Euro-socialism Under Stress - Ireland Takes $89 Billion From The EU

EU agrees on $89 billion bailout loan for Ireland

If the government supported lifestyle has shown to be unsustainable why protest the austerity cuts?

For those who long for the day where capitalism will fall - tell me - Where did the money for the bailout come from?  The gold vault which communism had filled up?

European Union nations agreed to give euro67.5 billion ($89.4 billion) in bailout loans to Ireland on Sunday to help it weather the cost of its massive banking crisis, and sketched out new rules for future emergencies in an effort to restore faith in the euro currency.

The rescue deal, approved by finance ministers at an emergency meeting in Brussels, means two of the eurozone's 16 nations have now come to depend on foreign help and underscores Europe's struggle to contain its spreading debt crisis. The fear is that with Greece and now Ireland shored up, speculative traders will target the bloc's other weak fiscal links, particularly Portugal.

In Dublin, Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen said his country will take euro10 billion immediately to boost the capital reserves of its state-backed banks, whose bad loans were picked up by the Irish government but have become too much to handle. Another euro25 billion will remain in reserve, earmarked for the banks.

The rest of the loans will be used to cover Ireland's deficits for the coming four years. EU chiefs also gave Ireland an extra year, until 2015, to reduce its annual deficits to 3 percent of GDP, the eurozone limit. The deficit now stands at a modern European record of 32 percent because of the runaway costs of its bank-bailout program.

Cowen said the accord — reached after two weeks of tense negotiations in Brussels and Dublin to fathom the true depth of the country's cash crisis — "provides Ireland with vital time and space to successfully and conclusively address the unprecedented problems that we've been dealing with since this global economic crisis began."

However, in a surprise accounting move, European and IMF experts decided that Ireland first must run down its own cash stockpile and deploy its previously off-limits pension reserves in the bailout. Until now Irish and EU law had made it illegal for Ireland to use its pension fund to cover current expenditures. This move means Ireland will contribute euro17.5 billion to its own salvation.

Police Blast Their Way Into "Victory" Against Drug Gangs In Rio De Janeiro

Armored vehicles roll into Rio de Janeiro slum

If there is a "Stop Police Violence" movement in Brazil they ought to start a march there soon.

(CNN) -- Authorities launched a massive sweep of the Alemao favela complex in northern Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sunday morning.
Military police told reporters they were entering the virtually impenetrable labyrinth of slums, searching for drug gang leaders and illegal drugs.
CNN affiliate TV Record showed images of armored vehicles entering the slum Sunday morning, followed closely by police trucks and helicopters equipped with military rifles.
Police told TV Record that they had arrested at least nine people, confiscated heavy weapons and seized four tons of marijuana.
On Saturday, police spokesman Mario Sergio Duarte declared an ultimatum against drug gangs in the complex, stating that a military attack was imminent.

Al Gore: I Changed My Mind About Ethanol But There Still Will Be Hell On Earth

Report: Al Gore Reverses View on Ethanol, Blames Politics for Previous Support

So let's see - Al Gore said that his previous defense of Ethanol was in defense of farmers but he expects us to not consider who he might be politically and financially bounded to with regard to "Global Warming"?

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore reportedly has had a change of heart on ethanol, telling a conference on green energy in Europe that he only supported tax breaks for the alternative fuel to pander to farmers in his home state of Tennessee and the first-in-the-nation caucuses state of Iowa.
Speaking at a green energy business conference in Athens sponsored by Marfin Popular Bank, Gore said the lobbyists have wrongly kept alive the program he once touted.
"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," Reuters quoted Gore saying of the U.S. policy that is about to come up for congressional review. "First-generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small.
"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president," the wire service reported Gore saying.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/11/22/report-al-gore-reverses-view-ethanol-blames-politics-previous-support/#ixzz162bw9ywE

2 Lynched And A Beheading In Tiajuana Mexico. Sorry Arizona Governor - This Does Not County As AZ

2 bodies hung from bridge, man beheaded in Tijuana

For Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to take credit for these beheadings in response to criticism from the Left the murderers would have had to go about 2 hours to the east in her state, not Tijuana Mexico.


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TIJUANA, Mexico – Two men were slain and hung from a bridge, another was decapitated and a fourth was shot to death over 24 hours in Tijuana, the latest gruesome killings in a Mexican border city where hopes had risen that cartel violence was decreasing.
The bodies of two men were found hanging from the Los Alamos bridge early Friday, said Fermin Gomez, Baja California state's deputy attorney general for organized crime.
Both victims had their hands and feet bound and one had his head covered with a black plastic bag. One of the bodies fell into traffic when the rope broke.
A day earlier, a human head was found underneath another bridge in Tijuana, which sits across from San Diego, California. The body of the 24-year-old man was found 12 hours later alongside the highway from Tijuana to the beach town of Ensenada.
Gomez said the victim, Victor Ramirez, had recently been deported from the United States, though he had no information on the circumstances.
Also Thursday, a man was shot to death while leaving his house in the exclusive Tijuana neighborhood of Chapultepec, and two other people were wounded in a shootout on one of the city's main avenues.
Gomez blamed the killings on feuding between drug-dealing gangs, but declined to give details.
Beheadings, massacres and body hangings had initially declined in Tijuana since the January arrest of Teodoro "El Teo" Garcia Simental, one of two crime bosses who had been waging a bloody turf war in the city.
President Felipe Calderon even visited Tijuana last month and touted it as a success story in his nearly four-year-old drug war, noting during a festival to promote the city's industries that homicides are down from a peak in 2008.
Days after his visit, drug gangs started beheading rivals and hanging bodies from bridges again. On Oct. 24, armed men burst into a Tijuana drug rehab center and killed 13 recovering addicts.
Prosecutors say they are investigating whether the rehab massacre was related to a record seizure of nearly 135 tons of marijuana the previous week.
The latest killings come two weeks after U.S. authorities made one of the largest marijuana seizures in San Diego, confiscating more than 20 tons of pot that was smuggled in through a tunnel connecting warehouses on either side of the border. Mexican authorities seized more than four tons of pot from the warehouse on their side of the border.
Meanwhile, the lawyer for alleged drug kingpin Edgar "La Barbie" Valdez Villareal said Friday that the Mexican government will not deport the U.S. citizen for prosecution in the United States.
The government considers Valdez, son of Mexican-born parents, a Mexican national who must go through the more complicated extradition process to be sent out of the country, attorney Kent Schaffer said.
Mexico has increasingly extradited high-profile drug kingpins to the U.S. under Calderon, a way to prevent them from running cartels from corrupt Mexican prisons.
Mexican officials in October extended a 40-day limit for holding Valdez without charge and that expires after this weekend, so they must decide whether to try him in Mexico.
Schaffer said both he and the U.S. Justice Department want Valdez to be prosecuted in the United States, where he is wanted on cocaine smuggling charges in three states. Schaffer said an extradition request had yet to be filed. U.S. Department of Justice officials could not be reached late Friday.
The Mexican attorney general's office would say only that Valdez was still being held and the investigation continued.
Valdez, a former Texas high school football player, was arrested Aug. 30 by federal police on his ranch outside Mexico City.
Described by authorities as a former ally of Mexico's most-wanted kingpin, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Valdez allegedly had been fighting for control of the notorious Beltran Leyva gang after Mexican marines killed its leader in late 2009. The warring factions were responsible for brutality and bloodshed from Cuernavaca south of Mexico City to the state of Guerrero and the resort city of Acapulco on the Pacific coast.

Americans Have The Luxury To "Sweat The Small Stuff" - Bristol Palin On "Dancing On Stars"

What could start a new civil war in the United States?

1. Our government inching closer to insolvency?
2. Massive Unemployment with little hope of  a return to normalcy?
3. A blanket of crime that floats over certain areas?

NOPE!!!!

BRISTOL PALIN AS A CATALYST FOR THE WARRING FACTION OF POLITICOS 

It doesn't take much to set them off.

Despite the fact that the political institutions in our nation being primary in governing the key civic services in all of our lives some people's small minds prevent them from seeing that "Dancing With The Stars", "American Idol", "I Think I Can Dance" or "The Gong Show" do not rise to this same level of importance.

We Need An International Perspective On The News Now More Than Ever

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During the Iraq War we were told of the need to get an international perspective on the news as a means of countering the information that we were being fed by the American media.  I believe that today this mandate is even more important.

Hugo Chavez Confiscates Apartment Complexes Accused Of "Housing Fraud"

'Act of justice': Venezuela seizes apartments

CARACAS, Venezuela — Facing a wave of criticism from business leaders, President Hugo Chavez is defending his order for government officials to seize control of residential complexes.

Chavez promised Sunday to crack down on construction and real estate companies that he accused of unjustly boosting prices, which he labeled "housing fraud."

The president, a self-proclaimed revolutionary who idolizes Cuba's Fidel Castro and is currently on a visit to Havana, called his decision last week to order the expropriation of six residential complexes and "the temporary occupation" of eight gated communities in Caracas and other cities "an act of justice."

'Organized crime'
Venezuela's consumer protection agency and state prosecutors are investigating complaints that construction companies and real estate firms are illegally charging buyers high interest on unfinished apartments, even though the buyers settled on a price years ago and made down payments.

"We have decided to put an end to this type of organized crime," Chavez wrote in his weekly newspaper column.

Companies accused of violating consumer-protection regulations deny any wrongdoing.

Apartment owners affected by the measures have had mixed reactions.

Some don't like having soldiers posted near their homes or fear the measure could encourage pro-Chavez squatters to invade buildings still under construction. Others applaud the measure, saying it has protected them from unscrupulous business practices.

In some mostly middle-class residential complexes, groups of neighbors have implemented security measures aimed at keeping squatters out, such as organizing around-the-clock surveillance teams and putting a siren at entrances to be sounded in case of emergency.

In Georgia - First Jew Elected To Statewide Office

Sam Olens breaks through an ancient Georgia barrier

Though the "Black / White" divide receives more attention, the struggle of Jewish Americans in electoral politics is a reality as well.

The Government Can Legally Steal Your Money After All

Birmingham man wins $20K at casino, loses it in Windsor tunnel seizure Read more: Birmingham man wins $20K at casino, loses it in Windsor tunnel seizure


This is some B.S.

How does lying about your currency declaration to Customs give the US government the "right" to TAKE your money?

Yes - take the taxes due on the spot.
NO - to taking the lions share of the money.

I Am Glad That The 2010 Election Season Is Over!!!!

America really needs to check itself on the campaigns that leads up to the elections.   There is far too much ignorance and negativity expressed in many of these campaigns.  This does nothing more than to stoke the group think and tribalism within the ranks of Americans.

Worst of all these contentious groups do nothing more than sell false hope that will never come true for the majority of their loyal supporters.   The United States has a $13,000 billion deficit because the promises have outlasted the MONEY to pay for them.

I believe that the present political system that is charged with assigning the stewards of the national treasury is ultimately the main threat to the treasury and the ultimate financial solvency for the nation.  Sadly neither party is charged with prioritizing the long term best interests of the nation.  We respond to the latest crisis at hand.  The previous shot gun decisions often imperil us in the future.

The short term election night high or depression that is suffered as "your side" wins or loses should not be mistaken for the long term situation that will undoubtedly impact the entire "ship" that both are riding on.

No I don't have a better systems to offer.   Unfortunately the long term fiscal un-viability of this entire fiat economy is going to be the most prominent force that precipitates a change.

Christians Are Loved In Iraq. They Make Good Hostages

Baghdad church seige ends with 47 dead

BAGHDAD — Iraqi security forces stormed a Baghdad church where militants had taken an entire congregation hostage for four hours, leaving at least 47 people dead, including a priest, Iraqi officials said Monday.

It was not immediately clear whether the hostages died at the hands of the attackers or during the rescue late on Sunday night in an affluent neighborhood of the capital.

The incident began when militants wearing suicide vests and armed with grenades attacked the Iraqi stock exchange at dusk Sunday before turning their attention to the nearby Our Lady of Deliverance church — one of Baghdad's main Catholic places of worship — taking about 120 Christians hostage.

Officials said at least one priest and 10 policemen were among the dead. Many of the 62 wounded were women.

The casualty information came from police and officials at hospitals where the dead and wounded were taken. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

There were conflicting accounts about the number of attackers involved in the assault, with Baghdad military spokesman Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi saying Sunday night that security forces killed eight, while the U.S. military said between five and seven died.