Michael Hastings Launches Epic Petraeus Rant On Piers Morgan

Michael Hastings, the reporter who took down General Stanley McChrystal in a previous life, was on Piers Morgan Tonight Monday evening defending the article he wrote for Buzzfeed about "the sins of General David Petraeus".

We've embedded a clip of Hastings' rant (yes, rant) below. It's well worth watching, especially for the way Hastings shreds the image of Petraeus put forward by fellow guest (and Petraeus friend) Gen. Mark Kimmit, before finally locking horns with Morgan when he tries to calm him down.

The Atlantic Wire transcribed the first part of the monologue before Morgan stepped in:

The larger point that I've been making is that essentially the media has played a role in protecting David Petraeus and promoting David Petraeus and mythologizing David Petraeus. And we saw it here tonight. Gen. Kimmit who was a spokesperson in Bagdhad who was a roommate of Petraeus who was involved in one fo the biggest debacles in recent foreign policy history is on TV defending David Petraeus without actually addressing the real problems with David Petraeus's record. And those are: the fact that he manipulated the White House into escalating in Afghanistan. He ran a campaign Iraq that was brutally savage, included arming the worst of the worst -- Shi'ite death squads, Sunni militia men -- and then you go back to the training of the Iraqi Army program that also had similar problems. … 

SEE ALSO: Michael Hastings Tears Petraeus' Career To Shreds In New Column >

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Qualcomm Rides Smartphone Demand To $69 As Chip Supply Crunch Eases

We expect the ramping up of 28nm supply, together with the holiday demand for new device launches such as the iPhone 5, the iPad mini and others, to help Qualcomm post a very strong next quarter.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/11/09/qualcomm-rides-smartphone-demand-to-69-as-chip-supply-crunch-eases/

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Things Should Be Aware Of With Regards To Debt Consolidation Reduction Lending Options

At this time, most of us inhabit a good fast-paced, high-technology environment where all sorts of things comes and goes when rapid as being a blink of total eye. Right from e-mails that will messengers that will cards, these items realestatehomesbcseem to be whatever you call now when necessities. Even now, we quite often lose [...]

The post Things Should Be Aware Of With Regards To Debt Consolidation Reduction Lending Options appeared first on legal debt help online.

Source: http://www.legaldebthelponline.com/2012/07/02/things-should-be-aware-of-with-regards-to-debt-consolidation-reduction-lending-options/

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A New Plan for Our Economy

Dave Ramsey is on fire!

Don?t worry folks; he?s going to be okay. Just like the stop, drop and roll response you practiced in elementary school, Dave?s got a plan.

Unlike your plan, however, his will ignite a nation.

For more than four years he?s watched our country face an economic downturn so deep that depression and fear settled like a blanket across the land. Our people are weary, and our hope is gone.

Politics won?t fix the mess we?re in. Fortunately, the church can. Last summer, Dave addressed pastors across the country, inviting them to join him in launching a Great Recovery.

You can check out the video to watch the full event or read through the main points below.

  • People are suffering. The economy bottomed out in 2008, and financial fear became rampant. Our nation continues to endure the harsh realities of a downed economy and the relentless pounding of hopelessness from the media.
  • Hopelessness invades our spirit and attitude. Individuals are holding back financially because they?re worried about the future. They aren?t spending like they once were, and those with money and jobs aren?t giving like they once did.
  • God is the true author of hope. God provides by pouring into us creativity, work ethic, ingenuity and initiative. He also gives us the power to be diligent and excellent over an extended period of time so that we may prosper. That?s hope!
  • The economy consists of millions and millions of individuals like me and you, and most of them aren?t doing well. They?re spending money they don?t have to buy things they can?t afford to impress people they don?t like. They are deeply in debt, with no savings and no plan.
  • If you fix the individuals, you fix the economy. This idea is counter-cultural because as a society, we?ve come to count on the government to rescue us. Unfortunately, the disease is at the base of the tree, not the branches.
  • When people decide to do things God?s ways, the result is revival. As the vaccine for hopelessness, the church earns the right to speak into people?s lives. The church can even provide insight on God?the original author of this ?new way? to handle money. Through this effort, many people will be introduced to Jesus and come to know him.
  • The time is now. There is a great vacuum in the marketplace, and our country is ripe for a movement. Only the church, which is the haven of hope, can walk in and give real answers.

Can you grasp the vision? Imagine what would take place in your home if you began to handle money God?s ways. Consider the change in your church, community, state and nation. By relying on God for our hope, we would experience a covering of peace and joy instead of fear and depression.

Will you join the effort? James 4:17 says, ?Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.? As Christians, we know our mission is to bring others into a relationship with God. We are also to care for those who are in financial despair. This is the best opportunity for the church to meet the two most pressing needs of our day.

We invite you to partner with Dave and ignite a fire across our nation!

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Source: http://www.daveramsey.com/article/a-new-plan-for-our-economy/lifeandmoney_church

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Huge Crime Spree In Brazil's Largest City Leaves 140 Dead In Two Weeks

Sao Paulo

It was a more than typically murderous Saturday night in São Paulo: at 10pm, in the São Bernardo do Campo neighborhood, a motorcyclist rode up to a private home, killed two of the residents, then sped away. An hour or so later in a nearby district, police shot and killed two men in what they said was an exchange of fire. Elsewhere police found the body of a man with a bullet through his brain – one of 14 people murdered and 12 injured in this single night amid a rising wave of violence in Brazil's biggest city.

At least 140 people have been murdered in São Paulo over the past two weeks in an outbreak of violent crime that has prompted early school closures, a change of municipal bus routes and street demonstrations. In September 144 people were killed. The causes are manifold, but a major factor appears to be an undeclared war between the largest criminal militia and the police, which has led to drive-by shootings, ambushes and other killings.

After initially denying the link, officials from the public safety department told local newspapers at the weekend that many of the killings of police had been ordered by imprisoned leaders of the First Capital Command criminal group in reprisal for a crackdown on the drug trade.

Non-governmental organisations, however, say the responsibility also lies with militias formed by former and serving police officers, who are used to skimming profits off the drug trade. So far this year, 92 former and current police officers have been gunned down.

Last week state and federal police said they would combine forces to create a new intelligence agency to counter the resurgent threat posed by organized crime.

Police jitters were apparent on Friday night when an off-duty officer, Edcarlos Oliveira Lima, killed the driver and passenger of a car that swerved in front of him. He claimed to have seen a gun in the vehicle and feared he was being corralled for a possible hit. However, witnesses and the victims' families say he needlessly killed two innocents. Oliveira Lima is under investigation.

There were 982 murders in the first nine months of this year in São Paulo, according to data released by the public security department. This is up 10% on last year and higher than the total in Rio de Janeiro.

Five hundred angry and worried residents of Brasilândia – one of the worst-affected areas – took to the streets on Sunday morning, carrying white roses, wearing T-shirts printed with the faces of some of the victims and shouting for greater vigilance.

Schools and shops in some São Paulo districts closed early last week due to concerns about the rising risks. "In view of the wave of violence in the city's south zone, the school's directors decided to send staff and students home early so as to assure their safety," Eliane Valerio de Souza, administrative assistant at a professional training school, told the newspaper Folha de S Paulo.

Regional authorities have played down the violence. Governor Geraldo Alckmin said the crime rate in Greater São Paulo was on the wane.

However, he warned the problem would not go away unless the national government took firmer measures to control the influx of drugs and guns along Brazil's extensive borders.

Despite the recent killings, São Paulo state is by no means the most violent in Brazil when its huge population is taken into account. Last year, this commercial powerhouse saw 10.1 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants compared with 74.5 in the most murderous state, Alagoas.

Until recently, the dominance of the First Capital Command was credited as a factor in the relatively low crime rates that São Paulo has enjoyed for most of the past decade. While Rio has been riven by frequent violence between competing gangs of drug traffickers, the war for control has largely been won in the commercial hub. But police crackdowns in 2001 and 2006 have resulted in surges of violence.

• The picture on this article was changed on 11 November 2012 to replace an image showing police in Rio de Janeiro

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

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Sprint?s Spectrum Position Bolstered By U.S. Cellular Deal

If the deal receives regulatory approval (which is expected by mid-2013), U.S. Cellular will exit the Midwest and lose around 10% of its subscriber base but be able to focus better on the rest of the markets where it has the highest penetration and increase efficiency.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/11/09/sprints-spectrum-position-bolstered-by-u-s-cellular-deal/

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Market Correction Started In September, Has Room To Get Worse

Major market participants including corporate insiders and hedge funds did not believe the rally off the June low was justified and were already selling into it at an unusual pace, and increased their selling after the Fed announced in September that it would provide QE3.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/11/12/market-correction-started-in-september-has-room-to-get-worse/

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REPORT: Robert Mugabe's Inner Circle Has Stolen At Least $2 Billion In Diamonds

Debeers diamonds

VICTORIA FALLS, Zimbabwe (AP) — At least $2 billion worth of diamonds have been stolen from Zimbabwe's eastern diamond fields and have enriched President Robert Mugabe's ruling circle, international gem dealers and criminals, according to an organization leading the campaign against conflict diamonds.

Zimbabwe's Marange fields have seen "the biggest plunder of diamonds since Cecil Rhodes," the colonial magnate who exploited South Africa's Kimberley diamonds a century ago, charged Partnership Africa Canada, a member of the Kimberley Process, the world regulatory body on the diamond trade.

Zimbabwe's eastern Marange field — one of the world's biggest diamond deposits — has been mined since 2006 and its vast earnings could have turned around Zimbabwe's economy, battered by years of meltdown and political turmoil, the group said. But funds from the diamond sales have not showed up in the state treasury. Instead there is evidence that millions have gone to Mugabe's cronies.

The report, released Monday to coincide with the Zimbabwe government's conference on the diamond trade here in Victoria Falls, casts a shadow over the Mugabe regime's effort to win international respectability for its gem trade.

The report condemns the Mugabe government's control of the Marange diamond fields which have made Zimbabwe a major player in the international diamond trade.

"Marange's potential has been overshadowed by violence, smuggling, corruption and most of all, lost opportunity," the PAC report said.

"The scale of illegality is mind-blowing," and has spread to "compromise most of the diamond markets of the world," said the report.

The report describes the $2 billion lost to the Zimbabwe treasury as a "conservative estimate."

Finance Minister Tendai Biti said in his 2012 budget he had been promised $600 million in diamond revenue for the national treasury to help re-finance crumbling health, education and other public services. Biti said that only one-fourth of that pledge has been received.

Mines Minister Obert Mpofu, a Mugabe loyalist, insists Western economic sanctions have prevented the government from getting good prices for the diamonds on the international market. But Mpofu has repeatedly refused to give exact figures on diamond revenues, said the PAC report.

Mpofu, the mines minister since 2009, amassed an unexplained personal fortune and is linked to a "small and tight group of political and military elites who have been in charge of Marange from the very beginning" and who are personally benefiting from the diamond sales, the report alleged.

In 2010 leading industry insiders, including Filip van Loere, a Belgian diamond expert working for the Mugabe government, forecast the country could produce as much as 30 million to 40 million carats a year, worth about $2 billion annually, the PAC report said. The diamonds are being mined and sold but the funds are not reaching the Zimbabwean treasury, according to the report.

Most of the diamond revenue is lost through a lack of transparency in accounting for how many diamonds are mined, how much is earned from their sales, the underpricing of gems on world markets, smuggling and a "high level of collusion" by government officials.

Records show that 10 million carats of Marange diamonds were exported to Dubai in late 2012 for $600 million, which the report said is an artificially low price because the same stones were sold for double their original price when they left Dubai for Surat, India — the world's biggest diamond cutting center. It says the gems should have been valued at $1.2 billion.

The low valuation lost the Zimbabwe nation considerable money and "underscores a price manipulation scheme perpetrated by Indian buyers and their Zimbabwe allies, with whom they are believed to share the spoils," the report said.

In addition, the report's researchers were unable to locate a 2.5 million carat stockpile, valued at around $200 million, which mysteriously disappeared in November 2011. It also charges that $300 million in diamond sales never made it to the Zimbabwe treasury in 2011.

All this has been allowed to happen under the watch of the Kimberley Process, which is supposed to prevent misuse of diamond funds.

"Calls for greater transparency have been dismissed within the Kimberley Process," it said.

"The lack of transparency surrounding Zimbabwe's diamond revenue is matter of critical public interest and amplifies concerns for some time that these revenues are funding a parallel government" of police and military officers and government officials loyal to Mugabe, many known to be building private mansions and buying luxury cars costing far in excess of their income from tax-funded salaries, said the report.

___

Partnership Africa Canada: http://www.pacweb.org

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Govt Insured Program For Senior Home owners

Reverse mortgages are an progressively preferred way for seniors to dwell off the equity from their residences and cease creating mortgage payments. This government application for seniors is assisting them give a method to combat the slowing financial system. This federal government application was developed from the Division of Housing and concrete Advancement (HUD) in [...]

The post Govt Insured Program For Senior Home owners appeared first on legal debt help online.

Source: http://www.legaldebthelponline.com/2012/06/27/govt-insured-program-for-senior-home-owners/

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