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'Security delirium': Netanyahu wasted $3bn on Iran attack plan - former PM


RT.com
Sun, 13 Jan 2013 10:48 UTC
Image
© AFP Photo / David Silverman
Ehud Olmert
Ex-Israeli premier Ehud Olmert has accused current PM Benjamin Netanyahu of spending $3 billion on a war with Iran that never took place.

Olmert pointed out that the current leader "wasted" the money on "harebrained adventures that haven't, and won't, come to fruition."

"We are dealing with expenditures that go above and beyond multi-year budgets," Olmert also said in an interview with Israeli broadcaster Channel 2 News. "They scared the world for a year and in the end didn't do anything."

The former leader also pointed out that the money was spent on "security delirium", and "the projects won't be carried out because 2012 was the decisive year." The ex-PM referred to the Israeli drive to toughen sanctions, and possibly engage in a military conflict, with Iran to interfere with the nuclear development in the country.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with Ehud Barak, the deputy PM and the defense minister, reacted to the ex-premier's claims in an interview with Army Radio set to be aired on Sunday, IsraelNationalNews.com reported. Netanyahu called the former PM's criticism "a bizarre, irresponsible thing to say."

The current leader also indicated, "We've done a lot to strengthen the IDF, Mossad and Shin Bet [the Israeli Security Service] in various ways."
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Play

Alex Jones Wood Shed II: Post Piers Morgan side show

Ry Dawson
YouTube
Tue, 08 Jan 2013 12:55 UTC
Ry Dawson dissects AJ's latest insane rant during his appearance on CNN's Piers Morgan TV show, an appearance that was clearly intended to discredit all alternative political views as the delusions of crazed conspiracy theorists .

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Brick Wall

French government escalates row with Catholics over gay marriage plan

Tom Heneghan
Reuters
Sun, 06 Jan 2013 10:16 UTC
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© REUTERS/Patrick Kovarik
Francois Hollande (L) and Vincent Peillon (R), then in opposition but now France’s president and education minister, at a meeting with teachers during last year’s election campaign in Villeneuve-la-Garenne, a Paris suburb, on March 6, 2012.
France's President Francois Hollande has weighed this weekend into the war of words between his government and the Catholic Church over holding discussions in schools on the planned legalisation of same-sex marriage.

He defended Education Minister Vincent Peillon on Saturday for urging Catholic schools, which teach about one-fifth of all pupils in France, to stay neutral in the debate.

Peillon's supporters and critics dominated the headlines and airwaves on Sunday, a week before a Church-backed protest in Paris that organisers say could draw as many as half a million people opposed to any change in traditional marriage.

The shrill polemics could not drown out another big news story, the growing unpopularity of Hollande and his government. One poll said 75 percent of voters doubt he can keep a New Year's promise to turn around rising unemployment this year.

Laurent Wauquiez, a former conservative higher education minister, slammed Peillon for implying that Catholic opposition to the reform was responsible for suicides of gay teenagers.

"This is a big political manipulation," he said.
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Snakes in Suits

France to pursue Mali mission, raise domestic security


Reuters
Sat, 12 Jan 2013 10:12 UTC
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French President Francois Hollande
France will pursue operations in Mali to prepare a subsequent African-led intervention to oust Islamist rebels and will step up anti-terrorist security measures on its own territory, President Francois Hollande said on Saturday.

As French aircraft pounded rebel fighters for a second day, Hollande said he had given instructions that the several hundred French troops sent to Mali must keep their actions strictly limited to supporting a West African ECOWAS operation.

"We have already held back the progress of our adversaries and inflicted heavy losses on them. But our mission is not over yet," Hollande said, a day after French forces launched air strikes and reinforced the capital Bamako to pre-empt a feared rebel advance towards the city.
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Padlock

Libya, Algeria and Tunisia to step up border security

Ali Shuaib
Reuters
Sat, 12 Jan 2013 10:08 UTC
Image
© REUTERS/Ismail Zitouny
Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan (C) speaks during a joint news conference with his Algerian counterpart Abdelmalek Sellal (L) and Tunisian counterpart Hamadi Jebali, in the border town of Ghadames, southwest of Tripoli January 12, 2013.
The prime ministers of Libya, Algeria and Tunisia agreed on Saturday to enhance security along their common borders in an attempt to fight the flow of arms and drugs and organised crime in the politically turbulent region.

Meeting in the western Libyan border town of Ghadames, Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan and his Algerian and Tunisian counterparts said measures would include setting up joint checkpoints and patrols along the frontiers, which stretch for thousands of kilometres (miles) through mostly sparsely-populated desert.

They also expressed concern over the crisis in Mali, where an international campaign to crush rebels who seized the north of the country was gathering pace.

Mali does not share a border with Libya but it has been affected by the spill over of weapons and fighters from the war.
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Crusader

Mali intervention will put French citizens at risk: Islamists


Reuters
Sat, 12 Jan 2013 10:04 UTC
Image
© REUTERS/Joe Penney
Malian soldiers drive on the streets of the capital Bamako, January 12 2013. ECOWAS will begin sending soldiers to Mali by Monday as part of a mission to drive al Qaeda-linked fighters from the country's north, an Ivory Coast government official said on Saturday.
France's military intervention against Islamist fighters in northern Mali will put French citizens at risk, a spokesman for insurgent group Ansar Dine said on Saturday.
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Cowboy Hat

Hollande: The 'indecisive' French president who intervened in Africa

Pierre Haski
Guardian
Sat, 12 Jan 2013 09:58 UTC
Image
© Photograph: Philippe Wojazer/Reuters
The French president, Francois Hollande, right, speaks with members of Malian associations in France at the Elysee Palace in Paris.
François Hollande, who had signalled a hands-off policy on ex-colonies, has allowed French troops to intervene in Mali.

During the election campaign last year, François Hollande was attacked for being too indecisive, and nicknamed "Flamby" after a dessert - not exactly in the superman category. Seven months later, the same Hollande sanctioned an operation by French commandos in Somalia to try and rescue a French hostage, and started an unpredictable war in France's former colony of Mali. He received support from mainstream opposition leaders who oppose him on almost every other issue - and from Britain too, which has agreed military assistance to help transport foreign troops and equipment to Mali.

Nothing predestined this Socialist apparatchik to become a war president, particularly after having campaigned for the early return of French troops from Afghanistan, which was completed a few weeks ago.

Soon after he was elected last May, Hollande designed a strategy for the Mali crisis, which had erupted a few months earlier when radical Islamist groups took over the northern half of the country and imposed tough sharia laws over the population. The new president didn't want to see French troops leading the battle, as has happened in the past - for example in Chad, when Libyan tanks were threatening its southern neighbour. Hollande wanted to show times had changed.

As a sign of his new, non-interventionist approach to France's former colonies, Hollande only last month refused publicly to answer calls from President François Bozizé of the Central African Republic, for French troops to come and stop a rebel advance towards its capital. Hollande said: "We are not present to protect a regime ... That time is over."
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Radar

France bombs Mali rebels, African states ready troops

Bate Felix and John Irish
Reuters
Sat, 12 Jan 2013 09:52 UTC
Image
© REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett
British Islamists protest outside the French Embassy in London January 12, 2013. - French aircraft pounded Islamist fighters in Mali for a second day on Saturday and neighbouring states accelerated plans to send in troops in an international campaign to crush the rebels.
French aircraft pounded Islamist rebels in Mali for a second day on Saturday and neighboring West African states sped up their plans to deploy troops in an international campaign to prevent groups linked to al Qaeda expanding their power base.

France, warning that the control of northern Mali by the militants posed a security threat to Europe, intervened dramatically on Friday as heavily armed Islamist fighters swept southwards towards Mali's capital Bamako.

Under cover from French fighter planes and attack helicopters, Malian troops routed a rebel convoy and drove the Islamists out of the strategic central town of Konna, which they had seized on Thursday. A senior army officer in the capital Bamako said more than 100 rebel fighters had been killed.

A French pilot died on Friday when rebels shot down his helicopter near the town of Mopti. Hours after opening one front against al Qaeda-linked Islamists, France mounted a commando raid to try to rescue a French hostage held by al Shabaab militants in Somalia, also allied to al Qaeda, but failed to prevent the hostage being killed.
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Bad Guys

Vowing revenge, 15,000 rally in Paris over Kurd killings


Raw Story
Sat, 12 Jan 2013 14:59 UTC
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About 15,000 Kurds from all over Europe vowed revenge as they rallied Saturday in Paris over the killing of three top Kurdish activists from a separatist group banned in Turkey.

The march, which began at the city's Gare de l'Est railway station, was emotionally charged, with demonstrators saying France would be an accomplice in the brazen murders if it did not identify and punish the killers.

"This crime is a crime against the Kurdish people and against peace," said a woman demonstrator, calling for an end to the listing of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) as a terrorist organisation.

"The French state bears a responsibility. If the perpetrators of these crimes are not found, France will be indisputably considered as an accomplice," said a leaflet published and distributed by France's main Kurdish association, Feyka.
"It's the first time something like this has happened in Europe," said Celine Yildirim, a waitress in Paris who gained political asylum in France after being jailed in Turkey.

"We want to know who did this."
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Crusader

'You're in danger! You're in danger!' Alex Jones shouts in latest unhinged rant

David Ferguson
Raw Story
Sat, 12 Jan 2013 14:48 UTC
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Infowars.com and Prison Planet pundit Alex Jones, host of the Internet-only radio show, "The Alex Jones Show," went on another unhinged rant while appearing Friday on "HuffPost Live." He shouted, "You're in danger! You're in danger!" at host Alicia Menendez while ranting about fluoride in the nation's drinking water and, of course, Hitler.

For most of the appearance, Jones was decidedly more low-key than in his now-infamous wild-eyed, faux British accent sporting dust-up with CNN's Piers Morgan and its paranoid follow-up, the video he later shot in his hotel room warning darkly that he may be "killed by crackheads" who work for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
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