Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin scoffed at President Barack Obama’s decision to begin arming the Syrian rebels, saying that until the U.S. has a commander in chief that knows what they’re doing, “let Allah sort it out.
14 June 2013
13 June 2013
G8 may discuss role of central banks: German source | Reuters
G8 may discuss role of central banks: German source | Reuters
(Reuters) - Leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations are likely to discuss the role of central banks and monetary policy at a summit in Northern Ireland next week, a German source said on Thursday.
"It is understandable that there are different views of the role of central banks and monetary policy around the world," said the German official, noting that leaders of three euro zone states, the United States, Britain, Japan, Russia and Canada, would represent a wide range of views.
"The introduction of looser monetary policy could form part of the discussions," the official told reporters.
A sell-off on global markets is accelerating as fears grow that central banks may start to scale back stimulus measures that helped push asset prices to historic highs this year.
The U.S. Federal Reserve has hinted it may start to slow down its money-printing, although the Bank of Japan - encouraged by the government - began a massive monetary stimulus program to revive its stagnant economy in April.
To euro zone nations, especially Germany, an independent central bank with a focus on stability is sacrosanct.
"It is important that we understand that we in Europe and the euro zone have a European Central Bank whose main goal is stability and which is independent," said the German official.
"There are differences in other countries and that is part of the discussion," the official added.
Although some European politicians, including German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, have voiced concern about Japan's monetary stimulus, the world's third biggest economy has escaped censure at recent meetings of the world's richest nations.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will have a bilateral meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during the summit, the official said.
(Additional reporting by Gernot Heller; Writing by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Catherine Evans)
(Reuters) - Leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations are likely to discuss the role of central banks and monetary policy at a summit in Northern Ireland next week, a German source said on Thursday.
"It is understandable that there are different views of the role of central banks and monetary policy around the world," said the German official, noting that leaders of three euro zone states, the United States, Britain, Japan, Russia and Canada, would represent a wide range of views.
"The introduction of looser monetary policy could form part of the discussions," the official told reporters.
A sell-off on global markets is accelerating as fears grow that central banks may start to scale back stimulus measures that helped push asset prices to historic highs this year.
The U.S. Federal Reserve has hinted it may start to slow down its money-printing, although the Bank of Japan - encouraged by the government - began a massive monetary stimulus program to revive its stagnant economy in April.
To euro zone nations, especially Germany, an independent central bank with a focus on stability is sacrosanct.
"It is important that we understand that we in Europe and the euro zone have a European Central Bank whose main goal is stability and which is independent," said the German official.
"There are differences in other countries and that is part of the discussion," the official added.
Although some European politicians, including German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, have voiced concern about Japan's monetary stimulus, the world's third biggest economy has escaped censure at recent meetings of the world's richest nations.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will have a bilateral meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during the summit, the official said.
(Additional reporting by Gernot Heller; Writing by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Catherine Evans)
11 June 2013
09 June 2013
Is That a Bomb Up Your Ass, or Are You Just Happy to See Me?
Attacker in Afghanistan Hid Bomb in His Body - NYTimes.com: "allowed"
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s spy chief, Asadullah Khalid, was taking no chances.
A man had crossed into Afghanistan from Pakistan with important information he said he would only deliver personally to Mr. Khalid, who had just taken over as the head of the National Directorate of Security.
Mr. Khalid’s aides took the visitor to an armored room in the basement of a safe house in Taimani, an upscale neighborhood in the capital city, for a security screening. They were no doubt mindful of what happened in September 2011 when a Taliban peace emissary was allowed to meet with a prominent Afghan peace envoy and then killed him with a bomb hidden in his turban.
Watching the man over closed-circuit television, they ordered him to strip naked, which he did. Satisfied, they let him get dressed and took him to see their boss upstairs.
Then he blew up. The suicide bomber killed only himself, but Mr. Khalid sustained severe abdominal wounds as well as injuries to his hands and arms.
Now, months after that attack, on Dec. 6, a spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, Shafiqullah Tahiri, confirmed that the attacker had hidden the bomb inside his rectum.
Two other Afghan security officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that the bomb had been hidden internally. Officials had earlier been quoted as saying the bomb had been hidden in the attacker’s underwear.
The last time such a bomb was known to be used was in an attempt to kill a Saudi prince with a device thought to be the work of Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, one of the most skilled bomb makers of Al Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate.
In August 2009, Mr. Asiri’s brother, Abdullah, detonated himself during a meeting with Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, the deputy interior minister at the time, in Jidda. The prince was only lightly wounded; the bomber’s lower torso was shredded.
Afterward, the counterterrorism unit of Europol, Europe’s police agency, warned that airlines might have to tighten their screening procedures because a rectal bomb could escape detection by normal X-ray scanning machines.
“The sensitivity and power of these machines would need to be increased or reviewed, in order to overcome shielding of the device by the human body,” Europol’s report said.
Mr. Asiri, who was linked to the Saudi attack by postings on jihadist Web sites, is also believed to be the creator of the underwear bomb, used in an abortive attempt to bring down an American airliner in 2009.
Despite the concerns about what such bombs could accomplish on an airplane, and that they might make it easier to evade detection by normal X-ray scanners, Robert Bunker, a researcher who has extensively studied the possibilities of body-cavity suicide bombs, noted that there were inherent limitations to the design.
“There are some really practical limitations to what you can do with the basic physics,” he said. “You can only get so much in the body, and there is no shrapnel effect.” Because they are so small, the blast is greatly blunted by the bomber’s body itself.
“It’s good news that these things have very limited lethality,” Mr. Bunker said.
The origin and exact design of the bomb used against Mr. Khalid remained unclear. Within days of the attack, Mr. Khalid was taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, a leading treatment site for blast injuries. Though he returned to Kabul on April 2, within weeks he was back at Walter Reed for treatment of complications, and he apparently remains there.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on Mr. Khalid, but when asked whether it had been done with a body-cavity bomb, a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, demurred. “There is a commission in the Islamic Emirate that is organizing and masterminding these sophisticated and complicated operations,” he said. “We can’t reveal the secret because we may use these tactics again in the future.
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07 June 2013
China encircles U.S. by sailing warships in American waters, arming neighbors - Washington Times
China encircles U.S. by sailing warships in American waters, arming neighbors - Washington Times:
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/7/china-encircles-us-arming-western-hemisphere-state/#ixzz2VaEuFY33
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
China has been quietly taking steps to encircle the United States by arming western hemisphere states, seeking closer military, economic, and diplomatic ties to U.S. neighbors, and sailing warships into U.S. maritime zones.
The strategy is a Chinese version of what Beijing has charged is a U.S. strategy designed to encircle and “contain” China. It is also directed at countering the Obama administration’s new strategy called the pivot to Asia. The pivot calls for closer economic, diplomatic, and military ties to Asian states that are increasingly concerned about Chinese encroachment throughout that region.
“The Chinese are deftly parrying our ‘Pivot to the Pacific’ with their own elegant countermoves,” said John Tkacik, a former State Department Asia hand.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to question President Barack Obama about the U.S. pivot during the summit meeting set to begin Friday afternoon in California. Chinese state-run media have denounced the new U.S. policy as an effort to “contain” China and limit its growing power.
The Chinese strategy is highlighted by Xi’s current visit to Trinidad, Costa Rica, and Mexico where he announced major loans of hundreds of millions of dollars that analysts say is part of buying influence in the hemisphere.
U.S. officials say the visit to the region has several objectives, including seeking to bolster Chinese arms sales to the region amid efforts by Russian arms dealers to steal market share.
States including Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Mexico recently purchased Chinese arms but are said to be unhappy with the arms’ low quality. For example, Chinese YLC radar sold to Ecuador in 2009 did not work properly and sales of Chinese tanks to Peru also ran into quality problems. Both states are now looking to buy Russian weaponry, a U.S. official said.
Venezuela, a key oil-producing U.S. adversary, announced Thursday that China agreed to a $4 billion loan for oil development.
And in Mexico this week, Xi announced China is extending a $1 billion line of credit for oil development and pledged another $1 billion trade deal.
A joint Mexico-China statement said Mexico pledged not to interfere in China’s affairs on Taiwan and Tibet, a reference to the previous government of Mexican President Felipe Calderon who in 2011 invited exiled Tibetan leader the Dalia Lama, a move that angered Beijing.
U.S. officials say there are concerns that the pro-Beijing shift by the current government of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who visited China in April, will be exploited by China for such political goals, and could be used to generate support for China’s claims to Japan’s Senkaku Islands.
U.S. officials said there are growing fears that some type of military confrontation could break out between China and Japan over the disputed islands that are said to contain large underwater gas and oil reserves.
North of the U.S. border, Canada this week concluded a military cooperation agreement with China during the visit to Beijing by Canadian Defense Minister Peter G. Mackay. The agreement calls for closer cooperation between the two militaries, including bilateral military exchanges.
Chinese ambassador to Canada Zhang Junsai said China is deepening ties to Canada for infrastructure development, in Calgary last month. Chinese state-run companies have spent $30 billion for Canadian oil sands and natural gas, he said.
At a security conference in Singapore last month, the commander of U.S. military forces in the Pacific, Adm. Samuel Locklear, confirmed the earlier disclosure by a Chinese military officer that China’s military has been conducting naval incursions into the 200-mile U.S. Economic Exclusion Zone around U.S. territory.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/7/china-encircles-us-arming-western-hemisphere-state/#ixzz2VaEuFY33
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
From the Obama Ministry of Truth
The American Spectator : From the Obama Ministry of Truth:
Monday
Now, let’s see what we are supposed to believe today from the Obama Ministry of Truth….
First, that Hillary Rodham Clinton could possibly be taken seriously as a Presidential contender or a President. This is the woman who traveled one million miles with no positive accomplishments as Secretary of State. This is the woman who masterminded one of the great foreign policy catastrophes of all time… aiding the “Arab Spring” in which governments friendly to the west in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia were replaced with Islamists bent on destroying all human rights and the main repository of human rights on earth, The United States of America.
This is the woman who said, in what was supposedly total stone cold sobriety, “What does it matter how four Americans died in Benghazi? Whether they were killed by people walking down the street or by terrorists? They’re dead. So, what?” That’s a paraphrase.
Apparently, this future first female President does not realize that it matters because 1.) The killings themselves show that Mrs. Clinton was not doing her job properly, and 2.) Her lying about it was contempt of Congress and perjury and obstruction of justice.
So, we are supposed to believe that a supposedly non-inebriated person made these comments and they are worthy of a President.
What else.…
Well, we are supposed to believe that a massive assault by the IRS on a popular uprising called the Tea Party was known to the higher ups at the IRS, at the Justice Department, and at the White House.
But Mr. Obama, much too pure and innocent to be told about mistakes in his administration, was too busy bathing the feet of the poor and tending to lepers to be told that his administration was engaged in an Orwellian attack on free speech.
Now, you see if you fail to believe that, you are the worst thing that you can be in today’s world. You are a racist. You can be a homosexual. In fact, that’s a good thing. You can be a pornographer. In fact, you’re supposed to be a pornographer. You can kiss the butts of terrorists. That’s called leading from behind and abandoning American “exceptionalism,” a really wicked idea that America is exceptionally great. You can be all of these things. But no matter what, you cannot be a racist against blacks. (You can be a racist against whites.)
But if you criticize Mr Obama, you are a racist. Thus, quod erat demonstrandum, Mr. Obama cannot be criticized. So, he did not for a moment know that his IRS was tormenting the political movement that laid him low in 2010. And, if you doubt it, you’re a Klansman.
Let’s see what else we are supposed to believe….Oh, here’s the best one: that it’s fine, in fact, super fine, for a mother to kill a baby in the womb when it’s physically and mentally identical to a baby that’s just been born. That it’s fine to kill them if you don’t like their sex. But it’s anti-woman to want to keep them alive and not kill them because they are female babies.
And, it’s fine to kill 800,000 babies a year in abortion mills, but, it’s heinous to own a gun that you keep locked up in a closet and don’t even take out for years at a time and have never even aimed at a human being. That it’s urgently compelling to protect lizards in West Texas….but perfectly good — even a fine example of the progress women have made — to have women use abortion as a form of birth control.
God help us. Who would have ever dreamed things could go so wrong? And if Mr. Obama can never be held accountable because his father was a Kenyan, when does this ever stop?
Monday
Now, let’s see what we are supposed to believe today from the Obama Ministry of Truth….
First, that Hillary Rodham Clinton could possibly be taken seriously as a Presidential contender or a President. This is the woman who traveled one million miles with no positive accomplishments as Secretary of State. This is the woman who masterminded one of the great foreign policy catastrophes of all time… aiding the “Arab Spring” in which governments friendly to the west in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia were replaced with Islamists bent on destroying all human rights and the main repository of human rights on earth, The United States of America.
This is the woman who said, in what was supposedly total stone cold sobriety, “What does it matter how four Americans died in Benghazi? Whether they were killed by people walking down the street or by terrorists? They’re dead. So, what?” That’s a paraphrase.
Apparently, this future first female President does not realize that it matters because 1.) The killings themselves show that Mrs. Clinton was not doing her job properly, and 2.) Her lying about it was contempt of Congress and perjury and obstruction of justice.
So, we are supposed to believe that a supposedly non-inebriated person made these comments and they are worthy of a President.
What else.…
Well, we are supposed to believe that a massive assault by the IRS on a popular uprising called the Tea Party was known to the higher ups at the IRS, at the Justice Department, and at the White House.
But Mr. Obama, much too pure and innocent to be told about mistakes in his administration, was too busy bathing the feet of the poor and tending to lepers to be told that his administration was engaged in an Orwellian attack on free speech.
Now, you see if you fail to believe that, you are the worst thing that you can be in today’s world. You are a racist. You can be a homosexual. In fact, that’s a good thing. You can be a pornographer. In fact, you’re supposed to be a pornographer. You can kiss the butts of terrorists. That’s called leading from behind and abandoning American “exceptionalism,” a really wicked idea that America is exceptionally great. You can be all of these things. But no matter what, you cannot be a racist against blacks. (You can be a racist against whites.)
But if you criticize Mr Obama, you are a racist. Thus, quod erat demonstrandum, Mr. Obama cannot be criticized. So, he did not for a moment know that his IRS was tormenting the political movement that laid him low in 2010. And, if you doubt it, you’re a Klansman.
Let’s see what else we are supposed to believe….Oh, here’s the best one: that it’s fine, in fact, super fine, for a mother to kill a baby in the womb when it’s physically and mentally identical to a baby that’s just been born. That it’s fine to kill them if you don’t like their sex. But it’s anti-woman to want to keep them alive and not kill them because they are female babies.
And, it’s fine to kill 800,000 babies a year in abortion mills, but, it’s heinous to own a gun that you keep locked up in a closet and don’t even take out for years at a time and have never even aimed at a human being. That it’s urgently compelling to protect lizards in West Texas….but perfectly good — even a fine example of the progress women have made — to have women use abortion as a form of birth control.
God help us. Who would have ever dreamed things could go so wrong? And if Mr. Obama can never be held accountable because his father was a Kenyan, when does this ever stop?
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