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Latest Articles: International News
Israel’s Options All Point In The Same Direction.
Post Date: 2010-08-18 06:54:22 by Skip MacLure
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Israel knows it has to go it alone now. If there was hope lingering that Barack Hussein Obama was going to overcome his thinly-disguised contempt for the State of Israel, and in the end turn and lend his support to the mission that everybody knows Israel has on its plate but no one wants to talk about, that hope has now vanished. Israel has watched the situation become more dangerous and more difficult with every passing day. Buried amongst stories of an Iranian F-4 crashing several miles north of the Bushehr reactor site, there was speculation that the plane had been downed by the intense anti-aircraft blanket that is protecting the site, which is set to be fueled on August 21. There ...
Bolton: Israel Only Has '8 Days, No Make That 3 Days', To Hit Iran Nuke Site
Post Date: 2010-08-17 17:13:26 by Brian S
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Update: Former US envoy to UN tells Israel Radio deadline has slipped to 3 days"Bolton claimed Israel has only three days to strike before Russia 'begins the fueling process for the Bushehr reactor this Friday,' after which any attack would cause radioactive fallout that could reach as far as the waters of the Persian Gulf," The Jerusalem Post reports.In an interview with Fox Business Network earlier Tuesday Bolton had said the deadline was eight days, but he revised it to three in the Israel Radio interview, saying Iran and Russia had announced they would begin fueling on Friday."It has always been optimal that military force is used before the fuel rods are ...
Refusal of resignations serves to protect church [ refusal this week of Pope Benedict XVI to accept the resignations of Dublin auxiliary bishops Ray Field and Eamonn Walsh ]
Post Date: 2010-08-16 22:11:40 by WhiteSands
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THE KEY to understanding the refusal this week of Pope Benedict XVI to accept the resignations of Dublin auxiliary bishops Ray Field and Eamonn Walsh lies in realising the scale of the trauma experienced by the Vatican in recent months. After all, no such problems arose with the resignations of two other former auxiliary bishops Donal Murray and Jim Moriarty. At that stage, however, it was early in the year and it seemed the fallout from the Ryan and Murphy reports on the widespread cover-up of clerical child abuse was merely an Irish problem, a blip on the Vatican’s horizon. But then the appalling vista began to emerge. Undoubtedly prompted by the considerable international media ...
On Facebook: Israeli soldier posed with bound Arab
Post Date: 2010-08-16 21:53:20 by A K A Stone
5 Comments
JERUSALEM – A former Israeli soldier posted photos on Facebook of herself in uniform smiling beside bound and blindfolded Palestinian prisoners, drawing sharp criticism Monday from the Israeli military and Palestinian officials.
Israeli news websites and blogs showed two photographs of the woman. In one, she is sitting legs crossed beside a blindfolded Palestinian man who is slumped against a concrete barrier. His face is turned downwards, while she leans toward him with her face upturned. Another shows her smiling at the camera with three Palestinian men with bound hands and blindfolds behind her.
The incident was a reminder of the fraught relations between Israeli soldiers and ...
Urgent cry for help as death toll rises from Pakistan flooding [ about one-fifth of the country underwater ]
Post Date: 2010-08-16 21:51:05 by WhiteSands
4 Comments
Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- As an umbrella group of humanitarian entities called for "urgent international support" Monday in flood-ravaged Pakistan, the United States was sending materials to provide shelter for almost 47,000 displaced Pakistanis. The U.S. Embassy said that a cargo aircraft carrying 530 rolls of heavy-duty waterproof and fire-resistant plastic sheeting for use as temporary shelters was sent by the United States to Karachi, Pakistan, on Monday, a day after another flight ferried 240 rolls of plastic sheeting to Karachi. "Our experience has shown that plastic sheeting is urgently needed for temporary shelters, and we know it is urgently needed in Sindh as ...
White House Denies Giving Turkey Ultimatum Over Israel Ties
Post Date: 2010-08-16 19:29:13 by Brian S
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The United States on Monday denied reports it had given Turkey an ultimatum, threatening to scrap a huge arms deal unless the Muslim state toned down its hostile stance against Israel. Earlier Monday the Financial Times reported that U.S. President Barack Obama had warned the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that strained ties with Israel and increasing support of Iran could hinder Washington's plan to ship arms, including sophisticated drones, to Turkey. But the White House has rejected the claims. "I really don't know where they would have divined that from," White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton told reporters. "The President and Erdogan did ...
White House Says Afghan Deadline ‘Non-Negotiable’
Post Date: 2010-08-16 19:18:05 by Brian S
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The White House said Monday that July 2011 was a "non-negotiable" deadline for starting a US withdrawal from Afghanistan, while insisting that President Barack Obama and his top general in Kabul were on the same page. The White House was quizzed about a seeming disconnect between the two after General David Petraeus said in an interview aired Sunday that he could seek a delay in the troop drawdown if conditions on the ground required it. "I think the president has been quite clear in explaining that it's a process, not an event, and that it's conditions-based," he told NBC television's "Meet the Press" program. "The president and I sat down ...
Flood victim: Pakistan treating us like 'dogs'
Post Date: 2010-08-16 18:42:57 by WhiteSands
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SUKKUR, Pakistan — Pakistani flood victims, burning straw and waving sticks, blocked a highway on Monday to demand government help as aid agencies warned relief was too slow to arrive for millions without clean water, food and homes. Public anger has grown in the two weeks of floods, highlighting potential political troubles for an unpopular government overwhelmed by the disaster that has killed at least 1,600, made two million homeless and in total has disrupted the lives of at least a tenth of its 170 million people. Hundreds of villages across Pakistan in an area roughly the size of Italy have been marooned, highways have been cut in half and thousands of homeless people have been ...
Gold Market is not “Fixed”, it’s Rigged
Post Date: 2010-08-16 17:26:43 by WhiteSands
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In 1919 the major London gold dealers decided to get together in the offices of N.M. Rothschild to “fix” the price of gold each day. While this was notionally to find the clearing price at which all buying interest and all selling interest balanced the possibility for market manipulation and self-dealing is inherently systemic in such a cozy arrangement. This quaint anti-competitive procedure continues to this day. In no other market in the world do the major players get together each day and decide on a price. Imagine if Intel, AMD and Samsung were to meet each day to “fix” the price of microchips, or if the major oil companies were to meet each day to “fix” ...
Iran Will Build 10 Uranium Enrichment Centers, Nuclear Chief Says
Post Date: 2010-08-16 17:06:28 by Brian S
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Tehran, Iran (CNN) -- Iran plans to begin construction of 10 uranium enrichment centers across the country by next year, state-run media is quoting Iran's nuclear chief as saying. After a cabinet meeting Sunday, Ali Akbar Salehi told IRIB, a state network, that work on one of the centers will be started by March 2011. Over the weekend, a top Iranian lawmaker defended his nation's right to enrich uranium in the future after Iran and Russia confirmed that Russians will start loading a nuclear reactor in the Islamic republic with fuel next week. The August 21 arrival of fuel at the Bushehr facility, which Iran says will create atomic energy but other nations fear could be used for ...
Muslim leaders to abandon plans for Ground Zero community center
Post Date: 2010-08-16 16:38:42 by WhiteSands
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Insiders say Muslim spiritual leaders behind the controversial initiative are considering giving up on the former World Trade Center location, in a gesture of appeasement. After weeks of heated debate over plans for an Islamic community center near Ground Zero - the site of the 9/11 attacks on New York - it seems Muslim leaders will soon back down, agreeing to move to a new site. The decision follows a high-profile campaign against the project that included advertisements on New York buses showing images of the burning Twin Towers, an iconic landmark razed when al-Qaida terrorists flew packed passenger planes into them in 2001. The New York Republican party is also said to be planning a ...
Taliban Stone Couple for Adultery in Afghanistan
Post Date: 2010-08-16 16:09:01 by WhiteSands
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KABUL, Afghanistan -- Taliban militants stoned a young couple to death for adultery after they ran away from their families in northern Afghanistan, officials said Monday. Amnesty International said it was the first confirming stoning in Afghanistan since the fall of Taliban rule in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. The Taliban-ordered killing comes at a time when international rights groups have raised worries that attempts to negotiate with the Taliban to bring peace to Afghanistan could mean a step backward for human rights in the country. When the Islamist extremists ruled Afghanistan, women were not allowed to leave their houses without a male guardian, and public killings for violations ...
Turkey's Stance On Israel, Iran Could Harm Arms Sales: US
Post Date: 2010-08-16 15:50:06 by Brian S
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(RTTNews) - The United States has warned Turkey that its position on Israel and Iran could jeopardize its chances of obtaining American weapons, a British news report said on Monday. President Barack Obama is reported to have told Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan when he met the latter at the G20 summit in Toronto that Ankara had failed to act as an ally after it voted against fourth round of sanctions against Iran, which the U.N. Security Council adopted on June 9, the Financial Times said quoting an unidentified administration official. Ankara had then argued that Tehran should be given a chance to carry out a nuclear fuel-swap deal, which was brokered by Turkey and Brazil. ...
Pentagon: China's Military Power Growing
Post Date: 2010-08-16 15:39:14 by Brian S
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon says China's military power is on the rise as it pursues more land-based missiles and attack submarines, and that the secrecy of its drive increases the risk of miscalculation. The annual military assessment was released Monday. It comes at a time of strained U.S. relations with Beijing. This year, the two countries have been at odds on whether North Korea attacked a South Korean warship and how to settle China's longtime dispute with Taiwan. The Pentagon report says Beijing is actively pursuing ways to prevent the U.S. from intervening in a potential conflict with Taiwan. The report also says the country's secrecy about its military program ...
China Favors Euro Over Dollar as Bernanke Alters Path [Ruh-Roh!]
Post Date: 2010-08-16 14:40:58 by Capitalist Eric
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China, whose $2.45 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves are the world’s largest, is turning bullish on Europe and Japan at the expense of the U.S. The nation has been buying “quite a lot” of European bonds, said Yu Yongding, a former adviser to the People’s Bank of China who was part of a foreign-policy advisory committee that visited France, Spain and Germany from June 20 to July 2. Japan’s Ministry of Finance said Aug. 9 that China bought 1.73 trillion yen ($20.1 billion) more Japanese debt than it sold in the first half of 2010, the fastest pace of purchases in at least five years. “Diversification should be a basic principle,” Yu said in an ...
Dreadful Market Perceptions
Post Date: 2010-08-16 14:38:20 by Capitalist Eric
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August 16, 2010 As we explained in the last issue that when GDP figures are again revised we would find 2nd quarter GDP growth was really 1.3% to 1.5%, not 2.4% revised down from 3.7%. This experience points out the really bogus nature of government statistics. Several months ago we projected that without QE the economy in the 3rd quarter would result in 1% growth and minus 1% in the 4th quarter. Insiders on wall Street knew months ago that we’d get QE, which was announced on Wednesday by the FOMC and that is why they projected GDP growth for the 2nd half of 1-1/2%. We project zero to 1%. Even with a $5 trillion injection over the next two years by the Fed, we can only project ...
Fed's Hoenig: Keeping Rates Too Low 'Dangerous Gamble'
Post Date: 2010-08-16 14:16:37 by Capitalist Eric
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Fed's Hoenig: Keeping Rates Too Low 'Dangerous Gamble' - Politics and Government * US * News * Story - CNBC.com UpdateTimeStamp('634173139036870000');The Federal Reserve is undertaking a "dangerous gamble" by keeping rates at near zero for so long, and must start raising rates or risk damaging the nascent U.S. recovery, a top Federal Reserve official said on Friday. "To be clear, I am not advocating a tight monetary policy," Kansas City Reserve Bank President Thomas Hoenig said in the text of a speech to the Lincoln, Nebraska, Chamber of Commerce. "I am advocating a policy that remains accommodative but slowly firms as the economy itself expands ...
Robert Gates Dismisses Gen Petraeus Suggestion That Withdrawal From Afghanistan Can Be Postponed
Post Date: 2010-08-16 13:40:29 by Brian S
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Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, has put himself at odds with the country's top commander in Afghanistan by ruling out any delay in the start of troop withdrawals next year. Published: 2:57PM BST 16 Aug 2010 Mr Gates said that American troops would start to pull out on schedule in July 2011 as he confirmed that he would leave office next year, once the drawdown was on track. The remarks came just a day after Gen David Petraeus had said he reserved the right to advise a delay if the fighting was not going well. "I think that by next year I'll be in a position where - you know, we're going to know whether the strategy is working in Afghanistan," Mr Gates told ...
China Overtakes Japan As No. 2 Economy
Post Date: 2010-08-16 11:14:43 by Brian S
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China overtakes Japan in 2Q as world's No. 2 economy amid slowdown in recovery Japan lost its place as the world's No. 2 economy to China in the second quarter as receding global growth sapped momentum and stunted a shaky recovery. Gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of just 0.4 percent, the government said Monday, far below the annualized 4.4 percent expansion in the first quarter and adding to evidence the global recovery is facing strong headwinds. The figures underscore China's emergence as an economic power that is changing everything from the global balance of military and financial power to how cars are designed. It is already the biggest exporter, auto ...
US To Give $4 Billion Worth Of F-35I Fighter Jets To israel [my title]
Post Date: 2010-08-15 20:33:40 by Brian S
7 Comments
JERUSALEM — Israel's defense minister has given the go-ahead to a $4 billion purchase of advanced American F-35I fighter jets. Ehud Barak's office says Barak approved the purchase of the stealth fighters along with spare parts and services. Military officials said Israel would purchase around 20 of the Lockheed Martin jets. The F-35I is also known as the Joint Strike Fighter. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the deal were not made public. Israel's government is expected to approve the deal soon. The purchase will be funded by U.S. military aid to Israel. The F-35I can avoid enemy radar systems. Analysts suggest that could help Israel ...
Pakistan Will Never Recognize Zionist Regime
Post Date: 2010-08-14 21:17:41 by Brian S
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TEHRAN (FNA)- The Pakistani government announced on Saturday that Islamabad will never recognize the Zionist regime of Israel, and strongly rejected reports alleging that Pakistan has inaugurated an office in Tel Aviv. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry rejected some media reports that the country has recognized the Zionist regime, and described them as "unfounded". "Such news are utterly false," a foreign ministry spokesman said, adding, "Pakistan's policy on the Zionist regime is clear and based on principles." "Pakistan's policy on this issue has not changed and will not change," he reiterated. The spokesman further dismissed the media ...
WikiLeaks Says It Won't Be Intimidated by Pentagon
Post Date: 2010-08-14 21:05:15 by Brian S
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STOCKHOLM (Aug. 14) -- WikiLeaks will soon publish its remaining 15,000 Afghan war documents, despite warnings from the U.S. government, the organization's founder said Saturday. The Pentagon has said that secret information will be even more damaging to security and risk more lives than WikiLeaks' initial release of some 76,000 war documents. "This organization will not be threatened by the Pentagon or any other group," WikiLeaks founder and spokesman Julian Assange told reporters in Stockholm. "We proceed cautiously and safely with this material." He said WikiLeaks was about halfway though a "line-by-line review" of the 15,000 documents and ...
Pakistan Flood Crisis Raises Fears Of Country's Collapse
Post Date: 2010-08-13 20:17:15 by Brian S
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By Saeed Shah and Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The humanitarian and economic disaster caused by the worst floods in Pakistan's history could spark political unrest that could destabilize the government, dealing a major blow to the Obama administration's efforts to fight violent Islamic extremism. The government's shambling response to floods that have affected a third of the country has some analysts saying that President Asif Ali Zardari could be forced from office, possibly by the military, which has ruled Pakistan for more than half its 63-year history. Other experts caution that the state itself could collapse, as hunger and ...
Russia Will Begin Loading Fuel Into Iran's First Nuclear Plant Next Week
Post Date: 2010-08-13 11:07:09 by Brian S
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Iran’s first nuclear power plant will start operating Aug. 21, with electricity generation to begin “several months later,” said Rosatom Corp., the Russian state nuclear holding company building the facility. “On the 21st, nuclear fuel will be delivered to the reactor storage facility and from that moment on the plant can be certified as a nuclear power installation,” Rosatom spokesman Sergei Novikov said by phone in Moscow. “This means the end of the test phase. Power generation will begin several months later.” Rosatom unit ZAO Atomstroyexport took over construction of the Bushehr plant after Russia signed a $1 billion contract for the project in 1995. ...
WikiLeaks to continue releasing Afghan war files: Assange
Post Date: 2010-08-13 10:57:27 by Brian S
3 Comments
LONDON (AFP) – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange insisted Thursday the whistleblower website still planned to release its final batch of US military files on the Afghan war, despite American demands it hold back. Speaking via video link to an audience in London, Assange said the site was preparing to release the final 15,000 classified files, the remaining documents from a huge cache which were published last month. "We are about 7,000 reports in," he said, without giving a date when the files would be released. Asked whether the website would press ahead with the release, he responded: "Absolutely." His comments came despite renewed pressure from the Pentagon to ...
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