Saudi Arabia: For the record. European Christian websites have reported Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Shaikh, one of the most influential religious leaders in the Muslim world, issued a fatwa against non-Muslim places of worship last week.
In response to a Kuwaiti lawmaker who asked whether Kuwait could ban church construction in Kuwait, the Sheikh ruled that further church construction should be banned and existing Christian houses of worship should be destroyed.
Comment: Senior European Christian prelates have pointed out the Grand Mufti is contradicting King Abdallah's policy of supporting interfaith dialogue. The King is seeking to build an interfaith center in Austria, taking advantage of freedoms and tolerance not available in Saudi Arabia and most of the Arab world. Foreign Christian minorities make up substantial and significant portions of the working populations of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Yemen.
The Catholic Bishop for the Christians in the UAE, Oman and Yemen warned that some Muslims will be influenced to act on the Grand Mufti's edict. A delayed terrorist reaction against Christian churches is the threat, and has occurred in Iraq and Egypt.
Phi Beta Iota: This is also the best indication that the Assisi Peace Summit sponsored by the Most Holy Father was a clear failure. Although the Pope has done two important pronouncements, one on religion and science both seeking the truth, the second on the cancer of corruption, the Catholic Church — and the various other denominations — lack a coherent strategy for education, intelligence, and research toward inter-faith tolerance. We continue to recommend that an inter-faith campaign against secular corruption be the basis for advances in cultural and spiritual tolerance.
5.0 out of 5 stars Latest Version — One of the Most Intelligent & Elegant Books on 9/11,March 25, 2012
I've read or viewed over 30 books and DVDs on 9/11. This book is the more recent edition. It is one of the most intelligent and elegant contributions to the 9/11 public intelligence search for truth that I have read. Easily in the top three along with Webster Tarpley's 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, the latest version of which also has a full review of all the “drills” that Dick Cheney used to control the day, and anything by David Griffin, he has been a real patriot and real professional citizen intelligence officer–his latest is 9/11 Ten Years Later: When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed.
What really charms me about this book is the huge amount of pre-work that went into it. The author has distilled, in an extremely elegant and utterly compelling manner, the essence of why the US Government, the government of New York City, and various other elements including the co-conspirator insurance companies, can easily be indicted and then convicted of crimes against the Republic.
In my capacity as a private citizen, I invite your attention to attached Torchbearer Alert from the Association of the United States Army, the Army's private, non-Governmental, professional association. It describes in clear and simple terms the “screw job” that the Administration and Department of Defense propose to deliver to those military personnel who have retired, those who will retired, and some currently serving. It is self explanatory.
I also invite your attention to the summary below from the Military Officers Association of America concerning a 21 March hearing before the House Armed Services Committee Military Personnel Subcommittee. I FURTHER invite your attention to the links to videos of that hearing. Should you elect to watch, keep in mind that Dr. Woodson is a political appointee, selected for personal fealty to the President and the Secretary of Defense. Keep also in mind that the Service Surgeons General are, effectively, operating under “hostile control.” That is, under OMB [Office of Management and Budget] Circular A-11, no official of the Executive Branch (which includes all Department of Defense personnel) can articulate a need for anything that is not stipulated in the President's Budget. Essentially, all must articulate the Administration party line regardless of what truth may be.
Recommend maximum dissemination of material below and attached through all available channel.
Back in late 2006 and early 2007 a few (soon to be very rich) people were warning anyone who cared to listen, about what cracks in the subprime facade meant for the housing sector and the credit bubble in general. They were largely ignored as none other than the Fed chairman promised that all is fine (see here). A few months later New Century collapsed and the rest is history: tens of trillions later we are still picking up the pieces and housing continues to collapse. Yet one bubble which the Federal Government managed to blow in the meantime to staggering proportions in virtually no time, for no other reason than to give the impression of consumer releveraging, was the student debt bubble, which at last check just surpassed $1 trillion, and is growing at $40-50 billion each month. However, just like subprime, the first cracks have now appeared. In a report set to convince borrowers that Student Loan ABS are still safe – of course they are – they are backed by all taxpayers after all in the form of the Family Federal Education Program – Fitch discloses something rather troubling, namely that of the $1 trillion + in student debt outstanding, “as many as 27% of all student loan borrowers are more than 30 days past due.” In other words at least $270 billion in student loans are no longer current. That this is happening with interest rates at record lows is quite stunning and a loud wake up call that it is not rates that determine affordability and sustainability: it is general economic conditions, deplorable as they may be, which have made the popping of the student loan bubble inevitable. It also means that if the rise in interest rate continues, then the student loan bubble will pop that much faster, and bring another $1 trillion in unintended consequences on the shoulders of the US taxpayer who once again will be left footing the bill.
Fitch believes most student loan asset-backed securities (ABS) transactions remain well protected due to the government guarantee on Family Federal Education Program (FFELP) loans. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently reported that as many as 27% of all student loan borrowers are more than 30 days past due. Recent estimates mark outstanding student loans at $900 billion- $1 trillion. Fitch believes that the recent increase in past-due and defaulted student loans presents a risk to investors in private student loan ABS, but not those in ABS trusts backed by FFELP loans.
Why is the bubble starting to pop now?
Several macroeconomic factors are putting pressure on student loan borrowers. The main ones are unemployment and underemployment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the current unemployment rate for people 20 to 24 years old at nearly 14% and for those 25 to 34 years old, 8.7%. Underemployment is difficult to measure for these demographics, but it is likely having a negative impact.
Actually, no: the unemployment for 18-24 year olds is 46%. Yup: 46%.
The Syria Tracker Crisis Map is without doubt one of the most impressive crisis mapping projects yet. Launched just a few weeks after the protests began one year ago, the crisis map is spearheaded by a just handful of US-based Syrian activists have meticulously and systematically documented 1,529 reports of human rights violations including a total of 11,147 killings. As recently reported in this NewScientist article, “Mapping the Human Cost of Syria’s Uprising,” the crisis map “could be the most accurate estimate yet of the death toll in Syria’s uprising […].” Their approach? “A combination of automated data mining and crowdsourced human intelligence,” which “could provide a powerful means to assess the human cost of wars and disasters.”
On the data-mining side, Syria Tracker has repurposed the HealthMap platform, which mines thousands of online sources for the purposes of disease detection and then maps the results, “giving public-health officials an easy way to monitor local disease conditions.” The customized version of this platform for Syria Tracker (ST), known as HealthMap Crisis, mines English information sources for evidence of human rights violations, such as killings, torture and detainment. As the ST Team notes, their data mining platform “draws from a broad range of sources to reduce reporting biases.” Between June 2011 and January 2012, for example, the platform collected over 43,o00 news articles and blog posts from almost 2,000 English-based sources from around the world (including some pro-regime sources).
Syria Tracker combines the results of this sophisticated data mining approach with crowdsourced human intelligence, i.e., field-based eye-witness reports shared via webform, email, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and voicemail. This naturally presents several important security issues, which explains why the main ST website includes an instructions page detailing security precautions that need to be taken while sub-mitting reports from within Syria. They also link to this practical guide on how to protect your identity and security online and when using mobile phones. The guide is available in both English and Arabic.
Eye-witness reports are subsequently translated, geo-referenced, coded and verified by a group of volunteers who triangulate the information with other sources such as those provided by the HealthMap Crisis platform. They also filter the reports and remove dupli-cates. Reports that have a low con-fidence level vis-a-vis veracity are also removed. Volunteers use a dig-up or vote-up/vote-down feature to “score” the veracity of eye-witness reports. Using this approach, the ST Team and their volunteers have been able to verify almost 90% of the documented killings mapped on their platform thanks to video and/or photographic evidence. They have also been able to associate specific names to about 88% of those reported killed by Syrian forces since the uprising began.
Depending on the levels of violence in Syria, the turn-around time for a report to be mapped on Syria Tracker is between 1-3 days. The team also produces weekly situation reports based on the data they’ve collected along with detailed graphical analysis. KML files that can be uploaded and viewed using Google Earth are also made available on a regular basis. These provide “a more precisely geo-located tally of deaths per location.”
In sum, Syria Tracker is very much breaking new ground vis-a-vis crisis mapping. They’re combining automated data mining technology with crowdsourced eye-witness reports from Syria. In addition, they’ve been doing this for a year, which makes the project the longest running crisis maps I’ve seen in a hostile environ-ment. Moreover, they’ve been able to sustain these import efforts with just a small team of volunteers. As for the veracity of the collected information, I know of no other public effort that has taken such a meticulous and rigorous approach to documenting the killings in Syria in near real-time. On February 24th, Al-Jazeera posted the following estimates:
Syrian Revolution Coordination Union: 9,073 deaths
Local Coordination Committees: 8,551 deaths
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights: 5,581 deaths
At the time, Syria Tracker had a total of 7,901 documented killings associated with specific names, dates and locations. While some duplicate reports may remain, the team argues that “missing records are a much bigger source of error.” Indeed, They believe that “the higher estimates are more likely, even if one chooses to disregard those reports that came in on some of the most violent days where names were not always recorded.”
The Syria Crisis Map itself has been viewed by visitors from 136 countries around the world and 2,018 cities—with the top 3 cities being Damascus, Washington DC and, interestingly, Riyadh, Saudia Arabia. The witnessing has thus been truly global and collective. When the Syrian regime falls, “the data may help sub-sequent governments hold him and other senior leaders to account,” writes the New Scientist. This was one of the principle motivations behind the launch of the Ushahidi platform in Kenya over four years ago. Syria Tracker is powered by Ushahidi’s cloud-based platform, Crowdmap. Finally, we know for a fact that the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Amnesty International (AI) closely followed the Libya Crisis Map last year.
Convert to Islam has led spy agency's renewed assault on terror group
By Greg Miller
For every cloud of smoke that follows a CIA drone strike in Pakistan, dozens of smaller plumes can be traced to a gaunt figure standing in a courtyard near the center of the agency’s Langley campus in Virginia.
The man with the nicotine habit is in his late 50s, with stubble on his face and the dark-suited wardrobe of an undertaker. As chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center for the past six years, he has functioned in a funereal capacity for al-Qaeda.
Roger, which is the first name of his cover identity, may be the most consequential but least visible national security official in Washington — the principal architect of the CIA’s drone campaign and the leader of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. In many ways, he has also been the driving force of the Obama administration’s embrace of targeted killing as a centerpiece of its counterterrorism efforts.
Colleagues describe Roger as a collection of contradictions. A chain-smoker who spends countless hours on a treadmill. Notoriously surly yet able to win over enough support from subordinates and bosses to hold on to his job. He presides over a campaign that has killed thousands of Islamist militants and angered millions of Muslims, but he is himself a convert to Islam.
His defenders don’t even try to make him sound likable. Instead, they emphasize his operational talents, encyclopedic understanding of the enemy and tireless work ethic.
“Irascible is the nicest way I would describe him,” said a former high-ranking CIA official who supervised the counterterrorism chief. “But his range of experience and relationships have made him about as close to indispensable as you could think.”
Critics are less equivocal. “He’s sandpaper” and “not at all a team player,” said a former senior U.S. military official who worked closely with the CIA. Like others, the official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the director of CTC — as the center is known — remains undercover.
