dkf
dkf's JournalBeijing hints at bond attack on Japan
A senior advisor to the Chinese government has called for an attack on the Japanese bond market to precipitate a funding crisis and bring the country to its knees, unless Tokyo reverses its decision to nationalise the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea.
Jin Baisong from the Chinese Academy of International Trade – a branch of the commerce ministry – said China should use its power as Japan’s biggest creditor with $230bn (£141bn) of bonds to “impose sanctions on Japan in the most effective manner” and bring Tokyo’s festering fiscal crisis to a head.
Writing in the Communist Party newspaper China Daily, Mr Jin called on China to invoke the “security exception” rule under the World Trade Organisation to punish Japan, rejecting arguments that a trade war between the two Pacific giants would be mutually destructive.
Separately, the Hong Kong Economic Journal reported that China is drawing up plans to cut off Japan’s supplies of rare earth metals needed for hi-tech industry.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/9551727/Beijing-hints-at-bond-attack-on-Japan.html
US diplomats warned of deteriorating security 3 days before attack. UK consulate closed.
A senior official of the biggest militia in Benghazi, the February 17th Brigade, told CNN that he had warned US diplomats of a rapidly deteriorating security situation in Benghazi three days before the attack. "The situation is frightening, it scares us," he said he had stressed during the meeting. Mr Stevens had been back in Libya for only a short time before US security officials decided it would be safe to make the journey to Benghazi during the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The British consulate in the city was shut after an ambush of a convoy carrying Dominic Asquith, the UK ambassador, in which his bodyguard were injured. The UN and International Committee of the Red Cross offices had been bombed and there had been a spate of political assassinations.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/libya-we-gave-us-threeday-warning-of-benghazi-attack-8145242.html
Chicago teachers strike could hit jobs report
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- As it drags on for a second week, the Chicago teachers strike is so large it could distort national economic statistics, including the Labor Department's key monthly jobs report.
About 26,000 teachers and support staff are striking in Chicago, demanding higher pay, better job security and changes to a new evaluation system.
The strike's timing is key, in that it coincides with the period in which the government collects data for the national jobs report.
Last month, that report showed the economy added only 96,000 jobs. The number was seen as weak, posing a challenge for President Obama as he faces re-election.
September's report could look far worse if the strike continues.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/17/news/economy/chicago-teachers-strike-jobs-report/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Armada of British naval power massing in the Gulf as Israel prepares an Iran strike
An armada of US and British naval power is massing in the Persian Gulf in the belief that Israel is considering a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s covert nuclear weapons programme.
Battleships, aircraft carriers, minesweepers and submarines from 25 nations are converging on the strategically important Strait of Hormuz in an unprecedented show of force as Israel and Iran move towards the brink of war.
Western leaders are convinced that Iran will retaliate to any attack by attempting to mine or blockade the shipping lane through which passes around 18 million barrels of oil every day, approximately 35 per cent of the world’s petroleum traded by sea.
A blockade would have a catastrophic effect on the fragile economies of Britain, Europe the United States and Japan, all of which rely heavily on oil and gas supplies from the Gulf.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9545597/Armada-of-British-naval-power-massing-in-the-Gulf-as-Israel-prepares-an-Iran-strike.html
Israel is starting to really insert itself into the discussion. Not good.
Israeli Foreign Ministry: U.S. ignored Arab radicalization
Foreign Ministry official on signs of 'radicalization' in Arab world: ‘We knew what was happening, but the Americans preferred to find excuses.’
By Barak Ravid and Jonathan Lis | Sep.16, 2012 | 1:01 AM | 6
For months before the most recent attacks on U.S. embassies in North African states, Foreign Ministry and U.S. State Department officials had been arguing over developments in these countries. Senior figures in Jerusalem claimed that Washington was burying its head in the sand and ignoring the increasing radicalization in states such as Tunisia and Egypt.
The Obama administration, which since the beginning of the Arab Spring has aided, directly or indirectly, the forces that brought down the dictatorial regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Lybia, now finds itself in a position of helplessness. The attack on the consulate in Benghazi, in which the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was killed, and the storming of the U.S. embassies in Tunis, Sanaa and Cairo, proved the great hostility to the United States and the unwillingness of these country's new leaders to challenge domestic public opinion.
Senior Foreign Ministry officials say their conversations with their Washington counterparts have focused on what Jerusalem terms "radicalizing trends" against not only Israel but also against the United States and the West in general.
One of the most recent such meetings took place a week ago, during a visit to Jerusalem by the acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, A. Elizabeth Jones.
"The Americans were constantly trying to supply explanations and excuses for events in the post-revolution Arab states, and simply ignored the problems," one senior Israeli official said, adding, "In practice the administration's ability to affect events in the Arab world has decreased immensely."
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israeli-foreign-ministry-u-s-ignored-arab-radicalization.premium-1.465210
Chicago teachers fear wave of school closings after strike
(Reuters) - Striking Chicago teachers fear that once they approve a new contract with the school district and end their strike, Mayor Rahm Emanuel will go ahead with dozens of school closings because of falling enrollment and poor academic performance.
The closing of schools and what happens to the teachers working in them has been a major issue in the bitter dispute, even though the disagreement over evaluating teachers based on standardized test results of their students has received more attention.
Urban school districts around the country are grappling with closing schools, including Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Washington, according to a study last year on school closings by the Pew Charitable Trust.
"If they fire us, we're done," said Rhonda McLeod, a special education teacher at Gresham Elementary and one of the union delegates expected to vote on Sunday whether to end the strike. "We're terrified. We don't need to be dumped to the wayside. We're not trash, we're teachers."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/15/us-usa-chicago-schools-closing-idUSBRE88E0HF20120915
Corridor from Benghazi/Tobruk/Derna has greatest concentration of jihadi terrorists in the world
Must read post by Leveymg
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1343355
The most striking finding which emerges from the West Point study is that the corridor which goes from Benghazi to Tobruk, passing through the city of Darnah (also transliterated as Derna) them represents one of the greatest concentrations of jihadi terrorists to be found anywhere in the world, and by some measures can be regarded as the leading source of suicide bombers anywhere on the planet. Darnah, with one terrorist fighter sent into Iraq to kill Americans for every 1,000 to 1,500 persons of population, emerges as suicide bomber heaven, easily surpassing the closest competitor, which was Riyad, Saudi Arabia.
Is Susan Rice contradicting Libyan officials?
WASHINGTON — A deadly assault on a U.S. consulate in Libya was a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Muslim video, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Sunday, even as Libya's president insisted the attackers spent months preparing and carefully choosing their date – the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Unnerved by the rapidly escalating raid on Tuesday that claimed the life of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, the Obama administration last week launched an investigation into whether terrorist groups had exploited outrage over an anti-Muslim video to trigger an attack long in the works.
But Ambassador Susan Rice said evidence gathered so far shows no indication of a premeditated or coordinated strike. She said the attack in Benghazi, powered by mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, appeared to be a copycat of demonstrations that had erupted hours earlier outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, spurred by a YouTube film attributed to a California man mocking the Prophet Muhammad.
"It seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons," Rice said, adding that such weaponry is easy to come by in post-revolutionary Libya.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20120916/us-us-prophet-film/
Film protests were cover for two-part militant attack, Libyan security official says
BENGHAZI, Libya -- The attack that killed four Americans in Libya, including the U.S. ambassador, was an organized two-part operation by heavily armed militants that included a precisely timed raid on a supposedly secret safe house just as Libyan and U.S. security forces were arriving to rescue evacuated consulate staff, a senior Libyan security official said on Thursday.
Wanis el-Sharef, eastern Libya's deputy interior minister, said the attacks Tuesday night were suspected to have been timed to mark the 9/11 anniversary, with militants using civilian protests of an anti-Islam film as cover for their actions. Infiltrators within the security forces may have tipped off militants to the safe house location, he said.
He said an unspecified number of militants suspected of taking part in the attack have been arrested and that others were being closely monitored by police to see whether they are linked to a group. He refused to elaborate.
Ambassador Chris Stevens and another American were killed in the consulate during the initial violence, as plainclothes Libyan security were evacuating the consulate's staff to the safe house about a mile away, el-Sharef said. The second assault took place several hours later and targeted the safe house -- a villa inside the grounds of the city's equestrian club -- killing two Americans and wounding a number of Libyans and Americans.
http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_21535538/film-protests-were-cover-two-part-militant-attack
Can both these accounts be correct or has the Libyan account been deemed to be incorrect? Or are they just ahead of us in the investigation?
Clinton demands Arab Spring nations protect embassies, halt violence
As anti-American furor raged in the home of the Arab Spring, the top U.S. diplomat on Friday sternly warned countries where the unrest has been most pronounced: Stop the violence and seek justice against those attacking diplomatic missions, or else the United States will.
--
Clinton said such assaults are misguided, and fly in the face of the better society many in these countries recently fought for when they overthrew authoritarian rulers.
"The people of Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia did not trade the tyranny of a dictator for the tyranny of a mob," she said Friday during a ceremony in which the bodies of the four killed in Benghazi returned to the United States.
"Reasonable people and responsible leaders in these countries need to do everything they can to restore security and hold accountable those behind these violent acts. And we will ... keep taking steps to protect our personnel around the world."
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-09-14/middleeast/world_meast_embassy-attacks-main_1_el-abidine-ben-ali-street-vendor-anti-islam
If you don't think abortion is an absolute affront to some crazy righties religious beliefs...
Think about that when you are talking about punishing or limiting free speech or limiting exercising of our rights.
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