"CHANGE" - GM Launches Chevrolet Aveo Output at RUSSIAN GAZ Plant.

"CHANGE" - GM Launches Chevrolet Aveo Output at RUSSIAN GAZ Plant.(RN).NIZHNY NOVGOROD – Russian vehicle maker GAZ Group has launched assembly of Chevrolet Aveo sedans at its Nizhny Novgorod plant under an agreement with US car giant General Motors, GAZ said on Tuesday.
“We are now producing 48 cars a day. By April, we should be already producing 150 cars a day,” GAZ CEO Bo Andersson said at the launch ceremony.
GAZ said it will also start assembling Chevrolet Aveo hatchbacks by late March, and hopes to produce about 30,000 Aveo cars annually for the Russian market.
Joint investment in that project will total $29 million, including $19 million from GM and $10 million from GAZ. The vehicles will be built from components made in South Korea, but GM intends to increase the share of locally-made content.
The GAZ facility is Europe’s sole production site for the Chevrolet Aveo.
Chevrolet is General Motors' largest global brand with annual sales of about 4 million vehicles in more than 130 countries. It is the fourth-biggest global car brand in terms of sales and also one of the fastest growing brands in the world, according to GM’s website.
Chevrolet car sales in Russia rose 18 percent in 2012 to 205,000 vehicles, making Russia GM's fourth largest market by sales.Hmmmm.....Obama: "All the Choices We've Made Have Been the Right Ones"Read the full story here.

PS: GM closing assembly lines in Canada.

U.S. Taxpayers Likely to Lose Billions of Dollars on GM Bailout.

U.S. Taxpayers Likely to Lose Billions of Dollars on GM Bailout.(DN).The Obama administration said Wednesday it will sell 200 million shares — or 40 percent of its remaining stake in General Motors Co. — back to the automaker and announced plans to completely exit the Detroit automaker by March 2014.
The Detroit automaker said it will purchase 200 million shares of GM stock held by Treasury for $5.5 billion — or $27.50 per share — nearly $2 above the stock’s closing price on Tuesday.
GM shares jumped sharply on the news and were up 7.5 percent to $27.36, or $1.90, early afternoon in very heavy trading.
The exit timetable signals the end of one of the most extraordinary government interventions in the U.S. economy in history — the rescue and partial nationalization of two U.S. automakers and their finance arms supported by two U.S. presidents.
Still, taxpayers will almost certainly lose billions of dollars in the $49.5 billion GM bailout – and the government would need to sell its remaining shares for about $70 each to break even. If the government sold the rest of its stock at current prices, taxpayers would lose more than $13 billion. But profits from the bank and AIG bailouts will largely offset the auto bailout losses.
David Whiston, a senior equity analyst for Morningstar, said he was surprised the government didn't wait for a $33 a share price, but said investors likely were expecting an announcement following the quick AIG sale.
The Canadian federal and Ontario governments — which gave GM a separate $10 billion bailout — still hold about 9 percent of GM's shares. Canadian officials said in Toronto they have no immediate plans to sell.
The Treasury has said it expects to lose $24.3 billion on the $85 billion auto bailout.
Treasury also holds a 74 percent stake in Ally Financial Inc., the Detroit-based auto lender, as part of a $17.2 billion bailout.
Last year, the government exited Chrysler Group LLC and booked a $1.3 billion loss on its $12.5 billion bailout.Hmmmm.....Obama: "All the Choices We've Made Have Been the Right Ones" Read the full story here.

If the Auto Bailout Was a Success, I’d Hate to See What a Failure Looks Like.

If the Auto Bailout Was a Success, I’d Hate to See What a Failure Looks Like.(Cato).By Daniel J. Mitchell
Sometimes it’s no fun to be an economist. Or, to be more specific, it’s rather frustrating to understand Bastiat’s insight about the “seen” and the “unseen” and to always be asking “at what cost?” and “to what effect?” when politicians make inane statements.
The GM bailout is a good example. Politicians want us to believe that it was a success because the company is still in business. Heck, the Vice President’s favorite campaign statement is that “Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive”
But if you’re the type of person who recognizes t.he importance of tradeoffs and incentives, then it’s easy to see how a political success can be an economic failure. Which is the message of this new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation.

This is music to my ears. I’ve been saying for years that any company can be kept afloat indefinitely with taxpayers subsidies. So if that’s the definition of success, we can party until we hit the fiscal brick wall. But that wall won’t feel good, as we can see from the fiscal chaos in Greece and other European welfare states.
But this issue involves more than just inefficient subsidies. I’m also concerned about the corruption that inevitably exists when cronyism replaces capitalism.
It’s quite likely, after all, that GM is spending lots of money on the Chevy Volt because of pressure from Washington rather than demand from consumers. And when you have a car company executive endorsing higher gas taxes, it’s reasonable to think that he’s currying favor with the political masters in DC rather than looking out for the best interests of drivers.
The GM bailout may be a win-win situation for politicians and lobbyists, but it’s a lose-lose proposition for taxpayers and the economy.
P.S. If you want some auto bailout humor, here’s a spoof on the Chevy Volt, an advertisement for the new GM Obummer, a couple of good political cartoons, and a very funny video on the Pelosi GTxi SS/RT.Read the full story here.

"Doing Just Fine" - Auto Bailout Was Really Just a UAW Bailout.

"Doing Just Fine" - Auto Bailout Was Really Just a UAW Bailout.(Heritage).By Amy Payne.President Obama told the United Auto Workers (UAW) in February not to listen to critics of the auto bailout who said union members “made out like bandits—that saving the auto industry was just about paying back the unions.” “Really?” Obama said. “I mean, even by the standards of this town [Washington], that’s a load of you-know-what.”
New research from Heritage labor economist James Sherk proves that it was, in fact, a load of truth.
The Treasury Department estimates that taxpayers will lose $23 billion on the auto bailout. Sherk and co-author Todd Zywicki find that none of these losses came from saving jobs, but instead went to prop up the compensation of some of the most highly paid workers inAmerica. They write:

We estimate that the Administration redistributed $26.5 billion more to the UAW than it would have received had it been treated as it usually would in bankruptcy proceedings. Taxpayers lost between $20 billion and $23 billion on the auto programs. Thus, the entire loss to the taxpayers from the auto bailout comes from the funds diverted to the UAW.

The Obama campaign is touting the bailout in Michigan this week, crowing about saved-or-created jobs. What the bailout actually saved was the UAW’s heavily padded compensation packages; what it created was a massive taxpayer loss.
The UAW was a significant factor in the automakers’ decline: It had raised Detroit’s labor costs 50 percent to 80 percent above other automakers, such as Toyotaand Nissan. In 2006, General Motors paid its unionized workers $70.51 an hour in wages and benefits. Chrysler paid $75.86 an hour. Added to mistakes by management, these labor costs were a major reason the automakers went bankrupt.
However, through the bailout, the Obama Administration insulated the UAW from most of the sacrifices unions usually make in a bankruptcy—at taxpayer expense.Even Stephen Rattner, President Obama’s “car czar,” has admitted that “We should have asked the UAW to do a bit more. We did not ask any UAW member to take a cut in their pay.”
As a result, even after the reorganization, GM still has higher labor costs ($56 an hour) than any of its foreign-based competitors.
The average American worker—whose taxes paid for the bailout—earns $30.15 an hour in wages and benefits. Few Americans have the ability, as UAW workers do, to retire in their mid-50s before they can collect Social Security. Fewer still receive retirement health benefits in addition to Medicare, as UAW workers do. Yet their tax dollars went to subsidize UAW pay and benefits.
Had the government treated the UAW in the manner required by bankruptcy law, taxpayers would have broken even. The program would have amounted to bankruptcy financing instead of an outright bailout. The Administration could have kept the automakers running without losing a dime.Instead, more than $26 billion went out the door and into the UAW’s pockets. Let’s put that in perspective: The amount of the subsidy given directly to the UAW was bigger than the budget of the entire State Department. It was bigger than allU.S. foreign aid spending. It was 50 percent more than NASA’s budget.The Administration did not bail out GM and Chrysler. It bailed out the United Auto Workers.Read the full story here.

General Electric (which paid no taxes on billions in income), now 'forcing' employees into Chevy Volts

General Electric (which paid no taxes on billions in income), now 'forcing' employees into Chevy Volts.(GCR).Sixteen months ago, General Electric announced it would place the "largest order in history" for electric cars, to be used by its employees who are issued company cars.
Now, those cars are starting to arrive and be placed with employees.
And where changes are made, personnel policies are sure to follow.
A person inside GE recently forwarded a memo to us that covers some of the nuts and bolts of using the 2012 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car. It's from the fleet operations manager for GE Healthcare.
Among the interesting points:

• "All sedans ordered in 2012 will be the Chevrolet Volt"
• Crossovers and minivans will be replaced by electric-vehicle sedans, i.e. the Volt
• Field engineers (who presumably have to carry equipment and spare parts) are the exception to the Volt-only rule
• Home assessments for installation of a 240-Volt Level 2 charging station will be provided to all Volt drivers
• If it's not possible to install a Level 2 station, employees should use standard 110-Volt charging
• If no electric power is available, driving the Volt using only its gasoline range extender is permitted
• Employees should expense both public charging-station costs and the Volt-recharging portion of their monthly electric bills
• If new GE drivers opt out of the fleet-vehicle program and choose to use a personal car, GE will not reimburse those expenses
• Existing drivers will not be reimbursed for personal-vehicle use after January 1, 2013

Hmmmm..........Meanwhile French 'Entrepreneur' Renault cars Zoe Pure-electric Car Could Have a 220 Mile Range. Read the full story here.

MFS - The Other News

                        Morning Posting.

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity Argentina 6.1 ; Micronesia 5.6 and greenland 5.4 - 5.3 ! More info here.

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

• Obama, Dems Plan To Align Themselves With Occupiers And Tie GOP To Evil Capitalists On Wall Street.(US News) — The burgeoning of populist protests in New York and other cities shows that resentment over the economy is growing, and Democratic strategists are moving aggressively to show that President Obama and his party are taking steps to solve the problem while Republicans are standing in the way.The Democratic National Committee is starting what a spokesman called a coordinated attack with the Obama re-election campaign and state parties designed to link Republican presidential candidates to Wall Street. As part of that effort, the DNC this morning released a new 105-second web video called “Republicans: On the Side of Wall Street, Not Consumers”. . .The DNC also will attack Senate Republicans who have blocked Richard Cordray, the president’s nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.The news media have been paying increasing attention this week to the “Occupy Wall Street” protests that started in New York and have spread to other cities including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington. Democratic strategists make the point that Obama is sympathetic to the protesters’ underlying concerns. These strategists note that Obama and the Democrats are calling for legal protection for consumers and higher taxes on the wealthy and on big corporations so they pay their “fair share” while the GOP generally opposes those ideas.Hmmmm......"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."Wake up America there's a Dictatorship rising.Read the full story here.

• Obama Tax Plan Hides 2nd GM Bailout As ‘Responsibility Fee’.(BigGovernment).The White House has denied pressuring Ford to pull its ad that criticizes competitors that took and have yet to repay taxpayer dollars from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. However, the Obama administration can’t deny a new gift it showers on General Motors and Chrysler in its package of tax hikes to pay for its so-called American Jobs Act.

For all the talk about fairness and equity with the so-called Buffett Rule, there is one sneaky loophole in the Obama revenue proposal that has largely escaped notice. In doublespeak that would make even George Orwell do a doubletake, President Obama’s “financial crisis responsibility fee” would tax banks, insurance companies and brokerage houses that have paid back their bailout money — and even some firms that never took a bailout — to pay the tab of irresponsible firms, namely the auto companies that still owe the government billions.

“We also ask the largest financial firms — companies saved by tax dollars during the financial crisis — to repay the American people for every dime that we spent,” President Obama proclaimed in the Rose Garden two weeks ago. But the details of this “responsibility fee” in the 80-page plan the president submitted to the Joint Committee on Taxation makes it clear that this fee will only be on firms that have already repaid the TARP funds and likely on some firms who never took a dime of taxpayer money.

“Although many of the largest financial firms have repaid the Treasury for their TARP assistance, they continue to implicitly benefit from the TARP funds that bolstered their balance sheets during a period of great economic upheaval,” the administration states. A fee of an unspecified amount “will be restricted to financial firms with assets over $50 billion and will be imposed until all TARP costs have been recouped.”

But let’s look at the “fine print,” which Obama always talks about when making the case for his big new consumer agency, an agency created by the same “pro-consumer” Dodd-Frank law that is responsible for new monthly debit card fees due to price controls on debit card transactions that serve as corporate welfare for big retailers. (I had alerted BigGovernment readers about the dangers of the Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin’s destructive Dodd-Frank provisions last December.)Careful readers of the tax plan can see that or all Obama’s talk of “repayment,” his proposed “responsibility fee” would not be levied on recipients of TARP per se, but “financial firms” with assets of more than $50 billion.Let’s first examine the term “financial firm.” The Obama plan never exactly defines it, but appears narrow enough to exclude auto companies. Fannie and Freddie would also almost certainly be excluded, since they are now officially part of the government, and hence not private “financial firms.”Yet the term “financial firm” is also broad enough to go beyond banks and rope in broker-dealers and insurance companies, most of which have never taken a dime from TARP. Fidelity Investments, for instance, has weathered the storm relatively well and has not taken any TARP money. But since it has assets of more than $1 trillion under management, Fidelity would still likely be hit by the Obama tax.Other probable targets of this tax are well-managed insurance companies such as State Farm and USAA, which also never received taxpayer bailouts. It should also be remembered some of the TARP recipients, like BB&T Corp., hadn’t engaged in the foolish mortgage and credit practices, yet were pressured by the government to take the bailout money so that the truly insolvent banks wouldn’t be stigmatized by taking TARP money.The Obama plan argues disingenuously that “shared responsibility requires that the largest financial firms pay back the taxpayer for the extraordinary support they received.” Yet there is no responsibility, “shared” or otherwise, for the auto companies General Motors and Chrysler that still owe the taxpayer billions. In fact it gives GM and Chrysler a free ride to cave to the United Auto Workers’ demands for thousands more unionized workers, as GM recently did in sham “negotiations” with the union bosses.The White House “wants to make the nation’s largest banks pay for the losses incurred in the $85 billion auto bailout,” reports the Detroit News. And “last month, the Treasury Department raised the government’s estimate of taxpayer losses due to the auto bailout by more than $400 million to $14.33 billion,” the paper adds.What this really means is that ordinary Americans — “working-class folks” as politicians like to call them — will pay for the auto bailouts twice. Once through their tax dollars, and again when their banks and insurance companies pass on the cost of the “responsibility fee” through higher borrowing costs, higher policy premiums, and lower returns on savings and investment. For we know from the experience of the Dodd-Frank debit card price controls that when government imposes costs on business, those costs are inevitably passed on to consumers.So tell us, Mr. President and allies like MoveOn, how does Warren Buffett’s secretary benefit from that?!Read the full story here.

• Video: At National Press Club, Pigford Attorney Publicly Reveals Conspiracy to Defraud Federal Government.(BigGovernment).One of the key attorneys in the Pigford “black farmers” lawsuit has confirmed, on camera, what we at Big Government have argued for months: that the $2.7 billion Pigford settlement has been corrupted by fraud on a massive scale.On September 23, 2011, at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., attorney Faya Rose Toure (a.k.a. Rose Sanders) described a conspiracy to defraud the federal government, involving claimants, attorneys, and members of the clergy.The original Pigford plaintiffs were black farmers who sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture for racial discrimination.Sanders related how class-action lawyers later recruited claimants by sending representatives to black churches, where they allegedly told congregants that they were eligible for “reparations,” even if they had never farmed.Sanders’s claims were at least partially corroborated at the press conference by Gary Grant, President of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, who indicated that he knew of the involvement of preachers in Pigford-related fraud.What Sanders reveals in the clip below ought to be enough to cause the supervising judge, Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, to suspend the settlement process.It ought to be enough to prompt the FBI to re-open investigations into the lawyers and organizations involved.It ought to be enough to encourage Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to fire up his magic investigation machine, and start issuing subpoenas–not just regarding the Pigford settlement, but also the Obama-created settlements for women, Native American, and Hispanic/Latino famers who are alleging discrimination.Watch the clip, then I’ll take you through some of the points that Pigford attorney Sanders is making.

And so after all of that, they are now accusing the farmers of fraud. There is a problem. There are people who are out there hustling, and taking advantage of black farmers. And some of them are our people. They are the ones that are misleading the people, making them believe they are in the lawsuit, making them believe they are eligible. I actually went to a meeting in Alabama, where these white lawyers from Texas had hired–you were there [“Yes, maʼam. And they're still calling me and trying to get me to fraud.”]–hired black people, hired black people to go into all these black churches and they literally told black people: “Oh, you didn’t have to farm. It doesn’t matter if your grandfather never farmed. If you ever thought about farming, youʼre eligible for this lawsuit.” So these people are thinking this is more of a like reparations-type lawsuit. They donʼt know any better. So when they sign up, they just donʼt know. But the government is determined to prosecute [them], and to limit this process, and that is something I think we need to be outraged about. I think we need to somehow get to the NAACP, and I have talked to the NAACP–we’ve got to have a coalition. We–frankly speaking, we’ve got to get away from some of our differences, because our needs are greater than our differences…It is no longer possible to deny the urgent need for a federal investigation of fraud in the Pigford settlement. Those who stand in the way of that investigation should know that they are helping to cover up crime on a potentially massive scale.

$2.7 billion is worth more than five Solyndras. That’s not counting the potential billions in the pending copycat lawsuits in Pigford’s wake.Hmmmmm....What or Whom do both cases have in common?.....Exactly: Barack Hussein Obama.Read and see the full story here.

• Offshore Energy Leases Fall from $10 Billion to Zero Under Team Obama.(BigGovernment).Even as the Obama administration postures on behalf of deficit reduction and job creation, it continues to advance policies that undermine energy production in the Gulf region and lower federal revenue, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) has pointed out in his correspondence with top officials in Washington D.C.Most recently, in a letter addressed to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) Director Michael Bromwich, warned of a severe revenue fall off attached to declining energy lease sales.“Under the Obama administration’s management, revenue from our offshore lease sale program has gone from $10 billion to nothing in just three years,” Vitter said. “Revenue cannot be generated from sales that do not happen, and jobs cannot be created on leases that private industry cannot acquire. We’re in a severe fiscal crisis and we’re facing significant economic challenges related to job creation, yet the administration continues to neglect our offshore resources.”In fiscal year (FY) 2008 revenue from bonus bids on offshore leases was approximately $10 billion, but for FY 2011 that amount is down to $0, according to Vitter’s letter. “Revenue cannot be generated from lease sales that do not occur, and jobs cannot be created on leases that private industry cannot acquire,” he continued.Without a higher volume of additional permits, the number of active oil rigs will continue to decline in the Gulf, Vitter warned in one of his earlier letters. The 2011 permitting rate is well below the historical average, Vitter observed.As of early September, “there were 19 floating units operating in the Gulf, up from four in the third quarter of 2010, but down from the average of 28 recorded in the 2007-2009 period,” he wrote.Up to 20 oil rigs could leave the Gulf, in addition to 11 that have already left, since the administration’s moratorium on deepwater oil and gas drilling went into effect in May 2010, according to a new report.The future could still be there for the Gulf coast with the right mix of policies, the American Petroleum Institute (AEP) has concluded in a new study.If U.S. companies were permitted to drill with fewer regulatory hurdles, they could boost government revenues by $800 billion and generate over a million new jobs by 2030, according to API.But even with a change in administration heading into 2013, the Gulf region is not likely to experience a robust recovery in the short term, Kish, the IER policy expert, warns.“It will take time to correct these policies,” Kish said. “The Obama administration has shifted the entire ground on which the Gulf of Mexico operates.”Unless, the administration reverses course, Vitter anticipates “long-term economic impacts that include lose jobs, lost royalties and lost rental fees.” Companies will be reticent to own a lease if they cannot be reasonably certain that exploration plans or permits will be approved, he added.Daniel Kish, senior vice-president of policy with the Institute for Energy Research (IER), sees an “opportunity cost” for the Gulf region that may not be recaptured anytime soon.“The Obama administration has virtually put a stop to energy development in federal waters,” Kish said. “This is like planting seeds, if the government won’t allow to the seeds to be planted now, they are preventing future production. We are talking about a lost generation of economic activity.”Hmmm....If he really wanted to destroy America would he have done anything different???Read the full story here.

• Inspector General: Green Jobs Training Program a Failure, Money Should Be Returned.(BigGovernment).From The New York Times:  greenjobs_gw_03

A $500 million green jobs program at the Department of Labor has so far provided only 15 percent of current participants with jobs, leading the agency’s inspector general to recommend that the bulk of the money be returned to the Treasury.

The program, which was funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aims to find employment for almost 80,000 people by providing grants for labor exchange and job training projects. With those grants expiring over the next 15 months, IG officials concluded that the program would fail to come close to that target.

More than $300 million remains unspent, according to the report (pdf). Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who requested the Labor audit when he was ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said the findings show that Congress should focus on creating jobs in all sectors of the economy.“This report paints a pretty bleak picture of the program’s effectiveness in job creation,” he said in a statement. “It’s hard to see how leaving $300 million in unused funding for the program in the hands of the Labor Department benefits either the taxpayers or the unemployed.”The report comes as the bankrupty of solar manufacturer Solyndra has reinvigorated GOP criticism of the Obama administration’s green jobs initiative. Congress is now investigating the Department of Energy’s half-million-dollar loan guarantee to the company, and the controversy has become a political issue (E&E Daily, Oct. 3, 2010).Read the full story here .

• ACORN Behind Occupy Wall Street Protest.(JW).A famously corrupt leftist community organization with deep ties to President Barack Obama is largely behind the national movement to “end economic segregation” and social injustice in the United States.Best known as Occupy Wall Street, the rowdy protests have received quite a bit of mainstream media coverage around the world. Besides New York, disruptive marches have been held in other major U.S. cities such as Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami and Boston and more are scheduled in the coming days.Among the goals is to get major banks to stop preying on the poor and people of color, according to the organizer of a Boston offshoot of an Occupy Wall Street rally. The event, promoted as Take Back Boston, was organized by dozens of local community groups that claim big banks have a pattern of pushing “bad loans on people of color and the poor.” As a result of the “predatory lending,” foreclosures have skyrocketed in urban communities, the organizers say.Among the Take Back Boston organizers is a spinoff of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Amid a massive fraud scandal and a series of criminal probes, ACORN supposedly dismantled but the reality is that it simply changed its name. In fact, Judicial Watch recently published a special report (“The Rebranding of ACORN”) about the organization’s transformation into various spinoffs and affiliated groups.In this particular case, ACORN’s Boston office simply rebranded into New England United 4 Justice. Same crooked group with the same general mission and president, but a different name. Headed by Maude Hurd, the former president of ACORN and ACORN Housing, New England United 4 Justice promotes “social justice” for “low and moderate income families.” The group also seeks to educate the general public about social justice issues and the needs of poor and middle class families.    This sort of rebranding has allowed ACORN to skirt a 2009 congressional ban on federal funding, consequence of its many transgressions. A few months ago a Judicial Watch investigation found the Obama Administration gave an ACORN reincarnation called Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA) a $79,819 grant to “combat housing and lending discrimination.”Read the full story here.

• Swastikas spray-painted at Joseph's Tomb.(YNet).Unknown assailants have scrawled graffiti, including swastikas, on the walks of Joseph's Tomb in Nablus. Soldiers and worshippers arriving at the holy site on Wednesday night, exactly one year after the completion of its renovation, rushed to erase the graffiti. Shomron Regional Council head Gershon Mesika placed responsibility on the "Palestinian police terrorists." Some 1,500 people visited Joseph's Tomb in a special prayer organized by the Shomron Regional Council and the Shechem Echad organization in coordination with the security forces, ahead of Yom Kippur. When the first soldiers and worshippers arrived at the site, they immediately painted the graffiti in white and the prayer began.Selichot were said throughout the night in different Jewish versions, and the sounds of the shofar were heard across the West Bank city. Participants included Samaria Rabbi Elyakim Levanon and Rabbi David Dudkevitch of Yitzhar, who hosted the Rebbe of Volbroz, visiting from the United States. Council head Mesika responded to the vandalism at the site, saying that "only barbarians could do such a horrible thing. People capable of desecrating such a holy site in a pathological manner do not deserve to be called humans."Mesika added, "The Palestinian police terrorists, who tell the media that they are allegedly guarding the gravesite when IDF forces are not around, have lost all humanity a long time ago."These are the same terrorists in uniform who murdered Ben Yosef Livnat, may God avenge his blood, and have now allowed the decoration of the Joseph's Tomb compound with graffiti of Nazi symbols." Mesika called on the IDF to return to Joseph's Tomb and resume the yeshiva activity there, in accordance with the "awful Oslo Accords". According to Mesika, "A nation must not allow the repeated desecration of its symbols and most holy sites." Rabbi Elyakim Levanon said, "About a month ago, they tried to intimidate the people of Israel with shocking accounts of an alleged 'black September', but we clearly saw that when the Israeli government demonstrates its sovereignty, all these threats disappear. "I call on the Israeli government to draw strength from the image of Joseph the Righteous and show Jewish respect and heroism toward those rising up against the people of Israel." Israel's Chief Rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar expressed their shock and disgust over the damage caused to the holy tomb. "It's unthinkable that the holiest sites serve as a target of revenge between religions," they said in a statement. The two called on all religious clerics to strongly condemn the incident and "instill in their followers feelings of respect for the values sacred to members of other religions." Hmmmm......Palestinians.....Members of UNESCO?That's like admitting Attila the Hun as chairman.Read the full story here.

• Miss Universe Cancels Trip to Indonesia Under Pressure from Muslim Group.(Vinienco).Miss Universe 2011 Leila Lopes, who is visiting to crown the new Miss Indonesia on Friday evening, was expected to be a VIP guest at a charity night held by the West Java branch of Bhayangkari, the Association of the Wives of Policemen, next Tuesday.But after drawing the ire of the West Java branch of the Indonesian Council of Ulema (MUI), Lopes, from Angola, told TV One on Thursday that she was canceling the trip.A spokesman for the MUI said on Thursday that beauty pageants’ process of judging women by their physical attributes was deeply offensive and damaging to women’s dignity.“But if she only wants to shop at the factory outlets, please,” he said. “Even it will be better if she brings lots of money to shop here.”He added that the council would have gladly seen the city welcome a Nobel Prize winner or world-class athlete, rather than a Miss Universe.“There are selection sessions in which the contestants were only wearing bikinis. Even their height and breast size are measured. It is banned in Islam, while it is highly adored in the process as if they have a high degree of value,” said Rafani Akhyar, general secretary of the council. ““This is the difference between Islamic and secular states,” Rafani said.Masruchah, deputy chairwoman of the National Commission on Violence Against Women, said the MUI had more substantial issues it could address.“This is just man’s way to politicize the issue using the name of religion,” she said. “Even with women wearing fully covered outfits and veils, if the man has a nasty mind, it won’t make a difference. Fix the mind, not the women.”Lopes planned visit had earlier stirred controversy when it was reported that the Bhayangkari had offered Lopes Rp 750 million ($84,000) to appear at the charity function.Hmmm....Obama :"Indonesia is an example of religious tolerance'.Read the full story here.

• Turkey - Photo of shame!(Firat).ANF Turkish page has published a very disturbing picture and distributed to many media outlets. The photo was sent to ANF. It is not clear where and when the photo was taken but the content is unmistakably an intimidation to Kurdish people. It shows the lifeless bodies of two guerrillas, tied with a rope, in front of a monument dedicated to the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The bust of Atatürk bears the slogan of the Republic, "Happy is he who can say I am a Turk". Behind there is another slogan, "A country cannot be divided".The photo is a strike and disturbing reminding that nothing has changed as far as the approach towards the legitimate demands of the Kurds is concerned.Indeed prime minister Erdoğan said: “It is impossible to have freedom and democracy if people are killed in such an atrocious way”. And he was obviously referring to the soldiers who died fighting a war which only is for the benefit of few.It is about time everyone takes a closer look to images like this and rise their voice against the brutality of war and the ongoing repression of Kurds. The photo is quite disturbing and one wonders whether to publish it or not. We have decided to publish it because we believe it deserves an answer by the highest authorities. Democracy begins with justice. Hmmmm......Erdogan "Muslims Don't Commit Genocide", as i said before the Kurds seem to go the 'Armenian way'.Read the full story here.

• Firat News Agency banned in Turkey.(Firat).Ankara 11th Heavy Penal Court banned access to the "org" extension-website of Firat News Agency (ANF). The website of the agency with “org” extension has been banned for "security" reason. When you go to the page, a note appears saying “The ruling for this web site (firatnews.org) is applied by the Presidency of Telecommunications."Since its establishment in 2005, ANF has been subjected to constant attacks while on the other side being openly targeted by Turkish government officials, including the Prime Minister. Besides Turkey-based virtual attacks, the agency is also exposed to frequent prohibitions.While applying these prohibitions on one side, the censorious mentality may also take scandal decisions from time to time. While the address www.firatnews.ws was banned in June on grounds of "pornographic content", ANF’s websites with the extensions of “.com”, “.nu”, “.eu” were also banned earlier without showing any reason. With a statement on the subject, ANF condemned the prohibition and noted that this was an open attack made on the freedom of the press and expression. ANF stated that “truths are intended to be silenced” in a process when attacks against Kurdish and all opponent circles have increased ever before and added; “The Turkish government now needs to understand that it can not prevent free thought through prohibitions. The AKP government is wrong if it hopes to suppress free media workers by means of arrests, intimidation and bans or to make them its own instruments to propaganda. Despite all prohibitions and threats, ANF is determined to not to leave this information, which belongs to the people, to dictator powers.” The statement also pointed out to the senselessness of the bans in the present communication technology through which internet users can easily reach banned websites by using a variety of programs or just by doing simple settings. The website of ANF can also be reached from the websites www.firatnews.ws and www.firatnews.tv. Turkey is today among the countries with highest levels of censorship on internet. According to OSCE, more than five thousand websites were blocked in two years, 2009-2010, while some other sources say that this number is seven thousand. In respect of internet censorship, Turkey is among the Reporters Without Borders Organization’s list of "countries under surveillance".Hmmmm....."There is nothing more 'revolting' than the naked truth?Read the full story here.

• Iran arrests more journalists, threatens families.(BikyaMasr).Two journalists, Mehdi Afsharnik of the newspaper Etemad Melli and Ali Akrami, who works for several newspapers, were arrested at their home yesterday by police who carried out a search and confiscated personal effects. A third journalist, Mohammad Hidari, was arrested at his work place. The reasons for their arrests and where they are being held are not yet known.At the same time, several other journalists have been summoned and interrogated by intelligence ministry officials in recent days.Amid allegations of corruption and hit by the international economic downturn, the Islamic Republic has been resorting to all possible means to silence its critics – censoring newspapers, controlling online content, arresting journalists and in some cases threatening their relatives.Peter Horrocks, the head of global news at the BBC, reported yesterday that relatives and friends of around 10 Iranians who work in London for BBC Persian Television had been harassed by the Iranian authorities following the broadcast of a documentary about the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.Horrocks said they were summoned for questioning, passports were confiscated and some were banned from leaving the country.This is not the first time that the regime has threatened the families of exile journalists or used this kind of intimidation as a form of blackmail in an attempt to manipulate media.Reporters Without Borders knows of more than 50 cases of threats, arrests and harassment of families of journalists in Iran. In an unprecedented exodus, more than 250 journalists and bloggers have fled the country since the disputed presidential election of June 2009. The families of most of the journalists working for independent media abroad have been threatened by the regime’s various intelligence services.Read the full story here.

• Sarkozy: It is silly to talk about a Jewish state.(Ynet).Paris – French President Nicolas Sarkozy has always described himself as a true friend of Israel. However, according to unusual statements attributed to him in the French magazine Le Canard Enchaîne, he unequivocally sides with the Palestinians. The paper quotes comments made by the French leader during a cabinet meeting held upon his return from last month's UN General Assembly, Yedioth Aharonoth reported. "It is silly to talk about a Jewish state," Sarkozy said while referring to the Israeli demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state. "It would be like saying that this table is Catholic. There are two million Arabs in Israel."Sarkozy is also quoted as saying that "the US has been asking (Mahmoud) Abbas for years to come to the negotiating table. He is willing to do it because he is a statesman. Netanyahu, on the other hand, never fails to disappoint us," Sarkozy said in what appears to be a cynical tone. "Only now, he announced the construction of 1,100 housing units in the Arab part of Jerusalem," Sarkozy added. According to the report, the French president told the ministers that he fully supports the establishment of a Palestinian state. "The Palestinians have been waiting for a state they deserve for 60 years now," he said. "Is it not fair that Palestine is recognized by the UN even in an observer status?" Le Canard Enchaîne is well-known for its satirical tone and exposes many controversies. However, some in Paris were surprised by the report claiming that different voices have been coming out of Sarkozy's circle as of late. The Élysée Palace did not issue a response the report.Read the full story here.

• Vatican attacks 'foolish' BBC for ditching BC and AD to be PC.(DailyMail).The Vatican has accused the BBC of an ‘act of enormous foolishness’ for dumping the terms BC and AD in case they cause offence to non-Christians.The Roman Catholic Church also severely criticised the ‘senseless hypocrisy’ of Britain’s public service broadcaster for using a false respect for other religions to purge Christianity from Western culture.‘It is by now very clear that respect for other religions is only an excuse, because those who wish to erase every trace of Christianity from Western culture are only a few secular westerners,’ said a front page editorial in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official newspaper.‘The BBC has limited itself to changing only the description, rather than the computation of time, but in doing so, it cannot be denied that it has made a hypocritical gesture - the hypocrisy of those who pretend not to know why years began to be counted precisely from that moment,’ the paper said.‘To deny the historically revolutionary importance of the coming of Christ on the earth, which is accepted even by those who do not recognise him as Son of God, is an act of enormous foolishness.‘Why not recognise that from that moment the world changed?,’ the paper added. ‘There is nothing more anti-historical and senseless.’The new guidance from the BBC asserts that the abbreviations for Before Christ and Anno Domini (the Year of the Lord) infringed its protocols on impartiality.It instructs employees to instead replace them with the non-religious phrases BCE and BC – Before Common Era and Common Era.The new phrases are numerically equivalent to BC and AD but they explicitly exclude any reference to Jesus Christ.‘As the BBC is committed to impartiality it is appropriate that we use terms that do not offend or alienate non-Christians,’ said the instruction from the BBC’s religion and ethics department.‘In line with modern practice, BCE/CE are used as a religiously neutral alternative to BC/AD.’BBC programmes which are already regularly using the new politically-correct phrases include University Challenge, presented by Jeremy Paxman, who was recently criticised for a fawning interview with the campaigning atheist Richard Dawkins on BBC2’s Newsnight. They also include include BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, which is hosted by Melvyn Bragg.But some senior BBC employees are publicly dissenting from the edict – including Andrew Marr, one of its most high-profile presenters – in what has become a backlash.When asked on the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 if he was now using the new terms, he replied: ‘No I am not.’Mr Marr said: ‘I say AD and BC because that’s what I understand. I don’t know what the Common Era is. Why is it the Common Era in 20AD and it wasn’t the Common Era in 20 BC?’John Humphrys, the presenter of Mastermind and Radio 4’s Today programme, also refused to adopt the new phrases.‘I will continue to use AD and BC because I don’t see a problem,’ he said. ‘They are terms which most people use and understand.’Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, who presented a BBC television documentary on the Roman Empire, also described the guidance as ‘puerile, spineless and absurd’.He said that licence-fee payers should complain to senior executives and ‘fight this Beeb drivel now’.Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Anglican Bishop of Rochester, said he thought that the policy ‘amounts to the dumbing down of the Christian basis of our culture language and history’BC and AD emerged in the sixth century and are used in the Gregorian Calendar, which is recognised around the world.BC denotes the years before the birth of Jesus Christ and AD the years from Our Lord’s conception and birth.Read the full story here.

• Attacks Against Coptic Churches Part of a Plan to Expel Egypt's Christians.(Ania).Cairo -- Recent attacks against Coptic churches in Merinab (Aswan) and Elmadmar (Sohag) are part of a strategy promoted by Saudi Arabia to use its petrodollars to bring the country under a radical Islamic regime, sources in Cairo told AsiaNews. The latter are fearful of a mass exodus by Egypt's minority Christians.On Sunday in Merinab (Aswan, Upper Egypt), more than 3,000 Muslims, incited by their local imam, set fire to the local Coptic church after they accused Christians of building it without a permit.On Monday, a group of Muslims in Elmadmar, (Sohag province, Upper Egypt) tried to tear down Saint Mary Church, but were repulsed by police sent to rescue the Christian community. However, none of the attackers were arrested.Today, about 500 Christians demonstrated in front of the Governaorate building in Bani Suef (Aswan) demanding the reconstruction of the church of Merinab and the governor's resignation.Sources say Egypt's military is powerless against attacks by Salafis who use money and promises to turn people in the poorest regions of the country against Christians.The extremist group is spreading across the Middle East, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Tunisia, Iraq, and Lebanon.Salafis are taking advantage of the region's instability to get caretaker governments to impose their ideology based on Sharia and Islam's supremacy on other religions.According to a recent report cited by the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA), about 100,000 Christians have already left the country since Mubarak's fall."The figure is an exaggeration," sources told AsiaNews, "but many Copts are indeed leaving the country. In Upper Egypt, but also Cairo and Alexandria, many parish churches lay empty. People are afraid and believe that if the Muslim Brotherhood wins, there will be no place for Christians in the country."Read the full story here.

MFS - The Other News

                        Morning Posting.

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity in the Philipines 5.1 and 5.2 in russia! 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.

• "The War On Christianity" - Hindu, Buddhist & Muslim Religious Leaders Invited to 9/11 Tribute Event — But No Evangelicals?(TheBlaze).The head of the Southern Baptist Convention is asking President Barack Obama to reconsider attending a September 11 commemorative event at Washington National Cathedral. Why, you ask?The planned observance of the 10th anniversary of America’s worst terror attack will include the Bishop of Washington, a Hindu priest, a Buddhist nun, the president of the Islamic Society of North America and a Muslim musician – but not an evangelical Christian. This exclusion has caused SBC President Frank Page to call upon the president to reconsider his presence at the event.Obama is slated to speak at a “secular” program on Sunday night. According to reports, five faith leaders are scheduled to deliver prayers, but these individuals have not yet been publicly identified.Considering evangelical Christianity’s influence in America, it’s interesting that the event, entitled “A Call to Compassion,” will exclude this large subset of the faith. According to Fox News, Page has voiced his frustrations:“It’s not surprising. There is a tragic intolerance toward Protestants and particularly toward evangelicals and I wish the president would refuse to speak unless it was more representative.I think it would send a very strong and very positive signal to the left wing extremists in our country that the president ought not show up.”Christian leader Tony Perkins (head of the Family Research Council) reiterated these statements, also claiming that the exclusion is unacceptable:

“Three quarters of the American people identify as Christian and nearly a third of them are evangelical Christian. And yet, there is not a single evangelical on the program.There’s no doubt that this is clearly politically correct. It is historically inaccurate that in times of need or mourning that Americans pray to the Hindu or Buddhist Gods or the God of Islam. America is overtly a Christian nation that prays to the Judeo-Christian God – and specifically to Jesus Christ.”But the Cathedral claims that there is nothing sinister in its exclusion of evangelicals. Richard Weinberg, the director of communications for the Cathedral, claims that the goal was to have interfaith representation and that the church’s own involvement balances the need for Christian representation:“The Cathedral itself is an Episcopal church and it stands to reason that our own clergy serve as Christian representatives.We certainly aim to appeal to as many in the country as possible and feel that our events are not any one slice that could ever represent the entire country — but that we are doing our best commemorate the events as it fits with our mission.”So far, no official response has come from the White House and all signs point to the president ignoring Page’s plea. Regardless of intentions, this could create — or further perpetuate — the perception that the president is not sympathetic to evangelical causes and concerns.That said, this event is private in nature and Obama has been invited as a guest. Considering that his administration doesn’t have control over the guest list, perhaps most will simply blame the Cathedral (and not the president) for refusing — at least until this point — to include evangelical Christians in the commemorative mix.Hmmmm....."Divide et impera". Let me guess that the representative for the Islamitic faith might be 'Imam Rauf'?Read the full story here.

• Up to 25 killed and scores injured in two suicide blasts in Quetta, Pakistan.(AlArabiya).Two suicide bombers targeting a senior security official struck near government offices in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta on Wednesday, killing at least 25 people and injuring scores of others, Al Arabiya correspondent said.There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Pakistan’s Taliban militants, who are close to al-Qaeda, often carry out such attacks as part of a campaign designed to topple the US-backed government.Quetta is the main town of Baluchistan province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, police said.Autonomy-seeking militants demanding a greater share of the profits from oil and other resources in the province of Baluchistan, of which Quetta is the capital, have also waged a low-level insurgency for decades.One of the suicide bombers blew himself up in a vehicle packed with explosives near the car of the deputy head of the paramilitary Frontier Corps in Baluchistan, a police official told Reuters.Farrukh Shehzad said the other suicide bomber entered his house and blew himself up. The dead included his guards. The explosions brought down the walls of his house and nearby offices.Although al-Qaeda is reeling from the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan by US special forces, the Pakistani Taliban are still highly effective. They vowed to avenge bin Laden's death.Read the Full Story Here.

• More deaths reported as Syrian forces storm Homs, block telecommunications.(AlArabiya).Syrian security forces stormed the city of Homs and cut off telecommunications as heavy shooting was heard while troops raided homes, Al Arabiya reported on Wednesday. Syrian activists told Al Arabiya that more deaths have been reported as the security forces swept through Homs and fired at the Khaled bin Walid Mosque. According to AFP, seven people have been shot dead by the fire of security forces in Homs.“Most land and cell phone lines and the Internet have been cut off. Tanks moved in at dawn and began firing heavy machineguns randomly at houses in Bab Tadmur, Warsha district and Bab Dreib,” Syrian activists told Reuters.“Troops also deployed in Bab Sbaa, two explosions were heard in al-Khader neighborhood and they sealed off the city center,” said a statement by Homs City Neighborhoods Union sent to Reuters.The operation comes after Syria asked Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi to postpone a visit to the Arab country for talks on the violent crackdown on protests that broke out mid-March.President Bashar al-Assad faces the biggest challenge to his rule since inheriting power from his father 11 years ago, with increased international condemnation of the violence. The European Union on September 3 added four people and three companies to an asset freeze and travel ban on Syria, where the unrest began in mid- March. A day earlier, the EU banned imports of Syrian oil. More than 2,450 civilians and 700 members of the security forces have been killed during the crackdown, while 15,000 people have been injured and at least 20,000 are in prison, according to Mahmoud Merhi, head of the Arab Organization for Human Rights. The UN puts the death toll at more than 2,200.Security forces have failed to halt the protests, which were inspired by unrest across the Middle East and North Africa that unseated Tunisian President Zine Elabidine Ben Ali in January and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak the following month. Muammar Qaddafi is in hiding after an uprising ended his control over most of Libya.Tanks and troops, largely from Syria’s minority Alawite sect, moved into Homs four months ago and occupied the main square in the city to try to end protests demanding the removal of President Assad.The Alawite sect dominates Syria’s security forces and core army units that have besieged numerous towns and cities across the country to crush the six month uprising.Homs, 165 km (100 miles north of Damascus) is mostly Sunni Muslim, like the rest of Syria. The hundreds of casualties reported in the city since the army deployment has been caused by assaults on Sunni areas. Activists have also reported the death of several Alawite residents in apparent revenge killings.Residents said an Alawite militia loyal to Assad, known as shabbiha, has played a leading role in the raids and are responsible for some of the killings, raising tension between the two sects.Activists and residents have reported an increasing number of defections among the mostly Sunni rank and file military in Homs and its surrounding countryside.Residents of Rastan, a town near Homs, published footage purportedly showing defecting soldiers on a balcony greeting a crowd of several thousand people at a pro-democracy rally in the town last week.Syrian authorities, which have not allowed independent media in the country since the uprising began in March, say there have been no defections in the military.They say the troops were deployed in Syrian cities in response to appeals by inhabitants frightened by “armed terrorist gangs.”Hmmmmm.........Big noise Turkey........silent.Read the full story here.

• Beware: Emperor Obama’s executive fiat,White House plans to circumvent Congress to spend more.(WashingtonTimes).It’s official: President Obama is presiding over the worst era of unemployment in U.S. history since this nation was embroiled in World War II. On Friday, it was announced zero net jobs were created nationwide in the whole month of August. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis stammered, “I do believe that we’re going in the right direction, but we need cooperation and it begins with members of the House and the Senate agreeing to do something now.” Going in the right direction? It’s a perfect admission of the cluelessness of this White House that the head of the Labor Department thinks zero new jobs and a permanent unemployment rate above 9 percent mean the country is headed the right way.In White House talking points leaked to The Washington Times by an executive-branch employee, administration officials are told what to say to the press and the public about Mr. Obama’s Sept. 8 speech to a Joint Session of Congress. The document is devoid of specifics, which will be proclaimed from the podium on Thursday, but it does say that ideas announced to “provide economic security for the middle class … will be both legislative and executive actions.” The key words are the last two: executive actions. This is a tacit acknowledgment that the president is planning to take unilateral action to force through what he cannot get a divided Congress to do.Mr. Obama has a profound resistance to the Constitution’s separation of powers, whereby the legislature is the lawmaking body and the executive branch implements the laws passed on the other side of Pennsylvania Ave. He’s overstepped his bounds on numerous issues already, ignoring the law to further his liberal agenda through federal agencies. Oppressive environmental regulations against businesses and property owners jump to mind.“We need to lock arms, reach across the aisle and start acting as one community,” the kumbaya White House marching orders say. Propaganda aside, a panicking Obama administration will be less collaborative than ever in the days ahead.Hmmmm......Congress must act and stop this walking,talking Doomsday machine, It's clear that the American people had enough........impeachment is needed.Read the full story here.

• Is the Obama Administration about to endanger American troops for political gains?(Aina).Obama Administration to Drop Troop Levels in Iraq to 3,000.The Obama administration has decided to drop the number of U.S. troops in Iraq at the end of the year down to 3,000, marking a major downgrade in force strength, multiple sources familiar with the inner workings and decisions on U.S. troop movements in Iraq told Fox News.Senior commanders are said to be livid at the decision, which has already been signed off by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.The generals on the ground had requested that the number of troops remaining in Iraq at the end of the year reach about 27,000. But, there was major pushback about "the cost and the political optics" of that decision that the number was then reduced to 10,000.Commanders said they could possibly make that work "in extremis," in other words, meaning they would be pushing it to make that number work security-wise and manpower-wise.Now, sources confirm that the administration has pushed the Pentagon to cut the number even lower, and commanders are concerned for the safety of the U.S. troops who would remain there."We can't secure everybody with only 3,000 on the ground nor can we do what we need to with the Iraqis," one source said.A senior military official said by reducing the number of troops to 3,000, the White House has effectively reduced the mission to training only."There is almost no room for security operations in that number; it will be almost purely a training mission," this official said. The official added that a very small number of troops within that 3,000 will be dedicated to counter-terrorism efforts, but that's not nearly what Gen. Lloyd Austin, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, wanted.This shift is seen by various people as a cost-saving measure and a political measure. The only administration official fighting for at least 10,000 forces to stay in Iraq at the end of the year was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sources said. But she has lost the battle.Responding to the news, Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who has traveled to Iraq many times, said that in all the conversations he has had on force strength, he has "never heard a number as low as 3,000 troops to secure the gains Iraqis have won over the years."Lieberman said his first question for the administration is whether the number is one Iraqis had requested or if it was chosen according to other criteria.Any of the plans will require Iraqi approval, and on that front, the Pentagon recently secured a commitment from the Iraqis to start negotiations, but they have not agreed to any number."Discussions with the Iraqis on our post-2011 strategic relationship are ongoing, and no decisions on troop levels have been made," said Panetta spokesman George Little. "We continue to proceed with troop withdrawals as directed by the president."On Tuesday, the head of the three-province Kurdish autonomous region in the north of Iraq, warned that if American troops leave sectarian violence might resurface. Massoud Barzani urged the central Iraqi government to sign an agreement with the U.S. to keep forces in the country.Hmmmmm......."The Commander In chief decided?"Read the full story here.

• GM aka Government Motors (Obama administration) about to hire workers?(CarAndDriver).Joe Biden : GM is on schedule. They’ve paid back a significant portion. We still hold 33.3 percent of GM common equity, but the point is that 33.3 percent is worth something. So taxpayers have an asset. But the best news is GM is talking about hiring back essentially the last of the laid-off workers by  year’s end. No one ever thought we’d get there.Hmmmm......Another Big Government expantion with taxpayer money.Read the full story here.

• Good news: President spending your tax dollars wisely transporting anti-taxpayer union bosses to Detroit on Air Force One.(DougRoss).Reuters' Caren Bohan alerts us to another judicious use of taxpayer dollars: employing Air Force One to fly a bunch of overfed union bosses to a Labor Day rally in Detroit. These are the same lugs who feed at the troth of the taxpayer and then declare all-out-war on us "sons-of-bitches".If I didn't know better, I'd think the unions were actually calling the shots at the White House.Hmmmm......Thugocracy.Read the full story here.

• Obama - Messiah of Hate.By Daniel Greenfield.(CFP).The time when the Obama brand still seemed like it might have something to offer the American people is long past. There will still be voters who go to the polls and pull the wrong lever, but they won’t do it because they seriously believe that another term will make America a better place. Rather they will do it for reasons of identity. Political identity, racial identity and because ‘anything is better than voting GOP’ is also an identity.The emotion that Obama stirred in the hearts of millions, that illusory sense of history created by so many hours of media manipulation, the expectation that now things would be better, is gone. And it isn’t coming back. No one will ever look up dewy eyed at a giant projected image of the Beloved Leader and see the second coming of JFK. All they will see is the politician they’re stuck with.Glamor is all that Obama ever had. With the greasepaint off, there’s nothing there but a surly kid with greying hair. An obnoxious posturing preening brat parading down the runways of the world with his media entourage in tow. Some actors can change from one costume to another, but he is the costume. Worse yet, he isn’t even the costume. He’s the lights, the stirring music, the hours of anchor commentary, the deliberate pauses, the photographic halos, the teleprompter and the building expectation. Take those things away and there isn’t even an empty suit. There’s nothing at all.The Democrats have come to feel that hollowness deep inside. That set of unfulfilled expectations that lies like a hole at the heart of their campaign. An emptiness that can only be filled with hate.As Obama’s popularity has slipped, he has become more openly hateful. The vindictiveness that was hidden away has been put up for display in the store window. What Clinton might scribble on a memo or tell an aide—he delivers in a speech. And the worse his numbers have fallen, the uglier his words have become.Obama was never graceful, but the spitefulness is no longer camouflaged. The petty insults have become common as his persona has grown charmless. The scowl hides less deeply behind the practiced smile. Often it no longer hides at all. The small bag of tricks which he used to get this far has been exhausted. There’s nothing left now but the angry manipulative child underneath.Having failed as the Messiah of Hope and Change, he is swiftly becoming the Messiah of Hate. With a country in a state of severe economic decline and his own popularity further down the toilet than a burning Koran, there is no other choice left to him. And it’s an approach that suits his temperament.  Unlike 2008, he can’t expect to coast to victory on Hope and Change. This time it’s his opponents who are running on that. The halo is gone, but the hate campaign is his best option. No one around him thinks he can sell himself as a better alternative to a generic Republican candidate. But if he can make the Republican candidate look like a completely unpalatable choice to most voters, then he can still win.2012 is set to be half his 2008 campaign .The dark half. All the smears and demonization without any of the hope. There are an uncounted number of Democratic voters who pulled the lever for him, even though they had second thoughts. Voters who might have naturally gone for McCain, if the media had not done such an excellent job of making the McCain\Palin ticket look like the worst thing since the plague. The goal in 2012 is to retain those voters by doing the same thing all over again.Read the full story here.

• Clinton Talks to Palestine’s Abbas Over UN Bid.(AFP).Clinton Talks to Palestine’s Abbas Over UN Bid:US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke Tuesday with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas ahead of a showdown over the Palestinians’ controversial bid for UN membership, the State Department said.The Palestinians are expected to make their bid later this month before the United Nations General Assembly — a move Washington opposes. The US is seeking to set up a new round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.Clinton urged Abbas “to work hard with us to avoid a negative scenario in New York at the end of the month,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.Abbas will Wednesday meet with US Middle East envoy David Hale, and Clinton called on the Palestinian leadership to “hear him with open ears” as Washington hopes to avert a potentially rancorous UN meeting.White House spokesman Jay Carney meanwhile said the Palestinian effort was “not productive or helpful,” telling reporters that peace needed to be “negotiated directly by both parties.”Making the UN membership bid without a peace plan in place would “not bring the Palestinians any closer to statehood,” he said.Washington is said to be seeking to draft a proposal for peace talks that will be acceptable to Israel, as well as Russia, the European Union and the UN — the other members of the international peacemaking Quartet.“We are going to continue to work right up until the UN General Assembly, if necessary, to get these parties back to the table, and we’ll continue to work afterwards,” Nuland said of US efforts.US diplomatic efforts are focused on including a number of countries in the region to help deter the Palestinians’ move toward seeking unilateral statehood.“We have been talking in diplomatic channels… to a much broader section of countries than we usually talk to about Middle East peace, because many of them who don’t usually get confronted with decisions like this could be confronted with a decision in the General Assembly,” she said.Direct talks between Israel and Palestinians came to a halt shortly after they were re-launched in Washington last September over the issue of settlement construction.The Palestinians refuse to resume talks while Israel builds in annexed Arab east Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied West Bank.Hmmmm......"Washington is said to be seeking to draft a proposal for peace talks that will be acceptable to Israel, as well as Russia, the European Union and the UN — the other members of the international peacemaking Quartet."Palestine is not being mentioned........Obama already discussed it with the Palestinians?Read the full setup story here.

• The World from Berlin: Swiss Franc Decision Should Be a Lesson for Euro Critics.(Spiegel).The Swiss decision on Tuesday to peg its currency to the euro should serve as a warning for those who would like to see the return of the deutsche mark: No country can escape the dynamics of the tightly intertwined global market. German commentators hope that calm can now be restored to the euro debate.The future of the European common currency , as has become abundantly clear this week, is far from certain. Chancellor Angela Merkel's government is struggling to find a majority within her government coalition for a crucial vote on reforms to the euro backstop. Italy has been hesitant in confronting massive state debt. Greek reforms have come more slowly than promised. And investors are nervous .

Despite the uncertainty, however, Switzerland on Tuesday pegged its currency to the euro, announcing that the exchange rate was not to fall below 1.20 Swiss francs per euro. "The current massive overvaluation of the Swiss franc poses an acute threat to the Swiss economy and carries the risk of a deflationary development," the Swiss National Bank said in an announcement. The bank said it was "prepared to buy foreign currency in unlimited quantities" in order to maintain a cheaper franc.

The country had little choice. The massive increase in the value of the franc this year -- its value relative to the euro had increased by 20 percent since January -- had begun to slow the economy. In the second quarter of this year, the Swiss economy, heavily reliant as it is on exports, grew by a mere 0.4 percent. The franc's rise in value is a direct result of loss of confidence in the euro and the dollar in recent months.The move ended 30 years of a free-floating Swiss franc and comes at a time when the euro is facing its biggest existential challenge to date, as doubts about state debt and bank health in the euro zone continue to unsettle investors. There was some good news on Tuesday, with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi agreeing to stiffen up an austerity package that he had hollowed out just days before. The plan once again includes an increase to the VAT tax and higher taxes for the country's top earners. And European stock markets recovered slightly in early trading on Wednesday as a result.But foot-dragging on reforms in Athens has renewed concerns that Greece may ultimately be forced into insolvency despite the vast aid packages it has received. Indeed, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble on Tuesday warned Athens, saying that there was no alternative to implementing the tough belt-tightening measures the country has promised. Horst Seehofer, the governor of Bavaria and a key Merkel ally, refused to rule out a Greek withdrawal from the euro zone in an interview with the German tabloid Bild.In a speech before the German parliament on Wednesday, Merkel sought to calm nerves, saying that "we don't see any signs of an approaching recession" and emphasized that "Germany is once again the growth engine of the EU."German commentators, on Wednesday, were still processing the Swiss decision to connect its fiscal fate to the euro zone.

The Financial Times Deutschland writes:

"Even if it might be expensive in the end, the Swiss decision will ultimately be cheaper than having an economy that is no longer competitive. It should be a lesson to all those who shout 'Get Rid of the Euro' and 'Give Us Back the deutsche mark.' Were we to get the mark back, it would appreciate at least as rapidly as the franc has and German exports would suffer. It is, after all, a mistake to believe that a country only has to balance its budget in order to guarantee growth and prosperity, to avoid crisis and to make its citizens happy.""Switzerland has its own currency, a diminutive budget deficit and a legally mandated balanced budget (debt brake) -- and still it found itself being chewed up by the market machinery. In a world of globalized finances, there are no islands of bliss. This network creates a dynamic that solitary actors like Switzerland cannot escape. And Germany certainly couldn't either."Read the full story here.

• Delhi court blast: 11 dead, 50 injured; sketches of suspects released.(NDTV).New Delhi: A bomb placed in a brief case exploded at the Delhi High Court this morning killing 11 people and injuring over 70. The explosion took place in the reception area at Gate no 5, where hundreds of people had gathered to collect passes needed to enter the courthouse. A crater nearly four feet deep established how powerful the bomb was; police sources say the explosive shows traces of ammonium nitrate and combusted completely, signs of sophisticated bomb-making.The Delhi Police has released two sketches of the man believed to be responsible for today's terror attack, based on descriptions provided by eyewitnesses."All states put on high alert. A forensic team of CFSL Delhi examining evidence from blast site," UK Bansal, Special Secretary Security, said.This is the second explosion in the Delhi High Court in four months. A smaller bomb in a parking lot in May did not cause any injuries. Police sources say that attempt was a dry run by the terrorists behind today's attack. The incident in May had underscored the need for security cameras. They have yet to be installed at the court's nine different gates. (First pics of the blast)Home Minister P Chidambaram acknowledged that "Intelligence agencies constantly share intelligence inputs with Delhi Police. Intelligence pertaining to threats emanating from certain groups was shared with Delhi Police in July, 2011." Two hours after the blasts, he told Parliament that it is not possible at this stage to identify who is responsible for today's terror attack. The National Investigating Agency (NIA) will supervise the inquiry with a special 20-member team.Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, currently in Bangladesh on an official visit, described the attack as "a cowardly act of a terrorist nature." He added, "We will deal with it... we will never succumb to the pressure of terrorism... this is a long war." An email received by different media organizations including NDTV said that the Harkat-ul-Jihadi (HuJI) takes responsibility for today's blast. HuJI is a Pakistan-based terrorist group. "We take the mail very seriously," said NIA Chief SC Sinha. The email states, "We owe the responsibility of today's blasts at High Court Delhi... our demand is that Afzal Guru's death sentence should be repealed immediately else we would target major high courts and the Supreme Court of India."Afzal Guru has been sentenced to death by the Supreme Court for his role in the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001. His mercy petition that asks for his sentence to be commuted to life is pending with President Pratibha Patil. The Home Ministry has reportedly recommended that it be rejected.Today's explosion took place at 10.15 am - "rush hour" for the courthouse which usually starts hearings at 10.30 am.On Wednesday, Public Interest Litigations (PIL) are heard in the High Court, drawing larger than usual crowds. In the seconds after the blast, lawyers and litigants were seen running for help, their blood-soaked clothes clinging to them."I heard a loud noise and smoke coming out following by cries of people," said Narendra Kumar Singh, a guard at a construction site outside the court.By 3 pm, the High Court was back to work to signal that it remains strong despite today's attack. But the conversations in and outside court-rooms were about the tragedy.Lawyer Sanjeev Beniwal rushed his client Mehtab Singh to a Delhi hospital after the explosion. Mr Singh did not survive."He (Singh) was fighting a property-related case at the court. He was getting his pass made when the blast occurred. His son Rohit and my associate Sachin Powa have also been injured. We rushed them to hospital and I just want them to be safe as I could not save Singh," said Mr Beniwal, who was also injured.Read the full story here.

• Ya'alon takes on Erdogan.(Ynet).Vice premier confronts the Turkish prime minister: "How can you trust a government that consorts with Iran and Hamas?" wondered Minister Moshe Ya'alon during a conference in Tel Aviv on Wednesday. The vice premier, who addressed a 'Calcalist' gathering, continued his assault on Recep Tayip Erdogan, saying that "since his government rose to power, Turkey has decided to turn east instead of west. Turkey turned into an Islamic republic from a secular republic." Relations between Turkey and Israel reached a new low on Tuesday after the Turkish prime minister said Anakra would cut all defense-related trade with Israel. Erdogan said that further sanctions are on the agenda, calling Israel a "spoiled child of the UN".Ya'alon also referred to the question of whether Israel should apologize for the incident on board the Mavi Marmara, in which nine Turkish activists were killed. "We are talking about a phenomenon that goes beyond this specific incident. The goal is to defeat the State of Israel. If anyone thinks that one word can settle the matter, they fails to understand." Ya'alon, who was involved in efforts to bring about reconciliation between Turkey and Israel, added that "what happened during the flotilla was without a doubt a Turkish provocation." According to Ya'alon, "We had no intention of ending the incident with fatalities but the soldiers had no other choice but to defend themselves. The result was not good and we tried to resolve the crisis later on."Ya'alon also reacted to criticism voiced by Opposition Chairwoman Tzipi Livni against the conduct of Netanyahu's government during the crisis. "Israel is not at fault for the situation with Turkey. I regret hearing the Opposition chairwoman say that the absence of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks led to the situation with Turkey. Whoever says that in an interview is asking for outside pressure. Perhaps he fails to understand or perhaps he is driven by political interests."Read the full story here.

• Why the Muslim Beard Bodes Trouble.(PajamasMedia).By Raymond Ibrahim. To develop a thorough understanding of Islam, one must learn to “connect the dots.” For instance, Muslims who adhere to non-problematic aspects of Islam, indirectly indicate their acceptance of problematic aspects of Islam — such as enmity for infidels, death for apostates, subjugation for women, and so on.Consider the Muslim beard. Because Muhammad wanted his Muslims to look different from infidel Christians and Jews, he ordered them to “trim closely the moustache and grow the beard.” Accordingly, all Sunni schools of law maintain that it is forbidden, a “major sin,” for men to shave their beards — unless, of course, it is part of a stratagem against the infidel, in which case it is permissible.Prior to Ramadan, Islamic leaders in Egypt called for a million men to grow their beards and show Egypt’s adherence to Muhammad’s commands. Popular and enthusiastic preachers such as Muhammad Hassan went as far as to pray for the day when 80 million Egyptians grew their beards — a figure that presumably includes women and children, as 80 million is the size of Egypt’s entire population.Amr Adib, a popular talk show host on Cairo Today, mocked this call for a “million man beard” with his trademark sarcasm: “This is a great endeavor! After all, a man with a beard can never be a thug, can never rape a woman in the street, can never set a church on fire, can never fight and quarrel, can never steal, and can never be dishonest!”He and his Egyptian viewers know quite well that it is precisely those Muslims who most closely follow the minutia of Muhammad — the Salafists — that are most prone to violence and deceit, which were also advocated by the prophet. Towards the end of the program, Adib spoke seriously, ominously, saying this issue is not about growing a beard, but rather, “once you grow your beard, you give proof of your commitment and fealty to everything in Islam.”While Egyptians instinctively understand how fealty to the Muslim beard evinces fealty, or at least acceptance, to all those other things Muhammad commanded, even in fuzzy Western op-eds the connection sometimes peeks out. Consider the following excerpt from a recent New York Times piece titled “Behold the Mighty Beard, a Badge of Piety and Religious Belonging”:[A]ll over the Muslim world, the full beard has come to connote piety and spiritual fervor. It is such a powerful cultural signifier, in fact, that it inspires non-Muslims, too. … Of course, the beard is only a sign of righteousness. It is no guarantor, as Mr. Zulfiqar [a Muslim interviewee] reminds us: “I recall one gentleman who came back from a trip to Pakistan and remarked to me, ‘I learned one thing: the longer the beard, the bigger the crook.’ His anticipation was people with big beards would be really honest, but he kept meeting people lying to him.” [emphasis mine]The italicized portion speaks for itself. Whereas the Muslim beard represents piety, some people, mostly Westerners, are shocked to find that those who wear it are often “crooks” and “liars.” In Islam, however, outer signs of religiosity on the one hand, and corruption and deceit on the other, are compatible. After all, the same source — Muhammad, as recorded in the hadith — that tells Muslims to grow a beard also advocates deception and all sorts of other practices antithetical to Western notions of piety.The hijab, or headscarf, which cloaks Muslim women, also on Muhammad’s command, produces the same symbiosis. Tawfik Hamid, a former aspiring jihadist and acquaintance of al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri, accurately observes that “the proliferation of the hijab is strongly correlated with increased terrorism. … Terrorism became much more frequent in such societies as Indonesia, Egypt, Algeria, and the UK after the hijab became prevalent among Muslim women living in those communities.”The question is simple: Why do some Muslim men wear the prescribed beard and why do some Muslim women wear the prescribed hijab? Most Muslims would say they do so because Muhammad commanded them to in the hadith.Yet if such Muslims meticulously follow the minor, “outer” things of Islam simply because their prophet made a few utterances concerning them in the hadith, logically speaking, does that not indicate that they also follow, or at least accept as legitimate, the major, “inner” themes Muhammad constantly emphasized in the hadith — such as enmity for and deceit of the infidel, and, when capable, perpetual jihad?Read the full story here.

• Reciprocity…(HurriyetDaily).An officious deputy Istanbul governor – who unfortunately is serving as the “highest administrative official” at Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport – apparently decided to defend the “national honor” of Turkey by ordering customs police to apply the famous “reciprocity principle” to arriving Israeli citizens and question them why they wanted to visit Turkey. Thank God, at least so far, neither the officious deputy governor nor the officious customs policemen decided to undress arriving Israelis from top to toe as Israeli security people were reported to have been doing for some Turks at Tel Aviv Airport.I have been to Israel many times over the past years. There were times when I was treated as a VIP and escorted by protocol people, there were times when I was questioned mercilessly and my luggage was violently searched by security people. In view of the immense terrorist threat to Israel and Israelis, I always considered the tightened security or obsessive security measures undertaken by Israelis at key places such as the Tel Aviv Airport as “perfectly normal.” Yet, the fact that Israel employs “kids” as security people with the power to conduct body searches at the airport or at crossing points to Palestinian areas has always been problematic. A “kid” in uniform holding the Turkish foreign minister for hours at the crossing point to Palestinian territory was awful but almost a common practice in security-obsessed Israel. That has been a perennial problem that Israel must resolve somehow, of course without compromising its legitimate security concerns.The Justice and Development Party, or AKP, government should urgently take action against that stupidity at the Istanbul airport which if not stopped might seriously hurt Turkey’s legitimate uproar against the Israeli Mavi Marmara barbarism and intransigence in delivering a modest apology and compensation for the nine Turkish nationals murdered by Israeli marines.If such foolish and indeed shows of masturbation at the airport are allowed to continue on the pretext of reciprocity – as if this were the first time Israel had ever started to become obsessed about security – people might start asking tomorrow what happened to that deputy governor who allowed the Mavi Marmara to leave Turkey with passengers who did not go through routine departure formalities in accordance with the passport laws of the country. Did the Mavi Marmara possess proper navigation papers (and not ones obtained in the aftermath)?There are many questions to be asked and of course even though Ankara might declare the U.N. Palmer Report on the Mavi Marmara incident as “null and void,” can the people in Ankara say in all confidence as “honest Muslims” that they did all they could to prevent the Mavi Marmara catastrophe? Why at the last minute were AKP deputies “ordered” to stay away from the trip but others were allowed to leave without going through passport formalities? The Mavi Marmara incident exploded both in the hands of the Israeli coalition of absurdity and in the hands of Turkey’s absolute ruler, who had a revanchist outburst after being angered by Israel’s sidelining of Ankara’s “regional mediator” or “regional power” role by conducting the Gaza bombardment just hours after a trip to Ankara by the Israeli prime minister.What’s done is done… Perhaps Israel and Turkey should sit back and calculate the prospective cost of continuing the current politics of tension before adding more fuel to the fire… Where is the common interest? In reciprocating offenses or helping each other treat their wounds?Read the full story here.

• Putin: I Saw Jesus in Iran’s Leader.(PajamasMedia).Iran’s supreme leader is being elevated to sainthood and leader of the worldwide Islamic movement by the Iranian media.In commentaries that reflect the dictates of the Iranian regime, the media for the first time are publishing statements by world officials and others that deify Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.The most significant of such statements comes from Vladimir Putin, the former president and current prime minister of Russia. The media outlet Mahramaneh reports that in October 2007, when Putin traveled to Iran, he specifically requested a meeting with Khamenei and came away dazzled.During that meeting, according to the report, Khamenei talked about the history of Russia and what lies ahead, which surprised Putin. Afterward, Iranian diplomats said that Putin’s behavior had changed drastically. When Putin returned to Moscow, a reporter asked what he thought of the Iranian supreme leader. Putin is quoted as saying: “I don’t know much about the Messiah, the Christ, just what I have heard or read in the Bible, but I saw Christ, the Messiah, in the leader of Iran.”Kofi Annan, who served as the seventh secretary general of the United Nations, is also quoted as saying: “I have met … many world leaders whom I came to respect such as Jacques Chirac, the French president, Mikhail Gorbachev, the head of state of the U.S.S.R., and Helmut Kohl, chancellor of Germany, but none of these men touched me the way Ayatollah Khamenei did. In my meeting with him, I forgot about everything else as I was overwhelmed by his spirituality.”Recently, the Iranian state-controlled TV for the first time publicly announced that Khamenei is really the mythical figure Seyed Khorasani, who, a centuries-old hadith (saying) states, will create the circumstances for the end of the world and the reappearance of the last Islamic messiah, the Shiites’ 12th Imam Mahdi, who will conquer the world under the banner of Islam.Several high-ranking clerics in Iran have publicly announced that Khamenei is the deputy of the Shiite’s 12th Imam on Earth and that refusal to obey his orders would be to refuse Allah. Some have also stated that Khamenei once a year travels to the sky and meets with the 12th Imam and confers on needed actions. During one such meeting, according to the clerics, he was told to continue on with the Iranian nuclear program despite widespread world objection.The media in Iran have credited the supreme leader with predicting the economic turmoil in Europe and the global awakening of Islam in the “Arab Spring.” They have also been adamant about an important prediction of the leader: the destruction of Israel, which they believe is imminent.Seyed Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of the terrorist group Hezbollah, is quoted as saying, “Certain qualities of Iran’s supreme leader and aspects of his wisdom, prudence and spirituality are secret and sealed and unfortunately cannot be talked about in public.” He adds: “Though I cannot reveal much of what I know about Ayatollah Khamenei, I can tell with utmost certainty that the leader truly believes the destruction of Israel is … imminent.”One media outlet reports that what is about to take place is much more than the destruction of Israel. It claims humanity will witness the greatest event of its history and that Muslims should prepare themselves because the final glorification of Islam is at hand.Khamenei, in a speech last week on the occasion of Eid ul-Fitr, the Muslim holiday that marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, hinted that the end is near: “An important period in the history of the world is in formation.”“Who would have thought that the agents of America and the Zionists in the region would fall one after another,” he declared.The Iranian leader has also predicted the demise of America and has called the current sanctions in place by the Obama administration a failure in stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Iran has announced that there will be no negotiations on its nuclear drive. The United Nations nuclear agency in its most recent report indicated that there is credible evidence that Iran is working on nuclear weapons and that it already has enough enriched uranium for six nuclear warheads.Hmmmm...."Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God." (2nd Thessalonians 2:3-4).Read the full story here.

• PM Harper says 'Islamicism' biggest threat to Canada.(CBC).Prime minister says Conservatives will bring back controversial anti-terrorism laws.In an exclusive interview with CBC News, Prime Minister Stephen Harper says the biggest security threat to Canada a decade after 9/11 is Islamic terrorism.In a wide-ranging interview with CBC chief correspondent Peter Mansbridge that will air in its entirety on The National Thursday night, Harper says Canada is safer than it was on Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaeda attacked the U.S., but that "the major threat is still Islamicism.""There are other threats out there, but that is the one that I can tell you occupies the security apparatus most regularly in terms of actual terrorist threats," Harper said.Harper cautioned that terrorist threats can "come out of the blue" from a different source, such as the recent Norway attacks, where a lone gunman who hated Muslims killed 77 people.But Harper said terrorism by Islamic radicals is still the top threat, though a "diffuse" one."When people think of Islamic terrorism, they think of Afghanistan, or maybe they think of some place in the Middle East, but the truth is that threat exists all over the world," he said, citing domestic terrorism in Nigeria.The prime minister said home-grown Islamic radicals in Canada are "also something that we keep an eye on."Harper said his government will bring back anti-terrorism clauses that were brought in in 2001 but were sunset in 2007 amid heated political debate.There were two clauses at the heart of the debate:

One allowed police to arrest suspects without a warrant and detain them for three days without charges if police believed a terrorist act may have been committed.

The other allowed a judge to compel a witness to testify in secret about past associations or perhaps pending acts under penalty of going to jail if the witness didn't comply.Neither clause was used by police or prosecutors in the five years before they expired.

In October 2006, a parliamentary committee recommended extending the two provisions.The Conservatives put forward a proposal to keep the measures in place for three more years, but the three opposition parties united to defeat the proposal in February 2007 by a 159-124 vote.The rest of the legislation remained in force.When asked by Mansbridge if he would try to bring those laws back, Harper replied: "That is our plan.""We think those measures are necessary. We think they've been useful," he said. "And as you know … they're applied rarely, but there are times where they're needed."Read the full story here.

• Al-Arabiya TV Director to Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan: Don't Sell Dreams to the Arabs for Demagogical Purposes.(Memri).In an August 22, 2011 op-ed in the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, 'Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, the daily's former editor and current director of Al-Arabiya TV, criticized Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for inconsistency in his attitude towards the Syrian regime. He said that while Turkey had adopted a harsh stance against the Al-Assad regime at the onset of the protests in Syria, it had softened its stance following the June parliamentary elections – to the point where Turkey now resembled pro-Assad Russia. While praising many of Erdogan's accomplishments, Al-Rashed called on him not to make empty promises and to realize his potential as an influential leader in the region.

It should be noted that Al-Rashed's position is in line with similar views expressed in the Saudi press, i.e. that Saudi Arabia had hoped that Turkey could find a diplomatic resolution to the crisis in Syria."Two years ago, during the Davos summit, this [Turk] from Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, became the hero of the Arabs when he snatched the microphone from Israeli President Shimon Peres and rebuked him harshly for Israel's crimes in Gaza. Then he walked off the stage and told the world he would never again return to Davos. "The frustrated Arabs – comprising the majority of Arabs, who grasp at every sliver of hope that might rescue them from their miserable situation – naturally celebrated [Erdogan's actions]. They always look for heroes, but in most cases they discover that [their] heroes are cardboard figures and media propagandists [like Gamal] 'Abd Al-Nasser, [Bashar] Al-Assad, Saddam [Hussein], [Hassan] Nasrallah, and other stars who have ended up in the dustbin of history.

"Erdogan, who rode the wave of popular Arab [adoration], should think long and hard before taking up the role of savior, as he did recently when he and his family flew to Somalia and called for [feeding] the hungry [there].""What is the truth behind this great demagogue?"I think Erdogan could have contributed much to the region. First, he could have been a model of the moderate Muslim, in an age dominated by extremist Islamists. Turkey, too, could be a model of the modern Muslim state. There are many things that Erdogan and Turkey can do – but the question is whether they have any real intent and desire to do them.

"What happened at Davos was nothing but a show. The conflict with Israel over the Freedom Flotilla, [after] the Israelis attacked [the Mavi Marmara] and killed nine Turkish [activists], ended just like other [conflicts]: with nothing more than verbal threats..."Turkey's many failures under Erdogan's [leadership] are etched in our memory. In handling the Iranian crisis, [Erdogan] supported a nuclear Iran. [When the] Libyan [crisis erupted], he initially supported the regime of Colonel [Qadhafi] and then claimed he had been misunderstood. In the Bahrain [crisis], he supported the protest movement and called its suppression 'a second Karbala,' and later claimed, once again, to have been misunderstood. [In the Syrian crisis], he [initially] took a strident tone towards the Syrian regime, to the point of making threats; this elevated his popularity to new heights, with his photo being carried in most of the Syrian demonstrations."

"Unfortunately, all this noise was prior to the Turkish parliamentary elections. After the elections, Turkey [suddenly] changed its tone and style... The position of Erdogan's government [became increasingly similar] to that of the Russians, who were hostile towards the Syrian people. [Turkey] opposed foreign intervention [in Syria] and rejected the calls for Assad's resignation. Considering Erdogan's pre-election declarations that so delighted the Syrian public, Turkey could have at least remained silent [instead of voicing a pro-Assad stance].""I do not want to present Erdogan as a disappointing Muslim leader. I believe he [still] has plenty of time to prove the sincerity of his program. Nobody expects Turkey to do what is beyond its ability, but it should not sell people [empty] dreams for demagogical purposes..."We are not forgetting that, amid all his demagogical positions, Erdogan has enormous accomplishments: his reconciliation with the Kurds in Turkey and his support for their rights; the true peace with Greece, Turkey's [longtime] enemy; and the economic prosperity of his country, which allowed it to knock on Europe's gates and apply for membership in the EU. [Erdogan] has many accomplishments, and there is much more that he can yet achieve. "[But] I advise him not to say things he does not mean in this region – where people are emotional and easily moved to either love or hate – because they have a good memory."Hmmmmm.......As i said before on Syria he won't turn against Ahmadinejad.Get Turkey out of NATO.Read the full story here.

• Muslims Riot, Kill 2 and Injure Many Others Over Hindu Idol.(Vinienco).There were Hindu – Muslim riots on the issue of installation of Ganesh idol at Ujjain. Two persons were killed and many got injured during these riots. Curfew has been imposed in the jurisdiction of 9 police stations in the city.The trouble began on Friday night in the Daulatgunj old town area of Ujjain after a Hindu shop-owner installed an idol of Ganesh at his store, which is adjacent to a mosque. Police said that some members of the Muslim community objected to it since the idol is un-Islamic and was near the Mosque where Muslims were praying. Although the idol was on the shopkeepers property, police urged the shopkeeper to shift the idol to another spot to calm the Muslim mob.When discussions were going about place of installation, riots started. The Muslim group tried to move the idol and began to stone pelt Police and Hindus trying to install the Ganesh idol. Two persons have been killed and many injured during the riots. The violent mob was caned and police opened tear gas shells to have control over them. The police, however, declared curfew when they failed to bring the situation under control. Additional police force has also been called from the neighboring district to calm the Muslim extremist mob.Read the full story here.

• The Price of Camels a Life and a womans value.(ArabNews).Blood Money or diyya is an Shariah principle that arose to avoid feuds and independent application of lex talionis or retribution. In the case of accidental death, it may be covered by insurance, but for intentional killings, it falls upon the miscreant and his family. The value of blood money has remained static in Saudi Arabia for the past 29 years. It is now being raised to three or four times the old value to keep in line with the changes in its baseline figure: the price of a camel.RIYADH: Royal consent has been given to raise the diyyah (blood money) limit for murder to SR400,000 and accidental killings to SR300,000, Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported on Tuesday.The newspaper said the adjustments were requested by the Supreme Court in light of the hikes in the price of camels.According to Shariah rules, the heirs of a murdered person should be compensated with 100 camels. The new blood money values are expected to be circulated soon.Blood money values, currently set at SR110,000 for murder and SR100,000 for accidental killings, have been static for the last 29 years. Murdered women are paid half of the amount. The Supreme Council of Scholars had called for reviewing diyyah in light of the increasing prices of camels.The Saudi system still values women’s lives at half that of men and of non-Muslims at only a quarter.Judge Yasser Al-Balawi said he expected the changes in blood money levels to reduce crime in the Kingdom. It is also predicted that car insurance companies will increase their premiums in response.Fawwaz Al-Hijji, director of business development at Tawuniya, said the company would conduct a study to decide the price of new insurance policies.Read the full story here.