US Thwarts Plot to Kill Saudi Ambassador

Hopefully the DEA agent wasn’t trying to sell the would-be assassins a gun.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration on Tuesday accused agents of the Iranian government of being involved in a plan to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the thwarted plot would further isolate Tehran.

Two people, including a member of Iran’s special operations unit known as the Quds Force, were charged in New York federal court. Justice Department officials say they were working with a person they thought was an associate of a Mexican drug cartel to target the Saudi diplomat, Adel Al-Jubeir. But their contact was an informant for the Drug Enforcement Agency who told U.S. authorities about all their planning.

Holder Lied. People Died.

Literally.

WASHINGTON - New documents obtained by CBS News show Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the controversial Fast and Furious operation as far back as July 2010. That directly contradicts his statement to Congress.

On May 3, 2011, Holder told a Judiciary Committee hearing, “I’m not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.”

Yet internal Justice Department documents show that at least ten months before that hearing, Holder began receiving frequent memos discussing Fast and Furious.

Child Rapist Feels Bad

Well, that makes it all better, right?

Roman Polanski reveals in an interview with Swiss Channel TSR that he has “regretted for 33 years”  having unlawful sex with a 13-year old girl in 1977.  Polanski also thanked Switzerland for the way they handled his case, according to the BBC.

London Resists EU Bank Tax

Why does collectivism always seem to turn into fleecing the strongest members of the collective?

The UK has said it will "resist" a financial transaction tax on EU members proposed by the European Commission.

The tax would raise about 57bn euros ($78bn; £50bn) a year and would come into effect at the start of 2014.

Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said banks must "make a contribution" as Europe faced its "greatest challenge".

The UK said it had no objection to a financial tax in principle, but it would have to be introduced globally.

A transaction tax would need the approval of the UK in order to be implemented across the EU.

[...]

City of London officials have said that about 80% of the revenues of any Europe-wide financial tax would come from London.

America Caves to China Pressure

Ouch.

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — A U.S. decision not to sell Taiwan new F-16 fighter jets is being seen by many U.S. allies in Asia as a sign of China's growing clout.

The pre-eminent military power in East Asia for a half-century, the U.S. has explicitly and implicitly provided a security umbrella for countries from Singapore to Japan, helping to keep the peace that has fostered stunning economic growth.

While few of these allies believe the U.S. is lessening its commitment to the region, they still see Washington's refusal to make the F-16 sale — privately confirmed by congressional aides Sunday and then made public Wednesday — as showing a new deference to Chinese interests.

Here's the idiocy of this... unless America is abandoning the region, which I don't think we are, then it is in America's best interests to sell Taiwan the means to defend themselves. Otherwise, if the region flares up, it will be American fighters and warriors on the front line. If we are abandoning the region to its fate, then that's an entirely different story.

China’s Girls

Goodness, stories like this make my stomach turn.

Tsinghua University freshman Mia Wang has confidence to spare.

Asked what her home city of Benxi in China’s far northeastern tip is famous for, she flashes a cool smile and says: “Producing excellence. Like me.”

A Communist Youth League member at one of China’s top science universities, she boasts enviable skills in calligraphy, piano, flute and ping pong.

Such gifted young women are increasingly common in China’s cities and make up the most educated generation of women in Chinese history. Never have so many been in college or graduate school, and never has their ratio to male students been more balanced.

To thank for this, experts say, is three decades of steady Chinese economic growth, heavy government spending on education and a third, surprising, factor: the one-child policy.

Well, that’s just great, isn’t it? Well, it is for the girls who weren’t killed by their parents because they wanted a boy.

Crediting the one-child policy with improving the lives of women is jarring, given its history and how it’s harmed women in other ways. Facing pressure to stay under population quotas, overzealous family planning officials have resorted to forced sterilizations and late-term abortions, sometimes within weeks of delivery, although such practices are illegal.

The birth limits are also often criticized for encouraging sex-selective abortions in a son-favoring society. Chinese traditionally prefer boys because they carry on the family name and are considered better earners.

With the arrival of sonogram technology in the 1980’s, some families no longer merely hoped for a boy, they were able to engineer a male heir by terminating pregnancies when the fetus was a girl.

“It is gendercide,” said Therese Hesketh, a University College London professor who has studied China’s skewed sex ratio. “I don’t understand why China doesn’t just really penalize people who’ve had sex-selective abortions and the people who do them. The law exists but nobody enforces it.”

To combat the problem, China allows families in rural areas, where son preference is strongest, to have a second child if their first is a girl. The government has also launched education campaigns promoting girls and gives cash subsidies to rural families with daughters.

Still, 43 million girls have “disappeared” in China due to gender-selective abortion as well as neglect and inadequate access to health care and nutrition, the United Nations estimated in a report last year.

43 million girls killed for no other reason than they were girls. It’s great that some Chinese girls are succeeding, but they are doing so at the cost of genocide.

Chinese Businessman Bids on Big Chunk of Iceland

Curious.

A Chinese business tycoon is hoping to buy a large area of north-east Iceland to build a luxury hotel and eco-resort.

Huang Nubo is reported to have offered a billion krona (£5.4m: $8.8m) for the 300sq km (155 sq mile) Grimsstadir a Fjollum region.

Critics of the plan fear it could be used by China to gain a strategic foothold in Iceland.

But Icelandic officials have welcomed the purchase and the further 20bn krona Mr Huang says he intends to invest.

Mr Huang is the chairman of the Zhongkun investment group, and is also reported to have worked as a minister in the Chinese Central Propaganda Department and Ministry of Construction.

Libyan Rebels Reject Talks

Hey, remember that war that we’re involved in that was only supposed to last a few days?

Rebels fighting to topple Muammar Gaddafi scorned reports of secret talks with the Libyan leader on Tuesday as their forces fought to secure gains and the United States said Gaddafi’s days were numbered.

After 41 years of supreme power in his oil-rich desert state 69-year-old Gaddafi was isolated in the capital Tripoli, with reinvigorated rebel forces closing in from the West and South.

Libya’s rebel National Transitional Council (NTC), recognized by many of the NATO nations whose air power is supporting their assault, denied any kind of negotiation with Gaddafi to resolve the six-month-old conflict.

Oldest American Bataan Death Marcher Dies

RIP

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A doctor once told Albert Brown he shouldn’t expect to make it to 50, given the toll taken by his years in a Japanese labor camp during World War II and the infamous, often-deadly march that got him there. But the former dentist made it to 105, embodying the power of a positive spirit in the face of inordinate odds.

“Doc” Brown was nearly 40 in 1942 when he endured the Bataan Death March, a harrowing 65-mile trek in which 78,000 prisoners of war were forced to walk from Bataan province near Manila to a Japanese POW camp. As many as 11,000 died along the way. Many were denied food, water and medical care, and those who stumbled or fell during the scorching journey through Philippine jungles were stabbed, shot or beheaded.

But Brown survived and secretly documented it all, using a nub of a pencil to scrawl details into a tiny tablet he concealed in the lining of his canvas bag. He often wondered why captives so much younger and stronger perished, while he went on.

By the time he died Sunday at a nursing home in southern Illinois’ Nashville, Brown’s story was well-chronicled, by one author’s account offering an encouraging road map for veterans recovering from their own wounds in many wars.

Pakistan Gave China Access to American Stealth Helicopter

Well, isn’t that just wonderful...

Pakistan gave China access to the previously unknown “stealth” helicopter that crashed during the commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May despite explicit requests from the CIA not to, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

The revelation, if confirmed, is likely to further shake the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, which has been improving slightly after hitting its lowest point in decades following the May 2 bin Laden raid.

ECB To Buy Up Risky Debt

This isn’t going to end well.

“It is on the basis of the above assessments that the ECB will actively implement its Securities Markets Programme,” an ECB statement said.

The statement marked a watershed in the ECB’s fire-fighting efforts after modest bond-buying last week failed to stem contagion to the currency bloc’s larger economies.

It did not explicitly say that effort would now include buying Spanish and Italian paper, but the fact that last week’s purchases were confined to Irish and Portuguese paper drove Italian and Spanish 10-year paper to a 14-year high.

Last Friday’s downgrading of the United States’ AAA credit rating by Standard & Poor’s added urgency to efforts to control euro zone turmoil by raising the risk of global financial meltdown, driving global policymakers into a frenzy of weekend telephone consultations.

“The Euro system will intervene very significantly on markets and respond in a significant and cohesive way,” a euro zone monetary source said, speaking shortly before the statement was released.

Deadly Day in Afghanistan

Tragic.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)—A military helicopter was shot down in eastern Afghanistan, killing 31 U.S. special operation troops, most of them from the elite Navy SEALs unit that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, along with seven Afghan commandos. It was the deadliest single incident for American forces in the decade-long war.

The Taliban claimed they downed the helicopter with rocket fire while it was taking part in a raid on a house where insurgents were gathered in the province of Wardak late Friday. It said wreckage of the craft was strewn at the scene. A senior U.S. administration official in Washington said the craft was apparently shot down by insurgents. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the crash is still being investigated.

Fast and Furious Strikes Again

Is Obama actually going to hold anyone of any consequence accountable for this debacle?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At least 122 firearms from a botched U.S. undercover operation have been found at crime scenes in Mexico or intercepted en route to drug cartels there, according to a Republican congressional report being issued on Tuesday.

Mexican authorities found AK-47 assault rifles, powerful .50 caliber rifles and other weapons in late 2009 that were later linked to the U.S. sting operation to trace weapons going across the border to Mexico, the report said.

Guns from the program, dubbed “Operation Fast and Furious,” also were found at the scene of the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in the border state Arizona last December. It is not clear if they were the weapons responsible for his death.

Oslo Murderer’s Facebook Page

It sure looks like someone was monkeying around with the killer’s Facebook page. From Atlas Shrugged:

While the leftist and Islamic supremacist ghouls rush to portray Norway mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik as a Christian and even as an anti-jihadist, the unanswered questions multiply. Why did a jihad group take credit for the atrocities, and then retract? And who altered the murderer’s Facebook page?

Follow the link to check out the screen shots.

Good for Thee; Not for Me

If only the Obama Administration could support austerity measures at home.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton voiced strong American support Sunday for financially troubled Greece’s economic recovery plans and urged the nation to forge ahead with painful reforms that have sparked unrest.

During and after meetings with senior Greek officials, Clinton underscored Washington’s backing for their deficit and debt reduction programs that have hit the country hard, even as the Obama administration grapples with a similar issue at home. She acknowledged the reforms were “strong medicine” that are difficult to swallow, but said the United States had complete confidence in them.