Yahoo:

Mikhail Gorbachev calls for a new vote in Russia

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian authorities should annul the results of the parliamentary vote and hold a new one, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev urged Wednesday as popular indignation grew over widespread allegations of election fraud.

The call for an entirely new vote by the last president of the Soviet Union was a remarkable development for an election that had not generated much interest during the campaign. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had wanted to see his United Russia party do well to pave the way for his return to the presidency, but few Russians seemed to care about the vote, with many saying they assumed the results would be manipulated anyway.

United Russia won less than 50 percent of Sunday's vote, a steep fall from the 64 percent it won four years ago. But opposition parties and independent observers say even that result was inflated by vote-rigging, including alleged ballot-box stuffing and false voter rolls.

Gorbachev told the Interfax news agency that authorities must hold a fresh election or deal with a rising tide of discontent.

"More and more people are starting to believe that the election results are not fair," he told Interfax. "I believe that ignoring public opinion discredits the authorities and destabilizes the situation."

Surprisingly, thousands of Russians have rallied in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the last two days, facing off against tens of thousands of police and Interior Ministry troops. Hundreds of protesters have been detained in both cities. The unusually sustained protests suggests Putin's drive to regain his old job may not go as smoothly as he had expected.

The malaise revealed in Sunday's parliamentary election suggested Russians are tiring of Putin and his United Russia party, which has dominated all other political forces in Russia for the past dozen years and earned a reputation for corruption.

Gorbachev added that authorities "must admit that there have been numerous falsifications and ballot box stuffing."

He spoke on the same day that Putin officially registered to run for the presidency in a March vote.

Putin served as president from 2000 to 2008, when he moved into the prime minister's office because of a constitutional limit of two consecutive presidential terms. A constitutional amendment pushed through parliament by United Russia extended the presidential term from four to six years. Under it, Putin, 59, could theoretically serve as Russia's leader until 2024.

The 80-year-old Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until its breakup in 1991, has long had tense relations with Putin, but until recent years had refrained from directing his criticism of Russian politics at Putin.

Putin has been extremely critical of Gorbachev's legacy, including his concession to what many Russians saw as Western pressure to pull Soviet troops out of Germany, and has blamed him for the Soviet Union's demise.

Thousands of security forces were out in the Russian capital and helicopters roamed the sky Wednesday, a show of force following two days of protest. More opposition rallies were expected later in the day.

The Interior Ministry said Tuesday at least 51,500 police officers and 2,000 paramilitary troops have been deployed in Moscow since the election.

About 1,000 people gathered at a pro-Putin concert Wednesday afternoon in central Moscow. The crowd of mainly young people waved Russian flags and danced as organizers spoke on a stage adorned with a banner reading "The Future is Ours."

Someone dressed as a giant white bear — United Russia's mascot — danced among the crowd. He stopped occasionally to hug supporters — but kept right on dancing when someone ran out of the crowd to kick him in the rear.

College student Ivan Samburov, 17, said he had no interest in the protest rallies.

"I prefer just to stand like this and dance, to have fun and improve my mood, to feel that everything is good," he said.

The Russian Union of Journalists condemned police violence against protesters and called for an investigation into the dozens of attacks and arrests of journalists, describing them as "an attempt to gag and intimidate society."

On Wednesday, two video journalists working for the state-owned RIA Novosti news agency were briefly detained outside the Central Election Commission building where Putin was handing in his application to run.

The allegations of election fraud have fired up the opposition, which has long seen its protests crushed and its pleas ignored by the Kremlin-dominated media.

On Facebook, almost 15,000 people signed up to a page announcing an opposition rally for Saturday — and many of them have never taken part in political demonstrations

Mariya Boyarintseva, a 24-year-old event manager, said she has never been to a political rally before but she was going to Saturday's protest.

Boyarintseva said she didn't go to the rallies on Monday or Tuesday — which ended with clashes with police and hundreds detained — because "it felt a bit scary."

"Now, I have a feeling that I ought to go," she said.

CNBC:

Deutsche Bank CEO Target of Suspected Letter Bomb

A suspected parcel bomb addressed to Deutsche Bank Chief Executive Josef Ackermann was intercepted at a Deutsche office in Frankfurt on Wednesday, a senior U.S. law enforcement official said.

The package was discovered around 1 p.m. Frankfurt time (7 a.m. EST) in a mailroom, the official said. Initial analyses by investigators confirmed that it contained explosives and extra shrapnel, he told Reuters.

A spokesman for Deutsche Bank in New York declined to comment.

After receiving reports about the package, the New York Police Department stepped up security around Deutsche Bank's offices in New York and also notified corporate security executives around the city, the law enforcement official said.

The official said the suspected bomb carried a return address from the European Central Bank, which is also headquartered in Frankfurt.

Fox:

Lawmakers Blast Administration For Calling Fort Hood Massacre 'Workplace Violence'

Sen. Susan Collins on Wednesday blasted the Defense Department for classifying the Fort Hood massacre as workplace violence and suggested political correctness is being placed above the security of the nation's Armed Forces at home.

During a joint session of the Senate and House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday, the Maine Republican referenced a letter from the Defense Department depicting the Fort Hood shootings as workplace violence. She criticized the Obama administration for failing to identify the threat as radical Islam.

Thirteen people were killed and dozens more wounded at Fort Hood in 2009, and the number of alleged plots targeting the military has grown significantly since then. Lawmakers said there have been 33 plots against the U.S. military since Sept. 11, 2001, and 70 percent of those threats have been since mid-2009. Major Nidal Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, who is being held for the attacks, allegedly was inspired by radical U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in late September. The two men exchanged as many as 20 emails, according to U.S. officials, and Awlaki declared Hasan a hero.

The chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, said the military has become a "direct target of violent Islamist extremism" within the United States.

"The stark reality is that the American service member is increasingly in the terrorists' scope and not just overseas in a traditional war setting," Lieberman told Fox News before the start of Wednesday's hearing.

In June, two men allegedly plotted to attack a Seattle, Wash., military installation using guns and grenades. In July, Army Pvt. Naser Abdo was accused of planning a second attack on Fort Hood. And in November, New York police arrested Jose Pimentel, who alleged sought to kill service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Both Pimentel and Abdo also allegedly drew inspiration from al-Awlaki and the online jihadist magazine Inspire, which includes a spread on how to "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom."

Rep. Peter King of New York, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said military service members are "symbols of America's power, symbols of America's might."

"And if they (military personnel) can be killed, then that is a great propaganda victory for al Qaeda," King told Fox News.

King said there is also evidence that extremists have joined the services.

"There is a serious threat within the military from people who have enlisted who are radical jihadists," King said. "The Defense Department is very concerned about them. They feel they're a threat to the military both for what they can do within the military itself and also because of the weapons skills they acquire while they're in the military."

The witnesses testifying before the joint session include Paul N. Stockton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense; Jim Stuteville, U.S. Army senior adviser for counterintelligence operations and liaison to the FBI; Lt. Col. Reid L. Sawyer, director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, and Darius Long, whose son, Army Pvt. William Andrew Long, was shot and killed at an Arkansas military recruitment center in 2009.

A second private was also injured in the Arkansas attack. Both victims had just finished basic training and had not been deployed. They were outside the Arkansas recruitment center when the shooter opened fire from a passing truck. The shooter, Carlos Bledsoe, pleaded guilty to the crime earlier this year.

In a letter to the court, Bledsoe said he carried out the attack on behalf of al Qaeda in Yemen -- the group that was behind the last two major plots targeting the U.S. airline industry.

"My faith in government is diminished. It invents euphemisms ... Little Rock is a drive by and Fort Hood is just workplace violence. The truth is denied," Long testified.

King said the web is the driver of the new digital jihad.

"It enables people -- rather than having to travel to Afghanistan to learn about jihad or to be trained, they can do it right over the Internet," he said. "And this is a growing role."

And while Awlaki and his colleague Samir Khan, who was behind the magazine Inspire, were killed in a CIA-led operation in September, King warned against overconfidence that al Qaeda in Yemen was done.

"This is a definite short-term victory for us. There's no doubt they are going to regroup, that there will be others who will be providing Internet data, inspiration to jihadists in this country, instructions on how to make bombs," he said.

While King was heavily criticized, in some quarters, for launching his hearings 10 months ago on homegrown terrorism, the congressman said the joint session shows the threat is legitimate, and recognized as such by other members of Congress.

"To me it's a validation of what I've been trying to do all year," King emphasized. "There's a definite threat from Islamic radicalization in various parts of our society, including within the military, and we can't allow political correctness to keep us from exposing this threat for what it is."

Newt tells Repub Jewish Coalition 'my secstate will be Bolton'

Newt Gingrich promised conservatives on Tuesday he would ask formerU.N. Ambassador John Bolton to be his secretary of state if he’s elected president next year, according to several of those who met with him

Hours later he repeated that vow publicly to the Republican Jewish Coalition, winning a round of applause.

“If he accepts it, I will ask John Bolton to be secretary of state,” the former House speaker said.

During the closed-door meeting in Arlington, Mr. Gingrich spoke and fielded questions for about two hours from 70 conservatives, and they said afterward that they came away impressed.

One questioner asked Mr. Gingrich how he could assure conservatives he would be trustworthy, which is when he replied that he would tap Mr. Bolton, a hero to conservatives whom President George B. Bush named as a recess appointment to the U.N. ambassadorship after the Senate refused to confirm him.

Mr. Gingrich’s statement that Mr. Bolton would be his pick to head the State Department drew applause from the Jewish Republican group, which was hearing from virtually all GOP presidential hopefuls in a daylong session in Washington.

I cannot imagine a scenario more conducive to making progressives apoplectic. We better have 60 republican senators

Want to know what the end of the world looks like?

CNBC-More Americans Go Abroad for Economic Opportunities

Derek Capo was living the high life. He was in his early 20s, an analyst at hedge fund Everest Capital monitoring international equities, and soaking up the weather and nightlife of his hometown of Miami.But looking ahead, as he’d been trained to do, Capo didn’t like what he saw. The housing bust was starting to strangle the Florida economy, the stock market was looking increasingly erratic and he didn’t want to pursue a pricey MBA in the middle of an economic crisis.

He also wanted to test his entrepreneurial muscles, by starting his own business, ideally in a locale that felt economically vibrant, with seemingly limitless possibilities. To do that, Capo left the U.S. in 2007.

He now lives in Beijing, having founded Next Step China. The firm offers Chinese-language immersion programs, and arranges opportunities for foreigners to teach, intern or volunteer in China.

There is more entrepreneurial opportunity in a COMMUNIST NATION THAN IN THE USA?

Can this economy have been screwed up any worse?

It’s a curious phenomenon that sends Americans abroad to look for work. The U.S. has traditionally skimmed the best minds from around the world in pursuit of the American Dream. Indeed, according to polling firm Gallup, which surveyed people in 135 nations around the world, the U.S. was the top desired destination of those who wanted to relocate permanently to another country.

But with unemployment hovering around 9 percent, the use of food stamps at record highs and the recession continuing to punish the budgets of so many families, the American economy is much less of a magnet.

To some young entrepreneurs, economic possibilities seem brighter in places like Brazil, Russia, China or Latin America. Indeed, the State Department now estimates that 6.3 million Americans are studying or working abroad, the highest number on record.

In fact, according to a survey by marketing consultants America Wave, the percentage of Americans aged 25 to 34 actively planning to relocate outside the U.S. has quintupled in just two years, from less than 1 percent to 5.1 percent.

“Those numbers have shot through the ceiling,” said America Wave founder Bob Adams, who has run nine such surveys over the years. “They’re very surprising, and not something I anticipated. They’re looking for work because of the sluggish economy, and they’ve lost confidence that the U.S. is going anywhere.”

Younger Americans seem even keener to look abroad, with 40 percent of those 18-24 expressing interest in foreign relocation, which is up from 15 percent two years ago.

“There’s a feeling among more entrepreneurial Americans that if you really want to get anything done, you have to get out of country and away from the depressing atmosphere,” said Adams, who lives in Panama. “There’s a sense of lost direction, so more people are looking for locations that offer more hope about the future.”

America is NOT A PLACE, IT IS AN IDEA.

AYN RAND IS SHRIEKING AT THIS NATION FROM THE GRAVE

Speaking of Death

This recording, unbeleeeeeeavably, was accomplished at the Martin Guitar booth at the NAMM TRADE SHOW in 2010.

Jorma Kaukonen at a trade show booth!!!! Walk up and listen? AYFKM?

15 minutes later Jorma was beaten to death by IRS goons who discovered the back of each guitar was made of a single piece of Brazilian rosewood (thank God mine is 2 pieces)

;)

NEVER FORGET

The righting of the capsized USS Oklahoma from the mud of Pearl Harbor in 1943

12/7/41 2403 dead

9/11/2001 2996 dead

I will never be able to think of these events separately or how differently we responded

REMEMBERING PEARL HARBOR

Even though 70 years have passed since December 7, 1941, interment services continue in Honolulu:

Pearl Harbor:Final Wishes from Andrew Breese on Vimeo.

Cassandra Wilson
32-20

Ralph Stanley

Man Of Constant Sorrow

Oh, Death

Daddy's Wildwood Flower

Joe Biden praises ARAB UPRISINGS AS ‘BEAUTY’

Speaking at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Istanbul, Turkey, on Saturday, Vice President Joe Biden offered high praise for the revolutions that have broken out in the Arab world this year.

Biden likened the Arab uprisings to the American revolution.

No doubt all the Copts and Jews in Egypt agree with this factual analysis. And all the modern muslimas.

Well we know this is a valid comparison because, as we all have learned in grade school Abigail Adams was only beaten lightly, Martha Washington did not object to her clitorectomy, Abigail went about covered as demanded by John, and was never seen otherwise in public except by immediate family members.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE PEOPLE IN THIS ADMINISTRATION?

AMERICA WAKE UP

Just what Jefferson had in mind when he demanded the Bill of Rights

Library of Congress to receive entire Twitter archive

The Library of Congress and Twitter have signed an agreement that will see an archive of every public Tweet ever sent handed over to the library’s repository of historical documents.

“We have an agreement with Twitter where they have a bunch of servers with their historic archive of tweets, everything that was sent out and declared to be public,” said Bill Lefurgy, the digital initiatives program manager at the library’s national digital information infrastructure and preservation program. “The archives don’t contain tweets that users have protected, but everything else — billions and billions of tweets — are there.”

Maybe with the new exectuive power to have americans detained or killed without trial, people tweeting about inane things will simply be killed outright and thus save gaia

File under "SCREW YOU ISI AND THE COUNTRY YOU RODE IN ON"

India Boosts Afghan Military Role

India’s military establishment is finalizing plans to train thousands of Afghan Army officers. Will New Delhi secure a first movers’ advantage?

On Monday, more than 85 nations began a meeting in Bonn to discuss the future of Afghanistan from 2014, when U.S.-led troops are scheduled to hand over security to Kabul.

But thousands of miles away, plans are already in the final stages of receiving Indian government clearance for an extensive training schedule for the fledgling Afghan National Army (ANA) at training institutions across the country.

The program is the first concrete follow-up on military-to-military cooperation under the umbrella of the Strategic Partnership Agreement that was signed between Kabul and New Delhi in October, when Afghan President Hamid Karzai was given a grand reception in India.

Under the agreement, India, which has the world’s third-largest army, agreed to train, equip and build the capacity of the Afghan forces.

Sources in the Indian security establishment familiar with the contours of the detailed schedule say Kabul and New Delhi have identified three areas to focus on, namely increasing the intake of officers in India’s premier training institutes; providing specialized training to middle and higher level officers already operating in the Afghan National Army (ANA); and training soldiers in counter-insurgency and counter-terrorist operations by seconding them to various regimental centers across India.

This will involve, sources told me last month, when I first did a report on the issue for NDTV, bringing to India more than 25,000 ANA officers and men over the next three years.Finalizing the schedule may take at least another couple of months, the sources added.

The military leadership in India and Afghanistan has concluded after several rounds of discussions that training the officer cadre won’t on its own be enough, since Afghan soldiers also need to be given the skills to take on the mixed role of counter-insurgency operations and providing static security three years from now.

At the same time, military planners have concluded that mid-level officers in the ANA need to be reoriented and given the training needed to assume leadership roles in the post-NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014. Accordingly, officers at the ranks of Lt. Col. and Brigadier will be provided focused training at three specialized institutions in India: The Commando School in Belgaum in south India, The Counter-insurgency and Jungle Warfare (CIJW) School in Mizoram, in northeast of India, and The High Altitude Warfare School in Sonamarg, Kashmir.

Not only that, the dog ate my plans to fix the economy and spread it around

RCP:

Obama Now Blames The Internet For Job Losses

RELATED VIDEOS | expand

“Layoffs too often became permanent, not part of the business cycle. And these changes didn’t just affect blue collar workers. If you were a bank teller or a phone operator or a travel agent, you saw many in your profession replaced by ATMs and the internet,” President Obama said at a campaign event in Kansas.

"a prize almost beyond value to the United States" ..history's RQ-170 UH OH for the USA in Iran

The Akutan Zero, also known as Koga’s Zero and the Aleutian Zero, was a type 0 model 21 Mitsubishi A6M Zero Japanese fighter plane that crash-landed on Akutan Island, Alaska Territory, during World War II. It was captured intact by the Americans in July 1942 and became the first flyable Zero acquired by the United States during the war. It was repaired and flown by American test pilots. As a result of information gained from these tests, American tacticians were able to devise ways to defeat the Zero, which was the Imperial Japanese Navy’s primary fighter plane throughout the war.

The Akutan Zero has been described as “a prize almost beyond value to the United States”, and “probably one of the greatest prizes of the Pacific war”. Japanese historian Masatake Okumiya stated that the acquisition of the Akutan Zero “was no less serious” than the Japanese defeat at the Battle of Midway, and that it “did much to hasten Japan’s final defeat”. On the other hand, John Lundstrom is among those who challenge “the contention that it took dissection of Koga’s Zero to create tactics that beat the fabled airplane”.

The result of this Zero was the stoppage of production of the F4F Wildcat and the rushed, and incredibly successful design and production of the F6F Hellcat, a plane which had but ONE PURPOSE…KILLING ZEROS

The direct and measurable effect?

The battle of the Phillipine Sea - which effectively eliminated the Imperial Japanese Navy’s ability to conduct large-scale carrier actions. It took place during the United States’ amphibious invasion of the Mariana Islands during the Pacific War. The battle was the fifth of five major “carrier-versus-carrier” engagements between American and Japanese naval forces, and involved elements of the United States Navy’s Fleet as well as ships and land-based aircraft from the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Combined Fleet and nearby island garrisons. The battle was nicknamed the ‘Great Marianas Turkey Shoot’[2] in American accounts, for the severely disproportional loss ratio inflicted upon Japanese aircraft by American pilots and anti-aircraft gunners. American forces suffered much lighter losses, and a pilot from the U.S.S. Lexington supposedly remarked that “This is like an old-time turkey shoot!” during the battle.

Japanese Aircraft Losses ~750 planes to 123 US.

So as you read about the RQ-170 drone remember the value of military research continuing, RAPIDLY and that this could turn out to be a disaster

This is the RQ-170

This is the X-47B COMBAT ATTACK DRONE

Any questions?