President Obama’s assault on Mitt Romney for sending jobs overseas draws from a playbook used repeatedly by politicians of the right and left over the last two decades.
In 1992, Ross Perotran for president on the strength of the “ giant sucking sound ” of jobs going to Mexico. Four years later, Pat Buchanan tried to gain the Republican nomination by promising to repeal the North American Free Trade Agreement and withdraw from the World Trade Organization. In 2004, John Kerry accused George W. Bush of providing tax breaks to outsourcers.

After six years, New Delhi Charter School’sunique policy booting pregnant students off campus triggers an uproar. Allison Yarrow reports.
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Home to less than three thousand people, and the boyhood stomping grounds of country music star Tim McGraw, Delhi, La., shot to national attention this week when it came out that a local charter school has for the past six years required any girl “an administrator or a teacher suspects” is pregnant “to take a pregnancy test … andto refer the suspect student to a physician of the school’s choice.”
Any girl who is pregnant, or who refuses to submit to the test, is barred from campus, according to the charter’s student pregnancy policy—which twice refers to the school’s “high standards” that students are requiredto meet, and says its “curriculum will maintain an environment in which all students will learn and exhibitacceptable character traits that govern language, gestures, physical actions and written words.” The policy makes no mention of male students.
Charter schools are publicly funded but privately operated schools that are allowed to function outside of the rules governing traditionalpublic schools, but must live up to results laid out in each school’s charter.Delhi Charter School (the name is pronounced del-HIGH) opened in 2001 and is attended by around 600 students. The town itself is about 57 percent black, according to the most recent census data, while just 23 percent of the students in the school are black, according to the Associated Press .
Marjorie Esman, Executive Director of the Louisiana branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, calls Delhi’s rule the “how to get the girl you don’t like kicked out of school policy,” suggesting high-school students could abuse a rule rooted in suspicion rather than fact, employing it to humiliate female peers. She said she was not aware of anyother public or publicly funded school with a similar rule. The school has yet to respond to the group’s letter.
Seventy percent of school-age girls who give birth leave school, according to the ACLU, which issued a formal complaint to the school Monday contending the policyviolates the 14th Amendment’s right to due process and Title IX, the landmark1972 ruling prohibiting discrimination on thebasis of sex to any education program receiving federal monies.
Ira Heuvelman-Dobrolyubova / GettyImages
Delhi Charter general manager, Mike Wilson, who answered a call to the school’s general number, said he wasn’t authorized to talk about the policy or whether the school intended to maintain it. He confirmed it was instituted in 2006, five years after the charter first opened. He couldn’t say how many girls had been coerced to take pregnancy tests or dismissed for being pregnant, or what happens to girls who refuse the test.
Other Delhi Charter School administrators, as well as their attorney, David Hammett, did not return calls for comment.
Esman says an anonymous community member alerted the ACLU about the school’s policy, which she says“punishes any girl whether she’s pregnant or not.” And, she argues, the policy creates a perverse incentive for students to have an abortion.
“If you have an abortion, you get to come right backto school. If you choose to have your child you get kicked out.”
“If you have an abortion, you get to come right back to school. If you choose to have your child you get kicked out. Itdoesn't do anything for boys who are parents.”
Esman and ACLU’s national office hope the school will suspend the rule immediately—the new school year starts in a matter of weeks—and revisit itwhen its board meets next to draft something “more legally sound.” A legal fellow in the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, Tiseme Zegeye, calls the rule among the most outdated and egregious she has seen, stereotyping and stigmatizing students illegally. Shesays the ACLU has been “unable to find information that students have challenged this in any way” in the six years the policy has been in effect.
Zegeye said she knew of no other public schools with the same policy.
A former teen mom has stepped up to challenge the school’s rule. NatashaVianna got pregnant at 17, and says the staff at her private Catholic school in Cambridge, Mass. made her feel so ostracized and unsafe that she transferred to a public school in nearby Somerville. After overcoming herown shame about being a teen parent, Vianna began blogging about it at a site dedicated to the topic, thepushback.org. Reading about Delhi Charter moved the 24-year-old to post a petition to Change.orgTuesday, calling on the school to throw out the rule.In less than 24 hours, nearly 70,000 people have signed it.
Vianna said she is encouraged by the support, but afraid that even if the school does toss its policy as the outcry builds, its attitude about pregnant girls won’t necessarily change.
“They can get rid of the policy,” she said, “that doesn't mean they’re going to treatteen parents the waythey should be treated.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/08/louisiana-charter-school-mandates-pregnancy-tests-for-suspect-students.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/blackberry/p.html?id=1758097
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/48554183/ns/today-back_to_school/
Should schools be able to require pregnancy tests for students?

Аgreed.

Last week, Mitt Romney declaredthat if his new, ...
Now, usually politicians ( Barack Obama included ) gethammered for overstating how much the economy will improve under their watch. But by at least some forecasts, Mr. Romney’s promises may actually be a little underambitious, in that his promised job growth is pretty close to what’s already expected.
In its semi-annual long-term economic forecast released in April, Macroeconomic Advisers projected that the economy would add 11.8 million jobs from 2012 to 2016. That means Mr. Romney believes his newly announced policies would add an extra 200,000 jobs on top of what people already expected, or a jobs bonus of about 2 percent. Themore jobs the better, of course, butthat’s not really much to write home about.
Moody’s Analytics, another forecasting firm, projects similar job growth:
Payroll Employment Change
Sources: BLS, Moody’s Analytics
Year Millions of jobs
2010 -0.93
2011 1.50
2012 1.85
2013 1.89
2014 3.12
2015 3.76
2016 3.07
2017 1.35
2013-2016 11.84
In an e-mail Monday,Mark Zandi, the chiefeconomist at Moody’s Analytics, emphasized that he actually expects the economy to remain on about the same path regardless of who is elected:
The forecast is agnostic with regardto who is elected in November. The key assumption is that whoever wins they will reasonably gracefully address the fiscal cliff, increase the Treasury debt ceilingwithout major incident, and achieve something close to fiscal sustainability.
My view, is that the economy’s fundamentals are much improved, as households deleverage, the financial system re-capitalizes, and American businesses become global competitive. Moreover, the construction cycle is on the verge of turning up significantly, which by itself will create a boat load of jobs, particularly in 2014-15. If policymakers can getit roughly right soon after election, all of this will shine through quickly.
Not everyone is so upbeat.
Jan Hatzius, the chiefeconomist at Goldman Sachs, told me that he has not developed explicit forecasts that go through the end of 2016, but he says he expected an averagejob growth of just under 150,000 a month from now through the end of 2013.
Given those expectations for the start of the next presidential term, hesaid that Mr. Romney’s promise ofjob growth averaging 250,000 a month over the next four years “would bequite a good outcome.”
Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office’s latestlong-term economic forecast , released in January, showed that employment would grow by just 10 million from the first quarter of 2013 to the first quarter of 2017, the dates of the next presidentialterm. (Two asides: The numbers are thesame if you use the last quarter of 2012 through the last quarter of 2016. Additionally, note that the C.B.O.’s forecast refers to thenumber of workers employed, as opposed to the number of payroll jobs in existence, which was the metric in the other forecasts cited.)
That C.B.O. forecast implies that Mr. Romney would be promising an extra 2million jobs, or a 20 percent bonus from what’s already expected. Pretty impressive.
By law, though, the Congressional Budget Office must base its projections on the laws that are on the books rather than on what Congress is expected to do. That means that the office’s forecast assumes the“fiscal cliff” — with its sharp tax increases and deep spending cuts — materializes at the end of this year. Most economists do not believe Congress will allow this to happen.
Needless to say, the C.B.O.’s jobs numberswould probably lookstronger if they likewise assumed Congress does not allow the country to go over the cliff. In that case, Mr. Romney’s job growth premium would be at least somewhat less impressive.
So what to make of all these figures?
First, as you can probably tell from both these forecasts and the events of the last decade, there is a huge margin of error when it comes to predicting economic trends for the next week, let alone the next four years. So it’s very hard to judge whether a promised gain of 12 million jobs under Mr. Romney’s policy overhaul significantly deviatesfrom what would happen without the overhaul.
Perhaps the more important corollary, though, is that there’s a huge margin of error in what Mr. Romney is promising, too. And that’s true for just about any economic forecast you hear from any politician (or pundit or journalist for that matter).
Politicians throw outlots of different numbers for what the economy will do under the assumption that their exact agenda ispassed, which is a pretty unrealistic assumption in the first place. Even if their policies do sail through the sausagefactory that is Washington unscathed, there’s no telling what effect they’ll have when they move outof the world of bullet points and into the actual economy. So take any forecasts you hear from either presidential campaign with a boulder-size grain ofsalt.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/07/romneys-job-growth-promises/
Empty Promises...

WadeM. Page, the man who the police say shot and killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin this week, died froma self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said on Wednesday. The authorities had reported earlier that he was fatally shot by a police officer.

The United Nations Organization is neither United, nor it is an Organization, but rather, a club for trading interests and what community of Nations is it supposed to represent? Did anyone vote for it? Therefore speaking about the UNO and democracy in one and the same breath is ludicrous.
Enter the UNO, talking about"democracy". What"democracy"? Did anyone vote for the United Nations Organization? Then what right do a handful of members sitting in its Security Council have to implement policy which can have a direct affect on our lives? And how"democratic" are the member states supporting the policies it implements - policieswhich more and more rubber-stamp NATO's colonialist adventures?
Does the UNO then admit that it supports terrorists and racists? In which case, this organization does not represent my idea of a United Nations Organization, it does not represent the ideals set forth in its own Charter and it does not represent a forum which has the right to claim to defend or uphold international law.
It is about dismantling the African Union, it is about destroying Africa's institutions and handing them back to former colonial powers, crippling African nations and Africans once more with horrific interest repayments, it is about channelling Africa's resources outwards for free, aided and abetted bythe UNO, aided and abetted by the African leaders themselves who look on with their hands in their pockets, aided and abetted bythose who recognise and support what can only be called a terrorist organization.
This is not my world, this is not my international community, this is not my UNO - it has failed to represent my wishes, it has failed to represent the wishes in the hearts and minds of the world communityand as such it no longer exists as anything worthy of respect - it is a club for trading interests among those who were not elected andtherefore have no right to barter the world's resources between them.
It is time for a new world community, it is time for a new approach, it is time for the rule of law to be applied equally to all, it is time to hold the handful of political leaders among the 7-billion-strong world population to be accountable for their actions. It is not theirworld, it is ours!
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

The mysterious explosion that occurred in the early morning on June 30, 1908 near the Stony Tunguska River, has been haunting the researchers for over ahundred years. Recently, a group of experts from the University of Bolognafound a strange anomaly in the center of Lake Cheko,located eight kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion that may be a fragment of a celestial body.
Tunguska is the common name of thethree major tributaries of the Yenisei: The Upper (Angara), Medium (Stony) and Lower. Inthe area near the village of Stony Tunguska near the village of Vanavara on June 30, 1908 around 7:00 am a bigfireball was seen, overflying the territory of the Yenisei River basin from the southeast to the northwest (on an alternative testimony, the body was cylindrical in shape). The flight ended with a deafening booming explosion over the taiga at seven to ten kilometers above theground.
A powerful blast wave was recorded by observatories around the world. A flash of light was observed at a great distance - the ball hasbecome a pillar of fire at about 20 kilometers altitude. On the territory of more than two thousand kilometers trees were knocked down and in houses, located hundreds of kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion, windows were blown out.
Ironically, within 13 years no one dared to carry out studies on the site of the explosion. Only in 1921, a romantic enthusiast, a member of the Mineralogical Museum in Moscow, Leonid A. Kulik, accidentally learned about the Tunguska mystery from an old sheet tear-off calendar, and his interest was sparked.With the support of Academicians Vernadsky and Fersman, he organized the first expedition to the area of ​​Stony Tunguska.
Kulik and his companions gathered over 230 fragments weighing over 200 pounds. But these were the fragments of meteorites that fell earlier in the taiga. In addition, the expedition found microscopic silicate and magnetite pellets and fragments of rock with a high content of elements, indicating a possible cosmic origin of the substance. However, it has not been established whether they were remnants of the above events.
Today there are about 120 scientific, pseudo-scientific andpseudoscientific hypotheses explaining the natureof the Tunguska phenomenon. The most common of them is the fall of themeteorite (presumably iron) or passing meteor swarm - was quickly called into question because meteorite fragments have not been found.
Despite the doubts inmeteorite nature of the explosion, the enthusiasts continued to search for a crater (or craters) in the area ofthe suggested epicenter, and not without success.
For example, in 1994 participants of the research association"Kosmopoisk" Romeiko managed tomake a successful aerial Stony Tunguska region. Thepictures clearly show the outlines of a mysterious lake, located a few dozens of kilometers from the epicenter of the alleged explosion.
The lake is of round shape, and its area is 200 to 250 meters. The shores of the reservoir are covered by forest, where some trees are felled.Since Taiga is difficultto pass in that area, the place had previously been virtually unknown. According to the hypothesis of Romeiko, it is a water-filled crater of meteoritic origin.
Researchers from Bologna led by a specialist in marine geology Luca Gasperini ran into another "crater" in 2007. The Italians drew attention to the taiga Lake Cheko that lies eight kilometers north-west of the alleged epicenter of the explosion. The location of the reservoir coincides with the flight path of a giant body that later without good grounds became known as the Tunguska meteorite. It is interesting that Lake Cheko is not observed on any mapmade before 1929, and according to the testimony of local residents, prior to the crash in 1908 it simply did not exist.
Under The project"Tunguska 99," Gasperini and his colleagues conducteda study of the lake onthe ground. First of all, they were struck by its nearly hemispherical form. It was also found that the bottom of the reservoir has the shape of a cone, and its maximum depth isabout 50 meters. Thismay indicate that something huge had struck the tunnel at this point and sank into the ground. Indeed, the ground penetrating radar recorded a large object at a depth of 10 meters below the bottom of the lake.
The Italian scientists suggest that the"culprit" was a fragment of an exploded cosmic body. The weight of the "fragment" is about 1,5 × 10 6 kilograms.
Yet, the discovered"craters" are still just a speculation. To date, no object was found in the Stony Tunguska that wouldclearly indicate that they are relevant to the old events.

Syria news , all the latest and breaking.
Syrian Newspapers and News Sites:
Syria Report independent newspaper providing economic, business and financial information on Syria.
http://www.syria-report.com/
Local Coordination Committees of Syria
Breaking news about Syrian uprising
http://www.lccsyria.org/
DP News
Covers Syrian, Arabic, and International issues in politics, economy, NGOs, sportas well as online video and documentaries.
http://www.dp-news.com/en/
Cham Press
Private news agency in Damascus.
http://www.champress.net/index.php?q=en.

http://www.bradenton.com/2012/08/06/4146108/eastern-european-wives-of-syrians.html
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/08/06/eastern-european-wives-syrians-forced-to-flee-war/

The National Alliance is a white supremacist, anti-semitic and white nationalist
political organization. It was founded by university physics teacher Dr. William ...

It wasa life from a fairy talethat turned into hell.
Hundreds of Eastern European women married to Syrian men have fled the war with their children in recent weeks as fighting intensifies, splitting up families and leaving them wondering about whether they can ever go back.
Among them is Kseniya Murtada, a 36-year-old Ukrainian who fled Syria last week with two sons, 3 and 5, leaving her husband Aziz in Aleppo, Syria's biggest city and the focus of a major battle between government and rebel forces.
"Who knows what might happen? This is a war," said Murtada, who was among more than 200 Ukrainians evacuated on a government plane last week.
"Our men have stayed there, they will fight, and they will defend their home," she said."Some families will be broken; some kidswill lose their fathers.But we all live with hope."
The marriages between Eastern European women and Syrians are believed to number in the thousands. They result from close ties first forged in the 1960s when the Soviet Union, its Eastern European satellite states and the former Yugoslavia began welcoming students from the Middle East and Africa with the aim of spreading their influence around the world through an educated elite.
Yugoslavia was then a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, which had close ties to the Assad family regime. The Soviet Union, for its part, had an interest in spreading its political influence in the volatile Middle East. Oleksandr Bogomolov, president of the Kiev-based Center forMiddle East Studies, said Soviet authorities encouraged the marriages as a way to gain influence with the Syrian elite since most of the Syrian students camefrom prominent families.
For the women, marriage to a foreigner offered an escape from communist repression and the promise of a better life abroad, and many were attracted to Syria's cultural wealth and good climate.
The tradition has continued since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, with Russian, Ukrainian and women from Belarus still eager for better living conditions abroad and husbands who don't drink, though such marriages abated in the former Yugoslavia during its bloody breakup in the 1990s.
Murtada, who met her husband when he was studying computer engineering in the Ukrainian city of Odessa, was taken byher husband's charm.
"He was so romantic, always with flowers, always very kind and polite, so I could not but marry him," she said.
Many of the Syrian men who married women from the ex-communist countries are believed to be members of the educated Alawite elite, the group most under threat from a rebel insurgency dominated by the country's Sunni majority. The Assad regime only let its supporters travel to Europe in the communist period.
"These women did not land in some village and did not have to struggle for aliving," said Katarzyna Gorak-Sosnowska, a professor in the Department of Arabicand Islamic Studies at the University of Warsaw in Poland."They are the wives of men educated at European universities, academies."
Among those who fled in recent days was Biljana Ayoubi, a53-year-old Serbian mother who left Syria on a Serbian plane with her three children along with nearly 40 others, almost all of them the wives and children of Syrians. To her, there is no doubt who is to blame for the carnage that forced her to leave her husband in Aleppo.
"Americans are to blame. They have been financing the rebels, along with Qatar and Saudi Arabia," she said, adding that her husband stayed behind because "he did not want to return, he was too proud."
Ayoubi said she hoped the Syrian army "will win and we will go back" to Aleppo, adding that Assad "has nothing to do" with the carnage.
Svetlana Djurdjevic, a53-year-old Bosnian-born woman who returned on the sameSerbian government flight, said the sectarian violence reminds her of the 1992-95 war in her native country, whichshe escaped with her marriage.
"It's a civil war there, just like it was in Bosnia," she said."They are fighting to change things for thebetter, but it turned out it can't get any worse."

The gunman who killed six people at a Wisconsin Sikh temple was a 40-year-old U.S. Army veteran and authorities said they were investigating possible links to white supremacist groups and his membership in a skinhead rock band.
The assailant, who was shot dead by police at the scene on Sunday, was named Wade Michael Page, a former U.S. soldier who served from 1992 to 1998, according to John Edwards, the police chief of Oak Creek, a suburb of Milwaukee and home to the 400-member temple.
Page killed six people and seriously wounded three, including a police officer, at theSikh Temple of Wisconsin as worshippers prepared for religious services.
The victims were five men and one woman, aged between 39 and 84.Members of the Sikh community said the president of the congregationand a priest were among the victims.
Authorities said they were treating the attack as a possible act of domestic terrorism.American Sikhs saidthey have often been singled out for harassment, andoccasionally violent assault, since the September 11, 2001, attacks because they are mistaken as Muslims due to their colorful turbans and beards.
"The definition of domestic terrorism is the use of force or violence for social or political gain, so that's obviously what we're looking at," FBI special agent Teresa Carlson said at a news conference on Monday, adding that authorities were looking at Page's ties to whitesupremacists.
U.S. military sourcessaid Page had been discharged from the Army in 1998 for "patterns of misconduct" and had been cited for being drunk on duty.
Page had served in the military for six years but was neverposted overseas. Hewas a psychologicaloperations specialist and missile repairman who was last stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the sources said.
In June 1998 he was disciplined for being drunk on duty and had his rank reduced to specialist from sergeant. He was not eligible to re-enlist.
Page had been a member of the skinhead band End Apathy, based in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 2010, said Heidi Beirich, director of the intelligence project at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Montgomery, Alabama.
He also tried to buy goods from the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group, in 2000, she said. The SPLC describes the National Alliance onits website as"perhaps the most dangerous and bestorganized neo-Naziformation in America."

Spacecraft survives '7minutes of terror,' lands safely, sends first pictures.
PASADENA, Calif. — After eight years of planning and eight months of interplanetary travel,NASA's Mars Science Laboratory pulled off a touchdown of Super Bowl proportions, all by itself. It even sent pictures from the goal line.
The spacecraft plunged through Mars' atmosphere, fired up a rocket-powered platform and lowered the car-sized, 1-ton Curiosity rover to its landing spot in 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide)Gale Crater. Then the platform flew off to its own crash landing, while Curiosity sent out a text message basically saying, "I made it!"
That message was relayed by the orbiting Mars Odyssey satellite backto Earth. A radio telescope in Australiapicked up the message and sent it here to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. When the blips of data appeared on the screens at JPL's mission control, the room erupted in cheers and hugs.
NASA TV
Because of the light-travel time between Mars and Earth, throngs of scientists and engineers — along with millions who were monitoring the action via television and the Internet — celebrated Curiosity'slanding 14 minutes after it actually occurred.
Even the engineers who drew up the unprecedented plan for the landing admitted that it looked crazy. But the plan actually worked.
Minutes after the news of the landing broke, commentator Allen Chen brought more good news:"We have thumbnails!" Odysseydelivered pictures showing the view from hazard avoidance cameras mounted on the rover.
Super Bowl pride The touchdown marked a $2.5 billion triumph for what Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters, called"the Super Bowl of planetary exploration." Curiosity's primary mission is scheduled to last one full Martian year, or almost two Earth years — but scientists hope the nuclear-powered rover will keep goingfor years longer than that.
The successful landing sparked a swell of American pride for the mission team as well as for NASA and the White House. The biggest heart-swelling moment came duringa post-landing news conference, when theblue-shirted team behind Curiosity's entry, descent and landing marched through the packed auditorium and high-fived their leaders.
"EDL! EDL!" the flag-waving troop chanted, but it mightas well have been"USA! USA!"
President Barack Obama's science adviser, John Holdren, said that if anyone had any doubts about American technological leadership, "there's a one-ton, car-sized piece of American ingenuity, and it's sitting on the surfaceof Mars right now, and it certainly should put any such doubts to rest."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48511087/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/nasas-curiosity-rover-scores-touchdown-mars/?ns=technology_and_science-space

Congrats! Lp!!!

OAK CREEK, Wisconsin(AFP) - US investigators on Monday probed a vicious attack on worshippers at a Sikhtemple in Wisconsin in which a gunman killed at least six people before he wasshot dead by police.
Three men, includinga member of a police unit called to the scene, were reportedto be in a critical condition with gunshot wounds.
The killings were condemned by US President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who said he was"deeply shocked and saddened".
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said the probe into the shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, was in its early stages and that no definitive conclusionscould yet be drawn.
"While the FBI is investigating whether this matter might be an act of domestic terrorism, no motive has been determined at this time," Special Agent in Charge Teresa Carlson said in a statement.
Officials speaking on condition of anonymity said tattoos on the body of the slain gunman and certain biographical details have led the FBI to look at the possibilityof domestic terrorism, but more time was needed to make a final determination.
The attack was the second massacre to shock the United States in under three weeks and will boostpressure on Obama and his rival Mitt Romney to address gun control before the November 6 presidential election.
Oak Creek Police Chief John Edwards told reporters that officers had responded to a 911 call and raced to the temple, where one ofthem was"ambushed" and shotseveral times before a colleague took down the gunman.
The suspect died, as did six others he had shot in and near the temple. Three men, including the wounded officer, were taken to a Milwaukee hospital, where a medic said they were in "critical condition."
Witnesses described a bloody scene of confusion and terror as the gunman strode into the temple and opened fire as people gathered for Sunday services.
Japal Singh, 29, spoke to several fellow parishioners about what happened and said that while people were still confused, some things were now clear.
A man who dropped his father off at the temple, known to Sikhs as a"gurudwara," said hesaw the shooter -- described as a tall white man with a bald head -- kill two people in the parkinglot.
"Then he went down inside the temple and then went into the room where the holy scripture is kept and basically shot more people there, multiple people there," said Singh, a combat medic in the US Army reserve.
Police did not name the shooter, although they had clearly identified himas local and federal officers soon evacuated three blocks of housing in Cudahy, a suburb justnorth of Oak Creek, while they sealed off his home.
An AFP reporter in Cudahy saw heavily armed officers mounted in the basket on the ladder of a fire truck observing a house from above, while more police cordoned off the neighborhood as a precaution.
Dozens of members of the Sikh community descended on the area after reports of the shooting and were held back behind a police cordon, anxiously scanning their cell phones for news of friends and relatives in the temple.
"Our priest, he's dead. One of my friends' grandfathers,he's dead. It's a very close-knit community. No matter who's hurt, we're all family," Harinder Kaur, a 22-year-old student, told AFP.
Factory worker Navreet Raman, 42, said: "It's terrorizing. It's our worship place. If church is not a safe place, what is? Nothing is safe."
President Obama said he and First LadyMichelle Obama had been "deeply saddened" to learn ofthe shooting, and Romney sent his condolences.
"As we mourn this loss which took placeat a house of worship, we are reminded how much our country has beenenriched by Sikhs, who are a part of ourbroader American family," Obama said in a statement.
In New Delhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, himself a Sikh,said: "That this senseless act of violence should be targeted at a place ofreligious worship is particularly painful."
The president of the temple, Satwant Kaleka, was shot and was taken to a hospital, according toThe Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which said the large place of worship had been founded in 1999.
According to religious tradition, Sikh Indians wear turbans to cover their uncut hair and sport long beards. There are reportedly between 500,000 and700,000 Sikhs now living in the United States.
In the United States they have often beenmistaken for Muslimsand have been targeted by anti-Islam activists, particularly after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the UnitedStates.
Sapreet Kaur, executive director of the Sikh Coalition, which represents the community in the United States, said police should be allowed to investigate but that he suspected a hate crime had taken place.
"There have been multiple hate crime shootings within the Sikh community in recent years and the natural impulse of our community is to unfortunately assume the same in this case," he said.
Sunday's shooting also bore some similarities to a March 2005 incident in nearby Brookfield, Wisconsin that saw a gunman kill seven worshippers at a church service at a hotel, before turning the gun on himself. Last month, a gunman burst into a movie theater showing the new Batman film in Aurora, a suburb of Denver, Colorado, and opened fire, killing 12 people and wounding dozens more.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/14468520/police-brand-wisconsin-shooting-domestic-terrorism/

“We’re in economic purgatory,” said Alexander M. Cutler, the chief executive of Eaton, a big Ohio maker of industrial equipment like drivetrains and electrical and hydraulic systems. “In the nondefense, nongovernment sectors, that’s wherethe caution is creeping in. We’re seeing it when we talk to dealers, distributors and users.”
As a consequence, Mr. Cutler lowered Eaton’s projected results for 2012 in late July, adding thathe sees particular weakness in the heavy-duty truck market. “I don’t think there’s any question the economy is starting to see an impact from the fiscal cliff,” Mr. Cutler said. He noted that as companies retreat, the effect is multiplied by the impact it has on other sectors, like restaurants and hotels.
Siemens, the Germanindustrial giant, remains optimistic over the long haul about the American market, but has turned more cautious in the short-term, said the company’s chief financial officer, Joe Kaeser. Siemens has slowed the filling of openings among its 60,000 member work force in the United States, while delaying some new investments and capital expenditures.“We would expect volatility till after the election and the fiscal cliff is sorted out,” he said.
In Washington, powerful business lobbies like the National Association of Manufacturers, the Business Roundtable, and more specialized groups like the National Electrical Manufacturers Association have grown more vocal about their frustration with the inaction of Congress,and the possible dangers ahead.
“It’s totally irresponsible and absolutely insane,” said Evan R. Gaddis, the president of the electrical manufacturers’ group. “The two parties are really dug in. Companies see the writing on the wall and business decisions are now being madeon this.”
Business leaders say the latest fight feels different. Last summer, during a confrontation over raising the debt limit that risked a government shutdown, Mr. Powers of Hubbell did not alter course at his company, as he is doing now. “We never expected the government to shut down,” he said. “This bluff carries much more weight.”
Many in Washington predict a solution that keeps most of the tax cuts in place and avoids the worstof the budget cuts inthe short-term will emerge after the November election, but John Selldorff is not taking chances. As the chief executive of the American subsidiary of Legrand, a global manufacturer of power devices basedin France, Mr. Selldorff says that for the rest of the year, his company plans to “hold off on doing things that wemight otherwise do if the environment were more stable.”
“We’d love to hire more people, but we’re saying no,” he said.
Smaller companies that serve both military and civilian customers are also taking steps. Ace Clearwater, an aerospace firm in Torrance, Calif., began the year projecting a 7 percent rise in revenue, but now expects sales to be flat at best, down 10 percent at worst, said Kellie Johnson, the company’s owner.
As a result, Ms. Johnson said the company had decided not to fill eight open positionsamong its 200 member work force, canceled a half-million-dollar machine order, and opted to buy a used forklift instead of a new one, saving more than $100,000.
“Everyone is sitting back and hunkering down,” she said.

A rising number of manufacturers are canceling new investments and putting off new hires because they fear paralysis in Washington will force hundreds of billions in tax increases and budget cuts in January, undermining economic growth in the coming months.Executives at companies making everything from electrical components and power systems to automotive parts saythe fiscal stalemate is prompting them to pull back now, rather than wait for a possible resolutionto the deadlock on Capitol Hill.
Democrats and Republicans are far apart on how to extend the Bush-era tax breaks beyond January — the same month automatic spending reductions are set to take effect— unless there is a deal to trim the deficit. The combination of tax increases and spending cuts is creating an economic threat called “the fiscal cliff” by Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Until recently, the loudest warnings about the economy have come from policy makers and economists, along with military industry executives who rely heavily on the Pentagon’s largess and who would be hurt by thegovernment reductions.
But more diversified companies like Hubbell Inc. in Shelton, Conn., have begun to hunker down as well.
Hubbell, a maker of electrical products, has canceled several million dollars’ worth of equipment orders and delayed long-planned factoryupgrades in the last few months, said Timothy H. Powers, the company’s chief executive. It has alsoheld off hiring workers for about 100 positions that would otherwise have been filled, he said.
“The fiscal cliff is the primary driver of uncertainty, and a person in my position is going to make a decision to postpone hiring and investments,” Mr. Powers said. “We can see it in our order patterns, and customers are delaying. We don’t have to get to the edge of the cliff before the damage is done.”
The worries come amid broader fears that the economy is losing momentum —the annual rate of economic growth in the second quarter fell to 1.5 percent from 2 percent in thefirst quarter, and 4.1 percent in the last quarter of 2011.
On Thursday, the Commerce Department reported that factoryorders unexpectedly fell 0.5 percent in June from the previous month, while data on the labor market released Friday showed job creation still falling short of the level needed to bring down the unemployment rate.
All told, the political gridlock in the United States, along with the continuing debt crisis in Europe , will shave about half a percentage point off growth in the second half of the year, estimates Vincent Reinhart, chief United States economist at MorganStanley.
More than 40 percent of companies surveyed by Morgan Stanley inJuly cited the fiscal cliff as a major reason for their spending restraint, Mr. Reinhart said. He expects that portion to rise when the pollis repeated this month.
“Economists generally overstate the effects of uncertainty on spending, but in this case it does seem to be significant,” he added. “It’s at the macro- and microeconomic levels.”
Unless Congress acts to extend the tax provisions and comes up with a budget deal that averts the planned reductions in military spending and other government programs, taxes will rise by $399 billion while federal government spending will fall by more than $100 billion, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. The end-of-year battle comes after Democrats and Republicans have failed over the last year to reach long-term agreements on how to tackle the budget deficit.
Last week, Congressional leaders did manage to agree tentatively to keep the government financed through next March, extending a deadline that had been set to expire Oct. 1, but that deal did not address the extension of the tax cuts or spending reductions.
All together, the fiscal cliff’s total impact equals slightly more than$600 billion, or 4 percent of gross domestic product, and if no action is taken, the Congressional Budget Office projects the economy will shrink by 1.3 percent in the first half of 2013 as aresult.
With many Fortune 500 companies now setting budgets and planning for 2013, chief executives say they cannot afford to hope for the best. Wall Street is also paying more attention: over the last few weeks, chiefexecutives of companies like Honeywell, U.P.S. and Eaton all cited the uncertainty as a threat to earnings inthe second half of 2012.

Turkey: 115 Kurdish rebels killed in offensive...
Turkey's security forces have killed as many as 115 Kurdish rebels during a majorsecurity offensive over the past two weeks, the country's interior minister said Sunday.
Idris Naim Sahin said the rebels were killedin an airpower backed offensive near the town of Semdinli, in Hakkari province which sits on the border with Iraq. He said the offensive began on July 23.
Sahin provided few other details on the ongoing operation but said the security forces were trying to block the rebels' escape routes into northern Iraq.
Private NTV television said earlierthat as many as 2,000troops were taking part in the offensive and that public access to some roads in the area were blocked.
Earlier Sunday, Kurdish rebels raidedthree military posts in simultaneous attacks in Hakkari, sparking a clash at one paramilitary outpost that left six soldiers and 14 rebelsdead. Two government-paid village guards assisting the Turkish military were also killed.
The rebels fired on military posts in Hakkari province thatborders Iraq, including the paramilitary station near the village of Gecimli, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the frontier, according to a statement from the Hakkari governor's office.
Gov. Orhan Alimoglu said the attack near Gecimli triggered clashes that claimed the lives of 22 rebels, soldiers and village guards. At least 15 soldiers, another village guard and fivecivilians were also injured in the attack. There were no reports of any casualties in the attacks on the other posts.
The attack comes some six weeks after a similar raid on a military unit, also in Hakkari province, killed 18 rebels and eight soldiers, prompting Turkey's military to send warplanes and attackhelicopters to hit Kurdish rebel targets inside Iraq.
The rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, are fighting for autonomy in Turkey'sKurdish-dominated southeast region andmaintain bases in northern Iraq from where they launch hit-and-run attacks on Turkish targets. The conflict between the PKK and Turkish government forces has killed tens of thousands of people since the rebels took up arms in 1984.
The group is considered a terroristorganization by the United States and theEuropean Union. Turkey has raised concerns that Kurdishrebels could now alsoexploit a power vacuum in neighboring Syria and warned it would"not tolerate" any rebel threats from the Syrian territory. The Turkish government said last month that Turkish Kurdish rebels have seized control of five towns along the border in collaboration with Syria's Democratic Union Party, or PYD — an ethnic Kurdish grouping. It has launched military drills near the frontier in a show of muscle aimed at the rebels.
The military on Sunday sent reinforcements to Hakkari, launching ground and air operations to chase the rebels, the governor's office said, without elaborating. State-run TRT television said attack helicopters were firing on the rebels' escape routes in the rugged, mountainousborder region.
Turkey's leaders condemned the attack, which came during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, and said the government was determined to keep up the fight against the PKK.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the attack was a"dastardly assault" and issued a warningto countries allegedlybacking the PKK, saying Turkey was"powerful enough to bring into line enemy-country (puppet masters) who hold the strings of the terror organization." He didnot name any countries and it was not clear if the statement was aimedat Syria, in relation tothe PKK presence there.
Erdogan has recently ruled out negotiatingwith the PKK to end the decades-old conflict and said state security forces would continue their struggle against the group until it lays down arms. The government has acknowledged that some officials have inthe past held secret talks with the rebels that were subsequently abandoned.
"Terrorism is, sooner or later, doomed to lose and to go up in smoke in the face of the people's resolve and determination," Erdogan said Sunday.
An estimated 20 percent of Turkey's 75 million people are Kurds. The government is trying to reconcile with the Kurdish minority by granting it more cultural rights.
Erdogan's government recently announced plans to introduce elective Kurdish classes in schools, building on moves that allowed Kurdish language television broadcasts,Kurdish-language institutes and privateKurdish courses.
The government however, refuses demands by Kurdish activists and politicians for full education in the Kurdish language, fearing it would divide Turkey along ethnic lines.

Nina Rhodes-Hughes agrees, if called, to testify about a second shooter
Rhodes-Hughes: Sirhan Sirhan was not the only shooter in the pantry
Sirhan was the only person charged and convicted in RFK assassination
Witness says FBI altered her account of RFK shooting
Los Angeles (CNN) -- Awoman who witnessed the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy says she has agreed to testify for Sirhan Sirhan's new defenseteam.
Nina Rhodes-Hughes insists Sirhan was not the only gunman firing shots when Sen. Kennedy was murdered only a few feet away from her at a Los Angeles hotel. She says there were two guns firing from separate positions and that authorities altered her account of the crime.
"What has to come out is that there was another shooter to my right," Rhodes-Hughes has told CNN."The truth has got to be told. No more cover-ups."
As a federal court hasbeen preparing to rule on Sirhan's current legal challenge to his conviction in the Kennedy murder, Rhodes-Hughes says she has been contacted by Sirhan'slead defense lawyer, New York attorney William Pepper. "He asked me if indeed I would testify that there was another shooter and I said yes, I would," she said. Rhodes-Hughes says she has not been contacted by the California attorney general's office, which represents the other side in the Sirhan federal court case.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/08/justice/california-rfk-second-gun/index.html

“Still it cried, ‘Sleep no more!’ to all the house: ‘Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more.’” - Wm Shakespeare, Macbeth II. ii. 53-55
Cliff Kincaid’s recent article about the JFK assassination is well worth a thoughtful reading. If nothing else it will certainly arouse the naysayer’sand deniers. Let us have it out once and for all on this subject and pursue where evidence takes us.
If the Kennedy Assassination was settled history, there would not still be such outcry and disbelief in the general public. The whole truth is still out there. Two thingsare certain: PresidentKennedy was killed by a Communist Assassin, and, America has not beenthe same since this happened. It was a deft stroke by the International Communist movement against American Constitutionalism and Exceptionalism. Ironically, instead of expelling this Left-Ideology from our shores and our culture, we have allowed it to flourish.
I have many sympathies with Cliff Kincaid’s report. I have reviewed much of what he reports over the years, but I am no studied expert. Rather, I am simply a casual and informed observer. The body of evidenceis intriguing and all but obvious on the surface. But what liesunderneath? The International Communist movement is famous for doing the outrageous. They do it, then they deny it, then project the deedonto others, and slink back under theirrock. The Left Media wanted America to think the assassination deed was done by the American Right. ThenOswald’s Communist connections came out ... most unfortunate for the Liberals.
Oswald’s connectionswith the Soviet Union and Cuba wereundeniable. Should we instead believe the denials of the inveterate, unmitigated, lying communist tyrants? Incredibly [at least tome] I have even heard it suggested instead that the Texan Vice President, LBJ had Kennedy eliminated. Obama might act like this type of thug perhaps,but LBJ? ... never. If he wanted to get rid of JFK there were more salacious scandals to expose and ruin the man andLBJ knew where all ofthe skeletons of bothparties were buried. LBJ was a role model for Dallas’ J.R. Ewing.
Most Kennedy Assassination investigations head initially down the road of accusing the Right of wicked Fascist-Conservative deeds, but even the most crudely prepared political philosophy student knows that Fascism and Conservatism arepolar opposites. Failing this effort, they then conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald was a “lone wolf” with scarce mention of his extensive communistties. Is not “lone wolf” a favorite term these days as well? Did not Janet Napolitano warn America of “lone wolfterrorists” among returning war veterans early in her tenure in a Federal Government Document? Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ shooter was eagerly misreported by the Media as most assuredly being someRight-wing nut, until the Leftist Looney perpetrator was apprehended and identified. You get the point. The smear lives on but the Left-media never apologizes for their slander and libel ... the entire Left slinks away, the unapologetically “move on.”
Some truth: John Kennedy was a Liberal, but he was also a rock-ribbed American Patriot. John Kennedy and Barry Goldwater were amicable Senate colleagues. They had talked together of some daydebating one another as presidential candidates in such a way as to show clearly the two visions to Americans. Imagine what a civil and erudite discussion of ideas and contrasts of Liberal-Conservative we might have had in 1964 had Goldwater run against Kennedy. Instead LBJ would not debate Barry Goldwater and LBJ chose to smear him with Bill Moyer’s vicious “Daisy Commercial” on TV, and and others with racial themes and innuendo.
Today, continuing in the LBJ Tradition, smear, innuendo, and slurs are stock and trade of the Modern Progressive Democrat Party! The despicable Left led bythe likes of the OliverStone smear-machine, and others, still come up with even more fanciful Right-wing Conspiracies in the FBI, CIA and plotting by evil “Kennedy-haters,” and “grassy knoll” shooters ... ya-da ya-da. We of the GOP: the “stupid” but peaceful Party. They: the Party of the1968 Leftist and Race riots, with a continued legacy down to and including modern anarchists and the#OWS Movement. Whenever we have Progressives in the Presidency[ FDR, LBJ, JEC, BHO] there is bitter division and mean politics from the Left aimed at the Right. Judge for yourselves. This Left-wing hatred of Republicans and Conservative Democrats is the poison that gives riseto Class and Racial Warfare in America. It is the raison d’être of the Revolutionary Left. How can it not lead to violence and assassination?
I believe that Mr. Kincaid is onto something worth pursuing. The proof is in the pudding. The Left does not change. They are still trying to cover up their evil deeds. Consider 1968, when Sirhan Sirhan killed RFK. The SDS supported Palestinian causes and anti-Semitism strongly even then. That anti-democratic communist, and unrepentant terroristdynamic duo, Bernadine Dohrn andBill Ayers, still spout this very same anti-Israel garbage and Communist ideology, even as they bundle money for Obama’s re-election. Did anyone really ever investigate investigate the Ayers-Dohrn SDS connections to Islamic terrorists in the late 1960s and early 70s with an eye towards prosecution for terrorism, sedition, or possible treason during wartime? Of course not. And some still wonder why no one will truly investigate Mr. Obama’s skeletons either. I vividly Remember the German Baader-Meinhof Gang, Black Septembrists [ever notice how the Islamists conduct their rampages in September?] and dead Israelis in Germany when stationed in Nurnberg in in 1972. Do we honestly thinkthat that movement was isolated and thatit ended? Dream on.
Terrorists like Dohrn and Ayers can hide these days behind a tenured professorship or by writing children’s books. Jane Fonda hides behind her divaexercise videos. This all needs to stop. For how much longer, and why, do we continue to play this charade of protectingFidel and Raul Castro,and worshipping at the altar of that Cuban Gulag-butcher,Che Guevara? How long do we persecutefriends in Honduras and Columbia while playing footsy with dictators like Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and leaders of Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina?Why do domestic terrorists and seditionists and traitors get the free run of the house in America to profit from their evil deeds? This has nothing to do with “their” free speech. “Their” free speech ispreaching the overthrow of our Constitutional form of government and replacing it with a Communist or Socialist one. That is not free speech, that is sedition. As long has we continue to buy into the nonsensical Leftist-romantic mythology about Communism and their stinking ideological thinking as being co-equal or morally equivalent totraditional Constitutional Republicanism, then we are doomed to a continued downwardspiral toward serfdom in the United States. They will still be tenured and rich. You will be poor and in a re-education camp.
Perhaps in the biggerpicture of that era, the truth was papered over in 1963in order to prevent such public outrage as might spark a direct regional or global war/confrontation with Communist expansionism. I was only 14 at the time, but I remember the table talk and the news broadcasts of the day. It was a possibility. But why continue to coddle that devil in Havana and all of his Communist cronies here and abroad almost fifty years later? Now is the time to get the truth out.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/47884