HELP YOU MAKE IT TO YOUR FLIGHT - Buck Howdy
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Click on the following link and read it for yourself.
www.michnews.com/Tom_DeWeese/tc90909.shtml
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6:36 PM
nintendo
6:21 PM
nintendo
Sarah Palin has demanded that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is hunted down like Osama bin Laden. In an extraordinary outburst on Facebook, the former Alaska governor attacked the White House for 'incompetent handling of this whole fiasco.'Excuse me for asking but since when does exposing corruption and hypocrisy make one an al Qaeda' terrorist? Is the whole world supposed to stand up and salute our illegal wars, our torture of civilians, our holding of prisoners in Cuba with no charges being filed. Are we supposed to salute or simply look away from fraud by our banks and coverups in our Treasury department?
Assange is not a "journalist," any more than the "editor" of al Qaeda's new English-language magazine Inspire is a "journalist."
'He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.
'His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. 'Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?'
3:45 PM
nintendo
2:00 PM
nintendo
Massive failure rates follow new, tougher Canadian citizenship tests
Failure rates for immigrants writing citizenship tests have soared since the spring, when tougher questions and revamped rules made it harder for newcomers to become Canadian.
The new test, introduced March 15, was based on a bulked-up citizenship guide released a year ago to give immigrants a richer picture of Canada’s history, culture, law and politics.
The 63-page guide, Discover Canada, replaced a slimmer volume dating from 1995 that had fewer facts to memorize. The failure rate for the old citizenship test, with questions drawn from the smaller guide, ranged between four and eight per cent.
Failure rates for the new test, however, rocketed to about 30 per cent when it was first introduced — prompting officials to revise the rules to avoid clogging the system with thousands of would-be Canadians who, because they had flunked, often had to plead their cases before busy citizenship judges.
A reworked test introduced Oct. 14 is helping to cut the national failure rate to about 20 per cent, still far higher than historic levels and making the exam-hall experience much more nerve-wracking for newcomers.
12:45 PM
nintendo
Very interesting nugget from the WikiLeaks dump showing how the world of economics, security, and energy collide.A Selection From the Cache of Diplomatic Dispatches
Specifically, the documents reveal a plan, hatched by the US, whereby Saudi Arabia would guarantee China ongoing supply of oil in exchange for China weaning itself off Iran.
FM SAUD: CHINA NEEDS TO MORE ACTIVELY COUNTER IRANIAN NUKESGlobal Economic Illiteracy
9. (C) Deputy Foreign Minister Dr. Prince Torki told visiting NEA A/S Feltman on January 26 (ref C) that FM Saud had pressed the Chinese Foreign Minister hard on the need to be more active in working with the rest of the international community and the UN Security Council to counter the threat of Iran developing a nuclear weapon. FM Saud told FM Yang that Saudi Arabia was convinced Iran intended to develop anuclear weapon, despite its assurances, and that only concerted international action could stop that.
While no explicit bargain was discussed, Dep FM Torki explained that Saudi Arabia understood China was concerned about having access to energy supplies, which could be cut off by Iran, and wanted to attract more trade and investment. Saudi Arabia was willing to provide assurances on those scores to China, but only in exchange for tangible Chinese actions to restrain Iran's drive for nuclear weapons.
COMMENT:
...try and leverage their economic relationship with China for political gain with respect to sensitive regional issues, such as Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are significant and growing. After patiently focusing on building the economic relationship since 2006, FM Saud's public and private prodding of FM Yang indicates the Saudis are ready to try and cash in some political chips. End comment.
SMITH
251,000 State Department documents, many of them secret embassy reports from around the world, show how the US seeks to safeguard its influence around the world. It is nothing short of a political meltdown for US foreign policy.There is much more in the Spiegel article including a nice interactive map showing a time lapse of 251,287 documents, where the majority of the cables originated from, and where they had the highest level of classification.
What does the United States really think of German Chancellor Angela Merkel? Is she a reliable ally? Did she really make an effort to patch up relations with Washington that had been so damaged by her predecessor? At most, it was a half-hearted one.
The tone of trans-Atlantic relations may have improved, former US Ambassador to Germany William Timken wrote in a cable to the State Department at the end of 2006, but the chancellor "has not taken bold steps yet to improve the substantive content of the relationship." That is not exactly high praise.
And the verdict on German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle? His thoughts "were short on substance," wrote the current US ambassador in Berlin, Philip Murphy, in a cable. The reason, Murphy suggested, was that "Westerwelle's command of complex foreign and security policy issues still requires deepening."
Such comments are hardly friendly. But in the eyes of the American diplomatic corps, every actor is quickly categorized as a friend or foe. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia? A friend: Abdullah can't stand his neighbors in Iran and, expressing his disdain for the mullah regime, said, "there is no doubt something unstable about them." And his ally, Sheikh bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi? Also a friend. He believes "a near term conventional war with Iran is clearly preferable to the long term consequences of a nuclear armed Iran."
A Political Meltdown
Such surprises from the annals of US diplomacy will dominate the headlines in the coming days when the New York Times, London's Guardian, Paris' Le Monde, Madrid's El Pais and SPIEGEL begin shedding light on the treasure trove of secret documents from the State Department. Included are 243,270 diplomatic cables filed by US embassies to the State Department and 8,017 directives that the State Department sent to its diplomatic outposts around the world.
On the whole, the cables from the Middle East expose the superpower's weaknesses. Washington has always viewed it as vital to its survival to secure its share of energy reserves, but the world power is often quickly reduced to becoming a plaything of diverse interests. And it is drawn into the animosities between Arabs and Israelis, Shiites and Sunnis, between Islamists and secularists, between despots and kings. Often enough, the lesson of the documents that have now been obtained, is that the Arab leaders use their friends in Washington to expand their own positions of power.US embassy cables: browse the database
Iran has fortified its weapons cache with the help of Russian-designed missiles and North Korea. Saudi King Abdullah can't stand Iran. In fact, the entire Middle East is basically uncomfortable with Iran right now. The US has been involved in a dangerous standoff with Pakistan regarding nuclear fuel since 2007 (not surprising at all) Under Hillary Clinton, us diplomats have been urged to help spy on the UN. Afghanistan is seen as corrupt (shocking!) US officials have been wargaming a North Korea collapse (again, not surprising). Vladimir Putin and Sylvio Burlesconi have an unusually close friendship (amusing).
Secret Police TacticsDo you have that principle down? If "a single foreign national is rounded up and put in jail" because of the WikiLeaks disclosure -- even a "single one" -- then the entire WikiLeaks enterprise is proven to be a "disaster" and "Assange is a criminal" who "should be in jail." That's quite a rigorous moral standard. So let's apply it elsewhere:
What about the most destructive "anarchic exercise in 'freedom'" the planet has known for at least a generation: the "human disaster" known as the attack on Iraq, which Klein supported? That didn't result in the imprisonment of "a single foreign national," but rather the deaths of more than 100,000 innocent human beings, the displacement of millions more, and the destruction of a country of 26 million people. Are those who supported that "anarchic exercise in 'freedom'" -- or at least those responsible for its execution -- also "criminals who should be in jail"?
How about the multiple journalists and other human beings whom the U.S. Government imprisoned (and continues to imprison) for years without charges -- and tortured -- including many whom the Government knew were completely innocent, while Klein assured the world that wasn't happening? How about those responsible for the war in Afghanistan (which Klein supports) with its checkpoint shootings of an "amazing number" of innocent Afghans and civilian slaughtering air strikes, or the use of cluster bombs in Yemen, or the civilian killing drones in Pakistan? Are those responsible for the sky-high corpses of innocent people from these actions also "criminals who should be in jail"?
I'm not singling out Klein here; his commentary is merely illustrative of what I'm finding truly stunning about the increasingly bloodthirsty two-minute hate session aimed at Julian Assange, also known as the new Osama bin Laden. The ringleaders of this hate ritual are advocates of -- and in some cases directly responsible for -- the world's deadliest and most lawless actions of the last decade. And they're demanding Assange's imprisonment, or his blood, in service of a Government that has perpetrated all of these abuses and, more so, to preserve a Wall of Secrecy which has enabled them.
Hello MishMike "Mish" Shedlock
Thanks for your post. I am 100% in agreement. I'm 65, and as a youngster worried almost daily about being called up for the draft for Vietnam.
Imagine what might have happened to the Vietnam war effort if the whole mess had been made public from the start.
I was supportive of the war, and would have gone if called, but the revelations about it over the past 50 years have definitely called that into question. It sure would have been nice to know what folks in the Federal Government were hiding.
Those who are in favor of prosecuting Mr. Assange need to remember the words, "Secret Police," and contemplate how close we are coming to that concept in our nation, and in our actions throughout the world.
We need someone like this to shine the light of day on what passes for proper behavior now.
12:44 PM
nintendo
12:33 PM
nintendo
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