Trump Is A Mobster, Part Infinity
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bitterlemons-international.org
Middle East Roundtable
Edition 20 Volume 8 - October 28, 2010
Regional ramifications of the governmental impasse in Iraq
Analysis, critique, and commentary by Faiza Alaraji, Hamid Alkifaey, Safa A. Hussein, and Mahjoob Zweiri
⢠The dilemma of democracy in new Iraq - Faiza Alaraji
The key to Iraq's future is not in the hands of the Iraqi people anymore.
⢠Iran-weary Arabs won't be comfortable with a Shiite government in Baghdad - Hamid Alkifaey
Many believe the current political impasse in Iraq is due to a regional power struggle over control of the country.
⢠Opportunities for foreign influence - Safa A. Hussein
It is not difficult to foresee Iraq emerging as an influential regional power.
⢠Iran's linkages - Mahjoob Zweiri
Iraq, in Iran's backyard, must not become a source of threat. That is Iran's strategic goal.
Read these articles @ bitterlemons-international.org
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"The "Collateral Damage" caused by US forces was more likely to be kept secret or 'lost', automatically skewing any statistics, and what exactly were the US forces going to do if their 'trainees' F up? Shoot them, or 'hang them out to dry' later. Just food for thought." source, FacebookInternational Safety Infrastructure, FAIL FAIL FAIL! It is notable that before Indonesia was hit by a 7.7 earthquake and the concurrent 10 foot plus tsunami last week no one got a warning... despite millions of dollars spent by the international community for an early warning system, because the system was not maintained. Now the biggest volcano on Sumatra has begun to erupt leading to mass evacuations.
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Who would have thought there'd be gunfire (or that said gunfire would be news) near the building that houses the people who control most of the planet's fired weapons? Shots fired at Pentagon, no injuries. The person who did this appears to have 'experience':There have been ballistics tests done and the shots fired at various federal buildings and memorials, including the US Marine Memorial appear to have come from the same weapon.Director of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency Steven Calvery said he considered the shooting to be "a random event" and did not foresee any new security measures.
But he added that the investigation was continuing and that authorities were looking for any possible link to a shooting over the weekend at the nearby National Museum of the Marine Corps, which also only caused minor damage to the building.
"Right now we consider this just a random event. But if our investigation and others' ascertain that it's part of a larger incident, we would have to evaluate that," Calvery told a Pentagon news briefing.
The Pentagon was one of the targets of the September 11, 2001 attacks and Calvery said the Joint Terrorism Task Force was assisting in the Pentagon investigation, along with local police.
Still, it appeared as if investigators had little firm initial evidence. No bullet casings have been found or suspects identified. While investigators believe a high-velocity rifle was used, ballistic tests still needed to be done. (Reuters) (src)
Democrats: 'If We're Gonna Lose, Let's Go Down Running Away From Every Legislative Accomplishment We've Made'
October 27, 2010
WASHINGTONâConceding almost certain Republican gains in next month's crucial midterm elections, Democratic lawmakers vowed Tuesday not to give up without making one final push to ensure their party runs away from every major legislative victory of the past two years.
Party leaders told reporters that regardless of the ultimate outcome, they would do everything in their power from now until the polls closed to distance themselves from their hard-won passage of a historic health care overhaul, the toughest financial regulations since the 1930s, and a stimulus package most economists now credit with preventing a second Great Depression.
"There's a great deal on the line, and we know it isn't going to be easy for us," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), speaking from the steps of the Capitol. "But if we suffer defeat, we will do so knowing we cowered away from absolutely anything we produced that was even remotely progressive or valuable in any way."
"And we will keep cowering right up until Election Day," Reid continued. "From Maine to Hawaii, in big cities and small towns, we will collapse into a fetal position and refuse to take credit for our successes anywhere voters could conceivably be swayed by learning what we have achieved on their behalf."
Democrats are spending millions of dollars on a last-minute campaign to remind Americans how utterly spineless they are.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) acknowledged the task would be difficult, but said Democrats would remain steadfast in permitting their opponents to deride... In Full
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The Bombing of Dresden was a military bombing by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) as part of the allied forces between 13 February and 15 February 1945 in the Second World War. In four raids, 1,300 heavy bombers dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the city, the Baroque capital of the German state of Saxony. The resulting firestorm destroyed 15 square miles (39 square kilometres) of the city centre.[1]
A 1953 United States Air Force report written by Joseph W. Angell defended the operation as the justified bombing of a military and industrial target, which was a major rail transportation and communication centre, housing 110 factories and 50,000 workers in support of the Nazi war effort. source
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Wikileaks Iraq war logs: every death mapped
"The Wikileaks Iraq war logs provide us with a unique picture of every death in Iraq.
These are those events mapped using Google Fusion tables."
When the Hand Cursor points at a red dot, click once for the specifics of that particular death.
US unveils $2bn military aid planMeanwhile... unintended consequences of our war on Afghanistan... It's gone Nuclear throughout the region and all along the Himalayan ridge. There is High level Radiation over Lahore India and other densely populated places:
Saturday, 23 October 2010
AP - The United States has laid out a five-year, $2bn (ÂŁ1.3bn) military aid package for Pakistan, and has pressed the Islamabad government to step up the fight against extremists there and in neighbouring Afghanistan.
The Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, announced the plan at the end of the latest round of US-Pakistani strategic talks.
The new aid package will not benefit Pakistani military units suspected of human rights abuses. The Obama administration has already cut off aid to some Pakistani units over concerns they may have been involved in abuses that include extrajudicial killings and torture. Reuters
Downwind Airflow Maps Of US DU War On Afghanistan
Hi Jeff - Here are two maps by Peter Eyre (former UK Naval Intel, and weatherman) that he just sent to me for DOWN WIND air flow at three altitudes - Low, Medium and High - for Afghanistan, India and Australia. Rense.com
"MATTHEW HINTON / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE A boat travels through oil that was spotted in West Bay just west of the Southwest Pass of the Mississippi River Friday October 22, 2010." In FullHad Enough?
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...a right-wing agricultural-chemical entrepreneur from Nebraska, currently sells copies of a germ-warfare cookbook he authored that experts say is accurate enough to be dangerous." More on the topic of toxinsPresident Obama is in the San Francisco Bay area today, and Nevada tomorrow stumping for Democratic candidates Barbara Boxer and Harry Reid.
Finally... Haiti... remember Haiti? Had a BIG earthquake just a while back and the international community sprang into action?
Haiti's 1.3 Million Camp Dwellers Waiting in Vain
Friday 15 October 2010
by: Correspondents | Inter Press Service | Report
Grand Goave - Rosie Benjamin is just one of over 1.3 million people living in Haiti's 1,354 squalid refugee camps. She and 1,200 others are jammed into 300 tents and plastic tarp-shacks on a soccer field in Grand Goâve.
Like about 70 percent of Haiti's refugee camps, the residents here are on their own. Apart from water deliveries, they get nothing from the government and the massive humanitarian apparatus on the ground. No food. No jobs. And no news about their future.
"We went to City Hall, we didn't learn anything. We went to Terre des Hommes, nothing," Benjamin said. "So far we haven't gotten anything. Nothing. We are sitting here and we have no idea what anyone is thinking."
Benjamin and her neighbours live on money from relatives overseas, share what food they have, and every now and then a non-governmental organisation (NGO) drops off some bulgar wheat and vegetable oil, but that's about it. Some of the children â many of whom will likely not go to school this year â even have orange-tinted hair.
Asked about that obvious sign of malnutrition and other conditions, Deborah Hyde, a member of the U.N. "Shelter Cluster" â a U.N.-mandated management team tasked with trying to coordinate the NGOs working on the shelter issue â said...
Find out what she said here
COAL POWER DOWNSIZING
Is coal power headed for a downsizing in US?
"Coal power, with about 340,000 megawatts of generating capacity, today produces about half of US electricity. After expected (ed. Now federally required) emissions upgrades, the coal fleet will continue to have plants, producing about 103,000 megawatts, that are still "lacking any major emission controls," the study says. The oldest, smallest coal plants with few emissions controls make up an "at-risk" (of closure) portion that account for about 20 percent of total US coal-fired generating capacity, or 69,000 megawatts."
Utilities may close up to 1 in 5 coal-fired power plants after tougher EPA air pollution rules go into effect next year, Wall Street investment banker Credit Suisse recently reported. Coal power is losing its price edge to natural gas, too. In Full @ Christian Science Monitor
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The Obama administration won a temporary stay against the moratorium on "don't ask, don't tell" Wednesday, granting the Pentagon the right to once again enforce the 17-year-old ban on gay men and women serving openly in the military.Expect a 'final kill' during the lame duck congressional session after the elections because it's included in the already overdue Military Appropriations bill.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued the decision, giving itself time to consider the Justice Department's appeal of last week's injunction by U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips... Washington Post
"There are signs that the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan's Kandahar province is beginning to make progress, as military and local sources have reported that the Taliban have been driven from some of their key strongholds in the region. The improvement in conditions is the result of President Barack Obama's troop surge, which increased troop strength in the province to 12,000 coalition soldiers and 7,000 Afghan security forces, and made it possible to carry out operations in crucial areas of the province simultaneously.It's also notable that, under the rubric of "The Fog Of War"...
The offensive against the Taliban has targeted areas around Kandahar City: First, Afghan forces captured the town of Mehlajat, which had been largely abandoned, to the south of the city. U.S. forces then moved into the district of Arghandab to the north and the district of Zhare to the southwest. Last weekend, a joint U.S. and Afghan force tackled the district of Panjwai, to the west of Kandahar city. According to NATO commanders, local Afghan security forces, and even some of the Taliban themselves, the insurgents were surprised by the intensity of the attack and retreated to Pakistan in significant numbers.
One commander in Arghandab said that Taliban attacks had declined from 50 a week in August to only 15 per week in October." Source: Foreign Policy
"Blackwater prosecutions unravel: Almost four years after prosecutors indicted contractors operating under the security firm Blackwater for murder and excessive use of force in Iraq and Afghanistan, those cases are falling apart due to the difficulty of retrieving evidence from war zones, and a form of legal immunity granted to the contractors by U.S. embassy officials." (sourced from link above)
France clears fuel blockades before pension voteIn OTHER words: "If you all behave it won't hurt you as much economically as if you resist." That ALMOST passes for a backhanded insinuation of collective punishment against the citizens of France if they forcibly reject the French government's idea of what their 'Austerity" should consist of, and what ABOUT those "Others"? Should the average French worker care about that?
By Nick Vinocur
PARIS Wed Oct 20, 2010
(Reuters) - President Nicolas Sarkozy sent in police to clear access to barricaded French fuel depots and restore supply as trade unions kept up their resistance on Wednesday to a pension reform due for a final vote this week.
Fuel imports hit a record high on Tuesday, the government said, as it tried to get round a 24-day blockade of France's largest oil port, near Marseille, where 51 oil tankers lay idle in the Mediterranean, unable to dock.
With more than 3,000 service stations out of nearly 12,500 in France out of fuel, police could also be deployed to clear access to striking oil refineries, according to Sarkozy's order.
A nine-day transport strike in 2007 cost France about 400 million euros ($550 million) a day, according to the economy ministry, although analysts do not see the current strikes costing as much.
Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said on Britain's Channel 4 television that she could not estimate the full cost of the strike action for France but it was unlikely to have a major impact on gross domestic product if it did not last too long.
Earlier on France's TF1 television Lagarde said the government hoped petrol pumps would be full again in a few days, and urged people rioting on the fringes of protests or blockading fuel depots to think about France's image and its need to speed up its economic recovery.
"I truly appeal to people's sense of responsibility, particularly those who think it's fun to blockade things and smash them up," Lagarde said. "It's serious for our country because France is missing a chance to come out of the crisis under better conditions than others." In Full @ Reuters
Rome - Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in the Italian capital Rome on Saturday, demanding worker rights and democracy.And in NOT-SO-MERRY Olde England the biggest spending cuts since WWII are announced. For instance, the BBC has been 'restructured' with a 16% budget cut and...
Seven chartered trains and 70 buses from across Italy brought people to the protest, which had been called by the metal-worker union FIOM, local media reported.
Students and workers from other fields also took part.
'We want to defend work contracts, jobs and democracy -given one of the biggest assaults of all times on the rights of workers,' said the secretary general of FIOM, Maurizio Landini.
The protest came amid criticism of the economic policies pursued by the conservative government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, as well as an attempt by Italian carmaker Fiat to push through more flexible work conditions and contracts at its Pomigliano branch near Naples - threatening to close the plant otherwise. MORE
"...the Treasury finally backed off money-saving plans to remove child benefit from 17- and 18-year-olds, but went ahead with plans to cut the means-tested education maintenance allowance aimed at largely the same age group.Also, as reported here yesterday, the British Navy is going to scrap the last aircraft carrier in the fleet as part of the British military's cost-cutting plan.
There was acute embarrassment for the government, meanwhile, as Danny Alexander, the Treasury chief secretary, allowed himself to be photographed with a briefing paper showing that the government accepts that 490,000 public sector jobs will be lost by 2014-15 as a result of the spending cuts, which will finally be outlined by the chancellor, George Osborne, today.
Osborne acknowledges that his unprecedented spending review will take Britain into uncharted social and economic territory as he announces ÂŁ83bn of spending cuts over the next four years.
The cuts will involve the loss of thousands of jobs, massive cuts in university funding, wholesale reform of public housing and further cuts to the welfare budget.
The coalition will also announce the state retirement age is to be raised to 66 in 2016, 10 years earlier than previously planned and liable to save billions of pounds in the medium term. It is also expected there will be big cuts to the budget for sport in schools and the abolition of the specialist school network. Some departments including the Ministry of Justice, the Department of Communities and Local Government and the culture department will see cuts of 30%, involving multibillion-pound reductions in the prison programme and to legal aid.
Voluntary groups and private companies operating on a payment-by-results basis will be asked to take over the rehabilitation of released prisoners. Guardian.co.uk For More
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"At least a million protesters demonstrated in cities across France in the biggest and most persistent challenge to economic reforms anywhere in Europe... ...Speaking in the seaside town of Deauville where he met the leaders of Russia and Germany, (president) Sarkozy appealed for restraint as hooded protesters in the southern city of Lyon torched cars and looted shops after using cafe chairs to smash windows... ...Police used tear gas to disperse protesters in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, where the mayor said 200 youths set cars on fire and smashed public property." More @ ReutersFeeling left out? Don't worry America, you'll get your chance to be impoverished... As an outcome of the G20 Toronto, the IMF has an austerity plan for YOUR Social Security too!
Director of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency Steven Calvery said he considered the shooting to be "a random event" and did not foresee any new security measures.
But he added that the investigation was continuing and that authorities were looking for any possible link to a shooting over the weekend at the nearby National Museum of the Marine Corps, which also only caused minor damage to the building.
"Right now we consider this just a random event. But if our investigation and others' ascertain that it's part of a larger incident, we would have to evaluate that," Calvery told a Pentagon news briefing.
The Pentagon was one of the targets of the September 11, 2001 attacks and Calvery said the Joint Terrorism Task Force was assisting in the Pentagon investigation, along with local police.
Still, it appeared as if investigators had little firm initial evidence. No bullet casings have been found or suspects identified. While investigators believe a high-velocity rifle was used, ballistic tests still needed to be done. (Reuters)
Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com
Banks Sold the Same Mortgage Over and Over to Investors
By: David Dayen
Tuesday October 19, 2010
I mentioned this at the end of this post about investor lawsuits, but it deserves to be highlighted. This is a level of fraud that I probably shouldâve seen coming, but didnât.
Apparently, Bank of America has admitted in a court filing that they sold the same mortgage loan in multiple pools to investors.
In laymanâs terms, say I own the FDL News Cupcake Food Truck and you come up to buy a cupcake. I sell it to you, and then I sell the same cupcake to the guy behind you, and the guy behind you. As you all wait for your order, you talk to each other and realize that you were all sold the same cupcake. So who actually owns it?
Thatâs directly from the court document, saying that many loans and other mortgage-related assets âhave been double- and even triple-pledged to various constituencies.â It would be impossible to designate ownership in that scenario unless the trustees of the mortgage pools took back all the loans and assigned them again.
Youâre talking about the same mortgage loan sold two or three times to different people. In the hustle to get as much paper out the door as possible, all kinds of fraudulent occurrences like this happened. An anonymous whistleblower at Zero Hedge basically corroborates this today... More at Firedoglake
In other words the county has mysteriously declared the building that VFW Post #1588 (Bill Motto, ANTI-war) has used for at least the thirty five years of Razer's residence here a 'seismic hazard' because of an un-level floor and some loose plaster.
The County closed the building, alleging it is unsafe, a situation which has prompted the United Veterans Council â of which VFW Post 5888 is a part â to bring suit against the County in Superior Court, jury trial is scheduled to commence November 15th. The eviction, and lack of offers by the County for substitute facilities, resulted in a regrettable decline of in services for veterans and the community at large. At the last Post meeting, October 6, the decision was made that the Post is unable to hold the Holiday Dinners, this year.
If they knew...
by Auntie Imperial
Tuesday Oct 19th, 2010
The only other public place that comes to mind that could handle the 1000+- people who attend and the THREE DAYS of preparation time needed would be the Civic Auditorium, and you don't REALLY believe the city would host such an event for their impoverished, seniors, houseless, and community in general?
Their WHOLE TACTIC IS destruction of the current community. They've already eliminated all low wage resident workers (as opposed to college students who party on the 'wages' provided by the 16 hr a week jobs offered by most DT businesses) who used to live downtown and replace them with over-the-hill commuting, shopping mall as entertainment worshiping 'citizenry' of people who are socially isolated and have homes to cook meals in... ...and college students... who mostly won't be around on Thanksgiving.
At least that's their target for a Santa Cruz city population, and they're actively working on it.
Do you REALLY think the city and the tourist trash businesses they pander to would want their underclass downtown while the affluent window shop the day before "The busiest shopping day of the year"?
Of course not.
Hell... Councilmember Cynthia Matthews even engaged in personal communications with the Presbyterian arch-diocese implying that Father Joel at the Red Church was not cooperating with the city's "homeless plan" by continuing to operate the Monday evening youth meal, which caused an investigation by the diocese.
BTW... Turn your back on these pigs for a second and they'll just drop the vets hall into it's own footprint... level the ground,and build some 'telecommuting cubies' In Full
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