MFS - The Other News

"Pre election fever" - US and Israel revive largest joint anti-missile drills

2012-01-28T20:40:00.000-05:00

US and Israel revive largest joint anti-missile drills.(RT).Israeli and American officials put plans for a massive missile drill mysteriously on this month, but now the exercise, originally slated for this spring, will be scheduled for October 2012.The drill, which will also signal a surge of American troops to Israel by the thousands, will mark the biggest test of its type for both nations. As tensions worsen between the US and Iran — as well as Israel and its Islamic Republic neighbor — Tehran authorities fear that the exercise will try out more than just the missile capabilities of the allies. Also being put to the test is Iran’s patience.The United States has already equipped almost every nation surrounding Iran with weaponry and mobilized a fleet in the adjacent Strait of Hormuz. The postponement of the exercise, which RT reported last week, was viewed by some to be a response from Israel over America’s lack of initiative in actually putting the heat on Iran. Overseas news outlet Debka, which has close connections with the Jewish state’s intelligence community, suggested that the snag in the plans occurred after Israel grew irritated at America’s hesitance to bite, instead only barking at Iran.
Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon called the Obama administration "hesitant" earlier this month, which was followed by a warning only a day later by the nation’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, in which he urged the US to "move from words to deeds.”Parts of the program involve a troop surge in the thousands as well as the deployment of America’s Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system and the ship-based Aegis system overseas.
Israel’s own Arrow, Patriot and Iron Dome missile systems will work in cooperation with their US counterparts. The US troops, estimated to be at a tally of 3,000, could arrive in Israel as early as next week. They will join forces with around 2,000 Israeli’s involved in the country’s own missile program.Earlier this month, the US deployed 15,000 troops to the nearby nation of Kuwait. Israel has also in recent weeks increased its defense budget to the tune of $700
million.Hmmmm........."Postponed for electoral reasons".Read the full story here.

Overnight music video - The Coasters - Down in Mexico

2012-01-28T20:22:00.000-05:00

Penn State Hosts Conference Promoting Campaign to ‘Boycott, Divest, and Sanction’ Israel

2012-01-28T17:25:00.002-05:00

Penn State Hosts Conference Promoting Campaign to ‘Boycott, Divest, and Sanction’ Israel.(BigPeace).Penn State University is the home of the 2012 "National Conference of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement" (BDS), whose origins lie in the actions of nations and groups including Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah. The three-day event will take place on the Penn State campus February 3-5 and feature a variety of speakers with antisemitic, extreme views, such as Ali Abunimah, who has stated, "none of the European and American leaders who constantly lecture about Holocaust denial will dare to admonish Netanyahu for his bald lies and omissions about Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians."Hmmmm.......The legal penalties of supporting the BDS action against Israel.The antiboycott laws were adopted to encourage, and in specified cases, require U.S. firms to refuse to participate in foreign boycotts that the United States does not sanction. The law prohibits U.S. persons from taking certain actions in support of an unsanctioned foreign boycott against a country that is friendly to the United States.Read the full story here.

Susan Daniels Testifies in Atlanta: Obama's Social Security Number is Fraudulent

2012-01-28T17:21:00.000-05:00

MFS -The Other News - What the main papers don't say.

2012-01-28T10:39:00.009-05:00

Picture THE BATTLE OF COPYRIGHT 2011 By Christopher Dombres.
Morning Posting.

Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity situation Greece 5.3 - 5.2 ; Indonesia 5.2 !More info here.

Iranian Parliament Finalizes Draft Bill on Cutting Oil Supplies to Europe.(Fars).TEHRAN (FNA)- Members of the Iranian parliament finalized a draft bill on cutting the country's oil exports to the European states in retaliation for the EU's oil ban against Tehran, a senior legislator said on Saturday. "The bill has 4 articles, including one which states that the Islamic Republic of Iran will cut all oil exports to the European states until they end their oil sanctions against the country," Vice-Chairman of the parliament's Energy Commission Nasser Soudani told FNA. Elaborating on the other parts of the draft bill, he said another article requires the government to stop imports of goods from those countries which are a party to these sanctions against Iran.The statement continued that since just 18 percent of oil produced by Iran is exported to European countries, Islamic Republic can easily replace new markets with the European market. Read the full story here.

Washington Should Reject ‘No Missiles, No Meeting’ Russian Blackmail.(Heritage).By Ariel Cohen.Recently, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that there may be no summit between NATO and the Russian Federation if no agreement on missile defense is reached.This is understandable: Moscow has so far refused all Western entreaties to sign a workable missile defense arrangement and threatened that the NATO–Russia summit may be cancelled. If so, the loss will be all the Kremlin’s.NATO should not feel under any pressure to finalize a missile defense agreement, as Moscow is only trying to constrain the development of the U.S. missile defense system that could be used for the protection of Europe against Iran or another rogue power.Russia’s efforts to squeeze unreasonable concessions, such as sharing U.S. missile defense technology for free, are a poke in the eye of President Obama’s “reset” policy. So far, the policy has required large payoffs for small results. Highly significantly, President Obama decided not to talk about the reset policy’s achievements in his State of the Union speech—because there is little to be proud of.In December, Putin accused U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of “giving the signal” for mass protests in Moscow—after the ruling United Russia party brazenly stole parliamentary elections.The putative missile defense agreement presupposes that the foxes will guard the henhouse: Putin recently promoted the loudmouth nationalist Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s former envoy to NATO, to head Russia’s hugely corrupt defense industry as a Vice Premier. This is a big step for Rogozin, which may signal bigger and better things in the future, like a coveted Defense Minister’s job.Rogozin has been leading the anti-American and anti-missile-defense campaigns in Russia and internationally. Recently, he attemptedto link Russia’s opposition to the NATO missile defense in Europe to the future of the NATO supply line to Afghanistan. This complex logistics operation, known as the Northern Distribution Network, is responsible for 60 percent of NATO supplies to Afghanistan; the other 40 percent goes through Pakistan.Congress and the Administration should not tolerate Russian mischief, such as on missile defense. The U.S. should not shy away from protecting its vital security interests, including keeping vital military technology close to its chest. Washington should articulate its priorities and values to its Russian partners—and play hardball when necessary.It is clearly time to reset the “reset.”Hmmmm.......Closing the NATO supply line to Afghanistan, would mean US soldiers caught in a trap with not enough Food, Petrol and Ammo.......Obama's 'Stalingrad'.Read the full story here.
Is President Obama Creating A Nation Of Dependents?(ID).By John Merline.If the Republican primaries are any indication, one big debate in the upcoming election will be whether President Obama is pushing the country toward a European-style welfare culture.Mitt Romney, for example, argues that "over the past three years, Barack Obama has been replacing our merit-based society with an entitlement society."Newt Gingrich has taken to calling Obama "the best food-stamp president in American history."Obama, in contrast, says the government must play an increasing role — what he likes to call "shared responsibility" — to ensure a society that is fairer.So is Obama turning the country into a welfare society and away from one focused on opportunity?While it's true that the country has been headed in this direction for many years — with the explosion in entitlements since the 1960s and the aging of the population — Obama has, in fact, greatly accelerated the trend.Read the full story here.

Obama vows to remember Holocaust, fight anti-Semitism.(JPost).US President Barak Obama pledged to remember the Holocaust and to fight anti-Semitism, in a statement released on International Holocaust Remembrance day. "Michelle and I join people in the United States, in Israel, and across the globe as we remember the six million Jews and millions of others who were murdered at the hands of the Nazis," Obama said in a statement issued by the White House Friday."Together with the State of Israel, and all our friends around the world, we dedicate ourselves to giving meaning to those powerful words: 'Never Forget. Never Again,'" he said.Obama pledged to keep the memories of the Holocaust alive, "not only in our thoughts, but through our actions."The US president also vowed to fight Holocaust deniers. "We pledge to stand strong against all those who would commit atrocities, against the resurgence of anti-Semitism, and against hatred in all its forms," he said.Hmmmm.....While 'embracing' the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt that calls for the extermination of the Jews?Read the full story here.
Court Awards Attorneys’ Fees Against the City of Dearborn, Michigan for Violating a Christian Pastor’s Right to Freedom of Speech.(AM).AFLC--Today, a U.S. Magistrate Judge in Detroit, Michigan recommended that Robert J. Muise, the attorney for Christian Pastor George Saieg, be awarded $103,401.96 in fees and costs for successfully challenging the City of Dearborn’s restriction on the Christian’s right to freedom of speech at the 2009 Arab Festival held in the City. The City, not wanting to offend its large Muslim population, would not allow the Christian to hand out religious literature at the Festival.In the order, the federal judge stated, “In this case, the Plaintiff received the full relief he sought — an invalidation of the leafleting restriction and a permanent injunction barring its enforcement. . . . Because this result ‘cannot fairly be labeled as anything short of excellent, [Plaintiff] is entitled to a fully compensatory fee.’” AFLC Senior Counsel Robert J. Muise represented Pastor Saieg in this successful free speech case. At the time, Muise was Senior Trial Counsel for the Thomas More Law Center. The City has 14 days to appeal. [Read order here]“The award of attorney fees in this case,” noted Muise, “is critical in the lawfare against Civilization Jihad and dhimmitization, or subjugation, of an entire municipality in Michigan. Dearborn has a long record of this kind of illegal, heavy-handed treatment of Christians as an attempt to placate Dearborn’s sharia-faithful. The court’s ruling today demonstrates that this kind of behavior will come at great cost.”Muise recently won acquittals for charges of “disturbing the peace” brought by the Dearborn prosecutor against a group of Christians following their arrests by Dearborn police in 2010 for the same kind of peaceful free speech activities. Muise and David Yerushalmi of the American Freedom Law Center, along with attorneys from the Thomas More Law Center, currently represent these Christians in a civil action arising from these arrests.
The American Freedom Law Center is a Judeo-Christian law firm that fights for faith and freedom. It accomplishes its mission through litigation, public policy initiatives, and related activities. It does not charge for its services. The Law Center is supported by contributions from individuals, corporations, and foundations, and is recognized by the IRS as a section 501(c)(3) organization. Visit us at www.americanfreedomlawcenter.org.Read the full story here.
UN wants end to West Bank demolitions.(YNET).The United Nations on Friday called on Israel to immediately halt the destruction of Palestinian homes in the West Bank after reporting a dramatic rise in demolitions in the past year.Israeli forces destroyed 622 Palestinian homes in the West Bank in 2011, "forcibly displacing" almost 1,100 people, over half of them children, according to a UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs report."The current policy and practice of demolitions cause extensive human suffering and should end," said UN humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories, Maxwell Gaylard. Gaylard said the demolition figures represent a "dramatic" increase on previous years and that tens of thousands of people remain under threat of dispossession, demolition and displacement. Israel says it only demolishes structures that have been built without required permission. Palestinians say they are rarely granted permits.Gaylard said he went on Thursday to the village of Anata near Jerusalem where seven Palestinian homes were demolished this week. "He was informed that bulldozers and troops had arrived in the middle of the night of 23 January and that 52 people, including 29 children, had been forced from their homes, which were then completely destroyed," said a UN statement. The operation was carried out Monday night. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) said Israeli forces demolished Beit Arabiya, a family home and "peace centre" at Anata, that has now been destroyed five times since 1994. Israel's administration for the West Bank said the homes had no permit.Read the full story here.
The Risk of Islamist Coups.(HurriyetDaily).By Gwynne Dyer.The eastern half of what used to be Pakistan narrowly escaped a military coup last month. Brigadier Masud Razzak, the spokesman of the Bangladeshi army, announced on Thursday (19 January) that “A band of fanatic officers has been trying to oust the politically established government. Their attempt has been foiled.”They had “extreme religious views,” he said, and revealed that some of the sixteen conspirators, all of them current or former military officers, will soon appear before a military court. For a country with a dismalry with a dismal history of military coups, some of them very violent, it was a heartening outcome. But it was also a reminder of where the real danger lies in the subcontinent.A coup by Islamist officers in Bangladesh would be seen by most foreigners as deeply regrettable but mostly of only local interest. A coup by Islamist officers in Pakistan would unleash the Mother of All Panics.An Indian strategist once told me, off the record, what he thought would happen about six hours after news of an Islamist coup in Pakistan reached the rest of the world. There would be a huge “traffic jam” over Kahuta and other major Pakistani nuclear weapons facilities as the Indian, Iranian, American and Israeli air forces all tried to keep the nuclear weapons out of the hands of the fanatics by destroying them.So how likely is an Islamist military coup in Pakistan? About as likely as it is in Bangladesh, which is to say unlikely, but not unimaginable. In this one thing, the two armies are alike – and quite different from those of most other Muslim countries.In almost all other Muslim countries, the armies take great care to ensure that Islamist officers do not rise very high in rank: they may make captain, but they won’t make colonel. This is because the generals know that they can’t be trusted. The generals themselves are mostly faithful Muslims, but they must protect the integrity of the military institution they serve, and that means no Islamists in positions of real power.All previous military interventions in politics in Pakistan have been done by the army as an institution, acting in obedience to its lawful commanders. That kind of thing would not radically change Pakistan’s policies towards the rest of the world. But if middle-ranking Islamist officers were to break the chain of command and seize power, like their comrades in Bangladesh intended to do, then all bets would be off. Read the full story here.
Arab League suspends observer mission in Syria as killing spikes.(Alarabiya).The Arab League on Thursday suspended its monitoring mission in Syria because of the upsurge of violence a day after the monitors’ chief said killing had spiked this week, with the death toll approaching 200.“Given the critical deterioration of the situation in Syria and the continued use of violence ... it has been decided to immediately stop the work of the Arab League’s mission to Syria pending prevention of the issue to the league’s council,” the league’s secretary-general said in a statement.“The secretary-general has also asked the head of the mission to take all the necessary procedures to ensure the safety and well-being of the mission’s members.”The mission would remain in Syria, a source at the league had earlier told Reuters, but would temporarily halt its work.The announcement came as the opposition Syrian National Council said its leader would travel to New York to appeal to the U.N. Security Council for protection from the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.According to a tally by AFP taken from reports by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and official Syrian media, 193 people have been killed since Tuesday.That compares with the figure of more than 5,400 given by the United Nations last month since anti-regime protests erupted in March.On Thursday, the bodies of 17 men arrested by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces during an armored assault this week on the city of Hama were found dumped in the streets after being shot in the head, activists said on Saturday. “They were killed execution style, mostly with one bullet to the head. Iron chains that had tied them were left on their legs as a message to the people to stop resisting,” Abu al-Walid, an activist in the city, told Reuters by telephone.Another activist said the bodies, their hands tied by plastic wire and some with their legs chained, were dumped in the streets of five Hama neighborhoods on Thursday evening. “They are of mixed ages. One was in his 60s, another in his 40s and several were in their 20s,” he said, adding that only three had been identified, one of whom was a police deserter.Asked whether the bodies could be those of Assad loyalists killed by rebels, the activist said this was not possible.“Hama is a military zone full of armored vehicles and troops,” he said. “Roadblocks and tanks have isolated districts from each other. The streets are empty and no one dares to drive a car unless he wants to be shot, let alone to move between different neighborhoods and dump bodies.”A YouTube video, which could not be independently verified, showed six bodies of mostly young men in a street described as being in the Bab Qabli district of Hama. Their hands were tied and their legs were chained. They appeared to have died from gunshot wounds to the head or neck. Other bodies were found in the Basateen, Hamidiya, Arbaeen and Masbah neighborhoods, activists said.Read the full story here.
Largest conventional U.S. bomb not powerful against Iran: report.(AlArabiya).The U.S. military has concluded that its largest conventional bomb is not capable of destroying Iran’s most heavily fortified underground facilities suspected to be used for building nuclear weapons, The Wall Street Journal reported late Friday. But citing unnamed U.S. officials, the newspaper said the military was stepping up efforts to make it more powerful.The 13.6-ton “bunker-buster” bomb, known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, was specifically designed to take out the hardened fortifications built by Iran and North Korea, the report said.But initial tests indicated that the bomb, as currently configured, would not be capable of destroying some of Iran’s facilities, either because of their depth or because Tehran has added new fortifications to protect them, the paper noted. In a report issued in November, the International Atomic Energy Agency said intelligence from more than 10 countries and its own sources “indicates that Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device.”It detailed 12 suspicious areas such as testing explosives in a steel container at a military base and studies on Shahab-3 ballistic missile warheads that the IAEA said were “highly relevant to a nuclear weapon program.”Meanwhile, doubts about its bomb’s effectiveness prompted the Pentagon this month to secretly submit a request to Congress for funding to enhance the bomb’s ability to penetrate deeper into rock, concrete and steel before exploding, The Journal noted. The Defense Department has spent about $330 million so far to develop about 20 of the bombs, which are built by Boeing Co., the report pointed out. The Pentagon is seeking about $82 million more to make the bomb more effective, The Journal said. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in an interview with The Journal Thursday, acknowledged the bomb’s shortcomings against some of Iran’s deepest bunkers. He said more development work would be done and that he expected the bomb to be ready to take on the deepest bunkers soon.“We’re still trying to develop them,” Panetta said.Meanwhile the Washington Post reported Saturday that the U.S. military plans to send a large floating base for commando teams to the Middle East amid rising tensions with Iran and intensifying fighting in Yemen, Citing unspecified procurement documents, the newspaper said the Navy is converting an aging warship it had planned to decommission into a makeshift staging base for the commandos in response to requests from the U.S. Central Command. Unofficially dubbed a “mothership,” the floating base could accommodate smaller high-speed boats and helicopters commonly used by Navy SEALs, the report said.Hmmmm.........The bomb will be 'ready' just before the elections?Read the full story here.
Dutch plan Muslim face veil ban next year.(TS).One million out of 17 million people are Muslim in the Netherlands.AMSTERDAM - The Dutch minority government plans to ban Muslim face veils such as burqas and other forms of clothing that cover the face from next year.The ban would make the Netherlands, where 1 million out of 17 million people are Muslim, the second European Union country to ban the burqa after France, and would apply to face-covering veils if they were worn in public."People should be able to look at each other's faces and recognize each other when they meet," the interior affairs ministry said in a statement Friday.The ban will also apply to balaclavas and motorcycle helmets when worn in inappropriate places, such as inside a store, Deputy Prime Minister Maxime Verhagen told reporters, denying that this was a ban on religious clothing.Geert Wilders' anti-Islam Freedom Party (PVV), which helps give the Liberal-Christian Democrat coalition a majority in parliament, has set considerable political store on getting the so-called burqa ban passed into law.Few Muslim women in the Netherlands wear the Arabic-style niqabs which leave the eyes uncovered and Afghan-style burqas that cover the face with a cloth grid. Academics estimate the numbers at between 100 and 400, whereas Muslim headscarves which leave the face exposed are far more common.The face-veil law, which still needs to win approval in both houses of parliament, excludes clothing worn for security reasons such as that worn by firemen and hockey players, as well as party clothing such as Santa Claus or Halloween costumes.The ban does not apply to religious places, such as churches and mosques, nor to passengers on airplanes or en route via a Dutch airport, the interior ministry said.Read the full story here.
Growing Number of Child Brides Among Muslims ... in London.(Islingtontribune).By PavanAmara.AN alarming number of under-age girls – some as young as nine – are being forced into marriage in Islington, according to a leading campaign group.The Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (IKWRO) claim that at least 30 girls in the borough were forced into marriage in 2010.The practice was condemned by the Imam of Finsbury Park Mosque, who said such marriages were against Islam and “unacceptable”.He pledged to invalidate any marriage which he said were carried out by “back-street Imams”.IKWRO, which made headlines last month when they revealed there had been almost 3,000 “honour-based” violence cases in 2010, has shown the Tribune records which revealed at least three 11-year-old girls and two nine-year-olds had been forced into marriage with older men within Islington. The oldest girls involved were 16.They have warned that hundreds of Islington girls could be suffering sexual, emotional and physical scars as a result of the child marriages every year and are calling for teachers, social workers and police to be better trained to spot and manage the abuse.Information from the Ministry of Justice, following a Freedom of Information request, revealed that 32 Forced Marriage Protection Order applications were made for children under 16 in Britain last year.Six of these were made for under-16s within Islington at the Royal Courts of Justice, although these were not necessarily made for Islington residents.At the Islington court, “five or fewer” orders were made to protect children between the ages of 9-11.The orders are a form of injunction that threaten legal punishment if marriage takes place due to emotional or physical force.In most cases, the children fear they will be killed if they reveal the truth to anybody, while others believe they will be separated from their families and taken into social services’ care.Dianna Nammi, director of IKWRO, explained that the girls are married in a mosque’s sharia court. This means they are not legally married according to British law, rendering the Home Office unable to recognise or prove the abuse.“They are still expected to carry out their wifely duties, though, and that includes sleeping with their husband,” she said.“They have to cook for them, wash their clothes, everything. They are still attending schools in Islington, struggling to do their primary school homework, and at the same time being practically raped by a middle-aged man regularly and being abused by their families. So they are a wife, but in a primary school uniform.“The reason it doesn’t get out is because they are too terrified to speak out, and also the control their families have over them is impossible to imagine if you’re not going through it. The way it is covered up is so precise, almost unspeakable.”Ms Nammi said that one 13-year-old had to sneak out of a maths lesson to contact the group, because she was being monitored so closely by her family.“Her teacher didn’t notice because she said she’d gone to the toilet, but when she got home that day she was beaten,” she said. Imam Saad explained that Sharia law stated an individual can marry when they begin puberty, with the most important stipulation being that they are “rushd”, or mature enough to understand marriage.A spokesman for the Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) said he was “unsure” whether the lack of legal status of the marriages affected whether the they could intervene or not, but directed the Tribune to government practice guidelines on dealing with forced marriage.The spokesman added that due to the lack of legal status the marriages may be a “criminal matter that only the police can deal with”, but admitted to it being "”a very grey area”.Read the full story here.
New US military strategy and Turkey.(HD).As the details of the new U.S. defense budget for 2013 become clear, the outline of the new American military strategy becomes clear, too.the WSJ story also said that in some critical parts of the world – critical to the U.S. interests – the Pentagon considers establishing land bases for special units.The Darwin base in Australia was named among the bases to be used in the Pacific area control. The expansion of the Philippines base was another consideration. And the WSJ reported that the Pentagon was looking into ways to establish bases near the Iraqi border area of Jordan and Turkey.It is not clear from the WSJ story whether the U.S. official meant an additional use of the İncirlik Air Force Base of Turkey which is in NATO use, also hosting U.S. troops, or an additional base in the country that is not very likely considering the huge dimension of the İncirlik Base and the already high anti-American social climate in the country.Later on Pentagon officials denied there were plans to escalate presence in Turkey. Yet there are still a number of issues around Turkey, from energy routes to the consequences of the Arab Spring, including Iran-Israel tension, the sectarian civil war risk in Iraq and the Kurdish problem in a lesser scale.The Turkish proverb goes, “There is no smoke without fire,” and Turks are likely to assess the developments through a different lens from now on. Hmmmm......Obama has a 'relation of trust' with Erdogan?Read the full story here.
Source: Hamas' Meshaal Sets Sights on Brotherhood Post.(IPT).Hamas' out-going politburo chairman is leaving the Palestinian terrorist group to take a "high position in the Muslim Brotherhood movement," a "well-informed source in Hamas" told the Nazareth-based Arabic-language Al-Sinnara last week.The move would see Khaled Meshaal—the longtime Damascus-based leader of Hamas—transition to a new, more international role, as head of the "Supreme Council of the [Brotherhood] movement." The Council is said to be "responsible for political issues," according to the report. It remains to be seen whether the article is referring to the group's Guidance Bureau, which largely deals with the movement's political affairs, or with another body altogether.If true, the news would help explain why Meshaal has been so adamant about not seeking re-election. Earlier reports noted that the group made an official plea for Meshaal "to reconsider" his stance.It has been speculated that if Meshaal exits, the post could go to Hamas' Gaza-based Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, or Hamas' original political bureau chief, Mousa Abu Marzook.Meshaal's purported move appears to have the blessing of higher-ups in the Brotherhood. According to the Al-Sinnara source, longtime Brotherhood spiritual advisor, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, is in support of the leadership jump.Read the full story here.
Viking mass grave linked to elite killers of the medieval world, they faced their own beheading sword blow standing tall.(AD). A mass grave found in Dorset could belong to a crew of Viking mercenaries who terrorised Europe in the 11th century according to a new documentary on National Geographic which pieces together the story behind the burial. Their burial pit, at Ridgeway Hill, Dorset, was found in 2009 while archaeologists were working in the area ahead of the construction of a new road. In it, researchers made the gruesome discovery of the decapitated bodies of 54 young men. All had been dumped in the shallow grave, and their heads had been piled up on the far side.Radiocarbon dating revealed that the remains belonged to men murdered at some point around the year 1000.While historians will probably never agree conclusively about who the men were, Baillie's analysis draws her to the conclusion that they may have been Viking mercenaries who modelled themselves on, or behaved in a similar way to the legendary Jomsvikings a brotherhood of elite killers whose strict military code involved never showing fear, and never fleeing in the face of the enemy unless totally outnumbered. Allegedly founded by Harald Bluetooth, the Jomsvikings are thought to have been based at a stronghold called Jomsborg on the Baltic coast. At a time when Vikings were feared across Europe, they were known as perhaps the fiercest of them all a reputation which even earned them their own saga.Yet the remains in Dorset also suggest that these men were something unique. Researchers have found that one of the men's teeth had incisions. This rare feature could, it is believed, be the result of the victim filing his teeth deliberately to demonstrate his bravery and status.Further analysis then reveals that the St. Brice's day massacre victims in Oxford were killed in a frenzied mob attack. However, the Ridgeway Hill individuals were systematically executed. They were beheaded from the front just like the warriors in the Jomsviking saga. In the saga, one captured Viking says: "I am content to die as are all our comrades. But I will not let myself be slaughtered like a sheep. I would rather face the blow. Strike straight at my face and watch carefully if I pale at all."Read the full story here.

The 'Schmallenberg virus'. A new livestock disease hits European livestock.

2012-01-28T10:16:00.002-05:00

Picture source : Diatribes Of A Veterinarian.

The 'Schmallenberg virus' .A new livestock disease hits European livestock.(E24/7).A new livestock disease causing deformities at birth has been detected in at least five European countries, including the Netherlands and Germany, a Dutch agriculture ministry spokesman said Thursday.The Schmallenberg virus was also spotted in Germany, Belgium and Britain.France also reported its first case on Thursday.So far, cases of disease have been detected in 20 farms in Germany (in cattle and sheep), in 52 farms in the Netherlands (in sheep, and one case in goat), and in 14 farms in Belgium (in sheep, only). No clear geographical clusters of these cases has been shown, so far. This may suggest that the undetected subclinical cases of infection in ruminants may be many more,but the current lack of serological tests renders epidemiological investigations difficult.
Although the congenital malformation in newborn animals have been detected recently and
are still being detected in these days, they are most likely caused by transmission of virus by
insect vectors that occurred in summer and early autumn, during pregnancy.
Named after the German town where it was first detected in November, Schmallenberg affected 51 German farms mainly in the North Rhine-Westphalia state, the German Friedrich-Loeffler Institute for animal health research said.
Across the border in eastern France authorities said Schmallenberg had been detected for the first time on a sheep farm in Lorraine and suspect cases elsewhere were being investigated.
The disease, believed to be carried by gnats, causes fever and diarrhoea among adult animals and cannot be transmitted from one animal to another, said Gelinck. There is presently no vaccine for Schmallenberg.
There is no evidence that the Schmallenberg virus could cause illness in humans.The disease however can be transmitted to sheep, goat and cattle embryos leading to still births or deformities causing death soon after birth, the spokesman said The Member States and the Commission took note of the preliminary assessment carried out by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) on the zoonotic risks of the Schmallenberg virus which indicates that "it is unlikely that this virus can cause disease in humans, but it cannot be completely excluded at this stage.The Member States and the Commission recognise that the information on the Schmallenberg virus is still fragmented and mostly extrapolated from data available on genetically similar viruses in the Orthobunyaviridae genus (Simbu serogroup, like the Akabane virus). The situation needs to be reassessed once new data will be available. Awareness should be improved amongst veterinary services and stakeholders in order to better understand and address the possible risks associated with this virus.Given that this virus is likely transmitted by means of insect vectors, further virus circulation in the current winter is unlikely to occur. This will allow Member States time to gather further data and to plan further actions in view of a possible reoccurrence of disease in Spring and Summer..Dutch farmers have been ordered to report all birth deformities to authorities since December 20.Moscow in mid-January suspended sheep and goat imports from the Netherlands because of the disease. Read more here . here and here.

Raw Video: Woman assaulted in Egypt’s Tahrir Square - "Arab Spring"

2012-01-28T09:40:00.000-05:00

US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's son, Sam on Egypt “no-fly” list says could face jail time

2012-01-28T09:35:00.003-05:00

American on Egypt “no-fly” list says could face jail time.(BM).CAIRO: The director of the Egypt unit of the International Republican Institute (IRI) in Cairo said he fears he could be jailed for up to five years after being barred from leaving the country earlier this month.Sam LaHood, the son of US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, and a number of other Americans were banned from leaving Egypt little over a week ago and told Fox News that they believe they could go on trial and face jail time.
The younger LaHood told Fox News via telephone on Friday that an Egyptian judge claims he, along with the other Americans stopped, worked for an unregistered non-governmental organization and took a salary.“We’re kind of expecting the worst,” LaHood said.“There hasn’t been a lot of movement nothing has really changed.“If it does go to trial, a trial could last up to one year in a case that’s as wide-ranging as this one is. But the penalty for that is six months to five years in jail so these are very serious charges.”
For its part, the White House demanded that Egypt “immediately” lift the travel ban on Americans.
US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said top officials including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have gotten involved. She said the administration so far knows of “four or five specific cases” where Americans have tried to leave and “had difficulties.”“We are urging the government of Egypt to lift these restrictions immediately and allow folks to come home as soon as possible,” she said, later adding: “Frankly, we don’t know how this is going to come out yet.”
According to the statement from the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), the employees of the organizations are now under investigation by the public prosecutor.“The storming of NGO offices is an unprecedented move in the recent history of Egyptian NGOs. In February 2011, during the 18 days Egyptian revolution, Military Police have stormed the office of Hisham Mubarak Law Center (an Egyptian NGO based in Cairo) and arrested several of its members as well as staff members of other international organizations that were present at the scene,” the statement continued.Hmmmmm........Ever heard of "Jiiza Tax"or 'blackmail'?Read the full story here.

Update: Egypt plans to send delegation to U.S. as NGO tensions mount.(AlArabiya).An Egyptian military delegation plans to visit the United States next week in talks over future of U.S. aid to Egypt, American officials said on Friday.The delegation is set to meet with state department and Pentagon officials and hold talks on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers will soon consider a new request for aid to Egypt’s military.U.S. aid currently amounts to $1.3 billion per year, one official told Reuters news agency, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The visit comes after Egypt’s military-led authorities pounced on non-governmental organizations, including several funded by the U.S. government, and slapped travel bans on six American staffers including a son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a former congressman.The six U.S. citizens work with the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI).
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said American officials were pressing Egyptian authorities the crackdown, which she described as “bizarre.” The Americans have demanded that Egypt lift travel restrictions placed on a number of foreign NGO staffers.“We do not have progress since yesterday, I am sorry to report,” Nuland said.Political analysts say the crackdown, along with questions over Egypt’s Emergency Law and security forces’ treatment of women protesters, has clouded the outlook for Egypt’s fledgling democracy following last year’s overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.
“The assertions of the Egyptian government in these cases are that they are subject to a judicial process which is not complete,” Nuland said. “Our message back is, ‘Complete these formalities and let our people travel as soon as possible.’“Officials said a detailed Washington schedule for the Egyptian visit was still being worked out, adding that it was a regular staff delegation that was coming at a moment of high tension in the U.S.-Egypt relationship.
Other political sources said the Egyptians were expected to discuss the NGO issue on Capitol Hill, where a number of senators have warned the Egyptians that U.S. aid was at stake if action against the NGOs continues.“Continued restriction of their activities and harassment of international and Egyptian staff will be looked at with great concern, particularly in light of Egypt’s considerable U.S. assistance,” 11 senators said in a letter to Egyptian Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi dated Jan. 18.

President Barack Obama spoke with Tantawi on 20 January and stressed the importance of the NGOs, as well as Egypt’s deteriorating economic situation and its request for $3.2 billion in support from the International Monetary Fund.Hmmmm......Negociating 'blackmail 101' with the Cairo 'mob'.Read the full story here.

Antisemitic Installment of Jihadi Comic Strip Portrays Jews As Being Behind Child Trafficking

2012-01-28T09:02:00.000-05:00

Antisemitic Installment of Jihadi Comic Strip Portrays Jews As Being Behind Child Trafficking.(Memri).On January 24, 2012, "Qasf Al-Ru'ood," who is a member of the jihadi forum Shumoukh Al-Islam, posted the second installment in his jihadi comic strip. The installment, titled "The Fleeing Enemy" depicts the journey of a non-Muslim enemy soldier into Islam. The story begins in an unidentified location in the West, where future soldiers are shown as children who are raised with no loving family under harsh conditions. "Managing" the children is a man bearing Jewish characteristics named "Cohen." Cohen, along with his associate, raises the children so he can later sell them to be trained as soldiers. Outwardly, these soldiers are depicted as heroes, but on the inside they are miserable, and seek love and happiness. The story then follows one of the soldiers who travels to a Muslim land and meets the characters that appeared in the first comic strip installment. Those characters are shown to have been raised in a religious Muslim family; their father had travelled to one of the jihad fronts and died there. The soldier then wonders about the reason for their true happiness and fulfillment in life, to which the underlying answer is Islam. The story concludes with the soldier converting to Islam, and declaring that finally he has become a "true human being." He later decides to become a mujahid to fight for Islam and Muslims.Read and see the full story here.

Overnight Music video - ''Schindler's List'' - violin solos by Itzhak Perlman

2012-01-27T21:54:00.000-05:00

January 27 is designated Holocaust Remembrance Day.In memory of those relatives that did not survive the Camps.

"Eternal vigilance is the price of our freedom. This is our task, this is our responsibility." ~ Thomas Jefferson.

(JPost).OSLO - Norway apologized for the first time on Friday for the country's complicity in the deportation and deaths of Jews during the Nazi occupation in World War Two."Norwegians carried out the arrests; Norwegians drove the trucks and it happened in Norway," Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said. "Today I feel it is fitting to express our deepest apologies that this could happen on Norwegian soil.""It is time for us to acknowledge that Norwegian policemen, civil servants and other Norwegians took part in the arrest and deportation of Jews," he said in a speech marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day.Vidkun Quisling, the country's leader during the occupation whose name has become synonymous with traitor, ordered Norway's 2,100 Jews registered in 1942. More than a third were deported to death camps, while others fled to neighboring Sweden.Read the full story here.

Human Nightvision - Chinese boy can see in dark night, eyes glow in the dark like cat eyes.

2012-01-27T20:30:00.000-05:00

"Redistribution of wealth?" - Taxpayers Finance Rat Condos.

2012-01-27T15:25:00.002-05:00

Tales of the Red Tape #26: Taxpayers Finance Rat Condos.(Heritage).By Diane Katz. Millions of American homeowners face foreclosure, but at least one sort of housing crisis has been remedied: No longer will research rats suffer the indignities of crowded cages.
That is to say that the federal government has ordered labs to provide precisely measured living quarters for all rodents used in federally funded research.
Thus, a female rat and her offspring must be housed (for their short, genetically altered lives) in lodgings that feature no less than 124 square inches of floor space and 7 inches of head room.
By comparison, a mama mouse and her litter merit a mere 51-inch area. (Space taken up by food bowls, water containers, litter boxes, and toys doesn’t count.)
The new requirements appear in the latest edition of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (page 57), published by the National Research Council.
No such requirements have appeared in previous editions.
Researchers are alarmed, to say the least. According to the National Association for Biomedical Research, the new standards will increase lab costs by hundreds of millions of dollars—chunks of it from taxpayers—thereby detracting from research projects. Hmmmm........"Are rats unionized"?Read the full story here.

"Aloha" ! Hawaii may keep track of all Web sites visited.

2012-01-27T14:35:00.000-05:00

"Aloha"! Hawaii may keep track of all Web sites visited.(CNet).Hawaii's legislature is weighing an unprecedented proposal to curb the privacy of Aloha State residents: requiring Internet providers to keep track of every Web site their customers visit.
Its House of Representatives has scheduled a hearing this morning on a new bill (PDF) requiring the creation of virtual dossiers on state residents. The measure, H.B. 2288, says "Internet destination history information" and "subscriber's information" such as name and address must be saved for two years.
H.B. 2288, which was introduced Friday, says the dossiers must include a list of Internet Protocol addresses and domain names visited. Democratic Rep. John Mizuno of Oahu is the lead sponsor; Mizuno also introduced H.B. 2287, a computer crime bill, at the same time last week.

Democrat Jill Tokuda, the Hawaii Senate's majority whip, who introduced a companion bill, S.B. 2530, in the Senate, told CNET that her legislation was intended to address concerns raised by Rep. Kymberly Pine, the first Republican elected to her Oahu district since statehood and the House minority floor leader.

"This bill represents a radical violation of privacy and opens the door to rampant Fourth Amendment violations," says Daniel Leuck, chief executive of Honolulu-based software design boutique Ikayzo, who submitted testimony opposing the bill. He adds: "Even forcing telephone companies to record everyone's conversations, which is unthinkable, would be less of an intrusion."Even the Justice Department has only lobbied the U.S. Congress to record Internet Protocol addresses assigned to individuals--users' origin IP address, in other words. It hasn't publicly demanded that companies record the destination IP addresses as well.Read the full story here.

Iran would consider Russian proposal, World would acknowledge Iran as "A country with nuclear know-how".

2012-01-27T13:25:00.000-05:00

Iran would consider Russian proposal aimed at ending nuclear dispute.(BikyaMasr).Tehran (dpa) – Iran would consider Russia’s proposal for a gradual loosening of sanctions against Tehran in exchange for a gradual increase in access to the country for international nuclear inspectors, a senior Iranian lawmaker said Friday.Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made the proposal for a step-by-step approach in seeking to end the deadlock between Tehran and world powers suspicious of the aims of its nuclear program last year.“Iranian officials have several times discussed the issue with the Russians and if Moscow raises the proposal at the next nuclear meeting, then it could be examined,” said Alaeddin Boroujerdi, who parliament’s foreign policy commission.Boroujerdi however told Mehr news agency that the Russian plan should take into account Iran’s interests.“The world powers should simply acknowledge Iran as a country with nuclear know-how and (based on that) attend the negotiations,” Boroujerdi said.Iran has given the go-ahead for a visit by a high-ranking team of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, scheduled for Sunday.
The team is seeking substantial answers to intelligence reports that Iran had tested nuclear weapon components.Hmmmm...........The maximum of 3,000 centrifuges that Fodow can contain will never produce enough to supply the fuel needed for a nuclear reactor.However, their performance is perfect for making nuclear bombs.Read the full story here.

Iran "Go With The Flow?" The world will not let Iran block Hormuz, but Tehran can narrow the strait to the maximum.

2012-01-27T13:14:00.000-05:00

Iran "Go With The Flow?" The world will not let Iran block Hormuz but Tehran can narrow the strait to the maximum.(Debka).Military tensions in the Persian Gulf shot up again Thursday, Jan. 26, after Dubai police commander Gen. Dhahi Khalfan said on Al Arabiya television that an imminent Gulf war cannot be ruled out and first signs are already apparent. "The world will not let Iran block Hormuz but Tehran can narrow the strait to the maximum," he said.He echoed debkafile's predictions that Iran will not shut down the Strait of Hormuz completely, but gradually cut down tanker traffic which carries 17 million barrels, or one-fifth of the world's daily consumption, through the waterway. Our Iranian sources report that the rule of thumb Tehran has devised for confront sanctions is to respond to the tightening of an oil embargo by having the Revolutionary Guards gradually narrow the tankers' shipping lanes through the strategic strait. This will progressively cut down the amount of oil reaching the markets.Tehran will not go all the way and shut the channel down completely for fear of provoking a military showdown with the United States. But each time Washington manages to stop Iran supplying a given country, the IRGC will shut down another section of the strait.(Detailed map of the strait here).
General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff admitted on Jan. 8 that Iran has the capacity to block the Strait of Hormuz temporarily but the US would get it reopened within a short time.Saudi Arabia and Dubai are skeptical about the ability of the American navy and Gulf forces to keep the Strait of Hormuz open at all times in the face of continuous Iranian attacks.
The prevailing view in Gulf capitals is that for the six months from February through July 1, when the European embargo on Iranian oil and the Iranian national bank freeze kick in, a war of attrition will unfold as Iran carries out sporadic strait closures, either by mining the waterway or firing missiles at tankers from unmarked speedboats.These operations will push up the price of oil and so drum home to oil-dependent Asian and European governments the high cost to them of the alternate opening and closing of the Strait of Hormuz.A Saudi official said Wednesday, Jan. 1, that Tehran's threats to punish Riyadh for offering to make up the shortfall incurred from the oil embargo against Iran "could be seen by Saudi Arabia as an act of war."The Dubai general's remarks Thursday about an imminent conflict referred not only to the flow of American reinforcements to the Gulf region but also to the new deployments of the armies of Gulf Cooperation Council states. They are moving into position in expectation of a military confrontation with Iran.Read the full story here.

Socialism 101 for Dummies.

2012-01-27T09:32:00.000-05:00

Socialism 101 (13thspitfire).An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan". All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A…. (substituting grades for dollars – something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little..

The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. It could not be any simpler than that.

Remember, there IS a test coming up. The 2012 elections.

These are possibly the 5 best sentences you’ll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

.. and that Mr Cameron is why every Socialist state in history has failed. No matter that You choose to call it The Big Society, what You and the EU are selling forcing down our throats is socialist communitarianism, and it too will fail.Read the full story here.
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Free Syrian Army shows video of alleged Iranian fighters abducted in Homs

2012-01-27T09:29:00.000-05:00

Here's a video from the Syrian opposition, which captured five Iranian snipers on Thursday in Homs. The video is in Persian and Arabic, but an English summary follows.

Here's the message that goes with the video: Five of these malignant animals were captured with their guns and the other two are workers in a state company in Syria. The Free Syrian Army will allow those last two to go home with no condition whatsoever but with others: Iran Must remove all their mercenaries working with the 'Syrian' regime , who are helping each other in killing innocent civilians, then the FSA will set those free.
We respect the Shia religion and we demand from Ali Khamie to tell the Iranian government to stop supporting the brutal regime in Syria and take all their thugs out of Syria.Israel Radio reports on a couple of the things said in the video above. The five prisoners - who were captured in Homs on Thursday - admit that they are Iranians and that they are members of the Revolutionary Guard forces.HT: IsraelMatzav.

(AlArabiya) - The video showed travel documents of the captives, some of whom appeared to be speaking Farsi. “I am Sajjad Amirian, a member the Revolutionary Guards of the Iranian armed forces. I am a member of the team in charge of cracking down on protesters in Syria and we receive our orders directly from the security division of the Syrian air force in Homs,” one of the captives said.“I urge Mr. Khamenei to work on securing our release and return to our homes,” he added.The armed Syrian opposition group, which called itself the “al-Farouq brigade of the Free Syrian Army,” also released a statement calling for Iran’s Supreme leader Ali Khamanei to “acknowledge in explicit and unambiguous words the existence of elements of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in Syria in order to help the Assad’s regime in its crackdown on the Syrian people.” The group also urged Khamanei to withdraw all Revolutionary Guard fighters from Syria, pledging that that it would then release all captive Iranian fighters.The group said five of those abducted were military men working with the Syrian air force intelligence and two showed “civilian status” as employees in a power plant in Homs.Read the full story here.

MFS -The Other News - What the main papers don't say.

2012-01-27T07:59:00.011-05:00

Morning Posting.

Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity situation Greece 5.3 - 5.2 ; Indonesia 5.2 !More info here.

President Obama: I Want Second Term 'Badly'.(Abc).By Devin Dwyer.President Barack Obama today signaled an aggressive tact for his early re-election campaign, critiquing his Republican opponents by name and insisting he's ready to "fight with every fiber of my being" for a second term."How much do you want it?" ABC News' Diane Sawyer asked Obama during an exclusive interview in Las Vegas."Badly," the president said, "because I think the country needs it." "Whoever wins the Republican primary is going to be a standard bearer for a vision of the country that I don't think reflects who we are," Obama said."I'm going to fight as hard as I can with every fiber of my being to make sure that we continue on a path that I think will restore the American dream," he said.Obama pushed back against what he called Republicans' "rhetorical flourishes," including Newt Gingrich's oft-repeated contention that Obama is the "food stamp president."Hmmm......."Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty". ~ Plato.Read the full story here.

Ayatollah orders terrorist Attacks; Colleague of man given the order Visited recently the White House.(BN).The recent assassination of one of Iran's nuclear scientists has apparently prompted the Ayatollah to dispatch Hezbollah to commit terror attacks through the head of the Al Quds Brigade. That man's name is Gen. Qasem Soleimani. That name is made more relevant by the fact that a close associate of Soleimani was recently given the red carpet treatment by the White House.Al Ameri holds the Iranian nationality under the name of Hassan Ameri and his wife is Iranian. He usually visits Iran and meets with Qassem Sulaimani, the head of Al Quds Brigade, under the Iranian guard forces, on a regular basis.While being in Iran, Al Ameri played a role in torturing the Iraqi prisoners, who were captured by Iran during the Iraqi-Iranian war. Prisoners who returned from there accuse him of being the cruelest against them. This role helped him to reach the status that he occupies in the eyes of the Iranians.Hmmmmm.....Obama's 'guest'?Read the full story here.

Obama Can’t Handle the Truth (Just Ask Gov. Brewer).(BigGovernment).By AWR Hawkins.President Barack Obama has a problem, a problem much bigger than his plummeting poll numbers among black voters, the ever-worsening housing market, or the chronically high national unemployment numbers. Although these are all bad and must be weighing down on him—whether he admits it or not—they are minor compared to his deeper problem, which is his inability to handle criticism, his inability to handle the truth.We first saw this when Obama was starting to run for president and he put reporters “on notice” regarding comments about the size of his ears. Since then we’ve seen it in the way he locks out reporters who ask hard questions and, most recently, in the way he appears to have lodged a complaint with Gov. Jan Brewer regarding her criticism of the way he has gone to war with Arizona to keep that state from defending its southern border.If you’ll recall, in December 2006, after New York Times’ reporter Maureen Dowd had written about how Obama’s “ears stick out,” Obama tracked her down at a speaking engagement and said: “I just want to put you on notice. I’m very sensitive,” adding, “I was teased relentlessly when I was a kid about my big ears.” (Rush Limbaugh was then criticized for seizing on that comment and warning people that it demonstrated Obama’s skin was too thin for the rigors of the presidency. And in retrospect, Limbaugh was right.)Perhaps you remember the April 2011 exchange that took place between Obama and Dallas news reporter Brad Watson, during an interview wherein Watson asked the president pointed, probing questions instead of the kind of light and fluffy stuff a CNN reporter asks when he or she gets the chance. For example, as the two sat face to face, Watson looked right at Obama and asked: “Why do you think you’re so unpopular in Texas?” And when Obama tried to make it look like he wasn’t that unpopular in Texas, saying he’d only lost in 2008 by a “few percentage points,” Watson countered: “Well, you lost by about 10%. 55 to 44.” And because Obama can’t handle criticism, he became noticeably bothered as the questions continued. When the short interview was over, an angry Obama whispered to Watson: “Let me finish my answers next time we do an interview.”Of course Watson won’t get another interview, because Obama locks reporters out if they dare take him to task. As Keith Koffler wrote of Obama’s reaction to Watson back in April, “Look how thin-skinned he can be.”Speaking of thin-skinned, that’s the exact phrase Gov. Brewer used to describe Obama after he walked across the tarmac in Phoenix on Wednesday and greeted Brewer not with “hello” or “good to see you,” but with a complaint about how she’d described his efforts to deep-end Arizona’s S.B. 1070. He said he’d read the complaint in a passage from her book, “Scorpions for Breakfast.”There Brewer wrote: [Obama] has repeatedly made fun of those of us who want to see the law enforced, saying we want a ‘moat’ with ‘alligators’ in it around our country. The reason he has resorted to these failed attempts at humor, I think, is that he supports a policy that is fundamentally undemocratic, and he knows it.Said Brewer of the exchange: “He brought up my book and he was a little tense. He said he read the excerpt and didn’t think I was very cordial. I said we’d have to agree to disagree. He was a little thin-skinned and tense, to say the least.”The bottom line: Obama can’t handle criticism. Obama can’t handle the truth. Dowd proved it in 2006, Watson proved in 2011, and Gov. Brewer proved it again two days ago.Read the full story here.

Obama in SOTU: Cut the Taxes that Pay for Social Security, but Don’t Threaten Social Security.(BigGovernment).By Charles C. Johnson.Last night President Obama renewed his calls for a so-called “middle class tax” cut that would all but kill Social Security:“Right now, our most immediate priority is stopping a tax hike on 160 million working Americans while the recovery is still fragile. People cannot afford losing $40 out of each paycheck this year. There are plenty of ways to get this done. So let’s agree right here, right now: No side issues. No drama. Pass the payroll tax cut without delay.”And yet only two paragraphs later, he said this: Alas, in calling for a renewed payroll tax holiday, President Obama continues to raid Social Security and imperil the retirement account that many Americans have paid into and continue to depend upon.On the one hand, he raids the Social Security trust fund, while on the other he attacks Republicans for threatening Social Security. Republicans ought not let him get away with such transparent chutzpah.As I wrote for Engage America, this is a big mistake and potentially a catastrophic one for America’s largest entitlement program. Indeed, put yourself in the position of those “innocent Americans” and law abiding Americans–Generation X, who will grow old just as Social Security goes belly up.Read the full story here.

Jon Stewart Forces Secretary Sebelius to Sweat Obamacare’s Details.(Heritage).Monday on The Daily Show, comedian Jon Stewart interviewed Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The Secretary didn’t escape the hot seat in what turned out to be an interesting discussion regarding the implementation of Obamacare.One notable topic covered during the interview was the surprise proposal by HHS to let states determine their own definitions of “essential health benefits.” Obamacare explicitly instructs HHS to fill in the details of the legislation’s mandatory minimum benefit package, but as the Galen Institute’s John Hoff previously noted in a Heritage writing, “Although HHS can, of course, produce a piece of paper (or, more likely, hundreds of pages of regulation) purporting to define the term, in reality this will not provide the real-world uniformity of coverage contemplated by [Obamacare]. HHS has an impossible task.”It seems HHS agrees that it has an impossible task and is now looking for a way to stick somebody else with the problem. Sebelius claims that letting states define benefits will give them flexibility. But in reality, all that would do is intensify the existing special-interest lobbying in state capitols for more mandated health insurance coverage—driving the cost of coverage under Obamacare even higher.In a second installment, Stewart questioned Sebelius about whether or not employers would be inclined to “dump” their employees in the new health care exchanges and pay the new penalty instead. “Is the penalty more than the [cost of] insurance?” Stewart asked. Sebelius responded, “The penalty will help pay for the tax credit that the employee will get in the insurance.” Extensive research does a better job of answering the question. The cost of the new Obamacare subsidies will not be covered by the fines collected from employer penalties. The facts show that some employers will be able to come out ahead even after paying the penalty and increasing workers’ cash compensation to make up for the lost health benefits.Stewart then posed this question:Do you think ultimately this is, a bunch of people dump to the exchange, and it becomes sort of a back door, of government, not a takeover necessarily, but of a government responsibility for the health care, employees, and it decouples it—I’m not saying that’s a bad thing—but decouples it from employment, and people will get it through the government—through tax credits, rather than through their employers—and then suddenly, obviously then, we’re Sweden. Do you think that’s the case?Well, Jon, America may not be Sweden yet, but it’s getting a lot closer under Obamacare.Read the full story here.

Capitol Hill Chevy Volt Hearing: What About All the Other Fires?(BigGovernment).I attended Wednesday’s 8:00am (8am?!?) House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing entitled: Volt Vehicle Fire: What Did NHTSA Know And When Did They Know It?The witnesses were killer: National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), Barack Obama-appointee Administrator David Strickland.And General Motors (GM), Barack Obama-appointee CEO Dan Akerson.The scope of the hearing was a bit too narrow – leaving out some fairly important attending facts. Like, say, the (at least) five other Chevy Volt fires that have occurred besides the one being discussed.This hearing was all about a single June Volt blaze. The battery burst into flames about three weeks after a test crash at and by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA).A fire about which Obama’s NHTSA did tell the Obama White House.But a fire about which neither Obama’s NHTSA, the Obama Administration nor Obama’s GM told the American people for nearly six months – and then did so only when forced by a looming Bloomberg news story.But: The White House had no role in the decision to delay disclosure of a fire that broke out in a crash-tested Chevrolet Volt, the Obama administration told Congress on Friday.Of COURSE not.Hmmmm.....My guess dealers their fire insurance went up quite a bit.Read the full story here.

"Another one bites the dust" - Another Stimulus-Backed Energy Company Files for Bankruptcy.(Heritage).After months of financial turmoil, an Energy Department-backed lithium ion battery company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company, Ener1, received a $118 million grant from DOE in 2010 as part of the president’s stimulus package. The money, which went to Ener1 subsidiary EnerDel, aimed to promote renewable energy storage battery technology for electrical grid use.But despite generous federal support for the company, Ener1 was racked by problems last year. In October, NASDAQ delisted the company due to non-compliance with Securities and Exchange Commission filing requirements. A month later, the company’s president, chief executive, and top financial officer were fired.On Thursday, Ener1 announced it will initiate a pre-packaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan as part of an agreement to restructure the company’s debt obligations.Hmmmm........Obama: "All the Choices We've Made Have Been the Right Ones".Read the full story here.

Israeli Defense minister Barak: Iran 'drifting' toward nuke goal line.(YNet).Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Friday the world must quickly stop Iran from reaching the point where even a "surgical" military strike could not block it from obtaining nuclear weapons.Amid fears that Israel is nearing a decision to attack Iran's nuclear program, Barak said tougher international sanctions are needed against Tehran's oil and banks so that "we all will know early enough whether the Iranians are ready to give up their nuclear weapons program." Iran insists its atomic program is only aimed at producing energy and research, but has repeatedly refused to consider giving up its ability to enrich uranium. "We are determined to prevent Iran from turning nuclear. And even the American president and opinion leaders have said that no option should be removed from the table and Iran should be blocked from turning nuclear," Barak told reporters during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. "It seems to us to be urgent, because the Iranians are deliberately drifting into what we call an immunity zone where practically no surgical operation could block them," he said. Barak called it "a challenge for the whole world" to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran but stopped short of confirming any action that could further stoke Washington's concern about a possible Israeli military strike.IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said at a Davos session that "we do not have that much confidence if Iran has declared everything" and its best information "indicates that Iran has engaged in activities relevant to nuclear explosive devices." "For now they do not have the capacity to manufacture the fuel," he said. "But in the future, we don't know." Read the full story here.

Pentagon taps students to build robots, and death dealing drones.(StratRisks).With an eye toward revolutionizing how defense systems and vehicles are made, the Pentagon has tapped a team of Bay Area-based scientists, engineers and hackers to create a program that will enlist California high school students to build robots, drones and other low- and medium-tech gadgets.The Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has awarded $2 million of a $10 million program to two outfits that have joined forces to develop a pilot project in 10 schools.Part of the agency’s lauded Adaptive Vehicle Make program, which has employed university-based teams to build new navigation systems, the latest effort wants to cut down on manufacturing time. Dubbed Manufacturing Experimentation and Outreach, the program hopes to develop and motivate the next generation of chic geeks to collaborate through social networks to design and develop new vehicles.The overall goal is to expand to 1,000 high schools, both in and out of the country, said Dale Dougherty, founder of MAKE magazine and one of the directors of the pilot program, along with Saul Griffith of San Francisco-based design team Otherlab.The team has two years to reach the initial goal of 10 schools, then two more years to expand first to 100 schools then 1,000. The Defense Department wants unlimited rights to everything the students build, including all algorithms, source code, equipment and test use cases.Hmmmm.....Am i the only one who has 'moral objections' to this?Why not use the creativity of the youth for something constructive?Read the full story here.

Twitter to restrict user content in some countries.(Reuters).Twitter announced Thursday that it would begin restricting Tweets in certain countries, marking a policy shift for the social media platform that helped propel the popular uprisings recently sweeping across the Middle East."As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression," Twitter wrote in a blog post published Thursday.It said even with the possibility of such restrictions, Twitter would not be able to coexist with some countries. "Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there," it said.Twitter gave as examples of restrictions it might cooperate with "certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content."A Twitter spokeswoman declined to elaborate on the blog."Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country while keeping it available in the rest of the world," the Twitter blog said."Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country while keeping it available in the rest of the world," the Twitter blog said.Twitter's decision to begin censoring content represents a significant departure from its policy just one year ago, when anti-government protesters in Tunisia, Egypt and other Arab countries coordinated mass demonstrations through on the social network and, in the process, thrust Twitter's disruptive potential into the global spotlight.Hmmmm.....The fact that Prince Alwaleed unveiled a $300 million stake purchase in fast-growing microblogging site Twitter has nothing to do with 'oppressing free speech?Read the full story here.

'Iran could ban EU oil exports next week'.(JPost).TEHRAN - A law to be debated in Iran's parliament on Sunday could halt exports of oil to the European Union as early as next week, the semi-official Fars news agency quoted a lawmaker as saying on Friday."On Sunday, parliament will have to approve a 'double emergency' bill calling for a halt in the export of Iranian oil to Europe starting next week," Hossein Ibrahimi, vice-chairman of the Iranian parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, was quoted as saying.The Iranian parliament is pushing for the export ban to deny the EU a 6-month phase-in of the embargo on Iranian oil that the bloc agreed on Monday as part of a raft of tough new Western sanctions aimed at forcing Iran to curb its nuclear program."If the deputies arrive at the conclusion that the Iranian oil exports to Europe must be halted, the parliament will not delay a moment (in passing the bill)," Fars quoted Moayed Hosseini-Sadr, a member of parliament's energy committee, as saying.Read the full story here.

Turkey to become first Muslim nation to show Holocaust film.(HurriyetDaily).Turkish public television (TRT) was set to show an epic French documentary about the Holocaust last night in the first broadcast of its kind by national media in a Muslim state. A spokesman for TRT said the 1985 film “Shoah” would be shown on one of the network’s 14 channels.The director of the nine-hour-plus documentary, Claude Lanzmann, called the Turkish move historic.“We should acknowledge the courage and determination of the Turks,” said Lanzmann, who spent 11 years working on the documentary. “Turkey is a country people don’t know and understand very badly.”Turkey’s broadcast of the film is the culmination of work by the Aladdin Project, a Paris-based group which tries to improve Jewish-Muslim relations. The group said in a statement that it had never before been shown in its entirely in a Muslim country.Consisting largely of Holocaust-survivor interviews, the film examines the killing of European Jews in Nazi death camps during World War II.The broadcast comes at a sensitive time in Turkey’s international relations.Hmmmm.......How many will actually watch?Read the full story here.

Muslim Brotherhood Guide: Parliament has right to hold military accountable.(BM).CAIRO: The head of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie, said in statements on Thursday, that the newly elected parliament has the right to hold all state institutions, particularly the military, accountable and that any organization “cannot be above the rule of the people and the parliament can determine the budget of the military by creating a special committee.”Badie said the Muslim Brotherhood, which now holds 45 percent of the parliament`s seats, “will not nominate one of its members in the presidential elections,” and would not get behind Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, or any candidate with an Islamic reference in the elections, but that it would participate with “all national forces in the selection of a candidate that enjoys consensus on the basis of the rules does not favor anyone and define the specifications of the next Egyptian president according to what`s best for Egypt interests.”Badie stressed in statements to reporters on Thursday that the demands of the Egyptian people “is a top priority for the group to restore all fundamental rights of people, and the preservation of freedom and dignity, and social justice, and provide a decent living for every citizen,” stressing that democratic transition is the “only way for the return of the rights of the Egyptian people and dignity.”The Brotherhood chief said that the position of the Muslim Brotherhood towards the military council is one of “a partner in the protection of the revolution, where if it made mistakes … it should be held accountable and if it does well, it has to be praised without undermining the prestige of the Egyptian People’s Army.”Speaking about the defection of a number of young Muslim Brotherhood members recently, he said that what the group witnessed recently were differences and the rejection of youth and leaders to commit to the decisions of the Shura Council of the Brotherhood, “is evidence of the vitality and democracy,” pointing out that the Muslim Brotherhood, “is an institutional group and whoever violates the regulations, has to be subjected to a decision by the institution.”Hmmmmm........"You don't leave the mob"?Read the full story here.

Hamas quietly quits Syria as violence continues.(AlArabiya).The leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, has effectively abandoned his headquarters in the Syrian capital, Damascus, diplomatic and intelligence sources said on Friday.“Meshaal is not staying in Syria as he used to do. He is almost out all the time,” said a diplomat in the region who spoke on condition on anonymity.A regional intelligence source, who also did not wish to be identified, said: “He’s not going back to Syria. That’s the decision he’s made. There’s still a Hamas presence there, but it’s insignificant.”Damascus is isolated following a bloody, 10-month uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad and is not secure, the diplomat said, adding that Meshaal was no longer able to receive international visitors there.Analysts say Meshaal was also embarrassed by Assad’s violent crackdown, with more than 5,000 people reported killed. Many victims of the security forces have been Sunni Muslims allied to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose support Meshaal relies on.Assad is backed mainly by his minority Alawite sect and other minorities.The sources said Meshaal would not publicly shut down the political headquarters of Hamas in Syria, where it has long been hosted by Assad and by his father before him.“In the past month he may have only stayed five days in Syria and the rest he spent in Qatar, Turkey and Egypt,” said the diplomat. “But he did not close the headquarters in Syria in full and there are some Hamas officials still there.”The sources said Meshaal was currently in Egypt. But “there was no agreement to open an office in Cairo. Not yet,” said the diplomat. “The expected residence for Meshaal is Qatar where he may stay most of the time until the Syria smoke has cleared.”Qatar is the Arab world’s most outspoken critic of Assad. Qatari mediation was helpful in arranging Meshaal’s upcoming visit to Jordan next week, restoring ties with the monarchy more than a decade after Hamas was ejected from the kingdom.Hamas Gaza Strip leader Ismail Haniyeh was thought to have “received promises from Turkey to provide the movement and his administration with $300 million a year to help Gaza”.Turkey is also a strong critic of the crackdown by Assad in its southern neighbor, Syria. Haniyeh is scheduled to travel to Iran in the coming days.Hmmmm.........Muslim Brotherhood Egypt.....Turkey....Quatar.....Shaikh Yousef al-Qaradawi.Read the full story here.

Car bomb attack outside Baghdad hospital kills 28: medics.(AlArabiya).At least 28 people were killed and 50 others wounded when a bomb exploded near a Baghdad marketplace on Friday in the latest attack on a mainly Shi’ite neighborhood since a political crisis erupted in December, police and hospital sources said.An interior ministry official confirmed the explosion in Zafraniyah, which struck at 11:00 am (08:00 GMT), but said it was caused by a suicide attacker driving an explosives-packed car.The blast hit the funeral procession of Mohammed al-Maliki, a real estate agent who was killed along with his wife and son a day earlier in the west Baghdad neighborhood of Yarmuk, the doctor and interior ministry official said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity.The procession had collected Maliki’s body and was transporting it for the funeral when the explosion struck.A medical official said at least four women were among the fatalities, but no further details were immediately available.Maliki and his family were killed by gunmen in Yarmuk, although there have been differing accounts of the attack itself.A medic at Yarmuk hospital said the attackers burst into a real estate agency and killed three, while an interior ministry official said four people, including two real estate agents, died when gunmen opened fire on their car.Friday’s attack came a day after violence in Iraq killed 17 people, and is the deadliest to hit the country in nearly two weeks, amid a political crisis pitting the Shiite-led government against the main Sunni-backed bloc that has stoked sectarian tensions.The row erupted when authorities charged Sunni Arab Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi with running a death squad and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite, called for his Sunni deputy Saleh al-Mutlak to be sacked after the latter said the premier was “worse than Saddam Hussein”.Hmmmm.......Obama: If We Work Hard, Afghanistan Could Be a Success...Like Iraq!Read the full story here.

Indonesia's Islamic vigilantes 'turning to terrorism'.(HD).Tolerance of Islamic vigilantism is helping to breed a new generation of terrorists in Indonesia, the International Crisis Group warned in a report Thursday.The report criticised the government and police for lax law enforcement against hardliners, who often claim responsibility for violent anti-vice and sectarian attacks but regularly evade punishment."Indonesia: From Vigilantism to Terrorism in Cirebon" described how a group of poor uneducated men in the western Javanese town went from using sticks and stones in morality raids to using bombs and guns."What we saw in Cirebon was a a group of about 10 people who started out on a path to terrorism by participating in anti-vice campaigns," ICG analyst Sidney Jones told AFP."By using violence in these campaigns, they clearly violated the law but weren't punished." The group went from carrying out anti-vice attacks on TV stations and convenience stores selling alcohol to orchestrating suicide attacks on a police mosque and a church on Java island.The radicalisation of the Cirebon group was fuelled by weekly sermons where spiritual leaders encouraged the bloodshed of Islam's enemies, which have come to include the Indonesian government and police, the report said.Read the full story here.

Egyptian writer: "Who offends the Prophet is not the West, but we Muslims, for making Islam terrorist".(TJ).Translated from elbashayer.com, 22 December 2011: Who Offends the Prophet?By Ahmad al-Aswani. I don’t believe that cartoons, books, or movies can offend any religion, or affect the faith of those who adhere to that religion with truth and conviction. The ones who offend the Prophet are those who slaughter and blow up innocent people throughout all the world—from New York to Madrid, in London, Bali, Riyadh, Cairo, Kabul, and Baghdad—even now, after mentioning Allah and the Prophet under the banner of Islamic jihad. Protests come out in support of all this, and internet forums sing praises to the knight Usama bin Laden, the hero of the raids of New York and Washington. Who offends the Prophet is a man like al-Qaradawi, who incites people to kill Jewish children in their mothers’ wombs (from an interview with Egyptian journalists in 1996), and incites people to carry out suicide operations. In the name of the religion and the Prophet, he declares jihad in Iraq, and innocent victims are killed.Who offends the Prophet are those who demand that the world issue a decision preventing the disrespect of religions while they practice it themselves in every prayer in their mosques, schools (madrasas), and on their television stations. They especially disrespect Christians and Jews, and curse them in every prayer (after the Islamic bloc offered a decision on this issue in the Human Rights Council in the United Nations, the Saudi Shura Council objected to this decision because insulting other religions is one of the rites of Islam, according to what was published on the Saudi site al-Arabiya).Who offends is ..Continued..... Read the full story here.

Bahrain detainee dies in custody, opposition sees torture.(Reuters).Bahrain's police said on Thursday that a man detained over "acts of violence and sabotage" died of a chronic disease in hospital while in custody, but the opposition said he was tortured to death.A police official said the man suffered from sickle-cell disease and died of natural causes, state news agency BNA reported.The main Shi'ite Muslim opposition group, Wefaq, said on its website that the 19-year-old had been injured after being squeezed between two police vehicles as he tried to flee during a protest and that he had been detained and tortured instead of receiving treatment.Amnesty International urged Bahrain on Thursday to investigate its use of tear gas against frequent protests in the Gulf state, citing a Bahraini rights group as saying 13 people had died from its indiscriminate use."The rise in fatalities and eyewitness accounts suggest that tear gas is being used inappropriately by Bahraini security forces, including in people's homes and other confined spaces," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, an Amnesty regional deputy director.Washington, which bases its Fifth Fleet on the Gulf island, has linked a $53 million arms sale to the kingdom's response to the inquiry. Bahrain has said it is implementing the inquiry's recommendations, but the top U.N. human rights official argues that Bahrain is not punishing those who have committed abuses."Given the government of Bahrain's malicious misuse of tear gas, the U.S. government should continue its current policy to not issue new licenses for riot control equipment that have the potential for harmful misuse," Hans Hogrefe, chief policy officer of Physicians for Human Rights, said in a statement.Read the full story here.

Can there be a second Holocaust?(JPost).By Robert S. Wistrich.In recent years, the Holocaust has been subject to an increasingly sickening blend of ruthless politicization, deliberate distortion, crass commercialization and an often abject sentimentalism.More ominously, it has also become a weapon of choice for many of Israel’s worst enemies and for a resurgent anti-Semitism which brands the entire enterprise of Holocaust memory as nothing but a “Zionist plot.”In contemporary Europe, Holocaust guilt is used more often than not to promote the Palestinian cause rather than to recognize the necessity of having a Jewish state. Arab and Islamist propaganda, aided and abetted by many liberals and leftists (including some vocal Jewish anti- Zionists), hammers away at the grotesque libel that Israeli policies towards the Palestinians are worse than those of the Nazis. Many Europeans believe these fables.In Israel itself, there are even academics who trumpet such absurdities which have become all-too- commonplace on certain campuses abroad, especially in Britain, North America and Scandinavia.Read the full story here.

Israeli Ships Switch Flags When Sailing thru Suez Canal.(INN).A sharp decline was reported in the number of ships sailing through the Suez Canal under the Israeli flag in 2011, with only seven making the trip, compared to 15 in 2010, according to the Port and Port Website. Total freight tonnage was down 91 percent, from 166,000 tons to 15,000 tons.A senior source in Egyptian shipping said the level of Israeli shipping did not go down but that Israeli ships switch from Israeli flags to international flags for security reasons when making the trip. It was also reported that Wednesday's anniversary of the revolution that ousted former president Hosni Mubarak was marked by record ship traffic and cargo volume on the canal.Hmmmm......Read the full story here.

Turkey Moves to Deport Armenian Workers after French Vote.(A).BY Nanore Barsoumian.ISTANBUL–Turkey is set to amend a law that aims to rid the country of illegal workers. Many view this move as retaliation against Armenians, in light of the new bill criminalizing Armenian Genocide denial in France.Different estimates in Turkey put the number of Armenian citizens in the country at as low as 10,000 and as high as 100,000. Many of them are women, and they are employed in low-skill jobs.“This country, which Mark Levene called ‘the Genocide zone,’ throughout its history has made it a habit to deport, expel, and relocate innocent people as retaliation and punishment for things they did not do, or have no connection to at all,” human rights advocate Ayse Gunaysu told the Armenian Weekly Editor Khatchig Mouradian.Back in March 2010, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan hinted at retaliation against Armenian migrant workers if Genocide resolutions were passed in foreign parliaments. In a discussion about Genocide resolutions in the U.S. and Sweden, he told the BBC’s Turkish Service that of the 170,000 Armenians living in Turkey, only 70,000 are Turkish citizens. “We are turning a blind eye to the remaining 100,000… Tomorrow, I may tell these 100,000 to go back to their country, if it becomes necessary.”It appears the French bill was the last straw for Erdogan’s government. On Jan. 25, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters that “Turkey’s response to the adoption of the bill had long been decided.”President of the Migrants’ Association for Social Cooperation and Culture Sefika Gurbuz called the law a “threat to Armenians,” reported Bianet.Meanwhile, Gunaysu characterized Turkey’s response a “black comedy.” “The ongoing blackmail and threats against France is itself proof of guilt as well as a manifestation of lack of dignity and self-respect, despite—of course—pathetic demonstrations of national pride,” said Gunaysu.Gunaysu, who is a member of the Committee Against Racism and Discrimination of the Human Rights Association of Turkey, pointed out the country’s history of deporting innocents peoples. In 1915 the Young Turk regime began its systemic deportations of Armenians as a main tool to rid the Eastern provinces of a native population. “They still tell lies that it was because treacherous Armenians, whereas hundreds of thousands of Armenians were not engaged in any political activity whatsoever,” said Gunaysu. Then it was the turn of Turkey’s Kurdish and Greek populations. “The republican period is full of Kurdish deportations, especially in 1938 during and after the Dersim massacres,” she said. “In 1964, the Turkish government expelled 40,000 Anatolian Greeks, forbidding them to bring along any personal belongings over 20 kg and $20, as a retaliation against Greece in connection with the Cyprus issue—a deportation which is still terribly painful in the memories of these people.”Gunaysu added, “The mindset from which this policy of retaliation originates is racist, inhuman, and brutal. The rulers of Turkey have once more proven that [the government] still follows the same path as that of their predecessors back in 1915 and all along the history of the Republic.”Read the full story here.

Footage: Palestinians in Lebanon Shown Saluting Nazi/Hizbullah Style

2012-01-27T07:23:00.000-05:00

Footage: Palestinians in Lebanon Shown Saluting Nazi/Hizbullah Style.
Source :Palestinian Authority TV - January 24, 2012.

Obama's 'peacepartners'.

Cleric Sa'd Bin Al-Shathari Says: It Is Forbidden to Pray to Allah to Place Steve Jobs in Paradise

2012-01-27T07:22:00.001-05:00

On Channel Owned By Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal – Who Also Owns Part of Apple – Saudi Cleric Sa'd Bin Al-Shathari Says: It Is Forbidden to Pray to Allah to Place Steve Jobs in Paradise.

Interviewer: There is a great deal of interest in the death of Steve Jobs, the founder and owner of Apple and its former CEO. I'd like you to comment on two matters. First, is it permissible to be sad over the death of an infidel? Second, is it permissible to ask for Allah's mercy for an infidel? There was a lot of debate on Twitter and Facebook about this.

Sa'd Bin Al-Shathari: With regard to being sad, it is not something within one's volition. One does not decide to become sad, and therefore, there is no ruling about it in Islamic law. As for asking for Allah's mercy [upon an infidel], if a person prays for Allah to alleviate the torments of someone close to him, or for Him to ignore some of his sins – that's permissible too. But to pray for Allah to have mercy upon him or place him in Paradise – that is forbidden.Source : Memri.

Did Heracles just reincarnate?Snake dies from baby's bite.

2012-01-27T07:22:00.000-05:00

Imad, his father and the bitten snake (Photo: Maor Buchnik)

Snake dies from baby's bite.(YNet).An encounter between a snake and a baby ended in a surprising outcome Thursday, when the infant's mother walked into his room to find him chewing on the dead reptile. The infant, Imad Gadir, whose family resides in Shfaram, was not hurt when he bit the unlucky coin snake, but was taken to Haifa's Ramabam Medical Center, just in case.
According to Imad's grandfather, Shaheen Shaheen, who recalled the family's tumultuous morning, the boy woke up when his father left for work at 6:30 am. The 1-year-old left his parents' bed and headed to his room, where he found the 35-centimeter (13-inch) snake. He then grabbed it and bit its head off. "It wasn't a pretty sight," Shaheen said. "He's a baby, he didn't know what he was doing. He thought it was a game. I don't wish this kind of thing on anyone." When Imad's mother realized what had happened she began screaming, until a neighbor jumped the house's fence, entered the room and snatched the snake out of the boy's hand. "I went to the kitchen to get him some milk, and when I came back I saw he was already eating," the mother, Alain, said. "I screamed until the neighbors came. I still can't believe what I saw."
Veteran snake-catcher Eli Cohen said he has never come across a case of this kind. "I guess the kid acted out of a childish instinct when he put the snake in his mouth," he said. "Luckily for him, the coin snake isn't poisonous, otherwise it could have ended in a tragedy."
Hmmmm.......In Greek Mythology: Zeus fell in love with a beautiful Greek woman named Alcmene [Alk-ME-ne]. When Alcmene's husband, Amphitryon, was away, Zeus made her pregnant. This made Hera so angry that she tried to prevent the baby from being born. When Alcmene gave birth to the baby anyway, she named him Herakles. (The Romans pronounced the name "Hercules," and so do we today.) The name Herakles means "glorious gift of Hera" in Greek, and that got Hera angrier still. Then she tried to kill the baby by sending snakes into his crib. But little Hercules was one strong baby, and he strangled the snakes, one in each hand, before they could bite him. Read the full story here.

Overnight video - Holocaust Remembrance - Day 27 January

2012-01-26T22:37:00.000-05:00

Victims of the Holocaust deserve our remembrance.(TheAustralian).ON November 1, 2005, the UN general assembly resolved that each year January 27 would be designated Holocaust Remembrance Day. The date was significant. It was on this day in 1945 that the largest concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, was liberated by Soviet forces.With 104 states co-sponsoring the resolution, including Australia, the UN's action was widely acclaimed. It may have taken 60 years to get there, but the message was clear.
The international community is determined to ensure the most horrific episode in the history of mankind is neither forgotten nor repeated.So today on Holocaust Remembrance Day 2012 we gather to commemorate the six million Jews who perished and millions of others who lost their lives including Polish and Romani civilians, homosexuals, people with disabilities, political and religious leaders and Soviet and other prisoners of war, at the hands of the brutal Nazi war machine.

Make no mistake: these people were not casualties of war but the victims of an evil, ideological crusade, a crusade designed to systematically eliminate the Jewish people and achieve what Yehuda Bauer has called "a global-racial hierarchy with the Nordic peoples of the Aryan race on top".
In this sense the Holocaust was unique in scale and scope.

With its origins in the anti-semitic Volkisch movement and morphing into the Nuremberg Laws, Kristallnacht and ultimately the Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution, the Nazi campaign knew no bounds. Every one of the 11 million Jews in Europe including those in states that were neutral or at war with Germany were marked for destruction. It didn't matter if you were one of the more than three million Jews in Poland or one of only 200 in Albania, you were on (Holocaust architect) Adolf Eichmann's list.
In the end more than 90 per cent of Polish Jews were killed, 75 per cent of those in Germany and more than 50 per cent in Hungary, Romania and Belgium. These numbers include up to 1.5 million children, some of whom were exposed to the most horrific medical experiments. To think the German people were unaware of these calamities misses a fundamental point.
Millions of Germans were involved in this effort. From the bureaucrats to the bankers, from the teachers to the train drivers and of course the many German corporations that provided the means for exterminating millions of people, these civilians, like the soldiers in uniform, were not simply following orders. They were accomplices.
That is why, now more than 70 years on, we the descendants of Holocaust victims need to ensure the perpetrators of these horrible crimes see justice, however late. There is no defence for what took place.
That is why we must also do all we can to educate today's younger generation about the horrors of the Holocaust, for if we don't the tragedies of the past are doomed to be repeated.
Rwanda, Darfur, Cambodia and Bosnia were not isolated acts of violence, but were genocides too, orchestrated and committed on a grand scale for which the lessons of the Holocaust proved no deterrent. It is against acts like these that the international community must redouble its efforts to prevent in the future.
So too, must the international community stand up to dangerous leaders like Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The day after Iran has a nuclear weapon will be too late for action, for Iran will have at its disposal the technology to destroy in five minutes what the Germans took five years to nearly achieve.

Equally, we must actively confront those who seek to deny the Holocaust ever took place. It is historical revisionism of the worst kind. From Iran's hosting of an international conference on the subject in 2006, to a spattering of pseudo academics in France, Britain and the US who seek to give credibility to their claims, the attempts to deny the facts of the Holocaust are neither benign acts born of ignorance nor simple mischief making. Rather it is something far more sinister and far more deliberate.

In 1945 when a shocked general Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander, first saw the horrors of the camps he knew a time would come when those at home would say "the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda". He made it his duty then and there to bring journalists and legislators to the site to bear witness, assembling the evidence to prove what in fact occurred.

Eisenhower did his part to ensure "there is no room for cynical doubt" and we must do ours, by ensuring those who peddle falsehoods about the Holocaust are exposed at every turn.
This is our challenge. To constantly remind the peoples of the world that among the good there is also evil.

Communities that can produce the minds of Hegel and Mozart and the hearts of Schindler and Bonhoeffer can also produce the twisted and perverted thinking of Eichmann and Mengele, Himmler and Hitler.

When Soviet troops walked into Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27, 1945, one of the darkest chapters in the history of mankind may have ended. But it is now up to us to remind the world the book will never be closed.
To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson from nearly 200 years ago, eternal vigilance is the price of our freedom. This is our task, this is our responsibility.

Josh Frydenberg is the member for Kooyong and the keynote speaker at Melbourne's Jewish Holocaust Centre Memorial Day event.Read the full story here.

Iranian MP Hossein Ebrahimi, Deputy Head of the Iranian Parliament's National Security Committee: "The Persian Gulf Will Be Turned into a Graveyard" for International Forces

2012-01-26T21:49:00.000-05:00

Hossein Ebrahimi: [Closing the Hormuz Strait] is the prerogative of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic, in the event that our interests are threatened, and the export of Iranian oil is blocked. If we cannot export our oil, I expect that the oil of other countries will not pass through these waters either - especially not through the Hormuz Strait, because Iran controls it. This is indeed one of the strategic plans of the Islamic Republic of Iran. We will not allow countries from all corners of the world to give orders to the countries of the Persian Gulf, thus jeopardizing our national interests. We will never let this happen. If we see that our national interests are in danger, and that the [West] is serious about disrupting the export of Iranian oil, we will jeopardize their interests as well, and they should know this.
If they undertake this measure, I personally believe that in addition to closing the Hormuz Strait, the Persian Gulf will be turned into a graveyard for the forces coming from all corners of the earth to this sensitive region. Source : Memri.

Obama's Georgia Ballot Hearing: Judge Wanted To Immediately Enter Default Judgment Against Obama.

2012-01-26T15:33:00.002-05:00

Obama's Georgia Ballot Hearing: Judge Wanted To Immediately Enter Default Judgment Against Obama.(ORYR).As we are trying to get a quick lunch, and then do some interviews, this is just a very brief synopsis of what happened today. Before the hearing started, the judge called the attorneys into his chambers and explained that he was going to enter a default judgment in their favor. Attorneys Hatfield and Irion requested to be able to present abbreviated versions of their arguments so that they would be on the record. At that point, Irion estimated he would need 20 minutes, Hatfield estimated he would need 30 minutes, and Taitz estimated she would need 2 hours.

Van Irion and Mark Hatfield made their arguments, and left. Taitz then presented her argument, calling several witnesses, until the judge asked her to make her closing statement. As her closing statement began, the judge asked if she was testifying, and, in an unconventional move, Taitz took the witness stand to testify. The judge finally asked her just to make her closing statement, which she did.

We believe that the default judgment automatically translates into the judge's recommendation to the Sec. Of State being that Obama should not appear on the ballot in Georgia.Read the continious story here.

Update from :BarracudaBrigade - Obama Eligibility Court Case, Blow by Blow; Obama/His Attorney a No Show - full time line of the events! Read the full story here.

Obama's Admin "National security" secret - Meet SOPA's evil twin, ACTA

2012-01-26T14:23:00.003-05:00

Meet SOPA's evil twin, ACTA.(CNN).By Dan Mitchell.FORTUNE -- It's only fitting that a loud, global outcry over ACTA, an international agreement to govern intellectual property, began just after the anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA were shelved by the U.S Congress in the face of massive public pressure. If "copyright maximalists" can't get legislation passed, writes TechDirt's Mike Masnick, "they resort to getting these things put into international trade agreements, which get significantly less scrutiny."
Not that the "maximalists" -- including the movie and music industries -- were following such a timeline, exactly. ACTA -- the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (PDF) -- is their backup, and they've been working on it for years. It's stirring protests now because Poland, Ireland and the European Union announced they would sign on this week, moving the pact closer to reality.
Part of the confusion, and ire, comes from the fact that ACTA combines counterfeiting and piracy as if they were similar, when in reality, they're very different.
Counterfeiting is when a customer is duped into buying, say, a fake iPod or a knockoff Gucci handbag. Piracy is when someone, for instance, distributes an unauthorized copy of a movie or song. Different kinds of laws apply to each, or are supposed to.
Copyright holders (movie studios, record labels, etc.) often try to meld anti-piracy measures with those aimed at counterfeiting, which are usually less controversial. SOPA and PIPA were similar to ACTA in this regard.Critics also say that activities such as non-commercial file-sharing, which are normally handled by civil courts, could be turned into crimes because the agreement is unclear on precisely what "commercial-scale" piracy is.
Piracy for commercial gain is covered, but so is "significant willful copyright or related rights infringements that have no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain." It all depends on what the meaning of "significant" is. In other words, if you download a movie -- or maybe it has to be three movies, or 300 -- it's possible that rather than a summons-server knocking on your door, it would be a cop. But again, this isn't entirely clear because the language is so vague and because it's impossible to tell how U.S. enforcement agencies will interpret it.
There are lots of other problematic provisions in ACTA, having to do with seed patents, generic drugs and other matters (watch this space for more), but the loudest criticisms so far have to do with its copyright provisions. In 2010, 75 law professors signed a letter to President Obama urging him not to sign the pact.They went unheeded. Obama signed the pact -- which was originally developed by the United States and Japan -- last year. Other current signatories include Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Morocco, Singapore, and South Korea.
There are questions as to whether it was even legal for Obama to sign without the consent of Congress. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon thinks it wasn't. In October, he sent a letter to Obama demanding an explanation. Wyden was a vociferous critic of SOPA and PIPA, and has been critical of ACTA as well -- particularly the opacity of its development. In particular, he decried the failure "to give the public a say over issues that so profoundly affect their lives."
A US-backed footnote removed from the document more than a year ago provided for "the termination" of Internet accounts for repeat online infringers. US internet service providers and content providers, however, have brokered such a deal toward that goal.Today the European parliament approved of it, Belgium would not have been willing to go beyond what is now the plan, in contrast to the U.S., who wants a stricter treaty !In this sense, Belgium joined Germany and Switzerland, which at times heavely criticized the texts of the Convention
Until European Union authorities began leaking the document’s text, the Obama administration was claiming the accord was a "national security" secret.Hmmmm.........."Obama reelection security" secret sounds more like it!Read the full story here, more here.

Related ? - Obama Plans to Create Internet ID for All Americans.(Fox). The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace is currently being drafted by the Obama administration and will be released by the president in a few months."We are not talking about a national ID card. We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy.Hmmm.....Lets say you downloaded illegally music or movies what would be the odds that your Internet ID card would be confiscated by the 'Autorities'?Read more here.

Total Federalization of Police Under New Homeland Security Mission

2012-01-26T11:26:00.001-05:00

Total Federalization of Police Under New Homeland Security Mission.(PrisonPlanet).By Aaron Dykes.A new white paper presented to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence carves out an ‘evolving mission’ for Homeland Security that moves away from fighting terrorism and towards growing a vast domestic intelligence apparatus that would expand integration with local/state agencies and private-public partnerships already underway via regional fusion centers.
Crafted by the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group, co-chaired by former DHS chief Michael Chertoff and composed of a who’s who of national security figures, the report outlines a total mission creep, as the title “Homeland Security and Intelligence: Next Steps in Evolving the Mission” implies.

Significantly, it puts on paper and into the Congressional record a proposed transition from outwardly dealing with the threats posed by terrorism towards intelligence gathering “focused on more specific homeward-focused areas.” That is, the homegrown, domestic threats we’ve heard so much about from Big Sis already.

In short, it confirms the intentions of key insiders– including former NSA/CIA head Michael Hayden, former Rep. Jane Harmon, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, 9/11 Commissioners Philip Zelikow and Richard Ben-Viniste, former National Security Advisor Samuel Berger and others– to flesh out a plan we have already seen developing from an outside perspective– namely, to build a domestic Stasi-like force to takeover, monitor and control the population.

Moreover, the media has reported on this changed mission– towards the full spectrum domination of the people under a patently-fascist framework– with the same calm as the weekly weather forecast.
Achieving this new aim includes co-opting local law enforcement and other regional agencies.
“As the threat grows more localized,” the report reads, “the federal government’s need to train, and even staff, local agencies, such as major city police departments, will grow.”
That’s right, the feds want to oversee the hiring of your local police.
As unbelievable as it sounds, DHS says other agencies can handle the all-encompassing threat of terrorism that was used to justify the super-agency’s own existence and powers.
Abandoning specific focus on tracking terrorist cells and organizations, DHS instead plans to shift into broad coverage of border protection, integrating travel data, cyber defense, critical infrastructure protection and other areas.

“There are enough agencies pursuing the terrorist adversary to allow DHS to build a new analytic foundation that emphasizes data, analytic questions, and customer groups that are not the focus for other agencies,” the report states.

And funding should be cut from terrorism-focused areas:

“Analysis that helps private-sector partners better understand how to mitigate threats to infrastructure, for example, should win more resourcing than a focus on all-source analysis of general threats, such as work on assessing the perpetrators of attacks. Conversely, all-source analysis of terrorist groups and general terrorist trends should remain the domain of other intelligence agencies.”

Instead, the “national security experts” who’ve brought us naked body scanners, checkpoints on highways, streets, airports, bus & train stations, and who have projected the homegrown terror threat into the theaters of private hotels, shopping malls and sports stadiums, are again expanding the bureaucratic growth of tyranny by infiltrating areas traditionally spared from federal intrusion.Will the already-controversial Department of Homeland Security be allowed, too, to creep so far into our lives that we can never look back?Hmmmm...Obama:"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We got to have a civilian national security force that is just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded."

"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty". ~ Plato.
Read the full story here.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's son barred from leaving Egypt.

2012-01-26T08:40:00.000-05:00

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's son barred from leaving Egypt.(Fox).By Judson Berger.The son of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is among several Americans who have been barred from leaving Egypt following a raid on advocacy groups last month.
Sam LaHood has been the director of the International Republican Institute's Egypt program since late 2010. The IRI's offices, as well as the offices of nine other nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, were raided by the Egyptian government last month.
But the IRI found out over the weekend that the Egyptian government has gone on to create a "no-exit list" as part of that investigation. And Sam LaHood is on it.When he tried to fly out of Egypt on Saturday for what was described as a "routine trip out of the country," LaHood was told he could not travel, according to Scott Mastic, director of IRI's Middle East division."He was told by the airport official that they have received instructions not to let him pass through passport control," Mastic said.
Though he said the organization has not been able to see the whole no-exit list, IRI has learned that five of its members, including three Americans, are on it. Other non-Americans are also on the list. The existence of the list was confirmed by the group's legal counsel in Egypt, Mastic said.
The no-exit list is the latest development in the fallout from the raids, which the Obama administration has condemned.Given the existence of the no-exit list, he said the groups are concerned about “further escalation.”"We are very concerned about finding that there is a list preventing Americans from leaving Egypt," Mastic said. "We are actively working to ask that this no-fly list be lifted, be removed."Mastic said his organization has been told the no-exit list would be lifted, but expressed doubt – given that prior assurances that the Egyptian government would return confiscated materials so far have not been honored."Frankly, at this point, we don't have a lot of faith that that will happen in short order, because there's just not been any signs of positive progress since the initial raids," he said.LaHood used to work as a press officer in the State Department.Hmmmm.....Perhaps Obama could give them an extra few $ Billion?Read the full story here.

MFS - The Other News - What the main papers don't say.

2012-01-26T08:30:00.004-05:00

Morning Posting.

Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity situation Greece 5.3 - 5.2 ; Northern Mariana Islands 5.3 !More info here.

Obama’s Former Faith Adviser: ‘I, Frankly, Am Glad American Civil Religion is Dying’.(CNSnews).Shaun Casey, the religious affairs adviser to presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008, said at a discussion on Tuesday about “God and Politics” that the demise of religious society in the United States is a good thing.“I, frankly, am glad American civil religion is dying,” said Casey, who is an associate professor of Christian Ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C.Casey made the remarks at an event focusing on religion and the 2012 presidential election at the liberal Center for American Progress where he was a panelist along with Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Hispanic Evangelical Coalition.Casey was responding to Salguero’s claim that civil religion is employed by politicians as an “iconic use of faith".“There is also a negative underside to that history with respect to slavery, manifest destiny, to war, you know, to empires, so I, frankly, am glad American civil religion is dying,” Casey said. “But it does raise the practical question, what does bind us together in some way as a country?“We need some substitute for that and I don’t think we’ve found it yet,” Casey said.Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Swiss-French philosopher, is credited with coining the term “civil religion” in his 1762 book in his series “The Social Contract.” He described civil religion as the moral and spiritual foundation of modern society. In June 2008, Casey was hired by the Obama campaign to “focus on outreach to evangelical voters,” according to a June 27, 2008 Washington Post article. The article also said that Casey, who was named senior adviser of religious affairs, had been informally advising the campaign for a year before his official appointment.During Obama’s presidential campaign, Casey defended Obama’s affiliation with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the controversial and left-wing pastor of the United Church of Christ in Chicago and one-time “spiritual adviser” to Obama.Obama attended Rev. Wright’s church for 20 years.Obama distanced himself from Wright after his many controversial remarks and sermons were made public during the 2008 campaign.On Mar. 18, 2008, Casey told The Washington Post, "The senator [Obama] is not naive, and what he's doing is very hard. He's trying to remain loyal to his pastor but also differentiate himself politically."Hmmmmm.......How long before they say"Religion is the opium of the people"?Read the full story here.

Strait of Hormuz blockade threat - 'No one can sell oil if Iran cannot'.(PTV).A senior Iranian official has dismissed as futile the latest EU sanctions on the country's oil exports, adding that Tehran will not allow a condition to arise wherein others are allowed to sell oil and Iran is not."In the absence of Iranian supply, oil prices will go up and they (the Western states) know it; However, Iran will never allow itself to be in a situation in which it cannot sell oil but other regional states can," Ali Akbar Velayati, senior adviser to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, told Press TV on Thursday.Europe's decision to embargo Iranian oil exports is in no one's interest, Velayati said, adding, "Western policy makers know just too well that their sanctions regime is a political maneuver.""Iran doesn't need any favor from any country to sell its oil, because global demand is always there."Read the full story here.

Lone Gunman caught at Bush Jr Mansion in Dallas TX, attempting to deliver a "spiritual message" to the former President.(Wfaa).DALLAS - The Secret Service took a man into custody Tuesday afternoon who had a gun in his vehicle next to the home of former President George W. Bush. Dallas police sources told News 8 that police were called to the 10000 block of Daria Place by the request of the Secret Service. They detained a man who was believed to be armed with a gun.The Bushes are currently out of town.The man made it through a gate at the end of the block on Meaders Lane by closely following another vehicle. The Secret Service monitors the gate 24 hours a day with cameras and microphones.The man told the Secret Service he got a "spiritual message" to come there to deliver that message to the former president. They searched the man's car and found a weapon in the glove compartment of the vehicle.Read and see (Video) the full story here.

Duped by the Duplicitous: the Left’s Big Tax Trick.(BigGovernment).ByKayleigh McEnany.When the Democrats aren’t cheating on their taxes like Charlie Rangel or forgetting to pay them like Timothy Geithner, they’re busy lambasting Republicans for actually paying theirs—albeit at a rate unsatisfactory to them.In yet another fantastic display of hypocrisy, the liberal mainstream media spent the week attacking Governor Mitt Romney for having a 15% tax rate. Since the media is loath to engage in any actual investigative journalism when it comes to the Democrats, I decided to do a little of my own. Here’s what I found.Start with Senator John Kerry who is among the 400 richest Americans thanks to his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry’s, inheritance. Their last publicly released tax returns in 2003 revealed that they paid a rate of 13.4% on a declared income of $5.5 million. This from the man who, just last year, tried to avoid half a million dollars in taxes by anchoring his yacht in Rhode Island rather than Massachusetts. Estimates pin Kerry’s net worth somewhere between $700 million and $3.2 billion compared to Romney’s lower net worth of $202 million.Take a look at former Vice Presidential Candidate John Edwards’s 2003 tax returns, and you’ll find that he paid an astonishingly low rate of 5.1%. Seems a bit low for a man with a net worth hovering around $54.7 million.But, of course, Kerry and Edwards’ income tax rates were protected under lock and key by the mainstream media during the 2004 presidential race against President George W. Bush. Speaking of Bush, you’ll also never hear anyone mention the fact that he paid a rate of 27.7% in the same year.Tax rates aside, in yet another attempt to make something out of nothing, the media has been reporting relentlessly on Romney donating millions in cash and stocks to the Mormon Church, as if tithing to one’s church is somehow a negative. Thanks to donations like Romney’s, the Mormon Church is able to sustain a large philanthropic network and send young men on two year missions that provide extensive humanitarian aid to a countless number of people in need. If you call that bad, I’d hate to see what you call good.This much I can assure you—Romney’s millions donated to the Mormon Church did far more good than the $353 Al Gore gave to charity in 1997 or the $0, $820, $175, $2,039, and $0 Senator Kerry gave between 1991 and 1995. Contrast that to the $28,236, $31,914, and $31,292 George Bush gave between 1991-1993 when he was a mere private citizen. That is the real story that you will never hear.Instead, you will hear report after report on Romney’s tax rate and his donations to the Mormon Church. You’ll hear about how the Democratic Party is the party of the little man, and the Republican Party is the party of the selfish, rich fat cat. That’s what the Democratic Party and the mainstream media want you to believe.So before you buy into the Left’s big tax fable like the Occupy Wall Streeters did, take a good hard look at what you’ll never see reported—the facts.Read the full story here.

Thoughts On The SOTU from Clark Judge.(HughHewitt).SOTU: Did I hear that right?By Clark S. Judge: managing director, White House Writers Group, Inc.; chairman, Pacific Research Institute.I believe that’s what I heard the president advocate last night. But one term I didn’t hear, maybe I missed it: “The Constitution.” Then again, wasn’t he suggesting that, in brave times like these, we need to put aside those old rules. Do I have this straight?Read the full story here.

John Bolton Discusses Why Iran Continues to Defy America.(BigPeace).John Bolton, former UN ambassador sits with Fred Grandy to analyze and discuss whether the U.S. is safer and more respected around the world. Is the United States stronger than it was under the last administration? If the U.S. is indeed a stronger and respected nation, why has Iran continuously disregarded the United States’ “no nuclear weapons” warning? Ambassador Bolton analyzes the consequences of Iran’s threat to shut down the Strait of Hormuz. How will it affect the U.S.? Can the United States avert this threat?You can hear Ambassador Bolton’s interview with Fred, as well as the rest of today’s show, at Secure Freedom Radio.Read and hear the full interview here.

FACT CHECK: 10 Dubious Claims from Obama’s State of the Union.(Heritage).President Obama made a number of questionable statements in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night. Heritage experts took on some of the policy issues he raised, but we at Scribe thought we would address the simple factual accuracy of 10 of the more outlandish statements from the president.Quotes are drawn from the president’s prepared remarks.

Claim: “On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen … And together, the entire industry added nearly 160,000 jobs.”

Fact: Using the relevant dates, that number is actually between 33,000 and 63,000.

Claim: “It’s not fair when foreign manufacturers have a leg up on ours only because they’re heavily subsidized.

Fact: Obama has targeted manufacturers with punitive tax hikes.

Claim: “[M]y administration has put more boots on the border than ever before.”

Fact: The vast majority of that increase was proposed and implemented before Obama took office.

Claim: “We’re also making it easier for American businesses to sell products all over the world.Two years ago, I set a goal of doubling U.S. exports over five years. With the bipartisan trade agreements we signed into law, we’re on track to meet that goal ahead of schedule.”

Fact: Obama chose to delay seeking congressional approval of those agreements for more than two years.

Claim: “American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years.”

Fact: No thanks to Obama.

Claim: “[W]ith only 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves, oil isn’t enough.”

Fact: The United States has more recoverable oil than the rest of the non-North American world combined.

Claim: “[I]t was public research dollars, over the course of 30 years, that helped develop the technologies to extract all this natural gas out of shale rock – reminding us that government support is critical in helping businesses get new energy ideas off the ground.”

Fact: Government funding only marginally contributed to the development of hydraulic fracturing.

Claim: “[W]e don’t have to choose between our environment and our economy.”

Fact: Obama just rejected both.

Claim: “I ask the Senate to pass a simple rule that all judicial and public service nominations receive a simple up or down vote within 90 days.”

Fact: The president has already demonstrated his complete lack of respect for the separation of powers.

Claim: “Do we want to keep these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans? Or do we want to keep our investments in everything else – like education and medical research; a strong military and care for our veterans? Because if we’re serious about paying down our debt, we can’t do both.”

Fact: Entitlements drive our national debt, not discretionary spending or tax rates.Read the full story here.

Obama's Attorney Refusing To Show Up At Obama's Georgia Ballot Challenge Hearings.(BR).Obama's Private Attorney Refusing To Show Up At Obama's Georgia Ballot Access Challenge Hearings.Dear Secretary Kemp: This is to advise you of serious problems that have developed in the conduct of the hearings pending before the Office of State Administrative Hearings. At issue in these hearings are challenges that allege that President Obama is not eligible to hold or run for re-election to his office, on the now wholly discredited theory that he does not meet the citizenship requirements. As you know, such allegations have been the subject of numerous judicial proceedings around the country, all of which have concluded that they were baseless and, in some instances – including in the State of Georgia - that those bringing the challenges have engaged in sanctionable abuse of our legal process.Nonetheless, the Administrative Law Judge has exercised no control whatsoever over this proceeding, and it threatens to degenerate into a pure forum for political posturing to the detriment of the reputation of the State and your Office. Rather than bring this matter to a rapid conclusion, the ALJ has insisted on agreeing to a day of hearings, and on the full participation of the President in his capacity as a candidate. Only last week, he denied a Motion to Quash a subpoena he approved on the request of plaintiff’s counsel for the personal appearance of the President at the hearing, now scheduled for January 26.For these reasons, and as discussed briefly below, you should bring an end to this baseless, costly and unproductive hearing by withdrawing the original hearing request as improvidently issued.Hmmmmm......I am above the law?Read the full story here.Updated: Obama's Attorney Jaberwoki Slapped Down By Georgia SOS here.

Pentagon to slash spending by $260 billion through 2017.(HD).The Pentagon will unveil a five-year budget proposal this week that aims to implement $487 billion in spending cuts over the next decade by trimming the size of the military and canceling or scaling back some weapons programs. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will outline a budget request for the 2013 fiscal year today that will cut $260 billion in spending through 2017, taking the Pentagon more than halfway to its target for the decade.Details about the 2013 spending plans have begun to emerge from sources familiar with the budget proposal despite the Pentagon’s efforts to keep its funding discussions secret until they are formally announced. The budget proposal is expected to eliminate thousands of military and civilian jobs over the next five years at a time when President Barack Obama is running for re-election against a field of Republicans who accuse him of being weak on national security.The proposed budget will terminate or scale back spending on dozens of weapons programs, including the Air Force’s high-altitude Global Hawk unmanned surveillance plane built by Northrop Grumman Corp and the Pentagon’s biggest weapons program, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, built by Lockheed Martin Corp. But it will not tackle some $600 billion in additional spending cuts due to take effect in January 2013 after lawmakers failed to agree on $1.2 trillion in deficit-cutting measures.Officials said they would revisit the issue and address those cuts later if Congress did not take action this year. Panetta is expected to seek a Pentagon base budget of about $523 billion. The number of combat brigades stationed in Europe will be cut in half, from four to two, Panetta said recently.The overall size of the Army, which was already scheduled to fall to 520,000 by 2016, could be further reduced to 490,000, a drop of another 30,000 soldiers, analysts say.Hmmmm.......Read the full story here.

'Iran won't move toward nuclear weapon in 2012'.(JPost).WASHINGTON - Iran is unlikely to move toward building a nuclear weapon this year because it does not yet have the capability to produce enough weapon-grade uranium, a draft report by the Institute for Science and International Security said on Wednesday.The report by the institute founded by nuclear expert David Albright offered a more temperate view of Iran's nuclear program than some of the heated rhetoric that has surfaced since the United States and its allies stepped up sanctions on Tehran."Iran is unlikely to decide to dash toward making nuclear weapons as long as its uranium enrichment capability remains as limited as it is today," the report said.The United States and Iran are engaged in a war of words over sanctions, with Iran threatening to retaliate by blocking oil shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. The United States said it would not allow that to happen.The escalating rhetoric and tensions have led to concerns about the potential for missteps between the adversaries that might spiral into a military confrontation that neither wants.But the report, financed by a grant from the United States Institute of Peace, said Iran had not made a decision to build a nuclear bomb. The USIP is an independent, non-partisan center created by the US Congress in 1984 that receives federal government funding."Iran is unlikely to break out in 2012, in great part because it is deterred from doing so," said the ISIS report, which has not yet been publicly released.The report turns down the temperature, saying that sanctions and the fear of a military strike by Israel on Iran's nuclear facilities have worked as a deterrent.The institute has advised US and foreign governments about Iran's nuclear capabilities and Albright is considered a respected expert on the issue. The report tracks closely with what is known of official US government assessments.US officials say Iran has not made the decision to build a nuclear weapon and that Iranian leaders haven't made the decision because they have to weigh the cost and benefits of building a nuclear weapon.Much of what the Iranians are doing with their nuclear program has civilian uses, but they are keeping their options open, which significantly adds to the air of ambiguity, US officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity.Hmmmm..........Read the full story here.

Convicted Terrorist Hysen Sherifi Accused of Plotting to Behead Witnesses.(Fox).RALEIGH, N.C. – A North Carolina man sentenced to prison recently as part of a homegrown terrorist ring has been accused in a federal court document of plotting to kill witnesses who testified against him at trial.An affidavit unsealed in federal court Monday accuses Hysen Sherifi of plotting against the witnesses from his jail cell. Authorities say an FBI informant posing as a hit man met with Sherifi's brother and a female friend and accepted $5,000 and a photo of an intended victim.The informant soon befriended Sherifi, who requested help in hiring someone to kill three people who had testified against him at his trial, according to the affidavit. Sherifi specified that he wanted the witnesses beheaded and that he would be provided photos of the severed heads as confirmation of the deaths, according to the document.FBI agents have arrested the brother, Shkumbin Sherifi, and Nevine Aly Elshiekh, a school teacher. Now in federal custody at the New Hanover County Jail, each is charged with a felony count of use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire.Hysen Sherifi, 27, was sentenced to 45 years in prison earlier this month in what prosecutors described as a conspiracy to attack the Marine base at Quantico, Va., and targets abroad. Five others, including construction contractor Daniel Patrick Boyd, have been sentenced to federal prison terms for terrorism charges related to raising money, stockpiling weapons and training in preparation for jihadist attacks. . . .The Sherifi brothers and other family members emigrated from Kosovo following the wars that ravaged the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. A call to the Sherifi family home in Raleigh on Tuesday was not returned.Hysen Sherifi and others arrested in the terrorism conspiracy were members of the Islamic Association of Raleigh, the largest Muslim congregation in the Triangle. Several members of the mosque also routinely made the 4-hour round trip for the trial in New Bern to support the accused, who they described as innocent men being railroaded by overzealous federal authorities. Read the full story here.

Iran Set to Turn Off Oil Supply to Europe.(Spiegel).It's a move which has tit-for-tat written all over it, but one which could nonetheless have a serious impact: The Iranian government wants to present a bill to parliament this weekend calling for an immediate halt to oil deliveries to Europe. The move, with most reports citing the Iranian news agency Mehr, has come about in response to the EU agreement to impose sanctions against Iran, which were announced earlier this week.The sanctions banned any new contracts for buying oil from Iran, but allowed existing deals to continue until July in order to give countries time to find other sources. But that process is now at risk after the latest move from Tehran, a step the Iranian government had already threatened."If this bill is passed, the government will be forced to stop selling oil to Europe before the actual implementation of their sanctions," said Emad Hosseini, spokesman for the Iranian parliament's energy commission, reportedly said. The bill is set to become law on Sunday.The EU sanctions allow for oil deliveries from Iran until July 1. Any pre-empting of this timescale by Tehran could prove problematic for countries like Italy, Greece and Spain, who would need to urgently find new suppliers.China, meanwhile, a major importer of Iranian oil, has also criticized the EU sanctions. The Xinhua news agency quoted the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Thursday as saying: "To blindly pressure and impose sanctions on Iran are not constructive approaches."Read the full story here.

Turkey drops heavily in press freedom rankings.(HD).Turkey took a big step backwards in press freedom rankings losing 10 places to be 148th out of 178 countries in the Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) World Press Freedom Index for 2011 made public yesterday.Eritrea, North Korea and Turkmenistan came right at the bottom of the 10th annual list by the press freedom group, with the same clutch of European states - led by Finland, Norway and Estonia - at the top. Turkey’s fall came as a result of the pressure against journalists and media outlets. “Far from carrying out promised reforms, the judicial system launched a wave of arrests on journalists that was without precedent since the military dictatorship,” the report said on Turkey.“Control of news and information continued to tempt governments and to be a question of survival for totalitarian and repressive regimes,” said the Paris-based group.RSF said it was no surprise that the same trio of countries - Eritrea, North Korea and Turkmenistan - were bottom of the list because they were “absolute dictatorships that permit no civil liberties”.“They are immediately preceded at the bottom by Syria, Iran and China, three countries that seem to have lost contact with reality as they have been sucked into an insane spiral of terror,” it said.Hmmmm.......only a 30 places away from the bottom.......Obama's best buddy.Read the full story here.

Canada - Shafia murder trial to resume amid tight security after bomb scare.(Yahoo).KINGSTON, Ont. - The Shafia family murder trial is expected resume this afternoon after a bomb threat forced an evacuation at the courthouse in the morning.People have started returning to the courthouse but increased security measures are making for long waits to get inside.Those entering the building are being asked to show photo identification while metal detectors and security wands are also be used. There is only one entry point into the courthouse.While police would only say there was a ''security concern,'' a source told The Canadian Press the reason for the evacuation was a bomb threat."I can neither confirm nor deny in regards to specifically a bomb, but we are just stating at this point in time it is a security concern," Const. Steve Koopman said. "As you can see we're taking it extremely seriously."Koopman couldn't say if the security threat was related to the Shafia trial."I cannot say 100 per cent, I think it's relatively coincidental that today that Superior Court Justice (Robert) Maranger was going to charge the jury and this is the most high profile case in town," he said.Police said they were notified of the security threat at 9:35 a.m., prior to the start of the day's proceedings in the Shafia case. The building was completely evacuated shortly after police received the call and the three accused were taken offsite."I certainly think that we're going to take this as seriously as we need to," said Koopman. "I would certainly say it is medium to high."We would rather treat it high rather than treat it less seriously than it needs to be."Read the full story here.

Why Iran will not ‘come to its senses’.(DailyMail).By MelaniePhillips.War with Iran is a truly fearsome prospect.Its likely consequences would include attacks on US air bases from thousands of Iranian missiles, the unleashing of terrorist attacks within the US and Europe, the rocketing of Israeli towns from the tens of thousands of missiles trained on Israel from Lebanon, the closing of the Straits of Hormuz thus paralysing western oil supplies, and doubtless other horrors.But however fearsome this prospect, that of a nuclear-armed Iran is worse. The consequences are simply insupportable.A regime which has seen itself at war with the west ever since it came to power in 1979, and which has been involved in arguably every major terrorist atrocity against it, will be equipped with nuclear weapons to bring the west to its knees. Working as it does through puppet rogue regimes and terror organisations, it could perpetrate acts of nuclear terrorism – or threaten to do so.It could mount its long-threatened attempt to wipe Israel off the map, thus provoking a nuclear response to prevent a second genocide of the Jews. Last but by no means least, it will spark a nuclear arms race throughout the region, thus ensuring that nuclear weapons come under the control of some of the most unstable and belligerent regimes on earth. To all these threats and more, the west will be paralysed by Iran’s nuclear capacity, just as it is currently paralysed over North Korea.But the deeper problem is the west’s assumption that the Iranian regime is capable of ‘coming to its senses’ – its assumption that these are rational actors who ultimately will act in their own interest. Few in the west understand that, on the contrary, the Iranian regime is impervious to reason. Educated, intelligent and cunning they may be – but they are religious fanatics driven by an entirely different set of considerations. That’s what makes this situation so terrifying.As I have written over and over again, from the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei downwards the Iranian regime is dominated by people (adherents of a sect called the ‘Twelvers’) who believe that the Shia messiah, the Mahdi, will return to earth either as result of or to bring about the apocalyptic end of days. It is that apocalypse that they are intent upon facilitating. That is why the argument that ‘they wouldn’t dare launch a nuclear attack because they know half of Iran would be obliterated as a result’ is so fatuous. They would be happy if that were to occur.Reza Kahlili (a pseudonym) is reportedly a former CIA spy within the Revolutionary Guards. As he has written:‘Khamenei has been heard to say that the coming of the last Islamic Messiah, the Shiites’ 12th Imam Mahdi, is near and that specific actions need to be taken to protect the Islamic regime for upcoming events. Mahdi, according to Shiite belief, will reappear at the time of Armageddon... Many in the Guards and Basij have been told that the 12th Imam is on earth, facilitated the victory of Hezbollah over Israel in the 2006 war and soon will announce publicly his presence after the needed environment is created.'... Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, an influential cleric and a radical Twelver, previously had stated that Khamenei ascends to the sky every year to take direction from Imam Mahdi, and sources close to the cleric have disclosed that Khamenei has been ordered by Imam Mahdi to continue with the nuclear program despite worldwide objection as it will facilitate his coming.’Last December, Kahlili warned that the previous May Khamenei had ordered the Revolutionary Guards to speed up the nuclear-bomb program and arm Iran’s missiles with nuclear warheads. Now, he wrote, Khamenei had ordered the guards to prepare for war.What really threatens to bring the west to its knees is its own cultural hubris. Refracting everything in the world through the prism of its unshakeable faith in universal reason, it is incapable of recognising or understanding religious fanaticism – and insists instead upon treating the fanatic as a rational actor. Ironically, it is this belief in reason which has led the west to behave so irrationally in refusing to acknowledge the evidence of the mortal threat to itself posed by Iran -- and that there is no alternative to force if it is to be stopped. And now, alas, we’re about to discover the consequences.Read the full story here.

Al Qaeda Spokesman: ‘America Has Been Defeated in Iraq’.(BigPeace).BAGHDAD (AP) – The U.S. pulled its troops out of Iraq because its economy is collapsing and it needed to save money, an al-Qaida front group said in a message posted on its website Wednesday, its first online comment since the U.S. completed its pullout last month after nine years of war.Al-Qaida was one of the main U.S. enemies in Iraq. It was behind some of the deadliest attacks on U.S. soldiers, Iraqi security forces and American-backed government institutions. Since the U.S. pullout, al-Qaida and other Sunni militants have stepped up attacks on Shiites, killing more than 170 people since the beginning of the year and raising concern that the surge in violence and an escalating political crisis might deteriorate into a civil war.In an audio message, a spokesman for al-Qaida’s Islamic State of Iraq who identified himself as Abu Mohammed al-Adnani said “America has been defeated in Iraq.”“They pulled out because its economic and human losses were unbearable,” al-Adnani said. “America’s bankruptcy and collapse is imminent. This is the real reason behind the withdrawal.” .Al-Adnani also called on former al-Qaida fighters who switched sides and fought the group with Americans not to “abandon jihad” now that the U.S. withdrawal has been completed. He threatened more attacks on the Shiite-led government, saying that “our explosives are at the door” of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.He told his followers not to be deceived by the number of the Iraqi government troops and its Shiite supporters, saying “they are merely beetles and flies.” Sunni extremists consider Shiites as not real Muslims.Al-Adnani called on former Sunni fighters who switched sides and fought al-Qaida to return, promising to forgive “whatever their crime was.”Hmmmmm........Obama: If We Work Hard, Afghanistan Could Be a Success...Like Iraq!Read the full story here.

U.S. Ambassador to Russia: Obama Says We Should Support ‘Universal Values,’ Not American Values.(BigPeace).U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul neatly summarized everything that is wrong with President Barack Obama’s foreign policy in an interview yesterday with National Public Radio (emphasis added):There is no single path to democracy. And every society and every government and every country will find their own path. And we, as President Obama has said many, many times, we’re not going to get into the business of dictating that path, we’re just going to support what we like to call universal values. Not American values, not Western values, universal values.McFaul’s primary responsibility as an ambassador is to represent the United States and its values.If he believes otherwise; he should resign. If he has been ordered otherwise by the President of the United States, he should resign in protest.That appeasement has been present in President Obama’s approach to foreign affairs from the very start of his administration, when he described his job as representing the Arab world to Americans as much as Americans to the Arab world, and speaking for the world in general, not just the United States:and my job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives. My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy….I think that what you’ll see is somebody who is listening, who is respectful, and who is trying to promote the interests not just of the United States, but also ordinary people who right now are suffering from poverty and a lack of opportunity…There can be no clearer explanation of why the United States is failing to pursue its interests with the urgency and emphasis they demand–while at the same time appeasing anti-American regimes instead of promoting the democracy he purports to champion as a “universal” value.Hmmmmm........I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes. ~ Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776.Read the full story here.

'Obama set to accelerate pace of US aid to Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.'(Jpost).DAVOS, Switzerland - US President Barack Obama plans to accelerate the pace of American aid to Egypt, a top State Department official said on Wednesday, as the most populous Arab nation reaches a critical stage in its uncertain transition away from autocratic rule.Undersecretary of State Robert Hormats, part of a US delegation that held unprecedented talks last week with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, said Washington wanted to provide "more immediate benefits" to Egyptians, who earlier this month conducted their first democratic elections in decades."During this period, we want to be as supportive as we can. This is an historic moment. Egypt's a country of enormous importance," Hormats said.Under the plan, some non-urgent US aid slated for other countries - he did not name them - would be redirected to Egypt. And funding in the pipeline for long-term programs in Egypt would be shifted to quick-impact projects, he said.Hmmmm....On top of the $1.57 Billion Dollar he promised them last year?Read the full story here.

Russia stays firm on Syria; head of Syrian Red Crescent killed.(AlArabiya).Russia said on Wednesday it would consider “constructive proposals” to end bloodshed in Syria but was opposed to force or sanctions, as regime troops reportedly pounded the protest hub of Hama.“We are open to constructive proposals that go in line with the set task of ending violence,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Moscow after meeting his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu.Lavrov said any U.N. Security Council resolution backed by Russia “must firmly record that it cannot be used or interpreted to justify anyone’s outside military intervention in the Syria crisis.”His comments came after Russian and U.S. officials held talks in Moscow on how to stop the violence in Syria, which the United Nations estimates has killed more than 5,400 people since it erupted in mid-March.Russia and China both blocked a previous Western attempt to have the Security Council formally condemn Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown on dissent and impose stiff sanctions if he refuses to enter direct talks.According to diplomats at the United Nations, European and Arab nations are in the process of hammering out a Security Council draft resolution condemning the crackdown.Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on Tuesday warned against foreign “interference,” which he said Russia, a Cold War ally with a naval base at Tartus on the country’s Mediterranean coast, would never accept.According to diplomats, European and Arab nations want a vote early next week on a resolution condemning the Syrian crackdown and hinting at sanctions against Assad’s regime.A first draft of the new resolution, obtained by AFP, notes Arab League sanctions ordered against Syria and “encourages all states to adopt similar steps and fully to cooperate with the League of Arab States in the implementation of its measures.”Russia’s Lavrov made it clear on Wednesday that any resolution hinting at sanctions would be opposed by Moscow.“We will not be able to back proposals under which unilaterally imposed sanctions against Syria -- sanctions that were declared without any consultations with Russia or China ... are blessed retroactively,” he said.Activists said security forces were pounding the central city of Hama for a second straight day on Wednesday.“The Syrian army is bombarding Hama with heavy weapons, using rocket-propelled grenades,” said a statement from the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), which organizes anti-regime protests on the ground.Syria’s Al-Watan newspaper, which is close to the authorities, said the military had launched an offensive aimed at retaking several districts in Hama that were controlled by insurgents.Also on Wednesday, the secretary-general of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent was shot dead on Wednesday as he travelled outside the capital Damascus in a clearly marked vehicle, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.Doctor Abd-al-Razzaq Jbeiro, also head of the Red Crescent branch in the northern town of Idlib, was on the highway to Idlib from Damascus after attending meetings at Red Crescent headquarters, the agency said in a statement.“Regardless of the circumstances, the ICRC condemns this very severely,” Beatrice Megevand-Roggo, head of ICRC operations for the Near and Middle East, told Reuters in Geneva.She added that the “lack of respect for medical services” remained a major issue in Syria.Syrian state television blamed “terrorists” for the killing, saying he had been “assassinated” in Khan Sheikhoun district.Read the full story here.

On 25 January 2012 there's nothing for the Copts to celebrate.(OCN).The Coptic nationalists, together with the overwhelming majority of the Copts inside and outside Egypt, have no reason to celebrate the first anniversary of the 25th January 2011 revolution. The revolution which some Copts, indeed the Coptic nationalists, wanted has not happened – we cannot see a civilian, secular democracy in Egypt as we enter 2012. What we see, instead, is a military rule, run by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) working in tandem with the Islamists who want to convert Egypt into Islamic country and impose Sharia law on all. This is not it that we had wanted. It is fair to say that Egypt, and the Copts, are going from bad to worse – the new reality that emerged as a result of the 25 January 2011 is simply not bright.Since the coup d’état on 11 February 2011, the Copts have been exposed to increasing number of attacks by Islamists and, more ominously, by the Egyptian State itself, represented in its various security forces. Even official Egyptian media joined in the onslaught as Egypt’s TV channel incited Muslims to attack Copts.Do Egypt’s new rulers recognise that the Copts are still being attacked? Have they brought the Muslim attackers of Copts to justice?Read the full story here.

Turkey won't let NATO use its territory to attack Iran.(RN)(IsraelMatzav).President Obama's favorite Middle East leader will not allow NATO - of which his country is a member - to use his territory in an attack on Iran. Turkey, a member of NATO, will not give the Alliance territory for a military strike on Iran, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, RIA Novosti reports.The official added that Turkey has been agitating NATO to avoid attacks on neighbors of Turkey and would continue the efforts. He concluded that the borders between Iran and turkey have been borders of peace and will remain that way.We already knew that Turkey won't allow their territory to be used against Iraq, and I guess this means they won't allow it to be used against Syria either.Hmmmm.....Can the US andNATO be sure that their missile shield will be 'operational'?.......Yes exactly.....Big location mistake.Read the full story here.

"Invasion" Seeks to Undermine Israel.(TIP).Palestinian activists plan to invade Israel on foot from neighboring Arab states as part of a "Global March to Jerusalem," a report issued Monday by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center said.Leaders of the Global March to Jerusalem (GMJ) say the event will take place March 30 and will involve "the crawling of hundreds of thousands of Arab and international supporters through the neighboring countries and into Israel…"Marchers from around the world will meet in Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon GMJ's website said. Massive marches will also be organized in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip toward Jerusalem. Organizers say the marches will be "peaceful," the Meir Amit report said, "but past experience … has taught that they have the potential for violence."And organizers acknowledge that they "aim to make this march a turning point in the nature of the confrontation, with the occupation having to face millions of protesters and demonstrators demanding Freedom for Palestine and its capitol Jerusalem."Activists involved in the march have ties to Hamas, including: GMJ spokesman Zaher Birawi is a Hamas activist who lives in the UK and has also served as a spokesperson for various Viva Palestina convoys. Viva Palestina (VP) is a UK-based organization which has delivered millions of dollars to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Birawi also serves in leadership positions for Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood affiliated organizations in the UK.Mohammed Sawalha is formerly a senior Hamas operational operative in the West Bank who fled to Britain. Sawalha played an active role in organizing the deadly May 2010 flotilla to Gaza. He is involved with the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK and is one of the UK signatories of the pro-Jihad February 2009 "Istanbul declaration."George Galloway, the brainchild of the pro-Hamas organization Viva Palestina, plans on joining GMJ. Galloway discussed GMJ on his show The Real Deal, aired on Iran's Press TV station this month.Iranian-born Paul Larudee is the co-founder of the California-based Free Palestine Movement and participated in the May 2010 flotilla to Gaza. The Free Palestine Movement is an endorser of GMJ's branch in North America (GMJ-NA) and serves as a financial conduit for of GMJ-NA. Larudee is a leader of GMJ-NA, and serves on the International advisory Committee for GMJ.Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh promoted the march in a recent speech.Read the full story here.

Foreign woman stripped of clothes, assaulted, in Egypt’s Tahrir Square.(BikyaMasr).CAIRO: A foreign woman was stripped and sexually assaulted on Wednesday evening in Egypt’s iconic Tahrir Square, one eyewitness said on Twitter and another confirmed in an email to Bikyamasr.com.The woman, who’s identity has not been revealed, was taken away in an ambulance after being assaulted for 10 minutes. Her husband reportedly was unable to intervene and witnessed the incident.“I saw the woman and then dozens of men surrounded her and started grabbing her, when she screamed for help some people came, but they were hit in the face,” wrote one witness.What happened next was “appalling,” said the trusted witness, who asked for anonymity. “The men just started tearing at her clothes and grabbing her body all over. When she fought back, they pushed her. It was chaos.”There were unconfirmed reports that the men “violated” her with their hands.The nationality of the woman is unknown at the current time.Throughout the day, sexual harassment towards women has been increasing and more and more reports of women being grabbed and groped began being reported.Activists called the attacks on women completely “unacceptable” and must be exposed no matter what. They demanded an end to all violence toward women.“What happened in Tahrir today has no justification and must be fully exposed even if it taints Tahrir!” wrote EgyptSecularist on Twitter.The incident brings memories of reporter Lara Logan, who was sexually assaulted the night former President Hosni Mubarak gave up power.According to studies conducted by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Right (ECWR) in 2008, 98 percent of foreign women and 83 percent of Egyptian women surveyed had experienced sexual harassment in Egypt.Meanwhile, 62 percent of Egyptian men confessed to harassing women and 53 percent of Egyptian men faulted women for “bringing it on.”Hmmmm......This will do wonders for tourism ,'Come Visit Egypt get groped in sight of the Pyramides'.Read the full story here.

In Bahrain, Worries Grow of Violent Shiite-Sunni Confrontation.(NYT).MANAMA, BAHRAIN — Mohammed Ibrahim, 19, a Shiite student at the University of Bahrain, says he has gotten used to the tear gas the police use to disperse protests, which he and his friends attend every Friday.Suspended for several months after the violent suppression of last year’s pro-democracy movement, he recently was allowed back on campus. “They had suspended me because I participated in demonstrations on the campus and there had been fights with some Sunni students,” Mr. Ibrahim said in an interview last week. Now he is back in school, but the situation between Shiite students like him and Sunni students is very “tense,” he said. “I don’t think any longer that peaceful demonstrations are enough,” he said. “I think we should fight the police back, when they attack us.” Mr. Ibrahim belongs to the 14th of February movement, a group that started with peaceful protests but that in recent weeks has seen some members calling on the Internet for violent protests to overthrow the government — and especially the ruling family.Each Friday, before heading to protests, Mr. Ibrahim, like many other young Shiites, drives to Diraz, a village on the northwest coast, to listen to the kingdom’s most influential Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Issa Qassim. On a Friday this month, the mosque was packed to overflowing with worshipers. Nearby hung a large banner portraying Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Until recently, Ayatollah Qassim preached peaceful protest, but last Friday his language changed. Criticizing police violence against female protesters, he said the police who attacked women could be attacked in return. “This is a really dangerous message to the government,” said Habib al-Marzouk, who was present in the congregation. “He said, ‘It is enough, we cannot sit silent and see how they are attacking our women.”’ Mr. Marzouk said some Shiite youth would take that as broad approval for violence against security forces. A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that since the speech some police officers had been heavily beaten. Read the full story here.

Why some Jews hate Obama.(IsraelMatzav).Of course this JTA piece published in the JPost depicts Jews who hate and fear Obama as paranoid. Obama is hardly the first president to be called an anti-Semite or hostile to Israel. In 1991, George H.W. Bush found himself the subject of withering Jewish criticism when he sought to delay $10 billion in loan guarantees for Israel unless Jerusalem agreed to a settlement freeze in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, said he remembers holding a news conference to denounce Jewish characterizations of Bush as Satan and evil.But the rhetoric and conspiracy theories against Obama seem to constitute an unprecedented level of vitriol, say many longtime observers of the Jewish political scene.“I’ve never seen as much enmity toward a president by American Jews as I do toward Obama,” said Morton Klein, the national president of the Zionist Organization of America. “I’ve never heard people say, as they say to me, 'I hate him.' ”After examining Obama's record four years ago and concluding that he was anti-Israel and an anti-Semite, I have seen nothing since to dissuade me of that conclusion. With the check of a reelection campaign this year, Obama has exhibited levels of hostility toward Israel that are unprecedented by any President. Imagine what he will do if God forbid he is reelected.For a lengthy list of why so many Jews loathe and fear Obama, go here. read the full story here.

New Democratic Egypt: Salafist leader Yassar Al-Burhami gives Islam 101 lesson.

2012-01-26T08:30:00.001-05:00

HT:TundraTabloids.

Overnight Music Video - MIKA - Grace Kelly

2012-01-25T22:02:00.000-05:00

Antisemitic Statements, Publications by Iranian Regime.

2012-01-25T15:00:00.000-05:00

Antisemitic Statements, Publications by Iranian Regime.(Memri).Alongside the Holocaust denial policy promoted by the Iranian regime, its leaders also make statements and publish writings expressing hatred toward the Jews, especially those in Israel, while denying Israel's right to exist. Regime officials, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, claim that the Jews spread corruption in the world and that they are "evil, greedy, thieves, and murderers," and "filthy criminals who [only] appear to be human."

The title "Jew" is used as a slur in Iranian political struggles. Thus, for example, Mansour Arzi, a critic of Ahmadinejad, called Rahim Mashaei, the head of the president's office, a Jew in order to offend him.Ahmadinejad's opponents acted similarly in October 2009, when they claimed he was of Jewish origin, and that his father had changed his surname to mask the fact.

Formally, the Iranian regime distinguishes between Judaism as a religion, which is legitimate (Jews, being monotheists, are entitled to practice their religion under Muslim rule), and Judaism as a nationality – which Iran totally rejects as non-existent. President Ahmadinejad even claimed that the Zionists are not Jews, but rather infidels or atheists: "They [the Zionists] lie when they say they are Jewish. Judaism has not known a bigger injustice than the Zionists claiming they are Jews."

However, regime officials frequently blur the lines between the Jewish religion and nationality. Sometimes they refer to Jews by their religious affiliation, and sometimes by their national affiliation, recruiting the Koran to justify their claims anachronistically. For example, in August 2011 in Tabas (eastern Iran), preacher Ebrahim Mohajerian claimed that, "according to the Koran, the sons of Israel, the Jews, and the Zionists are the worst enemy of mankind, and especially of Muslims, aside from Satan."
Following are more examples of antisemitic statements and publications by regime officials, and movies screened with its blessing.

Khamenei: "Wherever Evil Jews Existed, They Were Gathered Together [and sent to Palestine]"

Ahmadinejad: The Jews Who Went to Israel "[Only] Appear to Be Human"

Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi: The Jews – "Enemies of Islam"

Iranian Book: "How to Eliminate Israel?"

New Antisemitic Film in Iran – "Saturday Hunter"

Iran Sponsors Antisemitic French Film "The Antisemite"

Read the full story here.

If Israel gave up the West bank today, would there be peace?The PLO Phased Plan

2012-01-25T13:37:00.001-05:00

HT:Shoebat.

Cato Institute Scholars on the State of the Union 2012

2012-01-25T13:37:00.000-05:00

Noted Lincoln Scholar Says Obama Misquotes Lincoln

2012-01-25T11:17:00.000-05:00

Noted Lincoln Scholar Says Obama Misquotes Lincoln.(BG).“[Barack Obama] didn’t get it right,” says Harry V. Jaffa, professor emeritus of Claremont McKenna College, senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and author of two influential books on Lincoln.Jaffa was referring to this quotation from President Obama.

“I’m a Democrat. But I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.”

Professor Jaffa noted that this quotation leaves a lot out. The 93-year-old Jaffa, by memory, recited the full statement from Lincoln’s speech, “The Nature and Objects of Government, with Special Reference to Slavery” (July 1, 1854):

“The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.”

Notice the difference? The emphasis is on need to have done, not on government doing the action. “That distinction was missing form his quotation,” Jaffa explains. But Obama has repeatedly invoked this misleading Lincoln quotation on both the campaign trail and during his presidency.

Yet despite getting this quote wrong repeatedly, expect Obama to continue to use it for his political ends. In trying to paint the Republicans as more extreme than the visionary who led their party, he hopes to run against the Congress and win the election. But it is he, not they, that misunderstands Lincoln as he tries to enslave us all to bigger and bigger government.Read and see the full story here.

MFS - The Other News - What the main papers don't say.

2012-01-25T09:27:00.008-05:00

Morning Posting.

Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity situation New Zealand 5.7 - 5.1 ; Papua New guinea 5.2 ; Italy 5.1 !More info here.

Halt in Iran oil could push crude up by 30 percent.(JPost).WASHINGTON - The International Monetary Fund warned on Wednesday that global crude prices could rise as much as 30 percent if Iran halts oil exports as a result of US and European Union sanctions.If Iran halts exports to countries without offsets from other sources it would likely trigger an "initial" oil price jump of 20 to 30 percent, or about $20 to $30 a barrel, the IMF said in its first public comment on a possible Iranian oil supply disruption.The IMF highlighted the risks of rising tensions over Iran sanctions in a note on Wednesday sent to deputies from G20 countries who met in Mexico City last week.The price impact caused by a cut in Iranian exports could be exacerbated by below average oil stocks in many countries, the result of tight oil market conditions through much of last year, the IMF said.The fund's comments add pressure to the Obama administration as it struggles to find a way to get countries to reduce shipments of Iranian oil without pushing prices higher ahead of the November US presidential election.Financial sanctions against Tehran may be "tantamount to an oil embargo" and would imply supply declines of about 1.5 million barrels per day from the world's fifth-largest oil producer, the IMF said.Hmmmm......Let the Speculators of the world rejoice!Read the full story here.

Is The NYPD Experimenting With Drones Over The City? Evidence Points To Yes.(CBSNY).They’re used in war zones for surveillance and military strikes.But are there plans to deploy drones in the Big Apple to keep an eye on New Yorkers?More and more people believe it’s inevitable, reports CBS 2’s Don Dahler.Drones are unmanned aircraft that can fly at low altitudes and shoot live video — or shoot live missiles.Surveillance cameras already dot the city’s streets, but is the NYPD exploring the use of even more eyes in the skies, in the form of drones? Some evidence points to yes.A website named Gay City News posted an e-mail it says it acquired through the Freedom of Information Act. It’s purportedly from a detective in the NYPD counterterrorism division, asking the Federal Aviation Administration about the use of unmanned aerial vehicles as a law enforcement tool.And the following is part of a recent interview with Commission Ray Kelly that raised more questions than it answered.“In an extreme situation, you would have some means to take down a plane,” Kelly told “60 Minutes.”Drones are already being used by law enforcement in other cities. CBS 2 has obtained footage of a huge protest in Poland a few months ago, shot by a small drone that could fly a few dozen feet right over the heads of the crowd and the police. High-resolution cameras can capture every detail, including faces and license plate numbers. In this country, Miami and several cities in Texas are experimenting with such aircraft.Read the full story here.

Foreign woman stripped of clothes, assaulted, in Egypt’s Tahrir Square.(BikyaMasr).CAIRO: A foreign woman was stripped and sexually assaulted on Wednesday evening in Egypt’s iconic Tahrir Square, one eyewitness said on Twitter and another confirmed in an email to Bikyamasr.com.The woman, who’s identity has not been revealed, was taken away in an ambulance after being assaulted for 10 minutes. Her husband reportedly was unable to intervene and witnessed the incident.“I saw the woman and then dozens of men surrounded her and started grabbing her, when she screamed for help some people came, but they were hit in the face,” wrote one witness.What happened next was “appalling,” said the trusted witness, who asked for anonymity. “The men just started tearing at her clothes and grabbing her body all over. When she fought back, they pushed her. It was chaos.”There were unconfirmed reports that the men “violated” her with their hands.The nationality of the woman is unknown at the current time.Throughout the day, sexual harassment towards women has been increasing and more and more reports of women being grabbed and groped began being reported.Activists called the attacks on women completely “unacceptable” and must be exposed no matter what. They demanded an end to all violence toward women.“What happened in Tahrir today has no justification and must be fully exposed even if it taints Tahrir!” wrote EgyptSecularist on Twitter.The incident brings memories of reporter Lara Logan, who was sexually assaulted the night former President Hosni Mubarak gave up power.According to studies conducted by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Right (ECWR) in 2008, 98 percent of foreign women and 83 percent of Egyptian women surveyed had experienced sexual harassment in Egypt.Meanwhile, 62 percent of Egyptian men confessed to harassing women and 53 percent of Egyptian men faulted women for “bringing it on.”Hmmmm......This will do wonders for tourism ,'Come Visit Egypt get groped in sight of the Pyramides'.Read the full story here.

Haniyeh's Deputy Confirms Ahmadinejad's Invitation to Palestinian PM.(Fars). Speaking to FNA, Awad said that Haniyeh received Ahmadinejad's invitation letter on Tuesday. He stressed the significance of Haniyeh's upcoming visit to Iran, and said Haniyeh will review many issues during the trip. As regards the details of Ahmadinejad's letter, Awad said that the Iranian president has also stressed the necessity for efforts to break the Gaza blockage and support the Palestinian nation. President Ahmadinejad also reiterated Iran's continued support for the oppressed Palestinian nation and confrontation with the Zionist regime's bullying behavior. Hamas Prime Minister, for the first time since 2007, left the Gaza Strip late in December on a tour that took him to several Arab and Islamic countries. Ahmadinejad had earlier in a telephone conversation with Haniyeh congratulated Palestinians on their victory in the prisoners swap deal with Israel which, he described as, a fruit of strong and continued resistance against the Zionist regime.Hmmmm.......Palestinian PM?Read the full story here.

US Special forces raid frees US, Danish aid workers.(HD).US special forces launched a pre-dawn raid to rescue two aid workers, an American woman and a Danish man, kidnapped three months ago in Somalia by gunmen, local security officials said Wednesday."The two DDG (Danish Demining Group) workers were released forcefully... we are getting information that at least six military helicopters attacked early this morning," said Mohamed Nur, a local security official."It was carried out by the US military," he added. Ecoterra, an independent piracy monitoring group, said its sources had also confirmed US involvement."There was a heavy shooting that left several of the pirates dead," Nur said."The reports we have is that the freed hostages were flown to Djibouti by their rescuers," he said.US officials were not immediately available for comment, but US news channel NBC reported that US Navy SEALs had been involved."We have collected dead bodies of eight pirates from the scene of the attack, and we understand that five others were arrested were taken by the rescuers," said Abduali Moalim, an official in the Adado administration."The raid took place before dawn, and it looks that very professional soldiers were involved in the attack as it lasted for less than an hour," he added.Read the full story here.

State of the Union 2012: Heritage Reaction Roundup.(Heritage).

SOTU 2012, Deconstructed.(THW).By MacAidho.Read the full story here.

Somali pirates chop off hostage captain’s arm to elicit $3m ransom.(DailyMail).Somali pirates have started to cut off their hostages' limbs in a bid to extract even greater ransoms from the owners of the ships they capture.The horrific new tactic was used last Friday on the Vietnamese captain of a ship being held in the Somali pirate lair of Haradhere.Chao-I Wu's right arm was cut off after negotiations to pay a $3million ransom for his fishing ship, the FV Shiuh Fu-1, broke down.Afterwards, the pirates allowed Mr Wu's fellow crew members to call their families and describe what had happened.'This group of pirates were allowed the crew to call their relatives for only a few minutes - just long enough to tell their families about the amputation.'They begged their relatives to pay and some of them were crying. 'It was a message to the owner and their families that if the owners don't pay this amount of ransom they will hurt another crew member', a pirate source told the Somalia Report news service.Vietnamese newspaper Tuoi Tre News reported that crew member Tran Van Hung called his father to say that he had seen the pirates chop off the captain's arm.The pirates had also repeatedly beat him and the deputy captain, Mr Hung added.Read the full story here.

Ignoring Ahmadinejad’s Calls for Jewish Genocide is a Grave Mistake.(Commentary).The run-up to International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Friday has produced some excellent articles drawing parallels between the Holocaust and the threat posed by an Iranian nuclear bomb. But there’s another parallel that’s equally disturbing: the world’s indifference to the relentless incitement to genocide of both Hitler and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.The Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad never misses an opportunity to call for “wiping Israel off the map.” Since there’s no way to eradicate Israel without also slaughtering a large number of its 7.8 million inhabitants, that is a blatant call for mass murder. Yet he has never, for instance, been declared persona non grata by the EU or investigated for incitement to genocide by the International Criminal Court; indeed, he has been feted in many parts of the “enlightened” West, from lecture invitations at Columbia University to joint press conferences with a fawning Swiss foreign minister, Micheline Calmy-Rey.But as Prof. Shlomo Avineri pointed out this month, even more troubling is the silence of world Jewry on this issue – a stark contrast to its activism over, say, Soviet Jews.Last week, Adam Kirsch wrote a chilling analysis for Tablet of how “Jews control America” rhetoric has moved from the fringes to the respectable mainstream of American discourse in just a few short years. It takes longer to mainstream calls for mass murder. But if left unchallenged, Ahmadinejad’s calls for genocide will eventually become mainstream as well.Judging by the degree to which he has not become a pariah, his rhetoric is already acceptable to far too many “enlightened” Westerners.Hmmmmmm........"Never again" seems to be forgotten.Read the full story here.

Exxon moves on Kurdistan despite Baghdad threat.(AlArabiya).Exxon Mobil, the first oil major to move into Iraqi Kurdistan, is quietly mobilizing in Arbil despite strenuous objections from the central government.Since the bold play came to light in November, the company has kept silent - fueling speculation that it froze the deal and bowed to Baghdad, which has long held that all foreign oil deals signed with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) are illegal.But Kurdish officials insist that investment is going ahead and movement on the ground supports their claims.“They (Exxon) are definitely here and they are definitely assessing living and working accommodation,” said a Western industry source in Arbil, at the heart of Iraq’s northern Kurdish region.“There are around 10 individuals here at any one time looking at what it takes to fully mobilize here - office space, housing space, these types of things. No oil company comes in in a day.”Exxon executives met the region’s Natural Resources Minister Ashti Hawrami last week, sources in Arbil said, and are preparing to issue a tender for seismic work for some, if not all, of the six exploration blocks acquired in October.The move north sparked fury in Baghdad, which is threatening to take action against Exxon - in charge of developing the supergiant West Qurna-1 oil field in southern Iraq. Exxon has been summoned to the oil ministry for final talks.Before signing the deal with Kurdistan, Exxon was sure to have weighed any possible legal challenges.“I’m sure Exxon has more lawyers than probably there are Ministry of Oil officials in Baghdad,” said the industry source.Read the full story here.

Ron Paul Is Taking Donations To End The TSA.(BI).A day after his Senator son refused to submit to a TSA pat-down, Ron Paul is raising money to end the TSA on his campaign website. As of writing of this post, the cause has raised over $125,000 and counting.A statement released by Paul yesterday, claimed that the police state is out of control and called attention to Paul's 'Plan to Restore America,' which through cuts in federal spending eliminates the TSA. Read the full story here.

LAPD: Joint Military Drills In Downtown LA.(PR).Maybe the Military Equipment Movement 1\19\12 near Santa Cruz, Southbound is headed toward Los Angeles, CA for the joint military| LAPD exercise. If you are a 11Bravo veteran [US ARMY], you know the branches of the military have Urban Warfare training centers. Fort Bragg, Twenty nine Palms, etc… Military exercises designed to familiarize/operate in an urban environment is suspicious.Source: CBS Los Angeles. Joint military training exercises will be held evenings through Thursday, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.The LAPD will be providing support for the exercises, which will also be held in other portions of the greater Los Angeles area, police said.Training sites “have been carefully selected to ensure the event does not negatively impact the citizens of Los Angeles and their daily routine,” a department official said.The training, which a department official said would involve helicopters, has been coordinated with local authorities and owners of the training sites, police said.Police said safety precautions have been taken to prevent risk to the general public and military personnel involved.The exercises are closed to the public, police said.The exercises are designed to ensure the military’s ability to operate in urban environments, prepare forces for upcoming overseas deployments, and meet mandatory training certification requirements, police said.Hmmmmm.........Anyone preparing for riots and Martial law?Glenn Beck:The Pentagon is deploying 20,000 troops inside the U.S. for domestic security.Read the full story here.

TRANSCRIPT: GOP Rebuttal to State of the Union.(FOX).The following is the full text of Gov. Mitch Daniels' Republican Address to the Nation, as prepared for delivery:"The status of 'loyal opposition' imposes on those out of power some serious responsibilities: to show respect for the Presidency and its occupant, to express agreement where it exists. Republicans tonight salute our President, for instance, for his aggressive pursuit of the murderers of 9/11, and for bravely backing long overdue changes in public education. I personally would add to that list admiration for the strong family commitment that he and the First Lady have displayed to a nation sorely needing such examples."On these evenings, Presidents naturally seek to find the sunny side of our national condition. But when President Obama claims that the state of our union is anything but grave, he must know in his heart that this is not true."The President did not cause the economic and fiscal crises that continue in America tonight. But he was elected on a promise to fix them, and he cannot claim that the last three years have made things anything but worse: the percentage of Americans with a job is at the lowest in decades. One in five men of prime working age, and nearly half of all persons under 30, did not go to work today."In three short years, an unprecedented explosion of spending, with borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt. And yet, the President has put us on a course to make it radically worse in the years ahead. The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy; it borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours.Read the full story here.

CAIR’s false attacks on ALAC legislation.(AFA).Dear Harold, CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) is at it again.This past Sunday, CAIR put out the release below, claiming that American Laws for American Courts (ALAC) legislation, recently introduced in Virginia, is “unconstitutional.”Let’s examine their release closely.First, CAIR claims ALAC is “anti-Muslim.” If so, why is it that ALAC legislation has won the endorsement of the American Islamic Leadership Coalition (AILC), a coalition of reformist Muslim leaders?In a release put out August 31, 2011, the AILC stated, referring to HB 4769, the ALAC bill introduced in Michigan: “We see no evidence that statutes like HB 4769 will adversely impact the free exercise of our personal pietistic observance of Islam…”The AILC knows that Muslims who reject sharia law will be protected under this legislation. For CAIR to argue ALAC is anti-Muslim is disingenuous and lacking any factual support.Second, CAIR claims ALAC is “racist.” Again, consider the words of the AILC in its support of ALAC: “To equate Bill 4769 to racism is not only dishonest, but is a poor and clumsy attempt at making ordinary Muslim Americans feel alien in their own homeland, while creating a rift between Muslims and the rest of our country.”Third, CAIR repeats the canard that ALAC will prevent Muslims from executing wills. Nonsense. If this were true we’re sure the AILC would not have endorsed it. What ALAC does is prevent state courts from applying foreign law if doing so infringes on the constitutional rights of a party in the case. A good example would be a Muslim woman denied equal protection under the law, as is commonly the case under sharia law.Fourth, CAIR uses the scare tactic that Catholics and people of other faiths would be banned from applying religious traditions. Again, utter nonsense. The linchpin of ALAC is its protection of those whose constitutional rights would be violated if foreign law were applied. And for CAIR to say with a straight face that the Catholic canon is the “equivalent” of sharia law is ludicrous.Lastly, CAIR calls ALAC “suddenly controversial.” Hardly. Nearly two years ago ACT! for America helped get ALAC passed in Tennessee with strong bipartisan support, and nearly a year ago we helped it get passed in Arizona—again with bipartisan support.We all need to remember that CAIR has been affirmed by our Justice Department as the American front organization for the terrorist group Hamas and that it was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing trial in American history.We also need to remember that its communications director, Ibrahim Hooper, stated in 1993 that he would like to see the government of the U.S. be Islamic sometime in the future. And in 1998 CAIR’s co-founder proclaimed that the Qur’an should be the highest authority in America.So while CAIR peddles falsehoods, canards and scare tactics about ALAC, we should all understand its REAL agenda—the imposition of sharia law in America.Read the full story here.

Mr. President: “We Can’t Wait” for the FY 2013 Budget.(Heritage).President Obama will release his annual budget proposal late yet again. Choosing the date is not merely a convention. By law, the President must release the budget by the first Monday in February, which falls on February 6 this year. Yet yesterday the Administration announced it will release its fiscal year (FY) 2013 budget a week late, marking the third such delay in four years. Right now, when the economy is struggling, annual deficits consistently exceed $1 trillion, and Americans are demanding that Washington govern responsibly, this delay is beyond frustrating. Especially after last year’s protracted budget battle, a prompt submission would have signaled that the President is ready to get down to business. Unfortunately, the opposite now seems imminent.For example, Obama’s 2012 budget would have put debt held by the public on track to rise from its current level of about 70 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to more than 87 percent of GDP by 2021. As this Budget Chart Book chart by The Heritage Foundation shows, that amounts to double the post–WWII average.That same budget failed to include the kinds of rational, market-based solutions necessary to fix the three major entitlement programs—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—which are currently set on spending autopilot. This chart shows that more than half of the President’s 2012 budget would have been spent on entitlement programs.The picture only gets worse from here. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that annual spending on all entitlement programs will increase from $2 trillion in 2011 to nearly $3.3 trillion in 2021. That’s almost the size of all federal spending today.Read and see the full story here.

Is Obama Trying To Replace The Pope?(Investors).Constitution: The First Amendment forbids "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion. But a pontificating President Obama would do just that in forcing Catholics to provide contraception and sterilization.When it comes to the unnecessary and un-American controversy Obama has caused by having his Health and Human Services Department mandate Catholic contraception and sterilization coverage, the Constitution and Catholic teaching are in accord — and united in opposing the president.The First Amendment explicitly protects the practice of religion. The Catholic Church has consistently taught that contraception and sterilization are to be avoided as grave evils."Any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin," Pope Pius XI wrote in the encyclical "Casti Conubii."Correspondingly, the "Catechism of the Catholic Church" published under Pope John Paul II affirmed that "every action which ... proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible is intrinsically evil."Obama's intolerance here goes against both religious and secular legal protections within U.S. law. For 50 years, for instance, the federal government has respected the religious objections of Amish Americans, exempting them from having Social Security numbers.ObamaCare was already on shaky constitutional ground in forcing the purchase of health insurance. Now it is striking at the heart of the First Amendment.Read the full story here.

Russia’s Dreams Coming True in Administration’s Nuclear Policies.(Heritage).President Obama is working hard to make a Russian dream of a superior nuclear weapons arsenal come true, writes Heritage’s James Carafano in his most recent op-ed. “The White House has made clear that its signature tool for combating nuclear proliferation is leading by example, and that example is disarmament,” he writes. The Administration, however, runs a risk of ending its path to disarmament in nuclear fallout.America’s arsenal of strong and reliable nuclear weapons has prevented countries around the world from developing or significantly expanding their own nuclear capabilities. It has been a more successful tool for nonproliferation than the Administration’s New Strategic Arms Control Treaty with the Russian Federation. Indeed, this treaty reduces the U.S. strategic arsenal while allowing Russia to build up and deploy more multiple independent reentry vehicles on fewer delivery systems—the most destabilizing option for the deployment of nuclear weapons. The treaty also fails to address nuclear warhead production disparity between the two countries. While Russia can produce as many as 600 nuclear pits per year, the United States can produce only about 60.North Korea, China, Russia, India, and Pakistan keep expanding and modernizing their nuclear weapons arsenals. Iran is ever closer to obtaining nuclear weapons capability, while the United States continues to deemphasize the role of nuclear weapons in its strategic posture. Under current policy, replacement systems will not enter the U.S. arsenal until 2030. By then, the U.S. will have 60-year-old intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (ICBMs), 40-year-old submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and 35- to 70-year-old bombers. There is currently no plan to develop a new nuclear warhead. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said that, under sequestration, the U.S. would be forced to abandon ICBMs and delay other modernization plans.The Pentagon’s new strategic guidance says, “It is possible that our deterrence goals can be achieved with a smaller nuclear force, which would reduce the number of nuclear weapons in our inventory, as well as their role in U.S. national security strategy.” The document does not offer any analysis explaining which U.S. deterrence goals changed to justify this shift. It does not appear to take into account shifts in other countries’ nuclear doctrines. As Carafano concludes, “The president is commander in chief. He can press for a smaller, less-capable military if he thinks that best. But he certainly can’t make the case with a straight face that he is giving us more defense. His policy is giving us far less.”Hmmmmm......If he really wanted to destroy America as a superpower would he do anything different?Read the full story here.

US leads Security Council charge against Israel.(Ynet)HT:IsraelMatzav.WASHINGTON – The US, Britain and Germany leveled harsh criticism at Israel's settlement construction policy on Tuesday.During a Security Council session, US Ambassador Susan Rice urged Israel to halt all settlement construction in the West Bank and work to quell settler violence against Palestinians. She also expressed concern over the humanitarian situation in Gaza.Washington's representative in the UN also criticized Palestinian incitement to violence and terrorist activity, including the launching of rockets towards Israeli territory. Rice also said the recent talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in Jordan were encouraging. British Ambassador to the UN Mark Grant accused Israel of employing violence in the territories and called on the Jewish state to halt all settlement construction, including in east Jerusalem. Germany's UN ambassador, Peter Wittig, said Israel was attempting to detach east Jerusalem from the West Bank, a move he claimed would make the establishment of a Palestinian state impossible. In his response to the criticism, Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor told the Security Council, "The primary obstacle to peace is not settlements. The primary obstacle to peace is the so-called 'claim (right) of return.' Let me repeat that: the major hurdle to peace is the Palestinian’s insistence on the so-called 'claim of return.'" "You will never hear Palestinian leaders say 'two states for two peoples'. If you ever hear them say 'two states for two peoples', please phone my office immediately. Call me 'collect' in the event of such an unprecedented occurrence," he said."You won’t hear them say 'two states for two peoples' because today the Palestinian leadership is calling for an independent Palestinian state, but insists that its people return to the Jewish state. This would mean the destruction of Israel. Prosor continued to say that "the idea that Israel will be flooded with millions of Palestinians will never be accepted. The international community knows it. The Palestinian leadership knows it. But the Palestinian people aren’t hearing it. In a poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion last November, 90% of Palestinians said that they would not give up the 'claim of return.' This gap between their perception and reality is – and will remain – the major obstacle to peace. "Since the Palestinian leadership refuses to tell the Palestinian people the truth, the international community has the responsibility to tell them the truth. You have a responsibility to stand up and say that the so-called 'claim of return' is a non-starter. Yet, many around this table who never miss an opportunity to tell Israel what it has to do for peace – mumble, stutter and conveniently lose their voices when it comes time to tell the Palestinian people about the basic compromises they will have to make for peace," the Israeli envoy said. He added: "The Palestinians' refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state goes hand-in-hand with a culture of incitement in mosques, schools and media. Day after day, children are taught to pursue violence – and to hate, vilify, and dehumanize Israelis and Jews. "Let me be clear. I am not only talking about Hamas in Gaza— but also about the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, where you can’t turn a corner without seeing terrorists and terrorism glorified," said Prosor.Hmmmm......Obama the 'closest ally' of Israel.Read the full story here.

Strait of Hormuz at center of int'l chess game.(JPost).A mere 54 kilometers wide at its narrowest point and dotted with tiny islands, the Strait of Hormuz has turned into something of a powder keg, just waiting to explode. The only question is who will light it on fire.Linking the Persian Gulf with the Indian Ocean, the strait is used to transport about a fifth of the world’s oil on a daily basis, and the popular assessment within the IDF is that Iran – which borders the channel to the north and east – has the ability to shut it down if it so chooses.The question then would be: What next? The US has taken a clear approach – some Israelis wished this week that such American resolve would carry over to Iran’s nuclear program – claiming that it will use military force, if needed, to reopen the sea line.Defense officials said Tuesday that while Iran will continue to threaten to close the strait, it most likely will not do so, in order to avoid providing US President Barack Obama with the justification to launch a strike against Iran and its nuclear facilities.Already under attack by political opponents for his economic policies, Obama is unlikely to initiate a war with Iran that would lead to a spike in worldwide oil prices. While the price of gas in the US would significantly increase, his popularity would crash.If, however, Iran closes the strait or attacks the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier that sailed through the channel and into the Persian Gulf on Sunday, Obama would receive the justification he needs to attack Iran, even in this election year.While Iran has threatened to close the strait a number of times in recent years, the last time it actually tried to disrupt shipping was during its eight-year war with Iraq.In 1988, toward the end of the war, an Iranian mine exploded under the USS Samuel B. Roberts, nearly sinking the frigate. This prompted the Reagan administration to launch Operation Praying Mantis, in which the US Navy carried out a series of retaliatory strikes against Iranian oil platforms and naval vessels.In recent years, Iran has increased its arsenal of naval mines and is believed to be capable of lining the strait with them, a move that would prevent the flow of oil from the Gulf to the West.In addition, Iran has a number of naval bases along its southern coast where it stations its submarines – including a number of Russian-made Kilo-class vessels – which it could use to attack oil tankers. With insurance premiums already at relatively high levels, the sinking of an oil tanker would be akin to closing the strait, since the price of oil would almost immediately skyrocket.Read the full story here.

Why won’t Saudi Arabia write down its laws?(MEfp).Nathan J. BrownIn 2007 and 2009 Saudi King Abdullah capped a decade of legal and judicial reforms in his country by reorganizing the judiciary and ordering that Saudi Arabia follow the step that virtually all other states in the region did long ago by codifying its laws — committing to paper a comprehensive compendium of the operative laws in the kingdom. Since that date, however, his order has been neither challenged nor implemented. Why is codification of law seen as such a dramatic step in Saudi Arabia? And why does the king seem incapable of making it happen?Saudi kings devoted considerable attention in the first decade of the 21st century to remaking the judicial order. Initial steps taken were new procedure laws with new decrees insisting (with uncertain effectiveness) that courts follow prescribed rules in their operation — and making the courts, always ambivalent about the role of lawyers, friendlier to the legal profession. In the most recent moves, besides ordering codification, the king consolidated all sorts of quasi-judicial bodies that littered the legal framework of the kingdom, wrenched adjudication functions away from the Supreme Judicial Council (handing them to a newly created Supreme Court), and relieved the country’s highest-ranking judge, a pillar of the old order, from his office at the head of the system. The king’s steps were sufficiently dramatic — and the identity of the Saudi state so deeply enmeshed in claims to be fully Islamic, especially in its legal structure — that longtime Saudi legal scholar Frank E. Vogel, in “Saudi Arabia: Public, Civil, and Individual Shari`a in Law and Politics,” termed them “not a shot but a barrage across the bow of his partners in rule, the conservative religious establishment” and “clearly seismic events within the world of Saudi shari`a politics.”So why is codification of laws -- merely writing down what the laws are -- seen as a repugnant steps by many (though not all) of the kingdom's most powerful religious scholars? The opposition shows some signs of waning, but it has still been sufficient to prevent any practical steps toward codification.First, there is a basic problem with the term "codification" of the shari`a itself -- the term used (taqnin al-shari`a) might quite literally be translated as "rendering God's law into man-made legislation," an almost sacrilegious concept. Some codification advocates have therefore preferred the term tadwin, which has the same denotation without the etymological baggage.The sweeping processes of political change unleashed elsewhere in the region may actually have taken the wind out of the sails of current Saudi Arabian judicial reform efforts. Like many promises made in the past -- for a consultative assembly, for instance -- codification will probably happen, but it may take decades more.Read the full story here.

Netanyahu tells special Knesset session: World silent while Iran, Hezbollah threaten to destroy Israel.(Ynet)."Seventy years have passed since the Holocaust, and many around the world still remain silent in the face of Iran's threats to wipe Israel off the map, and many stay silent despite Hezbollah's call for the destruction of Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday during a special Knesset session ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which will be marked this week. "International Holocaust Remembrance Day is the day on which the world needs to stand behind the words 'no more.' It's not a slogan, but has a deep meaning," he said. "It is the day on which the world must unite to make certain weapons of mass destruction do not fall into the hands of dark regimes, headed by the ayatollahs' regime in Iran." Netanyahu added: "Have we learned the lessons of the Holocaust? Are we treating these threats of destruction seriously? Or perhaps, like many generations before us we do not want to see the scope of the danger that is facing us. The Iranian regime is openly calling for the destruction of Israel, but many around the world remain silent. We mustn't bury our head in the sand. The Iranian regime is planning the annihilation of Israel and is working towards Israel's destruction – its agents (Hezbollah) fired over 12,000 missiles towards Israel's cities. They are not concealing their intent to kill as many (Israelis) as possible. "The UN was founded to prevent genocides and massacres. These were its basic goals. Have these goals been attained? Unfortunately, the answer is no," said the PM.Netanyahu also addressed a recent speech delivered by the Palestinians' top Muslim cleric, Mufti Mohammed Hussein, in which he encouraged the killing of Jews. "Instead of calling for peace and reconciliation, the mufti is calling to kill Jews wherever they may be. I don’t hear any condemnations from the world's countries. I hear them condemning the construction of a home in Gilo or a balcony in Ramot (neighborhoods in Jerusalem) – that is what I hear," he said. Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin told the plenum, "We don’t have the privilege to deny the tragedies of other nations, be it the Armenians, Syrians or others." "Even when denial is convenient, history has destined us to fight against such atrocities. We cannot stand aside and let the world remain indifferent," he added. Only three ministers and 22 Knesset members attended the special session.Hmmmmm.........The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.Read the full story here.

EU Reaches Agreement on Permanent Bailout Fund.(Spiegel).The 17 euro-zone countries have reached agreement on the contract for the permanent euro bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), clearing the way for the aid fund to be launched one year earlier than planned. Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, chairman of the group of euro-zone finance ministers, announced the agreement following a Monday night meeting in Brussels. The ESM is now set to replace the temporary European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) on July 1, a year earlier than originally planned."I believe this is an important achievement," said German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble after the meeting. "It demonstrates that the euro group and the European Union as a whole is capable of taking the necessary steps."Schäuble also said that agreement had been reached on the euro-zone fiscal pact, which would submit members of the common currency zone to stricter budgetary rules. "We aren't yet over the mountain," Schäuble said in reference to the ongoing euro-zone debt crisis. But he said there is "cause for optimism."The ESM will be funded with €500 billion to help struggling euro-zone countries, with Germany providing the largest share -- although Angela Merkel's recent refusal to consider upping that figure seems to be wavering under heavy pressure.Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti believes the ESM should be doubled to €1 trillion, while there have also been calls from French President Nicolas Sarkozy for Germany to put in more money. European Central Bank head Mario Draghi shares that view as does International Monetary Fund boss Christine Lagarde. "We need a larger firewall," Lagarde said at a Monday appearance in Berlin. "Without it, countries like Italy and Spain, that are fundamentally able to repay their debts, could potentially be forced into a solvency crisis by abnormal financing costs."The German chancellor has been adamantly opposed to such an increase, although that might be changing. Speaking at a press conference in Berlin on Monday with Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo, who had signalled his desire to see the fund increased, Merkel said: "Germany has always done what is necessary to defend the euro."Read the full story here.

OIC: Adoption of genocide law sign of Islamophobia in France.(Trend).The adoption of the law criminalizing the denial of the so-called "Armenian Genocide" is a sign of Islamophobia in France, Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu told Trend on Tuesday."This law contradicts three fundamental principles of democracy -- equality, freedom and brotherhood. It is a sign of growing Islamophobia," Ihsanoglu said.He called the law unacceptable, non-complying with historical facts and demonstrating double standards.After a nearly eight-hour debate, the French Senate adopted the bill. Some 127 senators voted in favor, while 86 senators voted against on Jan.23.The lower house of the French parliament adopted a bill criminalising the denial of the so-called "genocide" on Dec.22. Some 45 out of 577 French MPs voted with 38 voting for and seven against the adoption of the bill.The bill demands a year's imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euro for denying the so-called "genocide." In response to the decision, Turkey announced that it has frozen all diplomatic relations with France.MPs from the French president's Union for Popular Movement (UMP) party, which has the parliamentary majority, proposed the bill aimed at criminalising the denial of the so-called "genocide" to the legislative committee of the National Assembly in early December.Armenia and the Armenian lobby claim that the predecessor of the Turkey - Ottoman Empire had committed the 1915 genocide against the Armenians living in Anadolu, and achieved recognition of the "Armenian Genocide" by the parliaments of several countries.Read the full story here.

Just what you always suspected: FDR opposed bombing Auschwitz.(IsraelMatzav).A new study by the US Holocaust Museum has concluded that Franklin Roosevelt himself opposed bombing the Auschwitz death camp (Hat Tip: Dan F). A new two year study by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, DC reveals the opposition by WWII American President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) to bombing the Auschwitz Birkenau death complex in Southern Poland in the summer of 1944. The findings of the latest USHMM study on wartime allied and Jewish Zionist leaders over the decision not to bomb Auschwitz were the subject of an EnerPub article, “Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Sin of Omission: Auschwitz” by former US diplomat, Martin Barillas. Barillas noted the contrast with Britain’s wartime leader, Sir Winston Churchill: Churchill appeared interested in a military strike against the camps. He told Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden that Hitler's war against the Jews was "probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world," adding, "Get everything out of the Air Force you can, and invoke me, if necessary." In July 1944 Churchill was told that U.S. bomber pilots could do the job best, but that it would be "costly and hazardous."70 years from now, will future generations be discussing whether and why Barack Hussein Obama opposed bombing Iran?Read the full story here.

Hundreds of Kyrgyz prisoners sew lips shut in hunger strike.(HD).Three thousand prisoners were on a hunger strike Wednesday in Kyrgyzstan with several hundred sewing shut their lips with staples and thread to protest jail conditions, officials said."Over three thousand convicts are refusing food in Kyrgyzstan, about 640 have sewn their lips shut," the Central Asian country's ombudsman Tursunbek Akun told journalists.Prisoners in the country's largest prison in Bishkek are in a serious condition, he said, with some having to be hospitalised due to not taking food.Kyrgyzstan's prison service however claimed that criminal bosses were forcing convicts to mutilate themselves in protest after their privileges were taken away."The people initiating this 'sewing' are leaders of the criminal world," the prison service said in a statement.The standoff between prison authorities and convicts began in the Bishkek prison after one crime boss murdered another.Prison staff transferred the murderer to a different jail with less comfortable conditions, and raided the premises, confiscating mobile phones, drugs and money."That angered the criminal world, which told the regular convicts to riot," the prison service said. The hunger strikes have now spread to other prisons in Kyrgyzstan, which has a prison population of 15,000 people.Rights campaigner Tolekan Ismailova denied that the strikes were sparked by criminal bosses, however."Those on hunger strike are against inhumane conditions," she said. "They don't have medicine, normal food, linen or soap. Their illnesses are not treated because there are not enough doctors," she said.Read the full story here.

Arab Sheikhs fall in love with Renminbi, the "people's currency" also known as the yuan.(Stratrisks).By M K Bhadrakumar.China and Qatar have been taking virtually opposite positions apropos events in Libya and Syria. Yet, they do not seem to be deterred by this little difference and are bonding in a big way in economic cooperation to mutual benefit.Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who visited Doha last week, disclosed at a press conference on Friday: a) China proposes to invest in the manufacturing of ”downstream oil products, which are most urgently needed by Qatar”; b) China and Qatar signed an agreement to jointly build a refinery in Taizhou, Zheijiang, in China; c) Chinese companies propose to participate in infrastructure projects in Qatar; and d) China and Qatar arediscussing a “long-term, stable and comprehensive cooperative partnership” in natural gas.Then, Wen quietly dropped a bombshell. He revealed “one more important point” as if it were an afterthought. He said: In order to address investment issues, we [China and Qatar] need financial support. Therefore, we reached another agreement, a cooperation agreement linking finance with investment. Qatar also proposed the use of local currency in trade settlement and even a specific ratio. I think this proposal can be studied.The short point is, the renminbi, the “people’s currency” also known as the yuan, is appearing in Doha. The China-United Arab Emirates (UAE) currency swap deal which was signed during Wen’s visit to Abu Dhabi last week already brings the yuan to the Emirates. The deal with the UAE is worth US$5.5 billion and the Chinese central bank statement said that it aims at “strengthening bilateral financial cooperation, promoting trade and investments and jointly safeguarding regional financial stability”.Indeed, China is playing for the long term. Addressing an energy summit in the UAE, Wen made the startling proposal to create an international body that is mandated to determine the price of oil and which would regulate the policies of the entire supply chain involving the supplier countries, the consumers and even the transit countries.Iran and Russia have already switched to their national currencies for conducting bilateral trade. Tehran’s ambassador to Moscow Seyed Reza Sajjadi said on Friday, “[Trade] with Russia is based on our national currencies. We started this work long ago. Iranian businessmen are buying products in Russia and are using the rouble as [payment] currency] … The US dollar has no [economic] support base … There is a similar interest on the Russian side.”Last week, it also came to be known that India proposes to allow Iran’s central bank to open rupee accounts with two Indian banks as a long-term solution to the countries’ payment problems instigated by the US (which pressured New Delhi to terminate the traditional payment mechanism for Iran within the Asian Clearing Union.) An Indian delegation visited Tehran last week to finalize details.The new arrangement envisages that while the payments for India’s oil imports from Iran (roughly $12-14 billion annually) would be initially in Indian rupees, they would subsequently be converted into a separate designated currency. This is a pointed snub to Washington, which forbids friendly countries from dealings with Iran’s central bank.Hmmmmmm........Read the full story here.

Russian Peacekeepers to Pull Out of South Sudan.(RN).Russia is to withdraw its peacekeeping troops from South Sudan, the Kremlin website reported on Tuesday.All Russian soldiers and helicopters should leave the African country by April 1, 2012, a presidential decree published on the website said, adding that the decision was due to the official end of the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) on July 11, 2011.Russia currently has eight helicopters and 120 personnel servicing the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), which was established on July 9, 2011, when South Sudan was officially declared an independent state.Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said last week that Russia might withdraw its helicopters from South Sudan amid concerns over the safety of its personnel.Gatilov was speaking after an upsurge in inter-ethnic violence in the impoverished oil-producing state, which caused 60,000 people to flee their homes.A series of recent tribal clashes in the country is believed to have left some 3,000 people dead, according to local officials. The United Nations has yet to confirm the figure.“We have not been happy about security in the region recently,” Gatilov told reporters in Moscow.Gatilov said Russia doubted the authorities’ ability to contain violence, as both they and the UN had failed to give assurances about the safety of the Russian task force.Since a number of Russian personnel deployed in South Sudan were attacked in November last year, the Russian helicopters have been grounded, he said.Hmmmm........Read the full story here.

Egyptian minister: "Israel is the #1 enemy of Egypt and Arabs".(DocsTalk).Dr. Gouda Abdel-Khalek, Egyptian Minister of Supply and Internal Trade, has said that the calls by some Egyptians to dismantle the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) is "absurd."He said that the Egyptian military is "the only coherent military institution in the Arab world, capable of facing any external force."Abdel-Khalek told Al Masry al Youm, "I ask the revolutionaries to cease the demand for dropping SCAF, if they consider that Israel remains the number one enemy of Egypt and the Arabs."Abdel-Khalek was, unsurprisingly, appointed by the military council. And the Egyptian military owns a lot of Egypt's internal trade, even of non-military items. In the cabinet reshuffling currently taking place under Egypt's militarily-appointed premier Kamal El-Ganzouri, he places the responsiblity for regulating food prices back on the lap of the Minister of Social Solidarity - now renamed the Ministry of Supply and Domestic Trade.This revives a ministry that had recently been eliminated, simply transferring the post under the new name to Gouda Abdel Khaleq, who served as minister of social solidarity in the last administration.Abdel Khaleq is a veteran leftist associated with Al-Tagammu party.Prime Minister El-Ganzouri, who was chosen by Egypt’s ruling military junta to replace Essam Sharaf last week, has previously stated that the ministry of Supply and Domestic Trade will be mandated to face the rising prices of basic goods and food stuffs. It will also be responsible for supplying goods to limited-income citizens through its outlets.Food prices, which account for 44 per cent of Egypt's consumer price index (CPI), dropped 0.5 per cent in October below September’s level.Read the full story here.

EU Prepares Fresh Sanctions for Belarus.(RN).The European Union is preparing to impose new sanctions against Belarusian companies and individuals that are deemed responsible for human rights violations, a European Council spokesperson told RIA Novosti.“The Council ruled on a decision that expands the criteria for restrictive measures (sanctions) against individuals and companies. It lays a further foundation for determining people and companies, responsible for repressions against civil society and democratic opposition,” the spokesperson said.According to EU diplomatic sources, the new sanctions increased the list of Belarusian officials banned from traveling within the EU member states by another 135 people.Over 200 Belarusian officials are currently under EU and the U.S. sanctions that were first introduced in January 2011 in response to December 2010's flawed elections and brutal clampdown on opposition leaders and protesters.Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, dubbed "Europe's last dictator," said last week that he would “think seriously” about reforming the ex-Soviet state’s “political system” after a parliamentary vote in September.Read the full story here.

Hey Obama, Iran is your enemy, not Israel

2012-01-25T09:27:00.001-05:00

The author of this piece is a 18 year old Torontonian who is enrolled in Stern College (Yeshiva U) and is currently on a study year in Israel. Her proud parents sent it to me. Her depth of knowledge is remarkable, even more so for such a young person. She is looking for an internship this summer. Any suggestions? Ted Belman.

Hey Obama, Iran is your enemy, not Israel.(IsraPundit).By Eli Glogauer.In October 2011, I did not find out that captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was going to be released by reading newspaper articles or watching television reports, but because an entire street was closed off to allow for the singing and dancing brought on by the announcement. Many Israeli teenagers are in the army, making a noticeable difference in the lives of their neighbors. While American college freshmen learn how to read and analyze articles about weapons and warfare, 18-year-old Israeli soldiers are trained in how to protect their families and friends. It is not fair for the rest of the world to judge Israel for doing what it takes to survive. How can we understand the mentality of a country that survives despite a day-to-day struggle? How many other countries have to fight for recognition from their neighbors? How many had to fend off war on three different borders mere hours being declared a country? Would any other country be raked over the coals for standing up to the threat of nuclear war?
U.S. President Barack Obama and his administration have made it their mission to condemn any move that Israel makes to build settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Apparently, the Obama presidency considers Israel’s attempts to provide shelter for its citizens a more serious threat than the killing of political protesters in Syria or, say, the looming threat posed by Iran’s quest to acquire nuclear capabilities.
On Nov. 18, 2011, the International Atomic Energy Agency published a report that calculated that Iran currently has sufficient fuel to produce four nuclear weapons. Instead of concentrating on the threats posed by countries that are actually endangering the lives of civilians, Obama has chosen to keep the focus on the actions of a country that is only interested in doing what it considers best for its citizens and whose actions are not currently endangering lives. While on his crusade to turn the public against the only real democracy in the Middle East, Obama has failed to address the damage that he had a hand in causing: three years ago, Obama extended a hand of friendship to Tehran, stating that Iran should “have some right to nuclear energy, provided… that its aspirations are peaceful.”
Mr. President, do the Iranians possess so little oil that they need to revert to nuclear power? Saying that Iran should have the right to nuclear power “provided that its aspirations are peaceful” is like saying that Bill Clinton’s wife should support his hiring of more young, pretty female staffers, as long as his ‘intentions’ are only for them to complete his paperwork. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been very vocal in his opinion that the world would be better off should Israel decide to relocate to the bottom of the Mediterranean. Not only does Iran continue to fund Hezbollah, an organization widely acknowledged as a terrorist group, but it has also been using Hezbollah’s militant faction as a proxy through which to attack the State of Israel for decades. The bottom line here is that it is ridiculous to not oppose Iran, a rogue state that is a known terrorist collaborator, in its attempts to acquire the plans to a weapon of mass destruction and then expect the Iranians to use these plans “only in the pursuit of peace.”
Obama has attempted to assuage the damage that has been done by assuring the public that Tehran has been the target of an “enormous bite [of sanctions]”. In contrast to Obama’s allegations, a Reuters report found that, somehow, despite the sanctions, Iranian gasoline imports rose 21 percent in October alone. Somehow, I am not comforted by Obama’s assurances.Living in Israel has taken my interest in the international political situation to a completely different level; here, even small events have the potential to impact day-to-day life. As cliché as it sounds, right now I really do feel like Israel is my home. The fact that many other countries do not consider Israel a legitimate country, or consider it to be an “apartheid” state, bothers me on a very fundamental level.
As previously stated, the Obama presidency, in addition to many other governing bodies, believes that the land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank does not belong to the state of Israel and therefore, any settlements built on said land, by Israel, are illegal. Just to clarify, it is not in any way illegal for Israel to build in these territories – Israel’s constructing of settlements does not violate any international laws or treaties. The land may be in dispute, but Israel still retains a significant amount of political and military control over the land and it is in no way illegal for Israel to attempt to provide for the people that live in territory under its control.
Israel has more right to sovereignty over these territories than any other nation. Then there are the legal rights; the territory of Judea and Samaria was part of Cisjordan, which was designated, as per many internationally recognized documents (like the original Mandate for Palestine), as land on which the Jewish people were to build a homeland for themselves. It is also interesting that the former President of the International Court of Justice noted, “a country acting in self-defense may seize and occupy territory when necessary to protect itself…a state may [also] require…security measures… to ensure its citizens are not menaced again from that territory.” This refutes many of the claims that settlements in these territories are “illegal, under current international laws.”
This situation has never been remotely fair. The world needs something to blame for the current situation of unrest in the Middle East and Israel is an easy target; it is at the center of many of the Middle East’s current issues. This situation is in no way right, but I, for one, am glad that there is one country in our world that is willing to do what needs to be done, in order to ensure the long-term safety of the international public. It’s just too bad that I am the only one who feels that way.

Eliana Glogauer is currently studying on one of Masa Israel’s 200 programs.
Read the full story here.

33 Minutes - Protecting America in the New Missile Age.

2012-01-25T09:07:00.000-05:00

33 Minutes - Protecting America in the New Missile Age.(33 Minutes).33 minutes: Protecting America in the New Missile Age is a one-hour documentary produced by The Heritage Foundation that tells the story of the very real threat foreign enemies pose to every one of us. The truth is brutal - no matter where on Earth a missile is launched from it would take 33 Minutes or less to hit the U.S. target it was programmed to destroy.
Nuclear proliferation around the world, and the threat of a ballistic missile attack of some kind is mounting as more and more countries obtain nuclear technology. The ongoing threat toward America is also accelerating due to the fact that there are many rogue nations and terrorist organizations who either have or are seeking ballistic missiles and nuclear technology.
The challenges of protecting America and its citizens for President Obama's administration are great. Featuring rare footage and in-depth interviews with leading experts in the field, 33 Minutes is the definitive documentary exposing the untold vulnerability we all face and the action plan necessary to revive a strategic missile defense system that America uniquely can develop, maintain, and employ for its own defense and the peace-loving world's security.Source .

Obama 2012 Energy Ad's "Twisted Statistics"

2012-01-25T07:16:00.000-05:00

Misleading Claims in Obama’s First 2012 Spot.Dissembling on ethics, jobs and oil imports.(Factcheck).

President Obama’s first 2012 campaign ad misleads on ethics, “clean-energy” jobs and U.S. dependence on oil imports.
■The spot uses outdated quotes from groups that said his record on ethics is “unprecedented” and that he “kept a promise to toughen ethics rules.” One of those same groups said later that he “has let down millions of Americans who accepted his word,” and another rated his promise as “broken.”

■The 30-second TV spot also trumpets a claim of “2.7 million jobs” in “America’s clean-energy industry.” That mostly counts jobs put in place long before Obama took office.

■Finally, it boasts that U.S. dependence on foreign oil has declined to below 50 percent, as a net share of total demand, for the first time in more than a decade. That’s true, and increasing U.S. oil production is a factor (despite Republican criticisms that Obama is anti-drilling). But economists say the chief factor is reduced oil consumption, brought on by the recent economic recession.Read the full story here.