MFS - The Other news

                        Morning Posting.

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity in Tonga 6.0 ,  Panama 5.3 and South Africa 5.3 ! More info here.

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

• Hurricane Katia : Latest Updates here.

• 39 YEARS AGO !The Munich massacre.Read and see the full story here.

• IDF general: Likelihood of regional war growing.(Ynet).Recent revolutions in the Arab world and the deteriorating ties with Turkey are raising the likelihood of a regional war in the Middle East, IDF Home Front Command Chief, Major General Eyal Eisenberg warned Monday. "It looks like the Arab Spring, but it can also be a radical Islamic winter," he said in a speech at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv."This leads us to the conclusion that through a long-term process, the likelihood of an all-out war is increasingly growing," the IDF general said. "Iran has not abandoned its nuclear program. The opposite it true; it continues full steam ahead," he said. "In Egypt, the army is collapsing under the burden of regular security operations, and this is reflected in the loss of control in the Sinai and the turning of the border with Israel into a terror border, with the possibility that Sinai will fall under the control of an Islamic entity.""In Lebanon, Hezbollah is growing stronger within government arms, but it has not lost its desire to harm Israel, and the ties with Turkey aren't at their best," Major General Eisenberg added. Referring to what he characterized as the possibility of a "radical Islamic winter," Major-General Eisenberg said: "This raises the likelihood of an all-out, total war, with the possibility of weapons of mass destruction being used." During his address, the senior IDF official revealed that new, more lethal arms surfaced in the hands of Gaza terror groups during the latest round of fighting in the area. As result of the disturbing development, Israeli civilians were instructed to adopt greater precautions, he said. "We discovered a new weapon, and as result of this we instructed the public to hide under two roofs, rather than only one," he said. Eisenberg added that some 25% of local authorities in Israel are ill prepared to face emergency situations.Hmmmm......And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it….Zech. 12:3.Unknown to them, they are heading for eternal judgment, they think they are coming to make war against God, but they are being gathered for judgment. Isaiah 13:6-8.Read the full story here.

• President Obama puts union members ahead of workers.(WashingtonExaminer).Today is Labor Day, the unofficial end of the summer and a celebration of America's working men and women. Americans will relax and enjoy themselves on their day off, but this will come as little consolation for the 14 million Americans currently unemployed.Unfortunately, President Obama still hasn't provided an effective plan to restore our economic dynamism and put these people back to work. Instead, he has focussed his labor policies on the few Americans (one of every 14 in the private sector) who still belong to unions, largely ignoring the 90 percent of workers who don't. That's because those unions -- in many cases against their members' desires -- provide massive, poorly disclosed campaign expenditures on behalf of Democrats. The result has been panoply of policies that are sapping America's economic vigor while enshrining privileges for a fortunate few.Obama's National Labor Relations Board, far from serving as a mediator and peacekeeper between labor and industry, has become an advocate for a specific Democratic interest group. In addition to its punitive prosecution of Boeing -- which made the mistake of expanding its nonunion labor force in a right-to-work state -- Obama's NLRB has been busily staving off the inevitable demise of private-sector unions with a slew of decisions that will further weaken the businesses that employ most Americans. These latest rulings were made just as liberal Chairwoman Wilma Liebman's term expired last Saturday.Despite lacking any statutory authority, the board has now decreed that employers must advertise to workers their right to form unions, using very large posters and electronic communications. The NLRB also issued pro-union rulings in a handful of critical cases. In one, they decided that when unions cannot win over a majority of employees in a workplace, they can still replenish their diminishing ranks by targeting small groups of employees who might be more receptive to unionization. In another case, Obama's NLRB stripped from workers the right to challenge immediately the results of card-check drives by unions. The ruling applies in cases where employers collude with unions, letting them organize their workplaces without secret-ballot elections. In a third case, the NLRB abolished workers' right to change unions or get rid of their union in a timely manner when a company changes hands.Obama never hid from voters his fealty to union bosses. He promised the Service Employees International Union that as president, he would make the union's agenda his own. And since Obama's inauguration, top union bosses have had more access to the White House than most of Obama's Cabinet secretaries. American workers, the vast majority of whom have nothing to gain from unionization, can only wish they had a president who cared for their interests, and for broader prosperity, as much as he cares for this single, dying institution.Hmmmm........Obama's 'Army'?Read the full story here.

• Obama Bundler George Kaiser Made Multiple Visits to White House in Months Prior to $535 Million Loan Guarantee to Solyndra.(Biggovernment).Top Obama bundler George Kaiser made multiple visits to the White House in the months before the company was granted a $535 million loan from the government.iWatch News reported, via Free Republic:

The i Watch News investigation confirmed that at least 18 other bundlers have ties to businesses poised to profit from the president’s political agenda, through stimulus money, government contracts, or other spending to promote clean energy technology or green development.

Oklahoma billionaire investor George Kaiser is one. A longtime Democratic donor, he is a big financial backer of a company that in March of 2009 won a $535 million loan guarantee [19] from DOE for a solar plant in Silicon Valley. He had multiple visits to the White House in the months before he was awarded the contract. Kaiser has not responded to interview requests from iWatch News.This doesn’t look very good considering it was widely known that Solyndra was in deep economic trouble in 2010 and had negative cash flows since its inception.Kaiser says he did not use political influence or talk to administration officials about a massive government loan to Solyndra.Hmmmm......Hurry , hurry.....come and look at the Unicorn!Read the full story here.

• For wont of $3 billion, NASA loses manned space flight capability...though illegal aliens received $4.2 billion in tax credits.(DougRoss).In the midst of the Stimulus spending spree, President Obama shocked the NASA program with a devastating pronouncement. The Space Shuttle replacement effort, dubbed the Constellation Program, which needed $3 billion in annual funding, would be terminated. For the first time since the initial manned flight of Project Mercury on April 18, 1961, the United States would not have the ability to put a man into space. In spite of the national security impact of the space program -- and the fact that China has actively tested anti-satellite weaponry, the President felt that $3 billion was too much to spend on a replacement for the Space Shuttle. ...though illegal aliens received $4.2 billion in tax creditsAnd it wasn't just the fact that the public sector unions were awash with hundreds of billions in taxpayer Stimulus cash: the waste, fraud, and abuse in other federal programs turned out to be equally outrageous.The President's priorities are funding his union boss supporters, growing the size of government bureaucracies, ringing up massive deficits, advancing the anti-jobs "green" agenda, and cutting back on strategic national security programs. Now I want you to imagine what Obama's priorities will be if he were to be reelected in 2012. He would have absolutely nothing to lose in enacting an even more radical agenda: his devastating policies will go from merely stunningly bad to spectacularly worse. And that is why he must be defeated next November.Hmmmm......You can't cure stupid, but you can vote it out!Read the full story here.

• Sen. DeMint: Obama speech to Congress 'going to be hard for me to watch'.(TheHill).
  Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) expressed doubt on Sunday that President Obam can provide any viable economic policies to create jobs and gain bipartisan support. “Frankly I am so tired of his speeches, it's going to be hard for me to watch,” said DeMint on CNN’s State of the Union. “We need a plan in writing, he needs to send it to us and tell us what it is going to cost so not only Congress and the American people can read it, businesses can read it.”Speaking later in an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” DeMint added that he was "pretty frustrated with the speech idea and the things that have been leaking out from the White House."  "I don't think the president is going to come out with things that are really going to create jobs I'm afraid it's just pandering to his base," he said. "None of them are like what I've been hearing from businesses all over the country."DeMint also defended the Tea Party when asked about its unpopularity among independents, saying the movement “brought some accountability to Washington."Over 70 percent of Americans think we need to balance our budget … that’s what the Tea Party is.”The South Carolina Republican downplayed his role as a leader of the Tea Party.“I’m not head of the Tea Party … there are thousands of leaders who have become active as citizens."Although DeMint didn't endorse a specific Republican running for president, he said that there's no one in the field "who would not do a better job than our current president.”Read the full story here.

• The Emperor’s New Plan.(Commentary).President Obama could have returned from his vacation and addressed the nation from the Oval Office, outlining his plan to increase jobs, pledging to have the legislative language on the desk of every member of Congress by the time they returned to Washington, calling on citizens to demand Congress act promptly on the Obama Plan.For that strategy to work, however, you need an actual plan. You don’t summon the nation for an Oval Office address to propose what you’re already doing (unemployment insurance and a payroll tax reduction), or more of what didn’t work before (stimulus, but without the word “stimulus”), or things like patent reform or trade agreements you inherited from George W. Bush. If you don’t have a plan, but want to show you are the most reasonable man in the room, the Oval Office is not the right venue; you need a bigger room, and more people.It turned out what Obama had in mind was a speech he deemed important enough to pre-empt a Republican presidential debate but not a football game. Delayed a day, the time of the speech will be moved to avoid a conflict with the NFL opener. Score a trifecta for Obama: he helped publicize the Republican debate, lost another ill-considered battle with John Boehner​, and will give a speech while most of the country is either at work, driving home, or eating dinner.Hmmmm........Priorities?Read the full story here.
  
  

• 40 Israelis detained, questioned in Istanbul airport.(JPost).Forty Israelis passengers were detained for questioning by Turkish police in Istanbul's Ataturk Airport on Monday morning.The Israelis had their passports confiscated after landing on a Turkish Airlines flight from Tel Aviv on Monday morning. They were questioned for more than an hour and subsequently released.The Foreign Ministry was investigating the incident and has been in contact with Turkey to find out if it came about as the result of a new directive or if it was a local initiative by airport authorities, a spokesman stated.The spokesman added that an incident of this nature has never previously been known to occur to Israeli travelers in Turkey. The Foreign Ministry was also in contact with the Israelis who were detained, in attempts to find out exactly what they were asked by Turkish authorities at the airport.Israel planned to keep a close eye on additional flights from Israel to Turkey throughout the day to determine if anything out of the ordinary occurs.Hmmmm......And so it begun.Read the full story here.More here.

• France Warns Iranian Threat May Lead To Pre-Emptive Strike.(Pakalertpress).France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy warned on Wednesday that Iran’s alleged attempts to build long-range missiles and nuclear weapons could lead unnamed countries to launch a pre-emptive attack. “Its military nuclear and ballistic ambitions constitute a growing threat that may lead to a preventive attack against Iranian sites that would provoke a major crisis that France wants to avoid at all costs,” he said.Sarkozy did not say which country might launch such a strike, but it has been reported that Israel — perhaps with US support — has considered bombing Iranian nuclear sites if it believes Tehran is close to building a weapon. The French leader placed the blame for the crisis on Iran, which insists it has no intention of building a nuclear weapon, and is merely enriching nuclear fuel for medicinal research and a domestic atomic energy program.”Iran refuses to negotiate seriously,” he told an annual meeting of French diplomats. “Iran is carrying out new provocations in response to the challenge from the international community for it to provide a credible response.” Sarkozy said France would work with its allies to build support for tougher international sanctions against Tehran’s Islamist regime, in a bid to force it to back down over its enrichment program.Read the full story here.

• Greece, Israel agree on military cooperation.(RaiNovosti).The Defense Minister of Greece Panos Beglitis and his Israeli counterpart Ehud Barak signed a memorandum on military cooperation in Jerusalem on Sunday, the Greek Ministry of Defense reported.The contents of the memorandum is undisclosed. Panos Beglitis said that the two governments are intend to cooperate closely."Our relations with Israel are not under the influence of the current condition," said Beglitis.Greece has recently improved relations with Israel, exploiting the rift between Tel Aviv and Ankara over the Israeli attack on the pro-Palestinian Freedom Flotilla last year. The raid killed nine people, all Turkish nationals.Hmmmm......"The lines are being drawn".Read the full story here.

• Assad's days numbered?Oh Muslims, where are you? The Syrian regime has dug its own grave.(Asharq).A Syrian youth in a mosque in Riyadh told me that Syrian security figures force detainees to say “there is no God but Bashar .” Glory to God, this is a great slander! I thought the Syrian youth might have been overly-enthusiastic or prejudiced until I saw this for myself on Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera. I saw the henchmen of the Syrian regime hitting detainees in the face with their shoes and forcing them to say “there is no God but Bashar.” This brought to mind the Quranic passage “dreadful is the word that cometh out of their mouths. They speak naught but a lie.” . For there is no God but Allah, and may fire and destruction rain down upon the Syrian regime! Is there a Muslim on earth who possesses even an atom of faith who could accept such blasphemy? I call upon the Saudi Council of Senior Scholars, the World Association of Muslim Scholars, the Al-Azhar University, the Muslim World League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, and other prominent Islamic organizations, as well as prominent Muslim figures and scholars, and indeed anyone who possess faith, a conscience, fear of God, and concern for Islam, to rise up and confront this [Syrian] regime which is an enemy of Islam and Arabism. I call upon all those above to confront the principles and values of the Syrian regime and denounce and condemn them, otherwise you will be held accountable for your silence or God will hold you accountable on Judgment Day. You will also be held accountable before Muslims and history.Therefore in the name of the Arabs and Muslim, I call upon the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz – who previously called upon Muslim scholars to defend the true meaning of Islam – to adopt a stance on this issue regarding the Syrian regime’s abuse of the article of faith that “there is no God but Allah.” This is the heart and basis of Islam, the message of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), as well as the key to paradise!Read the full story here.

• Egypt builds wall around Israeli embassy in Cairo.(JPost).CAIRO - Egypt has walled off Israel's embassy in Cairo after tensions between the two countries sparked a series of angry protests that reached a climax last month when a demonstrator scaled the building and removed the Israeli flag.As work began on the wall a few days ago, many Egyptians gathered nearby to show their displeasure. Some sprayed "The people want the fall of the wall" onto its smooth concrete.Egyptian officials said the mainly concrete barrier, roughly 2 1/2 metres (8 feet) high, was to protect other residents of the high-rise embassy building, not the Israeli mission."The goal ... is to protect the lower floors of the building and prevent tensions between protesters and residents," daily newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm quoted local governor Ali Abdel-Rahman as saying.Egypt's relations with Israel have cooled since the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak, a staunch US ally, in a popular uprising in February.A diplomatic row broke out last month when five Egyptian security personnel were shot dead on the border as IDF troops repelled terrorists who killed eight Israelis.Egypt threatened briefly to withdraw its ambassador from Tel Aviv, said the deaths of the Egyptians breached its 1979 peace treaty with the Jewish state and demanded a joint inquiry.That was not enough for some Egyptians.Thousands protested angrily for days outside the embassy to demand a sterner response from their government, in scenes that would never have been allowed during the Mubarak era when political demonstrations were usually crushed by riot police.The protester who clambered up the high-rise embassy building was rewarded by an Egyptian provincial governor with a job, a new home and a commemorative shield, newspapers reported.The governor for Giza, where the embassy sits close to the banks of the Nile, denied the wall was designed to protect the embassy, a claim met with disbelief by some observers."It is obvious that the reason behind building the wall is to prevent protesters in the future from reaching the embassy and to protect it," said political analyst Mustapha al-Sayyid."Why would we protect a state that is killing our people? This is wrong, unfair and irritating," one man told Egyptian radio during a night live program on Sunday evening.Hmmmm.....September 5th 2011 ..first Jewish Ghetto build in Egypt?Read the full story here.

• Gunfire, explosions at Syrian military airport as more troops defect.(AlArabiya).Heavy gunfire and loud explosions were heard early on Monday in al-Maza military airport on the outskirts of the Syrian capital amid reports of defections among army forces in the area, an activist told Al Arabiya.Bashir al-Dimashqi, a pro-democracy activist from Damascus, said told Al Arabiya that army helicopters were seen flying near the airport and firing on defected army units.Dimashqi said defections among army forces were not uncommon in the area and that soldiers who refuse orders to fire on protesters are often killed. This past Friday, several army units defected in the Damascus suburbs of Douma, Harasta and Kfar Batna.Meanwhile, Syrian troops and security forces on Monday launched an assault on the central cities of Hama and Homs and shot dead at least two people, activists said.“More than 30 military vehicles and security forces raided Hama this morning and heavy gunfire was heard in the city,” Omar Idlibi, spokesman of the Local Coordination Committees, told AFP in Nicosia. Troops backed by tanks had stormed Hama on July 31, on the eve of the start of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, to fight “armed groups. ” At least 100 people were killed, and the troops withdrew 10 days later.The protest hub of Homs also witnessed violence Sunday as 15 people were wounded when troops and security forces raked gunfire in the city as part of an operation launched on Saturday night, activists said.Elsewhere, at least 24 people were killed in violence across the country on Sunday as the visiting head of the Red Cross, Jakob Kellenberger, sought access to those detained in more than five months of anti-regime protests.Kellenberger is scheduled to leave the country on Monday afternoon.Arab League secretary general Nabil al-Arabi said Syrian authorities have agreed to his visiting, plans for which he had announced a week ago after the 22-member bloc had met to discuss the Syrian crisis.Read the full story here.

• An American radar in Turkey is not a threat for Russia, but it is a risk.(Rainovosti).An American radar is going to be installed in Turkey, where it will most likely be used to track missile launches from Iran, but it will not be able to be used against Russian strategic forces. But the global missile defense system that the United States is currently building still presents a risk to Russia.One of the radars that are part of the U.S. and NATO anti-missile system will be stationed in Turkey, Selcuk Unal, the official spokesperson for the Turkish Foreign Ministry said on Friday. "The deployment of this anti-missile system in Turkey will be our country's contribution to the defense system that has been developed as part of NATO's new strategy. It will strengthen the defense potential of NATO, as well as that of our national defense system," noted the diplomat.As far as we can tell at this point, the issue concerns an X-Band AN/TPY-2 radar, which is part of the THAAD system designed to intercept medium-range missiles at very high altitudes, including in space. According to public data, the operating distance of the radar is about 1,000 km.In addition to using the THAAD launch complex to destroy falling warheads, it can also be used as a kind of remote "observation point" in the current design of the architecture of the new U.S. ballistic missile defense - the so-called Forward-Based Mode. In this case, the radar can be used for the early detection of ballistic missile launches, and for tracking their trajectories.Read the full story here.

• New Lancet Study Says 12,000 Iraqis Dead From Suicide Bombings.(Aina).By Dan Murphy.In 2006, when the British medical journal The Lancet published a study that found 601,000 Iraqis had died as a consequence of the war there (either from violence or a decline in medical care), it prompted a storm of controversy and led newspapers around the world.Amid the hot political debate in the US and United Kingdom over the wisdom of the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, critics of the invasion seized on it as evidence of what a mistake the war was, and supporters dismissed the findings as politically driven. "Not credible," was President George W. Bush's verdict the day the report was released. That report, based on the extrapolation of limited surveys, was later found by some in the academic community to have serious flaws.Now The Lancet has published another report on casualties in Iraq, looking narrowly at the toll on civilians from suicide bombers. Their data was drawn from Iraqbodycount.org, which has kept track of casualties in Iraq using press reporting since the start of the war. The numbers -- almost certainly an understatement since not every act of violence makes it into the press -- are staggering.With the US preparing to either fully withdraw from Iraq at the end of the year or at minimum cut down to a "residual" force of about 12,000, events in Iraq don't get anywhere near the attention they used to. But the findings by Dr. Madelyn Hsiao-Rei Hicks and her colleagues deserve attention, because of what they say about Iraq's recent past and it's looming future.The report documented 1,003 suicide attacks in Iraq between 2003-10, which killed 12,284 civilians and injured a further 30,644. The Lancet authors found 108,624 civilian deaths from violence of all kinds in the period. To put that in perspective by adjusting for population, that would be equivalent to 1 million Americans killed in a seven-year period. And the violence has continued. Earlier this week, 28 worshipers were murdered by a suicide bomber at Baghdad's Umm al-Qura mosque.The horrible toll from suicide bombing in Iraq also tells the tale of why Al Qaeda and its Iraqi fellow travelers have failed so miserably at achieving any of their political goals inside the country. While the fall of Saddam Hussein allowed Sunni jihadis to gain a foothold in Iraq, and they were the spectacular drivers of violence on the Sunni side of the country's Sunni-Shiite civil war, their own excesses have alienated Iraq's Sunni Arabs in general. The hope of Al Qaeda and its local ally, the self-proclaimed "Islamic State of Iraq," was that US troops would generate lots of civilian casualties in Iraq, and drive fighters to their banner.But while there have been violent excesses by US troops in Iraq (a US diplomatic cable recently released by Wikileaks contains a UN complaint that US troops participated in a massacre of 10 civilians and a cover-up near Saddam Hussein's hometown in 2006), Iraqis came to understand that civilian casualties were far more often carried out by jihadis claiming to fight the "occupiers." With the US headed for the exits -- and no promising signs that Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will approve an extension of the US stay beyond the Dec. 31 deadline -- Al Qaeda-type organizations increasingly look like murderers of average Iraqis.That doesn't mean the problem is going to go away. Iraq's sectarian divisions remain wide and the wounds of so much bloodshed on the national psyche simply can't heal overnight. Sectarian tinder remains thick on the ground, and reignition of outright war can't be dismissed as impossible. For instance, a jihadi attack on Iraq's Askariyah Shrine, one of the holiest sites in the country for Shiites, in February 2006 whipped up sectarian hatred to new heights.The hard work of reconciliation in Iraq, of closing the wounds of its war, has only just begun.But the immediate message of all that bloodshed at the hands of suicide bombers is that Al Qaeda and its friends, once again, have shown that all they're good for is destruction. Whatever political capital the group had on the Iraqi street as "resistance" to the US, has dwindled to its hard-core supporters. The group's ambitions for Iraq have failed, by its own hand.Read the full story here.