MFS - The Other News

                        Morning Posting.

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity in Papua New Guinea 5.7 and 5.2  in Columbia ! More info here.

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

• Kabul US embassy attack: live - Here.

• "SolyndraGate" - Obama Team Backed $535 Million Solyndra Aid as Auditor Warned on Finances.(Bloomberg).Solyndra LLC’s workers making solar-power panels in a California factory subsidized by U.S. taxpayers showed “the promise of clean energy isn’t just an article of faith,” President Barack Obama said on a visit to the company in May 2010. Two months before Obama’s visit, accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP warned that Solyndra, the recipient of $535 million in federal loan guarantees, had financial troubles deep enough to “raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.” The Obama administration stood by Solyndra through the auditor’s warning, the abandonment of a planned initial public offering and a last-ditch refinancing where taxpayers took a back seat to new investors. That unwavering commitment has come under increasing scrutiny since the company’s travails culminated in its filing for bankruptcy protection on Sept. 6 and a raid on its headquarters by the Federal Bureau of Investigation two days later. “People including our government put blinders on and did not want to believe in the obvious,” Jonathan Dorsheimer, an analyst in Boston for Canaccord Genuity Inc. of Vancouver, said in an interview with Bloomberg Government. “The fact that the government chose Solyndra as their white horse is mind- boggling.Since then, Republicans have pointed to connections between Solyndra and billionaire George Kaiser, an Obama campaign fundraiser. The George Kaiser Family Foundation, a charitable organization based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, holds about 36.7 percent of the company, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Kaiser made 16 visits to the president’s aides since 2009, according to White House visitor logs. “George Kaiser is not an investor in Solyndra and did not participate in any discussions with the U.S. government regarding the loan,” the foundation said in an e-mailed statement on Sept. 1. As Solyndra struggled to stay afloat, it worked to reassure lawmakers. The company spent $480,000 this year to lobby Congress, according to Senate records. Read the full story here.

• Cyprus: Exploratory drilling for gas to begin soon, Turkish warships next?(CNS).NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — U.S. firm Noble Energy will soon begin exploratory drilling to confirm oil and gas deposits beneath the sea bed off Cyprus' southern coast despite Turkey's attempts to prevent such a move, the island's president said on Tuesday.Dimitris Christofias didn't specify a date for the start of drilling which officials have said will begin early next month. Christofias he said surveys have so far shown a "very great possibility" of hydrocarbon deposits inside an 800,000-acre (1,250-square-mile) area that Cyprus has licensed Noble to explore.That area is close to large natural gas fields that Noble has recently discovered in Israeli waters.Christofias says decisions on how the hydrocarbons will be exploited will be made once drilling confirms their quantity and quality.Israeli energy company Delek, which is already working together with the Houston-based Noble Energy Inc., has already proposed a partnership with Cyprus to build a facility on the island for processing and exporting natural gas found in Israeli and Cypriot waters.Cyprus' energy service director, Solon Kassinis told lawmakers last week that natural gas could be pumped via a Noble-built pipeline as early as 2014.Christofias said the Cyprus government has lodged complaints with the United Nations and the European Union against Turkey, which is threatening to deploy its naval forces to deter Cyprus' gas exploration efforts."The navy is for the protection of Turkish national interests," Egemen Bagis, the Turkish minister in charge of EU affairs told CNN-Turk television in an interview on Tuesday.Christofias said Cyprus expects the international community's "robust and effective reaction" in case Turkey commits an "unlawful act."Turkey strongly opposes Cyprus' offshore gas search, saying that it disregards the rights of breakaway Turkish Cypriots on the divided island. Cyprus was split into a Greek Cypriot south and a Turkish Cypriot north in 1974 when Turkey invaded after a coup by supporters of union with Greece.Cyprus joined the EU in 2004, but only the internationally recognized south enjoys membership benefits."Turkey's policy is impermissible and condemnable," said Christofias. "These threats against Cyprus, to prevent drilling and to create a military incident, disturb international justice and create a climate of instability and tension in the already tense eastern Mediterranean."Christofias said Turkish Cypriots could share in the wealth generated by any gas find as part of a reunified island. He said the potential bounty can work as an incentive for achieving a swift accord in U.N. sponsored peace talks, now in their third year.Positive confirmation of sizable gas find would be a boon for Cyprus that is dependent on fossil fuel imports and ease the strain from a financial crisis that has fanned concerns it could be forced to seek a bailout.Read the full story here.

• "HolderGate " Issa: Eric Holder "So Inept He Is Dangerous”.(TheHill).Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said that Attorney General Eric Holder is so “inept that he is dangerous to have as the Attorney General” and that President Obama should consider removing him from office.Issa made the comments on the Laura Ingraham show while commenting about the controversial “Fast and Furious” gun-tracking program.“He doesn’t want to admit that it was felony-stupid,” Issa said of the operation, which was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which allowed assault-type weapons to be illegally purchased and smuggled across the border.The Department of Justice was monitoring the weapons, but they have turned up at crime scenes across Mexico. Two weapons that were sold under the program were found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December.Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson was removed from his position late last month as the result of an investigation pushed by Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. But Issa believes that Attorney General Holder either signed off on the operation or was “willfully ignorant.”“The only way the attorney general didn’t know is that he made sure he didn’t want to know,” Issa said.The congressman said the scandal was “dumber than Iran-Contra,” the program under which senior officials in the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran to fund Nicaraguan rebels. Both arms sales to Iran and funding of the Contras was explicitly prohibited by law, and Reagan national security advisers Oliver North and John Poindexter were convicted of violating the law.“What we need is an admission that it was wrong . . . and then we need assurance that it won’t happen again,” Issa said.For his part, Holder has admitted that the Fast and Furious program “was clearly a flawed enforcement effort,” but denied that he or any of his aides had knowledge of the operation.“The notion that this reaches into the upper levels of the Justice Department is something that at this point I don’t think is supported by the facts and I think once we examine it and once the facts are revealed we’ll see that’s not the case,” Holder said last Wednesday.The Department of Justice has launched an internal investigation to look into the matter, in addition to the one led by Issa.Holder also defended the decision to transfer Melson into the DOJ’s Office of Legal Policy, rather than fire him outright.“Ken has served this department well over the course of some three decades,” Holder said.Hmmmm.....A chip of the presidential block"?Read the full story here.

• Fogel family murderer gets 5 life sentences.(Ynet).The Samaria Military Court on Tuesday sentenced Hakim Awad, 18, who was convicted in the murder of five members of the Fogel family in Itamar last March, to five consecutive life sentences and another five years in prison - a total of 130 years behind bars. Hakim and his cousin Amjad brutally murdered Ehud Fogel, 36, Ruth Fogel, 35, 11-year-old Yoav, 4-year-old Elad and 2-month-old Hadas.During the court hearing, Awad claimed that Israeli security forces tied up and killed two men from his village. "I am 18 and in my teenage years. Not any young man of this age thinks about murder, only a Palestinian man whose land was taken. This is what the state does to me every day. When I want to leave my village I have to undergo a search which always involves beatings." As he left the court he motioned the V sign for Victory with his fingers. The judges asked Awad, who confessed to the murder last month, to refrain from discussing politics and instead talk about himself. "I am a person like you, I have no mental condition, I never had a serious illness. My only illness is the Israeli occupation." He replied negatively when asked if he regrets his actions.At one point during the hearing, one of the prosecutors presented a letter written by Yohai, Ruth Fogel's brother as well as a letter from Elad's nanny. "The children were murdered while screaming and fighting for their lives. It's hard to imagine a situation where the person standing before you is wrestling with a 4-year-old or an 11-year-old who were murdered. The two-month-old baby's only crime was that she cried. A helpless infant murdered by stabs to the head is a murder that is difficult to put into words." The prosecutor said, "At the end of the day when one considers the murder and its consequences, a life sentence is still a light punishment. This event elevated the murder to an extreme level. It's not an explosive where the terrorist does not know his victims. Here the hands of the murderers are covered in blood." He called on the judges not to consider the fact that Awad was underage at the time of the murder and to disregard any arguments for rehabilitation. "The defendant, in his actions, distanced himself from human company and acted on an malicious and satanic ideology deserving of the punishment the prosecution is demanding," he said. Defense Attorney Raed Erda claimed that the occupation was the cause of the murder. He noted that the Supreme Court had ruled that murders committed inside the territories are considered acts of war. "The prosecutor mentioned that the murder of a baby is a cruel and harsh act but all murders are harsh – no matter whether it's of a baby, a young person or an adult. We're all human beings and our blood is the same. No blood is more red than another."Erda enraged the judges when he claimed that the defendant was as much a victim as the Fogel family was. "When you build a Jewish community among dozens of Arab communities and do not provide it with the necessary security you can expect this to happen. "Houses are being built on their lands, there's no work, no education, the occupation is pushing people from all directions and a boy like the defendant goes out and does things like this without realizing their consequences." Major Lieberman noted that the option of a death sentence was never considered, as Awad was underage when he committed the crime. He mentioned that Hakim's accomplice, Amjad Awad, murdered three of the five victims with his bare hands and helped the defendant murder Elad and Ruth after he was unsuccessful in killing them himself. The trial of Amjad Awad is still ongoing and he has yet to be convicted. The judge noted that Hakim was a fully fledged partner to the crime and had hid the weapons after the act and tried to cover his marks.Read the full story here.

• Maryland Muslim Convert Hopes To ‘Chop Off Judges Head’ and 'Kill the President'.(Vinienco).On Sept. 14 of last year, a federal judge received a one-page letter that read, in part, “BOOM see how easy this was, next time you wont be so lucky ERM Family ANTHRAX!!”According to the indictment, the letter also said: “I just hope Allah grants me the opportunity to be the one who chops off your head,” and the words “die die die!!!” followed by the sentence “If I ever get out I promise you I’m coming after you.”The letter wasn’t signed but the FBI quickly found Willie Ray Bryant’s prints on it. The 41-year-old was in prison in Cumberland; the judge had presided over one of his previous trials in state court. According to on-line records, the judge had overseen a case in which Bryant pleaded guilty to a handgun charge in 2001 and sentenced him to five years in prison.The FBI also said they found “the letter also bore imprints of letters and numbers appearing to partially match Bryant’s mother’s name and phone number,” according to federal prosecutors.The Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement:

“After the FBI determined the sender’s identity from Bryant’s fingerprints, a message was sent to Maryland Corrections officials to monitor Bryant’s use of the mail. Shortly thereafter, corrections officials intercepted a letter Bryant had addressed to President Obama excoriating the President for turning his back on Islam and threatening to kill the President. Bryant signed the letter and included his state prisoner number.”He faces 10 years in prison when he is sentenced Dec. 9.Read the full story here.

• Obama's politicization of jobs bill.(Politico).By Keith Koffler. It’s hard to keep from laughing when President Barack Obama insists that Republicans put party and politics aside and pass his new “jobs” plan. The president’s own approach has been so nakedly political that it consigns his demand to absurdity.The proof that this is politics — and not policy — accumulates by the day.In what sector of fantasyland can legislation paid for with $467 billion in new taxes – as announced by the White House Monday - pass the GOP-controlled House? The president is practically begging Republicans to reject his initiative — so he can blame them next year for failing to take action to improve the economy.The problem for the White House is that George W. Bush’s presidency has begun to recede too far into the mists of time for Obama to continue blaming his predecessor for the current economic mess. He needs a new culprit — and he wants voters to finger congressional Republicans.The tax increase “pay for” is only the latest piece of evidence of Obama’s political intent. Exhibits A and B were presented into evidence even before Obama gave his speech Thursday to a Joint Session of Congress, where he announced the plan.Republicans can be forgiven for wondering why they are being asked to put aside politics even as Obama is jetting around to three of the most critical battleground states.If the idea is to pressure Republicans to pass the bill, why not just go to Texas?Obama’s Richmond appearance put him in House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s district, a clear political jab at the man who fought him over deficit reduction this summer – and whose support is critical if Obama were actually intent on passing new legislation.The Democratic National Committee is also using the jobs plan to campaign for the president. It has produced TV ads supposedly designed to pressure lawmakers to pass Obama’s legislation. But the spots don’t target specific lawmakers — and they’re running exclusively in swing states and Washington.The DNC has also thrown up a website describing the proposal and outlining how it will benefit key groups that Obama needs in 2012 — including women, Latinos, African-Americans and low income families.Both the DNC website and the campaign outreach include efforts to pad their email lists, a critical element of the reelection strategy.Obama Monday was already drawing fractious political lines, accusing Republicans of politicizing his proposal by citing an unnamed GOP aide, who was quoted saying it would be bad politically for Republicans to cooperate.That Obama would cling to the opinion of one unnamed Republican aide makes it clear the president is desperate for evidence showing that Republicans don’t want to work with him.The hypocrisy of demanding that Republicans avoid politics, while he wallows in it with such exuberance is stunning. It begs the question of whether Republicans can trust this president enough to work with him on anything.Hmmmm...."By their fruits you will know them".Read the full story here.

• EPA regulation forces closure of Texas energy facilities, eliminates 500 jobs.(DailyCaller).Texas energy company Luminant announced on Monday new burdensome Environmental Protection Agency regulations are forcing it to close several facilities, which will result in about 500 job losses.The company will be idling — stopping the usage of — two energy generating units. It will also cease extracting lignite from three different Texas mines.The EPA regulation Luminant cites as too burdensome is the new Cross-State Air Pollution rule, which requires Texas power generators to make “dramatic reductions” in emissions beginning on January 1, 2012.“We have hundreds of employees who have spent their entire professional careers at Luminant and its predecessor companies,” Luminant CEO David Campbell said in a statement. “At every step of this process, we have tried to minimize these impacts, and it truly saddens me that we are being compelled to take the actions we’ve announced today. We have filed suit to try to avoid these consequences.”The company said it has been trying to meet the new standards, but won’t be able to do so without closing down several facilities and eliminating 500 jobs.As always, Luminant is committed to complying fully with EPA regulations,” Campbell said. “We have spent the last two months identifying all possible options to meet the requirements of this new rule, and we are launching a significant investment program to reduce emissions across our facilities.”“However, meeting this unrealistic deadline also forces us to take steps that will idle facilities and result in the loss of jobs,” Campbell adds.Hmmmm.......Obamanomics in action.Read the full story here.

• Gunmen 'kill five children' in attack on Pakistan bus.(BBC).Gunmen have ambushed a school bus near the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar, killing at least five children, police say.The driver was also killed and 19 other children were wounded in the attack in Matani town about 20km (12 miles) south of Peshawar, police said. The area is close to Pakistan's volatile tribal areas where Taliban militants are active.But so far no group has said it carried out the attack.Matani has been targeted before. In June, six people were killed in a bomb blast at a bus stop in the town.The BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says that Matani has been the scene of a struggle between the Taliban and a local tribal volunteer force battling to prevent militants from entering the area. This is the first time a school bus has been targeted, our correspondent says. However, militants have attacked civilian targets to punish residents in the area for not supporting them.The bus is thought to belong to a private school in Matani and was taking children back to a village after lessons. One report said that those who were killed were aged between nine and 14."First a rocket was fired but it didn't hit. Then gunmen opened fire," said Sahibzada Sajjad, police deputy superintendent in Peshawar.Police also said that it was not clear whether the gunmen had arrived by car or were on foot. They escaped from the scene after the shooting.Read the full story here.

• Nato's 'Ally' Erdogan"We believe Western countries do not have a right to Libyan oil".(AlArabiya).Erdogan concerned about Syrian civil war, wants to deepen ties with Egypt.Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he was concerned Syria could slip into civil war and that he wanted to deepen Ankara’s ties with Egypt, in an interview published by an Egyptian newspaper on Tuesday during a visit to Cairo.“I fear that matters will end in civil war between the Alawites and the Sunnis,” Erdogan told the al-Shorouk newspaper in an interview that marked the start of his visit to Egypt.Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has sent tanks and troops to quell months of protests against his rule, is from the minority Alawite Muslim sect. Most Syrians are Sunni Muslims.Erdogan, who is on a tour of Arab states to boost his country’s influence in the region, said he wanted to build a strategic partnership with Egypt, the most populous Arab country, and that wanted to enhance economic and other ties.“If the Arab world has several doors, then no doubt Egypt is its most important one,” Erdogan said.Egypt has long viewed itself as a leading voice in the Arab world but Turkey's influence has risen steadily with its growing economic might and its assertive policy in the region, notably towards Israel, which has drawn praise from many Arabs.In part of the interview published by al-Shorouk a day earlier, Erdogan said Israel had “not fully grasped the reality of changes that happened in the Arab world.”Ankara expelled the Israeli ambassador in a feud over an Israeli raid last year that killed nine Turks on a flotilla bound for the Palestinian enclave of Gaza. Israel has said it would not apologize, which Turkey has demanded.“Israel refused even to listen to voices of reason in the West that realized the reality of the changes in the region and called for it to apologize to Turkey to what it did to (Turkey's) sons that it killed,” he said.Turkey has also engaged with its neighbor Iran, which is embroiled in a standoff with the West over its nuclear ambitions. Iran is also a close ally of Syria’s.“I think that Turkey has a role in correcting the Iranian discourse (regarding Syria).”He added that Turkey had been in contact with Tehran and told Iran about the “serious consequences” of the continuation of the use of force by Iran’s ally Syria.Erdogan has talks in Tunisia on Wednesday and is then expected to hold meetings on Thursday in Libya, where NATO air strikes that were launched to protect civilians helped rebels unseat long-time leader Muammar Qaddafi.Erdogan said Libyans should decide the country’s fate.“Firstly, we are against international intervention in Libya. Secondly, we believe Western countries do not have a right to Libyan oil, but it belongs to its people,” he told the newspaper.Hmmmm......Nato's 'Ally'.Read the full story here.

• More Evidence of Economic Recovery: Bank of America Will Eliminate 30,000 Jobs, Largest Cut by a U.S. Company This Year.(AP).Bank of America is slashing 30,000 jobs as part of an effort to reverse a crisis of confidence among investors. It’s the largest single job reduction by a U.S. company this year.What CEO Brian Moynihan is trying to do is nothing less than save the nation’s largest bank. Investors have cut the bank’s market value by half this year. The bank is facing huge liabilities over soured mortgage investments and concerns over whether it has enough capital to withstand more financial shocks.The cuts, which affect Bank of America’s consumer businesses, represent 10 percent of the Charlotte, N.C. bank’s work force. The bank said it hopes the cuts and other measures will result in $5 billion in annual savings by 2014. The bank has already cut 6,000 jobs this year. The bank also said it would look for cost savings at its other businesses in a six-month review that will begin next month.“It’s as if someone has hit the panic button,” said Bert Ely, president of banking consultant Ely and Co.Read the full story here.

• US hikers to be freed ‘in two days’: Iranian President Ahmadinejad.(HurriyetDaily).Two American men sentenced in Iran last month to eight years in prison on spying charges will be freed in two days , Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has told a U.S. television network.Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal were arrested in July 2009 near Iran's border with Iraq, where they say they were hiking in the mountains. A third American, Sarah Shourd, was freed in September 2010 and returned home.The U.S. network NBC, which interviewed Ahmadinejad in Iran, said in a Twitter message that the Iranian president had told it Bauer and Fattal would be released in two days. The interview was due to air later on Tuesday on NBC's Today show.Bauer, Fattal and Shourd say they were hiking in the mountains of northern Iraq and, if they crossed the unmarked border into Iran, it was by mistake.Shourd was freed on $500,000 bail. Bauer and Fattal were convicted at a trial held behind closed doors and share a cell in Tehran's Evin prison.Their supporters say evidence against them has never been made public, and that the sentence came as a shock after hopes for their release had been boosted by positive comments from Iran's foreign minister.U.S President Barack Obama has denied that the Americans, who were working in the Middle East when they decided to hike in the scenic mountains of Iraq, had any link to U.S. intelligence.The affair has heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington, which severed diplomatic ties after the storming of the U.S. embassy in the wake of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.Tehran’s prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi has confirmed that in late August that Iran had sentenced two American hikers to eight years in prison each. The verdict was expected to further raise tension between Washington and Tehran at a time when the animosity between the two has deepened under the presidency of Ahmadinejad. U.S. have vehemently denied Tehran’s charge that the three were spies and has called on Iran to release them. The lawyer for the three Americans, Masoud Shafii, had repeatedly expressed hope for the release of his clients after Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi had said on Aug. 6 that he hoped the trial would lead to their “freedom.” Shourd, a teacher, writer and women's rights activist, met Bauer, a fluent Arabic-speaking freelance journalist, while helping to organise demonstrations in the US against the war in Iraq. The two moved to Damascus together in 2008. Fattal, who grew up in Pennsylvania, is an environmentalist and teacher. He travelled in 2009 to Damascus, where he met Shourd and Bauer.Read the full story here.

• Insider Report: Obama Administration Intends to Unionize U.S. Military with Executive Order.(NewsFlavor).A longtime Wall Street insider shares their personal views about President Barack Obama – including shocking details of a meeting that left many in attendance wondering what, if anything, the president understands about the American economy – as well as Barack Obama’s desire to unionize the American military.With Mr. Obama spending much of his time over the last three years placating unions, it is not that far of a stretch to consider this report as a real possibility. As is pointed out in the interview, this is an extremely grave and dangerous situation. A unionized military would become beholden not to the US Constitution or the American people, but rather, to the union bosses in charge of the new military “workers’ parties” that will undoubtedly spring up as a result.

Ulsterman: Stop right there. Did you just say that the Obama administration wants to unionize the American military?Hmmmm.......President Obama, yet again, seems to be living up to his promise that he intends to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.”Read the full story here.

• Al Qaeda marked 10th anniversary of 9/11 with hour-long video featuring new leader and unreleased footage of Bin Laden.(DailyMail).Al Qaeda has marked the 10th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks with an hour-long video released on jihadist websites, an intelligence monitoring service has revealed. U.S.-based Site Monitoring Services said the video featured an audio speech by the new leader, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, as well as previously unreleased footage of former leader Osama bin Laden.The 62-minute video, called The Dawn of Imminent Victory, was posted on jihadist forums yesterday. Zawahiri is shown in a still photo.U.S. intelligence officials say Zawahiri tops their hit list after the killing of bin Laden by Navy Seals in Pakistan in May.The country was on high alert over the weekend over what officials described as a credible but unconfirmed terror threat on Washington or New York.Zawahiri is quoted as saying he hoped the 'Arab Spring' protest movements that have overthrown leaders in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya would establish what he called true Islam.Al Qaeda, which called for the violent overthrow of secular Arab governments, lost a great deal of relevance as a result of the political upheaval across the Middle East and North Africa.In the video, Bin Laden is said to warn Americans against 'falling as slaves' to the control of major corporations.Read the full story here.

• Nato headquarters and US embassy under attack in Kabul.(Telegraph).Blasts and gunfire echoed through the city, as the Taliban said several attackers armed with rocket-propelled grenades and suicide vests were targeting government buildings near the embassy district.At least six loud explosions were interspersed with gunfire around the middle of the day. Television pictures from near the attack showed a burned out minivan, a bicycle lying in the middle of the street and people running away.Police and other security officials blocked roads around the US embassy and other diplomatic missions, and said the attack had happened at a nearby square."There are several armed attackers in Abdul Haq Square," said Mohammad Zahir, head of Kabul's Crime Investigation Unit.Several Taliban attackers armed with rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47s and suicide vests have taken up positions in Kabul, near the embassy district, to attack government buildings, a spokesman for the insurgents said."The primary targets of the attackers are the intelligence agency building and a ministry," Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters by phone.He said he could not comment on how many attackers there were while the operation was going on.Western military sources also said that Nato's International Security Assistance Force headquarters was under attack.Read the full story here.

• Report: Turkish warplanes now able to fire at Israeli targets.(YNet).Turkey has developed a new radar system for its US-made F-16 fighter jets that will allow them to fire at Israeli targets, Ankara's Star Gazete reported on Tuesday. The orders to modify the system reportedly came directly from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's office. The new radar system – Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) – is a defensive command and control system developed by Turkey's Military Electronics Industry (ASELSAN) for the nation's air force and navy. It is slated to replace a similar US version which is in use today.The US system is comprised of lists of "friends" and "foes." The system's settings are designed to prevent pilot error as well, to an extent, disabling the ability to fire at "friendly" targets even by mistake. The US system identified Israel as a 'friend,' thus preventing Turkish fighter jets from firing at them automatically. The new system, however, allows Turkey control the "friend or foe" list independently.The Turkish IFF system is scheduled to be mounted on all Turkish fighter jets, military vessels and submarines in the near future. The move, whose timing coincides with a prolonged period of unprecedented diplomatic tensions between Ankara and Jerusalem, has received extensive media coverage in Iran, as well. According to foreign media sources, the IAF has a fleet of 1,964 aircraft, including 689 advanced assault helicopters and F-15 and F-16 fighter jets.Israel's aerial superiority will soon receive a significant boost, in the form of the US-made F-35 fighter jet. The Turkish Air Force is said to have a fleet of "just" 1,940 aircrafts, including F-16s and F-4 Phantoms, as well as 874 assault helicopters.Like Israel, Turkey has also been promised the F-35. It is slated to receive it by 2015.Hmmmm....."Off course we realise this means even before the Marmara crisis Turkey was planning to attack Israel, given that it took two years to develop the new system."All these 'hostile' actions are against the NATO Charter....Get Turkey out of NATO NOW!Read the full story here.

• Poll: Most Canadians Believe Islam Irreconcilable with West.(MontrealGazette).A majority of Canadians believes conflict between Western nations and the Muslim world is “irreconcilable,” according to a new national survey that revealed a strong strain of pessimism in the country leading up to Sunday’s 10th anniversary commemorations of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S.The survey of 1,500 Canadians, conducted over three days last week for the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies, showed 56 per cent of respondents see Western and Muslim societies locked in an unending ideological struggle, while about 33 per cent — just one-third of the population — held out hope that the conflict will eventually be overcome.Another 11 per cent of those polled didn’t answer the question.ACS executive director Jack Jedwab said the finding has “serious ramifications” for Canadian policies aimed at bridging divides between cultures, which are based on the premise that citizens believe significant progress in mending such religious and cultural conflicts is achievable.The dark view expressed in the survey “contradicts a fundamental idea in multicultural democracies like ours, that conflicts between societies can be resolved through dialogue and negotiation,” said Jedwab. “This is also a key element in multiculturalism, where Canada is often seen elsewhere in the world as a model in conflict resolution.”He adds: “If a majority of Canadians feel it is irreconcilable, what does this imply for the various projects and programs in place that aim to bridge gaps?”The online survey, carried out Sept. 6 to 8 by the firm Leger Marketing, is considered accurate to within 2.9 percentage points 19 times out of 20.The results also confirm the findings of other recent surveys highlighting Canadians’ ongoing anxiety about the state of security in the post-9/11 world and their deep doubts about whether the long and bloody war in Afghanistan has done much to thwart the threat of terrorism.In fact, 65 per cent of respondents in the ACS survey said they don’t believe the world is safer from terrorists today than it was 10 years ago. And 70 per cent of those surveyed said they don’t believe the war in Afghanistan has reduced the chances of terrorist attacks.Jedwab said the “pessimistic feeling” about what the war has accomplished is likely linked to the “widespread hopelessness” about the prospects for ever resolving the deep-rooted, “ideological” conflict between Muslim and Western societies.Many Canadians have come to believe “nothing will work” to end that conflict, said Jedwab, adding that this grim state of mind will require more scrutiny to fully understand and more carefully crafted public policies to rebuild a sense of optimism about the future of global relations.The survey did offer one notable “ray of hope,” Jedwab suggested, pointing to a result showing that a slight majority of Canadians (52 per cent) believe it would be wrong for airport security officials to do “extra checks” of “passengers who appear to be of Muslim background.”While 39 per cent of respondents were open to that kind of profiling, Jedwab interpreted the majority’s rejection of the practice as a sign that most Canadians realize such infringements “would make the purportedly irreconcilable conflict even deeper if the enshrined principles of our rights charters are to be disregarded.”Read the full story here.

• Winning the Battle Against Al-Qaeda, Losing the War Against Jihad.(MEF).By Raymond Ibrahim.So long as the West focuses on names and faces in the so-called "war on terror"—as opposed to focusing on ideas and motivations—so long will it possibly win battles, even as it slowly loses the war.As we approach the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, we win another battle with the recent slaying of al-Qaeda's number 2. According to the Associated Press, "U.S. and Pakistani officials said Saturday that al-Qaida's second-in-command, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, has been killed in Pakistan, delivering another big blow to a terrorist group that the U.S. believes to be on the verge of defeat."Splendid news. However, some context:

Before Osama bin Laden, the face of al-Qaeda, was killed, it made sense to announce, by way of prelude, the killing of various al-Qaeda members, such as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, Abu Ayub al-Masri , Abu Laith al-Libi, the notorious Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and any number of other "Abus" (and "Ibns"); it also made sense to exult, even if with hyperbolic headlines—"al-Qaeda receives devastating blow"—by way of saying the noose is tightening around bin Laden, who was next.However, with the killing of bin Laden—the snakes head, the face of terror, the heart of al-Qaeda—it is becoming a bit redundant for the administration to continue boasting over the killing of yet one more al-Qaeda member; just as it is redundant to continue asserting that al-Qaeda is on the "verge of defeat."After all, any number of analysts insisted that with the killing of bin Laden, al-Qaeda was as good as dead, thereby implying that whether this or that member gets killed is irrelevant. Peter Bergen, for example, declared that "Killing bin Laden is the end of the war on terror. We can just sort of announce that right now…. It's time to move on."

More to the point: the administration's inordinate focus and optimism over the killing of the latest al-Qaeda member (one can place past and future names here ___) ultimately exposes its myopic approach—an approach that tries to localize the problem, to give it a face, to treat it as a temporal and tangible entity that can be defeated through arms.The unfortunate fact is that, even if al-Qaeda were totally eradicated tomorrow, the terror threat to the West would hardly recede, since al-Qaeda has never been the source of the threat, but simply one of its manifestations. The AP report obliquely reflects this: "Senior al-Qaida figures have been killed before, only to be replaced," even as the Obama administration is optimistic that "victory" is at hand.To get a better perspective on the overall significance of the latest killing of an al-Qaeda member, consider how at the turn of the 20th century, the Islamic world was rushing to emulate the victorious and confident West—best exemplified by the Ottoman empire itself, the preserver and enforcer of Islam, rejecting its Muslim past and embracing secularism under Ataturk. Today, 100 years later, the Muslim world has largely rejected secularism and is reclaiming its Islamic—including jihadist—heritage, lashing out in a manifold of ways.Consider how many Islamist leaders, organizations, and terrorists have come and gone in the 20th century alone—many killed like bin Laden—only for the conflict between Islam and the West to continue growing by the day.It's in this context that the Obama administration audaciously evokes the word "victory," simply because yet another jihadist has been killed.This, of course, is to be expected, considering the administration, which has a tendency to censor words—and thus knowledge—concerning the nature of the threat, just released a much vaunted policy paper on countering terrorism that never once uses the word "Islam(ism)" or "radical Islam," while myopically fixating on al-Qaeda, one of countless jihadist organizations that seek to subjugate the West.Despite its narrow approach, the administration itself has inadvertently conceded to the existential nature of the threat, as it has begun to acknowledge that lone wolf terrorists—jihadists who have no connection to al-Qaeda other than that they share the same worldview—are a greater threat.As Attorney General Eric Holder put it, "the threat has changed … to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens—raised here, born here, and who for whatever reason, have decided that they are going to become radicalized and take up arms against the nation in which they were born."Note how Holder ignores the most important factor to understanding and ultimately defeating jihadists—their motivation—by dismissing it as "whatever reason." Even so, the administration's acknowledgement of the lone wolf jihad proves one thing: it is doctrinal ideologies floating among Muslims around the world—not just the caves of al-Qaeda—that create terror threats.So when Counterterrorism chief John Brennan says that "Taking him out of commission is huge. There's not another bin Laden out there. I don't know if there's another Atiyah Abd al-Rahman out there"—he can rest assured that while those two are gone, countless are the no-names out to emulate them, in a myriad of ways.To conclude, by all means, target and kill terrorists, singly and collectively, and rejoice over it; but keep in mind that even if al-Qaeda were expunged from existence, while that would be a battle well won, it would not be the end of the war, which has been prosecuted in various forms and frequencies for fourteen centuries, and will not end with the elimination of this or that individual or organization.Raymond Ibrahim, an Islam specialist and author of The Al Qaeda Reader, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.Read the full story here.

• Busload of Shia pilgrims shot dead in Iraq.(Al-Jazeera).Officials say the bodies of at least 22 Shia pilgrims who were shot dead have been found in a remote desert area in western Iraq.The bodies were discovered late on Monday night, hours after the gang of gunmen stopped the bus at a fake security checkpoint and told all the women to get off, according to one security official who interviewed a survivor.An Iraqi army patrol found the deserted women, weeping and wailing, by the side of the highway and brought them to the provincial capital of Ramadi for help.One of the women told officials that there were four gunmen who were dressed in military uniforms and stopped the bus at a fake checkpoint.The gunmen then drove the bus a few kilometres off the main highway between Baghdad and the Jordanian border in Iraq's Sunni-dominated Anbar province.The 22 bodies were found there, about 300km west of Baghdad."Some armed men stopped the bus coming from Syria Monday around 9:30pm (1830GMT), they made the 22 passengers get off the bus and killed them with automatic weapons in the desert region of Noukhair," police general Haider Rzayj told the AFP news agency.Two Iraqi security officials and a political leader from the southern Shia city of Karbala, where the pilgrims were from, confirmed the shooting details, but an interior ministry source put the death toll at 20 men.It was not immediately clear if the caravan was headed to the Sayyida Zainab shrine in Damascus or coming home.Hmmmm....."The religion of peace".Read the full story here.

• Russia Demolishing Historical Cathedral Mosque on 911 is a Muslim Tragedy: Moscow Mufti.(Vinienco).On September 11, 2011, the Russian capital saw the demolition of the historical Moscow cathedral mosque.The workers pulled it down with special machinery while conducting reconstruction of the complex. Albir Krganov, first deputy head of the Central Spiritual Directorate of Muslims, Mufti of Moscow and Central region of Russia, said that the cathedral mosque is leveled to the ground. He was bewildered by the fact that the mosque was pulled down exactly on September 11. “Exactly 10 years after the terrorist act in the USA, Moscow saw its tragedy,” Interfax quotes Krganov as saying.According to Ravil Gainutdin, Chairman of Council of Muftis of Russia, Moskomnasledie, which was reconstructing the mosque, assessed the cathedral mosque as of historical value. Meanwhile, on June 30, 2008 Bureau of Historical and Cultural Advisory Council (IKES) at Moskomnasledie decided to classify the mosque to the buildings of historical value. However, the decision was annulled in 2009. On January 21, 2009, at IKES meeting some attendees, member of Council of Muftis Damir Gizatullin among them, came up for demolition of the building, also due to its 8 degree deviation from the direction to Kaaba.According to Ravil Gainutdin, even during the construction of the mosque at the beginning of the past century there had been a serious deviation from the direction to Mecca.Centralized Islamic religious organizations in Russia, such as the Central Spiritual Directorate of Muslims, the Russian Association of Islamic Consent and others strongly criticized plans to demolish the historic mosque.The Cathedral Mosque was built in 1904 on money of Tatar patron, merchant Salih Erzin. Prior to the Moscow Olympics in 1980 the cathedral mosque already faced demolition threat. But then metropolitan religious leaders and ambassadors from Arab countries saved it. At times, the Indonesian President Ahmed Sukarno (1955), Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1957), Libyan revolution leader Muammar Gaddafi (1969) visited the mosque.Read the full story here.

• Walter Fauntroy Former Congressman, Feared Dead in Libya: ‘I Saw NATO Troops Behead Libyans’.(Afro).Former U.S. Congressman Walter Fauntroy, who recently returned from a self-sanctioned peace mission to Libya, said he went into hiding for about a month in Libya after witnessing horrifying events in Libya's bloody civil war -- a war that Fauntroy claims is backed by European forces.Fauntroy's sudden disappearance prompted rumors and news reports that he had been killed.In an interview inside his Northwest D.C. home last week, the noted civil rights leader, told the Afro that he watched French and Danish troops storm small villages late at night beheading, maiming and killing rebels and loyalists to show them who was in control. "'What the hell' I'm thinking to myself. I'm getting out of here. So I went in hiding," Fauntroy said.The rebels told Fauntroy they had been told by the European forces to stay inside. According to Fauntroy, the European forces would tell the rebels, "'Look at what you did.' In other words, the French and Danish were ordering the bombings and killings, and giving credit to the rebels. "The truth about all this will come out later," Fauntroy said. While in Libya, the former congressman also said he sat down with Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi for a one-on-one conversation. Gaddafi has ruled Libya since 1969, when he seized power in a military coup. Fauntroy said he spoke with Gaddafi in person and that Gaddafi assured him that if he survived these attacks, the mission to unite African countries would continue."Contrary to what is being reported in the press, from what I heard and observed, more than 90 percent of the Libyan people love Gaddafi," Fauntroy said. "We believe the true mission of the attacks on Gaddafi is to prevent all efforts by African leaders to stop the recolonization of Africa." Several months ago, Gaddafi's leadership faced its biggest challenge. In February, a radical protest movement called the Arab Spring spread across Libya. When Gaddafi responded by dispatching military and plainclothes paramilitary to the streets to attack demonstrators, it turned into a civil war with the assistance of NATO and the United Nations.Fauntroy's account could not be immediately verified by the Afro and the U.S. State Department has not substantiated Fauntroy's version of events. Fauntroy was not acting as an official representative of the U.S. in Libya. He returned to Washington, D.C. on Aug. 31.Read the full story here.

• Facebook's Foe -German Minister Urges Government to Quit Facebook.(Spiegel).German Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner has called on her cabinet colleagues to stop using Facebook, reflecting ongoing German concern that the social networking site threatens data privacy."Following an extensive legal probe I think it is essential that we should no longer use the Facebook button on all official government Internet sites under our control," she wrote in a letter seen by SPIEGEL. She sent her request to all government ministries at the end of last week. She added that the ministries should avoid using fan pages, a tool which allows users to access information on an organization. She argued there were "justified legal doubts" about fan pages. She wrote that, "logically enough" her ministry did not have a fan page and did not use the social networking site's "Like" button.Aigner herself quit her Facebook account last year in a high-profile move sparked by her concerns for data privacy .She wrote that government departments and parliamentarians should "set a good example and show that they give a high priority to the protection of personal data."She added that Facebook had to respect German and European laws. Her comments follow moves by the state of Schleswig-Holstein, which last month said it aims to ban the site's "Like" button. Critics argue that the "Like" button could allow advertisers to track users' tastes and consumer choices. Web advocates and bloggers were outraged at the plan, calling it "data protection hysterical."Germany is notably vigilant regarding the Internet's threat to personal privacy. Global giants like Facebook and Google have repeatedly been in the firing line and the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein even managed to ban Google Street View from its region in 2008.Read the full story here.

• World Bank: Palestinian Authority Heading Toward Sharp Financial Crisis.(Memri)A report issued by the World Bank yesterday warns that the Palestinian Authority is heading toward a sharp financial crisis while the report underscores the efforts of the Authority to build the institutions of an independent state. The report attributes the crisis to the slow rate of economic growth and the decline in the level of support for the Authority which has established a positive record in institution building compared with other countries in the region. The Authority's 2011 pro-forma budget was built on the projection of foreign aid valued at $967 million but it has received only $293 million. As a result, the Authority resorted to borrowing from local banks and it was also forced to withhold salaries to employees in the public sector in July.Given the shortfall in the amount of financial support, the Palestinian economy in the West Bank grew by 4% in the first half of this year compared with 8% for the parallel period of last year. The report says that the limitations on the movement of Palestinians imposed by Israel are a key factor in the slow growth of the economy.Hmmmm....The more financial aid they get...the lower their GDP...Go Figure.Read the full story here.

• Belgium And The Breakup Of Nations.(TheBrusselsJournal).After Belgium: The Orderly Split-Up is a rather misleading book. Or perhaps it is better to understand the book differently than its title suggests. Ostensibly, it argues for and catalogs reasons why we must expect the legitimate dissolution and transformation of Belgium into constituent parts based primarily on cultural ethnicity. As such, After Belgium is mostly of interest to European political observers. However, this misses the book’s greater value as a coherent and in-depth discussion about the politics of nationhood altogether, a discussion that transcends any one set of local politics. And it is this latter aspect that recommends the book to larger audiences than would otherwise be the case.After Belgium is the work of Gerolf Annemans and Steven Utsi, members of the Belgian political party Vlaams Belang (trans. Flemish Interest). They present the case that Belgium is essentially a “failed State,” artificial from the beginning, and now suffering the effects of internal contradictions mostly rising from incommensurable ethnic tensions. Tensions that are impossible to reconcile politically, but demand both an orderly and peaceful break-up. From this perspective, the book offers a finely detailed blueprint suggesting a way out.The authors write that they are Flemish nationalists, however at the same time they distance themselves from purely ideological motivations, either political or religious. They are “conservative” (self-described, after the style of Roger Scruton but not Edmund Burke), yet more importantly are they guided by a definition of nationhood derived from a more traditional, classical understanding. That is, one constituted among an indigenous people sharing an organic, common ethnic, linguistic, and cultural background resisting externally imposed artificial constructions — in fine, nationhood opposed to the modern liberal State.A sense of immediacy follows the authors as they point out that the dissolution of Belgium will happen one way or the other. Whether it will be done rationally or revolutionary is the question, simply because Belgian governance is rapidly becoming impossible due to the “sheer ineffectiveness” of the present government. The authors write that together both “Flemings and Walloons will initiate acrimonious divorce proceedings without waiting for permission from the guardians of the failed status quo.” With this inevitability in mind, the book begins its task.Primarily the very existence of Belgium is viewed as unjust in practice, highlighted by current internal political machinations, where even High Court rulings that are favorable to Flanders, instead of being applied, are subject to political quarreling and compromise. Pointing to the core of the current political crisis in Belgium, the authors write:To understand the essentially unjust nature of Belgium, we should recall that the majority of all Council of State and Constitutional Court judgments on communal differences have been decided in Flanders’ favor. One of the most notorious examples was the CC degree of 26 February 2003, which ordered the annulment of the provincial constituencies, in particular Flemish Brabant. This single decision means that every subsequent federal election has been technically unconstitutional and has made the contentious issue of the Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde (BHV) constituency loom large over each incoming administration. The Belgian problem is about unjust structures, not ethnic hatred.” Read the full story here.