Europe’s Hormuz Armageddon
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Using Claude AI to Analyze Current Events
If you want to find out why judges are releasing terrorists, ask McCain and Graham.
A new CNN / Opinion Research Poll out this afternoon of 953 registered voters nationally finds Obama tied at 47% with any Republican candidate.
VIENNA—The U.S. has backed away from pursuing a number of tough measures against Iran in order to win support from Russia and China for a new United Nations Security Council resolution on sanctions, according to people familiar with the matter.
Among provisions removed from the original draft resolution the U.S. sent to key allies last month were sanctions aimed at choking off Tehran's access to international banking services and capital markets, and closing international airspace and waters to Iran's national air cargo and shipping lines, according to the people.
Claims that the protesters hurled anti-gay and racist epithets at them tore through the blogosphere in the run-up to the vote and were used to decry the protests, but Tea Party supporters are challenging those accounts, saying they didn't hear them, or at least that those responsible were not part of the Tea Party protest.
"Never did I hear any type of racial slur," said William Owens, a black Tea Party activist from Nevada who joined in the D.C. protests Saturday.
Though the claims of racist epithets against Lewis and other congressmen drew a lot of media attention, witnesses say they never heard such language and YouTube videos have surfaced that show protesters booing and shouting "Kill the Bill" but not shouting the n-word.
Kay Fischer, a protester from North Carolina, said she was watching the black lawmakers walk by and, like Owens, heard nothing of the sort.
Asked about such claims, Emanuel spokeswoman Mary Petrovic noted that the online videos of the incident are under a minute — and so don't show the entire encounter. She and stood by her boss' account.
"He heard slurs," she said.
There's another oddity about that incident. Cleaver's office initially claimed that a protester was arrested after spitting on him, but that the congressman decided not to press charges.
However, U.S. Capitol Police said the protester was never arrested. He was only detained and put in handcuffs, then released.
Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, spokeswoman for the Capitol Police, told FoxNews.com the individual was released because Cleaver couldn't identify him.
"There were no elements of a crime, and the individual wasn't able to be positively identified," she said. "(Cleaver) was unable to positively identify."
Most importantly, Fischer said Frank was the first to start using salty language.
She said she and a half-dozen other protesters were waiting outside a committee room in the Longworth House Office Building on Saturday for about 45 minutes when Frank finally emerged. He was mobbed by reporters, she said, and the protesters started shouting things like, "Kill the bill." Then she said Frank snapped at them.
"He looked at me and said, 'F--- you,'" she said.
Shortly after that, she said, a tall man with brown hair, who hadn't been chanting with the other protesters at all, walked up and said "fag" to Frank.
This has started to sprout some conspiracy theories.
Fischer said the protesters immediately admonished him and told him not to say things like that.
"I have gay friends. ... There were a bunch of people moaning like, 'Oh God,'" she said.
But she said the guy "disappeared" quickly and that was the end of it.
Fischer said she has no idea where he came from, and alleged he was a plant, though she couldn't prove it.
"I think it was staged," she said.
Frank's office was unable to provide clarity.
TALIBAN commanders have revealed that hundreds of insurgents have been trained in Iran to kill Nato forces in Afghanistan.
The commanders said they had learnt to mount complex ambushes and lay improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which have been responsible for most of the deaths of British troops in Helmand province.
The accounts of two commanders, in interviews with The Sunday Times, are the first descriptions of training of the Taliban in Iran.
According to the commanders, Iranian officials paid them to attend three-month courses during the winter.
A nuclear Iran will continue to use both the Sunnis and Shiites to influence the region.
The focus is misplaced on Afghanistan when it should be placed on stopping Iran.
When you look at the rhetoric and how nations are dealing with Iran, a similar pattern is setting up on how Germany was handled.
If we adopt McChrystal's plan in Afghanistan, Iran will grow in power to where they have full nuclear capabilities.
If you look at the polls, the American people know instinctively, Iran is the threat that needs to be dealt with. Because if Iran falls, then so do the Taliban and the Al Qaeda.
Longtime incumbent John McCain now leads conservative challenger J.D. Hayworth by just seven points in Arizona’s hotly contested Republican Senate Primary race.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely Arizona GOP Primary voters shows McCain ahead 48% to 41%. Three percent (3%) favor another candidate, and eight percent (8%) are undecided.
Following the announcement that Sarah Palin would campaign for his reelection, McCain opened up a 53% to 31% lead over Hayworth in January. The two men were in a near tie in November.
But now Hayworth, a former congressman turned popular local talk radio host, is a formal candidate, and anti-immigration activist Chris Simcox has quit the race and endorsed him. For McCain, the new numbers also show him dropping again below 50%, and incumbents who poll less than 50% at this stage of a campaign are considered potentially vulnerable
-Scott Rasmussen has bad news for John McCain but notes that McCain has good news on the horizon: "Palin will attend a McCain rally in Tucson later this month."
The People's Party, the largest group in a five-party coalition, walked out amid disputes over how to cope with the country's severe problems.
Unemployment has now hit 20 per cent and the economy contracted by 18 per cent last year.
The People's Party quit after its action plan failed to get the backing of Valdis Dombrovskis, the Latvian prime minister, who labelled it "populist".
Mr Dombrovskis warned the People's Party's departure could cause yet further economic instability.
"Any contradictions in the government are immediately reflected in the financial markets, and they directly affect the fiscal stability our country... a policy that is truly responsible for the country cannot be self-centred," he said.
But he said remained confident that an emergency IMF bail-out worth £6.7bn would remain unaffected by the political instability.


3:31 AM
Anonymous said...
Are you aware that the organizer of this event is black?
North Dakota topped the century mark in the number of active oil rigs this week for the first time since February 1982.
There were 102 active rigs as of Wednesday. The state is still below the all-time high of 146 rigs that came in October 1981, said Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council. Ness said the numbers are a positive for the future of the North Dakota oil industry.
Ness said improvements in technology have allowed rigs to be more productive and efficient with the advent of horizontal drilling. “That’s the real story,” he said. Ness said that one of today’s rigs is able to do the same amount of drilling as eight older rigs in about one-third of the time.
In a survey of more than three dozen grass-roots tea party leaders from 29 states, the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, was the Republican most cited as a disappointment. Asked which three national Republicans they were most unhappy with, McCain was named by 18 respondents
China has offered its own critique of the United States in response to Washington's annual review of Beijing's human rights record.
China's State Council issued a report Friday blaming the subprime mortgage crisis in the U.S. for triggering the global economic recession.
The report also accused the United States of restricting the rights of its citizens in a number of areas, including racial equality, personal security, and political and economic advancement.
On March 7, millions of Iraqis "made their mark" and participated in the country's second, generally fair and democratic post-Saddam Hussein parliamentary elections -- an event that is exemplary for Iraq's Arab and Iranian neighbors. Among the good news was that election coalitions this time around were far more ethnically and confessionally mixed than they were during the 2005 polls.
The question is whether and how Iraq's fragile, young democracy and national unity can take hold and grow strong enough to resist internal pressure and external interference.
In addition to the Ba'athist and Al-Qaeda insurgencies that continue attempts to derail the democratic process, Iran's increasing influence among many Iraqi factions threatens ultimately to disrupt the further development of representative and moderate governance.
It will take time until all votes are counted and more time until a new government is in place. But it is widely expected that Iraq's two strongest election alliances, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law and Ammar al-Hakim's Iraqi National Alliance (INA), will probably receive the biggest shares of the vote. These alliances are Iran-friendly or pro-Iranian, respectively.
Whether the two alliances form a coalition together (the less probable option) or partner with one of the other two major alliances, the Kurds and the secularist, Sunni-led Al-Iraqiyah bloc, neighboring Iran will continue to enjoy considerable influence in Iraq and be in a position to increase its influence further after the U.S. troop withdrawal is completed at the end of next year.
Iran's Rising Influence
Maliki's alliance comprises dozens of political parties and popular figures, including his own Shi'ite Al-Dawah party, as well as Sunnis, Kurds, and Turkomans. During his premiership, Maliki maintained good relations with Tehran and Iranian leaders, notably Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In the run-up to the elections, Tehran repeatedly attempted to convince Maliki to join the INA and form a broad, primarily Shi'ite alliance.
As pointed out previously, there are some in the Pentagon who advocate bombing Iran.
But with McChrystal's plan, American troops and NATO troops will be in harms way from a possible retaliation from Iran with chemical weapons if we did attack Iran.
The focus is misplaced on Afghanistan when it should be placed on stopping Iran.
When you look at the rhetoric and how nations are dealing with Iran, a similar pattern is setting up on how Germany was handled.
If we adopt McChrystal's plan in Afghanistan, Iran will grow in power to where they have full nuclear capabilities.
If you look at the polls, the American people know instinctively, Iran is the threat that needs to be dealt with. Because if Iran falls, then so do the Taliban and the Al Qaeda.

Iran's president is expected to discuss the problems facing Afghanistan with Kabul officials during a Monday visit to the war-torn country.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will meet with his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai during his one-day visit to Kabul, Mehr News agency reported.
Finding solutions to the challenges facing Afghanistan and trade talks are expected to be high on the meeting's agenda.
Iran believes instability and insecurity in Afghanistan has its roots in the presence of foreign troops and has repeatedly called for the complete withdrawal of US-led forces from the country.
Iran says world powers will fail to reach a consensus on imposing new sanctions against Iran over the country's nuclear program.
"Since the principle of sanctions lacks the legal and logical basis regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran's basic right to peaceful nuclear activities; and since this policy is pursued under the political pressure of certain countries, it is natural that such a consensus [on sanctions] will not materialize," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said on Sunday.
Washington is persuading members of the P5+1 group — the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China, which are the veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council, and Germany — to approve a new round of sanctions against Iran.
China and Russia have repeatedly opposed new punitive measures against Iran with Beijing repeatedly calling for more dialogue with Tehran to resolve the issue.
NCRI’s report says that the cells have received a fatwa from the Qods Forces saying to target those connected to Iyad Allawi, a pro-American secular Shiite, and Saleh al-Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni allied to Allawi. The cells consist of 4-5 people and each commander supervises 20 teams.
The group’s website also reports that a senior European Union official that leads relations with Iraq confirms receiving many reports of fraud (early voting began yesterday) in support of the pro-Iranian bloc and Iranian currency is being found to bribe voters. He also confirmed reports of threats and assassinations of supporters of Allawi’s bloc.
We should consider the source for the first report, but to be fair, we must keep in mind that NCRI has been removed from the European Union’s list of terrorist groups after a lengthy court battle.
Ryan Mauro is the founder of WorldThreats.com and a regular contributor to FrontPage Magazine.
(Reuters) - The leader of a Sunni Muslim rebel group has "confessed" that the United States promised to provide him with financial and military aid if he agreed to work with them, Iranian state television reported on Friday.
Abdolmalek Rigi was arrested on Tuesday in Iran's southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan and Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi said he was at a U.S. military base before being taken into custody by the Islamic state.
The Pentagon on Thursday rejected as "propaganda" Iran's claims that Washington had links to Rigi's rebel group Jundollah and denied his presence at an American base.
In footage broadcast on Iranian television, Rigi said an American agent had promised "finances, military aid, arms and ammunitions as well as a military base in Afghanistan close to the Iranian borders" if he cooperated.
Predominantly Shi'ite Iran has linked Jundollah (God's soldiers) to the Sunni Islamist al Qaeda network and accuses Pakistan, Britain and the United States of backing the rebel group to destabilize the country, a charge the countries deny
Despite the widely held belief that Shia Iran won’t cooperate with Sunni extremist groups because of theological differences, they have found common cause -- a hatred for America. But their relationship is more complex than hatred.
The Sunni extremists also cooperate because Tehran supports them with weapons, training, funding and refuge. The extremists want Iran’s help to overthrow religiously corrupt Islamic states replacing them with a caliphate, an Islamic government.
The Islamic Republic of Iran partners with Sunni extremist groups to help preserve its national security, to undermine Western influence and to usher in the Shiite Mahdi, the messiah. These outcomes apparently happen when extremist groups in cooperation with Iranian agents create instability in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan that keeps the U.S. tied down and provides leverage to counter U.S. pressure to end Iran’s atomic programs.
Consider Iran’s paradoxical relationship with two of the leading Sunni extremist groups, al Qaeda and the Taliban, and then the theological nature of the regime’s motivation.
(emphasis added)
It's been assumed the South will be a source of strength for Sarah Palin if she decides to make a 2012 Presidential bid, but our early polling isn't backing up that assumption.
In Georgia we find Mike Huckabee as the leader with 38% to 28% for Mitt Romney and 25% for Palin. Palin has also finished behind Huckabee in recent polls of North Carolina and Alabama, and she's in third behind both Huckabee and Romney in Texas.
Huckabee won Georgia in 2008 with 34%, so this early 38% standing suggests he's picked up a little bit of support since then. Romney got 30% last time so his support is basically unchanged since last time.
Huckabee has the lead with both moderates and conservatives. Interestingly Romney outruns Palin with both groups as well, including a 28-24 advantage over her with conservatives. As has been the case in other states Palin is not getting any boost from female voters- her 24% level of support from them is pretty much the same as her 25% with men.
If Palin is going to do well in any of the biggest, most delegate rich states her best chances would seem to be in the South. But for now her poll numbers there aren't that great.
TEHRAN, Iran – Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday called the official version of the Sept. 11 attacks a "big lie" used by the U.S. as an excuse for the war on terror, state media reported.
Ahmadinejad's comments, made during an address to Intelligence Ministry staff, come amid escalating tensions between the West and Tehran over its disputed nuclear program. They show that Iran has no intention of toning itself down even with tighter sanctions looming because of its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.
To all of you hunters and organic food gatherers (subsistence users) out there, the Alaska Board of Game has ensured that the empty spot on your plate next to the mashed potatoes will be filled with moose or caribou meat.
According to the Anchorage Daily News, yesterday, the Alaska Board and Game ruled 4 to 3 to eliminate the anti-wolf hunting/trapping "buffer zone" that extended beyond the Denali National Park borders.
Hambro is chairman of the third-largest Russian gold mining company, Petropavlovsk, and is a scion of a famous British banking dynasty.
The statement did not specify how much money had been offered for the assets, and Latvian government sources were remaining tight- lipped about any possible deal.
The Latvian state, which bailed out Parex, holds around three quarters of shares in the bank and is anxious to recoup as much cash as possible. Investment bank Nomura has been hired to draw up plans for Parex's possible break-up and sale.
Ministers are due to discuss Nomura's recommendations on March 9.
Mikhail Shelkov, deputy chairman of Peter Hambro Mining's board of directors (left), before Vladimir Putin's meeting with the Venezuelan Oil and Energy Minister.
Location:Russia, Moscow
Date of event:01.02.2010
Author: Alexsey Druginyn, STF
Source:RIA Novosti
Original:Digital
Incoming date:01.02.2010
Peter Hambro, chairman of Peter Hambro Mining (and former gold trader), was in attendance and highlighted the significance of the massive buying of call options in the June and December 2009 Comex gold contracts. Last week's Thunder Road News discussed Adrian Douglas' analysis of this situation and noted that his sources are telling him the buyers are the two banks closest to the U.S. government. Hambro believes that this option buying might reflect the closing out of carry trades.
GATA's 2005 conference in Dawson City was attended by one of Russian President Vladamir Putin's advisers. Subsequently, Putin was photographed holding a gold bar and quoted as saying he supported the Russian central bank's plan to double its gold reserves.
John Embry, chief investment strategist of Sprott Asset Management in Toronto, described his 46-year "personal journey" in the investment world, for more than 30 years of which he has been closely associated with the gold market. He described how in other markets, good analysis could reach logical conclusions about the direction of market prices. In the late 1990s he observed how "the exact antithesis existed in the gold market." This opened his eyes to what was really happening.
Embry believes that the failure of so many people to acknowledge the manipulation of gold resulted from their being unable to believe that governments would conspire against their own citizens. What a touchingly naive notion!
Besides getting the GATA message over to a larger audience, the meeting was also a fund raiser. Additional funds will be used to further GATA's legal efforts to obtain more information on the manipulation in the gold market and bring it to a halt. Such actions might include:
-- Freedom-of-information lawsuits against the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury.
-- Legal action against the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
-- And action against the U.S. Mint, which is assigned to mint as many gold and silver coins as are demanded by the public but has violated this requirement in recent years.
Parex was founded in 1992 and spent years as a high-flying bank with an ability to attract sizable deposits from rich Russians as well as local clients.
However the credit crunch brought it to the edge of collapse in 2007, which in turn dragged the Latvian state to the verge of bankruptcy when Parex was nationalized in 2008.
An emergency bail-out by the government and subsequent injections of cash have seen more than 1 billion dollars spent on propping up what was the largest home-grown financial institution in the Baltic states.
Latvia turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international lenders, including the European Union and World Bank, for a 7.5-billion-euro bail-out in the wake of the crisis at Parex.
Prominent local businessman Nils Melngailis was appointed to reshape Parex and has managed to restore some stability by renegotiating the repayment terms of a large syndicated loan and attracting the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development as an investor.
Do not strike" is what the Americans are telling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "Let's first try sanctions on Iran."
"Do not strike" is what Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is saying to Netanyahu. "If you go crazy and go to war, it will be the end of the Zionist regime."
Netanyahu managed to convince the world that Israel is on the verge of a preemptive war to try to foil Iran's nuclear program. His speeches on a second Holocaust and Amalek, the acceleration of military preparations, the exercises on the Home Front, the distribution of gas masks and even the stockpiling of dollars by the Bank of Israel all suggest that Israel is preparing to strike Iran, as it did when it attacked the nuclear plants in Iraq and Syria.
The McChrsytal Doctrine: Paving the Road to Hell in Afghanistan
The focus is misplaced on Afghanistan when it should be placed on stopping Iran.
When you look at the rhetoric and how nations are dealing with Iran, a similar pattern is setting up on how Germany was handled.
If we adopt McChrystal's plan in Afghanistan, Iran will grow in power to where they have full nuclear capabilities.
If you look at the polls, the American people know instinctively, Iran is the threat that needs to be dealt with. Because if Iran falls, then so do the Taliban and the Al Qaeda.
A Fox News poll released Tuesday finds that 60 percent of voters think force will be required to stop Iran, while 25 percent think diplomacy and sanctions alone will work.
-For the first time he came the closest to Barack Obama in our monthly 2012 survey, trailing by 2 points compared to 3 for Mike Huckabee and 7 for Sarah Palin.
-His favorability among Republicans nationally went from 51% in December to 57% in February while Palin's (73% to 72%) and Huckabee's (57% to 56%) more or less stayed the same.
-Our analysis last week of swing voters nationally found that Romney might be the Republican who can best appeal to folks in the middle. His favorability with them was a net +15, compared to +10 for Huckabee and -30 for Palin.
-In our state by state 2012 Republican polling last week we found Romney up in New Mexico and Texas. He's also doing better than expected in the south- he was in third place but at a solid 25% in North Carolina two weeks ago and our Georgia polling later this week will show him in second.
It's debatable how much of this stuff two years before the first primaries and caucuses really matters, but Romney certainly seems to have the momentum among the leading GOP contenders at least for now.
A majority of Alaskans want the GOP's 2008 vice presidential nominee to stay involved in politics, though there's some disagreement as to how, the Dittman Research Group's Alaska Poll found. Of the 53% who think Palin has a political future, 17% said they want her to run for president. Another 36% said she should not run for president, but help other candidates. (Palin will be doing just that March 26and 27, when she's scheduled to campaign in Arizona for the re-election of Sen. John McCain, her Republican presidential running mate.)
On the other end of the spectrum, 43% of Alaskans responding to the poll said they think Palin should "stay out of politics."
