Foreign Policy Research Institute, June 10, 2014 – 10:03am
PBI Executive Summary: Significant fraud in first round (at least one seventh of the total votes); 3,000 election staff fired, Afghan government indicted for forbidding polls (the major fraud detection measure) and allowing repeat of massive fraud. New polls indicate Ghani wins easily on demographics alone. If normally standard measures do not counter fraud, election will be polarizing, civil war the outcome, and all investment to date made moot.
Editor's Note: Well, it looks like Obama the Peacemaker image took another hit today. China, which has no overseas military bases and no carrier battle groups sailing the seas to defend its customers, considers itself a target and not a threat. Imagine that!
The US “divide and conquer” ploy with the Asia Pivot is turning into Obama's Asia Boomerang. The land of freedom and democracy has turned into the major stimulus on the planet for forming defensive military alliances.
It seems they don't want to buy one of our “Sanctions-R-US” franchises. The Founding Fathers are turning over in their graves.
Maybe it's all a trick. Maybe “they” want to divert China and Russia's capital investment away from peaceful business endeavors and whiz it out the window, following the example of the $2 trillion we blew on the military industrial complex over the last decade with no credible threats on the planet.
Good gosh, what group in America would want to do that when our bridges are falling down and the highway trust fund is almost empty… the list goes on and on. Take a look at the companies that the Bush (43) thugs are all involved with, before and after. They seem to have done well.
Don't be surprised to hear brain dead Congressional candidates screaming about how we must rearm American to protect ourselves from the yellow horde building unsinkable inner tubes to float millions of Chinese secret DNA commandos across the Pacific to invade America.
The think tanks are sharpening their pens and swords to scare Americans into putting what money they have left into their various coffers by going on their Asian Jihad. Americans need to form a security alliance of their own here at home to defend ourselves against “you know who”… Jim W. Dean ]
France is expected to suspend pig-related imports from a number of countries as worries grow over the spread of a deadly swine virus.
Porcine Epidemic Diarrhoea Virus (PEDv) has killed some seven million piglets in the US in the past year.
The disease has also been found in Canada, Mexico and Japan.
While the virus isn't harmful to humans or food, France is concerned over the potential economic impact and is set to suspend imports of live pigs and sperm.
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PEDv is spread in faecal matter and attacks the guts of pigs, preventing them from absorbing liquids and nutrients.
Older animals can survive but fatality rates among piglets run between 80% and 100%.
So virulent is the agent that one expert estimated that a spoonful of infected manure would be enough to sicken the entire US herd.
The disease is believed to have its origins in China, according to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).
“According to the information from genetic analyses, there is some similarity with a strain from Asia,” director-general Dr Bernard Vallat told BBC News.
“But the evidence of the crossing from Asia to the US is not yet established. For the moment it is not possible to make a final conclusion on the formal link, it is a suspicion.”
In North America, the disease has moved rapidly, with around 4,000 outbreaks in 30 US states, in four Canadian provinces and in parts of Mexico.
Join Author Johnny Punish on an Irreverent Adventure as He Searches for the Perp-Pe-Traitor of the Political Rear Naked Choke Hold on Secretary of State John Kerry’s Campaign for World Peace
This week we bore witness to another smack down of a major U.S. leader by the global force that is “it”
This time, like so many before him, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was the target du jour; publicly tarred and feathered by this ominous dark sided menace.
At a closed meeting of the Trilateral Commission, the group that secretly runs the shadow government, Kerry said Israel could become an “apartheid” nation if it does not reach a peace deal to create a separate Palestinian state. And just before his warm viperian breath vapor ran cold, “it” had their attack squads scrambled into action like U.S. Taxpayer funded F-15s paid for as part of the billions upon billions of misappropriated monies and strong arm defense contracts that continue to fund the ethnic cleansing of an indigenous people in favor of whatever “it” wants.
Almost $2 trillion has left Africa illicitly since 1970, thwarting poverty reduction and economic growth.
This is far more than the external aid the continent received over the same period, and almost five times its current external debt. According to researchers, the continent also loses at least $100bn a year in this financial haemorrhage.
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African leaders convened this week in the Ethiopian city of Bahar Dar to discuss illicit financial flows and what can be done to staunch them. A study commissioned by the Tana High Level Forum on African Security, which organised the conference, found that illicit flows from Africa grew at an average rate of 12.1 percent per year since 1970, and that capital flight from West and Central African countries accounted for most of the illicit flows from sub-Saharan Africa.
Illicit financial flows consist of money earned illegally and then transferred for use elsewhere. The money is usually generated from criminal activities, corruption, tax evasion, bribes and smuggling. Yet the numbers tell only part of the story – a story that exposes how these highly complex and deeply entrenched practises have flourished, with a devastating impact on Africans' efforts to extricate themselves from grinding poverty.
India-Russia-Afghanistan: India, Russia and Afghanistan quietly have created a triangular arrangement for providing arms aid to Afghanistan after NATO withdraws. None of the countries have made an official announcement. Only a small number of news services, including The Moscow Times and Pakistani newspapers, have published articles about it.
The arrangement was finalized in February when an India team visited Moscow, but it had been under discussion during the past year. It was one of the discussion items when President Karzai visited India last December.
Under the agreement, smaller arms such as light artillery and mortars will be provided by Russia and moved to Afghanistan from the north, while India paid Russia for the equipment. An inventory of Russian-made equipment in Afghanistan has been completed. Afghanistan has presented India with a list of requirements and Russia reportedly has made one or more initial shipments.
Cases of the MERS Coronavirus have significantly increased in the last few months, and in recent weeks there have been reports of the virus in new countries including Egypt, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia, leaving officials struggling to figure out why infections have increased.
