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Posted on 01/01/2012 5:51:39 PM PST by MestaMachine
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2828665/posts
Breaking: Obama also set to make recess appointments to the NLRB
WaPo ^ | 1/4/12 | Greg Sargent
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/70989.html
Obama and the definition of ‘recess’
Because he can and no one will stand in his way while he does it. Republicans sit on Their hands with their mouthes sealed shut and let him have his way with them. The thought of impeachment would never cross their "fear of being called racist by media" minds. Watching while the Constitution is shredded and stomped upon is MUCH easier for them.
I’m spelling challenged this afternoon. It’s alarming when a leader threatens to bypass congress and actually does it (repeatedly) without a whimper from congress. No wonder congress has such a low rating. Why do they exist if they do nothing - and it’s being proven every day by this administration that brags about doing it).
The damage this man can do for the next entire year is horrifying. He will do as much as he can as fast as he can and he will do it gleefully.
He's only just begun and has already stated he'll be using executive orders freely from here on in.
"Occupy" in brief:
Communism
Marx predicted that the long history of social, political, and economic oppression would finally come to an end when the working class rose up and overthrew the ruling class.
Under a communist political system, everyone would be employed by the state and the wealth of the state would be distributed equally among the people. All men and women would have equal rights. The workers would be united and motivated by their belief in material progress. As long as each person contributed to the best of their ability and only asked for as much as they needed, then the continued development of science and technology would gradually lead to an ideal world.
Marx wrote that the ruling class used religion to reinforce its domination over the working class. He said that religion was the “opiate of the masses” used by the ruling class to suppress mass revolution by distracting the workers and molding them into servile conformists. Ironically, communism itself was destined to grow into a godless religion for the poor and oppressed, with Marx as their prophet.
Committed to overthrowing the capitalist system, a growing number of communist revolutionaries preached to the oppressed poor and recruited peasant armies by promising them a better life. Whenever unpopular governments were weakened by wars or other events, Marxist revolutionaries would be there to rally the peasants into overthrowing the ruling class to establish communist states.
Just saw a crawler at the bottom of FOX news. Drug Lord pleaded quilty to money laudering and conspiracy in Soutthern California...San DIego IIRC. Might want to check out and document.
I have often thought this as well. Then my brain kicks in and says "Are you nuts! That would involve a huge conspiracy! Are you some kind of a conspiracy wack job?"
My brain says that to me because that has been what has been drilled into it for years. Since the JFK assassination.
Mexican drug cartel chief pleads guilty in US
(AFP) – 1 hour ago
LOS ANGELES — A Mexican drug kingpin pleaded guilty on Wednesday to US federal charges of racketeering and conspiracy to launder money, and could face up to 25 years in prison, court officials said.
Benjamin Arellano Felix, former leader of the notorious Arellano Felix Organization, is due to be sentenced on April 2 by US District Judge Larry Burns in San Diego following a plea deal.
Arellano Felix was extradited from Mexico to the United States last April, to face charges of drug trafficking, criminal association, money laundering and organized crime.
(snip)
wiki:
History
Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, the founder of the Guadalajara Cartel was arrested in 1989. While incarcerated, he remained one of Mexico's major traffickers, maintaining his organization via mobile phone until he was transferred to a new maximum security prison in the 1990s. At that point, his old organization broke up into two factions: the Tijuana Cartel led by his nephews, the Arellano Félix brothers, and the Sinaloa Cartel, run by former lieutenants Héctor Luis Palma Salazar and Joaquín Guzmán Loera El Chapo.
Currently, the majority of Mexico's smuggling routes are controlled by three key cartels: Gulf, Sinaloa and Tijuana —though Tijuana is the least powerful. The Tijuana cartel was further weakened in August 2006 when its chief, Javier Arellano Félix, was arrested by the U.S. Coast Guard on a boat off the coast of Baja California. Mexican army troops also were sent to Tijuana in January 2007 in an operation to restore order to the border city and root out corrupt police officers, who mostly were cooperating with the Tijuana cartel. As a result of these efforts, the Tijuana cartel is unable to project much power outside of its base in Tijuana.[3]
[edit] Organization
The Arellano Félix family was initially composed of seven brothers and four sisters, who inherited the organization from Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo upon his incarceration in Mexico in 1989 for his complicity in the murder of DEA Special Agent Enrique Camarena. Although the subsequent brothers’ arrest in the 1990s and 2000s are blows to the Arellano Felix cartel, it did not dismantle the organization which currently is led by the Arellano’s nephew, Luis Fernando Sánchez Arellano.[4][5]
The Tijuana Cartel has infiltrated the Mexican law enforcement and judicial systems and is directly involved in street-level trafficking within the United States. This criminal organization is responsible for the transportation, importation, and distribution of multi-ton quantities of cocaine and marijuana, as well as large quantities of heroin and methamphetamine.[6]
The organization has a reputation for extreme violence. Ramón Arellano Félix ordered a hit which resulted in the mass murder of 18 people in Ensenada, Baja California, on September 17, 1998. Ramón was eventually killed in a gun battle with police at Mazatlán Sinaloa, on February 10, 2002.
The Arellano Félix family has seven brothers:
Francisco Rafael Arellano Félix (born 24 October 1949) - Captured and released
Benjamín Arellano Félix (born 3 December 1952) - Captured
Carlos Arellano Félix (born 20 August 1955) - is not currently wanted.[7]
Eduardo Arellano Félix (born 11 October 1956), - Captured on October 26, 2008.
Ramón Eduardo Arellano Félix (born 31 August 1964) - Deceased, shot by police in 2002
Luis Fernando Arellano Félix (believed to be born 26 January 1966) is not currently wanted.
Francisco Javier Arellano Félix (born 11 December 1969) - Captured
They also have four sisters, where Alicia and Enedina are most active in the cartel's affairs. The family inherited the organization from Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo upon his incarceration. Eduardo Arellano Félix was captured by the Mexican Army after a shootout in Tijuana, Baja California, on October 26, 2008;[4] he had been the last of the Arellano Félix brothers at large. According to a Mexican official, Enedina’s son, Luis Fernando Sánchez Arellano, has taken over the cartel's operations.[8] His two top lieutenants were Armando Villareal Heredia[9] and Edgardo Leyva Escandon.[10] Escandon remains at large and Heredia was captured in July 2011.[11] On November 5, 2011, Mexican troops arrested cartel lieutenant Francisco Sillas Rocha,[12] who was reported to the cartel's number two leader,[12] and some of his close associates.[12] Experts argued that Rocha's arrest had put the Tijuana Cartel “on the ropes,”[13] though some differed on whether or not the arrest put “the final nail in the coffin” for the Tijuana Cartel.[13]
[edit] Activities
The Tijuana cartel is present in at least 15 Mexican states with important areas of operation in Tijuana, Mexicali, Tecate, and Ensenada in Baja California, in parts of Sinaloa[14] and Zacatecas. After the death in 1997 of the Juárez Cartel's Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the Tijuana Cartel attempted to gain a foothold in Sonora.[2] The Oaxaca Cartel reportedly joined forces with the Tijuana Cartel in 2003.
Fourteen Mexican drug gang members were killed and eight others were injured in a gun battle in Tijuana near the U.S. border on Saturday, April 26, 2008 that was one of the bloodiest shootouts in the narco-war between the Tijuana Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel. On December 1, 2011, William R. Sherman, acting special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's office in San Diego, announced that the cartel had been annihilated and the Sinaloa Cartel now controlled a large number of the drug routes the Tijuana Cartel once had.[15] On December 12, 2011, Tijuana Police Chief Alberto Capella Ibarra also announced that captured cartel lieutenant Francisco Sillas Rocha had confessed that the Tijuana Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel had formed a truce and that the Tijuana Cartel was seeking to merge with the Sinaloa Cartel[16]
[edit] Captures and trial
In October 1997, a retired U.S. Air Force C-130A that was sold to the airline Aeropostal Cargo de México was seized by Mexican federal officials, who alleged that the aircraft had been used to haul drugs for the cartel up from Central and South America, as well as around the Mexican interior. Investigators had linked the airline's owner, Jesús Villegas Covallos, to Ramón Arellano Félix.[2]
On August 14, 2006, Francisco Javier Arellano Félix was apprehended by the United States Coast Guard off the coast of Baja California Sur.
[edit] Los Palillos
Los Palillos (”The Toothpicks”) was a group operating within Tijuana Cartel, who worked as the armed wing of the Tijuana Cartel in the United States, for the control of the criminal activities in the United States specially California and Nevada.[17][18]
They were a criminal organization that operates from San Diego to Los Angeles and other California and Nevada cities. To avoid constant confrontations with the police and police interest reducing his wealth Ramon Arellano Felix began bribing almost any official possible.[citation needed] Ramon received money from members of the criminal group and local criminals to “kick up” money from their illegal activities such as kidnapping and contract killing take the half of the money and give it to the Tijuana Cartel to launderning it. That was way the Arellano Felix brothers operation include other clans in Tijuana and Los Angeles.[18][19]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2828796/posts
EDITORIAL: Vietnam flashback in Afghanistan
The Washington Times ^ | January 4, 2012 | Editorial
Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2012 8:42:41 PM by jazusamo
President Obama smokes the peace pipe with the Taliban
You know the Taliban is feeling pretty good about life when it opens up a branch office. On Tuesday, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid announced that the insurgent group would be establishing a presence in Qatar’s capital city of Doha to facilitate negotiations with the United States. The location is significant because it is the base for Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a radical Islamist scholar who is reportedly brokering a peace deal that would give the Obama administration a face-saving means of exiting Afghanistan. An about-face would be a better idea.
Mr. Qaradawi is an exiled spiritual leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. In the Islamist world, the term “spiritual leader” is usually used to describe a radical who advocates violence but does not actually pull the trigger. This particular fellow believes the NATO presence in Afghanistan is an unjust occupation and has described those killed by U.S. forces as “martyrs,” so he is not exactly an honest broker.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been watching these developments warily, concerned that the United States may seek a private deal with the Taliban. The government in Kabul insists that any peace talks be led by a Karzai representatiave to prevent being cut out of the negotiations and handed a fait accompli. Washington has publicly backed this approach but the American sellout of the South Vietnamese in negotiations with the communist Viet Cong in the 1970s hovers ominously in the background.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2828797/posts
Caliph-in-Chief Obama Set to Release Taliban/Al Qaeda leaders at GITMO
Atlas Shrugs ^ | 1/4/12 | Pamela Geller
Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2012 8:44:03 PM by Nachum
It is as if the USA surrendered in installments and the caliph has been installed in the Oval office. Imagine reading the following on September 12, 2011. We would have stormed the capital. The Obama administration is set to release Taliban leaders with operational ties to Al Qaeda from Gitmo, even before the heinous Taliban has agreed to come to the table for “peace talks”. The war criminals set for release are hardcore jihadist leaders who fought on the fields of Islamic imperialism and killed US and coalition troops.
These Muslim leaders would return to the battlefield and serve to inspire and lead the next generation of Muslim soldiers bent on destroying and overthrowing the West. Why would the Obama administration release thesemass murderers? For an exchange for Taliban promises to engage in peace talks? Obama will get nothing in return. The Taliban knows we are leaving Afghanistan, why come to the table? And why did Obama send all of our soldiers over to Afghanistan these past three years under impossible rules of engagement to suffer the largest casualty rates month to month, year to year and then declare suddenly that the Taliban is not the enemy? To get re-elected? Monstrous murder.
Catherine Herridge of Fox News reports that a senior U.S. official has confirmed that “Mullah Mohammed Fazl is among the prisoners being considered for release.”
Marc Thiessen writes at the American Enterprise blog on Fazi the ghazi:
So who is this Mullah Mohammed Fazl?
************************************************
I will comment later. Right now I am choking with anger.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2828774/posts
Obama’s Genocidal Mediator
Patriot Post ^ | January 4, 2012 | Arnold Ahlert
Posted on Wednesday, January 04, 2012 7:50:38 PM by SJackson
The Obama administration, fresh from abandoning Iraq at a critical time in its post-war development, is apparently preparing to do the same thing in Afghanistan. According to a report published late last month in The Hindu, radical Islamist cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi is serving as a “key mediator in secret talks between the U.S. and the Taliban.” Unnamed government sources assert that Qaradawi helped in putting together a “road map” whose purpose is to provide America a “face-saving political settlement ahead of its planned withdrawal from Afghanistan which is due to begin in 2014.” Once again, for an Obama administration concerned with the 2012 election, a “political settlement” becomes a viable substitute for victory.
How viable? Viable enough to pretend that a rabid anti-Semite such as Qaradawi is a “moderate” Islamic cleric. Here is part of a speech he made in Tahrir Square in Cairo before a huge crowd on February 18, 2011, after returning to Egypt from 30 years of forced exile:
A message to our brothers in Palestine: I have hope that Almighty Allah, as I have been pleased with the victory in Egypt, that He will also please me with the conquest of the al-Aqsa Mosque to prepare the way for me to preach in the al-Aqsa Mosque. May Allah prepare the way for us to [preach] in the al-Aqsa Mosque in safety — not in fear, not in haste. May Allah achieve this clear conquest for us. O sons of Palestine, I am confident that you will be victorious. The speech was hardly unique. Mr. Qaradawi has a track record of anti-Semitic, genocidal statements. In 1995, at a conference held by the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA) in Toledo, Ohio, he told his audience that “the balance of power will change, and this is what is told in the Hadith of Ibn-Omar and the Hadith of Abu-Hurairah: You shall continue to fight the Jews and they will fight you, until the Muslims will kill them. And the Jew will hide behind the stone and the tree, and the stone and the tree will say: ‘Oh servant of Allah, Oh Muslim, this is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him!’ The resurrection will not come before this happens.” In 1998, the Associated Press quoted his writing: “There should be no dialogue with these people [Israelis] except with swords.” In April 2001, he characterized suicide bombings as “heroic martyrdom operations.”
In 2009, he had this to say during two TV broadcasts on al-Jazeera: “I will shoot Allah’s enemies, the Jews, and they will throw a bomb at me, and thus, I will seal my life with martyrdom. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds. Allah’s mercy and blessings upon you.” Two nights later it was this: “Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them — even though they exaggerated this issue — he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.”
One would be inclined to think that a “key mediator” advocating for the destruction of America’s foremost ally in the Middle East might be inclined to provoke second thoughts about his “moderateness” among officials in the Obama administration. Yet as this administration has more than amply demonstrated, its relationship with Israel might be most charitably described as tenuous. Thus, Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s anti-Semitic rants didn’t disqualify him from representing American interests at the bargaining table with the Taliban.
Nor apparently did his anti-American interests. In 2003, Qaradawi issued a fatwa for the killing of American troops:
Those killed fighting the American forces are martyrs given their good intentions since they consider these invading troops an enemy within their territories but without their will...Although they are seen by some as being wrong, those defending against attempts to control Islamic countries have the intention of jihad and bear a spirit of the defense of their homeland. Perhaps those “good intentions” of “martyrs” bearing a “spirit in defense of their homeland” is what prompted Vice President Joe Biden to declare that the Taliban isn’t an enemy of the United States. “Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical,” he told Newsweek. “There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy, because it threatens U.S. interests.” The Foundry blog at the Heritage Foundation puts the lie to rest, reminding us of the most recent Taliban attacks against Americans, including the Chinook helicopter shot down in August, killing 30, and the ramming of a military bus by a Taliban car bomber in October, killing 18.
Yet once Biden established the administration’s rationale in public, what followed was unsurprising. Reuters reported that, in addition to having Qaradawi act as a moderator, the administration is considering transferring to Afghan custody five terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, including Mohammed Fazl, a senior commander of the Taliban army. Administration officials claimed the men would not be set free, but remain in “some sort of further custody.” Reuters also reported that another part of the deal included allowing the Taliban to establish an “office” somewhere outside of Afghanistan.
How far afield have we traveled? “On my order, U.S. forces have begun strikes on terrorist camps of al Qaeda, and the military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan,” said president George W. Bush on October 7, 2001. Later in the same speech he added, “Every nation has a choice to make. In this conflict, there is no neutral ground. If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocence, they have become outlaws and murderers themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril.”
Apparently, “neutrality” is a far more flexible concept for the Obama administration. Thus, a certified anti-Semite who advocates the destruction of Israel and the killing of American troops becomes a “key mediator” between America and our country’s newest “non-enemy,” the Taliban. National Review’s Andrew McCarthy puts such grotesqueness in perspective:
After thousands of young Americans have laid down their lives to protect the United States from jihadist terror, President Obama apparently seeks to end the war by asking Qaradawi, a jihad-stoking enemy of the United States, to help him strike a deal that will install our Taliban enemies as part of the sharia state we have been building in Afghanistan...The administration will also agree to the lifting of U.N. sanctions against the Taliban, and recognition of the Taliban as a legitimate political party (yes, just like the Muslim Brotherhood !). In return, the Taliban will pretend to forswear violence, to sever ties with al-Qaeda, and to cooperate with the rival Karzai regime...It would mark one of the most shameful chapters in American history. Only if shame still has meaning. For an administration mired in the morally relative swamp of progressivism, headed by a president willing to do virtually anything to reassure his re-election, sacrificing America’s strategic interests in the Middle East is becoming something akin to Mr. Obama’s favorite pastime: par for the course.
While you were watching Iowa, Obama was springing taliban terrorists from Gitmo
Snip: Our new favorite Muslim Brotherhood mediator, Sheikh Qaradawi, is doing great, dontcha think?
Actually, I didn’t watch the Iowa Caucus. I was just answering your query about where everyone was. I, for once in a blue moon, laid down around the time the thing started and slept until about 15 seconds before they announced that romney had won by 8 votes. It was around 2 AM when I woke up. I was shocked that I slept for more than two hours. That is some kind of a record for me... LOL
Cuba not ready for 'Arab Spring': dissident blogger
Most Cubans make less than US$20 a month and have limited access to a censored Internet.
“Besides, people are very afraid,” said Sanchez, who in 2011 made Foreign Policy magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people.
Ecuador sends 10,000 troops to Columbia border
Mexico's Sinaloa cartel apparently ramping up meth production in neighboring Guatemala
Snip: While Mexico is usually estimated to be the main supplier of meth used in the United States, seizure data suggest that neighboring Guatemala could in fact be producing as much or more.
Saudi Arabia to harbor MKO terrorists
Snip: According to the reports coming from Baghdad, the US has asked its allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Qatar and Pakistan, to give refuge to MKO members for conducting espionage activities on their soil.
Snips:
On December 29, two staff members were killed in Somalia.
Doctors and nurses had to evacuate a hospital in the town of Pibor and two outreach clinics as a column of 6,000 armed youths from the Lou Nuer tribe descended on the town in pursuit of a rival tribe, the Murle, according to the Telegraph. The hospital was reportedly torched by the attacking forces.
I personally think this guy was in the plot to install Obama as POTUS back in the 80's.
I personally think this guy was in the plot to install Obama as POTUS back in the 80's.
I have alot of catching up to do, thanx!
Pentagon investigating possible leak of Bin Laden raid details
By Ken Dilanian
January 5, 2012, 2:17 p.m.
Did the Obama administration release classified information to Hollywood notables for a film about the operation that killed Osama bin Laden?
That’s a question Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) wants answered. And in response, the Pentagon’s inspector general has launched an investigation, King disclosed Thursday.
“We plan to begin subject investigation immediately,” Patricia A. Brannin, deputy inspector general for intelligence and special program assessments, wrote in a memo that King emailed to reporters.
snip
Boal, Dowd wrote, “got welcomed to the upper echelons of the White House and the Pentagon and showed up recently — to the surprise of some military officers — at a CIA ceremony celebrating the hero Seals.”
“The leaks that followed the successful Bin Laden mission led to the arrests of Pakistanis and put in danger the mission’s heroes and their families,” King said in a statement. “Privately, individuals in the intelligence and special operations communities expressed support for my request for a probe. I look forward to an update on the investigation and actions taken thus far.”
More at link.
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