Saturday, June 9, 2012
Obama Backs Away From ‘Fine’ Comment
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
President Obama on Friday afternoon backed away from his earlier comments that the “private sector is doing fine,” telling reporters that he does not believe the economy is doing fine.
“That’s precisely why I asked Congress to start taking some steps that can make a difference,” Mr. Obama said in brief remarks to reporters during a meeting with the visiting Philippines president.
Republicans had seized on comments Mr. Obama made during an earlier news conference, in which he repeatedly made the point that hiring at private businesses is doing well, while hiring by state and local government is not.
“The private sector is doing fine,” Mr. Obama said at the news conference.
But by later in the day, Mr. Obama had decided to emphasize that he does not believe that the overall economy is doing fine, as Republicans were trying to suggest.
“Listen, it is absolutely clear the economy is not doing fine,” he said. He suggested that Republicans had misstated his words from earlier in the day.
“I think if you look at what I said this morning, what I’ve been saying consistently over the last year, we’ve actually seen some good momentum in the private sector,” he said. “There’s been 4.3 million jobs created, 800,000 this year alone, record corporate profits.”
He added: “And so that has not been the biggest drag on the economy.”
Mr. Obama said the economy “needs to be strengthened,” adding that “I believe that there are a lot of Americans who are hurting right now, which is what I’ve been saying for the last year, two years, three years, what I’ve been saying since I came into office.”
Sinkhole swallows minibus in S China
A sinkhole engulfed a minibus Thursday morning in Guilin, south China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, injuring the vehicle's driver. The incident was a geological disaster that happened around 4 a.m. on Fuxing Road in the city's Qixing district. It left a big hole which is 4 meters long, 2.5 meters wide and 2 meters deep. The driver, the only person in the minibus, was being treated in hospital.
Gay Pride festivities kick off in Tel Aviv
By YONI COHEN
Parade will include a procession of floats and organized groups of marchers; tens of thousands expected to take part.
The streets of Tel Aviv were filled with rainbow-colored pride flags on Friday as thousands of people were taking part in the annual Gay Pride March.
The festivities began at 10 a.m. with a community happening at Meir Park with musical performances, celebrity appearances and speeches by public figures such as Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai, Meretz MK Nitzan Horowitz and Labor leader Shelly Yechimovich.
The parade itself began at 1 p.m. and included a procession of floats and organized groups of marchers accompanied by thousands of supporters waving pride flags and enjoying the fine summer weather. The parade will leave Meir Park, travel down Bugrashov Street then pass through Ben Yehuda Street onto Arlozorov Street, ending with a beach party at Gordon Beach at 3 p.m. Appearing on the central stage at Gordon Beach will be some of Tel Aviv's top DJs including Offer Nissim, Tal Cohen and Avihai Partok. Internationally recognized Israeli musicians Ivri Lider and Jonny Goldstein, the two main members of the pop-dance group The Young Professionals, will be hosting Uriel Yekutiel on stage.
A number of major streets were closed to traffic during the time of the parade including Bugrashov Street, Ben Yehuda Street between Bugrashov and Jabotinsky as well as parts of Arlozorov Street closest to the beach.
Thousands of tourists arrived in Tel Aviv over the past week to take part in activities gearing up to the main parade. Hilton Beach was decorated with gay pride flags and chill out music has entertained locals and tourists alike. The beach, which is popular among the local gay community, hosted some of the top DJs from the city's leading clubs.
This year the pride events were held under the banner "Pride Flags Countrywide." Though the central events are in Tel Aviv, everyone in the country should be able to walk the streets with pride, the Tel Aviv mayor's advisor on Gay Community Affairs explained recently.
"The message that we chose this year actually casts spotlight outside the city, on the periphery and the periphery's connection with Tel Aviv-Jaffa as Israel's secular and gay capital," Yaniv Weizman, who is also a member of the City Council, told reporters in Tel Aviv. "Most of the gays, lesbians and transgenders who currently live in Tel Aviv were not born in the city and have strengthened our pride by coming from all over the country."
Last year an estimated 100,000 people took part in the parade, carrying colorful banners calling for equality under the banner “Being gay is ‘shaveh’ [worthwhile/ equal]. Organizers expect similar numbers this year.
Jerusalem to become Egypt’s capital under Mursi’s rule, says Muslim cleric
If Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Mursi became president, Egypt’s new capital will no more be Cairo, but the new capital will be Jerusalem, a prominent Egyptian cleric said at a presidential campaign rally, which was aired by an Egyptian private TV channel.
“Our capital shall not be Cairo, Mecca or Medina. It shall be Jerusalem with God’s will. Our chants shall be: ‘millions of martyrs will march towards Jerusalem’,” prominent cleric Safwat Hagazy said, according to the video aired by Egypt’s religious Annas TV on Tuesday.
The video went viral after being posted on YouTube – accompanied by English subtitles by Memri TV –, with 61,691 views until Thursday night.
“The United States of the Arabs will be restored on the hands of that man [Mursi] and his supporters. The capital of the [Muslim] Caliphate will be Jerusalem with God’s will,” Hegazy said, as the crowds cheered, waving the Egyptian flags along with the flags of the Islamist Hamas group, which rules the Gaza Strip.
“Tomorrow Mursi will liberate Gaza,” the crowds chanted.
“Yes, we will either pray in Jerusalem or we will be martyred there,” Hegazy said.
Hegazy’s speech came during a presidential campaign rally at the Egyptian Delta city of Mahalla, where Mursi attended along with the Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohammed Badei and members of the group and its political wing the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP).
Mursi will challenge Egypt’s former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq in the election run-off, scheduled on June 16 and 17. Shafiq, an air force general, was the country’s last prime minister before former president Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down by a popular uprising in February 2011.
A court on Saturday sentenced the former ruler and his interior minister to life imprisonment for their role in the killings of up to 850 protesters in the January 25 uprising that ended Mubarak’s 30-year rule. Six senior police officers were acquitted for lack of evidence.
The verdicts were met by angry street protests by Egyptians who considered them too lenient and demanded a purge of the judiciary.
Members of the Islamist-dominated parliament attacked the verdicts, accusing the court of ignoring the rights of peaceful protesters killed in the uprising.
Hegazy led thousands of protesters at Cairo’s iconic Tarir Square against the verdicts. Protesters also called for the endorsing of the ‘Political Isolation Law’ that could bar political figures from Mubarak era, including Shafiq, from joining political life in the country for some years.
Endorsing the law, which will be decided by Cairo Supreme Constitutional Court on June 14, two days before the election run-off, could push Shafiq out of the presidential race.
For activists, choosing Shafiq would symbolize a return to the old regime and an end to the revolution. Voting for Mursi, on the other hand, would mean handing Egypt to an Islamic movement they say has monopolized power since the uprising.
Nigel Farage - Europe is Collapsing, Buy Gold & Expect QE
On the heels of Fed Chairman Bernanke’s comments, Spain being downgraded and key meetings taking place in Europe, today King World News interviewed MEP (Member European Parliament) Nigel Farage, to get his take on the ongoing crisis. Farage told KWN that “when I look into the eyes of the leaders of Europe ... what I’m seeing now is madness, absolute, total and utter madness.”
Farage also discussed the action in the gold market, but first, here is what Farage had to say about the deteriorating situation in Europe: “Of course, over the last couple of years we’ve had two bailouts of Greece, a bailout of Ireland, Portugal. We’re now on the verge of needing a bailout in Cyprus, but perhaps more significantly, a bailout in Spain.”
“There is all sorts of twisting and turning going on with the Spanish saying, ‘Please save our banks, but don’t put us under the austerity measures that you’ve put the other countries under.’
If one looks globally, we’ve got people like David Cameron, and importantly, President Obama, who are basically saying, ‘The euro project must be saved. It must be saved at all costs.’ ....
“For that to happen the Eurozone has to turn into a state, and a state that effectively has a Fed.
The Germans are saying, “Hang on guys, we don’t really want to take on the debt for the whole of ‘Club Mediterranean’ countries.” There’s been a meeting in Berlin today, and Angela Merkel has, for the first time, said that she’s prepared to countenance this becoming a full fiscal and political union, but it has to be constructed on German terms.
So it would appear that despite the fact that the eurozone is a disaster, despite the fact that nobody is prepared to recognize just what a mess our banks are in, despite all of this, our political classes in Europe and America are prepared to continue this project of total failure.
If we continue with this route, we are heading for money printing on a scale that has never been seen before in the history of mankind. Clearly, as history teaches us, that will lead to massive inflation, and huge asset depreciation.”
Farage also added: “All I can tell you is when I look into the eyes of the leaders of Europe, and as a leader of a group in the European Parliament I do get eyeball to eyeball with them, when I look into the eyes of these people, frankly what I’m seeing now is madness, absolute, total and utter madness.
The project, the idea is what must be protected and to hell with the consequences. I really believe that when we look back in decades or centuries to come, we will see what is happening now in the eurozone as something of huge historical significance.
People will say to themselves in classrooms, in a couple of hundred years time, ‘How could they have been so stupid?’”
Farage also had this to say regarding gold: “I think we are at that level where people who have waited to add to their gold portfolios should be adding now. You may well get a situation where if they do pull off some grand deal that gold falls ... but we are now back in the buying zone for gold.
I always felt, and I’ve said for some months on your show, that I thought gold would come back (down), and indeed it has. I think investors that are scared of what may happen to paper money, you’d have to be very complacent not to be, we are in a buying territory for gold now in my view.”
This is an incredibly important and timely interview with Farage. The KWN interview with Nigel Farage will be available shortly and you can listen to it by CLICKING HERE.
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