An al Qaeda terrorist stated in a recent online posting that U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens was killed by lethal injection after plans to kidnap him during the Sept. 11 attacks in Benghazi went bad.
The veracity of the claim by Abdallah Dhu-al-Bajadin, who was identified by U.S. officials as a weapons expert for al Qaeda, could not be determined. However, U.S. officials have not dismissed the terrorist’s assertion. [Editor’s Note: in September 2012, Restoring Liberty publicized the need HERE for the US Government to release the autopsy report to address allegations that the Ambassador had been sexually assaulted and suffered other abuses after capture]
An FBI spokeswoman indicated that the bureau is aware of the claim but declined to comment because of the ongoing investigation into the Benghazi attacks.
“While there is a great deal of information in the media and on the Internet about the attack in Benghazi, the FBI is not in a position at this time to comment on anything specific with regard to the investigation,” spokeswoman Kathy Wright said.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-05 02:14:552013-06-05 02:14:55US Gov’t Still Hasn’t Released Ambassador Steven’s Autopsy, Won’t Deny Terrorist’s Claim that He was Killed by Lethal Injection
Europe’s failing currency union … has been in crisis for more than three years, and there is a frighteningly high probability that it will end in continent-wide financial collapse and depression.
Nobody was more against the creation of the euro than Bernard Connolly, a senior European Commission official when the single currency’s foundations were being laid. He saw such danger in abolishing national currencies that he wrote a book warning against doing so in 1995. He has now republished the book (which cost him his job) with a new introductory essay [watch his engaging interview with Rick Santelli here]:
It is a timely contribution from someone who can lay more claim than most to foreseeing the long-unfolding crisis. Back in 1995 he wrote: “Trying to lock countries like France and Germany together via their currencies turns domestic monetary questions into international political conflicts. It damages the economic and political well-being of every country involved.” This now appears remarkably prescient.
Connolly’s argument was based on two pillars. The first was that Europe’s elites had become so obsessed with integration that they ignored all the risks and dangers of currency union in order to further their project. To this political argument he added an economic one: that the euro would not work because any and all attempts by governments to interfere in how markets determine exchange rates are economically and politically damaging…
Connolly dismisses as a “propaganda slogan” the claim that the EU has prevented war in Europe and describes those who talk of “building Europe” as being akin to Bolsheviks in their ideological single-mindedness.
The 166 terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay are offered a course in “interviewing and resume writing” as part of their indefinite stay at the prison camp.
Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) lists the variety of classes and activities it offers to the terrorist trainers, financiers, bomb makers, recruiters and facilitators who are housed at Gitmo.
Among them: “Interviewing and Resume Writing “and “Writing Success.”
The classes are part of “The Instructional Program” at Gitmo, which teaches literacy, English as a second language and art.
The prison that houses 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, also offers prisoners a “Life Skills” class, “Computer Familiarity,” “Personal Health and Wellness,” and “Personal Finance and Business.”
Deng’s economic reforms … opened China to foreign investment and freed thousands of Chinese students to travel abroad, exposing them to the subversive influence of Western ideas. Deng knew the risks he was taking, given the dramatic events unfolding in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Yet, he bravely pushed forward.
The Chinese people responded enthusiastically to Deng’s initiatives. In the spring of 1989, millions gathered peacefully to support his program and urge further political reforms. Led at first by students, the demonstrations soon drew in peasants, workers, professionals, people from across Chinese society. They called for evolutionary change, not political revolution.
But frightened Communist Party hardliners knew that real political reform would lead China inexorably along a democratic path and end their monopoly on power. The symbol the students erected in Tiananmen Square, the paper-mache Goddess of Democracy with torch held aloft, bore an unmistakable resemblance to America’s Statue of Liberty.
Deng was China’s paramount leader in name and in fact. He had bested the old-line Communists who opposed his economic reforms and was now at the peak of his popularity and power. As Party leader, he enjoyed the loyalty of the People’s Liberation Army. The entire nation was poised to take the next historic step with him.
But then Deng flinched, disastrously. He would not cross the democratic Rubicon, and ordered the People’s Army to violate its sacred tradition of never turning its guns on the Chinese people. The attacks in Tiananmen Square and in other cities killed thousands of demonstrators and denied subsequent generations of Chinese their long-sought chance for equal democratic citizenship in the international community.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-05 01:17:562013-06-05 01:17:56Struggle for China Continues
A Cairo court on Tuesday sentenced 43 democratic activists to up to five years in prison. The charges include operating illegal nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and receiving foreign funds without permission. Egypt’s spiral down continues.
Robert Becker of the National Democratic Institute is the only American citizen who remained in Egypt to face the charges. He and four others were given a two-year sentence. Twenty-seven other foreign employees were sentenced in absentia to five years each, while 11 Egyptians received one-year suspended sentences.
The 43 worked for such nonsubversive outfits as Freedom House, the International Center for Journalists and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Working for unlicensed NGOs is illegal under Egypt’s 2002 Associations Law. The statute, a relic of the Mubarak era, was applied selectively in pre-revolution Egypt, mainly to squelch the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists.
China Is Reaping Biggest Benefits of Iraq Oil Boom
By Tim Arango and Clifford Krauss. Since the American-led invasion of 2003, Iraq has become one of the world’s top oil producers, and China is now its biggest customer.
China already buys nearly half the oil that Iraq produces, nearly 1.5 million barrels a day, and is angling for an even bigger share, bidding for a stake now owned by Exxon Mobil in one of Iraq’s largest oil fields.
“The Chinese are the biggest beneficiary of this post-Saddam oil boom in Iraq,” said Denise Natali, a Middle East expert at the National Defense University in Washington. “They need energy, and they want to get into the market.”
Before the invasion, Iraq’s oil industry was sputtering, largely walled off from world markets by international sanctions against the government of Saddam Hussein, so his overthrow always carried the promise of renewed access to the country’s immense reserves. Chinese state-owned companies seized the opportunity, pouring more than $2 billion a year and hundreds of workers into Iraq, and just as important, showing a willingness to play by the new Iraqi government’s rules and to accept lower profits to win contracts.
“We lost out,” said Michael Makovsky, a former Defense Department official in the Bush administration who worked on Iraq oil policy. “The Chinese had nothing to do with the war, but from an economic standpoint they are benefiting from it, and our Fifth Fleet and air forces are helping to assure their supply.” Read more from this story HERE.
By Didi Kirsten Tatlow. When China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, told the United States late on Saturday that it should “correctly treat China’s development,” what did he mean?
The reprimand came after the U.S. State Department on Friday called on China to “fully account for those killed, detained or missing in the 1989 bloody military crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square,” The Associated Press reported. Mr. Hong also told the U.S. to “discard” its “political prejudice” toward China.
China often emphasizes that it seeks peaceful development. But the authors Heriberto Araújo and Juan Pablo Cardenal believe there is more to it.
In an opinion piece in The New York Times, they write that the state capitalist model behind China’s increasingly successful global push threatens the values of the established democracies. Read more from this story HERE.
By Courtney Coren. Donald Trump tore into President Barack Obama’s administration Monday for allowing China access to Iraqi oil while, he claimed, the United States gets “nothing” after it lost 4,500 troops in the war there.
“I’m not knocking China; I’m knocking our leadership,” the real estate millionaire said on Fox and Friends. “How can they allow this to happen? Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-04 01:07:212013-06-04 01:07:21US Military Freed, Protects Iraqi Oil Fields for … the Communist Chinese (+video)
Yusef al-Qaradawi, who is based in Qatar and has been a leading voice supporting the Arab Spring, warned that Iranian Shia were trying to “eat” Sunni Muslims, who are a majority in the Muslim world.
He referred to Alawites, the followers of the Muslim sect to which President Bashar al-Assad of Syria belongs, as being “worse infidels than Christians or Jews”. He also used the deliberately contemptuous term “Nusayris” when talking about them.
He was particularly critical of the roles played by Iran, which is largely Shia, and the Lebanon Shia militia Hizbollah whose name translates as Party of God but which he called “Party of Satan”, in supporting the Assad regime.
“There is no common ground between the two sides because the Iranians, especially conservatives, want to eat the Sunni people,” he said.
The Syrian opposition is dominated, like Syria itself, by Sunni Muslims, but also includes a number of Christians, Alawites and other minorities.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-02 23:51:252013-06-02 23:51:25Terrorist vs. Terrorist Rhetoric Continues in Syria: This Time, Iranians “Want to Eat Sunni People”
Congressman says Russians believe Boston bombings were preventable
BY Fox News. Russian intelligence officials believe that if U.S. authorities had acted on warnings about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombings could have been prevented, U.S. Rep. William Keating said Saturday after returning from a congressional delegation trip to Russia.
The Massachusetts Democrat, who met with Russian intelligence officials Thursday, said he was provided with details on how U.S. intelligence agents were warned in 2010 that Tsarnaev was preparing to join a terrorist cell in the southern Russian region of Dagestan, the Boston Globe reported.
Keating told reporters at Boston’s Logan International Airport that a top Russian counterintelligence official told the delegation that “if we had the level of information sharing that we do now, then the bombings might have been avoided,” according to the report.
He said he learned that information was sent from Russian officials to the U.S. government about Ibragim Todashev, a friend of Tsarnaev who was killed by an FBI agent in Florida on May 22 while being questioned in the bombing probe, the Boston Globe reported. Read more from this story HERE.
Keating says Russian officials were forthcoming on bombing suspect
By Wesley Lowery. FBI agents in Boston have yet to provide information about why Tamerlan Tsarnaev was able to move freely in and out of the country after US officials were warned about him, or about the May 22 fatal shooting of one of his friends in Orlando, Representative William R. Keating said on Saturday after returning from a trip to Russia to meet with that country’s top intelligence officials.
Keating said officials with the Russian Federal Security Service provided details about how they warned US intelligence agents in 2010 that they believed Tsarnaev was preparing to join a terrorist cell in Dagestan, in southern Russia.
After investigating him, FBI officials closed the file on Tsarnaev, who then spent six months in Russia, during which he is believed to have met with known terrorists.
Addressing reporters at Logan International Airport, Keating said he was impressed with what he saw as the forthcoming nature of the Russian intelligence officials. Meanwhile, he said, FBI officials were absent from Capitol Hill hearings about the bombings.
“We had a hearing on homeland security and [the Boston FBI office] were invited,” Keating said. When asked whether agents from the office had shown up, he responded: “No.” Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-02 23:50:582013-06-02 23:50:58Congressman: Marathon Bombing Preventable with Russian Intel; FBI Fails to Answer Questions About That and Todashev Killing
By Laurie Garrett. The head of the World Health Organization warned the world this week of a new virus, awkwardly dubbed MERS-CoV, found in Saudi Arabia.
“Looking at the overall global situation, my greatest concern right now is the novel coronavirus,” Margaret Chan said, calling it “a threat to the entire world.”
“We understand too little about this virus when viewed against the magnitude of its potential threat,” the director general said in her closing speech to the 66th session of the World Health Assembly. “Any new disease that is emerging faster than our understanding is never under control.
“These are alarm bells and we must respond. The novel coronavirus is not a problem that any single affected country can keep to itself or manage all by itself.” Read more from this story HERE.
UPDATE: MERS Virus Hits Death Toll Of 33 As New Cases Continue To Plague Middle East
By Samantha Olson. A 21-year-old man from Saudi Arabia has died this week after being placed in intensive care for the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which has brought the worldwide death toll up to 33, according to the World Health Organization.
Three new laboratory-confirmed cases of MERS were announced this week. The Saudi Ministry released a statement, which announced the young man’s death and the two other cases located in Saudi Arabia’s eastern governorate of Al-Ahsa.
All 58 cases of MERS across the globe since September 2012 have been linked to the Middle East and a majority of the disease cases have come from Al-Ahsa. The Saudi Arabia ministry announced the new cases and death only a day after saying it had made progress in its efforts to fight MERS outbreaks.
Researchers from Saudi Arabia and the UK have fully mapped out the genetic series from four infected cases of the MERS virus, according to the health ministry’s statement. Read more from this story HERE.
2 more cases reported in Italy, total in Europe rises to 11
By WHO/Europe. The Ministry of Health in Italy, through the European Union’s Early Warning Response System, has notified WHO of 2 more laboratory-confirmed cases with Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in the country.
Both the patients are close contacts of the recent laboratory-confirmed case of a 45-year-old man who had travelled to Jordan. The first patient is a two-year-old girl and the second patient is a 42-year-old woman. All three cases are in stable condition.
The man had returned to Italy on 25 May 2013 with symptoms of cough and fatigue. His condition deteriorated and he was hospitalised on 28 May 2013. Laboratory test was conducted by the influenza reference laboratory of Tuscany and confirmed by the National Center of NHI (Istituto Superiore di sanità). Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-02 23:40:302013-06-02 23:40:30Why MERS Virus is Terrifying Scientists Throughout the World
The combination of a strong, rising China and economic stagnation in Europe and America is making the West increasingly uncomfortable. While China is not taking over the world militarily, it seems to be steadily taking it over commercially. In just the past week, Chinese companies and investors have sought to buy two iconic Western companies, Smithfield Foods, the American pork producer, and Club Med, the French resort company.
Europeans and Americans tend to fret over Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea, its territorial disputes with Japan, and cyberattacks on Western firms, but all of this is much less important than a phenomenon that is less visible but more disturbing: the aggressive worldwide push of Chinese state capitalism.
By buying companies, exploiting natural resources, building infrastructure and giving loans all over the world, China is pursuing a soft but unstoppable form of economic domination. Beijing’s essentially unlimited financial resources allow the country to be a game-changing force in both the developed and developing world, one that threatens to obliterate the competitive edge of Western firms, kill jobs in Europe and America and blunt criticism of human rights abuses in China.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-02 23:24:152013-06-02 23:24:15China Taking Over the World … Economically
