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Best of the Web: Karzai suspects U.S. is behind Taliban attacks, Afghan officials say


Washington Post
Tue, 28 Jan 2014 10:18 UTC
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An Afghan driver looks out from a broken windshield after a recent suicide bombing outside a Lebanese restaurant in Kabul that left 21 dead.
Kabul - President Hamid Karzai has frequently accused the U.S. military of causing civilian casualties in its raids. But behind the scenes, he has been building a far broader case against the Americans, suggesting that they may have aided or conducted shadowy insurgent-style attacks to undermine his government, according to senior Afghan officials.

Karzai has formalized his suspicions with a list of dozens of attacks that he believes the U.S. government may have been involved in, according to one palace official. The list even includes the recent bomb and gun assault on a Lebanese restaurant in Kabul, one of the bloodiest acts targeting the international community in Afghanistan, the official said. The attack, which left 21 people dead, including three Americans, was almost universally attributed to the Taliban.


Comment: "almost universally" meaning the Western mainstream media.


But Karzai believes it was one of many incidents that may have been planned by Americans to weaken him and foment instability in Afghanistan, according to the senior palace official, who is sympathetic to the president's view and spoke on the condition of anonymity. He acknowledged that his government had no concrete evidence of U.S. involvement and that the American role had not been formally confirmed.
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Snakes in Suits

Bailed-out and nationalized Royal Bank of Scotland to ignore EU caps on bonuses and pay executives 200% salary bonuses, despite 2013 company profit loss of £8 billion

Jill Treanor
The Guardian
Mon, 27 Jan 2014 10:04 UTC
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© Murdo MacLeodRoyal Bank of Scotland is on track report up to £8bn losses for 2013 due to £2.9bn in conduct and mis-selling issues and £4.5bn from the creation of a mini-bad bank inside RBS.
Unscheduled trading statement to reveal bank, 81% owned by taxpayer, hit by extra £2.9bn over conduct and mis-selling issues

Royal Bank of Scotland is facing a row over its pay policies after a fresh hit for legal bills and mis-selling scandals put the bailed-out bank on track to report up to £8bn in losses for 2013.

Even though its nine-strong top management team said they would waive any bonuses, given the scale of the losses, the bank gave the strongest indication yet it would sidestep the EU bonus cap by asking shareholders' permission to pay bonuses worth 200% of salaries - double the size of the restriction imposed by Brussels.

Chairman Sir Philip Hampton insisted RBS had to keep paying competitively. He spoke at a hastily convened conference call caused by an unscheduled trading statement in which the 81% taxpayer-owned bank revealed it would incur an extra £3bn of losses for conduct-related matters over the US sub-prime mortgage crisis and mis-selling of payment protection insurance and interest rate swaps.

The additional costs come on top of £4.5bn losses from the creation of a mini-bad bank inside RBS and, according to estimates, could drive the bank to losses of around £8bn by the time it reports full-year results at the end of next month.

If the loss is on that scale it would mean RBS has incurred more than £40bn of losses since its 2008 bailout - almost as much as the £45bn taxpayers pumped in to rescue it.
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Info

Ukraine Prime Minister Azarov resigns


RT
Tue, 28 Jan 2014 09:12 UTC
Mykola Azarov
© Reuters / Denis BalibouseMykola Azarov resigns
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich has accepted the resignation of PM Nikolay Azarov and his cabinet, according to a decree on the presidential website. The cabinet will continue to work until a new government is formed.

The prime minister submitted his resignation earlier Tuesday, explaining that his move was motivated by efforts to peacefully resolve the current crisis in the country.

"For the purpose of creating additional possibilities of social and political compromise, for the peaceful solution of the conflict, I've made a personal decision to ask the Ukrainian president to accept my resignation from the post of prime minister," Azarov's statement reads.

Azarov described the current crisis in Ukraine as a threat to the economic and social development of the country, as well as a threat to each and every Ukrainian citizen.

"During the standoff, the government has done everything for a peaceful solution of the conflict," Azarov said. "We've been doing everything not to let bloodshed occur, to prevent the violence escalating, not to have human rights infringed upon. The government has made sure the economy and social security have functioned in extreme conditions."
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Pirates

An empire of drones and robots

Sartre Batr
Batr.org
Tue, 28 Jan 2014 07:18 UTC
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Is there any doubt that America's foreign policy, based upon maintaining a global empire, actually makes us less safe? The misgiving is that such intercession has any actual benefits to the citizens of the country. What once was a respected leadership role of non-interventionism in international affairs, has become a dominating imperium for worldwide control and subjugation. Exporting the "land of the free" is a myth, especially when domestic freedom is a dying memory. Internationalists tell us that military and surveillance drone technology promises enhanced security, with little concern for collateral damage or loss of innocent life. However, the facts do not bear out such claims.

Factor in the expansion of robot deployment and replacement of human assets, produces the net effort of an even more depersonalize and dehumanizing use of coercive force. Nonetheless, such a trend gets little public concern and even less outrage. Military branches, filled with voluntary recruits, are losing faith in the spin. CIA and unnamed black bag missions rely upon eager operatives that believes in the importance of the assignment or demented mercenaries that enjoy their macabre trade.
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Bad Guys

Afghan President Karzai finally catching up: suspects US role in attacks


Press TV
Tue, 28 Jan 2014 06:47 UTC
Kabul bomb attack
A Lebanese restaurant in Kabul’s central district of Wazir Akbar Khan was the target of a bomb attack on January 17, 2014.
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai suspects that Washington has been undermining the government in Kabul through conducting 'insurgent-style' attacks, a report says.

The Washington Post quoted a senior Afghan presidential palace official as saying that President Karzai has provided a list of several attacks, in which he says Washington may have been involved, including the recent bloody assault on a Lebanese restaurant in Kabul, where over 20 people, including 13 foreigners, were killed.

Comment: Washington is creating the instability in the country so that they can keep their troops there and continue to harvest the opium and Afghanistan's natural resources:

Opium and the CIA: Can the U.S. triumph in the drug-addicted Afghanistan War?

War On Drugs Is A Hoax - US military Admits to Guarding, Assisting Lucrative Opium Trade in Afghanistan

"The war is worth waging": Afghanistan's vast reserves of minerals and natural gas

Afghan President: U.S. maintaining death squads and torture militias in Afghanistan

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Calculator

Fear mongering: Japan tells world to stand up to China or face consequences


Yahoo! News
Wed, 22 Jan 2014 13:29 UTC
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© AFP/Eric PiermontJapanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe delivers his special address at the opening session of the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 22, 2014.
Japan on Wednesday told the world it must stand up to an increasingly assertive China or risk a regional conflict with catastrophic economic consequences.

In a landmark speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe issued what amounted to an appeal for international support in a potentially explosive dispute with its superpower neighbour over islands in the East China Sea.

"We must restrain military expansion in Asia ... which otherwise could go unchecked," Abe told the annual meeting of global business and political leaders, which Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is due to attend on Friday.

"If peace and stability were shaken in Asia, the knock-on effect for the entire world would be enormous," Abe added.

"The dividend of growth in Asia must not be wasted on military expansion."

Although Abe did not explicitly mention China, his speech had been flagged up in advance by Japanese officials as an alarm call to an influential audience over what Tokyo sees as bullying by Beijing.

The dispute over the uninhabited but potentially mineral-rich islands is being played out against a backdrop of Japanese fears that China is seeking to exert control over lifeline shipping lanes around its vast coastline and that the United States' commitment to guarantee Japan's security is waning.

Comment: Japan's main trading partner and the principle destination for its exports is China and Japan seems driven to overpower them - fueled by the U.S.?
"Military power grows from economic power and so the U.S. needs the aid of a powerful regional economic power in its drive against China. That is the role of Japan..."
U.S. goading Japan into confrontation with China - Will Japan take the bait?

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TV

Edward Snowden full interview with German ARD TV


Youtube
Mon, 27 Jan 2014 05:07 UTC
snowden
© Reuters / Tobias Schwarz
The full interview was aired on German ARD TV on Sunday night, January 26. It was recorded "in strict secrecy in an unspecified location in Russia", where Snowden is currently hiding and seeking asylum protection.

In the interview Snowden speaks among others about how he feels he's done the right thing revealing NSA's illegal surveillance activities around the world, how the US engages in economic spying, and the threats against his life that he continues to receive.
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Pumpkin 2

Everybody must get stoned: Now New Hampshire State House passes first recreational marijuana bill

Patrick McGoldrick
The New Hampshire
Tue, 28 Jan 2014 04:44 UTC
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Following the national tide of public opinion favoring the legalization of marijuana, the Democrat-controlled New Hampshire house passed a bill - HB 492-FN-LOCAL - on Jan. 16 that would legalize marijuana for recreational use.

In passing the bill, the New Hampshire House made history by becoming the first legislative body to pass a bill that would legalize recreational marijuana.

There are currently only two states in the Union - Colorado and Washington - where recreational marijuana is legal, and both states' laws were passed through public referendum, as opposed to legislative action.

The bill aims to construct laws regarding marijuana consumption, possession, and distribution similar to the state's established alcohol laws, effectively treating marijuana as a controlled substance. The current draft of the bill breaks down its intentions into three laws: first, the bill states that only persons 21 and older have the legal right to the new law - persons under 21 are prohibited from engaging with marijuana; second, persons with the intention to wholesale, retail, cultivate or test marijuana must obtain proper licensing; third, that a tax on the sale of marijuana be levied at both wholesale, manufacturing and retail levels.

As Colorado and Washington garner more national attention - serving as a litmus test for future nationwide legalization - the local media spotlight will be on the New Hampshire Ways and Means Committee. The committee is scheduled to meet this Thursday to revise the Bill before it is sent back to the House, where it is likely to pass again, according to Laura McCrystal of the Concord Monitor. McCrystal is basing this prediction on sources in the Merrimack County.
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Pistol

State execution: man shot in the back of the head by FBI during 8-hour interrogation

O.D.
Police State USA
Fri, 24 Jan 2014 02:29 UTC
Abdulbaki Todashev
© AP / Alexander ZemlianichenkoAbdulbaki Todashev says his son, Ibragim Todashev, was “executed” by the FBI. He holds up photos of his son’s bullet-riddled body during a press conference.
An unarmed man was shot to death in his own apartment by the FBI after a grueling 8-hour interrogation. The man was Ibragim Todashev, a Chechen immigrant being investigated because he was an acquaintance of one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing. He was ultimately shot 6 times in the chest and once in the back of the head, which his father describes as an "execution" performed to "silence" his son. Months later, the Feds still have not offered any cogent explanations of the the incident or why their agents altered their story multiple times.
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Bomb

U.S. resumes aid to militants in Syria


PressTV
Tue, 28 Jan 2014 02:00 UTC
Syria rebels
© n/a
As negotiations between Syrian officials and the country's foreign-backed opposition hit a deadlock over the issue of transfer of power, the United States has resumed deliveries of aid to the opposition.

The "non-lethal" aid comes more than a month after al-Qaeda-linked insurgents seized warehouses and prompted a sudden cutoff of Western supplies to other militant groups which are publically backed by Western countries.

US officials said Monday that "the communications equipment and other items are being funneled for now only to non-armed opposition groups," according to The Associated Press.
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