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Told You SoNot sure exactly when I said it, but I did predict that Greece would exit the Euro. I also said that it should leave the Euro sooner, rather than later and do so on its own terms. Now elite opinion has decided it's okay for Greece to exit. Mostly because the neoliberals have already raped the economy there. You heard it here first. Sean Paul Kelley May 16, 2012 - 1:59pm
Why Do Afghan Soldiers Turn Their Guns On Americans?Back in summer 2010 I suggested that there was a worrying emerging pattern of "green on blue" attacks in Afghanistan - that far from each being an "isolated incident" from which "it's very difficult to draw a generalisation", a comparison of the frequency of such attacks with those in Iraq might suggest it was going to be a whole lot harder to stand up the Afghan security forces than expected. That idea has taken on more credence within the past two years as the number of "green on blue" attacks has snowballed from a handful to dozens. Today, the New York Times has a detailed report on just one of those attacks, on March 1 this year, in which two Americans and their two Afghan attackers died - and which destroyed an armored vehicle as well as half the base before a helicopter gunship ended the fighting. A third conspirator was caught and the NYT's Matthew Rosenberg writes:
Steve Hynd May 16, 2012 - 1:58pm
( categories: Afghanistan )
Ignoring The Tornado In The RoomChuck Hagel pens an oped on "The Challenge Of Change" for the US:
I'm assuming that "environmental degradation" doesn't just mean pollution but is code for global warming/climate change in case Republicans reading get upset by the actual words*. It's one thing to ignore an elephant, it's entirely another to avoid a tornado. * At least I hope so, because the alternative - that the Chair of the Atlantic Council and co-Chair of Obama's Intelligence Advisory Board has written such a piece without mentioning climate change at all - is just too horrible a possibility to contemplate. Steve Hynd May 16, 2012 - 1:22pm
C-R-A-Z-Y Lady Is Crazy. No. Really.We all had a pretty good laugh at the woman who got up in front of the Lincoln, Nebraska city council and railed on about homosexuality in response to the proposed "Fairness Ordinance" extending anti-bias protections to the LGBT community. Select quotes: 2. "Whitney Houston was found without clothes in a bathtub. Every corpse found without clothes has a partner who did away with them." Actor 212 May 16, 2012 - 12:08pm
( categories: Miscellany )
John Boehner Puts On The Full Crazy SuitRemember last summer's suspenseful adventures of the New Republican Tea Party? When they threatened to do something that even Greece hasn't quite done yet - default on the country's debt? When American bonds were downgraded? Well, they love the country so much that they want to do it again. John Boehner said so yesterday. It seems to me that deliberately sabotaging the country's financial standing verges on (is?) treason. It's like when a couple divorces and one of them manages to pull all the money from their joint bank accounts. Except we're not so lucky to have the Republicans getting out of our lives with their addictions to racism and failed economics. It looks like Ezra Klein will be following this. That's good, because it makes me sick. Cheryl Rofer May 16, 2012 - 9:54am
( categories: USA: Domestic Issues )
Is Google Doomed?One might begin to see the seeds of its decline here:
Actor 212 May 16, 2012 - 9:39am
Officials: Nearly $2 million in guns, combat gear sold to gangsLindell Kay & Mike Mchugh | Camp Lejeune, NC | May 15 The probe began more than a year and a half ago when agents with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service began to conduct undercover operations to disrupt and reduce the theft, transfer, sale and possession of stolen U.S. Government property. With the aid of Marine and Naval authorities, NCIS has recovered $1.8 million in stolen guns and combat gear to include assault rifles, night-vision goggles, flashlights and other items, military officials said. Raja May 16, 2012 - 3:36am
( categories: AgonistWire | USA: Armed Forces )
"Anonymous" activist: We're fighting for the 99%Via Ian Welsh, a must-read interview with Christopher Doyon, a.k.a. Commander X. If the Anonymous hacker group says it doesn't have real leaders, then Doyon is one of the major leader's they haven't got. "There’s a really good argument at this point that we might well be the most powerful organization on Earth" he says of Anonymous' 50,000 strong collective, who Ian calls "the only enforcer class the left has". Doyon refuses to accept the term "terrorist" applies.
Steve Hynd May 15, 2012 - 7:03pm
( categories: Miscellany )
No wonder the suicide rate among vets is so highThis is just beyond tears. I've been reading the rare posts on this blog for a while - and they should all be read - but I seldom comment simply because words are insufficient. I'm sure there are many more women and probably gays in similar circumstances. All I can do is agitate for better VA funding and programs and speak up for tighter controls in the military. And weep. steeleweed May 15, 2012 - 6:30pm
( categories: USA: Armed Forces )
Pro-Life Means Doing Nothing While a Woman Bleeds to DeathUnder Kansas law, it is perfectly legal for a pharmacist, a doctor, a nurse, a hospital, or just about anyone, to allow a woman to bleed to death if you think the woman's bleeding is caused by an attempted abortion:
kathykattenburg May 15, 2012 - 4:53pm
( categories: USA: Domestic Issues )
F-15s Over YemenGo read David Axe on how Italian aviation blogger David Cenciotti joined the dots to throw some new light on America's shadow wars along Africa's Indian Ocean coastline. F-15s based in Djibouti carrying out airstrikes in Yemen, spyplanes at the same airbase, Reaper drones with bases in the Seychelles Yemen and Ethiopia. Axe himself adds the possibility of a floating headquarters for special forces ops sitting somewhere of the coast. America is waging more wars, with a bigger involvement, than it wants to admit. Steve Hynd May 15, 2012 - 1:29pm
( categories: Miscellany | Africa | Global War on Terror | USA: Armed Forces | USA: Foreign Relations | Yemen )
Insiders Say MeK To Be Delisted As Terror GroupAfter the EU delisted the MeK on the back of a well-funded lobbying campaign by the MeK and it's neocon allies, there was always going to be huge political pressure for the U.S. to follow suit. The MeK has poured large sums, millions of dollars, into paying for lobbyists and former government officials to speak up on its behalf. Now it seems their efforts are to pay off. The WSJ is reporting insiders who say the delisting is likely to happen. Glenn Greenwald explains why this is not just a bad idea but encapsulates everything that's wrong with Washington. It will cheapen the terrorist listing into simply a means to punish those the U.S. sees as its enemies, show that the U.S. is indeed an agressor against Iran, prove that national security decisions are available to the highest bidder and make a mockery of the rule of law by showing that the law is "not even a purported constraint on the conduct of Washington political elites".
Sadly I expected this, but it makes it no less disgusting that yet again the Obama administration doesn't even bother to make a passing nod to legality or ethics. Steve Hynd May 15, 2012 - 12:53pm
( categories: Miscellany | Global War on Terror | Iran | Iraq | USA: Foreign Relations | USA: Intel and Policy )
Rebekah Brooks charged with perverting the course of justiceSandra Laville | May 15 Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, has been charged over allegations that she tried to conceal evidence from detectives investigating phone hacking and alleged bribes to public officials. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced that Brooks, one of the most high-profile figures in the newspaper industry, would be charged with three counts of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in July last year at the height of the police investigation. Scotland Yard later confirmed she had been charged along with her husband, Charlie Brooks, and four others. Brooks is accused of conspiring with others, including her husband, a racehorse trainer and friend of the prime minister, and her personal assistant, to conceal material from detectives. Brooks and her husband were informed of the charging decision – the first since the start of the Operation Weeting phone-hacking investigation last January – when they answered their bail at a police station in London on Tuesday morning. Tina May 15, 2012 - 11:28am
( categories: AgonistWire | United Kingdom )
FadbookThe results of this poll sort of reflect my own feelings and experiences with Facebook:
Actor 212 May 15, 2012 - 8:44am
( categories: Miscellany | Arts & Culture | Media Criticism | MSM Criticism | Ruminations | Science | Technology | The Markets )
FlatheadI still think Matt Taibbi's takedown was the best on Friedman, but this is still pretty damned hilarious: Sean Paul Kelley May 15, 2012 - 7:24am
( categories: Humor & Satire )
Tuesday MuseAdrienne Rich died March 27th. Her righteously deep-sea impact as a poet is bottomless. Here is one of the poems that made her famous for breaking through silences about gender, among other things.
Bruce A Jacobs May 15, 2012 - 3:13am
( categories: Arts & Culture )
Mitt Romney and Bain CapitalByron York thinks he knows how Mitt Romney will respond to Team Obama's new campaign ad attacking Romney for destroying hundreds of thousands of high-paying middle-class jobs when he sold Bain Capital:
kathykattenburg May 14, 2012 - 7:58pm
( categories: USA: Domestic Issues )
It's Wildfire Season AgainThe first big wildfires of the season in Arizona have struck.
With over half of the US still in a state of drought, the weather forcasts are "not optimistic". Steve Hynd May 14, 2012 - 4:20pm
Privileged IntervenersTina posted earlier today about the HRW report on NATO-caused civilain deaths in Libya. Here's more,from the Guardian. I can't help but feel this is just another sign that universal law is a joke and that what really operates is privilege in it's original meaning of "private law":
Steve Hynd May 14, 2012 - 3:58pm
( categories: Africa: North )
Pakistan 'to move on' over NATO supply routesSajjad Tarakzai | Islamabad | May 14 Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar made the remarks a day before Pakistani leaders are to discuss ending the blockade, and thereby cave in to a key demand from the West in time to attend a NATO summit in Chicago on May 20-21. Islamabad shut its Afghan border to NATO supplies after US air strikes killed 24 soldiers on November 26, provoking a major crisis in Pakistani-US relations on top of the outcry from the raid that killed Osama bin Laden the previous May. "It was important to make a point, Pakistan has made a point and we now need to move on and go into a positive zone and try to conduct our relations," Pakistan's foreign minister told a news conference. "We are trying to put this relationship, you know, in a positive zone and I am quite sure that we will be successful in doing so." Tina May 14, 2012 - 3:40pm
Syrian violence spills over border into LebanonNicholas Blanford | Abboudiyah, North Lebanon | May 14 In the past week alone, several people, including an old woman, have been shot dead allegedly by Syrian soldiers firing into Lebanon, clashes have resumed between rival factions in Lebanon’s perennially tense second largest city, Tripoli, leaving four people dead, and some 40 Sunni Syrians have been kidnapped in reprisal for the abduction of three Lebanese Shiites. The Lebanese government, which is backed by the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, has adopted a policy of disassociation with the crisis in neighboring Syria, mindful that Lebanon is deeply polarized between supporters and opponents of the Assad regime. But Sunni residents of villages strung along the northern border with Syria accuse the Lebanese government and security services of either failing to block Syrian transgressions or actively colluding with the Syrian regime in some of the abductions. “Any person who is wanted by the Syrians is easily picked up because the Lebanese authorities are working with the Syrian security,” says Ali, a 22 year-old resident of the border village of Abboudiyah. Like others interviewed here, Ali requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject. Tina May 14, 2012 - 1:26pm
( categories: AgonistWire | Levant )
The Derb: A Stopped ClockSullivan links John Derbyshire's reappearance as a columnist - on VDARE - in which The Derb claims that "White supremacy, in the sense of a society in which key decisions are made by white Europeans, is one of the better arrangements History has come up with." Ugh. But apparently even the wrongest of racists can occasionally be right:
Indeed. Steve Hynd May 14, 2012 - 1:07pm
( categories: Miscellany )
Israel Hopes Iran Talks Fail So It Can AttackBarak Ravid of Haaretz writes that:
Got that? Netanyahu's government is praying for the talks with Iran in Baghdad to fail, because it wants a war. It's not about any existenial threat to Israel, either - it's that a second nuclear power, even one that only has a capability to produce weapons rather than weapons in fact, would short-circuit Israel's ability to wage other wars in the region at will. Steve Hynd May 14, 2012 - 12:31pm
( categories: Iran )
Easy PickingsBarack Obama taking on Mitt Romney's abysmal job creation record is a little like critiquing Stalin's abysmal human rights record:
Actor 212 May 14, 2012 - 9:54am
( categories: Economics: USA | Histories | USA: "Occupy Protests" | USA: Campaign 2012 | USA: Presidency )
Germans say NO to austerity - Curtain falling on Merkel's long Con
Merkel's party humiliated by shock election defeat "Angela Merkel's ruling conservatives suffered a humiliating defeat in key elections in Germany's most populous state yesterday when voters rejected her party's austerity policies and handed a resounding victory to her pro-growth Social Democratic Party opponents. "Ms Merkel's Christian Democrats were shell-shocked by the devastating result they returned in the poll in North Rhine Westphalia, which has a total population of 18 million. Exit polls showed that they secured a mere 25.5 per cent of the vote – their worst performance ever in the state. Michael Collins May 14, 2012 - 5:15am
( categories: Europe Minus UK )
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