Most Republican 2012ers Back the Tax Deal

EU's youngest PM waits as Latvia votes
AFP Latvia votes on Saturday in its first General Election since plunging into the world's deepest Recession two years ago. The ballot is a crucial test for Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis -- at 39, Europe's youngest head of Government -- who is at the helm of an Austerity drive which is part of an international Bailout for the Baltic state. "We took responsibility, we secured the nation's solvency, gradually restored Economic Growth," Dombrovskis said in a pre-election debate. As Latvia...

Latvians vote in crisis elections
Latvians have begun voting in Elections that are expected to reflect anger at the Government's tough Austerity measures in the Baltic state. The vote could determine the country's commitment to its international loan agreements and plans to adopt the euro. Opinion Polls show strong support for an opposition party representing the Russian-speaking majority. But the Polls also suggest that the Government of Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis could return to power. Continue reading the...

Greece seeks Chinese investment as PM visits
Cash-strapped Greece plays host to China's Premier Wen Jiabao on Saturday, hoping to drum up sorely needed investment as Athens battles to emerge from an unprecedented Debt crisis. Greece is hoping to build on the success of existing Chinese investment in the country where shipping giant Cosco is already upgrading and expanding the main port. "Business ties are extensive, especially in the area of shipping and maritime affairs," Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying said in Beijing ahead of the...

Are European Debt Problems Fixed, or Just Papered Over?
Is Europe's economy really healing, or are the Band-Aids pulling loose? Officially, the Continent's fiscal health is on the mend, but each time someone with Political clout declares that the European Debt Crisis is history, some ugly Financial news emerges shortly thereafter to undercut those claims. For example, no sooner did Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero claim that the European Debt Crisis was over than Moody's downgraded Spain's Sovereign Debt....

Envoy urges Bosnians to vote issues, not ethnicity
Bosnians should cast their votes based on economic and Social interests, the top international Envoy urged as the ethnically divided Balkans country headed into an election this weekend. "Do not let yourself be distracted by divisive Speech. Focus on those issues that concern you most in your daily lives, be it education, employment or Social Services," Valentin Inzko said in a message to some 3.1 million eligible voters. Bosnia's voters, deeply divided along lines of three Ethnic Groups --...

A foreign classroom for junior senator
DONETSK, Ukraine — Sen. Barack Obama ducked his head, stepped over a puddle of oil and slowly walked down the dark corridor of a giant weapons factory. A blast of heat made the room feel like a scorching furnace. "Don't touch the orange stuff," warned a worker. "Don't worry," Obama replied. The orange stuff was TNT . A crew of three men, their faces covered by white masks, were melting piles of ammunition. Their job was to extract explosives and render the Soviet-era weapons--some...

Farewell, Bailout Nation?
It was October 2008, and the Financial System—in the US, in England, in the rest of Europe—stood on the precipice. Weeks earlier, Lehman Brothers had declared Bankruptcy and Bank of America had acquired Investment Bank Merrill Lynch on the same day. The next day, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York bailed out American International Group (AIG) to the tune of $85 Billion. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two wounded quasi-governmental housing corporations, were essentially...

Europe's austerity anger grows
More than 100,000 marchers converged on Brussels from across the EU to Protest Austerity measures on Wednesday, while Spanish Unions took the extraordinary step of breaking ranks with Spain's Socialist Government by launching a general strike. © Associated Press Riot Police confront demonstrators during Riots in Barcelona on Wednesday Workers are on the streets today with a clear message to Europe's leaders," said John Monks, head of the European Trade Union Confederation. "There is a...

Clashes at German demo as 50,000 rally
AFP Tens of thousands of people rallied in the southwestern city of Stuttgart Friday to Protest against a contentious Rail project, a day after Riot Police clashed with demonstrators. Chants of "Shame on You!" and a cacophony of Vuvuzelas rang out from the crowd, hours after Chancellor Angela Merkel had appealed for calm. Organisers put the numbers at more than 100,000 people, while Police estimated half that number. The night before Police used water cannons, Tear Gas and batons to disperse...

Fallout spreads from Russian spy death
The fallout from the suspicious death of a former KGB agent in London reached the highest levels of Government this evening, as Britain's top ministers and security officials met to discuss the case. The Cobra Cabinet emergency committee, which met after the July 7 bombings and the discovery of the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic Aircraft this summer, convened after doctors found traces of polonium-210, a highly toxic radioactive substance, in the urine of Alexander Litvinenko, a former...

Those Damn Republican Landmines
Also bad for the Democrats was the rather stealthy nature of the early stages of the Gulf mess. One reason that Bush II caught it after Katrina was because it was all too obvious that a Big Hurricane was heading for a city that everyone knew was inadequately protected due to a failure of Big Government to be Big enough to properly protect impoverished New Orleans. You had to be way off your game to not be ready for that one. The BP affair in contrast started out rather low key, it was hard to...

Summit to ask for binding climate deal
AFP The European Union and Asia will issue a joint call for a "binding" Climate Change deal at a summit of nearly 50 nations next week, according to a draft of the final statement. The draft document, obtained by AFP on Friday, says leaders of the 48-nation Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Brussels "share the goal of reaching urgently a fair, effective and comprehensive legally binding outcome" on Climate Change. "Deep cuts in Global emissions are required" to ensure the increase in Global...

Euro-zone debt crisis is over, Spain's leader says
By SANTIAGO PéREZ NEW YORK—Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero declared that the European Debt crisis is over but said that the governments have to work better together and with Markets to stave off such events. Joe Fornabaio for The Wall Street Journal Zapatero Tuesday in New York. Journal Community Europe's Debt Crisis View Interactive "I believe that the Debt crisis affecting Spain, and the euro zone in general, has passed," Mr. Zapatero said in an...

Hundreds protest outside Iceland parliament
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the Iceland's parliament in Reykjavik on Friday, voicing their anger at home Foreclosures in a country still aching from the Global economic Crisis.

Baltic States: Pentagon's Training Grounds For Afghan and Future Wars
The year after Romania was brought into NATO's ranks, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed an agreement with its government to acquire the use of four Military Bases in the country, including the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base in southeast Romania near the Black Sea which had been used two years before for the invasion of Iraq. Romanian President Traian Basescu paid his first official visit to Washington to meet with President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Rice and Secretary of...

Obama hires Blackwater, again
Spencer Ackerman at Wired reports : Never mind the dead civilians. Forget about the stolen guns. Get over the Murder arrests, the Fraud allegations, and the accusations of guards pumping themselves up with Steroids and Cocaine. Through a “joint venture,” the notorious private security firm Blackwater has won a piece of a five-year State Department contract worth up to $10 Billion, Danger Room has learned. The company won the contract under one of its many alternate names,...

Bill Clinton, Russia And The Settlements
Bill Clinton has weighed in on the issue, laying the blame for the fragile state of the Peace Talks not only on the settlement issue, but on Israel's Russian-born immigrant population in particular. Clinton describes the Russian Jews who emigrated to Israel in huge numbers following the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 as the hardest of the hardline segments in Israel. Russian Jews moved to the settlement blocks in large numbers and now that they are there, they don't want to leave, providing...

Cannibals Converge on Washington
By the tens of thousands, so-called Progressives, Socialists, Communists, and their Unions will be gathering in Washington for a call to armsone final putsch before November 2nd. They will come by car, by train, by rented bus , to make demands, not for freedom or honor as marchers have in the pastbut for greater Redistribution of Wealth, more burdensome regulations, more Unions, and they want Jobs too . [Provided by whom?] It is with this in mind, as they climb aboard...

Ed Driscoll.com: The Birth Of The Modern
· The Future and its Enemies · The Return of the Primitive · War And Anti-War He takes a while getting there (all of which very much well worth your time), but David Gelernter makes a great observation near the end of an article titled, " Defeat at Any Price ". World War I created the modern world, from the map of the modern Middle East , to the Russian Revolution of 1917, which ultimately birthed not just the Soviet Union, buts also led to the creation of jealous...

Russia And India Hold Joint Military Exercises
Defence cooperation is one of the most important and longstanding aspects of our relationship with India. This cooperation began in the 1960s, soon after the Indo-Chinese border conflict. Our defence cooperation has been ongoing since then, despite some interruptions in the 1990s due to factors beyond our control, notably the collapse of the Soviet Union, when many Soviet-era structures were dismantled and Russian ones were only just emerging. It was a difficult period, because Russia supplied...

Russia thwarts twin attacks in Caucasus
AFP Russian security forces have deactivated two potentially devastating bombs, one mysteriously attached to a Dead Body, in a city on the fringes of the troubled Northern Caucasus region. One bomb was attached to the body in a car parked near a cafe in the southern city of Stavropol, a regional centre to the north of the Caucasus mountains, an area dogged by a deadly Islamist Insurgency, the National Anti-Terrorist Committee (NAC) said. Police later found another bomb nearby, disguised to look...

Modern-day Exodus
For anyone involved in the Soviet Jewry movement from the Russians trapped behind the Iron Curtain to the ordinary Jews who took up their cause our Gal Beckermans triumphant new book, When They Comes For Us, Well Be Gone, is a stirring reminder of the power of peoplehood. Peoplehood has become a word both hackneyed and politicized, but in its purest sense, it speaks to the ennobling, impervious bonds that link Jew to Jew. That, in the end, was what propelled this...