MFS - The Other News

                        Morning Posting.

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity in Fiji 5.2  - 6.2 ! More info here.

• Japan : For the most accurate info on the nuclear disaster go to : Paul Langley's Nuclear History Blog.Here.

• The End of Attaturk his legacy?Turkey’s Top Four Generals Resign After Erdogan Tension.(Businessweek). (Bloomberg) -- Turkey’s top four generals stepped down, the first such mass resignation in the country’s history, amid tensions with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan over alleged military plots to undermine his government.Chief of General Staff Isik Kosaner asked to leave because he “deemed it necessary,” the state news agency Anatolia reported from Ankara, citing no one. The chiefs of the army, air force and navy announced their resignations soon after, the NTV news channel reported. Those three were due to retire at the end of August, NTV said. The lira fell 1.3 percent and credit- default swaps rose 10 basis points to 193, data provider CMA said.Erdogan, re-elected to a third term in office in June, has reduced the secularist armed forces’ power over Turkish politics since he came to power in 2002. His party was formed after the closure of an Islamist party. More than 40 serving generals, or about a tenth of the senior ranks, are under arrest after prosecutors alleged that they planned bomb attacks to undermine Erdogan’s administration.“This will be managed with no tanks on the street,” Tim Ash, head of emerging market research at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in London, said in an e-mailed comment. “But this increases risk perceptions of Turkey and comes at a bad time given concern over the economy overheating. The lira will come under more short term pressure.”Turkey’s lira, the worst performer this month among more than 20 emerging-market currencies tracked by Bloomberg, fell as much as 1.3 percent to 1.6991 per dollar in Istanbul. It has lost 4.4 percent this month. Bond and stock markets were closed.Today’s resignations followed a meeting in Ankara between Kosaner, Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul to discuss promotions of senior military staff that are due to be decided at a Supreme Military Council that starts Aug. 1.Erdogan is in talks with Gul after meeting Necdet Ozel, head of rural police forces and the only top commander not to have stepped down, Anatolia said.Erdogan was pushing to force the retirement of the generals and admirals who are jailed as part of the trials, according to a report in Cumhuriyet newspaper on July 5. None of them have been convicted.The resignations were the general’s “way of expressing their response to the government’s arbitrary decisions,” Gursel Tekin, a deputy head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, said in a telephone interview.Hmmmmm......Judge,Jury and executioner?Read the full story here.More here.

• Barack Obama Twitter Spams The Nation, Loses 30,000 Followers And Counting.(Mediate).You know that friend of yours who’s always the first to get in on the hottest social media trends? The one who had a Tumblr before everyone? The one who first sent you a Google+ invite? Well, remember that one time that your hip friend made a big misstep? Like he joined some online service which lets you tag people in your dream journal or “like” porn videos and he swore that it was gonna be the next big thing even though it clearly wasn’t? Yeah well, today, President Obama’s campaign staff is kind of like that as they’ve initiated a day-long project to tweet out the Twitter names of every Republican Congressmen state by state…in individual tweets.Great idea to help people contact their representation, right? The 30,000 people who have unfollowed Obama in the past few hours seem to disagree.Soon the deluge started as the official Twitter account began to go through each state, listing the names of every Republican representative that has an account themselves. Anyone following the President soon found their Twitter feed filling up with messages that basically had, at best, a one in 50 chance of being relevant to them in anyway.Hey, remember that funny Onion story about Obama sending the entire country a “rambling 75,000-word e-mail” that the Fox Nation reported as true? Well, this is as close as we’re gonna get to it actually coming true.The idea is clearly to get constituents to overwhelm the Twitter accounts of these Congressmen and women with tweets and retweets to force them to see the will of the people. However, didn’t they realize that, to do this, they’d be overwhelming all of the President’s followers first? The idea may be working in that each individual tweet already has at least a hundred retweets, but the huge negative response from Twitter at large is quickly becoming the main story.Over the past few hours, the President’s Twitter account has already lost nearly 30,000 followers. That may not seem like much considering he has nearly 10,000,000 and every day the number changes by a couple grand or so. However, when the number moves, it moves upwards. And that’s always. According to TwitterCounter.com, Obama’s follower count hasn’t ever trended significantly downward in six months.Hmmmm......Obama has lost 36,000 followers as of 6:45 est. You think they report him for spam?Read the full story here.

• Economy on the Brink of Double Dip Recession.(WhitehouseDossier).By Keith Koffler.It’s worse than anyone thought.Economic growth in second quarter of 2011 is just 1.3 percent – a half percent less than expected – and the estimate for the first quarter of 2011 was revised downward from 1.9 percent to 0.4 percent – essentially no growth.Technically, a recession is two quarters in a row of negative growth. You don’t have to be a mathematician to see that we are basically in a mild recession, since the economy has ceased to grow. With unemployment at 9.2 percent and growing, I’d say it feels like a recession to me.

Here’s what President Obama should do:

1. Fire his economic team. No letters of resignation. Fire them. They can all go to Harvard to teach.

2. Stop fundraising and campaigning for reelection.

3. Accept a temporary increase in the debt ceiling that Speaker Boehner is offering him.

4. Spend the several months making drastic reforms to government that slash spending by trillions of dollars so that the deficit is under control and our economy has a fighting chance.

THIS IS BIGGER THAN YOU, MR. PRESIDENT.What happened to all the nonsense about how you’d be a one-term president if you could just do some good in the world? Please, you’re just another politician, grasping at power like an alcoholic straining for a quart of bourbon.YOUR POLICIES ARE A FAILURE. YOU MUST CHANGE THEM.Hmmmmm......SS Titanic Full Steam Ahead.Read the full story here.

• ATF: The White House Knew.(Investors).Scandal: A former ATF special agent tells Congress a National Security Council staffer was informed about Operation Fast and Furious before guns allowed into Mexico wound up at the murder scene of a U.S. agent.The latest evidence that both the White House and attorney general knew and approved of Project Gunrunner and its deadly offshoot, Operation Fast and Furious, came this week in the testimony of William Newell, ATF special agent in charge of the Phoenix office, before Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.That the "stench of cover-up," as Fox News analyst Brit Hume described the administration's handling of the matter, may reach even into the Oval Office itself was evidenced by Newell's testimony that he communicated with Kevin O'Reilly, a staffer on President Obama's National Security Council, about Operation Fast and Furious in September 2010.O'Reilly was national security director for North America tasked with monitoring the activities of Mexican drug cartels. We are asked to believe he inquired about a program that was providing the cartels with guns but kept what he found out to himself.That date, by the way, is three months before weapons permitted to "walk" into Mexico were found at the scene in Arizona were U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. Newell said O'Reilly had inquired about the status of Project Gunrunner to brief administration officials before a trip to Mexico.Are we to believe neither the White House nor the Department of Justice knew about a program that made that access even easier?Administration officials have taken the Sgt. Schultz "we knew nothing" approach to any inquiries, only to be tripped up by their own words and actions.Newell's email to O'Reilly is evidence that at least one person in the White House did.Attorney General Eric Holder told the House Judiciary Committee in May that he learned about the operation in the "last few weeks." In fact, as we've noted, Holder himself gave a speech to Mexican authorities in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on April 2, 2009, taking credit for Gunrunner as well as Fast and Furious for himself and the Obama administration.Holder told the audience: "Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels. My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner."At a June 29 press conference, President Obama told reporters, "As you know, my attorney general has made clear he certainly would not have ordered gun-running to pass through into Mexico."Yet a video shows former Deputy Attorney General David Ogden telling reporters at a Department of Justice briefing of steps to expand Gunrunner "as part of the administration's comprehensive plan" and as the "president has directed us."ATF agents have testified that they were ordered not to interdict guns before they passed into Mexico under this operation and evidence has surfaced that the FBI averted its eyes when an instant background check should have alerted them to two convicted felons transferring more than 300 guns.The "stench of cover-up" grows stronger even as the mainstream media put a clothespin on their collective nostrils.Hmmmmm.........GunWalker "These boots are made for walking , that's just what they'll do, one of these days these boots will walk all over you!Read the full story here.

• Did Obama Admit To Ordering ‘Operation Fast and Furious?’ – With Video.(PatDollard).Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama still deny authorizing the lethal program, despite President Obama specifically asking Holder to conduct a complete review of current gun enforcement policies during a joint press conference in Mexico City with Mexico President Felipe Calderon in April 2009.

“Our focus is to work with Secretary Napolitano, Attorney General Holder, our entire Homeland Security team, ATF, border security, everybody who is involved with this to coordinate with our counterparts in Mexico to significantly ramp up our enforcement of existing laws. In fact, I’ve asked Eric Holder to do a complete review of how our current enforcement operations are working and make sure we are cutting down on the loop holes that are causing some of these drug trafficking problems. Last point I would make, is that there are going to be some opportunities where I think we can build some strong consensus. I’ll give you one example and that is the issue of gun tracing, the tracing of bullets and ballistics and gun information that had been used in major crimes.”Read and see the full story here.

• And while you're all busy with the debt ceiling:"House panel approves broadened ISP snooping bill".(CNet).Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers' activities for one year--in case police want to review them in the future--under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today. The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall's elections, and the Justice Department officials who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements, a development first reported by CNET.A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses, some committee members suggested. By a 7-16 vote, the panel rejected an amendment that would have clarified that only IP addresses must be stored. It represents "a data bank of every digital act by every American" that would "let us find out where every single American visited Web sites," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, who led Democratic opposition to the bill. Lofgren said the data retention requirements are easily avoided because they only apply to "commercial" providers. Criminals would simply go to libraries or Starbucks coffeehouses and use the Web anonymously, she said, while law-abiding Americans would have their activities recorded. To make it politically difficult to oppose, proponents of the data retention requirements dubbed the bill the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011, even though the mandatory logs would be accessible to police investigating any crime and perhaps attorneys litigating civil disputes in divorce, insurance fraud, and other cases as well. "The bill is mislabeled," said Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the panel. "This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It's creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes."In January 2011, CNET was the first to report that the Obama Justice Department was following suit. Jason Weinstein, the deputy assistant attorney general for the criminal division, warned that wireless providers must be included because "when this information is not stored, it may be impossible for law enforcement to collect essential evidence." Hmmmm.........The Land of the 'free'?Read the full story here.

• 27 Terrorists deemed to Hold Aviation Licenses.(NYTimes).WASHINGTON — The Transportation Security Administration cannot determine the real identities of thousands of the people to whom the Federal Aviation Administration has issued licenses as pilots and aircraft mechanics, but has located an additional 27 who should not have held them because of terrorist connections, according to an internal report by the Department of Homeland Security. The report was requested two years ago by four senators after a private data analysis company in New York determined that the man convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 still held an F.A.A. license, as did a man caught trying to smuggle military equipment to Hezbollah in Lebanon, a man convicted of trying to make an airborne poison in his basement and a self-described eco-terrorist who fled the country after he was indicted on a charge of arson. The F.A.A. and the Department of Homeland Security were supposed to scour the list of licensed pilots, mechanics and flight dispatchers for terrorists under a law approved by Congress after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but they have had difficulties doing so despite having access to much more information than the private company.The new report, by the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, found that the F.A.A. had Social Security numbers of only about 750,000 people out of the 1.3 million names in its Airmen Registry, and that among those for whom it had numbers, more than 15,000 of them did not match the Social Security database for name, sex or date of birth. By law, the F.A.A. cannot require a Social Security number, the report noted, and as a result, “T.S.A. may not identify U.S. citizens who have provided false biographic information to receive an airman certificate.” Not all of the discrepancies represent a potential security threat; the report said that more extensive study over the past few years found that 8,000 of the license holders were dead. The report offers no details about the 27 individuals whose certificates were canceled, but does indicate the poor state of federal records, almost a decade after the Sept. 11 attacks. An initial computer scan found about 29,000 certificates that matched names on the government’s Terrorist Screening Database, but further study found that 28,500 of the matches were invalid; 506 were turned over for closer scrutiny, yielding the 27 names. The report does not mention any technique other than matching names. The New York company, Safe Banking Systems in Mineola, found some of the suspect individuals by matching names. But it contends that names are a poor identifier; they can be misspelled or, if they originate in a non-Roman alphabet, they can be spelled inconsistently when rendered in English. The Libyan convicted in the Lockerbie bombing was listed in F.A.A. records as Abdelbaset Elmegrahi; on the F.B.I.’s 10 Most Wanted list, he was Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi. Safe Banking Systems, using only publicly available data, found some suspect individuals by matching addresses or other data.John D. Rockefeller IV, one of the senators who requested the investigation, said Thursday that the report “shows that almost 10 years after the 9/11 attacks, the F.A.A. is still not doing enough to verify the identity of airman’s certificate holders and that some certificate holders have connections to terrorism.” Mr. Rockefeller, who is a West Virginia Democrat and chairman of an aviation subcommittee, said that the F.A.A. and Homeland Security were making progress, but that “issuing certificates to people who pose a threat to our aviation system is simply unacceptable.” Hmmmm.....Fasten your seatbelts, landing at Destiny?Read the full story here.

• U.S. balance now less than Apple cash.(FinancialPost).Steve Jobs is now more liquid than Uncle Sam.While it’s highly unlikely that President Barack Obama is looking to ask the founder and chief executive of Apple Inc. for a loan, it became a fact as of Thursday afternoon — the world’s largest technology company now has more cash on hand than the most powerful democracy on Earth has spending room.As Republicans and Democrats continue to work towards a compromise to the country’s debt ceiling crisis, the U.S. Treasury Department said on Thursday that Washington now has a total operating balance of only US$73.768-billion.Meanwhile, Apple currently boasts a cash reserve of US$75.876-billion, as of its most recent quarterly earnings report at the end of June.Hmmmmm......"CHANGE"?Read the full story here.

• Ken Langone Flips Out On Obama, Accusing Him Of Long Lasting "Destruction".(BussinessInsider). Ken Langone, the former director of the NYSE and a veteran of Wall Street banking, had some harsh words for President Obama.Langone lambasted Obama's leadership during the debt ceiling crisis to CNBC, saying it has been "unpresidential."Langone opined: He is dividing us as a nation. He's not bringing us together. He's willfully dividing us. He's petulant.He is not acting presidential. He is behaving in a way designed in my opinion to divide us, to make us look at each other with skepticism, with suspicion. That is the end of America as we know it. The destruction he is inflicting by his behavior will carry on long after we settle the debt limit.As Dan Loeb similarly commented in a recent letter to investors, Langone said that Obama has been fostering class warfare.While Langone said that people as wealthy as him should pay more taxes, he argued that framing this issue as a rich versus poor dichotomy is divisive and unnecessary."The debt ceiling is a done deal," says Langone told CNBC.Hmmmm......If he really wanted to destroy America, would he do anything different?Read the full story here.

• The Obama EPA’s Brave New Future: "You Will Obey"!(Heritage).Say goodbye to cars and trucks as you know them. Say hello to a brave new future ushered in by the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s one where the federal government reshapes a major U.S. industry by administrative fiat, all in pursuit of a policy goal that will cost money, jobs, and lives—all to satisfy the left’s environmentalist factions while dishing out taxpayer dollars to an Obama-favored unionized industry.That industry is the auto industry, and the Obama Administration is yet again using the mighty fist of the federal government to recast it in its own image. The Washington Post reports that the Obama Administration and the auto industry have reached agreement on new federal regulations that would raise fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, hitting an average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025—a 40 percent reduction in fuel consumption compared to today.Those new standards, though designed to reduce greenhouse gases, bring with them significant costs. Fourteen of Michigan’s 15 representatives in Congress—including Democrat Senators Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin—wrote a letter to the President warning him of the consequences that draconian fuel efficiency standards could have for their state, the home of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, citing a report by The Center for Automotive Research which warned that overly stringent standards could add $10,000 to the cost of a new car. Heritage’s Nicolas Loris explains how those higher costs can lead to job loss:

Higher prices reduce demand and force people to hold onto their older vehicles longer. Reduced demand means fewer cars produced, which means automakers have to shed jobs. The Michigan-based consulting firm Defour Group projected that a 56 mpg standard would destroy 220,000 jobs.

Has the promise of government subsidies been enough to convince the automakers and the United Auto Workers (UAW) to get on board with the job-killing standards? It sure looks that way. Despite reports that the government has “reached an agreement” with automakers on the new standards, the auto industry initially lobbied against the new rules, going so far as to prepare TV ads against the regulations to run in seven states. Strangely, the ads were pulled a week ago, possibly out of fear of further antagonizing the Obama Administration. And don’t forget, the industry faced the prospect of a higher than 60 mpg standard, as reported last October. Given no other option, it looks like they took the lesser of two evils.The UAW, too, had a change of heart on the regulations. Autoline Daily reports that the UAW met with automakers over its concern that the rule would mean fewer jobs because of its impact on SUV and truck production. But then on July 18, the UAW joined with members of the BlueGreen Alliance—which includes labor unions and environmental activist groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club—in calling for increased fuel efficiency standards in a letter to President Obama.The change in the UAW’s position might seem puzzling, were it not for a significant point in the letter. In addition to supporting the fuel efficiency standards, the UAW and the BlueGreen Alliance wrote that they support “federal efforts to assist the industry retool to meet demand for cleaner, more efficient cars.” And there’s the rub. Going green will require more green from the federal government in the form of cash for retooling—more government subsidies from the Obama Administration. Not surprisingly, the UAW is all for it. A blue-green alliance, indeed.And there you have it. The Obama Administration is issuing rules—without congressional approval—to significantly change the way the auto industry is doing business, forcing it to make vehicles that few are buying today (only 2,745 Chevy Volts have been sold this year). And in order to achieve that compliance, the Administration will likely have to fund the retooling plants and subsidize consumers’ purchase of the high-mileage cars. Meanwhile, the cost of gasoline is going up, yet the President has restricted drilling in the Gulf, leaving the United States unable to tap its domestic oil reserves.Hmmmm......A 'King' who will not only tell you which health insurance you will buy,but now will tell you which car you will drive.Read the full story here.

• 4 suspects in Hariri killing named.(Ynet).UN-backed Lebanon tribunal releases names, photographs and details of men wanted for assassination of former Lebanese PM in bid to speed up their arrest.The UN-backed Lebanon tribunal released on Friday the names, photographs and details of four men wanted for the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in a bid to speed up their arrest. Lebanon received the indictments and four arrest warrants from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) last month. While the suspects were not named then, Lebanese officials said the accused were members of the Shiite militant movement Hezbollah.Hezbollah accuses the tribunal of being a US and Israeli tool and denies any link to the 2005 assassination. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said this month that indicted members of his group would never be arrested. The suspects named were Mustafa Amine Badreddine, a senior Hezbollah figure and brother-in-law of slain Hezbollah commander Imad Mugniyah, as well as Salim Jamil Ayyash, Hussein Hassan Oneissi and Assad Hassan Sabra. Pre-trial judge Daniel Fransen ordered the lifting of confidentiality on the full names, aliases, biographical information, photographs and charges against the individuals named in the indictment, the tribunal said in a statement. "The Prosecutor further submits that making the requested information available in public fora may increase the likelihood of apprehending the accused in the event that any of them are noticed by the public," the tribunal said in a statement.Read and see the full story here.

• Facebook Social media giant refuses request to ban Holocaust denial from site, citing free speech.(Ynet). Facebook unmoved by Shoah survivors' plea.In a personal plea made by 21 Holocaust survivors earlier this month, social media giant Facebook has been asked to refuse access to anyone wanting to use the site to promote Holocaust denial. Meanwhile, Facebook officials, citing free speech, have refused the survivors’ emotional appeal."We think it's important to maintain consistency in our policies, which don't generally prohibit people from making statements about historical events," said a Facebook spokesman. "No matter how ignorant the statement or how awful the event." Simon Wiesenthal’s Associate Dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, clearly does not accept Facebook’s explanation. "A review of denial sites currently active on Facebook confirms that it is not mere speech, but that it constitutes at its core a platform for bigotry and hatred of Jews, dead and alive," said Cooper, who insists that he will continue to try and convince Facebook to removed the objectionable material. The letter, which appears on the Simon Wiesenthal website, reads as follows: Read the full story here.

• U.N. Busy Deciding How to Slam Israel.(Fox).By Anne Bayefsky.Member states of the U.N. General Assembly are busy hammering out how to slam Israel and restrict human rights like free speech at “Durban III” – the racist “anti-racism” event to be held in New York on Sept. 22. With the recent pull-outs by the Czech Republic, Italy and the Netherlands added to the previously declared boycotts by the United States, Canada and Israel, negotiations at U.N. Headquarters continued Thursday over how offensive the final declaration of Durban III can become without more countries following suit.The Durban III conference will commemorate the 10th anniversary of the conference held in Durban, South Africa, in September 2001. That event produced the Durban Declaration, which accused just one country on earth of racism, namely Israel. No negotiations, therefore, can hide the fact that Durban III is a commemoration – in the words of the authorizing General Assembly resolution – of a conference and an outcome remembered most notably for its overt anti-Semitism.Nevertheless, the U.N.’s idea is that since the General Assembly hall in September will be filled with heads of government already present for the Assembly’s annual opening, more than a hundred world leaders will embrace the Durban Declaration and its racist-Israel mantra for the first time. Durban I sported only a handful of such leaders – like Yasser Arafat and Fidel Castro -- while Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the only one to attend Durban II.On the table Thursday was a draft of a “political declaration” to be adopted by the General Assembly at the end of the day on Sept. 22. Negotiations proved to be a toxic combination of U.N. members either pursuing a contorted cover-up strategy or preferring more open Israel-bashing.The co-chairs from Cameroon and Monaco made the agenda painfully obvious. They insisted that the 2011 declaration will “not re-open previously agreed text” since their “mandate is clearly not to renegotiate the Durban Declaration.” On the contrary, Durban III will have the Durban Declaration “at its core.”In light of such an admission, the maneuvering of Germany proved most pathetic of all. German diplomats announced that Germany was a beacon of fighting discrimination. They then declared that the draft declaration, which commemorates and reinforces Durban I, was a good basis for discussion, and they were happily prepared to keep engaging in this “constructive” manner. They did manage to note that singling out any country will not be acceptable to them.In short, according to Germany, a square peg can be fit into a round hole. The Durban Declaration already singles out Israel. The purpose of Durban III is to applaud the Durban Declaration. At Durban II in Geneva in 2009, Germany pulled out just two days before Ahmadinejad opened the conference on the anniversary of Hitler’s birth. True to form (which Germany would have known months beforehand) Ahmadinejad said: “The word Zionism personifies racism that falsely resorts to religion and abuses sentiments to hide their hatred and ugly faces." How long will it take the Germans to figure it out this time?And then there is Australia. On Thursday, Australian diplomats said they were going to stay in the negotiations. They believed the draft declaration was a good starting point and were hopeful about the future. What happened to Australia’s former voice, having pulled out of the Durban II conference in the firm belief that lipstick on a caterpillar does not suffice?Australia, which is running for a seat on the Security Council this fall, is running scared. The Australians are well aware of what happened to Canada at the last Security Council election. The Canadians were defeated despite a huge investment spiritually, politically and financially in the U.N. for decades because the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper refused to abandon support for Israel, free expression and other rights in the face of repeated challenges from Islamic and Arab states at the U.N. Human Rights Council and General Assembly. Evidently, Australian principles aren’t quite so dear.Inspired by the weakness of democratic states across the U.N. human rights system – the United Kingdom and France evidently thought at Thursday's negotiations that dead silence was acceptable – the Russians pushed the envelope and circulated lengthy additional suggestions for a Durban III declaration. The Russians are undoubtedly working in collaboration with the 56 states in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.The Russian document demanded that the General Assembly on Sept. 22 “express concern about the use of the right to freedom of expression to propagate racism … and recall that the exercise of this right carries with it special duties and responsibilities and may therefore be subject to certain restrictions.” The Russians also insisted on recapitulating that the Durban Declaration is a “solid foundation for the struggle against racism.”Durban III – as was easily predicted – is a battleground between weak-kneed, anxious-to-please democratic countries and shameless, brazen non-democracies who hold the balance of power at the General Assembly. How many democracies will continue to play by rules where they cannot win is as yet unclear. What is clear is that there is no middle ground when it comes to being for or against the modern face of anti-Semitism.Hmmmm.......Read the full story here.

• Abdullah Ocalan: "I Have Finished Playing My Role!"(Hevallo).PKK Leader Abdullah Ocalan made significant statements during the meeting with his lawyers on Wednesday, July 27.Calling on the Turkish state and Kandil, PKK Leader Abdullah Ocalan said; "I have finished to play my role. I will take no more steps from now onward to carry on my role unless I am provided with an area of health, security and free movement".Stating that he will not be able to perform an active leadership under the current circumstances, Ocalan said the followings; "I had already expressed that I will no more be able to perform my role under these conditions, however the attitude of the state and the AKP is blindingly obvious, they don't take any steps. Both Kandil and the state's delegation take me in hand and use me as a subcontractor. From today on, I give an end to be used as a subcontractor as my current position harms both the state and the Kurds. I will no more able to give instructions from here. Peace talks cannot be held under these conditions. My situation is similar to that of Mandela in South Africa. And just like he did, I will also not attempt to take any steps towards peace unless I am set free and have a possibility to move freely. As known, Mandela played his role after the necessary conditions were provided.Operations are following one another and neither the state's delegation nor the KCK has done its part. We make no headway in this way. Besides the process does harm to both the state and the Kurds. My leadership under these circumstances will no more be for the benefit of Kurds."Ocalan also remarked that the Iranian operation is "a regional attack" as Iran intends to extirpate the Kurdish freedom vein, which he said is very dangerous.Hmmmm.........The 'roar' of silence.Read the full story here.

• Lebanese outcry after belly dancer performs with Israelis.(JPost).A Lebanese belly dancer has placed herself at the center of a cross-border war of words after performing at a French musical festival with an Israeli metal band, and brandishing the Israeli and Lebanese flags.Johanna Fakhry, 22, says she can’t return to her homeland following threats from her family and compatriots for appearing on stage with the band Orphaned Land in front of 90,000 fans at the Hellfest festival last month in Clisson, France.Amateur video of the performance has amassed 20,000 YouTube views over the past month. The clip shows Fakhry wearing traditional garb and waving a Lebanese flag while dancing around lead singer Kobi Farhi as he sings in Hebrew. She then stands next to the singer and helps him raise a significantly larger Israeli flag.“This is all about peace, my friends,” Farhi tells the crowd as the two performers hold the banners up alongside each other. “We are all brothers and sisters. Now I want to see all of you jumping and party with us, okay?” The crowd responds with cheers and heavy-metal “devil horns” signs, and as the tempo picks up both performers jump up and down holding their flags.With its mix of heavy metal and Middle Eastern influences, Orphaned Land has amassed a following in the region far beyond the most esteemed Israeli cultural ambassadors. Fans from Turkey, Bahrain and Iran regularly turn up for the band’s concerts in Europe.“That phenomenon creates a loyal audience that stays with us, and even endangers [the audience’s] own life,” Farhi told The Jerusalem Post. Indeed, several years ago Egyptian authorities sentenced a fan to six months imprisonment for “Satanism” after he was found with an Orphaned Land CD.The singer said the idea to make a political point onstage had been entirely Fakhry’s.“This dancer contacted me on Facebook and said she wants to perform with us. Of course we said yes, and then she suggested we wave the Israeli and Lebanese flags,” he recalled. “I told her, ‘We’d love to, but we think it might endanger you, and expose you to a lot of criticism.’ She said, ‘I know.Bring the flag – this is my choice, and I want to use my art for the sake of peace.’” With Israel and Lebanon technically at war since 1948, Lebanese law forbids citizens to have contact with Israelis. Fakhry was born to a Muslim family in southern Lebanon, but has lived in France for most of her life and has French citizenship.“Of course there were many negative responses – that’s not a shock – but to our surprise there were also many, many positive responses,” Farhi said.He said he received Facebook messages ranging “from calling her a whore who sold the flag to the Mossad, to Lebanese who said they were moved to tears, that we expressed their hopes and dreams that we can all live here in peace.”Fakhry has refused to recant. A response attributed to the dancer posted by New York-based Israeli blogger Roi Ben-Yehuda said, “I wanted to take this opportunity, so rare in history – witnessing on stage an Israeli group and a Lebanese dancer – to say that beyond the artistic exchange and our collaboration for the love of art, we were willing to make it a symbol of peace.“And these two flags that we held as high as the fist can rise, transcends all these years of war and suffering. We both experimented, endured the vicissitude of this never-ending war. But we belong to this new generation – those who behold far the horizon, who open the boundaries,” she wrote.“She can’t go back to Lebanon now,” Farhi said of the singer. “She stands behind her decision, she has no regrets. I’m in touch with her every day, and we’re performing with her once more in France in August. She may even come to Israel,” he said. “Our last names are very similar – she’s Fakhry, and I’m Farhi. The letters got switched at some point,” he added with a chuckle.Attempts to contact Fakhry went unanswered Thursday, but the day before she told Channel 2 News in a short web interview that her family had barred her from returning to her country of birth.“People started criticizing me, threatening me, saying they’d kill me – even my family,” she said.“They’d say things like, ‘You should be ashamed of yourself – never come back to Lebanon.’ But I’m dealing with it, as long as I still have support from people I love.”That same day, she told the website NOW Lebanon, “As a young child living in Lebanon, I, too, thought of Israel as an enemy, now I consider them friends. We are all one people.“I want to tell my fellow Lebanese that I am proud of my roots and my country and who I am as a Lebanese. I will always raise the colors of my flag with great pride. Please understand me before you judge me. I don’t regret what I did on stage because my actions were delivering a passionate message of freedom and peace,” she added.Hmmmm........Read and see (video) the full story here.

• The Successor To Prince Saud?(ElliotAbrams).An interesting royal decree from Saudi Arabia this past week suggests who may finally succeed Saud bin Faisal as foreign minister.Saud, son of the late King Faisal (who ruled 1964-1975) has been foreign minister for thirty-five years. Appointed at the age of thirty-four, he is the world’s longest-serving foreign minister and a sharp player. But now Saud is ill (Parkinson’s among other ailments), and has several times asked to retire. There has for years been a guessing game as to who might succeed him: his brother, Turki, former Saudi Intelligence chief and once their ambassador to Washington? But Turki did not get good reviews back home for his performance here, and does not have the reputation his older brother enjoys. The current ambassador here, Adel al-Jubeir? But he is not a member of the royal family, which has been a prerequisite. Might the job be given out as part of succession deal among the rival clans in the royal family after the death of King Abdallah (who is eighty-seven years old according to official accounts but may be older, and is also not in perfect health)?It appears that the king has his own candidate and wants to line up the job for him now—while he still can. An AFP news item on July 22nd revealed that “’Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has appointed his son deputy foreign minister with the rank of minister,’ the official SPA news agency said on Friday. ‘The king appoints Prince Abdel Aziz bin Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz as deputy foreign minister with the rank of minister,’ SPA quoted a royal decree as saying.”The prince is forty-eight, and his brief resume does not suggest him as the most obvious candidate. But he has since 1989 been a close adviser to his father, who was then Crown Prince and after 1996 (due to the incapacitation of King Fahd) ruled the country as regent. Close Saudi watchers will now wish to see if in the new position the prince actually takes up new duties and begins to position himself to take over for Saud. Of course, a new king will have the right to choose his own ministers—but this move by the present king certainly gives his son a leg up on the competition.Read the full story here.

• Qassem Suleimani: the Iranian general 'secretly running' Iraq.(Guardian).There's a story that the new CIA director, David Petraeus, likes to tell which harks back to his days as a four-star general in Iraq.Early in 2008, during a series of battles between the US and Iraqi army on one side and the Shia militias on the other, Petraeus was handed a phone with a text message from the Iranian general who had by then become his nemesis.The message came from the head of Iran's elite al-Quds Force, Qassem Suleimani, and was conveyed by a senior Iraqi leader. It read: "General Petraeus, you should know that I, Qassem Suleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan. And indeed, the ambassador in Baghdad is a Quds Force member. The individual who's going to replace him is a Quds Force member."Petraeus hardly needed to be told. Much of the US military's work with Iraq's Shia Muslims had been undermined by Suleimani and the client militias of the Iranian general's al-Quds force. So too had US government diplomatic efforts elsewhere in the Middle East, especially in Lebanon.Petraeus last year told a thinktank, the Institute for the Study of War, about the problem Suleimani created for him: "Now, that makes diplomacy difficult if you think that you're going to do the traditional means of diplomacy by dealing with another country's ministry of foreign affairs because in this case, it is not the ministry. It is a security apparatus."The strength of the ties between Suleimani and Iraqi legislators has been revealed during weeks of interviews with key officials, including those who admire him and those who fear the man like no other.Iraq's former state security minister, Sharwan al-Waeli is one who knows Suleimani well. A formal conversation between the Guardian and al-Waeli last year took on a very different tone as soon as Suleimani's name was mentioned.The Shia legislator was a known ally of Iran, so much so that he was seen by secularists and Sunnis in parliament as someone prepared to do Iran's bidding. He denied Iran played a pervasive role in Iraq until he was interrupted with a question that Iraqi officials have long prefered to ignore: when was the last time Qassem Suleimani came to the Green Zone, the fortified government district in the heart of Baghdad?Al-Waeli's left hand trembled slightly and his brow furrowed. "You mean Sayed Qassem Suleimani," he said, giving Suleimani an Arabic honorific reserved for the most esteemed of men. He refused to elaborate.In Baghdad, no other name invokes the same sort of reaction among the nation's power base – discomfort, uncertainty and fear."He is the most powerful man in Iraq without question," Iraq's former national security minister, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, said recently. "Nothing gets done without him.""There is a saying in Islam that you should never get angry with your father or mother. The [Shia] interpret that as meaning what (Khamanei, via Suleimani) says has to be respected by every [Shia] inside, or outside Iran."All of the important people in Iraq go to see him," said Mutlaq. "People are mesmerised by him – they see him like an angel."A second MP – a senior member of Prime Minister Nour al-Maliki's inner circle who regularly meets Suleimani in Iran – said the general has only travelled once to Iraq in the past eight years. He described him as "softly spoken and reasonable, very polite". "He is simple when you talk to him. You would not know how powerful he is without knowing his background. His power is absolute and no one can challenge this."Hmmmm......The weakness of the Obama administration.Read the full story here.

• Russia's envoy to NATO Rogozin:"The United States might use the European missile defense project as preparation for an attack on Iran".(RaiNovosti).Washington has said its nuclear missile defense plans were designed to prevent any possible missile strikes from Iran or North Korea."The missile defense system is not purely a defensive system," envoy Dmitry Rogozin said. "There are serious and authoritative experts in Russia and in other countries who fear that the creation of a European missile defense system, officially assigned the task of blocking a threat from Iran, may in fact be a pretext for preparing an attack on Iran."Western nations have accused Iran of pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program while Iran said its nuclear research was purely civilian. Russia has favored negotiations as a way to resolve the issue."It is absolutely clear that a missile defense aimed against virtual and nonexistent weapons and nonexistent threats can only aggravate the situation," Rogozin said.He added that Russia maintained contacts with Iran and supported its "peaceful nuclear program."Rogozin, who is meeting with the Turkish leadership in Ankara on the U.S.-led missile defense project, said the U.S. pursued its missile defense plans regardless of negotiations with Russia or European partners."The Romanian government and the U.S. recently signed an agreement to set up a base of interceptor missiles near Bucharest and shortly afterward a USS Monterey missile cruiser entered the Black Sea waters," Rogozin said.U.S. experts are also in talks with the Turkish government on deploying an early warning radar system in the southeast of the country.An interceptor missile base is to be opened in Poland in 2018 and equipped by 2020 with new missiles, which will be capable of threatening Russia's strategic nuclear potential.Rogozin said no other NATO country had interceptor missile technologies, so NATO countries have no choice but to buy missile defense elements from the United States.Hmmmmm.......Russia trying to breakup Turkey it's cooperation with NATO?Or is the question : Can the US EVER trust Turkey?Read the full story here.

• "Боже мой"!Kremlin-run Novosti quotes Belarusian opposition: Neo-fascist mass murderer Breivik trained at “secret paramilitary camp” in Belarus in early 2011,Belarusian KGB codename “Viking”.(OnceUponaTime InTheWest).Today, the Kremlin-run media, in a rare burst of candor that somehow slipped past Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s censors, dropped a bombshell. Novosti admits that Norwegian neo-fascist terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who bombed and gunned down 76 adults and youths last Friday, trained at a “secret paramilitary field camp” in the former Soviet republic of Belarus earlier this year.After his arrest, self-confessed killer Breivik indicated that his intention was to “save Norway” from drowning in a wave of Muslim immigration by inflicting maximum damage to the “communist-infiltrated” Labour Party. The summer camp where he mercilessly shot up more than 60 teen age participants was operated by Norway’s ruling party.“Breivik visited Belarus several times,” Mikhail Reshetnikov, leader of the opposition Belarusian Party of Patriots, told the Gazeta.ru online newspaper. “This spring, as part of his preparations for his twin attacks, he visited Minsk, where he underwent training at a secret paramilitary field camp.” Reshetnikov cited sources within Belarus’ “security organs,” meaning the Committee for State Security, which still bears its ominous Soviet-era name: KGB.In his 1,500-page online manifesto, Breivik mentioned that he had visited Belarus to study the effects of fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The former Soviet republic’s state border agency confirms the Norwegian was in Belarus from March 4 to March 11, 2005. Concerning his more recent activities in Belarus, Minsk authorities are mum.Reshetnikov claimed that earlier this year Breivik participated in “sabotage-terrorism drills” under the tutelage of a “former” Belarusian special service officer and that he had used a fake passport to enter Belarus. “His codename in Belarus’s KGB was Viking,” he added. “Rumors say he also had a girlfriend in Belarus.”“The theory that Belarus’ special forces were involved in training Anders Breivik seems, of course, far-fetched,” demurred political expert Viktor Demidov to Gazeta.ru. “On the other hand, [Belarusian] President Alexander Lukashenko’s friendship with Muammar Gaddafi is no secret – neither is his fondness for Adolf Hitler.” Norway, notes Novosti, is taking part in NATO air strikes against Libya and embattled dictator Qaddafi has threatened attacks against Europe.Read the full story here.

• Turkey - German Greens leader not allowed to meet Turkish journalist under arrest.(TodaysZaman).A German Greens leader who said she was not allowed to meet with an Turkish journalist under arrest has harshly criticized the government for what she said is risking Turkish democracy by jailing journalists.Germany’s Greens Party co-chair Claudia Roth, known to be a staunch supporter of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), attempted to visit Ahmet Şık, who was jailed earlier this year over the contents of his unpublished manuscript. At the time of his arrest critics slammed the government for crushing dissent and imposing censorship but prosecutors say his unpublished papers were not just a book manuscript but a part of an operation to foment chaos with the intent to eventually topple the democratically elected government.“If there are more than 70 arrested journalists in a country who cannot do their jobs, then there is something wrong in terms of democracy in that country,” Roth told reporters after the failed attempt to meet with Şık, who she labeled as a “symbol.” Roth said she came to Silivri Prison, where Şık is currently under arrest on charges of being a part of an Ergenekon plot, to send a message to him and his friends that “we will never forget you.”She added that it is a risk for democracy in Turkey if journalists are jailed for what they are doing. Roth was allowed to enter the prison and waited there for two hours, but she said she was not allowed to meet with Şık. “I am very angry about this,” she said.Hmmmmm......No word from the Turkish 'Human rights commission'?Neh...... didden't think so.Read the full story here.