Today's lesson in Sharia law: Saudi Arabia beheads woman for 'witchcraft'

The unindicted co-conspirators known as CAIR hardest hit.

A woman was beheaded in Saudi Arabia for practicing witchcraft and sorcery, the kingdom's Interior Ministry said, prompting Amnesty International to call for a halt in executions there.

Amina bint Abdel Halim Nassar was executed Monday for having "committed the practice of witchcraft and sorcery," according to an Interior Ministry statement. Nassar was investigated before her arrest and was "convicted of what she was accused of based on the law," the statement said. Her beheading took place in the Qariyat province of the region of Al-Jawf, the ministry said.

In a statement issued late Monday, the human rights group called the execution "deeply shocking" and said it "highlights the urgent need for a halt in executions in Saudi Arabia."

"While we don't know the details of the acts which the authorities accused Amina of committing, the charge of sorcery has often been used in Saudi Arabia to punish people, generally after unfair trials, for exercising their right to freedom of speech or religion," said Philip Luther, Amnesty International's interim director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme.

The real tragedy, according to CAIR insiders, is the public relations hit their political system religion is taking over incidents like this.

Outrage: Planned South Korean Towers Will Resemble Planes Smashing Into World Trade Center

In what civilized country could this be considered acceptable?

The unveiling of pictures of planned luxury residential towers scheduled to be built in Seoul, South Korea, has sparked instant controversy. The reason is obvious. The towers, which include a so-called “cloud” feature connecting them around the 27th floors, clearly resemble the World Trade Towers in the process of collapsing following the 9/11 attacks.

The designers of the towers, Dutch architectural firm MVRDV, have responded to the controversy by quickly publishing an apology in English. “It was not our intention to create an image resembling the attacks,” the designers insist, “nor did we see the resemblance during the design process.”

They did not see the resemblance during the design process? The problem with this assertion – apart from its inherent implausibility – is that they have admitted the contrary in Dutch. Thus Jan Knikker of MVRDV told the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, “I have to admit that we also thought of the 9/11 attacks.”

Eh, Jan - may I suggest you try roasting yourself in a hot stove for, say, an hour -- so you can better empathize with the victims of the WTC attacks?

Investment Tip: Make 343% On Your Money With Easy-to-Buy, Low-Risk Greek Bonds*

*Of course, I'm not an investment professional, so your mileage may vary.

Word from Europe is that its central bank (the ECB) is prohibited from buying the massive amounts of PIIGS debt that will soon need refinancing, the latest rumour-o-the-week (gratuitous limey spelling) that had ramped equity prices.

The main news in today's European roundup is the reiteration by ECB president Mario Draghi EU Treaty Prohibits "Monetary Financing":

At a news conference in Frankfurt, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said on Thursday that the European Union treaty prohibits "monetary financing." He was responding to a reporter's question about why the central bank doesn't ramp up its bond-buying program...

...The market has rallied for weeks on expectation the ECB would eventually get around to a massive bond buying program. The irony is Draghi personally fueled rumors the CEB would step up purchases...

So Draghi got out of this what he wanted: A big plunge in Italian and Spanish debt yields, by doing nothing more than yapping.

The second irony is that Draghi is in essence a liar. He cannot come out and say the ECB is providing "monetary financing" with its bond purchases, even though that is exactly what the ECB is doing.

The bond market is saying that the PIIGS' debt -- incurred by the massive social welfare states that the Obama Democrats are duplicating here -- will never be paid back.

The equity markets have yet to admit defeat.

One is wrong and one is right. I leave that choice as an exercise for the reader.

Good News: Saudi Prince Calls for Six Additional Arab Countries to Acquire Nukes

More evidence of 'the Arab Spring':

On 5 December Prince bin Turki al Faisal, speaking at the “The Gulf and the Globe” conference in the Saudi capital Riyadh urged the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to become a powerful regional bloc by establishing a unified armed force and defense structure.

While bin Turki’s call for the GCC to pool its military resources is nothing new, his idea of supporting Gulf countries acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) if Israel and Iran do not constrain their nuclear programs represents the edge of a precipitously slippery slope.

Bin Turki told his audience, "Why shouldn't we commence the building of a unified military force, with a clear chain of command. But, if our efforts and the efforts of the world community fail to bring about the dismantling of the Israeli arsenal of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and preventing Iran from acquiring the same, then why shouldn't we at least study seriously all available options, including acquiring WMDs, so that our future generations will not blame us for neglecting any courses of action that will keep looming dangers away from us."

...Bin Turki’s comments should not be dismissed lightly... [he is] the son of the late King Faisal, is a grandson of the late King Abdul-Azizz, brother of Foreign Minister Prince Saud and Prince Khalid, Governor of Mecca province and a nephew of the current King Abdullah... Bin Turki is currently a co-chair of the C100 Group, an organization set up to foster understanding between Islamic countries and the West and is head of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies.

All praise due to Obama.

It begins: bank runs break out in Greece, following the contours of the sovereign debt crisis

Following the path of the sovereign debt crisis, the Eurozone's bank runs have begun.

Anxious Greeks Emptying Their Bank Accounts

Many Greeks are draining their savings accounts because they are out of work, face rising taxes or are afraid the country will be forced to leave the euro zone. By withdrawing money, they are forcing banks to scale back their lending -- and are inadvertently making the recession even worse.

Georgios Provopoulos, the governor of the central bank of Greece, is a man of statistics, and they speak a clear language. "In September and October, savings and time deposits fell by a further 13 to 14 billion euros. In the first 10 days of November the decline continued on a large scale," he recently told the economic affairs committee of the Greek parliament... the outflow of funds from Greek bank accounts has been accelerating rapidly. At the start of 2010, savings and time deposits held by private households in Greece totalled €237.7 billion ... [but] the Greeks today only have €170 billion in savings -- almost 30 percent less than at the start of 2010.

...Nikoloudis has detected a further trend. At first, it was just a few people trying to withdraw large sums of money. Now it's large numbers of people moving small sums. Ypatia K., a 55-year-old bank worker from Athens, can confirm that. "The customers, especially small savers, have recently been withdrawing sums of €3,000, €4,000 or €5,000. That was panic," she said.

For those who insist it couldn't happen here, a word of caution: it can and it has, as recently as 2008.

The 2008 financial crisis displayed characteristics of a classic bank run, but people holding bank accounts weren't the ones scrambling to get their cash. It was lenders demanding their money from other financial institutions.

Indeed, today's panics are more likely to involve major financial institutions and are largely hidden from plain sight until they are severe enough to trigger plunging stock prices, bankruptcies, layoffs and rising unemployment. And the current European crisis is a reminder that some of the vulnerabilities exposed in 2008 still exist.

These panics often originate in the shadows of the banking system, where major financial institutions do business with one another... [and] the size of shadow-banking activities [are] roughly $60 trillion as of 2010—a sum that represents 25% to 30% of the total global financial system.

At best, shadow banking offers financial institutions a source of funding and liquidity on a day-to-day basis. At worst, it allows the buildup of leverage and systemic risk, as the 2008 financial crisis revealed. Gary Gorton, a Yale University professor and leading researcher in this field, has documented that the crisis was effectively "a run by banks and firms on other banks."

...Given the speed that Europe's debt crisis is unfolding, however, any measures that could help fend off future shadow-banking panics risk coming too late.

The propagand-conomist Paul Krugman -- a proponent of the debt-ridden European social welfare state -- hardest hit.

Presidents Behaving Strangely [Dan from NY]

Dan from NY:

At some point (like now) it’s appropriate to ask Barack Hussein Obama “what can you be thinking?”

12/6/11

'Obama urging US lawmakers to soften Iran sanctions'

By REUTERS

Senator Mark Kirk, co-author of proposal approved 100-0 by Senate to penalize foreign financial institutions that do business with Iran's central bank, says Obama administration trying to undermine sanctions.

Dan, I beg to differ. This isn't 'strange' behavior on the part of President Obama.

He's doing precisely what he was taught to do.

Euro-Bomb!

Guess the one word that describes the Eurozone (hint: it starts with 'S' and ends with 'crewed').

In simple terms, this is the stark reality: now that debt and risk have been repriced, Europe's debts are completely, totally unpayable. There is no way to keep adding to the Matterhorn of debt at the old cheap rate of interest, and there is no way to roll over the trillions of euros in debt that are coming due at the old near-zero rates.

Never mind actually paying down debt, sovereign, corporate and private--the repricing of risk and debt mean even the interest payments are unpayable. Consider this chart of one tiny slice of total EU debt:

There is no way to push the repricing genie back in the bottle, and so there is no way to roll over this debt and add to it--and to support the high-cost structure of Euroland's welfare-state governments and their astounding debt, then debt must be added, and in staggering quantities.

...[The] repricing has already occurred, and cannot be revoked or shoved back in the bottle. The Great European Debt Bubble has already burst, and so now it boils down to a simple choice: debt serfdom or open rebellion against the banks that profited so handsomely from the euro-fantasy.

There is no middle ground, as the debt cannot be repaid, not now and not in the future. It cannot be reshuffled, masked, or hidden; it can only be renounced.

It's your choice, Europe; choose wisely. If you want a model for sanity and growth, look to Iceland. They renounced their unpayable debts and debt-serfdom, and let the market reprice their currency, debt and risk. The nightmare is past for them; they chose wisely. Now it's your turn to choose.

The debt-serfdom will fall to you, not the banks or your Elites.

And if you find yourself mildly amused by the collapse of Europe's social democrat welfare states, a word of warning. We're next.

Media Struggle To Keep Their 'Narrative' Alive [Dan from NY]

Dan from NY:

Here’s a rather factual news story from the UK's Telegraph reporting the rise of the Islamist bloc in the wake of Egyptian elections. It's headlined Egypt elections: Islamists seize two-thirds of votes.

But let's review the last paragraph and the Muslim Brotherhood line spoon-fed and eagerly swallowed by the Telegraph’s reporter. See if you can stop yourself from laughing.

###

Seeking to allay the fears of Egyptian liberals, Essam el-Erian, the deputy leader of the Freedom and Justice party, said: “We represent a moderate and fair party. We want to apply the basics of Sharia law in a fair way that respects human rights and personal rights.”

The ludicrous Bill Kristol hardest hit.

Excellent News: Your Federal Government Training IT Workers In Asia and Europe... So They Can Outsource American Jobs

Gee, but there's nothing to cut!

U.S. Supports the Development of the IT Sector in Kyrgyzstan

The U.S. Government, through the United States Agency for International Development’s Local Development Program, will for the first time conduct a roundtable in partnership with IT experts from Kyrgyzstan. The roundtable will take place on November 29, at 15.30, at the Park Hotel (87 Orozbekova str., Bishkek).

In other words, your tax dollars are helping to strengthen the technology sector in Asia.

This comes on the heels of last year's news that the U.S. is training thousands of foreign workers as potential outsourcers of American jobs.

U.S. To Train 3,000 Offshore IT Workers

Despite President Obama's pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $36 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia...

...Following their training, the tech workers will be placed with outsourcing vendors in the region that provide offshore IT and business services to American companies looking to take advantage of the Asian subcontinent's low labor costs...

...USAID is contributing about $10 million to the effort

USAID is also funding an effort in Armenia to train IT workers for additional outsourcing of American jobs, though it won't say how much it's spending there.

Criminal stupidity or naked malevolence: which is it?

Absolute Must Watch: The Anti-Israel President

You'll get chills watching this.

Click here to pass it on.


Via: Right Scoop.

King warns of 'spiral' into systemic economic crisis and... weakened banks

The governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King, offered some disturbing and silly remarks to the public today.

Eurozone woes have created “an exceptionally threatening environment” as falling government bond prices, eroding confidence and asset fire sales threaten to “spiral” into a systemic financial crisis, the governor of the Bank of England has warned... King urged the UK financial system to continue building up capital against an “extraordinarily serious” situation it had not created and could not solve.

“The crisis in the euro area is one of solvency not liquidity. And the interconnectedness of major banks means the banking systems and economies around the world are all affected. Only the governments directly involved can find a way out of this crisis,” he said.

Underscoring their concern, Sir Mervyn and Hector Sants, head of the Financial Services Authority, revealed that the watchdog was allowing UK banks to dip into their liquidity buffers when they encountered funding squeezes.

Far be it from me to second-guess a genius like Sir Mervyn, but doesn't alerting the public to potential shortages of liquid capital at retail financial institutions risk, er, bank runs?

Saudis fear there will be ‘no more virgins’ and people will turn gay if female drive ban is lifted

That's not even my headline: that's the real thing from London's Daily Mail:

Repealing a ban on women drivers in Saudi Arabia would result in ‘no more virgins’, the country’s religious council has warned.

A ‘scientific’ report claims relaxing the ban would also see more Saudis - both men and women - turn to homosexuality and pornography.

The startling conclusions were drawn by Muslim scholars at the Majlis al-Ifta’ al-A’ala, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council, working in conjunction with Kamal Subhi, a former professor at the King Fahd University.

Their report assessed the possible impact of repealing the ban in Saudi Arabia, the only country in the world where women are not allowed behind the wheel... [and] was delivered to all 150 members of the Shura Council, the country’s legislative body.

The report warns that allowing women to drive would ‘provoke a surge in prostitution, pornography, homosexuality and divorce’.

Within ten years of the ban being lifted, the report’s authors claim, there would be ‘no more virgins’ in the Islamic kingdom.

And it pointed out ‘moral decline’ could already be seen in other Muslim countries where women are allowed to drive... The astonishing report comes after Shaima Jastaniya, a 34-year-old Saudi woman, was sentenced to 10 lashes with a whip after being caught driving in Jeddah.

Well, it was a 'scientific' study and therefore, like global warming, the matter must be settled.

Mission Accomplished! America's Job Market Begins to Resemble Europe's

Excellent charts from the Wall Street Journal's graphics feed (@WSJgraphics):

As the U.S. tries to dodge Europe's debt crisis, the job market is starting to look a lot like Europe's.

Which is the point, I suppose.

While America Gave Thanks, the Fat Lady Sang in the Eurozone

Contagion continued to rake the Eurozone today, reflected in 10-year bond yields and elsewhere:

...we thought we would once again remind readers just what the very simple math behind the entire spectacle is, which Europe tries so hard to ignore with each passing day. Because at the end of the day it is a very simple tension: there is massive demand for fresh cash in the form of 1.7 EUR trillion in maturing debt (ignoring interest payments)...

Of this Morgan Stanley says, "Policy makers and investors have consistently underestimated the bank funding roll as a transmission mechanism of sovereign fears into the banks and real economy."

...[The rollover funding crunch] is precisely what Europe is now fighting each and every day with, coming up with crazier and crazier plans to mask the fact that no matter what, there simply is not enough cash...

...Because while the [above] chart shows cash demand needs, the ... one [below] shows that when it comes to cash 'supply', or said otherwise issuance of unsecured debt, the market is now completely and totally dead. Indeed, November issuance is just laughable as the red-boxed region so vividly demonstrates.

...And that, in two charts is that - everything else is hype, rhetoric, smoke and mirrors.

Or, in terms even progressives can understand, it's Game Over for the grand European Democrat Social Welfare State™ experiment they desperately tried to make America emulate for lo these many decades.

The Truth About Ron Paul: Delusional, Power-Hungry and Dangerous

Interviewed on Neal Cavuto's Fox News show this afternoon, GOP presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul claimed that "a third of the crowd was with me last night [at the debate] and more than a third of the country is with my ideas."

Really?

So a third of the country agrees with:

• A man who claims that bloodthirsty Islamist terrorists are morally equivalent to Americans?

• A man who vocally encourages the despicable 9/11 Truther movement?

• A man who embraces virulent anti-semites and is inspired by those who despise Jews?

• A man whose foreign policy prescriptions are so "far left" that they are outright dangerous?

• A man whose strongest supporters vilify Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Ed Meese, Sarah Palin, etc.?

• A man who despises Israel, a beacon of freedom in an otherwise barbaric Middle East?

• A man so power-hungry that he refuses to rule out a third-party run, which would very likely help reelect Barack Obama?

Jeffrey Lord offers the quintessential summary of Ron Paul for conservatives:

The Ron Paul campaign is really about re-educating America to what can only be called Neoliberalism. Which, based on the evidence and writings of its supporters, appears to be a thin gruel of free markets and non-interventionism seasoned heavily with anti-Semitism, morally obtuse Neo-Confederates, and an outspoken contempt for both conservatism and conservative leaders past and present.

Brother, can you spare $2.1 trillion? Eurozone needs a cash infusion "ten times bigger than TARP"

The head of the Carlyle Group, Oliver Sarkozy, just left CNBC's cheerleaders aghast as he described the scale of the Eurozone crisis.

The math I'm working with is very simple.

In the U.S. banking sector, we had $3 trillion of wholesale funding that needed to be stabilized, got stabilized by the implementation of TARP which saw the U.S. treasury buy $212 billion worth of preferred in the banking sector to stabilize that $3 trillion, give our banks the time to work through their problem their problem assets.

In Europe, that $3 trillion is $30 trillion. So if you multiply the $212 by ten, you get the $2.12 trillion. In my view, the issues on the European banks are bigger than the issues on the books of the US banks. So if you want to stabilize that $30 trillion and in my view it's not that you want to, it's that you have to, you do not have a choice, you're going to have to be at least at $2.1 trillion and I suspect it may need to be more.

In other words, the Eurozone needs a cash infusion that is ten times the size of TARP*.

I'll check the couch to see if there's a spare $2.1 trillion that fell under the cushions.

* Pssst: hey, liberals -- Europe's imploding model is one your heroes Barack Obama and Paul Krugman keep trying to emulate. Hint: it don't work.

Contagion

Today's 10-year yields for the sovereign debt of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) confirm that Europe's debt crisis has spiraled out of control.

The can-kicking appears to have come to an end:

The time has come to confront an ugly truth: The possibility that the Eurozone will break up, or rather fall apart, is growing increasingly likely.

In fact, I'd say given recent developments in Italy the probability of a breakup is as high as 40%... [and] a Eurozone split would be bad news - no matter which way it happened.

Germany would survive an orderly breakup and do well in a tight-money default, but fare poorly in a period of hyperinflation. Conversely non-Eurozone Eastern Europe would do well in an orderly breakup and survive hyperinflation, but it would be battered by a tight-money default.

At the end of the day there are no easy answers on this one. The best you can do is to find markets with little economic connection to Europe - and even that's not easy.

The Eurozone is dead, whether or not the coroner has been called.

Hilarity in the White House Press Room: European Reporter Rips Obamaconomy for "Worse than Eurozone" Debt Levels

Today, as the Eurozone melted down in a debt-fueled replay of the 2008 Lehman crisis, a curious scene unfolded in the White House press room.

In an apparent suggestion of United States hypocrisy on debt issues, a journalist in the German media challenged White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on the role of the United States in responding to the European debt crisis.

"The U.S., as far as I know, has a worse debt-to-GDP ratio than the whole eurozone, and we are talking about the eurozone, not about the United States and that Congress can't get its act together," said a member of the German press during the briefing. "So from the European perspective, it seems that this country is in a bigger mess than Europe.  We are not proud where we are.  We know that it's slow and not bold, and so on, but at least they are doing something; they are deciding something, they're trying to pull that through.  And here, nothing is happening -- third time this year," he added, referring to the Supercommittee failure.

..."I don't think it's helpful to get into which side of the Atlantic handles its problems better or worse," Carney responded. "I think each side needs to -- we need to act and the Congress needs to act, this country needs to act.  And obviously, as I just discussed in answer to a question earlier, the Europeans need to move forward with rapid implementation of their plans."

That answer, with its recommendation regarding European action, did not seem to satisfy Carney's interlocutor, who began to ask "do you have [any] understanding -- the feeling in the eurozone, I said, it’s not really a time where the U.S. is in a position to give advice to Europe."

The debt ceiling debacle. The "debt commission", ignored by the very man who created it. The continuing resolution collapse. The bogus balanced-budget amendment.

Every single effort to contain the devastating federal spending addiction has been opposed not only by the Marxist left, but by John Boehner, Eric Cantor and the rest of the big government RINOs.

As Michelle Malkin puts it, "The disease [is e]ntrenched incumbency. The cure? Fresh fiscal conservative blood. Remember in November."

How guys like Corzine and Madoff get dealt with in China

When stories like this come down the pike, I get to thinkin' there are a couple o' things about Red China I actually like.

As reported today in the Suzhou evening news:

Former President Shen Changfu of China Mobile Telecom Chongjing Co, Ltd was sentenced to death on charges of taking bribes of over 36 million RMB. (Around $6 million U.S.D)

On 17Nov, 2011 his son Shen Juncheng was sentenced to ten years in prison for taking bribes valued at 13 million RMB ($2M USD) In this case, the son was using his father's connections to support getting new contracts for companies. He was then paid dividends by the companies.

The mentally challenged Thomas Fried-man hardest hit.

Another Day, Another Massacre in Syria

Caution: extremely graphic footage.

Just to keep everything straight in my mind... as I understand it, the Obama Doctrine consists of the president staying completely silent on:

...murders of peaceful protesters by Iran's vicious dictators
...murders of peaceful protesters by Syria's vicious dictator
...the Occupy kooks who riot, rape, pillage and otherwise erode the civil society
...Iran's continual threats to wipe America and Israel "off the face of the Earth"
...murders of Christian Copts by "freedom-loving" Egyptians
...incessant rocket attacks by Hamas into Israel
...the continued build-out of Iran's nuclear weapons program
...murders of Libyan civilians by the late, unlamented dictator Gaddafi
...the transit of the Suez Canal by Iranian warships in an outright provocation of Israel
...Iranian military personnel operating with impunity in Venezuela on missile technology
...a failed narco-terror state descending into civil war on our unprotected southern border
...being found in Contempt of Court by a federal judge over the Gulf drilling moratorium
...defying a de facto injunction by a federal judge who threw out all of Obamacare
...the union thugs who have issued countless threats against Governor Walker

However, the president is willing to courageously speak out on:
...How our Egyptian ally should step down
...Israel's construction of apartments in its capital city
...How awesome unions are for Wisconsin
...How awesome the economic recovery is
...How awesome all of the new green jobs he's saved or created are

Crystal clear.