MFS - The Other News

                          Morning Posting.

• HT:Frontline. Flying Cheap is it safe? A decade ago aircraft repairs were mostly done by the airlines flying the planes. Today, carriers are outsourcing the bulk of heavy maintenance. Should we worry? A co-production with the Investigative Reporting Workshop.In a follow-up to the hard-hitting investigation of the regional airline industry, FRONTLINE sets its sights on another growing trend -- the outsourcing of major airline repair work to foreign-based maintenance operations, from China to El Salvador, and to U.S.-based contractors who keep costs low by using unlicensed mechanics. FRONTLINE correspondent Miles O'Brien investigates reports of undertrained mechanics, foreign workers who can't read the English language repair manuals, inadequate FAA oversight and the use of unauthorized airline parts.Read the full story here.

• HT:Memri.Uproar in Germany over Anti-Israeli, Anti-Semitic Turkish Film Due for Release on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.An uproar has erupted in Germany over the upcoming launching of the Turkish film "Valley of the Wolves: Palestine," about Turkish commando team which goes to Israel to track down the Israeli military commander responsible for the Gaza flotilla raid. The film's intended release date in Germany, January 27, coincides with International Holocaust Remembrance Day.German politicians have condemned both the film and the date chosen for its release. PM Kerstin Griese, of the Social Democratic Party, criticized the film for inciting to violence and fomenting anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic sentiment. MPs Philip Missfelder of the Christian Democratic Party and Jerzy Montag of the Green Party said its release on January 28 disrespected victims of the Holocaust. The latter added, however, that the film could not be banned unless it breached the law, because, unless illegal, "sickening things [could] be shown in Germany.A spokesman for the film's distributors, the Cologne-based Pera Film, said the company had been unaware of the sensitivity of the date.Hmmmmm.....The hatred of Israel by theTurks is even bigger than that of the Palestinians.Get Turkey out of NATO!Read the full story here.

• Developping!Egypt protesters clash with police. Police fire tear gas at anti-government demonstrators in Cairo as thousands call for ouster of president Hosni Mubarak.Unconfirmed sources(twitter) say police opend fire with live bullets,one person killed.Inspired by Tunisian demonstrators, thousands of Egyptian protesters on Tuesday gathered in Cairo and other major cities, calling for reforms and demanding the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, Al Jazeera's correspondents have reported.The anti-government protesters, some hurling rocks and climbing atop an armoured police truck, were chanting slogans against Mubarak, who ruled the country for three decades.Downtown Cairo came to a standstill with protesters chanting slogans against the police, the interior minister and the government, in scenes that the capital has not seen since the 1970s.Demonstrators marched toward what Al Jazeera's Rawya Rageh called the "symbols of their complaints and their agony," the headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party, the foreign ministry and the state television.But police responded with blasts from a water cannon and set upon crowds with batons and acrid clouds of tear gas to clear demonstrators crying out "Down with Mubarak'' and demanding an end to the country's grinding poverty.Earlier on Tuesday, Rageh reported from the protests, calling them "unprecedented" in the leniency showed by security forces who allowed demonstrators to march through the capital.The Egyptian government had earlier warned activists hoping to emulate Tunisian pro-democracy protesters that they faced arrest if they went ahead with Tuesday's mass demonstrations, which some labelled the "Day of wrath".Black-clad riot police, backed by armoured vehicles and fire engines, have been deployed in a massive security operation in Cairo, with the biggest concentrations and likely flashpoints, including: the Cairo University campus, the central Tahrir Square and the courthouse where protesters are said to be gathering. Coinciding with a national holiday in honour of the police, a key force in keeping president Mubarak in power for 30 years, the outcome in Egypt on Tuesday is seen as a test on whether vibrant Web activism can translate into street action.Organisers have called for a "day of revolution against torture, poverty, corruption and unemployment"."Activists said they wanted to use this particular day to highlight the irony of celebrating Egypt's police at a time when police brutality is making headlines," reported Rawya Rageh, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Cairo."In fact, the call originated from a Facebook page initially set up to honour a 28-year-old man from Alexandria who activists say was tortured to death by police."Witnesses are telling us that there are hundreds on the streets. This is an indication that the protests seem so far to be larger than the usual protests that have taken place here in Egypt over the past few years."Read the full story here.Video here.

• UK - Film on dangers of Asian sex gangs commissioned by Government agency... then withheld for three years!A specially commissioned film warning young girls of the dangers posed by Asian sex gangs is yet to be seen in schools after almost three years, it was revealed today.My Dangerous Loverboy, a 20-minute drama ordered by UK Human Trafficking Centre in 2008, was intended to be seen by 13 and 14-year-old girls across Britain.It tells the story of an under-age girl whose older Asian boyfriend lures her into parties where drug and alcohol abuse are rife before selling her for sex with older men.Officials feared teenage girls were increasingly at risk of become victims of such crimes, concerns that have recently been backed by a string of convictions.However, after a series of delays blamed variously blamed on technical difficulties and budget problems, the film has only been seen by a small number of youngsters in test screenings.The screenings brought great acclaim for the drama which was hoped would make a real difference to the then almost unpublicised issue of Asian sex gangs.Sheila Taylor, chief executive of Safe & Sound Derby, told The Times newspaper that 'the bureaucracy and technical problems associated with this project have been deeply frustrating for all involved.'The UKHTC has denied the delay was due to fears about racial sensitivities.In the film, set in an unnamed northern town, 14-year-old Jade regularly bunks off school and is charmed by Raz, 27.He separates her from friends, giving her a mobile phone as she enjoys the parties and fast cars that he is involved with.At one such party he urges her to 'be nice' to a man he says is a record producer, and keen to oblige she does. The teenager then descends into being trafficked from town to town where she is sold to older men for sex.David Dillnutt, head of UKHTC said the film was being developed for use in schools soon.He added: 'Since 2009, My Dangerous Loverboy has been well used by frontline professional, including police officers and child support workers, who are in a position to spot warning signs and help prevent child exploitation taking place.'The UK Human Trafficking Centre and its partners, who commissioned the film, hope that in addition to encouraging early intervention, it will give victims confidence to come forward and help bring their abusers to justice.'The film has been shown at numerous national, regional and local conferences and seminars, film festivals and other events throughout the UK by a range of different organisations.'Further enhancements have now been made to develop it into an educational package for use in schools.' Read the full story here.video here.

• HT:What'sUpWithThat.Browner out at the White House – Hansen bites back.The plot thickens: White House aides Monday were mum about what would happen to the Office of Energy and Climate Change except to declare that Browner, a former Senate staffer to Al Gore, believed energy issues would remain front and center for the president.One wonders now if Obama will even mention climate during the State of the Union Address Tuesday night. With jobs and economy taking front and center and Browner’s announcement right before SOTUA, government climate initiatives may be relegated to the back-burner. We’ll have to wait and see.New York Times. Dot Earth. NASA’s Hansen Pushes Obama for a Carbon Cost and a Nuclear Push.Hansen also slammed President Obama for buckling to advocacy groups who impede progress on nuclear power, rather than being a “responsible leader” and authorizing a major new programme of building new nuclear power stations.Despite frequently proclaiming global warming to be an existential threat to humanity, Romm has hindered the move to low emissions energy by waging a campaign against nuclear power, which – as Hansen notes – has “the best safety record of any major industry”. Why is Romm ignoring the advice of the scientists he himself champions? Is it science, or is it politics?Read the full story here.

• HT:SultanKnish.In the Crosshairs of the Speech Police.In the weeks since the Arizona massacre, the media has revealed a preoccupation with language almost as intense as the one that motivated her shooter. Loughner's obsession with Congresswoman Giffords seems to have begun in 2007 when she mockingly replied to his question, "How do you know words mean anything?" And Loughner's killing spree has touched off the media's obsession with that same question, leading a CNN anchor to apologize for using the term "crosshairs".It was almost as if the media had come down with a lighter version of Loughner's fixation on grammar as a tool of mind control. If only they could properly censor the language, no one would have to die or go on shooting sprees. Somehow if we refuse to use the word 'crosshairs', no one will ever wind up in anyone else's crosshairs. It's as if the use of the word creates the idea, rather than the word being only another means of describing an idea.But controlling language is not the same thing as controlling minds. Orwell's 1984 depicted a totalitarian regime which controlled language in order to prevent forbidden ideas from finding expression. Since then (1948 not 1984) the left has obsessively tried to politicize language. There are entire seminars on the political uses of language. Newscasts are dotted with politically correct terminology, homeless, differently abled, custodial worker-- yet has changing language actually changed attitudes?Loughner and the media both agree that words can control men's minds. The media's descent into the madness of the speech police reflects a multichannel schizophrenia of their own. The belief that their words create reality. And in the crosshairs of the speech police, criminals become the victims of language, and language becomes the target.Read the full story here.

• Renewed Push to Give Obama an Internet "Kill Switch".A controversial bill handing President Obama power over privately owned computer systems during a "national cyberemergency," and prohibiting any review by the court system, will return this year. Internet companies should not be alarmed by the legislation, first introduced last summer by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), a Senate aide said last week. Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "We're not trying to mandate any requirements for the entire Internet, the entire Internet backbone," said Brandon Milhorn, Republican staff director and counsel for the committee. Instead, Milhorn said at a conference in Washington, D.C., the point of the proposal is to assert governmental control only over those "crucial components that form our nation's critical infrastructure." Portions of the Lieberman-Collins bill, which was not uniformly well-received when it became public in June 2010, became even more restrictive when a Senate committee approved a modified version on December 15. The full Senate did not act on the measure."Declaration of National Cyber Emergency"The revised Lieberman-Collins bill, dubbed the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, works this way: Homeland Security will "establish and maintain a list of systems or assets that constitute covered critical infrastructure" and that will be subject to emergency decrees. (The term "kill switch" does not appear in the legislation.) Under the revised legislation, the definition of critical infrastructure has been tightened. DHS is only supposed to place a computer system (including a server, Web site, router, and so on) on the list if it meets three requirements. First, the disruption of the system could cause "severe economic consequences" or worse. Second, that the system "is a component of the national information infrastructure." Third, that the "national information infrastructure is essential to the reliable operation of the system." At last week's event, Milhorn, the Senate aide, used the example of computers at a nuclear power plant or the Hoover Dam but acknowledged that "the legislation does not foreclose additional requirements, or additional additions to the list." A company that objects to being subject to the emergency regulations is permitted to appeal to DHS secretary Janet Napolitano. But her decision is final and courts are explicitly prohibited from reviewing it. President Obama would then have the power to "issue a declaration of a national cyberemergency." What that entails is a little unclear, including whether DHS could pry user information out of Internet companies that it would not normally be entitled to obtain without a court order. One section says they can disclose certain types of noncommunications data if "specifically authorized by law," but a presidential decree may suffice.For their part, Lieberman and Collins say the president already has "nearly unchecked authority" to control Internet companies. A 1934 law (PDF) creating the Federal Communications Commission says that in wartime, or if a "state of public peril or disaster or other national emergency" exists, the president may "authorize the use or control of any...station or device." In congressional testimony (PDF) last year, DHS Deputy Undersecretary Philip Reitinger stopped short of endorsing the Lieberman-Collins bill. The 1934 law already addresses "presidential emergency authorities, and Congress and the administration should work together to identify any needed adjustments to the act," he said, "as opposed to developing overlapping legislation." Hmmmm......Democracy or dictatorship?Read the full story here.

• HT:TheAmericanDream.No Jobs, No Hope, No Future: 27 Signs That America’s Poverty Class Is Rapidly Becoming Larger Than America’s Middle Class.In the America that most of us grew up in, most Americans considered themselves to be part of the "upper middle class", the "middle class" or "the lower middle class". Yes, there have always been poor people and homeless people, but they were thought to be a very small sliver of the population. Well, today all of that is dramatically changing. America's emerging "poverty class" is exploding in size at the same time that America's middle class is rapidly disappearing. You won't hear it on the mainstream news, but the truth is that the United States has lost ten percent of its middle class jobs over the past decade. Only the top 5 percent of income earners in the U.S. has had their incomes increase enough to keep up with the rising cost of living over the past 40 years. The truth is that today there are a whole lot of people aggressively jostling for the small number of good jobs that are actually available and each year millions more Americans are being squeezed out of the middle class. The number of Americans that are financially dependent on the U.S. government continues to set new records month after month. The number of Americans that are participating in the labor force continues to go down. The sad reality is that the "American Dream" that so many Americans used to take for granted is being ripped away from us. If you still believe that the United States is guaranteed to always have a very large, very prosperous middle class then you really need to read the statistics listed below.If you told most Americans ten years ago that in 2011 over 43 million Americans would be on food stamps hardly anyone would have believed you.But yet here we are.Read the full "Change" story here.

• And the Debt Bomb Ticks On.With his approval rating moving up to 50 percent and higher in some polls, the pundits are all agreed. President Obama has turned the corner. He is now the winter-book favorite in 2012.How, two months after his "shellacking," did he do it?First, by taking the wheel from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, cutting a deal to extend the Bush tax cuts, bringing aboard Bill Daley, and separating himself from the demonizers of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck as moral accomplices in the Tucson massacre.Second, Obama has been the beneficiary of bullish news.Undeniably. Yet, consider. The federal deficit for the fiscal year 2011, which ends Sept. 30, is projected at between $1,200 billion and $1,500 billion.Thus, the $100 billion in cuts the firebrands are pushing, and few think they will get, add up at best to 8 percent of the deficit and 2.5 percent of the $3.87 trillion budget Obama proposed.Thus, at best, this Congress will only slightly reduce the rate of speed at which we are heading toward a debt default.The last few days have brought other news bearing on the debt bomb hanging over the Western world.Now, facing trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, House Republicans are balking at agreeing to raise the debit limit of $14.3 trillion, though the national debt just crossed the $14 trillion mark.Are the happy days really here again?Hmmm......"Together we thrive" over the cliff?Read the full story here.

• HT:StrategyPage.Iraq Prepares For War With Iran.January 25, 2011: The Iraqi Army is hustling to get ready to deal with Iran, by the time the last 50,000 U.S. troops leave at the end of the year. Increased oil production, and oil prices, has made it possible to recruit more troops, and equip more combat divisions. Particularly noteworthy is the creation of Chemical Defense Regiments, with the goal of one of these units being assigned to each combat division over the next few years. The only neighbor known to have chemical weapons is Iran. Iraqi diplomats spend a lot of time trying to improve relationships with Iran, but just in case things go south, the Iraqi military is preparing for the worst. While Iraq has sought to obtain a lot of American weapons, particularly tanks, artillery and combat aircraft, it's been easier, and faster, to get Russian type gear from Russia or East European nations. A lot of this stuff is newly made, but most of it is Cold War surplus. These vehicles and artillery are cheap, a lot of older Iraqis are familiar with them, and they are as good as anything the Iranians have.By the end of the year, the army will have about 230,000 troops. They will not be as well as equipped as during Saddam Hussein's tenure (1960s-2003), but they are better trained. This is important, because Iraqi troops have long been the least effective in the Arab world, largely because of poor leadership. The war with Iran in the 1980s changed that, but Saddam purged most of the competent new leaders, soon after, as he feared they would lead a coup against his disastrous rule (he was probably right.)Read the full story here.

• HT:ElderOfZion.Hamas imam: "Please, Allah, kill all the Jews".Richard Millett watched a new two-hour anti-Israel documentary claiming that Israel targeted children in Gaza. The film is now being shown on college campuses. It included this lovely clip.Read and see the full story here.

• Obama won't endorse raising retirement age or reducing Social Security benefits.President Obama has decided not to endorse his deficit commission's recommendation to raise the retirement age, and otherwise reduce Social Security benefits, in Tuesday's State of the Union address, cheering liberals and drawing a stark line between the White House and key Republicans in Congress.Over the weekend, the White House informed Democratic lawmakers and advocates for seniors that Obama will emphasize the need to reduce record deficits in the speech, but that he will not call for reducing spending on Social Security - the single largest federal program - as part of that effort. Liberals, who have been alarmed by Obama's recent to shift to the center and his effort to court the nation's business community, applauded the decision, arguing that Social Security cuts are neither necessary to reduce current deficits nor a wise move politically. Polls show that large majorities of Americans in both parties - even in households that identify themselves as part of the tea party movement - oppose cuts to Social Security."The commission said nothing surprising about Social Security. The options they recommended are perfectly reasonable and balanced. If the president wasn't willing to embrace these sort of changes, he shouldn't have appointed a commission to find solutions. What did he expect?" Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the nonprofit Concord Coalition, which advocates for balanced budgets, said in an e-mail."I'm increasingly concerned that both parties are content to have a knock-down-drag-out fight over waste, fraud and abuse," Bixby said. "It's a fiscal sideshow, but very safe territory before a presidential election. Very depressing."Hmmmm....It seems there are politicians who would even kiss an Skunk's bottom if it would yield votes? Read the full story here.

• HT:SeeingRed.“Honor killing” trial begins in Phoenix.Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 49, an Iraqi immigrant intentionally drove his vehicle into his 20-year-old daughter, Noor Almaleki and Amal Khalaf her boyfriend’s mother, as the two walked through a parking lot. After running them over, he backed up and ran over them again. Noor was in a coma for two weeks before she died.This horrific, premeditated 2009 crime in which the Muslim father intentionally killed his own daughter and seriously injured another woman, was filed as a first degree murder case, but apparently not one worthy of the death penalty. Although Almaleki admitted his role in the murder, he pled not guilty. The Arizona Republic reported that a plea deal was considered earlier this month. Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugged writes: Honor killing should be a capital crime. Islamic honor killing is on the rise in the West. These barbaric crimes should be stamped out, not sanctioned. They should be dealt with in the harshest terms. Instead unemployed trucker Faleh Hassan Almaleki faces life in prison if a jury finds him guilty of this vicious “honor killing“and hit and run of two. No death penalty was sought.Why?Incredibly, Almaleki’s public defender, Billy Little, asked the judge to take special precautions to ensure the prosecution wouldn’t wrongly seek the death penalty because Almaleki is a Muslim. Little requested that the court “provide some level of assurance that there is no appearance that a Christian is seeking to execute a Muslim for racial, political, religious or cultural beliefs.”No American court should tolerate brutal and premeditated murder out of political, religious and cultural considerations. The message to Muslim girls who are threatened by honor killing is that American courts will offer them no refuge.Hmmmm....America must say NO TO SHARIA LAW and dishonor killings!Read the full story here.

• "Life Or Death in Iran's Prisons".Amnesty : Iran hangs two activists detained during the 2009 unrest.Amnesty International has condemned the executions of two political activists who were arrested in September 2009 during mass protests following Iran’s disputed presidential election..Ja’far Kazemi and Mohammad Ali Haj Aghaei are reported to have been hanged this morning at Tehran’s Evin Prison. Both men had been convicted of moharebeh (enmity against God), “propaganda against the system” and having contacts with a banned opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI).Their hangings are the latest in a wave of executions which has seen the Iranian authorities execute at least 71 prisoners since the beginning of this year – an average of more than 20 each week. Thousands more prisoners are on death row.“We are appalled by the executions of Ja’far Kazemi and Mohammad Ali Haj Aghaei, as we are appalled by the continuing use in Iran of this most cruel and extreme penalty,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s director for the Middle East and North Africa.“Like so many other victims, neither of these men received a fair trial.According to some reports, Ja’far Kazemi was tortured for months by his interrogators at Evin Prison to force him to make a televised “confession” but he refused to do so.He and Mohammad Ali Haj Aghaei were tried together. They are believed to have been sentenced to death in April 2010 and to have had their appeals rejected in July and September.Before they were arrested both men had visited members of their families who live in Camp Ashraf in Iraq, where some 3,400 members and supporters of the PMOI live in exile. Ja’far Kazemi’s son lives at the Camp, which is located some 60km north of Baghdad.Read the full story here.

• US awards $300,000 to four Turkish projects to empower women.Four Turkish projects aimed at increasing women’s and girls’ access to education and healthcare and combating all forms of violence against women and girls were awarded a total of $300,000 from the US Secretary of State’s Office of Global Women’s Issues in the implementation of its first small grants initiative program. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer, appointed by US President Barrack Obama, spoke at a press conference yesterday in İstanbul. During the announcement of recipients of the grants, she said they had received many valuable project proposals.“I wish we could have funded even more projects because we had so many project proposals,” Verveer said, adding that 38 countries had been awarded funding for 57 projects.One of the four Turkish organizations is the Mother and Child Education Foundation (AÇEV), which received approximately $95,000 to implement its “Raising Young Girls” project to benefit 2,550 young girls in İstanbul and Diyarbakır over the next 16 months.Representing AÇEV, Çiğdem Kağıtçıbaşı said their programs in early education, family education and adult literacy have been exemplary since the organization was founded in 1993.The Foundation for the Support of Women’s Work (KEDV), established in 1986, was granted $100,000 for its “solar cooker” project. Şengül Akçar from KEDV said they will work with local women’s cooperatives to implement the solar cooker project, which is aimed at reducing dependency on fossil fuels, providing economic advantages to women and providing benefits for those implementing the solar cooking project.Two more projects received funding from donations to the US State Department by the Avon Foundation. One was the Hüseyin Özyeğin Foundation, which was awarded approximately $50,000 to implement its program “Empowering young women against violence.” Aslı Bekmen from the foundation said the funds will be utilized in the provinces of Diyarbakır, Şanlıurfa, Bitlis and Muş for seminars at six dormitories for girls housing 1,148 students.The fourth grant was $50,000 for Anadolu University’s (AÜ) education projects for journalism students on the issue of gender. İncilal Cangöz from AÜ said their purpose will be to raise awareness of the language journalists use in their reporting of gender-related topics. She said they plan to educate 40 students from five universities and produce educational DVDs and books on the issue to be distributed at journalism schools.Verveer’s visit to İstanbul will also include the inauguration of the US State Department sponsored “Invest for the Future: Women Driving Economic Growth Conference” -- a three-year program geared towards improving the economic situation for women across Southern and Eastern Europe and Eurasia. The conference on Jan. 24-26 will bring together 125 women business owners from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece and Turkey in İstanbul to learn about innovative ways women entrepreneurs can grow their businesses. The program is being implemented in partnership with the Women Entrepreneurs Association of Turkey.Hmmmmmm......KEDV  A "Solar cooker?AÇEV who works together with Harvard?Coincidence Mr president?Read the full story here.

• Russia - Two terrorists involved in Domodedovo blast, both killed.Two terrorists were involved in a suicide bomb attack at Moscow's Domodedovo International Airport that killed 35 and injured up to 180 on Monday, a law enforcement source said.Both died in the explosion that ripped through the international arrivals zone at 4:32 p.m. (13:32 GMT), as friends and taxi drivers were meeting arriving passengers.The blast was equivalent to 5 kilograms of TNT and the bomb was packed with metal objects to cause maximum damage. Earlier reports said that the bomb was equivalent to 7 kg of TNT."The blast occurred when a suspected female terrorist opened a bag. She was accompanied by a man whose head was ripped off by the explosion," the source told RIA Novosti."It cannot be ruled out that the terrorists wanted to leave the explosive device in the hall but the bomb was detonated inadvertently or by a remote control device," he said."The terror attack was done according to a scheme that is used by terrorists from the North Caucasus region," he said. "The [2004] blasts at the Rizhskaya subway station and other explosions in the Moscow metro [2010] were carried out similarly, when the terrorists were accompanied by militants."Reports suggest the terrorists were driven to the airport, Moscow's busiest, by an accomplice.The bombing was the worst terror attack since two female suicide bombers from the volatile North Caucasus republic of Dagestan blew themselves up at two of the capital's subway stations last March, killing 40.Police have hinted the latest outrage may be linked to the Islamist radicals in the North Caucasus.Three suspects are being sought over the bombing.Hmmmm....Makes me wonder...If female terrorists blow themselves up ,do they also get 72 virgins?Read the full story here.

• Sen. Sessions on Obama Initiatives: ‘Can’t See How We Could Possibly Spend More Money’.ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: President Obama is leavening his calls for fiscal restraint for targeted “investments” aimed at helping the economy – including new spending on areas such as education, infrastructure, and job creation.But the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions, told us on ABC’s “Top Line” today that he doesn’t foresee supporting even limited expansions in government spending.“I can't see how we could possibly spend more money at this point,” said Sessions, R-Ala. “Start new programs perhaps -- if some were reduced or eliminated, you might reorder money, and I'd be open to that. But we'd really have to have at least, I think, this year, a 10 percent reduction in spending.”“Ryan has done a fabulous thing. He's developed a plan that goes 60 years, and he deals with Social Security and Medicare, a lot of those changes don't take place until in the distant years in the future,” Sessions said. “But his whole plan and approach is fabulous, we need to be listening to it. The president needs to be engaging it, just those kinds of serious discussions, and from what I'm hearing he's still talking about ‘investments’ which is a code word for spending. We've got to get off that road -- we can't go 30 miles an hour down the road just because we [were doing] 60. It’s the wrong road, so we get on the right road to a solvent America. This will be the best thing for our economic growth.”We also checked in with Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. Van Hollen said the president is pursuing “two paths” – one of fiscal discipline, and another with targeted investments “to get jobs moving again in this country.”Read the full story here.

• Pro-Palestinian groups plan largest Gaza flotilla ever.Convoy of ships is expected to arrive in Gaza on the anniversary of the Israeli raid on the "Mavi Marmara," in May.International pro-Palestinian groups are preparing a massive flotilla of ships to the Gaza Strip in the spring, to coincide with the first anniversary of the Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara in late May, organizers said on Monday.The convoy will be named “Freedom Flotilla 2” and is expected to include delegations from close to a dozen countries including, for the first time, vessels from the US and Canada.According to the organizers, the various groups are in the process of raising money, buying vessels and recruiting volunteers.Dror Feiler, an Israeli- Swedish musician and artist who lives in Stockholm – and one of the organizers behind the new flotilla – said that the flotilla would try to reach Gaza on May 31, the same day that the Israel Navy stopped the Turkish flotilla last year.The coalition behind the new blockade-busting effort includes the Turkish IHH and the Free Gaza Movement, both of which were involved in the May flotilla. It is demanding “an immediate and complete lifting of the closure, including a lifting of the travel ban as well as the ban on exports from Gaza.”According to Feiler, the new flotilla will include activists from Norway, Spain, the US, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, Indonesia and Malaysia.Read the full story here.

• New trends in Halal retailing in North America.The halal retail market in North America is brimming with opportunities and creative retailers are experimenting in numerous ways of capitalizing it. An often overlooked but growing trend is the emergence of large super-market style stores which are open until late night or for twenty four hours. Despite facing a slew of hurdles these businesses have grown and expanded.In Toronto Iqbal Foods has become a landmark and a hit not only with Muslims but also non-Muslim consumers. Open until midnight it attracts customers from throughout the Greater Toronto Area and beyond. Unlike the Queens case, Nayab and Iqbal Foods have faced little opposition because the areas in which they opened were already dominated by the immigrant population. Devon Avenue is a well known South Asian hub. Thorncliffe Park, where Iqbal is located, is a dense neighborhood with highrises populated mainly by Muslims.Hmmm......Merriam-Webster Dictionary "Dominate" Synonyms: conquer, overpower, pacify, subdue, subject, subjugate, subordinate, vanquish.Read the full story here.

• Top Senate Budget Republican not ruling out government shutdown.Washington (CNN) – Most Republicans demanding to slash federal spending won't entertain the idea of taking a possible standoff with President Obama so far that the government shuts down.But the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee told CNN Monday he's not ruling out that possibility "if the President just stonewalls – refuses to pass anything that will be responsible."In 1995, when Republicans controlled all of Congress and a spending stalemate resulted in a government shutdown, President Clinton went on to win re-election.Most Republicans remember that as a politically disastrous move they don't want to repeat. Sessions says there was an upside – the country's fiscal condition did get better."It worked out good for the country. We had three years of balanced budgets that would never have happened had they not fought that hard in Congress so I think that Congress does have to fight," said Sessions.Sessions said he is worried that the "gulf" between what Republicans want in spending cuts and what President Obama will tolerate may be too hard to bridge."It does appear that the president is a man of the left. He believes in government - he's still talking about it now – investments, which are spending programs," said Sessions.Hmmmmm.....If he really wanted to destroy America would he do anything different?Read the full story here.

• Russian Bear protects BP against a takeover.Almost three years ago, Bob Dudley fled Russia. Now he's going back in a big way. Dudley was the chief executive of TNK-BP, a joint venture between the British oil giant and a Russian company to produce oil from Siberia. Today, of course, Dudley runs BP itself.The company recently announced a stock swap in which BP will get a 9.5 percent stake in Russia's state-owned oil company, Rosneft, and Rosneft will get 5 percent of BP's common stock.The deal, which Russia's deputy prime minister valued at about $8 billion, gives BP access to the Russian Arctic, perhaps the world's greatest potential untapped oil reserves, and it gives Rosneft access to Western capital. For BP, though, the deal has an added benefit. For the past six months, the company has been working to shore up its finances in the wake of its disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.Back in the summer, BP faced the threat of a hostile takeover, because, as I wrote at the time, the value of its assets was greater than its market value.Now, nine months after the Deepwater Horizon accident, BP's U.S. shares are within striking distance of their pre-disaster level. Last week they traded more than 75 percent above their low of $27.02 in late June. Even so, takeover rumors have persisted. BP's weakened stock price, combined with rising oil prices, made it a cheap way for another major to bolster its reserves at a bargain price, the theory went.The Russian deal pretty much quashes any chance that another oil major would make a hostile offer for BP, because any buyer would have to deal with the Russian government.Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell have struggled with Russian investments because of that country's hostile business climate.For BP, though, the Rosneft stock swap is a devil-you-know sort of deal. In 2003, the company became the biggest foreign investor in Russia by setting up the 50-50 joint venture with TNK.The equal ownership stakes, though, meant neither side was really in charge, and the Russian oligarchs who control TNK accused Dudley of managing the venture to benefit BP at their expense. The oligarchs, for example, wanted to expand internationally, but BP's directors shot down the idea, presumably because the venture might compete with BP's own interests abroad.The Rosneft deal could indeed prove lucrative just on its merits. In the meantime, it's better than any poison pill takeover defense BP's board could cook up.Hmmmm.....Hiding behind the Russian bear?Read the full story here.

• HT:NewZeal.When Obama Talks like Reagan, Remember Mark Rudd's Warning Words.It is clear that President Barack Obama is going to move his rhetoric to the center, even to the right, as he positions himself for 2012. After all he can hardly talk further left can he?But as the beguiling one talks like Ronald Reagan, we should all keep an eye on his actions.We should also remember this analysis from former Weather Underground terrorist Mark Rudd, written just after the 2008 elections;Obama is a very strategic thinker. He knew precisely what it would take to get elected and didn't blow it. He used community organizing methods to mobilize a base consisting of many people who had never voted before or who regularly don't vote....But he also knew that what he said had to basically play to the center to not be run over by the press, the Republicans, scare centrist and cross-over voters away. He made it.So he has a narrow mandate for change, without any direction specified. What he's doing now is moving on the most popular issues -- the environment, health care, and the economy. He'll be progressive on the environment because that has broad popular support; health care will be extended to children, then made universal, but the medical, pharmaceutical, and insurance corporations will stay in place, perhaps yielding some power; the economic agenda will stress stimulation from the bottom sometimes and handouts to the top at other times. It will be pragmatic... Read Obama's first book, "Dreams from My Father." The second section is the story of his three years doing community organizing in Chicago. It's some of the best writing on organizing I've ever seen. That's all it's about, the core of the book. Obama learned many lessons of strategy and patience... This is no stupid guy... Had any of the stupid Republicans read his books, they never could have said, "We don't know who this guy is." You know every thought he's ever had.Hmmmmm......"They don't trust me because of my middle name"And a million other things?Read the full story here.

• Black Pro-Life Leaders: Santorum ‘Absolutely Right’ to Wonder How Obama Could Support Abortion. Black pro-life leaders say they agree with former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who in an interview with CNSNews.com last week, referred to President Obama's African-American heritage and said he found it “almost remarkable” that the president could be pro-abortion.The former senator touched off a media storm when he said that he agreed with the argument Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., made in his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail” that a just law is a manmade law that comports with the natural law or the law of God, and that he finds it “almost remarkable” that a black man like President Barack Obama would want to deny legal recognition for the human rights of an unborn child.“I have to agree with him and say that I find it remarkable, also,” Day Gardner, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union in Washington, D.C., told CNSNews.com. “In light of the fact that coming out of slavery, we were not considered full human beings. We were treated as no better than pack mules, working in fields, without any rights at all.”During the one-hour-and-40 minute interview, Santorum said that, when asked during the 2008 campaign by Pastor Rick Warren "at what point" a baby "gets human rights," President Obama was wrong to answer “(T)hat is above my pay grade.”Santorum then said: "(T)he question is--and this is what Barack Obama didn't want to answer -- is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no. Well, if that person, human life, is not a person, then I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, no, we are going to decide who are people and who are not people."“It’s very interesting that the ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ was referenced,” Childress said. “In that same letter, Martin Luther King references infanticide or child-killing as evil. So what Martin Luther King calls evil, Barack Obama and this administration calls good -- because all of their policies have more or less facilitated the growth or the intrusion of abortion in our community and our legislation a hundred fold.” "Unfortunately Barack Obama, undoubtedly, is a facilitator for black genocide. What’s the irony of that? Well, Barack Obama himself is black.”“We look at the conditions in which Barack Obama was born himself, his mother endured, and took on the challenges that were given her and did not choose to kill the child that was in her womb," said Childress. "She was abandoned by her father. She did not have any certain dwelling place. She was unquestionably unsure about her financial stability, and yet she chose to have Barack – and as, we can see, this has turned out to be something that became a historic decision to have him -- because this man is the first black president of the United States."“Just because I’m born in Bedford-Stuy or born in the projects and my mother is single and 16 and doesn’t have an education, you don’t have the right to cut off my pursuit of happiness," said the pastor. "You don’t have that right. The Declaration says you don’t have that right. The Constitution says that these rights are for ‘us and for our posterity’ – our future children."Hmmm.....Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal. Martin Luther King, Jr.Read the full story here.

• Charles Aznavour called on Israel to officially recognize Armenian 'genocide'.Turkey pursues “cave anti-Semitism”, Aznavour says.World renowned French chansionnier Charles Aznavour called on Israel to officially recognize Armenian 'genocide', perpetrated under Ottoman Empire in 1915, Kol Israel radio reports.Speaking at the ceremony of International Award of Jerusalem University on January 23, Aznavour said “cave anti-Semitism” has been observed in Turkey in recent years, which took obvious anti-Israeli positions on all Middle East problems, Nashe.orbita.co.il reports.Source.

• Turkey urges Canada not to adopt new 'genocide' resolution.Turkish Parliament Speaker meets Canadian counterpart.Turkish Parliament Speaker Mehmet Ali Shahin has urged Canada to change its policies recognizing Armenian genocide claims, requesting that the country’s Parliament not adopt more resolutions on the same issue in April.“Our wish is not [to see] new problems this April,” Shahin said during a joint press conference with his visiting Canadian counterpart, Noel Kinsella.The Canadian Parliament recognized the 1915 killings of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire as genocide in 2004. The parliamentary recognition was later approved by the government as well, prompting severe reaction from Turkey. However, because the Canadian government later softened its comments on the issue, relations have improved between the two in recent years.Noting that nearly 50,000 Turkish citizens are living in Canada, Shahin said: “They are civilized humans who contribute to the stability and the development of Canada. I want to believe that the Canadian government and its officials will not make a move that could hurt Turkish citizens.”Hmmmmm......Keep silent .....or else what?Read the full story here.

• HT:Memri.'Abbas: If We Fail in the U.N., We Will Take an "Inconceivable" Decision.PA President Mahmoud 'Abbas said that September 2011 was the deadline by which the U.N. must respond to Palestinian appeals regarding the peace process. If these appeals were rejected, he said, the Palestinian leadership would take a decision of which nobody could conceive.Hmmmm......They might leave and go and live in Iran?Read the full story here.