Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Latin American Links 3/13/2013

West Africa Links 3/13/2013

Qatar Links 3/13/2013

Balkanization of the Balkans 3/13/2013

  • Belgrade Denies Backing Bosnia Serb Opposition
    Aleksandar Vucic, Vice-President of the Serbian government, has dismissed reports in the Sarajevo media that Belgrade plans to help the opposition in Republika Srpska win the next general election in 2014.

Bankster Business 3/13/2013

  • Bill Black: Which Aspect of the FDIC’s Litigation Failures is the Most Embarrassing and Damaging?
    The article contains four key facts we did not know about the FDIC’s leadership and its litigation director. ...The first fact is that the banks and bank officers can now cut deals with the FDIC designed to keep their settlements secret.....The second key fact that we learned from the article is that the size of the settlements, for some of the most culpable fraudulent mortgage lenders, is so embarrassingly low that the FDIC’s litigators and investigators have proven to be an embarrassing failure....The third fact that emerges is that the FDIC’s real purpose in entering into these settlements crafted to try to keep the public from learning about them is not to secure a higher settlement but to protect the FDIC leadership from embarrassment for their failures of nerve, competence....The fourth fact that emerges is that the FDIC does not understand how a banking regulator and its litigators must deal with control fraud.

Monday, March 4, 2013

European Crisis 3/4/2013

Bankster Business 3/4/2013

Qatar Links 3/4/2013

West Africa Links 3/4/2013

Balkanizaton of the Balkans 3/4/2013

Pearls of Wisdom 3/4/2013

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Perls of Wisdom 3/13/2013

  • This Story Stinks
    Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they’d previously thought.

    My Observation: Since Aristotle, rhetoric has included not only the reasoning of an argument, logos, but also its ethos and pathos, how well it advances the good and how strongly. See Modes of PersuasionTo enshrine Logos while discounting Ethos and Pathos is simply to be incomplete.
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West Africa 3/3/2013

Bankster Business 3/3/2013

European Crisis 3/3/2013

Qatar Posts 3/3/2013

  • Saudi Arabia and Qatar ratchet up sectarian and ethnic tensions in Iraq 
    Both Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been working hard to break up the Shia-Kurdish strategic alliance in Iraq, replacing it with a Turkish strategic alliance with the Kurdish Region (KR), headed by Massoud Barzani, a development which has not only dramatically bolstered the position of the KR in its tense confrontation with Iraq's central government (CG) over land and oil, but also more broadly ramped up ethnic tensions.
  • The Saudi Arabization of Islam






  • West Africa Links




    Saturday, March 2, 2013

    How to become a drone target



    The government apparently calls such attacks signature strikes because the targets are identified based on intelligence “signatures” that suggest involvement in terror plots or militant activity.
    So what signatures does the U.S. look for and how much evidence is needed to justify a strike?
    The Obama administration has never spoken publicly about signature strikes. Instead, generally anonymous officials have offered often vague examples of signatures. The resulting fragmentary picture leaves many questions unanswered.



    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/02/how-to-become-a-drone-target/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story%29