Hard hitting global and local news
Tweet The news from Crimea is unsettling , partly because it’s not entirely clear to me whether it’s bad to have Crimea reattached to Russia in some form. From a utilitarian perspective, removing the most eastern-oriented portion of Ukraine from its electoral politics would pretty much guarantee a western-oriented political outcome.
Read More: Ukraine Aftermath: Hunt for Yanukovich, Russia Denounces Interim Leaders, Documents Reveal Plans to Use Army on Civilians
Links The Secret War in Libya January 23, 2014 ( Eric Draitser – Stop Imperialism ) - The battles currently raging in the South of Libya are no mere tribal clashes. Instead, they represent a possible burgeoning alliance between black Libyan ethnic groups and pro-Gaddafi forces intent upon liberating their country of a neocolonial NATO-installed government.
The New York Times admitted in an early 2013 article titled, " In Thailand, Power Comes With Help From Skype ," that: For the past year and a half, by the party’s own admission, the most important political decisions in this country of 65 million people have been made from abroad, by a former prime minister who has been in self-imposed exile since 2008 to escape corruption charges. The country’s most famous fugitive,Thaksin Shinawatra, circles the globe in his private jet, chatting with ministers over his dozen cellphones, texting over various social media platforms and reading government documents e-mailed to him from civil servants, party officials say. The NYT piece would also report:  “He’s the one who formulates the Pheu Thai policies,†said Noppadon Pattama, a senior official in Mr. Thaksin’s party who also serves as his personal lawyer
Read More: Thailand: "Men in Black" Terrorists Uncovered After Broad Daylight Grenade Attack
These threats come after Jatuporn’s promise to bring mobs to the city to confront protesters  – as well as numerous threats online by police themselves that they would use covert violence  to attack protesters if February 2, 2014’s sham elections  were disrupted. 4. January 11, 2014 : Perhaps the most troubling warning yet comes from the regime’s Western backers at the corporate-financier funded US think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
More: Big Miss: Nonfarm Payrolls +74,000 vs. 205,000 Expected; Unemployment Rate 6.7% as Labor Force Shrinks by 347,000
The Washington Post has details in Target says 40 million credit, debit cards may have been compromised Company officials offered few details on the intrusion, which reportedly began the day before Thanksgiving and lasted until Sunday this week. Security experts said that the kind of information stolen – including names, card numbers, expiration dates and three-digit security codes – could allow criminals to make fraudulent purchases almost anywhere in the world. The breach highlighted vulnerabilities in the massive, interconnected shopping systems used for billions of dollars of retail transactions every day.