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Hafiz Saeed sprung
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Page 6: Politix
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Arabia
UAE PM Sheikh Mohammed Bn Rashid al Maktoum speaks out - WSJ
Arabs appreciate the fact that President Barack Obama has decided to deliver a major speech in an Islamic country (Egypt) about relations between the United States and Muslims, many of whom were alienated by American foreign policy in recent years.

More than half of the 300 million residents of the Middle East are people under 25 years of age. The region has the fastest growing labor force in the world.

With an already high unemployment rate of 15%, the Middle East must create 80 million new jobs in the next five years just to keep apace of our demographics. Unemployment is a problem afflicting all 22 member states of the Arab League, but it is most conspicuously a youth issue. Fifty percent of the jobless are under the age of 25, roughly double the world average. Women have an especially difficult time finding jobs.

These increasingly restive youths are particularly vulnerable to those who would preach radicalism and hostility toward the West, especially the U.S.

Why did Arabs fail to make deep structural reforms in education and in stimulating employment opportunities? The Arab world's track record on education, particularly girls' education, is discouraging. Sixty-five million adult Arabs are illiterate and two-thirds of them are women. More than 10 million Arab children between the ages of 6 and 15 are still not enrolled in any schooling, and on current trends this number will increase by 40% over the next decade. This is a monumental waste of human capacity.

That's why among my philanthropic priorities have been primary education, health care, and the employment of women in the Middle East and elsewhere in the developing world.

But so much more needs to be done, and perhaps Mr. Obama might want to consider a new American-Arab education and health-care initiative. Arabs have the primary responsibility to create a better investment climate and stronger policies concerning education and economics. This will require greater transparency in governance, a stronger rule of law, and more independent institutions of justice.

Far too frequently in our region, good governance strategies take a back seat to military spending. Such recklessness has cost Arabs decades in lost development. The total expenditure on conflicts in the Middle East in the last six decades has exceeded $3 trillion. In fact, the Middle East is the world's most militarized region. And how much do we spend on education? The per capita expenditure of our region's 22 nations has shrunk in the last 15 years to 10% from 20% of what the world's 30 wealthiest countries spend.

We in the United Arab Emirates are dedicated a new education paradigm, notwithstanding some recent setbacks on account of the world financial crisis. We're urging our Arab brethren to do the same.

Our ancestors had their own form of globalization. Through free trade and scientific inquiry, they brought great wealth and enlightenment to Arab societies. We want to rekindle that spirit of daring in the Arab world. There aren't any other viable options, because we are in danger of being left behind in a relentlessly competitive world.

Investing in education means investing in the permanent peace and security that our people deserve.

Sheikh Mohammed is vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, and ruler of Dubai.
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/03/2009 09:08 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  "Our ancestors had their own form of globalization. Through ....." rape, slaughter and conquest...

I'm sick of hearing about all these "great" Arab virtues. They were then as they are now a rock worshiping death cult.

Virtually every thing attributed to the Arabs was Greek knowledge or produced by dhimmis.
Posted by: AlanC || 06/03/2009 12:22 Comments || Top||

#2  ALso from WSJ, ISRAELI MIL FORUM > WHAT A SINGLE NUCLEAR WARHEAD COULD DO [Center-of-the-USoAmerika EMP Attack(s) on US Power grids]???
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 06/03/2009 22:11 Comments || Top||


Obama enables Saudi princes to escape accountability for terrorism
Allegations against Saudis released by the 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism
Posted by: ryuge || 06/03/2009 08:23 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  "My Muslim region": BHO
Posted by: HammerHead || 06/03/2009 10:02 Comments || Top||

#2  This is certainly a test of his limits. Our founding father built this nation with events like this in mind. Let's see if our balance of power that was designed a couple hundred years ago works.
Posted by: 49 Pan || 06/03/2009 11:23 Comments || Top||

#3  If he were a muzzie would he act any differently than he does now?
Posted by: Hellfish || 06/03/2009 12:30 Comments || Top||

#4  "If he were a muzzie would he act any differently than he does now?"

He'd show more moral integrity.
Posted by: ebrown2 || 06/03/2009 12:50 Comments || Top||

#5  ebrown wins.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 06/03/2009 14:54 Comments || Top||

#6  he is a muzzie what you talkin bout, just because he showed up at a crazy preachers church once or twice don't make him christian
Posted by: funky skunk || 06/03/2009 15:09 Comments || Top||


China-Japan-Koreas
Norks to manufacture Kornet missiles for Syria
Joshua Stanton at One Free Korea has the details. The Kornet missile, known to NATO as the AT-14 Spriggan, is an anti-tank missile that the Hezbies used against the Israeli Merkava tanks in the Lebanon war, and to good effect.

Apparently, as the story goes, after the shooting stopped the Israelis leaned on the Russians to stop selling the missiles to Syria, so the Syrians are paying the Norks to reverse-engineer the suckers.

Listed as 'opinion' because this is not based on public sources, but Mr. Stanton seems to have pretty good private sources. See for yourself.
Posted by: Steve White || 06/03/2009 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Economy
Inflation Begins
Think of it as the early rumblings of thunder preceding the storms that will eventually explode into a tornado. The more lyrically-minded might see visions of a single butterfly flapping its wings somewhere off Bora Bora, creating the tiniest of ripples on a glasslike sea and setting in motion the eventual tsunami that will wreak havoc many thousands of miles away. That was the role of the bond market last week, as the yield curve—the difference between yields on the Treasury’s two-year and ten-year notes—expanded to 2.75 percentage points, their widest differential ever. That’s right—ever. Thus did the bond market herald the inception of the developing inflation tidal wave created by out-of-control spending and ever-yawning budget deficits.

As part of the stimulus/recovery package, the Fed has been buying up massive amounts of Treasurys as well as mortgage-backed securities. But as the grim reality of delusional social-realignment programs and trillion-dollar deficits emerges from the dissipating post-election rapture, it is becoming clear that the government’s printing presses will have to keep spinning at dizzying speeds around the clock to fund both the stimulus as well as future outlays as the government either nationalizes or “reforms” anything that moves or breathes—financial institutions, autos, healthcare, markets, energy, credit cards—the list grows by the day. The money has to come from somewhere, and not even fleecing the “wealthy” will cover the cost of recasting the nation in the Obama vision. No, the government will have to continue to sell massive amounts of Treasury bonds, although it is no longer clear who will be lining up to buy them as the world begins to lose faith in robustness of the dollar and the ability of the U.S. to control unthinkably profligate spending in its quest for a utopian society—or at least one that more resembles Europe’s mildly-modified socialism.

Ah, supply and demand, one of the myriad simple economic laws that for some reason appear to exist beyond the grasp of an Obama administration chock full of Harvard graduates and Nobel laureates: When supply outstrips demand, prices fall. The burgeoning surfeit of Treasury securities is beginning to overwhelm the demand for them, so the price goes down and the yield rises. This will make it even more expensive, of course, to kite this bacchanalia of government growth, influence, and power over its citizens. So investors shun and abandon long-term paper, with its open-ended inflation exposure, and seek safe haven in short-term securities. That’s how the yield curve steepens.

And so the vicious cycle continues: The more the administration proposes to spend, aided and abetted by congressional cohorts, the more funds the government will have to raise at increasingly disadvantageous terms. Higher Treasury rates will, of course, push up interest rates across the board. Attention, Obama acolytes: It’s called inflation, and it is a cancer that eats away at a nation’s economic well-being and social fabric. Go and ask nearly any Latin American or Eastern European country.
Rest at link
Posted by: ed || 06/03/2009 00:00 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  You sow Identitity Politics you reap...
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 06/03/2009 5:28 Comments || Top||

#2  Inflation Begins

When did it ever stop? No matter how small, it's pretty much always been there. Deflation has been a more of a fear than ever a manifestation. I wouldn't count the inability of some car manufactures to off load their junks no matter what the price as an indication of deflation.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 06/03/2009 9:06 Comments || Top||

#3  Price inflation AND debt deflation can easily happen at the same time.

Trying to "cure" the debt deflation that the economy needs with harmful monetary inflation will be a disaster for jobs.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 06/03/2009 9:18 Comments || Top||

#4  Deflation has been a more of a fear than ever a manifestation.

You must not own a home, P2K. Just as there is a wealth effect when assets appreciate, there is a poverty effect when they decline. We have just had a massive destruction of asset value that has sever demand impact.

To combat the reduction in demand, the government has printed money which will ultimately result in inflation of prices for current goods and services and ultimately, the reinflation of asset values at the cost of an inflation that taxes those on fixed incomes the most.

This is the introduction of the shifting of the burden from the young to the elderly. Part of the price for having supported the "Greatest Generation" and being the pig in the python. Don't ever think they weren't thanked for their service.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble || 06/03/2009 9:36 Comments || Top||

#5  Don't be at all surprised when the next step in the fascist takeover of the economy is wage and price controls on virtually everything.

Fascism is an economic system where the government through cronyism, regulations and tax power controls business without bothering to "own" the business.

Everyone should read up on Mussolini.
Posted by: AlanC || 06/03/2009 12:28 Comments || Top||

#6  With the unemployment rate as high as it is and probably not getting down to 8% before the end of 2010, the CPI and WPI will probably be quite tame through then.

Interest on 10+ year debt may go up quite a bit more but, in the short run, this will prevent a rapid recovery in home prices.

Thus, it is hard to see much retail level inflation risk for the next 18 months or so.

Posted by: Lord garth || 06/03/2009 12:51 Comments || Top||

#7  Money supply has little to do with inflation, eh?
Posted by: Nimble Spemble || 06/03/2009 13:25 Comments || Top||

#8  Must be very worrisome as Bernanke even warned Congress they had to cool the spending.
Posted by: Lumpy Elmoluck5091 || 06/03/2009 13:36 Comments || Top||

#9  yes Nimble, money supply is important, but in the short term the velocity slows because of unemployment

With respect to the long term, we can hope (pray) that much of the TARP money will be repaid which would slow the money supply growth. Very little of the stimulus funds have been spent so there is some chance of reining in the out years of that program. On the other hand, the $ for GM and Chrysler and FannieMae and FredieMac are probably not recoverable in the next decade if ever.

We will have to hope the Fed will tighten in 2010.
Posted by: Lord garth || 06/03/2009 13:54 Comments || Top||

#10  "Don't be at all surprised when the next step in the fascist takeover of the economy is wage and price controls on virtually everything."

The best cigar you can afford to AlanC.

This is the stealth plan of how the Messiah and his cronies on the left plan to 'rein in health care costs'.

As we enter the coming period of high inflation, doctors and hospitals would raise fees to keep up with their own rising costs. The government's plan is to freeze fees in place or index them at a rate far below inflation. Presto, the appearance of decreasing health care costs. Except that hospitals and doctor's offices will go bankrupt when they can't raise their fees to cover costs, leaving the government to take over the health system utterly.

Beyond this, shortages will be created the same way as they were when Nixon did his little experiment in wage-price freezes in the 1970's.
Posted by: no mo uro || 06/03/2009 17:59 Comments || Top||

#11  Those who seek to emulate Mussolini should remember how his career ended.
Posted by: rwv || 06/03/2009 19:28 Comments || Top||

#12  rvw, you tease....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 06/03/2009 20:06 Comments || Top||

#13  thanks to all these gifts... Acorn among us...
Posted by: 3dc || 06/03/2009 21:59 Comments || Top||

#14  Those who seek to emulate Mussolini should remember how his career ended.

It didn't faze the MSM at the time....
Posted by: KBK || 06/03/2009 23:35 Comments || Top||

#15  So when can we start hanging the guilty politicians?
Posted by: OldSpook || 06/03/2009 23:41 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Politix
Barack Obama should stop apologising for America
It is time for President Obama to recognise that his strategy is weakening his country and making the United States more vulnerable to attack, says Nile Gardiner.

No leader in American history has gone to greater lengths than Barack Obama to make amends for his own country. From condemnation of American “arrogance” in a speech in Strasbourg to acknowledging U.S. “mistakes” before millions of Muslims on Arab television, Obama has rarely missed an opportunity to apologise for the actions of the American people.

President Obama has elevated the art of national self-loathing to new heights, and seems to delight in prostrating the most powerful nation on the face of the earth before its critics and rivals, especially on foreign soil. The Obama worldview revolves around the central premise that the United States must be humble and “engage” and work with its enemies through the application of “smart power”. There is nothing smart, however, in appeasing rogue states such as North Korea or Iran.

The Obama doctrine is now lying in tatters after North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-Il and Iranian demagogue Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met Obama’s recent overtures with missile tests and even a nuclear blast from Pyongyang. The president’s video message in March offering “a new beginning” to “the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran” was followed by the launch of a surface-to-surface missile with a range of 1,200 miles capable of reaching southern Europe. Incredibly, the U.S. response has been to slash defense spending, with a dramatic scaling down of plans for a global missile defence shield.

The world today is considerably more dangerous than it was in the days of the Bush Administration, and the Obama White House has nothing to show for its weak-kneed efforts. The brutal truth is that the United States is increasingly viewed as a soft touch by its enemies, increasingly jeered rather than feared.

When he travels to the Middle East and Europe this week, the president will have ample opportunity to do what he does best – atone for America’s past. After a brief visit to Saudi Arabia he will deliver a major address to the Muslim world in Cairo, before travelling to Germany to visit the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp and meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Dresden. His world tour ends with his participation in ceremonies marking the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy.

It will be hugely tempting for the rock star president to play to his Arab and European audiences by scoring points against his hugely unpopular predecessor. He could easily rail against the Bush Administration’s enhanced interrogation techniques, boast of the impending closure of the Guantanamo detention facility, or revive the ghosts of Abu Ghraib. The president’s advisers are no doubt furiously trying to outdo one another with the most original mea culpas.

Obama’s supine approach has become a humiliating spectacle for a country that, together with Great Britain, has done more to advance the cause of liberty and freedom across the world than any nation in the world. Every groveling apology by the president undermines America’s confidence, standing and power, and strengthens the hand of those who seek her destruction.

It is time for President Obama to recognise that his new strategy is weakening his country and making the United States more vulnerable to attack. The dream of America haters who revel in the vision of the humbling of a superpower, is being realised by an administration that has so far fundamentally rejected the idea of American exceptionalism.

The world needs a president who aggressively projects American power on the world stage, rather than seeks the adoration of traditionally hostile foreign audiences. In Egypt, Obama should not be afraid to offend the sensibilities of Muslim leaders, by calling for religious tolerance, freedom of speech, worship and association, and a rejection of Islamist extremism.

In Germany, the president should call on Europe to learn the lessons of the Holocaust and stand and fight against totalitarianism, whether in the form of the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Mullahs of Tehran in their drive for nuclear domination of the Middle East. He must urge the Germans to end their massive investments in Iran, which shamefully help sustain a regime that threatens to wipe the descendents of the survivors of the Final Solution from the face of the earth.

In Normandy, President Obama should take great pride in America’s role in the liberation of Europe and remind his French hosts that Europe is free today because of the huge sacrifice of American, British and Commonwealth forces. This is a moment for the president to recognise American global power and the role it has played as a great force for good, as well as the broader importance of the transatlantic alliance and the Anglo-American Special Relationship.

No one expects Barack Obama to adopt the swagger of a John Wayne or Clint Eastwood when he travels to the Middle East and Western Europe. But he should adopt a more forceful and confident approach to international affairs that marks him as a force to be reckoned with rather than a Jimmy Carter-like pushover. It is not too late for the president to acknowledge that the time for apologies is over, that the world needs robust American leadership that projects strength and power rather than timidity and weakness.

Nile Gardiner is the Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.
Posted by: tu3031 || 06/03/2009 12:04 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  McCain vs Obama was one of the most unappealing election choices since Nixon vs McGovern. One obvious difference between the two, though, was that McCain seemed to genuinely love America, a sentiment that Mr. Obama appears to lack entirely. I don't see how you can effectively lead a country if you don't believe in it.
Posted by: SteveS || 06/03/2009 18:44 Comments || Top||

#2  "I don't see how you can effectively lead a country if you don't believe in it."

It works if where you're leading it is down the primrose path....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 06/03/2009 19:00 Comments || Top||


Undersecretary of Naivete
Five months into the Obama administration, its chief export seems to be confidence, generously doled out to hostile nuclear regimes. Pleas for dialogue and understanding have yielded North Korean belligerence and Iranian defiance. President Obama’s nomination of Rep. Ellen Tauscher as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security will exacerbate rogue states’ worst behavior and assure the president receives the worst counsel about how to respond. Tauscher believes the United States should disarm, as our arsenal provokes aggressive dictators into developing nuclear weapons. She deems long-range missile defense unnecessary, because Iran and al-Qaeda do not yet have nuclear weapons. She calls for negotiating with our enemies while punishing close allies who have abided by the highest standards of non-proliferation. She may also have been the first Democrat of national prominence to accuse President Bush of lying but Iraqi WMDs, and her troubling record on Homeland Security includes advocating habeas corpus rights for terrorist detainees.
Rest at link
Posted by: ed || 06/03/2009 00:02 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:



Who's in the News
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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.
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Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
tu3031
badanov
sherry
ryuge
GolfBravoUSMC
Bright Pebbles
trailing wife
Gloria
Fred
Besoeker
Glenmore
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Two weeks of WOT
Wed 2009-06-03
  Hafiz Saeed sprung
Tue 2009-06-02
  NKor names Kimmie's successor
Mon 2009-06-01
  Mass kiddy abduction by Talibs in Pakistan
Sun 2009-05-31
  Former director of National Security Intel was owned by ISI
Sat 2009-05-30
  Mighty Pak Army clears Piochar valley
Fri 2009-05-29
  Pakistan: Suspects arrested for ´plotting attack against spy agency´
Thu 2009-05-28
  7 killed in attack on Somali presidential palace
Wed 2009-05-27
  Taliban strike ISI headquarters in Lahore, 35 killed, 250 wounded
Tue 2009-05-26
  SKor military bolsters defense readiness
Mon 2009-05-25
  N. Korea appears to have conducted second nuclear test
Sun 2009-05-24
  Pak security forces enter Mingora
Sat 2009-05-23
  Car boom kills 10, injures 75 in Peshawar
Fri 2009-05-22
  Thousands flee tense Wazoo
Thu 2009-05-21
  Iran tests long range missile
Wed 2009-05-20
  Army takes Sultanwas, kills 81; Mullah Fazlullah maybe titzup

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