It’s a SCAM Assholes. Ain’t Fucking Iranian Sanctions no more! Obama Administration Pulled Stunt Bluff to Monetize Treasuries against Oil Surge. Israel got lucky outta this Farce
More US waivers to Iran sanctions. Around two thirds of Iran’s crude exports flow to Asia, where the biggest buyers are China, Japan, India and South Korea. The United States granted Japan an exception in March and has signaled it has had good talks with South Korea.
Here is some Wallstreet Whorsmanure Worth-Loathed Reading from Stephen Kirkland and Rita Nazareth, Bloomberg
June 8 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks and Treasuries rose while oil and the euro fell as investors awaited weekend talks among European financial officials about a potential bailout of Spain. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index advanced 0.4 percent to 1,319.67 at 12:46 p.m. New York time, heading for a 3.3 percent weekly gain that’s the biggest since December, after losing as much as 0.6 percent. The yield on the benchmark 10-year note declined two basis points to 1.62 percent. Oil slumped 1.8 percent and the S&P GSCI gauge of 24 commodities slipped 1.1 percent. The euro weakened 0.6 percent to $1.2488 after Spain’s credit ranking was cut three steps by Fitch Ratings. The yen strengthened against 14 of 16 of its most-traded peers. Spain is poised to become the fourth of the 17 euro-area countries to require emergency assistance as the currency bloc’s finance chiefs plan weekend talks on a potential aid request to shore up the nation’s lenders. German exports dropped in April for the first time this year and industrial output in Italy fell more than economists estimated, reports showed today. Global stocks rallied this week as speculation mounted that policy makers will act to spur growth. “You’ve got both sides hedging their bets,” said Walter “Bucky” Hellwig, who helps manage $17 billion at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama. “Stocks are up and bonds are up. There’s uncertainty going into the weekend. Anything that could address the Spanish situation in a favorable way could have a positive impact. Yet it’s not a big rally. The risk-off trade is very much alive predicting an economic slowdown.” Thirty-year U.S. bonds also rallied, sending yields down two basis points to 2.72 percent. Rates on two-year Treasuries were little changed at 0.27 percent.
Market Leaders
Among U.S. stocks, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Intel Corp. added at least 1.4 percent to pace gains among the biggest companies. Facebook Inc., which this week fell to the lowest price since it went public, added 3.7 percent. McDonald’s Corp., the largest restaurant chain, slid 1 percent as its May sales trailed analysts’ estimates. Alpha Natural Resources Inc. slumped 4 percent as the nation’s second-biggest coal producer is shutting mines in Kentucky and closing U.S. regional offices. Stocks reversed an early rally yesterday after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben. S. Bernanke said the Fed will need to assess conditions before deciding if more measures are required to stoke an economy threatened by Europe’s debt crisis and U.S. budget cuts.
European Markets
The Stoxx Europe 600 Index slipped 0.3 percent, after falling as much as 1.4 percent. A gauge raw-material producers slumped 2.8 percent for the biggest decline among 19 groups. BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s biggest mining company, slid 2.9 percent and Rio Tinto Group retreated 4.8 percent. Barclays Plc decreased 1.3 percent as the Financial Times reported that Chief Executive Officer Bob Diamond has postponed his goal of reaching a 13 percent return on equity by 2013. The newspaper cited unidentified people close to the bank. Lamprell Plc, an oil and gas rig engineer, slumped 22 percent after cutting its profit outlook for the second time in a month. The euro, which depreciated 0.8 percent versus the yen, was set for its first weekly gain against the dollar in six. The Dollar Index, which tracks the U.S. currency against those of six trading partners, jumped 0.7 percent.
German Swaps
The cost of insuring against losses on Germany’s sovereign debt rose for a sixth day with credit-default swaps linked to bunds adding two basis points to 108 basis points, the highest since January. The yield on its sovereign 10-year bund dropped four basis points to 1.34 percent, paring the rate’s first weekly advance in 12. The Spanish 10-year bond yield rose 13 basis points and swaps on government debt rose 16 basis points to 588. Oil lost 1.8 percent to $83.28. Its sixth straight weekly drop is the longest losing streak since December 1998. Copper tumbled 2.5 percent. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index slumped 0.8 percent, paring its first weekly gain since March. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index of mainland stocks slipped 1.3 percent before data tomorrow on China’s inflation, industrial output and investment. Taiwan’s Taiex index slipped 1.1 percent and South Korea’s Kospi lost 0.7 percent.
Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays a dictator in his upcoming comedy, dressed in character Monday and told reporters at a press conference that he liked “Mitchell Romney.”"He has the makings of a great dictator,” Cohen said. “He is incredibly wealthy but pays no taxes, and it’s not much of a leap to go from firing people to firing squads and from putting pets on the top of a car to putting political dissidents on top of them.” If Rick Santorum were still running for president, though, Cohen — whose character’s name in “The Dictator” is Gen. Shabazz Aladeen — says he’d be backing him.”I would say Santorum, despite his liberal views, but since he is out of the running, I don’t know,” he said. “In terms of policies, I would have to say the Republicans if
Mileikowsky Curse is Over, (no offense I wish he passed away in 1967), Benzion forged his kid (Bibi) the present Prime Minister of Israel to Psychobabble who looks at Palestinians from Adamite Perspective as Subhuman and has to mass-murdered. Benzion Mileikowsky also known as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu QUITS BITCHN’, cancels Elections and stands at the helm of the broadest coalition in Israel’s history, with 94 MKs Kadima‘s Shaul Mofaz vows to work to change Tal Law, system of government, pass budget, and advance peace process.
Read more from Mati Tuchfeld, Shlomo Cesana, Israel Hayom Staff and News Agencies:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kadima Chairman Shaul Mofaz (Iranian Jew) dropped an unprecedented political bombshell early Tuesday, as the two decided to join forces, establish a national unity government, and cancel plans for what only hours earlier had seemed to be an inevitable early election. Mofaz (Iranian Jew) announced before dawn that Kadima, the head of the opposition until the agreement was reached and the biggest faction in the Knesset with 28 seats, would be joining Netanyahu’s Likud-led coalition to advance two flagship issues: the modification of the system of government in Israel and the equal enlistment of all populations to the military. The deal between the two parties stipulated that an alternative to the Tal Law, which exempts ultra-Orthodox men from mandatory military service, would be submitted by July and that a deal would be reached by December to alter the system of government. In exchange, Kadima vowed to ensure that the current government would remain intact for its full term, which ends in November 2013. Mofaz (Iranian Jew) said that parliamentary taskforces headed by Kadima representatives would be established to advance these issues. Under the deal, Mofaz (Iranian Jew) will be named deputy prime minister, and Kadima will be given the chairmanship of the Knesset Economics Committee. It already chairs the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. The move was especially surprising in light of recent remarks made by Mofaz (Iranian Jew), who has insisted repeatedly that he would challenge Netanyahu’s failing leadership and swore that he would never join Netanyahu’s government. Even more surprising was the timing: The meeting in which the unity deal was struck was held simultaneously with a vote on a bill to dissolve the Knesset and hold early elections on Sept. 4. The bill was nearly unanimously approved (110 in favor versus one against) in its first reading, with Kadima voting in favor. The second and third readings of the bill were called off when the unity government was announced. Coalition Chairman MK Zeev Elkin actively delayed the legislation process, after the bill was already approved, to allow the negotiations between Netanyahu and Mofaz (Iranian Jew) to bear fruit. “This move was begging to happen,” said one Kadima member. “The prime minister gets the political stability he wanted, and Mofaz (Iranian Jew) gets to delay the elections, which, had they been held now, would likely have crushed him.” At 2 a.m., the Likud and Kadima factions convened separate emergency meetings for a briefing on the new development. “I didn’t want to go to elections,” Netanyahu explained to his party. “But I saw the coalition begin to unravel, so I went for it.” He added that the unity deal had been coordinated with coalition partners Yisrael Beitenu and Shas, who supported the move. Netanyahu and Mofaz (Iranian Jew) held a joint press conference around noon Tuesday, during which Netanyahu said that political stability is of utmost importance to Israel at this time. He praised Mofaz (Iranian Jew) for the decision to join the coalition, saying Mofaz (Iranian Jew) “took an important step.” “When I thought that the government’s stability was being undermined, I was ready to go to elections,” Netanyahu said. “But when it became clear to me that it would be possible to establish an extremely broad government, I understood we could restore stability without elections.” Meretz MK Nitzan Horowitz interrupted Netanyahu as he spoke, shouting, “This is corruption in the fullest sense of the word,” before being removed from the press conference. Netanyahu said his new coalition government would promote a “responsible” peace process with the Palestinians, as well as presenting a “responsible” alternative to the Tal Law and a “responsible” budget that would take economic and social concerns into consideration. “The peace process is stalled because the Palestinians are not willing to resume negotiations,” Netanyahu said. “Maybe now they will reconsider. We have been prepared to resume talks in the past, and still today. I hope that they take advantage of this opportunity to return to the negotiating table and conduct responsible talks in which both sides will have to make painful decisions.” He also said the new coalition government would hold serious talks about Iran’s nuclear program, although Mofaz (Iranian Jew) has previously spoken out against an Israeli strike on Iran – something that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are said to support. Netanyahu told the news conference Tuesday that he and Mofaz (Iranian Jew) already have had many discussions about Iran and would continue to hold “serious and responsible” talks on the matter. As a former military chief, Mofaz (Iranian Jew)’s opinion could carry great weight in a decision on whether to strike. Netnayahu also said he had offered former Kadima head Tzipi Livni the chance to be part of a unity government twice. “I am very glad that Shaul Mofaz (Iranian Jew) accepted the offer,” he said. “I have received the blessing of the other parties for this move. This is not a fake unity – it is for the sake of action and for strengthening of the State of Israel.” For his part, Mofaz (Iranian Jew) said, “I made a decision to join the prime minister and he expressed an openness to issues that are a part of the Kadima platform. We decided to undertake a historic move. This was not extortion.” Mofaz (Iranian Jew) said he wanted to be a part of discussions on national and defense issues that are crucial to the State of Israel. “I didn’t ask for a portfolio,” he said. “He offered me one, but I won’t say what. I will be involved in all the issues Israel currently has to deal with, and I promise you that our impact will be felt.” When asked about recent remarks he had made, calling Netanyahu a liar, Mofaz (Iranian Jew) replied, “The prime minister and myself have decided to put the past behind us.” Mofaz (Iranian Jew) said there are moments when a nation has to make difficult decisions and leaders have to make difficult personal choices as well. “Together, we can change things in Israel,” he said. “This is the biggest national unity coalition, which is important for the future of Israel – 94 coalition members would know how to deal with future challenges facing Israel. We are here to join forces and confront the challenges – which are not easy challenges that lie ahead,” Mofaz (Iranian Jew) said. Mofaz (Iranian Jew) also commented on the deadlocked talks with the Palestinians, saying, “We will continue to discuss how to move forward to achieve an understanding with the Palestinians, but we have to talk about borders and security arrangements first.” Mofaz (Iranian Jew) added that it would have been easy to remain in the opposition, but “when you have this kind of political power – and Kadima has 28 seats – it would have been irresponsible of me to decline [joining the coalition].” He said that joining a unity coalition would ultimately serve to benefit Israel and its citizens. “The fact that Kadima was not a partner in a unity government until now was a mistake,” he said.
Racism is becoming ever more common in Mongolia, where extreme, right-wing nationalist groups target especially Chinese citizens. They are not afraid of resorting to violence.
Tserenchunt, 25, and two of his friends are all dressed in black. He is wearing tinted sunglasses and has the tooth of a large animal around his neck. The three young men stand out among the pedestrians dressed in colorful clothes in the center of the Mongolian capital city, Ulan Bator. They met there in front of a school to distribute fliers.
“We want to save Mongolians from the threat of foreigners,” Tserenchunt says.
The three are members of the ultra nationalist organization “Dayar Mongol.” Such nationalist groups have seen a rise in popularity in recent years. They use Nazi symbols – the white swastika on red and the Hitler salute and worship Hitler.
Chinese and Koreans
Their hate is directed against foreigners living in Mongolia. Tserenchunt believes there is a Chinese and Korean conspiracy against Mongolia.
Many Mongolians are nomadic herders
“The Koreans flood us with their soap operas. They use them to make Korea seem attractive, so that our men will go over there to work. They try to convince our women that Korean men are good catches,” he says.
He is also convinced that the Chinese are sent to the country by their government to destroy Mongolia.
“They want to rot us pure blooded Mongolians out. We have been enemies from the very beginning. That won’t change.”
Many Mongolians fear the economic and political domination of China.
Distrust
But it isn’t only the followers of “Dayar Mongol” who believe they must protect themselves from foreign influence. Prejudices are not uncommon among the country’s 2.8 citizens. Foreign construction companies that have recently started investing in Mongolia are received with great distrust.
“The foreigners are stealing our natural resources and nothing will remains for us.” Sentences like that are common. Many foreigners in Ulan Bator have reported being insulted and in some cases assaulted, especially in bars or clubs, where alcohol is involved.
But the far-right extremists take a step further, even. They vandalize stores and equipment belonging to foreign construction companies and sometimes even attack people. Members of “Dayar Mongol” made headlines for cutting the hair of women who meet with foreign men. Tserenchunt uses a harsh racist ideology to justify such actions.
“Our greatest threat is blood-mixing. Our women going out with foreign men for their money – that is unacceptable. There is a saying that goes, ‘if your women are impure, your country is done for.’”
Chinese and Koreans are increasingly unwelcome in Mongolia
The nationalists don’t even shudder at the thought of murder. Years ago, the group’s leader was sentenced to death for murder. It is the same story with other radical groups. The leader of the neo-Nazi group “Blue Mongolia” was also sentenced to death for racially motivated murder a few years ago. He had killed his daughter’s boyfriend because he studied in China.
Bitter irony
Bayaraa, who wishes not to uses his real name, is the owner of a Chinese restaurant in Ulan Bator. He has on occasion had the displeasure of crossing paths with neo-Nazis.
“They used to threaten us. They vandalized the store and broke what they could. They don’t do that anymore. But sometimes they come in and demand that we pay ‘protection money.’ When we refuse to do so, they threaten to go to the health department and tell them that our restaurant is unhygienic,” he says, adding, “But we are not afraid of inspections because everything he is according to regulation.”
Out of fear of a return of attacks, Bayaraa no longer hangs up signs written in Chinese characters, like many Chinese restaurants in Ulan Bator.
Bayaraa is in his mid-30s. He is wearing a yellow shirt and his hair is a typical-Chinese brush cut. The sad irony of his story is that he himself is Mongolian. He is from Inner Mongolia, which is part of China. He grew up in a traditional yurt. “When I was a child, we raised livestock. I didn’t learn Chinese until I was 18, when I joined the military.”
FBI TORTUREAMERICAN MUSLIM IN UAE
EXCLUSIVE: Yonas Fikre believes the US government played a role in his hellish three-month detention in the United Arab Emirates. By Nick Baumann | Tue Apr. 17, 2012 12:01 AM PDT
Last June, while Yonas Fikre was visiting the United Arab Emirates, the Muslim American from Portland, Oregon was suddenly arrested and detained by Emirati security forces. For the next three months, Fikre claims, he was repeatedly interrogated and tortured. Fikre says he was beaten on the soles of his feet, kicked and punched, and held in stress positions while interrogators demanded he “cooperate” and barked questions that were eerily similar to those posed to him not long before by FBI agents and other American officials who had requested a meeting with him.
Fikre had been visiting family in Khartoum, Sudan, when, in April 2010, the officials got in touch with him. He agreed to meet with them, but ultimately balked at cooperating with FBI questioning without a lawyer present and he rebuffed a request to become an informant. Pressing him to cooperate, the agents told him he was on the no-fly list and could not return home unless he aided the bureau, Fikre says. The following week he received an email from one of the US officials; it arrived from a State Department address: “Thanks for meeting with us last week in Sudan. While we hope to get your side of the issues we keep hearing about, the choice is yours to make. The time to help yourself is now.”
“When Yonas [first] asked whether the FBI was behind his detention, he was beaten for asking the question,” says his lawyer. “Toward the end, the interrogator indicated that indeed the FBI had been involved.”
Fikre made his way to the UAE the following year, where, he and his lawyer allege, he was detained at the request of the US government. They say his treatment is part of a pattern of “proxy” detentions of US Muslims orchestrated by the the US government. Now, Fikre’s Portland-based lawyer, Thomas Nelson, plans to file suit against the Obama administration for its alleged complicity in Fikre’s torture.
“There was explicit cooperation; we certainly will allege that in the complaint,” says Nelson, a well known terrorism defense attorney. “When Yonas [first] asked whether the FBI was behind his detention, he was beaten for asking the question. Toward the end, the interrogator indicated that indeed the FBI had been involved. Yonas understood this as indicating that the FBI continued to [want] him to work for/with them.” Nelson, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Council on American Islamic Relations are assembling a high-powered legal team to handle Fikre’s case in the United States.
Fikre’s story echoes those of Naji Hamdan, Amir Meshal, Sharif Mobley, Gulet Mohamed, and Yusuf and Yahya Wehelie. All are American Muslim men who, while traveling abroad, claim they were detained, interrogated, and (in some cases) abused by local security forces; the men claim they were arrested at the behest of federal law enforcement authorities, alleging the US government used this process to circumvent their legal rights as American citizens.
As Mother Jones reported in its September/October 2011 issue, the FBI has acknowledged that it tips off local security forces on the names of Americans traveling overseas that the bureau suspects involvement in terrorism, and that these individuals are sometimes detained and questioned. The FBI also admits that its agents sometimes “interview or witness an interview” of Americans detained by foreign governments in terrorism cases. And as several FBI officials told me on condition of anonymity, the bureau has for years used its elite cadre of international agents (known as legal attachés, or legats) to coordinate the overseas detention and interrogation by foreign security services of American terrorism suspects. Sometimes, that entails cooperating with local security forces that are accustomed to abusing prisoners. (FBI officials have told Mother Jones that foreign security forces are asked to refrain from abusing American detainees.)
It’s difficult to confirm US involvement in the detentions of Fikre or other alleged proxy detainees—indeed, plausible deniability is part of the appeal of the program. But what’s clear is that Fikre was on the FBI’s radar well before his detention in the UAE. (The FBI declined to comment on his case, as did the State Department.) Fikre, whose only previous brush with the legal system came when he sued a restaurant for having ham in its clam chowder, may have drawn the FBI’s interest because of his association with Portland’s Masjed-as-Saber mosque, where he was a youth basketball coach.
The mosque has been a focus of FBI scrutiny ever since the October 2002 case of the “Portland Seven,” in which seven Muslims from the Portland area were charged with trying to go to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban in the wake of 9/11. (Six are now in jail; the seventh was killed in Pakistan.) Masjed-as-Saber was in the news again in 2010 when Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a 19-year-old Somali American who sometimes worshipped there, was charged with trying to detonate a fake car bomb provided by an undercover FBI agent.
More recently, three other men who attended Fikre’s mosque—Mustafa Elogbi, Michael Migliore, and Jamal Tarhuni—have found themselves on the no-fly list after traveling abroad. (The government’s use of the no-fly list to prevent American terrorist suspects from returning home after traveling overseas is currently the subject of a major ACLU lawsuit.)
Fikre’s case “really does make a mockery of the FBI’s use of watchlisting as a means of protecting the US,” says Gadeir Abbas, a staff attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “It’s not a means of protecting America—it’s a tool the FBI uses to put people in vulnerable positions.”
It “really does make a mockery of the FBI’s use of watchlisting as a means of protecting the US.”
Fikre, who is currently living in Sweden and believes that it would be unsafe for him to return to the United States, has given a series of videotaped interviews detailing his ordeal. His presence in Sweden beyond the three-month window allowed for tourist visas suggests that he has applied for permanent status there, and local media have so far refrained from reporting on the story for fear of affecting his case to stay in the country.
In the interviews, Fikre describes a series of events that are similar to the 2008 case of Naji Hamdan, a Lebanese American auto-parts dealer from Los Angeles who was then living in the UAE. Like Hamdan, Fikre claims he was detained in the UAE, tortured (including with stress positions and beatings on the soles of his feet, so as to not show marks), and asked about his activities in the United States. Like Hamdan, Fikre believed a western interrogator was present in the room at some points during his detention, because when he could peek out under his blindfold (“after being kicked/punched and falling over,” Nelson says) he occasionally saw western slacks and shoes. “In those occasions there was a fair amount of whispering,” Nelson added.
The similarities between the two cases were so striking that Michael Kaufman and Laboni Hoq, lawyers who are representing Hamdan in his separate case against the government, initially thought that Fikre had simply parroted Hamdan’s story. But once they heard more, they decided “the backstory of why the government was interested in him was reasonable and something that didn’t sound fabricated,” Kaufman said. “It seemed like a long way to go for a lie,” Hoq added.
A key difference between Hamdan’s and Fikre’s stories is that Hamdan eventually confessed—under torture, he now emphasizes—to being a member of several terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda. He ultimately spent 11 months in UAE custody before being deported to Lebanon, where he now runs a children’s clothing store. Despite an extensive FBI investigation, he was never charged in the United States.
Fikre, his lawyer says, “never confessed to anything”—”thankfully.”
“The FBI does this stuff because they can get away with it,” Nelson says. “But the bureau has totally destroyed any relationship it had with the Muslim community in Portland.”
