#4
* See also BIGNEWSNETWORK > [Profit Confidential] JIM RICHARDS: WE ARE IN A GLOBAL DEPRESSION.
Post-GREECE BAILOUT, still ROLLING DOMINO???
* SPUTNIK NEWS > [Russia Today] US GEARS UP FOR ON-RUSHING [US-Global] ECONOMIC APOCALYPSE.
looks like Anti-US US Globalist POTUS Obama will have ALL the PCorrect-Deniable reasons he needs to NOT DEFEND US REGIONAL ALLIES IN EAST ASIA [Japan, PH. Vietnam, etal.] DESPITE VARIOUS MUTUAL DEFENSE-SECURITY TREATIES, + TO HAND OVER GUAM-CNMI-WESTPAC + 1/2 OF PACIFIC [Hawaii?]TO CHINA BY 2020 NLT 2025 [Post-Jan 2017 Globalist POTUS Successor(s)].
Lest we fergit, IRAN NUKE DEAL > POTUS OBAMA [paraph] ="THE US CAN'T AFFORD TO REMOVE OR DELINK CHINA FROM THE US FINANCIAL SYSTEM", I.E. THE US NEEDS TO KEEP BOND-BORROWING, ETC. FROM CHINA IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN ITS OVERMASSIVE-N-STILL-EXPANDING NATIONAL WELFARE-NANNY STATE.
And BTW avoid a NucWar wid China as China as already Nuke-Armed + LT Member of the Nuclear Club. THE US NEEDS TO AVOID A WAR OR NUCWAR WID CHINA AS IT DID WID PRE, POST-NUKE DEAL IRAN.
AH YES, NOTHING SAYS SOCIALIST HAPPINESS THAN A MASSIVE SOVIET-STYLE DEBT WRITE-OFF.
* LUCIANNE > [Investors Business Daily = CNS] 150 DAYS: US TREASURY SAYS DEBT HAS BEEN FROZEN AT US$18, 112, 975,000,000.
A potent econ indicator that US foreign vendors/financial lenders consider the US per se as excessively, effectively, andor essentially DE FACTO BANKRUPT, + ARE DEMANDING GOLD-N-SILVER, OTHER COMMODITY? PAYMENTS IN LIEU OF ACCEPTING US-PRINTED PAPER DOLLARS [inflationary].
The desire to impose religion over society is otherwise known as theocracy. Being veterans of the struggle to push back against fundamentalist Christians, American liberals are well acquainted with the pitfalls of the neoconservative flirtation with the religious-right. How ironic, then, that in Europe it is those on the left—led by the Guardian—who flirt with religious theocrats. For in the UK, our theocrats are brown, from minority communities, and are overwhelmingly Muslim.
Islam is a religion like any other. Islamism is an ideology that seeks to impose any version of Islam over society. When expressed through violence, I call it jihadism. It is obvious to an American liberal that Christian fundamentalism must be made to respect personal choice. Likewise, it is as plain as the light of day to me—a Pakistani-British liberal Muslim—that any desire to impose any version of Islam over anyone anywhere, ever, is a fundamental violation of our basic civil liberties.
But for those who I have come to call Europe’s regressive-left how could Islamist tyranny—such as burying women neck deep in the ground and stoning them to death—possibly be anything other than an authentic expression of Muslim rage at Western colonial hegemony? For don’t you know Muslims are angry? So angry, in fact, that they wish to enslave indigenous Yazidi women for sex, throw Syrian gays off tall buildings and burn people alive? All because… Israel. For Europe’s regressive-left—which is fast penetrating U.S. circles too—Muslims are not expected to be civilized. And Muslim upstarts who dare to challenge this theocratic fascism are nothing but an inconvenience to an uncannily Weimar-like populism that screams simplistically: It is all the West’s fault.
It is my fellow Muslims who suffer most from this patronizing, self-pity inspiring mollycoddling. And just as American Muslims, with some reason, fear becoming targeted by right-wing anti-Muslim prejudice, British Muslims are being spoon-fed regressive-left sedatives, encouraging a perpetual state of victimhood in order to score their petty ideological points against “the West.” In the name of cultural diversity, aspiration is being stifled, expectations have been tempered and because Muslims have their own culture don't you know, self-segregation and ghettoization have thrived.
And while the regressive-left have taken this approach with Islamist extremists, they have been simultaneously marginalizing that great political inconvenience, liberal Muslims.
There is a natural fear among Europe’s left, that challenging Islamist extremism can only aid Europe’s far-right. But the alternative to this fear must not be to instead empower theocratic fascism. There is a way to both challenge those who want to impose islam, and those who wish to ban Islam. It has not escaped me, nor other liberal Muslims, that while challenging Islamist extremism we must remain attentive to protecting our civil liberties. We are born of this struggle, after all.
But if the regressive-left has its way, why worry about medieval punishments conducted in Islam’s name, such as the lashing of Saudi bloggers like Raif Badawi? Let us not be Uncle Toms, after all. Israel is the real enemy. Keep it real, man.
#5
1st noticed this trend while manning barricades with the staff of the Israeli consulate in SF during the protests accompanying outbreak of the Iraq war. It took a good bit of pondering the situation but could only come to the conclusion that P2k put forth -it's really no more complicated than that.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
08/17/2015 15:10 Comments ||
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#6
This alliance between the left and jihadism goes back at least to the days of the Russian Civil War.
#8
..what the Left believes in is Power. They share that belief with Islam. They both have demonstrated that several times and the death count they leave is always impressive, often 'historical' in record.
[DAWN] IN Kasur district, Punjab, a gang of men sexually assaulted several children -- it is still not certain how many -- over several years, filmed them being abused and sold the videos to other paedophiles. Details of the abuse, which emerged some days ago after festivities between villagers and the police over the latter's failure to arrest all the abusers, left the entire nation shocked, with people making emotional calls demanding that the perpetrators be hanged.
Child abuse is insidious in all countries and incredibly hard to eliminate. Just last month a BBC report about child abuse in the United States quoted the FBI as saying that child abuse levels are at an all-time high in that country. The report blamed "poverty, deprivation and exploitation" as the reason why thousands of American children are abused every year.
It's obvious that poverty, deprivation and exploitation cause the same problems in Pakistain: open any newspaper on any given day and it is fairly likely that a report of child sexual abuse from somewhere in the country will jump out from the pages. A lack of willpower to prosecute criminals of all kinds -- not just paedophiles -- means there is no deterrent for child abusers. And Pakistain's culture of secrecy around sexual abuse ensures that these crimes are almost never reported to the police. The recent documentary Pakistain's Hidden Shame which examines paedophilia in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. created a stir when it was released last fall, but since then, little to nothing has been done at any level to address the issues the film raised.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/17/2015 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] PAKISTAN'S diplomatic initiatives with Afghanistan and India have both collapsed.
Afghanistan's President Ghani and Pakistain's prime minister and army chief were sincere in desiring normalisation. The implicit bargain was that Pakistain would deliver the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating table while Afghanistan would act against Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP) leaders and gunnies hiding in Afghan territory. Success would have implied: enhanced security within Pakistain from TTP-engineered terrorism and attacks by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), and an end to Indian pressure on Pakistain on the western front; the re-emergence of the Afghan Taliban as a political force in Kabul ...the capital of Afghanistan. Home to continuous fighting from 1992 to 1996 between the forces of would-be strongman and Pak ISI/Jamaat-e-Islami sock puppet Gulbuddin Hekmayar and the Northern Alliance, a period which won Hek the title Most Evil Man in the World and didn't do much for the reputations of the Northern Alliance guys either.... ; and the complete withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
08/17/2015 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] A YEAR on from the Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who is the lightweight's lightweight... - and Tahirul Qadri ...Pak politician, and would-be dictator, founder and head of Tehreek-e-Minhajul Quran and Pakistain Awami Tehrik. He usually resides in Canada, but returns to Pakistain periodically to foam at the mouth and lead demonstrations. Depending on which way the wind's blowing, Qadri claims to be the author of Pak's blasphemy law. Other times he says it wasn't him... -led attempt to oust the PML-N government, the repercussions are continuing. The first anniversary of the beginning of the four-month-long sit-in in Islamabad has resulted in an extraordinary set of allegations by a member of the federal cabinet and frontline PML-N spokesperson, Mushahidullah Khan, that resulted in an immediate firestorm. That it came only weeks after the Supreme Court-led inquiry commission rejected the core of the PTI's allegations regarding the May 2013 general elections and after the PML-N itself had taken a generally conciliatory and forward-looking approach towards the whole affair makes the senator's comments especially perplexing. Either the PML-N is not convinced by its own rhetoric that damaging as the dharna was, the country needs to move on or the PML-N is unable to maintain party discipline and avoid shooting itself in the foot. Neither of those explanations is particularly comforting. Simply, this was an entirely unnecessary and avoidable firestorm.
In a more evolved, deeper democracy the events of last year would never have happened. The PTI and Tahirul Qadri tried to use street power to oust a legitimately elected government on the flimsiest of grounds. Principal blame for the whole sordid affair rests with those two groups, then. But it should also not be forgotten that the whole affair was turbocharged by a sense that the military had not backed the elected government. Had that been the case, the widespread apprehensions that the government was at risk and that democracy itself may be in trouble would never really have been present. Instead, the military chose to announce its neutrality in the matter, effectively putting an elected government and a patently unreasonable street movement on the same level. Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri explicitly tried to involve the military in their ouster bid too and at one time Mr Khan even travelled to GHQ to meet the army chief, who briefly appeared to play the role of interlocutor between the government and its opponent. There was also the memorable ISPR statement pledging neutrality and urging a political settlement at the height of the drama.
Clearly, civil-military relations remain a complicated affair. The PML-N has been bullied on occasion and the military is becoming ever-more forthright about its internal role, be it in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... , Fata or in certain legislative matters. It is not really clear what the government, indeed the political class as a whole, can do to slow down the ingress, let alone reverse it and work towards constitutional civilian supremacy. The PML-N does appear outmatched, unwilling or unable to bring to bear the accumulated experience of three terms in power to the problem. Perhaps Mushahidullah Khan decided to speak out on his own and did so out of deep frustration. But the fallout from the senator's comments have only worsened the situation.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/17/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
Like the Occupy movement, except not enough police cars to accommodate all those needing to defecate.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/17/2015 17:45 Comments ||
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[DAWN] INFLUENTIAL leaders continue shaping national fate posthumously through concrete legacies. Viewed so, unfortunately Gen Zia ul Haq ...the creepy-looking former dictator of Pakistain. Zia was an Islamic nutball who imposed his nutballery on the rest of the country with the enthusiastic assistance of the nation's religious parties, which are populated by other nutballs. He was appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom he hanged when he seized power. His time in office was a period of repression, with hundreds of thousands of political rivals, minorities, and journalists executed or tortured, including senior general officers convicted in coup-d'état plots, who would normally be above the law. As part of his alliance with the religious parties, his government helped run the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, providing safe havens, American equipiment, Saudi money, and Pak handlers to selected mujaheddin. Zia died along with several of his top generals and admirals and the then United States Ambassador to Pakistain Arnold Lewis Raphel when he was assassinated in a suspicious air crash near Bahawalpur in 1988... arguably emerges as Pakistain's most influential leader ever, whose legacies still haunt Pakistain decades later.
Time and health did not allow Mohammad Ali Jinnah to bequeath a definitive legacy which could clarify his vision for Pakistain given his contrasting speeches about state and religion. Ayub Khan's legacy of a centralised polity and lopsided elitist development was quickly dismantled by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
08/17/2015 00:00 ||
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[RFE/RL] After almost a year of silence, Ayman al-Zawahiri has released an audio message swearing allegiance to Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansur, the new Taliban chief.
Zawahri's message is another response to, and nullification of, Daesh and its claims to have established a caliphate. In declaring a caliphate, Daesh leader and Zawahiri's archrival Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi confirmed his rejection of Al-Qaeda's authority.
But in his pledge to Mansur, Zawahiri does not mention Baghdadi, Daesh, or its "caliphate" at all. And he refers to Mansur as Amir al-Mu'amin, the leader of the faithful -- the same title adopted by Baghdadi.
"We pledge allegiance to you to establish the Islamic caliphate that rises on the choice and preference of the Muslims, with the spreading of justice and consultation, realizing security, removing injustice and restoring rights, while raising the banner of jihad," Zawahiri said, implying not only that the Daesh caliphate has not fulfilled these criteria, but that it doesn't even exist.
Zawahiri calls his vow to Mansur as a continuation of the "path of jihad" of Al-Qaeda's "just leaders," including Al-Qaeda in Iraq founder Zarqawi and -- notably, since he led the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), the forerunner of Daesh -- his successor, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir (Abu Ayyub al-Masri).
Zawahiri's pledge to Mansur could lend the new Taliban leader greater credibility, according to one Afghan intelligence official. But how much?
One major difficulty for Zawahiri in his pledge to Mansur is the highly damaging revelation that the Taliban lied about Mullah Omar's death for two years. Beyond that, Mansur is not viewed as a figure with particularly strong jihadi credentials, some analysts say.
Zawahiri's pledge could prove boon for Daesh. Soon after the audio recording of Zawahiri's pledge was released, online Daesh supporters began to mock it, saying that the Al-Qaeda leader had effectively pledged himself to the Pakistani intelligence service.
Mansur accepted Zawahiri's pledge in a statement published on the Taliban's English-language website on August 14. But other key figures, including some of Daesh's most fierce critics -- Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, Al-Qaeda's intellectual godfather, and Sheikh Abu Qatada al-Filistini, who has referred to Daesh as a "mafia group" -- have yet to react.
Driving across California is like going from Mississippi to Massachusetts without ever crossing a state line.
Consider the disconnects: California's combined income and sales taxes are among the nation's highest, but the state's deficit is still about $16 billion. It's estimated that more than 2,000 upper-income Californians are leaving per week to flee high taxes and costly regulations, yet California wants to raise taxes even higher; its business climate already ranks near the bottom of most surveys. Its teachers are among the highest paid on average in the nation, but its public school students consistently test near the bottom of the nation in both math and science.
The state's public employees enjoy some of the nation's most generous pensions and benefits, but California's retirement systems are underfunded by about $300 billion. The state's gas taxes -- at over 49 cents per gallon -- are among the highest in the nation, but its once unmatched freeways, like 101 and 99, for long stretches have degenerated into potholed, clogged nightmares unchanged since the early 1960s.
The state wishes to borrow billions of dollars to develop high-speed rail, beginning with a little-traveled link between Fresno and Corcoran -- a corridor already served by money-losing Amtrak. Apparently, coastal residents like the idea of European high-speed rail -- as long as noisy and dirty construction does not begin in their backyards.
As gasoline prices soar, California chooses not to develop millions of barrels of untapped oil and even more natural gas off its shores and beneath its interior. Home to bankrupt green companies like Solyndra, California has mandated that a third of all the energy provided by state utilities soon must come from renewable energy sources -- largely wind and solar, which presently provide about 11 percent of its electricity and almost none of its transportation fuel.
#1
We keep talking about how the state is gonna crash and burn, but it just keep rockin' along. When will it be obvious to the rest of the world - like Greece closing its' banks?
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/17/2015 7:38 Comments ||
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#2
....when the bond sellers and investment houses can't sell the rubes the paper crap the state puts out. Just like Detroit, they believe someone else will bail them all out when it goes bad.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[DAWN] IN Kasur district, Punjab, a gang of men sexually assaulted several children -- it is still not certain how many -- over several years, filmed them being abused and sold the videos to other paedophiles. Details of the abuse, which emerged some days ago after 
...the creepy-looking former dictator of Pakistain. Zia was an Islamic nutball who imposed his nutballery on the rest of the country with the enthusiastic assistance of the nation's religious parties, which are populated by other nutballs. He was appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom he hanged when he seized power. His time in office was a period of repression, with hundreds of thousands of political rivals, minorities, and journalists executed or tortured, including senior general officers convicted in coup-d'état plots, who would normally be above the law. As part of his alliance with the religious parties, his government helped run the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, providing safe havens, American equipiment, Saudi money, and Pak handlers to selected mujaheddin. Zia died along with several of his top generals and admirals and the then United States Ambassador to Pakistain Arnold Lewis Raphel when he was assassinated in a suspicious air crash near Bahawalpur in 1988...
[RFE/RL] After almost a year of silence, Ayman al-Zawahiri has released an audio message swearing allegiance to Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansur, the new Taliban chief.
Driving across California is like going from Mississippi to Massachusetts without ever crossing a state line.
