Dangerous Times: Obama Bows to the Mullahs

Photo Credit: isafmediaIt looks like the fix is in. The mullahs will certainly get their nukes and ICBMs, and neither Israel nor the Saudis (who are scared to death of the mullahs) will rely on American protection as long as Obama is in office. Obama just put out the welcome mat for Mullah Rouhani, the killer of 245 U.S. Marines in Beirut in 1984, and the ultraleft UK Guardian just claimed that its readers voted for Great Humanitarian Rouhani to be the next winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. The post-Stalinist Guardian is not known for telling the truth too often, and nobody knows if that “survey” is real or not. But the Guardian and the BBC are the two biggest hard-left organs of propaganda in Europe, and they have long promoted a kind of Hitler-Stalin Pact between European socialists in the EU and radical Muslims of both stripes in the Middle East. These are politically powerful signals, and they will be read as such around the world.

Here is the way the dominos seem to be falling: We are going back to a binary power split between Russia and the United States, with China dominating Asia. Our former allies like Israel and the Saudis are quickly moving away from us and seeking more trustworthy allies, notably Russia, as this column has pointed out before. Putin successfully protected his ally Assad in Syria against a pathetic Obama, who has systematically sabotaged the Pax Americana of the last seven decades. The U.S. only needed to betray a few allies (like Poland on anti-missile defense and Israel against Iran) to spur on our other allies to get the idea. Japan and South Korea may be drawn to China, and Japan is now said to be developing its own nuclear weapons, seventy years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Europeans (who have lost the will to defend themselves) are looking to Russia as well, which is acting like the old Tsarist empire, promising to protect Western civilization against the barbarian hordes of imperial Islam. Vladimir Putin visited Jerusalem last year and sat down to talk with the Israeli Cabinet. He also prayed at a Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where the Russian Orthodox Church has long staked its own claim. Putin says he is a Christian, and is often shown in photos with the ancient Patriarch of Moscow, the equivalent of the Catholic Pope.

Putin has dealt ruthlessly with his own Islamist terror threat from Chechnya, and the Europeans will huddle under any umbrella in the nuclear proliferation storm that is about to break loose. Serious nations defend themselves seriously. In the nuclear missile age, non-serious nations have to buy protection.

Huge discoveries of shale deposits around the world are promising to liberate industrial countries from the chokehold of the Persian Gulf oil — and once that’s gone, who will defend the Sunni Arabs against Iranian aggression? Texas is becoming the biggest oil and gas producer in the world. Both Saudi Prince Bandar and Al Waleed, the richest zillionaire in Arabia, are publicly warning that the price of oil will soon go down as China, Poland, Russia, Germany, Britain and of course the United States are expecting domestic energy to supply their own needs for decades to come.

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Earthquake In Greece Hits Crete With 6.4 Magnitude Quake

Photo Credit: The InquisitrA Strong earthquake in Greece shook the island of Crete, causing some damage.

The quake had a magnitude of 6.3 on the Richter scale, but early reports indicate that damage is minimal.

The Athens Geodynamic Institute said the quake occurred at 4:12 p.m. (13.12 GMT), 68 kilometers (42 miles) west of the city of Chania, in Crete, and 279 kilometers (172 miles) south of Athens. The epicenter was 23 kilometers (14 miles) under the sea.

Chania deputy mayor Manoussos Lionakis told The Associated Press: “The earthquake was very strong and lasted long… Fortunately, there was no serious damage. The worst I’ve heard was some rock falls in a ravine west of the city. A bus was trapped, but no one was hurt. We have removed the debris.

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Senior Pakistan Taliban Commander Captured in Afghanistan

Photo Credit: APThe State Department has confirmed that U.S. troops have captured a senior Pakistani Taliban commander in Afghanistan.

Deputy spokesperson Marie Harf told reporters Friday that U.S. forces nabbed Taliban terrorist leader Latif Mehsud in a recent military operation. Harf said Mehsud served as a senior deputy and trusted confidant of Pakistan Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud.

The Islamic extremist group claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing in New York’s Times Square in 2010 and has vowed to attack the U.S. again, according to Harf. She went on to say the group has also attacked U.S. diplomats and “countless” civilians in Pakistan.

The capture could be a significant blow to the Pakistani Taliban, which has waged a decade-long insurgency against Islamabad from sanctuaries along the Afghan border. They have also helped the Afghan Taliban in its war against U.S-led NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Latif Mehsud was arrested by American forces as he was driving along a main highway in eastern Logar province’s district of Mohammad Agha, said the Logar governor, Arsallah Jamal. The road links the province with the Afghan capital, Kabul.

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Edward Snowden Breaks Cover in Moscow to Collect Prize for ‘Integrity in Intelligence’

Photo Credit: Getty Images Edward Snowden has been pictured in public today for the first time since leaving Moscow airport.

The National Security Agency whisteblower emerged to collect the Sam Adams Associates Integrity in Intelligence Award.

The picture was published on the same day his father Lon Snowden arrived in Russia to see his son

Dressed in a black suit and open-necked blue shirt, Snowden was seen smiling alongside UK WikiLeaks journalist Sarah Harrison, who took the leaker from Hong Kong to Moscow and also obtained his asylum.

The precise location of the award ceremony is not known, although it is believed to have been in Moscow.

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Taliban Mocks Shutdown: Lawmakers ‘Sucking The Blood Of Their Own People’

Photo Credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty ImagesEven the Taliban is mocking the U.S. government over the shutdown.

In a statement released to AFP, the terrorist group accused American lawmakers of “sucking the blood of their own people.”

“The American people should realize that their politicians play with their destinies as well as the destinies of other oppressed nations for the sake of their personal vested interests,” the Taliban said in a statement.

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GCHQ Leaks have ‘Gifted’ Terrorists Ability to Attack ‘At Will’, Warns Spy Chief

Photo Credit: MI5/PAAndrew Parker, the director general of the Security Service, said the exposing of intelligence techniques, by the Guardian newspaper, had given fanatics the ability to evade the spy agencies.

It comes at a time when the UK is facing its gravest terror threat, including from “several thousand” Islamist extremists who are living here and want to attack the country, Mr Parker said.

He used his first public outing since taking over at MI5 to launch a scathing attack on the Snowden leaks.

It is feared around Whitehall that the revelations have resulted in a “guidebook for terrorists” while there is frustration that the American is being heralded as some kind of heroic whistleblower.

Sources find it incomprehensible that exposing spy agency techniques for tracking terrorists has been argued to be in the public interest.

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Pan-African Magazine: Africa has 55 Billionaires

Photo Credit: APA pan-African magazine says Africa has many more billionaires than previously reported, 55 of them worth more than $143 billion including a Nigerian said to be the richest black woman in the world.

“Move over, Oprah!” Ventures Africa says in its latest edition published this week.

Editor-in-chief Uzodinma Iweala said Tuesday the magazine’s estimates are “on the conservative side.”

The report predictably identifies Nigerian manufacturer Aliko Dangote as the richest African worth $20.2 billion, among 20 Nigerians listed.

Africa Ventures put the average net worth of Africa’s billionaires at $2.6 billion and their average age at 65. The oldest billionaires are Kenyan industrialist Manu Chandaria and Egyptian property tycoon Mohammed Al-Fayed, both aged 84. The youngest billionaires are Mohammed Dewji of Tanzania and Nigerian oil trader Igho Sanomi, both 38 years old.

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Get your Fiscal House in Order: China Warns US as Superpower Expresses Concern for $1.3tn of Investments

Photo Credit: Glyn Lowe PhotoworksChina, the biggest foreign creditor of the United States, has waded into the American budget crisis, warning Congress that it must resolve the political impasse over the debt ceiling without further delay.

The Chinese Vice Foreign Minister, Zhu Guangyao, told America’s deadlocked politicians on Monday that “the clock is ticking” and called on them to approve an extension of the national borrowing limit before the federal government is projected to run out of cash on 17 October.

“We ask that the United States earnestly takes steps to resolve in a timely way the political issues around the debt ceiling and prevent a US debt default to ensure the safety of Chinese investments in the United States,” Mr Zhu told reporters in Beijing. “This is the United States’ responsibility,” he added.

The American government entered its seventh day of shutdown on Monday, following the failure of Congress to approve the national budget a week ago. And there was little sign of progress on the still more crucial issue of the fast-approaching “debt ceiling” deadline. Yet rather than indicating a willingness to negotiate, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, stated on Sunday that it was “time for us to stand and fight” over the budget. He added that a default was “the path we’re on”. American stock markets opened down in response to the belligerent comments yesterday, with the S&P 500 Index of leading shares shedding 0.5 per cent.

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Libya Demands Explanation for ‘Kidnapping’ of Citizen by US Forces

Photo Credit: US Navy/AlamyLibya has demanded an explanation for the “kidnapping” of one of its citizens by American special forces, hours after a separate US military raid on a terrorist target in Somalia ended in apparent failure and retreat.

In Tripoli the US Army’s Delta force seized alleged al-Qaida leader Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, known by his alias Abu Anas al-Liby and wanted for the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 220 people.

The New York Times reported that Liby was being held in military custody and interrogated on board a navy ship, the USS Antonio, in the Mediterranean.

But US Navy Seals suffered a major setback when they launched an amphibious assault to capture an Islamist militant leader said to be Ahmed Godane, described as Africa’s most wanted man and the architect of last month’s attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Kenya. The elite Seals were beaten back by heavy fire and apparently abandoned equipment that the Somali militants photographed and posted on the internet.

As dramatic details of Saturday’s twin operations emerged, US Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that terrorists “can run but they can’t hide” , but faced growing questions about America’s military reach in Africa and the consequences of unilateral aggression.

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‘The Taliban Have Never Come for a Small Girl’: What Brave Pakistani Schoolgirl Malala Told Friend Before She was Shot in the Head (+video)

Photo Credit: Getty Images Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai told her friend not to worry because the Taliban ‘have never come for a small girl’, shortly before she was shot in the head by a militant.

The 16-year-old was gunned down last year on her school bus after angering the Taliban with her brave and outspoken pleas for girls to be educated.

In her autobiography, I am Malala, she describes the moment she was shot on her way home from school in the valley of Swat in north-west Pakistan on October 9, 2012.

Malala was travelling with about 20 other girls when a masked man approached their school bus and said: ‘Who is Malala?’

Although no one said a word, some girls looked at Malala and she as the only one with her face uncovered.

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