China Decries U.S. Spending Bill

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/KEVIN LAMARQUE

Photo Credit: REUTERS/KEVIN LAMARQUE

China’s Commerce Ministry has condemned a $1.1-trillion spending bill passed by the U.S. Congress last week over clauses that limit technological purchases from the Asian giant, saying they clash with the principles of fair trade.

The bill, signed by President Barack Obama on Friday, included a cyber-espionage review process for federal purchases of technology from China, a measure incorporated last year amid growing U.S. concern over Chinese cyber attacks.

In a weekend statement, China’s Commerce Ministry said the move “went against the principles of fair trade” as it sought to curb purchases of Chinese technology and export of satellites and parts to China.

“China is resolutely opposed,” the ministry said in comments attributed to an unnamed official in its U.S. trade division.

The bill sent a wrong message, did not aid exchanges and cooperation in the high-tech field and would have a negative effect on Chinese companies, besides harming the interests of U.S. firms, it added.

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Nuke Inspectors in Iran Ahead of Monday’s Deal Deadline, as Senate Weighs More Sanctions

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Photo Credit: REUTERS

Photo Credit: REUTERS

A team of international inspectors arrived Saturday in Iran, a key step toward fulfilling a deal the country has struck with the United States and other world powers to curtail its nuclear program.

The team of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors arrived in Tehran and will visit Natanz and Fordo, Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities, according to Iranian state television.

The deal takes effect Monday, amid continued concern on Capitol Hill and elsewhere about whether the Iranian government will fulfill its part of the deal, in exchange for an easing of international sanctions.

Under the international deal, Iran will limit its enrichment of uranium in return for some painful economic sanctions being lifted. The deal will last for six months as Iran and the world powers negotiate a final deal.

In return, some Western sanctions to be lifted against Iran. The deal will last for six months as Iran and the world powers negotiate a final deal.

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Israel Picking Up Tab for Abortions

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Israel’s newly-passed health budget for 2014 includes a significant increase in government funding for legal abortions, a move that Sandy Shoshani, national director of the pro-life organization Be’ad Chaim, says is a serious indictment of the nation’s spiritual condition.

Last month, the Health Basket Committee – which annually decides which medications, treatments and procedures will be covered or subsidized by the government – determined that the previous practice of paying for abortions for women under the age of 19 and over the age of 40 wasn’t enough.

Included in the new budget is 16 million shekels (USD $4.5 million) to also cover abortions for women between the ages of 20-33.

While all women seeking a legal abortion must receive special approval, the committee in charge of making that decision rubber-stamps 97 percent of requests, or well over 20,000 abortions each year.

Reports in recent years were that abortion rates were falling in Israel, despite the Jewish state’s very liberal laws on the matter. Since the 1990s, there had been a 20 percent drop in the number of legal abortions requested and performed. But the new legislation and government funding are expected to result in an additional 6,300 abortions per year.

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Up to 21, Mostly Foreigners, Killed in Kabul Suicide Attack

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/OMAR SOBHANI

Photo Credit: REUTERS/OMAR SOBHANI

Up to 21 people were killed in Friday’s attack on a restaurant popular with foreigners in the Afghan capital, after a suicide bomber blew himself up near the entrance and gunmen burst in to spray diners with bullets.

The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) representative in Afghanistan and four United Nations staff were among the dead, who included 13 foreign nationals, police said.

Islamist Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the attack on a Lebanese restaurant in the capital’s central Wazir Akbar Khan district, which hosts many embassies and restaurants catering for expatriates.

“Such targeted attacks against civilians are completely unacceptable and are in flagrant breach of international humanitarian law,” U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said. “They must stop immediately.”

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Al Jazeera Host Asks Why Can’t Arab Armies Be More Humane, Like Israel? (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

An Al Jazeera Arabic anchor recently asked his audience why Arab armies, and, in particular, the regime of Bashar al-Assad, in Syria, can’t behave more humanely towards civilians, like the Israeli and French armies do?

In a clip uploaded to YouTube this week and flagged by Mideast Media Analyst Tom Gross, the anchor asks, “Why don’t they learn from the Israeli army which tries, through great efforts, to avoid shelling areas populated by civilians in Lebanon and Palestine? Didn’t Hezbollah take shelter in areas populated by civilians because it knows that Israeli Air Force doesn’t bomb those areas? Why doesn’t the Syrian army respect premises of universities, schools or inhabited neighborhoods? Why does it shell even the areas of its supporters?”

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Obama Acting Like Weak Power in Iran Negotiations

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Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons

Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons

Here’s a thought: If we’re starting negotiations to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program cowering in fear that Iran will walk away from the table, we’re probably not negotiating from a position of strength.

America’s interim deal with Iran went into effect over the weekend, giving the U.S. and other so-called world powers six months to negotiate a deal to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program. There is good reason to be skeptical that Iran would ever negotiate away its nuclear weapons program — which it denies even having — but given the Obama administration’s claim that sanctions brought Iran to the table, wouldn’t the prospect of more sanctions if a deal does not materialize provide even greater incentive for Iran to capitulate?

You would think so, but President Barack Obama is adamantly opposed to a Senate bill co-sponsored by Republican Sen. Mark Kirk and Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez that would impose further sanctions on Iran if the Islamic Republic doesn’t come to an acceptable agreement with the U.S. on its nuclear program. The bill, so far backed by 59 Senate Republicans and Democrats, has sent the Obama administration into a tizzy. The president has pledged to veto it. Administration officials say those who support it are essentially warmongers — in contrast, of course, to the president, who says he only wants to “give peace a chance.”

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Ambassador Stevens Cabled Washington: CIA Says ‘AQ [Al Qaeda] Training Camps Within Benghazi’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

On August 16, 2012–a little less than a month before the terrorist attacks on the U.S. State Department and CIA facilities in Benghazi, Libya–Amb. Chris Stevens sent a cable to State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. stating that a CIA officer on the ground in Benghazi had briefed a State Department officer in that city the day before “on the location of approximately ten Islamist militias and AQ training camps within Benghazi.”

This information was released today in a report issued by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

“AQ,” the initials for al Qaeda, are used in intelligence documents quoted in the report to indicate a tie to al Qaeda. For example, a Defense Intelligence Agency report refers to “al Qa’ida (AQ) regional nodes;” a Pentagon Joint Chief’s intelligence report refers to “AQ associates;” and a CIA report entitled “Libya: Al Qa’ida Establishing Sanctuary,” refers to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula as “AQAP” and al Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Magreb as “AQIM.”

The CIA officer’s discussion of the “AQ training camps” in Benghazi occurred at an “Emergency Action Committee” meeting convened August 15, 2012 by the State Department’s principal officer in Benghazi.

“In an August 16, 2012, cable to State headquarters, Stevens raised additional concerns about the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi following an Emergency Action Committee (EAC) meeting held on August 15, 2012, in Benghazi,” says a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on Benghazi that was released today.

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Iran’s Chief Negotiator: We Won

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

Iran’s chief negotiator, Abbas Araqchi, who helped his country secure the nuclear deal with the U.S. and other Western countries, is claiming victory.

“No facility will be closed; enrichment will continue, and qualitative and nuclear research will be expanded,” Araqchi recently said, explaining the deal in an interview with the propaganda organ the Iranian Students News Agency. “All research into a new generation of centrifuges will continue.”

The nuclear deal is supposed to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. But if the chief negotiator for Iran is to be believed, his country’s pursuit will continue, practically unchanged.

The deal was praised by President Obama at the White House yesterday who told Americans to “give peace a chance.”

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White House Has Harsh Words for Senators Seeking New Iran Sanctions: Actions Could Lead to War

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Photo Credit: T.J. Kirkpatrick / Getty Images

Photo Credit: T.J. Kirkpatrick / Getty Images

The White House launched a harsh attack on supporters of a Senate bill to impose fresh sanctions on Iran, suggesting that they have a hidden goal of drawing the country into another Mideast war.

If supporters “want the United States to take military action, they should be up front with the American people and say so,” Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said in a statement. “Otherwise, it’s not clear why any member of Congress would support a bill that possibly closes the door on diplomacy and makes it more likely that the United States will have to choose between military options or allowing Iran’s nuclear program to continue.”

[Updated at 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 10: A pro-sanctions advocacy group, United Against a Nuclear Iran, pushed back.]

“It is wrong for the White House to continue questioning the integrity and motives of anyone who supports more sanctions,” said Mark Wallace, chief executive of the group. “It is nonsensical and out of bounds to say that a bipartisn majority of U.S. senators secretly wants war with Iran.”]

The White House argues that by driving Iran from the bargaining table, the tough new sanctions bill could undermine international negotiations aimed at an agreement to ensure that Tehran’s nuclear program remains peaceful. Many nations fear that Iran, despite its denials, seeks a nuclear weapon capability.

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Al-Qaeda’s New Poster Boy for the Middle East

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Photo Credit: Telegraph

Photo Credit: Telegraph

THE FBI “most wanted” mugshot shows a tough, swarthy figure, his hair in a jailbird crew-cut. The $10 million price on his head, meanwhile, suggests that whoever released him from US custody four years ago may now be regretting it.

Taken during his years as a detainee at the US-run Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, this is the only known photograph of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the new leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria. But while he may lack the photogenic qualities of his hero, Osama bin Laden, he is fast becoming the new poster-boy for the global jihadist movement.

Well-organised and utterly ruthless, the ex-preacher is the driving force behind al-Qaeda’s resurgence throughout Syria and Iraq, putting it at the forefront of the war to topple President Bashar al-Assad and starting a fresh campaign of mayhem against the Western-backed government in Baghdad.

Last week, his forces fought open clashes with Iraqi army troops around the city of Fallujah – once known as the graveyard of the Americans – after brazenly attempting to seize control there the weekend before.

“They turned up in convoys waving their black flags and saying that Fallujah belongs to al-Qaeda again,” said Ayad Dulaimi, a local resident. “With God’s help, the army will destroy them.”

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