Mohammad

Precious paper...

While the first alleged terrorist bomber, 19 year-old Dhjokar Tsarnaev, born in Kyrgystan, is on the loose currently somewhere in Boston and is the target of a massive manhunt, his brother, 26 year-old, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, born in Russia and legal US resident since 2007, died overnight in a shootout with the local police. It appears he was a boxer, studied at Bunker Hill Community College, was very religious, didn't drink or smoke, wanted to become an engineer, and his favorite movie was Borat. His YouTube page can be found here: on it can be found videos of Islamic preacher Feiz Mohammad. Most informative is a captioned photo narrative by Johannes Hirn showcasing the older brother's boxing pursuits and a glimpse into his history and philosophy.

Cheney Caught In Another Major Lie

There was a time when working on Wall Street, either on the sell or buy side,  was the dream of every able-bodied worker who could do simple addition in their head and wasn't afraid to cut the occasional corner in exchange for a bottle of Bollinger and a sizable year end bonus. That, however, was so 2006 and with the long overdue conversion of the banking sector into a utility the stratospheric compensation payments from the peak of the credit bubble are long gone. So what is the New Normal dream job? Become a California state worker, preferably one who deals with neurotic and/or crazy people (i.e., a psychiatrist), and rake it in. The following chart from Bloomberg shows just how generous the otherwise insolvent state of California is when it comes to paying its public servants, and the 100%+ increase in California employee state pay since 2005. Needless to say, this is a rate of increase in compensation that 99% of workers in the private sector would die for.

Perhaps the reason why AAPL is having its biggest daily tumble in recent history on the day it officially launched the iPad mini for retail sale, is because all the people who otherwise would be waiting in line in front of FAO Schwartz and inhaling the smell of fresh horse excrement, are doing all they can to obtain gas. Any  gas. Because iHeater, iShower and iFridge just lack that little "oomph" when dealing with people who are cold, smelly and hungry.

Don't Read This ... It's Totally Irrelevant, Old News, Who Cares, Americans Are Above the Law, We're Exceptional (and Anyone Who Criticizes anything our Government Does is a Commie Fascist Turruristicalist Moooooslim)

Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis (Nafis), 21, was arrested this morning in downtown Manhattan after he allegedly attempted to detonate what he believed to be a 1,000-pound bomb at the New York Federal Reserve Bank on Liberty Street in lower Manhattan’s financial district. The defendant faces charges of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to al Qaeda. The arrest of Nafis was the culmination of an undercover operation during which he was closely monitored by the FBI New York Field Office’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). The explosives that he allegedly sought and attempted to use had been rendered inoperable by law enforcement and posed no threat to the public. The charges were announced by Loretta E. Lynch, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York; Lisa Monaco, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Mary E. Galligan, Acting Assistant Director in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI); and Raymond W. Kelly, Commissioner, New York City Police Department (NYPD).

Update: we now have the suspect's name: Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, who in addition to Plan A had Plan B: "If Nafis felt his attack was about to be thwarted by cops, he would invoke the back-up plan, which involved a suicide bombing operation"

NBC 4 New York has learned that federal authorities have arrested a man they say was plotting to attack the Federal Reserve in New York City. The man is in custody in New York. Sources tell NBC 4 New York that he lives on Long Island. Law enforcement officials stress that the plot was a sting operation monitored by the FBI and NYPD and the public was never at risk. "According to the report, the suspect drove a van he believed to be loaded with explosives from Long Island to Lower Manhattan. He then placed the van near the Federal Reserve and was then arrested by the FBI and NYPD. The suspect, whom sources said is from the Jamaica Queens section of New York City, is currently in custody in New York. Sources say he was acting alone." And "New York terror suspect is a 21-year-old Bangladeshi citizen who traveled to the U.S. in January to carry out terror attack." At least all that tungsten gold lying on the Manhattan bedrock is safe and sound and John McClane will not be called out of retirement just yet.

Even as the popular ADHD affliction is preoccupied with who paid what taxes, and whether this poll shows that guy on top or this one, until tomorrow when they flip providing even more meaningless chitchat opportunities, everyone appears to have once again lost sight of the big picture, which is that two US ships continue full steam ahead toward Iran, namely the CVN-74 Stennis aircraft carrier which has crossed the Pacific ocean and is now a week away from its target, and the LHA 5 Peleliu big deck amphibious warfare ship, where they will join two other aircraft carriers and the LHD 7 Iwo Jima as summarized by the graphic below. Why is US naval presence in the Gulf soaring to a concentration not seen since the last Gulf war? The head of the Iran revolutionary guard may have an idea. From Reuters: Israel will eventually go beyond threats and will attack Iran, the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards was quoted as saying on Saturday. "A war will occur, but it's not clear where or when it will be," Jafari was quoted as saying on Saturday. "Israel seeks war with us, but it's not clear when the war will occur."

The torching of US embassies across the Muslim world may have been put on the backburner, perhaps driven by the withdrawal of virtually all embassy personnel across the affected regions, but the anti-US sentiment, whether predicated by some movie or not - and oddly enough nobody appears to have set any French embassies on fire following the Prophet Mohammad cartoon which appeared earlier this week, continues. The latest affected country: Pakistan, where "police opened fire on rioters who were torching a cinema during a protest against an anti-Islam film Friday, killing one man on a holiday declared by the government so that people could demonstrate against the video." So, the government specifically creates a "holiday" to protest the video then shoots people who protest the video? Does anyone else get the feeling that all authorities here are urgently doing their best to preempt a war? Was there a secret G-50 meeting in which it was decided the world was too overpopulated and a war was desperately needed? Surely that is ludicrous: just look at the natural growth that the world experienced after the first great depression unaided and unabetted by such trivialities as world war.

It's almost as if someone is actively trying to force the Muslim world to launch an all out war against the "developed" west. A week ago, it was a film mocking Mohammad which led to the death of the US ambassador in Libya. Today, it is a French magazine which has ridiculed the Prophet Mohammad by portraying him naked in cartoons, which, as Reuters logically adds, "threatens to fuel the anger of Muslims around the world who are already incensed by a film depiction of him as a womanizing buffoon." It is as if the anti-Iran strategy of antagonizing the country to its breaking point, merely so the first attack comes from them in response to endless provocations, and a defensive retaliation can be spun to the "free world", has now been adopted against the entire Muslim world now, and all the insolvent Western countries are praying they get attacked just so the media spin will coalesce the sheep around the "developed" democracies in an all out "retaliatory" assault, which among other things, liberates tens of millions of barrel of oil equivalents, even as it spreads democracy and unlimited credit cards.

Here is a summary of where the world stands:

• Unable to reach a compromise over the weekend, South Africa is now in an all out labor strike, with the police again firing rubber bullets at miners with lethal escalation guaranteed
• Back from vacation, the once again penniless citizens of Spain, Greece, and Portugal have resumed protesting austerity
• US embassies attacked, in many cases with numerous casualties, in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Sudan, Lebanon, India, Balgadesh, Indonesia, and others.
• Japan "appropriating" China-contested islands provoking a firestorm of retaliation including demands for "war with Japan"
• The Japanese ambassador to China dying mysteriously
• Netanyahu telling Meet the Press Iran will have a nuke in six-seven months and must be stopped beforehand
• Warships from more than 25 countries, including the United States, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, launching a military exercise in the Straits of Hormuz
• A third US aircraft - the CVN-74 Stennis - carrier is en route to Iran with an ETA of about 10 days
• And finally, a potential catalyst to light this whole mess on fire, Iran's Revolutionary Guard announcing that its troops are now on the ground in Syria.

Moments ago it was Mitt Romney saying a bunch of canned, pre-election stuff. Now it is Obama's turn to say another bunch of canned, pre-election stuff. The sad thing is that for both the death of US civilans in the line of duty is an electoral gambit.

Yesterday it was the US embassy in Egypt which fell victim to rioting as angry protestors stormed the building and replaced the US flag with a black one. Today, the violence shifts to Libya where the US ambassador and three staffers was just killed after an attack over a US-produced filmed deemed insulting to Muslims. Perhaps it is time for the US to replace one "pro-democracy" regime with another. From Reuters: "The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff were killed in a rocket attack on their car, a Libyan official said, as they were rushed from a consular building stormed by militants denouncing a U.S.-made film insulting the Prophet Mohammad." Number of US ambasadors to Libya killed under Gadaffi's regime? Zero.

Three months ago, the Muslim Bortherhood supported, US-endorsed and recommended candidate, Mohammed Mursi won the Egyptian presidential election. Fast forward to today, when we learn from Al Jazeera that the grateful Egyptian population has decided to conduct a little Arab Spring repeat rehearsal in the fall, as Egyptian protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. embassy in Cairo on Tuesday and some pulled down the American flag during a protest over what they said was a film being produced in the United States that was insulting to the Prophet Mohammad, witnesses said.