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2013
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February
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- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, February 28, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, February 27, 2013
- Barker's Ramblings
- Pat Buchanan (and yours truly) Opine on What the S...
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, February 25, 2013
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., Feb. 23 & 24, 2013
- The Wisdom of Patrick J. Buchanan
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, February 21, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, February 20, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, February 19, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, February 18, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, February 14, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, February 13, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, February 11, 2013
- I... Want... Them... Dead...!!!
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, February 8, 2013
- Censor the Truth...? Or Just Ignore It...?
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, February 7, 2013
- Just a Quick Note...
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., Feb. 2 & 3, 2013
- And We're Back! Dow 14,000 Fuels a New Wealth Boom!
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, February 1, 2013
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February
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About Me
- William R. Barker
- Pearl River, NY High School Class of '81; Northeastern University, Boston, MA Class of '87.
5 comments:
http://news.yahoo.com/postal-cut-saturday-mail-trim-costs-121746412.html;_ylt=A2KJ3Cd6VxJRwmwAmErQtDMD
The financially struggling U.S. Postal Service said Wednesday it will stop delivering mail on Saturdays...
* WHICH, BTW, I'M IN FAVOR OF. THE POINT BEING, THOUGH, THAT YOU'LL BE PAYING THE SAME (AND SOON MORE) IN ORDER TO GET LESS. THAT'S THE DIRECTION AMERICA'S MOVING IN. PLUS... THIS CUT IS BARELY GONNA DENT THE POSTAL SERVICE'S CONTINUING LOSSES.
The service expects the Saturday mail cutback to begin the week of Aug. 5 and to save about $2 billion annually...
* BUT HERE'S THE PROBLEM... (READ ON!)
The agency in November reported an annual loss of a record $15.9 billion for the last budget year...
(*SHRUG*) (*HEADACHE*)
The financial losses for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 were more than triple the $5.1 billion loss in the previous year. ... The agency's biggest problem [is] mounting mandatory costs for future retiree health benefits, which made up $11.1 billion of [last year's] losses.
* AND GUESS HOW THEY WANNA "SOLVE" THE PROBLEM... (*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)... YEP... YOU GOT IT! THEY'D LIKE TO BE RELIEVED OF THE "BURDEN" OF FUNDING FUTURE RETIREMENT COSTS!
* FOLKS... YA CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP!
Under the new plan, mail would be delivered to homes and businesses only from Monday through Friday, but would still be delivered to post office boxes on Saturdays. Post offices now open on Saturdays would remain open on Saturdays.
* FOLKS... WE'RE DEALING WITH TOTAL INCOMPETENTS! SO... KEEP INCURRING THE COSTS OF KEEPING THE POST OFFICES OPEN ON SATURDAY... BUT DON'T DELIVER MAIL ON SATURDAY...?!?!
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/02/04/flash-mob-mayhem-violent-groups-of-teens-leave-nyc-neighborhoods-in-disarray/
Violent, thieving mobs have been making headlines across the country for the past few years, and now they have hit New York City.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
And Maurice Dubois reported in this CBS 2 investigation, the teen mobs have left neighborhoods worried as businesses take matters into their own hands.
Judson Bennett, 78, recently ran into a violent group of teens – often described with the once-benign term “flash mob” – as he made his daily trip to buy a newspaper at his favorite news team.
“I’m approaching the newsstand, and then suddenly there is a tremendous force behind me,” Bennett said.
Bennett ended up with a broken arm. “I was taken completely by surprise,” he said.
(*SIGH*)
The man who manages the newsstand where Bennett was injured said it has been attacked four times in just the past few weeks. “It’s hard to earn a living, and then they come here and destroy everything, and then they leave,” he said. “It’s sad.”
* IT'S NOT "SAD." IT'S PATHETIC. IT'S SUICIDAL - A SIGN OF A SUICIDAL SOCIETY THAT ALLOWS SUCH HAVOC TO CONTINUE... A SUICIDAL SOCIETY THAT REFUSES TO PROTECT ITSELF!
In New York and across the country, the mobs of kids – 20, 30, 40 or more — appear out of nowhere and suddenly charge a newsstand or convenience store. They ransack, steal and wreak havoc with no consideration for customers, such as Bennett, who get in their way. “They assemble, they do whatever it is that they’re going to do, and then they disassemble in a matter of minutes,” said Jon Shane, assistant professor of criminal justice at John Jay College. “By the time somebody recognizes what is happening or is injured, if the police are able to respond, it’s slow.”
* "THE KIDS." HMM... DOESN'T THAT PHRASE ALSO QUALIFY AS "A BENIGN TERM?" CALL 'EM WHAT THEY ARE - OUT OF CONTROL ANIMALS... UNCIVILIZED... RABID... AND ACCORDING TO THE VIDEO... BLACK.
Raj Shmara owns a newsstand at Broadway at 55th Street. Shmara said his newsstand has been targeted seven different times by mobs of teens. During an attack just last week, the kids threw a bottle at an employee who had to be hospitalized.
* BLACK TEENS...???
Teens have destroyed the newsstand on 57th Street between Eighth and Ninth avenues so many times that the manager has been forced to shut down completely in the afternoon so he doesn’t lose any more money.
* BLACK TEENS...???
“All our displays are broken,” he said.
When CBS 2 contacted the NYPD about the issue, the Department declined to comment.
* GREAT... WONDERFUL...
Meanwhile, many newsstands have turned to putting in their own surveillance to try and deter the attacks — because they feel left on their own.
* THEY "FEEL" LIKE THEY'RE ON THEIR OWN BECAUSE THEY ARE ON THEIR OWN! AND GOD HELP THE LAW-ABIDING DECENT CITIZEN WHO IN TRYING TO PROTECT HIS LIFE AND PROPERTY HURTS OR KILLS ONE OF THESE ANIMALS! NO DOUBT HE'D BE ARRESTED!
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/06/world/middleeast/with-brennan-pick-a-light-on-drone-strikes-hazards.html?_r=1&
Late last August, a 40-year-old cleric named Salem Ahmed bin Ali Jaber stood up to deliver a speech denouncing Al Qaeda in a village mosque in far eastern Yemen.
It was a brave gesture by a father of seven who commanded great respect in the community, and it did not go unnoticed.
Two days later, three members of Al Qaeda came to the mosque in the tiny village of Khashamir after 9 p.m., saying they merely wanted to talk. Mr. Jaber agreed to meet them, bringing his cousin Waleed Abdullah, a police officer, for protection.
As the five men stood arguing by a cluster of palm trees, a volley of remotely operated American missiles shot down from the night sky and incinerated them all, along with a camel that was tied up nearby.
* WE'RE RESPONSIBLE, FOLKS. EACH OF US. I'M NO FAN OF THE REV. WRIGHT, BUT "GOD DAMN AMERICA" IS HEARD THROUGHOUT THE WORLD FOR A REASON. DO YOU SUPPOSE THOSE WHO LOVED SALEM AHMED BIN ALI WILL EVER FORGIVE AMERICA?
Could the targeted killing campaign be creating more militants in Yemen than it is killing? And is it in America’s long-term interest to be waging war against a self-renewing insurgency inside a country about which Washington has at best a hazy understanding?
Several former top military and intelligence officials — including Stanley A. McChrystal, the retired general who led the Joint Special Operations Command, which has responsibility for the military’s drone strikes, and Michael V. Hayden, the former C.I.A. director — have raised concerns that the drone wars in Pakistan and Yemen are increasingly targeting low-level militants who do not pose a direct threat to the United States.
Christopher Swift, a researcher at Georgetown University who spent last summer in Yemen studying the reaction to the strikes, said [that while] he thought that critics had exaggerated the role of the strikes in generating recruits for Al Qaeda, “in the political sphere, the perception is that the U.S. is colluding with the Yemeni government in a covert war against the Yemeni people.” “Even if we’re winning in the military domain,” Mr. Swift said, “drones may be undermining our long-term interest in the goal of a stable Yemen with a functional political system and economy.”
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
American officials have never explained in public why the C.I.A. and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command are carrying out parallel drone campaigns in Yemen. Privately, however, they describe an arrangement that has evolved since the frantic, ad hoc early days of America’s war there. The first strike in Yemen ordered by the Obama administration, in December 2009, was by all accounts a disaster. American cruise missiles carrying cluster munitions killed dozens of civilians, including many women and children.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Another strike, six months later, killed a popular deputy governor, inciting angry demonstrations and an attack that shut down a critical oil pipeline.
* GEEZUS FRIGGIN' CHRIST...
Not long afterward, the C.I.A. began quietly building a drone base in Saudi Arabia to carry out strikes in Yemen. American officials said that the first time the C.I.A. used the Saudi base was to kill Mr. Awlaki in September 2011. Since then, officials said, the C.I.A. has been given the mission of hunting and killing “high-value targets” in Yemen — the leaders of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who Obama administration lawyers have determined pose a direct threat to the United States. When the C.I.A. obtains specific intelligence on the whereabouts of someone on its kill list, an American drone can carry out a strike without the permission of Yemen’s government.
* SO IN OTHER WORDS YEMEN ISN'T A SOVEREIGN NATION BUT RATHER A VASSAL STATE OF THE UNITED STATES... (*SHRUG*)... BY DEFINITION!
There is, however, a tighter leash on the Pentagon’s drones. According to American officials, the Joint Special Operations Command must get the Yemeni government’s approval before launching a drone strike. This restriction is in place, officials said, because the military’s drone campaign is closely tied to counter-terrorism operations conducted by Yemeni special operations troops.
* FOLKS... CLEARLY THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION HAS COMPLETELY CAPTURED THE CIA AND THUS "TRUST" THEM MORE THAN OUR MILITARY. IS THIS WHAT AMERICA HAS BECOME...? (THINK OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE WEHRMACHT AND THE SS AND GESTAPO. THINK OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE RED ARMY AND THE POLITICAL OFFICERS... THE COMMISSARS.)
Yemen’s military is fighting its own counterinsurgency battle against Islamic militants, who gained and then lost control over large swaths of the country last year. Often, American military strikes in Yemen are masked as Yemeni government operations.
There have been at least five drone strikes in Yemen since the start of the year, killing at least 24 people. That continues a remarkable acceleration over the past two years in a program that has carried out at least 63 airstrikes since 2009, according to The Long War Journal, a Web site that collects public data on the strikes, with an estimated death toll in the hundreds. Many of the militants reported killed recently were very young and do not appear to have had any important role with Al Qaeda.
* JUST OUT OF CURIOSITY... WHAT IS THE FINANCIAL COST OF THE DRONE WAR? ARE WE SPENDING TENS OF THOUSANDS... HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS... OR MILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO KILL EACH INDIVIDUAL 15 YEAR OLD "TERRORIST" WHEN THE MATH IS DONE?
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
“Even with Al Qaeda, there are degrees — some of these young guys getting killed have just been recruited and barely known what terrorism means,” said Naji al Zaydi, a former governor of Marib Province, who has been a vocal opponent of Al Qaeda and a supporter of Yemen’s president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
In one recent case, on Jan. 23, a drone strike in a village east of Sana killed a 21-year-old university student named Saleem Hussein Jamal and his cousin, a 33-year-old teacher named Ali Ali Nasser Jamal, who happened to have been traveling with him. According to relatives and neighbors of the two men, they were driving home from a nearby town called Jahana when five strangers offered to pay them for a ride. The drone-fired missile hit the vehicle, a twin-cab Toyota Hilux, just outside the village of Masnaa at about 9 p.m. The strangers were later identified in Yemeni news reports as members of Al Qaeda, though apparently not high-ranking ones.
After the strike, villagers were left to identify their two dead relatives from identity cards, scraps of clothing and the license plate of Mr. Jamal’s Toyota; the seven bodies were shredded beyond recognition, as cellphone photos taken at the scene attest. “We found eyes, but there were no faces left,” said Abdullah Faqih, a student who knew both of the dead cousins.
Although most Yemenis are reluctant to admit it publicly, there does appear to be widespread support for the American drone strikes that hit substantial Qaeda figures like Mr. Shihri... ... Moreover, many Yemenis reluctantly admit that there is a need for foreign help: Yemen’s own efforts to strike at the terrorist group have often been compromised by weak, divided military forces; widespread corruption; and even support for Al Qaeda within pockets of the intelligence and security agencies.
* FINE. BUT THAT'S LIKE SAYING ONE APPLAUDS AN ALCOHOLIC DOCTOR WHO SUCCESSFULLY SAVES A PATIENT'S LIFE EVEN THOUGH HE SHOULD STILL HAVE HIS MEDICAL LICENSE PULLED BECAUSE HE OFTEN OPERATES WHILE DRUNK AND OFTEN KILLS HIS PATIENTS THROUGH DRUNKENNESS AND INCOMPETENCE!
In some cases, drones have killed members of Al Qaeda when it seemed that they might easily have been arrested or captured, according to a number of Yemeni officials and tribal figures. One figure in particular has stood out: Adnan al Qadhi, who was killed, apparently in a drone strike, in early November in a town near the capital. Mr. Qadhi was an avowed supporter of Al Qaeda, but he also had recently served as a mediator for the Yemeni government with other jihadists, and was drawing a government salary at the time of his death. He was not in hiding, and his house is within sight of large houses owned by a former president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and other leading figures.
Whatever the success of the drone strikes, some Yemenis wonder why there is not more reliance on their country’s elite counter-terrorism unit, which was trained in the United States... ... One member of the unit, speaking on the condition of anonymity, expressed great frustration that his unit had not been deployed on such missions, and had in fact been posted to traffic duty in the capital in recent weeks, even as the drone strikes intensified. “For sure, we could be going after some of these guys,” the officer said. “That’s what we’re trained to do, and the Americans trained us. It doesn’t make sense.”
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