeli Democracy Index, a public opinion project conducted by the Guttman Center for Surveys and the Israel Democratic Institute, released the results of an extensive survey this week which assessed the quality of Israeli of democracy in 2014.
In the Jewish-Israeli population 85.5% of the population said they felt a sense of pride to be part of the nation ? a slight rise from the 83.3% of Jewish-Israelis who felt proud to be Israeli in 2013.
All sorts of other sociological questions discussed in the rest of the article, but the above is the key bit from Rantburg's Muslim War perspective, it seems to me.
[Ynet] The US military said on Tuesday it had received 18 complaints of civilian casualties in air strikes against Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... faceless myrmidons in Iraq and Syria, but concluded that 13 of the cases were not credible and was still reviewing the other five.
The Pentagon has said it takes allegations of civilian casualties seriously and investigates them, but in the past military officials had played down such reports.
"We ... apply very rigorous standards in our targeting process to prevent civilian casualties in the first place," said Sergeant First Class Sheryl Lawry, a spokeswoman for Central Command, which oversees US military forces in the Middle East.
Lawry said nine reports of possible civilian casualties took place in Syria and nine in Iraq. Thirteen of the cases were found to be baseless while five are under further review, including two involving fewer than five deaths that are being investigated more deeply.
She said the two cases under closer investigation were the result of the US military's own internal review process and were not based on allegations from outside the Department.
#1
Ima getting married in the morning,
Sure has hell the bombs are gonna fall.
Pull out your choppers
Let's tell a whopper!
But get me to the bunker on time!
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.
China pledged billions of dollars of financing to Venezuela and Ecuador, two South American energy exporters battered by falling oil prices, as Beijing moved to secure resources and allies in the region.
North Korea
[HOSTED.AP.ORG] Two conflicting sides on whether there should be limits to the liberty of self-expression clashed violently Wednesday in a usually tranquil side street on the Right Bank of Paris.
[REUTERS] Anti-immigrant groups in Germany seized on Wednesday's deadly attack in 
[CSMONITOR] Canada is coming to the rescue.
the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon
International Criminal Court
