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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
2/10/2013 10:38:49 PM

New US commander takes the helm in Afghanistan


Associated Press/Omar Sobhani, Reuters, Pool - U.S. Gen. John Allen, left, the outgoing U.S. and NATO- led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) commander in Afghanistan salutes with upcoming U.S. and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force commander in Afghanistan U.S. Gen. Joseph Dunford during a changing of command ceremony in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Feb. 10, 2013. A new U.S. commander is at the helm of international forces in Afghanistan as Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford takes charge at a critical time for President Barack Obama and the military as foreign combat forces prepare to withdraw by the end of 2014. (AP Photo/Omar Sobhani, Reuters, Pool)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford took charge of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan on Sunday as the coalition enters its final stretch of the more than 11-year-old war.

The new commander faces daunting challenges, including making sure Afghan government forces are ready to take control and orchestrating the withdrawal of foreign forces during the next 23 months.

Dunford, who will likely be the last commander of the U.S.-led international military coalition, succeeded Marine Gen. John Allen, who oversaw the buildup of governmental security forces and dealt with a series of setbacks —from Qurans burned at a U.S. base to a spike in deadly insider attacks that killed international troops.

"Today is not about change, it's about continuity," Dunford said during the handover ceremony at the coalition's headquarters in Kabul. "What's not changed is the growing capability of our Afghan partners, the Afghan national security forces. What's not changed is our commitment. More importantly, what's not changed is the inevitability of our success."

The change in command comes at a critical time for President Barack Obama, who may use Tuesday's State of the Union address to announce a timetable for pulling out the remaining American combat forces by the end of 2014 and plans for a residual U.S. force post-2014.

Dunford faces the challenge of overseeing the drawdown of about 100,000 foreign troops, including 66,000 from the United States, and helping the Afghans counter insurgent groups, including the Haqqani network, that show no sign of compromise. The Haqqani network, based in Pakistani tribal areas near the Afghan border, has ties to al-Qaida and is thought to be responsible for many attacks on U.S. and Afghan forces, including the recent spate of so-called insider attacks.

Dunford also must help Afghanistan secure its next presidential election in 2014 — the first ballot since the U.S. invasion that will not include President Hamid Karzai as a candidate.

"Much work lies ahead," Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the ceremony, which was attended by senior Afghan and U.S. military officials. Karzai did not attend.

Relations between the United States and Pakistan have greatly improved in recent months after a series of visits to Islamabad by Allen. Allen has worked to patch up ties after they hit historic lows following a border airstrike in late 2011 that killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers. Allen took Dunford along last week to Islamabad when he paid a farewell visit to the chief of the Pakistani army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

Allen has been nominated to lead NATO forces in Europe after being exonerated in a Pentagon investigation of questionable email exchanges with a Florida woman linked to the sex scandal that led CIA Director David Petraeus to resign.

Allen, 59, of Warrenton, Virginia, was the longest serving commander of U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan so far. Nearly two dozen generals have commanded troops from the United States and other nations in the coalition since the American invasion in late 2001 — with six U.S. generals, including Dunford, running both commands in the past five years alone.

Afghan Defense Minister Bismullah Khan Mohammadi applauded Allen's military campaign against the insurgents.

"The efforts and the role played by Gen. Allen to apply military pressure against the Taliban and terrorists through joint special operations have led to the death and capture of many terrorists and Taliban leaders," Mohammadi said. The operations, he added, allowed Afghan forces to expand their control across areas heavily influenced by the Taliban.

Obama said last month that the Afghans would take over this spring instead of late summer — a decision that could permit a speedier withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan.

Allen said he told Dunford "our victory here will never be marked by a parade or a point in time on a calendar when victory is declared. This insurgency will be defeated over time by the legitimate and well-trained Afghan forces that are emerging today and who are taking the field in full force this spring."

Allen, however, has acknowledged that the Afghans still have work to do to become an effective and self-sufficient fighting force. But he said a vast improvement in their abilities was behind a decision to accelerate the timetable for putting them in the lead nationwide this spring when the traditional fighting season begins.

Although the Afghan security forces are almost at their full strength of 352,000, persistent violence and insider attacks against Americans and other foreign forces have raised concerns about whether they are ready to take on the fight by themselves.

Dunford has to deal with "navigating the drawdown, keeping a sense of calm before (Afghan) presidential elections" and maintaining progress against insider attacks, said Michael O'Hanlon from the Brookings Institution in Washington. "Then, of course, there's the issue of gradually working more closely with Pakistan."

Much depends on the U.S. negotiating a bilateral security agreement with the Afghan government that includes the contentious issue of immunity from Afghan prosecution for any U.S. forces that would remain in Afghanistan after 2014. Karzai has said he will put any such decision in the hands of a council of Afghan elders, known as a Loya Jirga.

Although Dempsey said earlier in the week that the United States had plans to leave a residual force, a failure to strike a deal on immunity would torpedo any security agreement and lead to a complete pullout of U.S. forces after 2014 — as it did in post-war Iraq. It is widely believed that no NATO-member nation would allow its troops to remain after 2014 to train, or engage in counterterrorism activities, without a similar deal.

___

Follow Patrick Quinn on Twitter at www.twitter.com/PatrickAQuinn

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
2/10/2013 10:50:21 PM
Note: Relevant information on Cheney's past activities can be found HERE and HERE.

Cheney criticizes Obama nominees in Wyoming speech

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
2/11/2013 10:35:55 AM

36 dead in stampede at Hindu festival in India

Associated Press/Kevin Frayer - An Indian man weeps as he holds his wife who was killed in a stampede on a railway platform at the main railway station in Allahabad, India, Sunday, Feb. 10, 2013. At least ten Hindu pilgrims attending the Kumbh Mela were killed and more then thirty were injured in a stampede on an overcrowded staircase, according to Railway Ministry sources. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

Indian police carry the body of a pilgrim who was killed in a stampede on a railway platform at the main railway station in Allahabad, India, Sunday, Feb. 10, 2013. At least ten Hindu pilgrims attending the Kumbh Mela were killed and more then thirty were injured in a stampede on an overcrowded staircase, according to Railway Ministry sources. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)
An Indian woman weeps as she and other family members mourn next to the body of a relative who was killed in a stampede on a railway platform at the main railway station in Allahabad, India, Sunday, Feb. 10, 2013. At least ten Hindu pilgrims attending the Kumbh Mela were killed and more then thirty were injured in a stampede on an overcrowded staircase, according to Railway Ministry sources. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)
ALLAHABAD, India (AP) — Anxious relatives were searching for missing family members Monday in a northern India city that is home to one of the world's largest religious gatherings, unsure if their loved ones were caught in a stampede that killed 36 people or had simply gotten lost among the tens of millions of pilgrims.

People thronged to the main hospital in Allahabad to see if their relatives were among 36 dead and 30 people injured in Sunday evening's stampede at the city's train station. Tens of thousands of people were in the station waiting to board a train when railway officials announced a last-minute change in the platform, triggering the chaos.

An estimated 30 million Hindus took a dip Sunday at the Sangam — the confluence of the Ganges, the Yamuna and the Saraswati rivers — as part of the 55-day Kumbh Mela, or Pitcher Festival. Sunday was one of the holiest days to bathe.

People missing at the Kumbh Mela is the stuff of legend in India and at least a dozen films have been made on the theme. On Sunday, like most other days, volunteers and officials used loudspeakers to give details of children and elderly who were "found" on the river banks, having lost their families in the crowd.

It was unclear how many people were actually missing because of the stampede.

Witnesses blamed police action for the stampede.

"We heard an announcement that our train is coming on platform number 4 and when we started moving toward that platform through a footbridge, we were stopped. Then suddenly the police charged us with batons and the stampede started," passenger Shushanto Kumar Sen said.

"People started tumbling over one another and within no time I saw people, particularly women and children, being trampled over by others," Sen said.

Police denied they had used batons to control the crowd.

"It was simply a case of overcrowding. People were in a hurry to go back and there were not enough arrangements by the railway authorities," said Arun Kumar, a senior police officer.

Medical superintendent Dr. P. Padmakar of the main state-run hospital said 23 of the 36 people killed were women.

India's railway minister Pawan Kumar Bansal said an inquiry has been ordered into what led to the stampede.

Indian television stations showed large crowds pushing and jostling at the train station as policemen struggled to restore order.

"There was complete chaos. There was no doctor or ambulance for at least two hours after the accident," an eyewitness told NDTV news channel.

The auspicious bathing days of the Kumbh Mela are decided by the alignment of stars, and the most dramatic feature of the festival is the Naga sadhus — ascetics with ash rubbed all over their bodies, wearing only marigold garlands — leaping joyfully into the holy waters.

According to Hindu mythology, the Kumbh Mela celebrates the victory of gods over demons in a furious battle over nectar that would give them immortality. As one of the gods fled with a pitcher of the nectar across the skies, it spilled on four Indian towns: Allahabad, Nasik, Ujjain and Haridwar.

The Kumbh Mela is held four times every 12 years in those towns. Hindus believe that sins accumulated in past and current lives require them to continue the cycle of death and rebirth until they are cleansed. If they bathe at the Ganges on the most auspicious day of the festival, believers say they can rid themselves of their sins.

____

Associated Press writer Biswajeet Banerjee contributed to this report.


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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
2/11/2013 10:42:59 AM

China's patience with North Korea wearing thin


Associated Press/Eugene Hoshiko - In this Feb. 6, 2013 photo, a tourist wears a traditional Korean dress to have a souvenir photo taken by a Chinese vendor with a backdrop of the Friendship Bridge linking China and North Korea in the Chinese border city of Dandong, China, opposite the North Korean border town of Sinuiju. China’s patience with North Korea is wearing thin, and a widely-expected nuclear weapons test by the latter could bring that frustration to a head. Beijing signaled its growing unhappiness by agreeing to tightened U.N. sanctions after North Korea launched a rocket in December, eliciting harsh criticism from Pyongyang and comment from China watchers surprised by Beijing’s unusually tough line. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

In this Feb. 7, 2013 photo, a Chinese woman sells North Korean souvenirs in Dandong, China, opposite the North Korean town of Sinuiju. China’s patience with North Korea is wearing thin, and a widely-expected nuclear weapons test by the latter could bring that frustration to a head. Beijing signaled its growing unhappiness by agreeing to tightened U.N. sanctions after North Korea launched a rocket in December, eliciting harsh criticism from Pyongyang and comment from China watchers surprised by Beijing’s unusually tough line. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
DANDONG, China (AP) — China's patience with North Korea is wearing thin, and a widely-expected nuclear test by the latter could bring that frustration to a head.

Beijing signaled its growing unhappiness by agreeing to tightenedU.N. sanctions after North Korea launched a rocket in December, surprising China watchers with its unusually tough line, which prompted harsh criticism from Pyongyang.

And while China isn't expected to abandon its communist neighbor, it appears to be reassessing ties a year after new North Korean leader Kim Jong Un took office. The question is for how long China, itself under new leader Xi Jinping, will continue to back North Korea's nettlesome policies.

"Perhaps Kim Jong Un thinks Xi Jinping will indulge him. Perhaps he's in for a surprise," said Richard Bush, Director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C.

China is feeling spurned by Kim. Although China welcomed his ascension after his father died in December 2011 and maintained flows of aid and investment, Kim has ignored China's interests in a stable neighborhood with his two rocket launches and nuclear test plan. North Korea announced last month it would conduct a test to protest the toughened U.N. sanctions.

"At the start, China gave him a warm welcome and, I think, some aid. But we got no gratitude. They take us for granted," said Jin Canrong, an international affairs expert at Renmin University in Beijing. "China tried to get closer to him, but it was not successful. China has become very disappointed."

Yet Beijing also sees Pyongyang as a crucial buffer against U.S. troops based in South Korea and Japan. It also deeply fears a regime collapse could send swarms of refugees across its border. For those reasons, Beijing is unlikely to cut Pyongyang adrift, even if it pushes North Korea harder to end its nuclear provocations and reform its broken-down economy.

"China's not ready to turn the support to North Korea switch to 'off' at this stage," said Roger Cavazos, a North Korea watcher at the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability.

North Korea's apparent reluctance to reform its economy ranks among Beijing's biggest frustrations, and the thorny nature of the bilateral relationship is on show along the frigid Yalu River, which forms part of the border Chinese troops crossed to rescue North Korean forces during the 1950-53 Korean War.

Last week, ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, dozens of North Korean trucks lined up at a customs checkpoint in the northeastern Chinese border city of Dandong, loaded with bags of rice, cooking oil, cheap electronics and other daily items that their country's collapsed industry cannot produce enough of for its 24 million people.

Further to the south, a much-heralded North Korean economic zone on a pair of islands along the Yalu remains a field of untrammeled snow behind a newly erected border fence, more than 18 months after it was opened with great fanfare.

The Hwanggumphyong and Wihwa islands zone, one of two such establishments along the border, resulted from talks led by Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming and Jang Song Thaek, Kim's uncle and a top official in the ruling Korean Workers' Party who is thought to be pro-China. The two men attended the June 2011 grand opening accompanied by a brass band and the celebratory release of doves, giving rise to hopes that China's advice was having an impact on the North.

Yet area residents say they've seen no progress since then, while work on a towering bridge nearby, intended to supplement the rickety old one in Dandong, has slowed to a snail's pace. Dandong's city government has moved offices to the area, but the thickets of surrounding high-rise buildings remain unfinished and empty.

While Kim has made improving the economy a hallmark of his nascent rule, many analysts doubt that he will go too far with reforms for fear that change could lead to a loss of control, in turn threatening his authoritarian rule.

"There's nothing going on around here. North Korea is fine with taking Chinese aid and doing some trade, but its economy doesn't seem to be changing at all," said a Dandong businessman who trades with North Korea AND asked to be identified only by his surname, Qu.

That leaves the new fence as the dominant feature along the border. Topped with rolls of barbed wire, it doubles up in places to form both an inner and an outer perimeter, with a strip of concrete in between for guards to patrol along.

The intimidating barrier seeks to block the flow of illegal border crossers, typically those seeking food and work in China or an escape route to South Korea. It also symbolizes China's fears of instability in North Korea, a steel barrier to contain the chaos.

China is widely credited with keeping its neighbor afloat, providing an estimated half million tons of oil to North Korea a year, along with copious amounts of food aid. Officially tolerated smuggling buttresses the formal trade between them, while North Korea earns much-needed hard currency from thousands of North Koreans who work in northeast China and a similar number of Chinese tourists and advisers visiting the other side. Chinese companies are also investing in North Korea's mines, although many complain of corruption and a lack of respect for contracts.

Yet it remains unclear how much influence China has with North Korea. Despite Beijing's entreaties, Pyongyang has refused to return to Chinese-hosted six-nation nuclear disarmament talks that had won China credit as a responsible international power.

In a sign of China's rising pique, the Foreign Ministry recently took an unusual swipe at North Korea for spending on defense, rocket and nuclear programs instead of the economy. "We would also like to actively encourage the relevant country to develop economy and improve people's living conditions," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters late last month.

Chinese media have also been running commentaries suggesting Chinese interests need not be held hostage by its desire for a stable North Korea.

"If North Korea ignores the persuasion and eventually carries out a third nuclear bomb test, it must pay a heavy price for it. The various kinds of aid it receives from China will be decreased for good reasons. Of this, we hope the Chinese government will warn North Korea in advance, so that they will not have other fantasies," the Global Times, a nationalist tabloid that often airs controversial views, said in a commentary last week.

Another test may not be enough to push the new leadership into casting North Korea adrift, but China may employ tougher measures, given that it has already upped the ante by agreeing to the tightened U.N. sanctions. If it does, North Korea can't say it wasn't warned.

___

Associated Press writer Charles Hutzler and researcher Yu Bing contributed to this report from Beijing.


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
2/11/2013 10:44:32 AM

Watchdog Finds Well-Oiled Revolving Door Linking SEC and Industry


Former Securities and Exchange Commission employees routinely helped companies overseen by the regulator to influence rulemaking, soften enforcement actions, and secure exemptions from federal law, according to a report that will be released Monday by the Project On Government Oversight.

POGO – an independent watchdog group – studied disclosure statements filed from 2001 through 2010 and said it found numerous instances where the line between regulator and industry was blurred.

Over that period, 419 former SEC employees filed 1,949 disclosure statements, indicating their intent to contact the SEC on behalf of an employer or client.

Among the most blatant examples of a revolving door between the SEC and regulated companies, POGO found a former SEC manager helped companies such as JPMorgan, UnitedHealth Group, Yahoo! and Alaska Air to block proposals from shareholders. When the manager was at the SEC, he served as deputy director in the division that reviewed these proposals.

In another case, an enforcement branch chief in the SEC’s San Francisco office left the agency in 2010 to take a job as Wells Fargo & Co.’s in-house counsel. Less than two weeks later, she filed six separate disclosure statements, indicating she would be representing Wells Fargo in connection with pending enforcement matters, including probes conducted by her former office.

POGO’s database of disclosure statements is available here.

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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