The aim of releasing thousands of classified documents on the Afghanistan war on the WikiLeaks Web site was apparently to undermine American public support for the war. The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, said he wanted the world to see the “true nature of the war” and equated the WikiLeaks Afghanistan archive with the release of the secret files of the East German police following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
But an initial look at a handful of the thousands of released reports reveals no shocking information but rather a mix of both operational battlefield information and unverified spot reporting, the credibility of which is impossible for the average U.S. citizen to determine.
Commentators are essentially using the so-called “Afghanistan War Diaries” to re-emphasize their own positions on the war. The reports provide details and context on the day-to-day conduct of the war, but they are only pieces of information that do not lend themselves to sweeping generalizations about the efficacy of the overall war effort.
While a major Afghanistan war funding bill still managed to pass Congress earlier this week, the anti-war drum beat is unmistakable. Even some conservatives are succumbing to the defeatist attitude that it is impossible to succeed in Afghanistan. This is highly unfortunate. Stabilizing Afghanistan and ensuring it does not again become a global terrorist hub is the surest way to guard against another type of 9/11 terrorist strike on the U.S. homeland.
General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. and NATO forces, just released a new set of counterinsurgency guidelines for coalition forces on the ground in Afghanistan that call on the troops to “fight hard” but “be a good guest.” He is following through with the sound counterinsurgency strategy first laid out by General Stanley McChrystal last year.
It would be a mistake to give up on the war effort now, just as thousands of additional forces and civilian resources are pouring into the country and before the talented General Petraeus—who is largely responsible for turning the Iraq war around three years ago—is given a chance to succeed. Rather than taking the anti-war bait, Americans should support our dedicated troops in the field, focus on protecting vital U.S. national security interests, and avoid getting caught up in the current Wikisteria.
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Only the gallop polls will tell if this works but I am pretty sure nobody is buying it. If people lose support for the war, which they shouldn’t, it’s probably because of issues back at home. Even OBama realized that he can’t abandon Afghanistan, he knows all too well if he does, that place becomes a terorrist Disneyland (god i love this fucking term lol).
The reason this wikileaks shit won’t work today is because 9/11 is STILL TOO RECENT. Since people have factual proof the threat of terrorism is real, they don’t adhere to the typical “let’s just wait until they actually do something before we act” mentality. This takes a back seat to the “we gotta prevent this shit from happening before it’s too late” kind of thing.
Obvioiusly I support preventative action, much to the dismay of many liberals or other fanatics of “let’s just wait and see why happens” kind of thing. It’s only natural. It isn’t until people hit rock bottom or they lose osmething very dear to them do they change their point of view. And if people haven’t realized, criminals always TARGET LIBERALS first because they know they can take advantage of the open-mindedness of the left. Why do you think they target new york and boston and shit, never places like fucking Idaho or Texas?
If i were a terrorist that’s what I’d do because I know the left don’t believe in guns and will arm themselves with shitty kitchen knives or cell phones to dial 911. I also know that response time from the police is fairly short but it still exists versus say, a gun in my face by my “victims”. I’d have a harder time targeting right wing areas because I know those crazy fucks have guns stacked up yee-high to hte mountain so the odds of success lie in attacking left/liberal areas before going for right-wing areas.
This is the reality of the fuckers we fight. The sooner people realize reality the better for all of us. Terrorists ARE NOT DUMB.
PHOENIX – A federal judge dealt a serious rebuke to Arizona’simmigration law on Wednesday when she put most of the crackdown on hold just hours before it was to take effect.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton sets up a lengthy legal battle as Arizona fights to enact the nation’s toughest-in-the-nation law. Republican Gov. Jan Brewer said the state likely appeal the ruling and seek to get the judge’s order overturned.
But for now, opponents of the law have prevailed: The provisions that angered opponents will not take effect, including sections that required officers to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws.
The judge also delayed parts of the law that required immigrants to carry their papers at all times, and made it illegal for undocumented workers to solicit employment in public places — a move aimed at day laborers. In addition, the judge blocked officers from making warrantless arrests of suspected illegal immigrants.
“Requiring Arizona law enforcement officials and agencies to determine the immigration status of every person who is arrested burdens lawfully-present aliens because their liberty will be restricted while their status is checked,” Bolton, a Clinton appointee, said in her decision.
She said the controversial sections should be put on hold until the courts resolve the issues. Other provisions of the law, many of them procedural and slight revisions to existing Arizona immigration statute, will go into effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday.
The law was signed by Brewer in April and immediately revived the national debate on immigration, making it a hot-button issue in the midterm elections. The law has inspired similar law elsewhere, prompted a boycott against the state and led an unknown number of illegal immigrants to leave the state.
Lawyers for the state contend the law was a constitutionally sound attempt by Arizona to assist federal immigration agents and lessen border woes such as the heavy costs for educating, jailing and providing health care for illegal immigrants. Arizona is the busiest gateway into the country for illegal immigrants, and the border is awash in drugs and smugglers that the state badly wants to stop.
“It’s a temporary bump in the road, we will move forward, and I’m sure that after consultation with our counsel we will appeal,” Brewer told the Associated Press. “The bottom line is we’ve known all along that it is The responsibility of the feds and they haven’t done their job so we were going to help them do that.”
The ruling came just as police were making last-minute preparations to begin enforcement of the law and protesters were planning large demonstrations against the measure. At least one group planned to block access to federal offices, daring officers to ask them about their immigration status.
In a sign of the international interest in the law, about 100 protesters in Mexico City who had gathered in front of the U.S. Embassy broke into cheers when speakers told them about the federal judge’s ruling. The demonstrators had been monitoring the news on a laptop computer on the stage.
The crowed clapped and started chanting, “Migrants, hang on, the people are rising up!”
Gisela and Eduardo Diaz went to the Mexican consulate in Phoenix on Wednesday seeking advice because they were worried about what would happen to their 3-year-old granddaughter if they were pulled over by police and taken to a detention center.
“I knew the judge would say that part of the law was just not right,” said Diaz, a 50-year-old from Mexico City who came to Arizona on a since-expired tourist visa in 1989. “It’s the part we were worried about. This is a big relief for us.”
Opponents argued the law would lead to racial profiling, conflict with federal immigration law and distract local police from fighting more serious crimes. The U.S. Justice Department, civil rights groups and a Phoenixpolice officer had asked the judge for an injunction to prevent the law from being enforced.
“There is a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens under the new (law),” Bolton ruled. She added that a requirement of the law that police determine the immigration status of all arrested people will prompt legal immigrants to be “swept up by this requirement.”
Federal authorities who are trying to overturn the law have argued that letting the Arizona law stand would create a patchwork of immigration laws nationwide that would needlessly complicate the foreign relations of the United States. Federal lawyers said the law is disrupting U.S. relations with Mexico and other countries and would burden the agency that responds to immigration-status inquiries.
Bolton noted that the expected increase in immigration checks from Arizona will divert federal resources away from other priorities and said the federal government has shown that it’s likely to succeed on its claim that such mandatory checks under the Arizona law would be trumped by federal law.
Responding to the ruling, Justice Department spokeswoman Hannah August said that the agency understands the frustration of Arizona residents with the immigration system. She added that a wide range of state and local policies would seriously disrupt federal immigration enforcement.
Brewer’s lawyers said Arizona shouldn’t have to suffer from America’s broken immigration system when it has 15,000 police officers who can arrest illegal immigrants.
Brewer is running for another term in November and has seen her political fortunes rise because of the law’s popularity among conservatives. It’s not yet clear how the ruling will affect her campaign, but her opponent was quick to pounce.
“Jan Brewer played politics with immigration, and she lost,” Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, a Democrat. “It is time to look beyond election year grandstanding and begin to repair the damage to Arizona’s image and economy.”
Republican Rep. John Kavanagh, one of the law’s top supporters, said he was disappointed by the ruling and that he expects it to ultimately end up being decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I don’t think the judge’s statements in the hearings justify this ruling,” Kavanagh said. “I don’t think the law justified her injunction.”
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Arizona will lose. Much to my dismay and the dismay of about 70-85% of the population (depending on what kind of polling metrics you will use) the law will fail because fundamentally, the government is the only entity that can enforce rules on immigration, not the state. However there was an argument that the state could “assist” the federal government and that is what Jan Brewer and her lawyers reconized (that is why she said “assist” in her quote). My guess is the supreme court will walk a fine line of doing nothing but maybe they will force a decision by declaring the state can or cannot assist the federal government. If they rule they can’t then they are effectively saying the state is powerless and can’t “help” which doesn’t make sense legally and common sense wise.
I myself have mixed feelings these days about illegal aliens. They do in fact cost tax dollars, send dollars abroad (isntead of keeping it here) and all the while take jobs from the legal residents. The trouble is they also bring family or kids here and it’s not really right to displace them either so we’re kind of stuck. Another known fact is that all these illegals will very likely vote Democrat or anything “left” so the imbalance of political power sways over to the left. Right now it is 50/50. It should always be 50/50. Since men are not angels we are forced to vote the extreme left or right to get anything done in the middle. That’s how the system works. Any imbalance to this status quo would destroy this country.
To mitigate this problem, we have the “winner take all” electoral system. We also “cap” how much each state is worth in terms of the electorate but if I recall correctly, if you jam enough people into a state you can reapportion how many electoral votes that state is worth. 20 million illegals that vote overwhelmingly democrat out of a population of 300 million can have a devastating effect on the balance of power. This is why so many right wingers and conversatives are angry, and they have every right to be.
It won’t be long before it’s like new york state where we get no representation on the right, at all. Hell, we got dummy fuck Rhinos (republicans in name only) who abandoned our asses and do nothing to support the cause on the right. Kenneth LaValle is one such person so far. His site sucks and it is clear he doesn’t give a shit, until recently when he started to post like crazy. He msut realize Regina Calcattera is going to take his job in November, lol!
I digress. Overall, expect more illegals to flow in while Arizona fights a losing battle. The people will get a lot angrier in the mean time and violence and racism will begin to rise as it is the only defensive mechanism the legal citizens who miss out on jobs, business opportunities, etc will have. The state will be unable to protect itself due to the supreme court and future court rulings and the dummy federal government won’t do a fucking thing (esp. the democrats because they desperately need those votes). So yeah. There you have it. Maybe the supreme court will give the state leeway though.
We’ll see. For now, illegal Juan and Paco can stay here a little longer. I can’t imagine how many racists at Stormfront are steaming right now. Oof, what a great world we live in.
WASHINGTON – The House prepared Tuesday to send President Barack Obama $33 billion to pay for his troop surge in Afghanistan, unmoved by the leaking of tens of thousands of classified military documents that portray a war effort beset by Afghan shortcomings.
From Obama on down, the disclosure of the documents was condemned anew by administration officials and military leaders, but the material failed to stir new anti-war sentiment. The bad news for the White House: A pervasive weariness with the war was still there — and possibly growing.
At a Senate hearing on prospects for a political settlement of the Afghan conflict, there was scant mention of the leaked material, posted on the website of the whistleblower group WikiLeaks, but there were repeated expressions of frustration over the direction of the fighting.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who has questioned the realism of U.S. goals in Afghanistan though he supports the war, pointedly asked why the Taliban, with fewer resources and smaller numbers, can field fighters who are more committed to winning than are Afghan soldiers.
“What’s going on here?” Kerry asked with exasperation.
Still, the House seemed ready to vote final approval for more than $33.5 billion for the additional 30,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and to pay for other Pentagon operational expenses. Other non-war provisions brought the total bill to nearly $59 billion.
Republicans were strongly behind the major war spending, with opposition coming mostly from members of Obama’s own Democratic Party who argued that the money could be better spent at home. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said the leaked documents revealed corruption and incompetence in the Afghanistan government.
“We’re told we can’t extend unemployment or pay to keep cops on the beat or teachers in the classroom but we’re asked to borrow another $33 billion for nation-building in Afghanistan,” McGovern said.
At the separate Senate hearing, meanwhile, Sen. Edward Kaufman, D-Del., questioned whether the U.S.-led war effort is capable of pushing the Afghan government to provide the kind of leadership that wins the confidence of the population.
“Can we carry this off?” Kaufman asked.
In his first public comments on the weekend leak of tens of thousands of documents, Obama said it could “potentially jeopardize individuals or operations” in Afghanistan. But he also said the papers did not reveal any concerns that were not already part of the war debate.
Obama said the shortcomings in Afghanistan as reflected in the leaked documents explain why, last year, he undertook an in-depth review of the war and developed a new strategy.
“We’ve substantially increased our commitment there, insisted upon greater accountability from our partners in Afghanistan and Pakistan, developed a new strategy that can work and put in place a team, including one of our finest generals, to execute that plan,” Obama said. “Now we have to see that strategy through.”
The leaked documents are battlefield reports compiled by various military units in Afghanistan that provide an unflinching view of combat operations between 2004 and 2009, including U.S. displeasure over reports that Pakistan secretly aided insurgents fighting American and Afghan forces.
Even as the administration dismissed the leaked documents as outdated, U.S. military and intelligence analysts were caught up in a struggle to limit the damage contained in the once-secret files now scattered across the Internet.
In Baghdad, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters he was “appalled” by the leak, which he said had the potential of putting troops’ lives at added risk.
Officials also are concerned about the impact the disclosures could have on the military’s human intelligence network built up over the past eight years inside Afghanistan and Pakistan. The people in that network range from Afghan village elders who have worked behind the scenes with U.S. troops to militants working as double agents.
Beyond expressions of disgust at the document dump, the political fallout in Washington appeared limited.
Advocates of pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan said the leaks reinforced their argument for disengaging. War supporters said they illustrated why Obama was right to decide last December to send an additional 30,000 troops and step up pressure on the Afghan government to reform, while pressing Pakistan to go after insurgents on its side of the border.
At the State Department, spokesman P.J. Crowley said efforts to explain to Afghanistan and other allies that the U.S. government played no role in leaking the documents seemed to have paid off.
“We’re very gratified that the response thus far internationally has been moderate, sober,” Crowley said.
In his only reference to the leak, Kerry called the new material “over-hyped,” said that it was released in violation of the law and that it largely involved raw intelligence reports from the field.
The House, meanwhile, prepared to approve legislation to pay for the extra 30,000 troops.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., said he was torn between his obligation to bring the bill to the floor and his “profound skepticism” that the money would lead to a successful conclusion of the war.
Even if there were greater confidence, he said, “it would likely take so long it will obliterate our ability to make the kinds of long-term investments in our own country that are so desperately needed.”
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This is why I choose not to be in politics. Sooner or later the realities of the ground trump any and all of your ideals. The reason the war funding bill will be cheaper than say passing unemployment insurance is because it is a lot easier to cut off war funding to a nation after a while (the countries we go in will eventually make money and stop sucking our aid). It’s also easier to work with foreigners than it is to deal with us.
Domestically, it should be the same idea. Our people can take that unemployment money and spend it but the same paranoia is, it won’t help long term. Eventually they will get jobs again and make money for everyone. The truth is our GDP can handle it (the United States makes $2 trillion a year in income). Of course the issue is why borrow money if we make that much $. I need to go back and re-read my investing books but the dominant themes are narrowed down to 2 camps:
1. This country uses “blackbox accounting” which is basically smoke & mirrors combined with fake accounting bullshit to make us seem richer than we really are. “Fraud” is the term to accurately describe it or “Enron”. Kenny boy would have been so fucking proud.
Or
2. This country actually makes way more money than it seems. Beccause accounting is so fucking diverse and difficult to understand, Kenneth Fisher basically argues that for every $1 this country spends, we get back way more than that in return ($1.50 or so). Combine this with the velocity of money and our returns skyrocket. $33 billion is a lot but that is less than 1% of $2trillion A YEAR. To put it in our layman terms, the cost of funding this bill (or unemployment) is 16.5 cents out of the $1 we make every year. It’s a pretty nice chunk of change but we still have the remaining 83.5 cents to spend (and oh boy spend it we will).
I think the reason why Republicans and the right favor the war and less domestic socialist shit is because they feel the velocity of money would be greater in the hands of foreigners (who are in the shit and don’t have hte luxury of being unrealistic) versus here at home where most people won’t spend it on much. It’s a known fact people will either pay their monthly bills (rent) or pay down their debt (credit cards). This type of deleveraging doesn’t spur velocity of money much but the people who receive this cash will have to eventually spend it somewhere, so it money will trade hands eventually.
Unless it winds up in the hands of the fucking big bankers (which sadly it will) and all they are doing now is hoarding our fucking money instead of lending it out. Lending is the lifeblood of our economy and those fucking assholes are sucking it right out. To be fair, they are scared to death because they got bit so hard by the subprime and beyond crisis, so now they don’tw ant to lend *anything*.
I’m happy with this , not only because i’m a proud warmonger but more seriously, we can’t have a terrorist disneyland over there. The islamists are relentless and will not quit until every single one of us is dead or praying at a mosque. That’s the kind of tyranny I will not tolerate. People here at home are rightfully more concerned about the tyranny from the “evil rich” and now everyone will soon hate Obama as that poor black man realizes he can’t just keep doing his lefty agenda and expect the world to change.
Welcome to the big leagues Mr. President. Be sure to talk with daddy Bush on how it feels to do a great job and get your ass handed to you in re-election. It’s not called ‘Public service” for nothing.
——————— You may not agree with a lot of what he says but this guy is really funny. More importantly, what he talks about is the heart of today’s capitalism. Money is only an idea, and our world is held by “belief”. That is why sometimes you hear the term “House of cards” because our money supply is backed by nothing. It’s fake ass shit called paper money or formally Fiat currency. I also would note to skip the last half of the interview. That guest speaker was unusually boring. ———————
ADVOCATING democracy in a single-party, authoritarian state would seem to be a fool’s errand.
Wei Jingsheng, one of China’s most ardent pro-democracy dissidents, spent over a decade in jail for demanding multiparty elections. Last year, the writer Liu Xiaobo was given an 11-year sentence after he wrote a manifesto calling for an end to the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power.
Then there is Yu Keping, a mild-mannered policy wonk who has been singing the praises of democracy for years. In his most famous essay, “Democracy Is a Good Thing,” he made an impassioned argument for the inevitability of direct elections in China, describing democracy as “the best political system for humankind.”
In April, he published another treatise calling on the Communist Party to abide by the Constitution, not a small matter in a country where government leaders often argue that the law should be subservient to the party.
A cynical troublemaker playing with fire? Hardly.
Mr. Yu’s writings are sold in state-owned bookstores, and he is a ranking Communist Party official in charge of the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau, an obscure agency dedicated to translating works by Chinese leaders and Marxist tracts from around the world. He also runs a policy research organization, China Center for Comparative Politics and Economics, that provides advice to China’s leadership.
Even China experts have a hard time determining whether Mr. Yu is a brave voice for change or simply a well-placed shill.
Mr. Yu, 51, a deceptively soft-spoken man who is fond of guns and off-road driving, does little to clarify his role. “I am only a scholar interested in academic research,” he said with a grin, surrounded by hundreds of books in his Beijing office.
A closer look at Mr. Yu provides a small window into the role of those few public intellectuals who have learned to navigate what would appear to be treacherous terrain. They tackle seemingly provocative subjects and can even function as a force for change, but in the end their writings rarely challenge the underpinnings of China’s single-party, authoritarian rule.
Even Mr. Yu’s use of the word “democracy” is not what it seems. China’s leaders frequently talk about it as a worthy goal, but in practice they have virtually no intention of ceding the Communist Party’s monopoly. In fact, Mr. Yu never advocates Western-style multiparty democracy.
“What he writes might sound good, but he is misleading the Chinese people into thinking the government is moving toward democracy,” said Guo Tianguo, a former rights lawyer from Shanghai who was forced into exile five years ago and now lives in Canada. “He owes his job to President Hu Jintao, and if he ever pushed too hard he would lose everything. He’s a coward.”
YET to some who have followed his career, Mr. Yu’s role is far more nuanced. They say that he is a true believer in democracy, but that he walks a tightrope, trying to nudge China’s political elite toward reform without upsetting the apple cart.
Minxin Pei, a specialist in Chinese politics at Claremont McKenna College, said that Mr. Yu is a uniquely Chinese public figure who tries to influence the system through carefully choreographed words and well-placed obfuscation. “He’s flexible in the sense that if the atmosphere were more tolerant, he’d go further,” he said. “But he knows that going too far won’t do any good for him or the larger cause he’s promoting.”
During a series of recent interviews, Mr. Yu was relaxed and loquacious, but his responses hewed closely to his writings, which call for the incremental introduction of democracy “when conditions are right.” But he also stepped beyond the vague pronouncements on democracy that have been uttered by Mr. Hu, who has suggested that China already enjoys widespread political liberties.
Asked whether he thought the Chinese political system could be described as democratic, Mr. Yu offered up a few examples of reforms that have been tried in rural townships or small provincial cities but then added, “We have a long way to go.”
Like many of his peers, Mr. Yu grew up in the tumult of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the decade between 1966 and 1976 when concepts like universal rights and free speech were viewed as bourgeois contaminants from the West. Class struggle was the watchword of the day, and Mr. Yu, the son of rice farmers from coastal Zhejiang Province, was anointed the leader of his school’s Red Guard battalion. He was not quite 10 years old.
He recalled terrorizing landlords and merchants during so-called struggle sessions, a wooden revolver tucked into his pants. “I was so small I had to stand on a chair,” he said.
In 1978, two years after the death of Mao, during the gradual return to normalcy and the reopening of schools, he was one of the first of his generation to go to college. “I literally crawled out of the paddies to take the entrance exam,” he said, smiling and shaking his head at the memory.
Mr. Yu was a teacher at Peking University during the spring of 1989, and he said he went to Tiananmen Square several times to look after his students, who were part of the throngs protesting corruption and inflation and demanding democratic reforms. “I was so worried about them,” he said, recalling the denouement — a bloody military crackdown in which hundreds died — as “a regrettable tragedy.”
But he said those events taught him that China must have legal avenues for its citizens to express their disdain for injustice, or their desire for change. “In any nation, when people are demanding reform, this is a sign of prosperity,” he said. “To ignore these demands is to invite instability.”
Mr. Yu said he was impressed by the United States, where he was a visiting scholar atDuke University. He relishes memories of the intellectual give-and-take in the classroom and the unencumbered vigor of the news media. “I really loved the American can-do spirit, the values of equality and justice, and the way people cared about the environment,” he said. For all the open-mindedness of Americans, he still winces when he recalls the barbed reactions of people when they learned he was a member of the Communist Party.
HIS most indelible experiences came after he left Duke to travel across 30 states on a Greyhound bus. He said he saw the chasm between the grotesquely rich and the abjectly poor, the lack of respect for the elderly, and the apathy on Election Day, especially among the “common people” who would seem to be the most invested in political change.
Mr. Yu also had a personal brush with a downside of abundant liberty. He said he was mugged twice, once by a man who put a knife to his back in a public restroom in Indianapolis. “I pretended I didn’t speak English; someone else came into the bathroom and the man ran away,” he said with a laugh.
That experience set off his interest in guns, and Mr. Yu sometimes lets off steam at a shooting range in Beijing. His other distraction from the esoteric is off-road driving. “She’s terrified of my driving,” he said of his wife, Xu Xiuli, a professor of Chinese economic history.
Before ending the interview, he had one parting thought. The story about his childhood, he said, contained a lesson, and it came back to his passion. “When I think about those days of the Cultural Revolution it reminds me of one truth,” he said. “It is only democracy and the rule of law that can save China from ever again falling into that kind of fate.”
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Hopefully this is a sign of change. It’s very difficult to get anyone to change, let alone China. Our culture really despises questioning of the status quo and elders, something us westerners do with alarming regularity.
I find it funny his interest in guns went up after a failed mugging attempt. Works for me. Maybe he can join the NRA next visit to here.
I also find it interesting that he said that when people clamor for reform, that it is a sign of prosperity. Hmm, I always thought it was a sign people just wanted something new or a change. I’m perfectly happy with the way things are in some respects and someday I will be very happy with everything.
As a side note, Taiwan was under martial law for about 40 or so years (it’s on wikipedia) before they slowly reverted to democracy like we know it today. Perhaps China will undergo something similiar (very restrictive, spits on universal rights plus free speech, and is authoritarian) but it will take much longer for such a change to occur.
Kind of makes you appreciate America, huh? Well, what’s left of it anyway.
Oh P.S. change usually comes from within. That’s the route Mr. Yu is going and we can all hope he succeeds.
General Electric said Friday that it is raising its quarterly dividend by 2 cents because of its improving financial performance, the first increase since it deeply slashed payments to shareholders last year to save cash.
The company also said it would start buying its own shares again.
GE will now pay 12 cents per share on Oct. 25, to shareholders who own stock at the close of business on Sept. 20. There are roughly 10.7 billion shares of GE stock.
The conglomerate cut its quarterly dividend by 68 percent to 10 cents in February 2009, saying it needed to conserve cash after its GE Capital lending unit was overwhelmed by the financial crisis. It was the first time GE cut its dividend since the Great Depression.
GE had said it not begin increasing its dividend until 2011.
That date was pushed forward “because of continued strong cash generation, recovery at GE Capital and solid underlying performance in our industrial businesses,” said CEO Jeff Immelt.
GE recently posted a 16 percent gain in quarterly profits, the first growth in net income since late 2007. It also expects to end 2010 with about $25 billion in cash.
The company is in the process of shrinking GE Capital and whittling down its big losses on bad loans while building back the industrial divisions that make jet engines, power plant turbines and medical equipment.
GE suspended its share buyback program in September 2008. It will restart those efforts with about $11.6 billion to spend.
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Stock supply destruction is always good for stock prices. Why? Because less supply but same or better demand equals higher prices, in which case are stocks. The important thing is GE reconizes its stock is fucking cheap and this is a chance to reduce dividend cost to the company but having less public shares to dole out to the masses. Damn, I really wished I had more money to buy this stock. Maybe another crisis or ideally a “double dip” will happen and fuck up stock prices. That is something I am hoping for (stocks become less risky to a point as they get cheaper, but bankruptcy risk is higher because investors know something is wrong with the company).
With record profits beating dismal expectations, people are feeling good. Mr. Market feels great one day and stocks go up and it feels like shit the next and stocks go tanking.
A lot of robbers use force. This one used the Force.
A bandit decked out in a Darth Vader costume strolled into a Long Island bank yesterday – and walked out with a wad of cash.
The villain looked ready for Halloween, wearing the “Star Wars” scoundrel’s signature mask and sweeping black cape.
He lost some authenticity points for a pair of camouflage pants.
The get-up struck one customer as so funny that he started joshing with the Darth Robber after he strode into the Chase bank in Setauket.
“The customer thought it might have been a joke, and not a serious attempt at a robbery,” said Suffolk County police Detective Sgt. William Lamb.
But Darth wasn’t kidding – and he wasn’t going to be stopped by a non-Jedi Knight.
He won a “shoving match” against the incredulous customer before using his piece to order him to the floor, Lamb said.
And his weapon was no joke. He was carrying a pistol instead of a lightsaber.
Cops released a surveillance camera image yesterday showing Darth at the teller counter, loading bills into a bag, while the customer cowers on the floor.
The fake Darth made a quick-footed getaway, and the bank was still checking its drawers late yesterday to figure out how large his take was, Lamb said.
It was the second recent off-the-wall bank robbery. On Wednesday, NYPD cops arrested a man dubbed the “Bouquet Bandit,” saying he brought flowers and potted plants into banks he robbed.
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Wow, things are so fucking bad in this country that star wars geeks are now turning to crime. Lol I have to admit, I’m trying VERY Hard to find this funny but it’s just so sad really. I guess it’s not that funny but damn, I think the next comic book hero fan to go on a crime spree will be Spiderman or Batman.
Definitely not Superman though. He’s fucking lame. I bet George Lucas isn’t going to be happy about this one.
Back in the 1980s, they were the biggest stars in Hollywood, both in terms of box-office receipts and bicep circumference. But the glory days of the brawny action heroes — Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Van Damme, and the like — eventually faded. In their place, a new breed of ’90s star took over: younger, leaner, and nowhere near as macho. By decade’s end, Keanu Reeves was a huge action star (shudder to think).
Where did it all go wrong? According to an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Sylvester Stallone puts the blame squarely on the caped shoulders of one comic book hero.
“It was the first ‘Batman‘ movie,” Stallone told the Times, in reference to the 1989 movie adaptation starring Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader. He went on to say, “The action movies changed radically when it became possible to Velcro your muscles on,” a clear dig at how the trim Keaton was encased in a sculpted Batsuit for the film. Stallone joked, “I wish I had thought of Velcro muscles myself… “I didn’t have to go to the gym for all those years.”
Stallone adds that the director Tim Burton’s stylish take on the superhero story changed what audiences expected from an action flick: “It was the beginning of a new era. The visual took over. The special effects became more important than the single person. That was the beginning of the end.”
It’s ironic, then, that Stallone will be going to this year’s San Diego Comic-Con — the center for all things geeky — to promote his upcoming movie, “The Expendables,” which is a true throwback to the action hits of the ’80s. In the film, Stallone (who also directed) leads a team of mercenaries to overthrow a corrupt South American dictator. It costars Jason Statham, Jet Li, Mickey Rourke, Terry Crews, and even Stallone’s “Rocky IV” nemesis, Dolph Lundgren.
“The Expendables” is also notable for being the first time Stallone has appeared on-screen with fellow ’80s icons Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis. Stallone told the Times that each of them had their own on-screen persona which made set them apart from one another: “Arnold was king of the one-liners. Bruce was witty and talkative… And I was pretty silent.” He added that their differences made it impossible for him to see himself in his friend’s signature roles. “Arnold was relentless, like this perfect machine. People asked if I could have played the Terminator. Are you kidding? Not a chance, I never could have played the Terminator.”
As it happens, Bruce Willis will be at Comic-Con this weekend promoting his upcoming movie “Red,” which also is an action flick about an aging team of experts. It stars Oscar-winners Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren.
Stallone will preview “The Expendables” at Comic-Con on Thursday, and the movie will muscle its way into movie theaters on August 13.
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The reason for the decline is because people wanted to see ordinary men and women become “super heroes”. They are flawed, tainted, have big serious emo issues, yet they overcome these obstacles to save the day, world, galaxy, etc.
That’s why all the new hit movies feature these flawed screwed up characters. It’s fun and enjoyable to see this screw ups (Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker, Tony Stark are the ideal protagonists) overcome their dark shit and go own. Contrast these characters with idiots like Superman who are fucking perfect and completely invulnerable except stupid kryptonite. Not as fun or relateable. Lame is the word that comes to mind.
The old 80′s flicks of super packed action is probably a niche today but if you combine it with flawed and personable characters, you’ll have a great film like The Dark Knight, Iron Man 1 and 2, or Spiderman trilogy (I still have yet to watch this shit!).
BEIJING – China’s largest reported oil spill emptied beaches along the Yellow Sea as its size doubled Wednesday, while cleanup efforts included straw mats and frazzled workers with little more than rubber gloves.
An official warned the spill posed a “severe threat” to sea life and water quality as China’s latest environmental crisis spread off the shores of Dalian, once named China’s most livable city.
One cleanup worker has drowned, his body coated in crude.
“I’ve been to a few bays today and discovered they were almost entirely covered with dark oil,” said Zhong Yu with environmental group Greenpeace China, who spent the day on a boat inspecting the spill.
“The oil is half-solid and half liquid and is as sticky as asphalt,” she told The Associated Press by telephone.
The oil had spread over 165 square miles (430 square kilometers) of water five days since a pipeline at the busy northeastern port exploded, hurting oil shipments from part of China’s strategic oil reserves to the rest of the country. Shipments remained reduced Wednesday.
State media has said no more oil is leaking into the sea, but the total amount of oil spilled is not yet clear.
Greenpeace China released photos Wednesday of inky beaches and of straw mats about 2 square meters (21 square feet) in size scattered on the sea, meant to absorb the oil.
Fishing in the waters around Dalian has been banned through the end of August, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
“The oil spill will pose a severe threat to marine animals, and water quality, and the sea birds,” Huang Yong, deputy bureau chief for the city’s Maritime Safety Administration, told Dragon TV.
At least one person died during cleanup efforts. A 25-year-old firefighter, Zhang Liang, drowned Tuesday when a wave threw him from a vessel, Xinhua reported.
Officials, oil company workers and volunteers were turning out by the hundreds to clean blackened beaches.
“We don’t have proper oil cleanup materials, so our workers are wearing rubber gloves and using chopsticks,” an official with the Jinshitan Golden Beach Administration Committee told the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper, in apparent exasperation.
“This kind of inefficiency means the oil will keep coming to shore. … This stretch of oil is really difficult to clean up in the short term.”
But 40 oil-skimming boats and about 800 fishing boats were also deployed to clean up the spill, and Xinhua said more than 15 kilometers (9 miles) of oil barriers had been set up to keep the slick from spreading.
China Central Television earlier reported an estimate of 1,500 tons of oil has spilled. That would amount roughly to 400,000 gallons (1,500,000 liters) — as compared with 94 million to 184 million gallons in the BP oil spill off the U.S. coast.
China’s State Oceanic Administration released the latest size of the contaminated area in a statement Tuesday.
The cause of the explosion that started the spill was still not clear. The pipeline is owned by China National Petroleum Corp., Asia’s biggest oil and gas producer by volume.
Friday’s images of 100-foot-high (30-meter-high) flames at China’s second largest port for crude oil imports drew the immediate attention of President Hu Jintao and other top leaders. Now the challenge is cleaning up the greasy plume.
“Our priority is to collect the spilled oil within five days to reduce the possibility of contaminating international waters,” Dalian’s vice mayor, Dai Yulin, told Xinhua on Tuesday.
But an official with the State Oceanic Administration has warned the spill will be difficult to clean up even in twice that amount of time.
Some locals said the area’s economy was already hurting.
“Let’s wait and see how well they deal with the oil until Sept. 1, if the oil can’t be cleaned up by then, the seafood products will all be ruined,” an unnamed fisherman told Dragon TV. “No one will buy them in the market because of the smell of the oil.”
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Aside from anti-Chinese and “hoorah, China has a disaster hahaha!” comments that I see on yahoo, the #1 theme of most comments out there is that this was done on purpose and conspiracy theorists are having a fun time exploiting this one. The 3rd most relevant topic, oddly enough, is a combination of either “save the earth” or “feel sorry and pray for China”. At least some people have some sense.
This is just another rare tragedy. Like airplane crashes or Steve Irwin stingray impalements, this is just a coincidence. But damn, lotta oil spills.
As a side note, the reason why it’s unlikely to be done on purpose, or at least by China, is that the money and economic harm from both damage to property, lives, businesses, and loss of income (oil generates energy to run literally an entire economy) is always way more than the “benefit” of a disaster, if you can even call it that. Don’t believe me? Why don’t you fly off the roof of your building, break your body or potentially get killed, and collect the insurance? Think it’s worth it? (Hint, I hope your answer is actually “no” – please don’t go out and get yourself hurt or killed on purpose).