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Thursday 09.13.2012
Not a Neighborly Day in the Brotherhood
Yesterday's embassy stoning sets the stage for Egyptian President Morsi's upcoming visit to the U.S.
By JERI THOMPSON The American Spectator.com
The storming yesterday of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt should not come as a surprise to those who have been following the increasingly volatile situation in that country, and as the radical Islamic organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, takes great control there. The embassy violence also comes at an inconvenient time, as the U.S. relationship with Egypt was already being tested by its new president, Mohammed Morsi, who will visit the U.S. later this month.
Libya Attack Sparks Crisis
U.S. Sends Marines After Ambassador, Three Other Americans Killed; 'We Couldn't Stop Them'
By MARGARET COKER, ADAM ENTOUS
and JULIAN E. BARNES - WSJ.com $$
The killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, in one of the most brazen attacks on a U.S. diplomatic compound in a generation, sparked a security crisis in the North African country, elevated tensions across the Middle East and raised concerns about how well the U.S. can protect its diplomats abroad.
[Scroll down for more articles on the Middle East]
'Anti-Islam film a pretext;
US diplomat's killing shows Libya intervention's failure'
Washington has condemned the killing of its ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other officials - who died when an armed mob attacked the U.S. consulate in the city of Benghazi. The bloodshed followed protests over an American film which has been described as an insult to Islam. It's the first time a U.S. ambassador has been killed while in post since 1979. RT's Gayane Chichakyan has the latest.
QE3 hopes: Gold markets ready to press bull button
NEW YORK(Commodity Online): The Federal Reserve may do it and hence the precious metals are extending rallies or trading firm.
Gold has climbed near to a six month high on expectations of a stimulus measure by US Federal Reserve. Cash gold jumped up to 0.3 percent to $1,736.45 an ounce and was spotted trading at $1,735.30 at 11:20 a.m., extending Monday's 0.3 percent gain.
QE3 hopes: Gold markets ready to press bull button
NEW YORK(Commodity Online): The Federal Reserve may do it and hence the precious metals are extending rallies or trading firm.
Gold has climbed near to a six month high on expectations of a stimulus measure by US Federal Reserve. Cash gold jumped up to 0.3 percent to $1,736.45 an ounce and was spotted trading at $1,735.30 at 11:20 a.m., extending Monday's 0.3 percent gain.
Understanding the Rules
Before You Transport Precious Metals Oversees Part 1
BY MARK NESTMANN - FinancialSense.com
While it's perfectly legal to move precious metals in or out of the United States, you must understand the reporting rules before you begin. Otherwise, your risk confiscation of your metals along with possible civil and criminal sanctions. You're much better off paying an armored security service such as Brinks or ViaMat to transport the metals for you.
However, if you simply want to walk, drive, or fly across a U.S. border carrying, say, 100 one-ounce U.S. gold eagles with a market value of US$175,000 in your carry-on bag, there are two sets of rules with which you must be concerned:
Developed World in Financial Decay –
How Long Before Money Collapses?
By: Julian D. W. Phillips - GoldSeek.com
The Current Scene
Since 2007 and the start of the "credit-crunch" the developed world's money system has been under stress. As a consequence, there has been an economic downturn that government and bankers have not been able to stop, convincingly, in the last five years.
The developed world has decayed to the point that it can't handle another major crisis such as an oil price well into the $100+ area.
Keiser Report: Blackhole of Bamboozlement (E339)
In this episode, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss the Paul Bunyan banks, which are too big to be true and all flow, no assets. They also discuss the Bermuda Triangle of Fraud and the London disease. In the second half of the show, Max Keiser talks to investigative journalist and author, Leah McGrath Goodman about her being banned from the UK for reporting on the Jersey sex and murder scandal. They discuss the $5 billion per square mile in laundered money that means Jersey rises, while Switzerland sinks.
Why the Fed's words mean more than its actions
FOMC must credibly promise to be irresponsible
By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Federal Reserve has tried a lot of things over the past five years to get the economy back on track: It's lowered overnight rates nearly to zero, it's bailed out banks, investment banks and insurance companies, and it's bought trillions of dollars worth of bonds and mortgage-backed securities.
But still the economy is stuck in the mud. The listless economy has idled millions of people and dashed the hopes of millions more.
Bernanke Should Do the Right Thing and Not Say He's Sorry
By the Editors - Bloomberg.com
If Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke fails this week to announce new measures to stimulate the U.S. economy, he'd better have a good reason. We can only think of a bad one, and we urge Bernanke to refute it explicitly.
For weeks, Bernanke has been signaling to the financial markets that he will act. If he fails to follow through when the Fed's policy-making committee meets Sept. 13, it will probably be because, with the presidential election coming in November, he wants to shield the Fed from the charge that it's doing the Obama administration's bidding. That's the bad reason he should confront and dismiss.
Cui Bono Fed: Who Benefits from the Federal Reserve?
BY CHARLES HUGH SMITH - FinancialSense.com
Does the Federal Reserve benefit the nation, or just the banks?
Cui bono--to whose benefit?--is a skeptic's scalpel that cuts through the fat of propaganda and political expediency to the hard truth. Since the world has been trained (in Pavlovian fashion) to hang on every word issued by America's privately owned central bank, the Federal Reserve, it's appropriate to ask a simple but profound question:
Who benefits from the Fed's existence and its policies of loaning "free money" to banks at 0% and ZIRP (zero interest rate policy)? The Status Quo's answer is "the American people," of course, a deliciously juicy layer of "Big Lie" propaganda and obfuscation.
QE3 won't create jobs
By Annalyn Censky - Money.CNN.com
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The Federal Reserve's policymaking committee is meeting for the next two days, and it is widely expected to announce a third round of quantitative easing, known as QE3.
But even if the Fed launches that third bond-buying spree, it is unlikely to have a major positive effect on the economy.
The impact would be "microscopic" at best, said Catherine Mann, a Brandeis University finance professor and former Federal Reserve economist.
Will we see a Big Sell-Off in the Coming Weeks?
By Dave Zgodzinski - OilPrice.com
I had a neighbour who had a method for market timing. It was physical.
She told me that she knew it was time to sell a stock when she got a tingling in her fingers.
In the past couple of weeks, somebody out there has been letting their fingers click the sell button.
Maybe it's the time of year. There is a seasonality to the markets. A time to buy and a time to harvest. September has often been a selling time for stock markets.
J.P. Morgan Reorganizes Investment Banking
By CHRISTIAN BERTHELSEN - WSJ.com
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. announced a reorganization of its corporate and investment banking division on Wednesday, organizing it into two units and shifting the decade-long head of its equities business to run a restructured arm catering to institutional investors.
The corporate and investment bank, which was recast in late July as part of an overhaul in the wake of the bank's $5.8 billion trading loss on credit derivatives, will now be divided between banking and market and investor services. An internal memo announcing the changes was sent out by Mike Cavanagh and Daniel Pinto, the division's co-leaders.
Markets rally after German high court
gives nod to European bailout package
AP - WashingtonPost.com
KARLSRUHE, Germany — Germany's highest court paved the way Wednesday for the creation of Europe's €500 billion ($640 billion) rescue fund for indebted governments after it rejected calls to block it
The Federal Constitutional Court's decision allows President Joachim Gauck to sign off on the German parliament's ratification of the treaty that sets up the European Stability Mechanism bailout fund — a financial weapon that that leaders of the 17 countries that use the euro hope will help calm the debt crisis that threatens the eurozone and the global economy.
A party in Europe, but a hangover is coming
The German court's ruling that the European bailouts can go ahead came with some major caveats. The euro hasn't necessarily been saved.
By Cyrus Sanati - Fortune.CNN.com
FORTUNE -- The euro will live another day, but it remains on life support. The markets rallied overnight on word that the German constitutional court had affirmed the Fatherland's role in the European bailout scheme, allowing the European Central Bank to heat up the printing presses. That was followed by reports that pro-euro parties were in the lead in a critical national election in the Netherlands, putting an end to concerns that one of the eurozone's strongest members could fly the coop.
But while the twin victories for the euro are worth popping a bottle of champagne, it isn't enough to open an entire case. There were plenty of caveats in the German ruling that could cause some problems for the bailout down the road. And while the court gave the thumbs up to the bailout, they seem to have expressed some severe reservations to Germany's role in a possible fiscal union with its eurozone partners.
A Europe Devoid of Sovereign Democracies
BY DANIELLE PARK - FinancialSense.com
The European Stability Fund (ESM) was due to take effect in July and proposed as a backstop to protect the debt crisis from spreading by providing loans to troubled euro zone members. It was designed to replace the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), which was a established as an emergency fund in May 2010. Euro zone countries (including those in dire financial shape like Italy and Spain) pledged 440 billion euros in loan guarantees, which the E.F.S.F. used to supply 192 billion euros in bailouts for Ireland, Portugal and Greece. The EFSF now has little of the initial funds left to deploy.
Nigel Farage destroys Barroso's State of the Union
The euro's demise may be the final chapter of the ERM debacle
The drama of 1992 showed why Germany cannot lead Europe out of a monetary crisis
By Jeremy Warner - Telegraph.co.uk
Few problems in economics are genuinely new. Virtually every scenario you care to think of has been played out before in some shape or form. Thus it is with the eurozone debt crisis, which has some striking parallels with the debacle of Britain's entanglement with the European exchange rate mechanism back in the early Nineties.
Today's crisis is of course infinitely more complex, intractable and serious, but it shares many of the same characteristics. The central issue – that it is next to impossible to maintain a currency union with Germany unless wholly aligned to the German economic cycle – hasn't changed.
German court backs ESM rescue fund in double-edged ruling
Germany's highest court has cleared the way for ratification of the eurozone bail-out fund but capped German contributions and fired a cannon shot across the bows of the European Central Bank.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
Markets breathed a sigh of relief across the world after the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe ruled that the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the EU's Fiscal Compact are compatible with the country's Basic Law. The euro surged to a four-month high of €1.29 to the dollar.
"This is a good day for Germany and a good day for Europe," said Chancellor Angela Merkel. "Germany is fulfilling its full responsibilities as the biggest economy and a trusted partner in Europe."
Who Built the Recession?
Two guilty parties.
BY JEFFREY BELL AND RICH DANKER - WeeklyStandard.com
Bill Clinton, who rode a recession into office and left the scene just before another one began, knows something about the blame game. Addressing the Democratic convention on Wednesday night, he made a full-throated effort to defend the Obama presidency by putting it in the context of past Republican failure.
"They want to go back to the same old policies that got us into trouble in the first place," he warned, listing tax cuts, financial deregulation, defense spending, and domestic budget cuts as examples. Clinton's argument was an inch deep, but it recalled the fact that the economic catastrophe that primed Obama's 2008 victory and has dogged his incumbency remains a liability to Republicans four years later.
The Tom Woods / Max Keiser Debate
Chicago Teachers Shouldn't Be Obstacle to School Progress
By the Editors - Bloomberg.com
The stakes in Chicago's school strike go well beyond the nation's third-largest public school system. For U.S. education reform, it may be a watershed. For teachers unions, it may be a Waterloo.
It was poor timing for Chicago teachers to walk out on 350,000 children Monday, the second week of the school year. (Despite union claims to the contrary, "walk out" is exactly what the teachers did, unilaterally shutting off negotiations with city.)
'The Super Bowl of School Reform':
What the Chicago Teacher Strike Is Really About
The public supports higher pay for teachers, but not at the expense of less accountability. That's a problem for the Chicago teachers union.
By Andrew P. Kelly - TheAtlantic.com
The Chicago teachers strike is no ordinary labor dispute. It's a part of a larger war between the teachers unions and a growing coalition of education reformers who have pushed for rigorous teacher evaluation and tenure reform across the country. As the Chicago Tribune argued in yesterday's editorial page, "the strike is not only--or even mostly--about money. It's about who controls schools and classrooms..."
In education policy circles, this is way bigger than even the presidential election. It's the Super Bowl of school reform.
Mayor Rahm-Ney's Attack on the Chicago Teachers Union
By Amy Goodman - Truthdig.com
Unions are under attack in the United States—not only from people like Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, but now, with the teachers strike in Chicago, from the very core of President Barack Obama's inner circle, his former chief of staff and current mayor of that city, Rahm Emanuel. Twenty-five thousand teachers and support staff are on strike there, shutting down the public school system in the nation's third-largest school district. This fight now raging in Chicago, Obama's hometown, has its roots in this historic stronghold of organized labor, and in the movement started one year ago this week, Occupy Wall Street. The conflict presents a difficult moment for Obama, who will need union support to prevail in his race with Mitt Romney, but who is inextricably linked, politically, to his brash, expletive-spewing former aide, Mayor Rahm-ney Emanuel.
Depending on Dependency
By Thomas Sowell · PatriotPost.us
The theme that most seemed to rouse the enthusiasm of delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte was that we are all responsible for one another -- and that Republicans don't want to help the poor, the sick and the helpless.
All of us should be on guard against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should check such beliefs against facts.
Yet the notion that people who prefer economic decisions to be made by individuals in the market are not as compassionate as people who prefer those decisions to be made collectively by politicians is seldom even thought of as a belief that should be checked against facts.
Live Long and Pay for It: America's Real Long-Term Cost Crisis
As the population ages, the costs -- financial and social -- of long-term care will rise rapidly. We're not prepared for it.
By William Galston - TheAtlantic.com
About a decade ago, my mother's slow mental decline became too obvious for our family to deny. She continued to live at home with my father under increasingly difficult circumstances until she fell and broke her hip. In the hospital, it became clear that her mental impairment precluded physical rehabilitation and that institutional care was unavoidable.
Things Are Getting Worse: Median Household Income
Has Fallen 4 Years In A Row
By Michael Snyder - TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com
New numbers that have just been released show that things are getting worse for American families. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income declined to $50,054 in 2011. That is a 1.5 percent decline from the previous year, and median household income has now fallen for 4 years in a row. In fact, after adjusting for inflation median household income has not been this low since 1995. These new numbers once again confirm what so many of us have been talking about for so long - American families are steadily getting poorer. Incomes are going down and the cost of living just keeps going up. This dynamic is squeezing more Americans out of the middle class every single month.
Number of U.S. poor holds steady but earnings gap grows
By Susan Heavey and Lucia Mutikani
WASHINGTON | Wed Sep 12, 2012 5:21pm EDT
(Reuters) - The poverty rate in the United States stabilized in 2011 for the first time in three years even as incomes fell and inequality grew, according to government figures.
The share of people living in poverty edged down to 15 percent from 15.1 percent in 2010, a "statistically insignificant" drop in the words of analysts at the U.S. Census Bureau, which released the report.
Census: Middle class shrinks to an all-time low
By Carol Morello - WashingtonPost.com
The vise on the middle class tightened last year, driving down its share of the income pie as the number of Americans in poverty leveled off and the most affluent households saw their portion grow, new census data released Wednesday showed.
Income inequality increased by 1.6 percent, the Census Bureau said in its annual report on poverty, income and health insurance. This was the biggest one-year increase in almost two decades and suggested that a trend in place since the late 1970s was picking up steam.
New Public-Private Partnerships:
The President's Stealth Plan To Create Jobs?
By GARY BELSKY - Time.com
As casual reading, the Presidential Memorandum "Accelerating Technology Transfer and Commercialization of Federal Research in Support of High-Growth Businesses," released Oct. 28, 2011, is about as riveting as the Department of Defense Instruction No. 5535.11 ("Availability of Samples, Drawings, Information, Equipment, Materials, and Certain Services to Non-DoD Persons and Entities") that followed in its trail on March 19, 2012. Which is to say, not riveting at all.
But as a window into the Obama Administration's efforts to create jobs, both documents are revealing. And both help to explain a series of new investment partnerships announced today—almost a year after the aforementioned memorandum was released. Hey, no one ever said job creation was easy. At least no one not running for president.
Dollar no longer primary oil currency
as China begins to sell oil using Yuan
BY: KENNETH SCHORTGEN JR - Examiner.com
On Sept. 11, Pastor Lindsey Williams, former minister to the global oil companies during the building of the Alaskan pipeline, announced the most significant event to affect the U.S.dollar since its inception as a currency. For the first time since the 1970's, when Henry Kissenger forged a trade agreement with the Royal house of Saud to sell oil using only U.S. dollars, China announced its intention to bypass the dollar for global oil customers and began selling the commodity using their own currency.
Lindsey Williams: "The most significant day in the history of the American dollar, since its inception, happened on Thursday, Sept. 6. On that day, something took place that is going to affect your life, your family, your dinner table more than you can possibly imagine."
MIT Develop Simple, Fast, Efficient
Method of Cleaning Up Oil Spills
By Joao Peixe - OilPrice.com
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have proposed a new oil spill clean-up technique which is set to be simple, fast, and energy efficient.
MIT hope to use magnets to strip the oil from the water. The whole system will be highly efficient and all parts of the system are recyclable, including the oil extracted from the water.
OBAMA SPENDS $1 BILLION
ON IRIS & FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY
By: Candice Lanier - HumanEvents.com
For over a year and a half, the Mexican government has been collecting an unprecedented amount of biometric data from minors ages 4 to 17 as part of a youth ID card program.The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that the data is being gathered for Personal Identity Cards for minors. This I.D. card, according to Mexican authorities, will help streamline registration in schools and health facilities and comes embedded with digital records of iris images, fingerprints, a photograph and a signature for each minor.
Missing in China... or under the radar?
Xi's Absence Complicates Planning for Party Meeting
By JEREMY PAGE - WSJ.com
BEIJING—Vice President Xi Jinping's continuing absence from public life is throwing another wrench into preparations for China's leadership change this fall when Mr. Xi is due to take over the nation's top job, according to party insiders, analysts and diplomats.
The announcement of when the meeting to start the transition will take place is already considered late, after a highly unusual year in Chinese politics, and Mr. Xi's disappearance, apparently because of a health problem, has created another complication that could cause further delays, those people said.
Israeli Voters in US Election
Citizens who never lived in US can vote in 24 states
Children of immigrants from the US who have citizenship but never lived there are eligible to vote in upcoming election.
By HERB KEINON0 - JPost.com
Children of immigrants from the US who have American citizenship but have never lived there are eligible to vote in the upcoming elections in 24 states, including six of the eight key battleground states, according to information on a US government website meant to help overseas voters.
Estimates of the number of Americans eligible to vote in the US living, working or studying in Israel vary widely from 100,000 to 250,000.
White House declines Netanyahu request to meet with Obama
The White House's response marks a new low in relations between Netanyahu and Obama, underscored by the fact that this is the first time Netanyahu will visit the U.S. as prime minister without meeting Obama; PM to meet with Clinton
By Barak Ravid and Natasha Mozgovaya - Haaretz.com
The White House declined Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's request on Tuesday to meet U.S. President Barack Obama during a UN conference in New York at the end of the month.
Israel's Netanyahu opens the door to Iran attack
Reuters - TheNational.ae
JERUSALEM // The United States forfeited its moral right to stop Israel taking action against Iran's nuclear programme because Washington had refused to be firm with Tehran, the Israeli prime minister said yesterday.
In comments which appeared to bring the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran closer, Benjamin Netanyahu took the US administration to task after Washington rebuffed his own call to set a red line for Tehran's nuclear drive.
MI6 chief was British messenger
sent to dissuade Israel from Iran strike
Visit by intelligence official is unprecedented, Daily Mail reports
By SAM SER and GREG TEPPER - TimesOfIsrael.com
The high-ranking British official dispatched to Israel to discuss the Jewish state's plans regarding a possible attack on Iran's nuclear program was Sir John Sawyers, the head of England's MI6 intelligence agency, The Daily Mail reported Tuesday night.
The British report followed a revelation in the Hebrew press earlier in the day that a telephone call between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his British counterpart David Cameron prior to the Olympic games led Cameron to send an emissary to meet with Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu: Those that refuse to set red lines
for Iran can't give Israel red light
Netanyahu launches unprecedented attack on U.S. government; U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says if Iran decides to make a nuclear weapon, the U.S. would have a little more than a year to stop it.
By Barak Ravid, Reuters, Reuters & AP - Haaretz.com
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday launched an unprecedented verbal attack on the U.S. government over its stance on the Iranian nuclear program.
Obama's Slap at Netanyahu
Israeli PM gets the shaft -- while Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood figurehead gets the red carpet.
By Arnold Ahlert - PatriotPost.us
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leveled some of his most stinging criticism to date at an Obama administration that refuses to issue concrete ultimatums to Iran regarding that nation's pursuit of nuclear weapons. "Those who refuse to draw red line to Iran don't have the moral right to put a red line to Israel," said Netanyahu during a press conference in Jerusalem. The Prime Minister's comments were an apparent reaction to a statement made by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in an interview with Bloomberg Radio on Sunday. When asked if the administration would specify consequences for Iran's refusal to quit its uranium enrichment program, Clinton refused to do so. "We're not setting deadlines," she responded.
Libya attack may have been planned, sources say
By ILENE PRUSHER - JPost.com
Obama rejects denigrating religious beliefs but condemns senseless violence that killed US Ambassador, 3 others; Clinton says the attack is work of "small, savage group"; PM extends condolences to US.
Armed men at the US Consulate in Benghazi killed US Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and three embassy staff late Tuesday following a protest by people upset over an American- made film that bashes the prophet Muhammad.
September 11, 2012
Pro-al Qaeda group suspected in attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador
BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
A pro-al Qaeda group is considered the top suspect in the attacks at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya that left four Americans dead, including Amb. J. Christopher Stevens.
The group, the Imprisoned Omar Abdul Rahman Brigades, previously attacked the consulate in June of this year. According to CNN, sources tracking eastern Libya say the attack Tuesday was likely too complex to be the result of a protest over an anti-Muslim film:
'Sam Bacile, Israeli Jew,'
May Actually Be Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, Coptic Christian
By Jeffrey Goldberg - TheAtlantic.com
From the Associated Press, which previously reported that Sam Bacile was a real person, and an Israeli Jew:
The search for those behind the provocative, anti-Muslim film implicated in violent protests in Egypt and Libya led Wednesday to a California Coptic Christian convicted of financial crimes who acknowledged his role in managing and providing logistics for the production....
U.S. Missions Stormed in Libya, Egypt
Movie Critical of Prophet Muhammad Spurs Attack in Benghazi, Killing American; Protesters Breach Wall of Cairo Compound
By MATT BRADLEY in Cairo
and DION NISSENBAUM in Washington - WSJ.com
Demonstrators attacked a U.S. consulate in Libya, killing one American, and breached the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, amid angry protests over a film by a U.S. producer that mocks and insults the Prophet Muhammad.
The footage, which depicts the Islamic Prophet Muhammad as a womanizing fraud, was posted on YouTube in early July under the user name Sam Bacile.
In a telephone interview Tuesday with The Wall Street Journal, a man identifying himself as Mr. Bacile said he was a 52-year-old Israeli-American real-estate developer in California who raised $5 million from 100 Jewish donors to promote the film.
Thanks Obama - The Terrorists You Used
To Topple Regimes In Egypt And Libya
Are Now Attacking Our Embassies
By Michael Snyder - EndOfTheAmericanDream.com
Many of us tried to warn Barack Obama that using militants from al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations to overthrow governments in the Middle East would not end well. The Obama administration has been so determined to get rid of some of these dictators in the Middle East that they have not even really stopped to think about who would be replacing them. Our leaders assured us that those opposed to Mubarak and Gaddafi were "freedom fighters" that just wanted "liberty" and "democracy" in those countries. Well, of course it turns out that the folks that took control of both Egypt and Libya bear no resemblance to George Washington whatsoever. They have simply replaced one form of tyranny with an even worse form of tyranny. Sadly, the last couple of days have been a huge wake up call for all of us. Radical Islamic militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt and replaced the American flag with the al-Qaeda flag. In Benghazi, Libya the U.S. consulate was attacked by a crowd equipped with guns, homemade bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. They torched the consulate, looted it, and killed the U.S. ambassador and three other U.S. officials. Apparently they are not as grateful for our help in "liberating" their homelands as the Obama administration thought they would be. Unfortunately, our politicians fundamentally misunderstand what is going on in the Middle East, and this is going to continue to lead to more policy errors.
US moving Navy destroyers off coast of Libya
From Barbara Starr, CNN's Pentagon Correspondent
Two US Navy warships are moving towards the coast of Libya, two US officials tell CNN. The destroyers are the USS Laboon and the USS McFaul. Both ships are equipped with tomahawk missiles that could be used if a strike was ordered. Tomahawks are satellite-guided cruise missiles that can be programmed to hit specific targets.
"These ships will give the administration flexibility," a senior official said, if the administration orders action against targets in Libya.
U.S. Sending Drones to Hunt Libyan Attackers
By DASHIELL BENNETT - TheAtlanticWire.com
CNN reports that the United States will send unmanned drones to Libya to look for jihadist camps, as the White House now accepts the belief that the Benghazi attack was the premeditated work of terrorists. U.S. officials say the attack was not a direct assassination attempt on Ambassador Christopher Stevens, but that used the otherwise peaceful protest of an anti-Muslim film as a diversion to infiltrate the area and then strike the compound.
U.S. envoy to Libya killed in riot over movie
Three Benghazi staffers also killed; U.S. Embassy in Cairo attacked
By Robert Daniel, MarketWatch
TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) — Rioters angered by the release of a movie they considered insulting to Islam burned down the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in an attack late Tuesday that killed the U.S. ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, and three diplomatic staffers.
In Egypt, protesters had earlier scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and replaced the American flag with an Islamic banner.
BENGHAZI AND CAIRO: POLARIZING ATTACKS
Posted by Jon Lee Anderson - NewYorker.com
The ambush-murder, on Tuesday night, of the American Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans in the eastern city of Benghazi, following a violent mob attack on the American consulate there, is the worst in a long string of disquieting episodes that have occurred in Libya in the year since Qaddafi's overthrow by NATO-backed rebels. At about the same time, mobs stormed the U.S. Embassy in Cairo in neighboring Egypt, though there, thankfully, without loss of life.
Photos from the Aftermath of the Benghazi Embassy Attack
By DASHIELL BENNETT - TheAtlanticWire.com
New photos have been released from the burned-out American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that show what remains of the damaged buildings in the light of day. The pictures show a compound gutted by fire and scarred by graffiti and looting. There have also been some new details this morning about what exactly happened during the assault.
Sam Bacile: The Mysterious Filmmaker
Who Set the Muslim World on Fire
By JOHN HUDSON - TheAtlanticWire.com
Update: Mysterious is right. Skepticism about the actual identity of "Sam Bacile," the producer of the anti-Islam film Muslim Innocence, appears to be justified. The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldbergcontacted a consultant of the film, Steve Klein, who said that Bacile, contrary to previous claims inThe Wall Street Journal and Associated Press, is not Israeli nor actually named Sam Bacile. (It's a pseudonym.) Klein tells Goldberg:
"I don't know that much about him. I met him, I spoke to him for an hour. He's not Israeli, no. I can tell you this for sure, the State of Israel is not involved, Terry Jones (the radical Christian Quran-burning pastor) is not involved. His name is a pseudonym. All these Middle Eastern folks I work with have pseudonyms. I doubt he's Jewish. I would suspect this is a disinformation campaign."
"LIBYA SURPRISE"
COULD BE DEATH KNELL FOR ROMNEY CAMPAIGN
Posted by John Cassidy - NewYorker.com
Harold Wilson, who was Prime Minister of Britain twice, in the sixties and seventies, famously said a week is a long time in politics. Sometimes, so is a day. This time yesterday, the conventional wisdom, faithfully trotted out by yours truly among many, was that Obama was coasting to victory in a Presidential sweepstakes that was threatening to peter out in tedium.
So much for that. After last night's "September surprise," Obama is still home free, and Romney is still trailing. In fact, this might well be the death knell for his campaign. But what an uproar.
Mitt Romney's Comments on Embassy Attacks Backfire Badly
By ELSPETH REEVE - - TheAtlanticWire.com
Mitt Romney's attack on President Obama for the "disgraceful" decision to "sympathize" with the murderers -- and his decision to stick with the political attack in a press conference Wednesday -- "is likely to be seen as one of the most craven and ill-advised tactical moves in this entire campaign," Time's Mark Halperin says. The "campaign faces a near consensus in Republican foreign policy circles that, whatever the sentiment, Romney faltered badly," BuzzFeed's Ben Smithwrites. "I've been inundated with emails and calls from elected GOP leaders who think Romney's response was a mistake. Not today," MSNBC's Joe Scarborough tweeted. Peggy Noonan said on Fox, "I don't feel that Mr. Romney has been doing himself any favors, say in the past few hours, perhaps since last night... Sometimes when really bad things happen, when hot things happen, cool words or no words is the way to go." Former George W. Bush pollster Matthew Dowd tweeted, "Romney react feels a lot like ready, fire, aim."
What Comes After Assad?
Al Qaeda is not a threat in Syria.
BY BARTLE B. BULL - WeeklyStandard.com
The moral and geostrategic arguments for a Western intervention in Syria speak for themselves. There is only good in helping a courageous majority free itself of a barbaric puppet of Iran and Russia who indiscriminately bombs his own civilians from land, air, and sea. Ethically, no outcome could be worse than more of this war. Strategically, nothing could be worse for civilized interests than Assad coming out of it the winner.
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