USA And The Future Of The World -II

[Guest]

Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize
Manmohan hails Obama's Nobel win
Taliban condemns Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

[Guest]

Funny thing is Obama had to have been in office only for 10 days or so before he got nominated <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->. Tremendous achievement in 10 days!! <!--emo&:beer--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' /><!--endemo-->

[Guest]

Next we will hear
Hooters 2009 award will go to Obama. <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->

[Guest]

<b>Enjoy, Todya's news </b> <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->

<b>Breaking: Pope Benedict crowns Obama "Holy Roman Emperor"</b>
White Smoke over Vatican, Cardinals Elect Obama as Pope!

BREAKING - Barack Hussein Obama Declared Winner of 2000 Florida Recount
Barak Obama Named Mr. Universe 2010
Obama cures cancer, Mt. St. Helens moves
Breaking (with photo): Obama challenges Kobayashi to hot dog eating contest.
Obama wins the INDY 500
BREAKING! Barack Hussein Obama's likeness to be carved into Mount Rushmore!
Barack Obama becomes Campbell soup spokesperson
Breaking: Obama Pulls on Superman's Cape - Superman Flees
Obama then flew up into a tree and retrieved a kitten. And got $50 bucks for doing such.
Barack Obama Wins Oscar For "Best Actor In A Completely Fictional, Made-Up Story and Role"
Barak Obama Wins 2010 NBA Dunk Contest
Breaking: NBA to Cancel Season. Awards Trophy to Barack Hussein Obama Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm
FLASH! Kim Jong Il Resigns, Names Obama New Leader of North Korea!
BREAKING: Barack Obama wins World Series by forfeit from all eight teams in the playoffs!!!
Obama climbs Mount Everest...his only comment was, "refreshing"
Breaking: Obama named Time's Man of the Year for the last 20 and the next 20 years
BREAKING: BARACK OBAMA WINS IDITAROD!!!!
Barack obama Wins KENTUCKY DERBY !!!!!
Obama, the Nobel Prize, Modern Politics and Seinfeld: It's About Nothing
BREAKING...Obama Wins Best Actor Oscar for Portrayal as POTUS.
Barak Obama Awarded 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Literature
FLASH: Barack Obama wins Top Chef Las Vegas, awarded FOUR Michelin Stars (out of 3)
BREAKING: Obama wins "International Man of Mystery" award!
BREAKING: OBAMA WINS THE AMAZING RACE!!!
Obama delivers pizza in less than 30 minutes!
breaking news!...Obama has just walked across Lake Michigan!

[Guest]

MMS got gypped <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tongue.gif' /><!--endemo-->

Fine, Sign XYZ-T and let Queen of India get it next year. That too shall make MMS all kumbaya!!

[acharya]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->
US-India Friendship
http://usindiafriendship.net/ 


http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-libe...paradox/526490/ 

INDIAN EXPRESS.COM

The liberal paradox

Pratap Bhanu Mehta

Posted: Thursday , Oct 08, 2009 at 0330 hrs

There is an abiding paradox in Indo-US relations that calls for deeper reflection. From India’s point of view, those whom we think of as liberals within the American spectrum seem much more difficult to deal with than conservatives. This was not always the case. During the fifties the conservatives were miffed at India’s reluctance to be at the frontline of anti-communism, while liberals were trying to garner support for India. Now liberals are less enthusiastic about India.

At one level, this is easy to explain. Contemporary conservatives believe in a straightforward calculus of power, shorn of any moralistic pretension; you can engage with them straightforwardly on that terrain. American liberals pretend to greater idealism. They therefore have higher moral demands: they want countries to be the perfect environmentalists, fair traders, human rights activists, and renounce nuclear weapons. India is a problematic case for them because India’s position has been simple. India will go along with this version of internationalism only if it applies to all powers, including the major powers.

But this is where American liberals run up against two of their own limitations. First, their version of liberalism is not about replacing American hegemony with some equitable conception of world order; it is about using the language of liberalism and multilateralism to preserve and prolong American pre-eminence. Even as thoughtful and influential a document as the “Princeton Project on National Security”, that aimed at “Forging a World of Liberty Under Law”, could barely disguise the undercurrent that its commitment to a global rule of law was not for intrinsic reasons, but because it could enhance American power. But rather than owning up to its own limitations and its powerlessness against American double standards, American liberalism needs an object on which to assert its ideological identity. Since they dare not take on China, India is the easier target. Certainly there is something quite bizarre about the extraordinary construction of India as an “obstructionist” state that still permeates discourse in the American liberal establishment on almost every issue.

Certainly this construction of India as obstructionist is in stark contrast to the contemporary representation of China. There is no question that the liberal establishment is cosying up to China in unprecedented ways. One could explain this away simply as a consequence of the realities of power: the US needs Chinese cooperation desperately; China simply matters a lot more. But there is still something odd about the repeated calls in the liberal establishment that India should take more responsibility, while China is let off lightly. All the liberal non-proliferationists still bear a grudge against India, while the biggest proliferators are still excused. But there is maybe another, less conscious dynamic at work: the liberal allure of difference. China still serves the function of an exoticism in a way in which India does not. India, by virtue of its political system, is all too familiar. It has to be said: in the US liberal establishment there is a bit of suppressed admiration for the way China manages to create order. India is still chaos.

But the attraction of difference also explains a rather curious mystery about the American establishment, one that crosses party lines: its extraordinary ability to be bewitched by the Pakistani establishment.

Despite the direst constructions of the Pakistani state, the Pakistani ruling establishment still has an odd allure. Its generals — even the ones that let the Taliban lose, and brought their own country to ruin — are often described as “professional”. And there is often a barely suppressed fascination with the aristocratic character of the Pakistani elite, compared with India’s decidedly more humdrum, middle-class public face. Even though India and Pakistan are in a sense de-hyphenated, Pakistan still remains a source of American liberal ambivalence in relation to India. In some ways, American liberals are receptive to the argument that despite all that has transpired in the last couple of years, Pakistan needs some reassurance against India. It is India’s responsibility to ensure that it is not up to funny tricks in Afghanistan, it is India’s responsibility to reassure Pakistan by withdrawing troops. India’s policy of self-restraint is prudent, but there is something distinctly odd about the way in which liberals sanctimoniously counsel it. Richard Holbrooke is a prime example. The implicit construction of India as a “threat” is still prevalent; the liberal establishment still has not entirely got over its protective instincts about Pakistan.

There may also be another curious social dynamic at work. It is fair to say that by and large Indians (and those who work on India) in the humanities and social sciences, who have access to the public discourse, in the East Coast are left-liberals. This reinforces the two dynamics mentioned above: a culturally protective instinct on Pakistan (the Hindu-Muslim question is still centrally conflated with the Pakistan question), as a manifestation of their own liberalism, and a more relentless questioning of India. And second, a refusal to see India in a comparative geo-strategic frame. So what is excusable in China is not excusable in India. In short, a free culture of self-criticism of India is made to feed easily into a discourse of putting India on the defensive.

Some of this is all to the good. It is a backhanded compliment to be held to higher standards. Indeed, India should hold itself to higher standards than other powers. But we should be under no illusions about who our real friends and supporters are going to be. We should not take it for granted that there is some objective necessity that will now drive the US to favour India. India is risking a structural dependence on the US; one that will be greatly exacerbated if India does indeed place its impending single largest order of aircraft with the Americans. Till now the risks have not been great, but it may be too premature to lock us into long-term commitments. India is by no means perfect. But there is still something disquieting about the degree to which it is being put on the defensive on a number of issues, from climate change to proliferation — and now even potentially on Arunachal. Foreign policy, we know, is not just governed by the cold calculus of interests. It is governed by an amalgam of prejudgments, cultural representations, and ideological constructions. India needs to watch out for the fact that the “liberal” construction is likely to gain ascendancy, posing challenges for how we carve a place for ourselves in the world.

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi
_________________________
Please also read: guardian.co.uk. "Where China leads, the US follows:Washington is increasingly beholden to Beijing’s point of view – but some fear Barack Obama is being too accommodating," http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/ci...n-beijing/print 
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[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-k.ram+Oct 9 2009, 10:40 PM-->QUOTE(k.ram @ Oct 9 2009, 10:40 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->MMS got gypped  <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tongue.gif' /><!--endemo-->

Fine, Sign XYZ-T and let Queen of India get it next year. That too shall make MMS all kumbaya!!
[right][snapback]101848[/snapback][/right]
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He already display his UN's pagari and salute to 10 Janpath, that is award in itself. <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->

[Guest]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdel...obel-peace-wtf/
<b>Obama's won the Nobel Peace – WTF?!</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace prize and I’m still reeling at the shock. Most of us are, I should think.
Here are my theories as to how it might have come about:
1. Unlike in most of the rest of the world  Øbama Køøl Aid ™ remains Oslo’s most popular beverage.
2. The Norwegian prize committee’s sense of irony is growing ever more sophisticated, as it hinted when it gave the prize in 2002 to comedy ex-president Jimmy Carter, and hinted more strongly when it gave the prize in 2007 to climate-fear-promoting comedy failed-president Al Gore.
3. The other candidates on the shortlist were Robert Mugabe; Osama Bin Laden; Ahmed Jibril; and the late Pol Pot.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[HareKrishna]

ok

[acharya]

<!--QuoteBegin-"RayC"+-->QUOTE("RayC")<!--QuoteEBegin-->Obama winning the Nobel Prize could also be seen as a ploy to rejuvenate and synergise the white supremacy syndrome in the US by injecting a fear psychosis.

Notwithstanding the fact that Obama is the President of the US, yet the fact that he is Black is never far from the mind of the White population and it is difficult for the white American to reconcile that a Black President could not only win the election, and even before completing 9 months in office, can bag the Nobel Prize which no White President could do! The vitriol generated in the US over Obama winning the Nobel Prize indicates how shell shocked the white American is! Even the part of the US media which supported Obama in the elections is not too happy!

As it is Obama’s ‘socialist’ (an anathema to the Americans) policies is internally not very attractive to the white populace. His appeasement of and even subjugating and compromising American (read Christian) ideals in deference to the Islamic world (the Cairo address and more so, his bowing low to the Saudi satrap [surprisingly, this has annoyed the American more than anything else]) has upset the Americans and it is not confined to the white population alone!

Notwithstanding Obama’s consecration as the first Black President of the US, his job rating has plummeted from the high that he commanded earlier

<img src='http://sas-origin.onstreammedia.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/tqhk1xw3de60romyabzg7a.gif' border='0' alt='user posted image' />

This rating above still indicates that Obama is not doing too badly so far. However, the point to note is that the demography of the US has changed dramatically.

The Non Hispanic white population is as follows:

<img src='http://www.censusscope.org/us/map_nhwhite.gif' border='0' alt='user posted image' />

The Religion disposition in the US is at this link:
http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html#religions.

The popularity rating of Obama may indicate the he is still above water, but it must be noted that this rating is not confined to the votes of the white population and the Jews. The demography has been changing rapidly and so the rating includes these non white and Hispanic people too and they have become a sizeable proportion. Therefore, one cannot state for certain the views of the white and Jew population of the US from these figures.

While it is true that the demography is changing in the US, it is too early to wish away the influence of the Christian Church and the Jews in the US. There has been a silent revival of the Christian faith and the fact that George Bush won two elections on religious rhetoric while waging a war that was becoming increasing unpopular indicates that Christianity is alive and kicking in the US. The Jew influence in politics and finance and that ‘power’ requires no elaboration. Obama won because McCain was lacklustre and he (Obama) promised to ‘bring the boys back home’ sooner than later. Change and Hope fired the tired electorate!

It is also a truism that unless you are a Christian in the US, your chances are slim. Obama understood that in spite of a Muslim father and Bobby Jindal was clever enough to embrace the Catholic faith since that was the majority denomination on this beat! He is clever enough to not even acknowledge his ethnic roots.

Of all the Christian denominations that are on the missionary path to ‘harvest souls’, the most active ones are of US origin, including throwing in pseudo evangelist messiahs like Benny Hinn, who caused a rumpus in Bangalore. Hence, Christian America continues to be sensitive to Christian ideals and Christians causes and will battle on against the advent of other religions within and without the USA. Further, notwithstanding the popular feeling that Americans have given way to materialism and become agnostic, while attendance in Churches may have dropped, it does not indicate that Christian values and fears of Islam have waned in the USA. It is similar to the notion that you are not a Hindu, if you don’t visit regularly a temple or go on a perambulation of the religious sites! Even this widespread notion circulated that the drop in the Church attendance is indicative of people leaving the Christian faith is a subtle way to instil the fear and aggravate it to scare the Christians of being swamped by other non Western faith and changing the ‘American way of life’ (read white European Christian).

Therefore, the Nobel Prize to Obama, as I see it,  is a left handed compliment to wake up the western world, ignite the fear of Islam swamping Christendom, ensure Obama gives way to a white President the next time around (having riled the white American), whip up the Americans and to some extent, the Europeans to have a greater resolve to save Christianity from Islam and so on.

Israel will never be forsaken by the US. The Jewish lobby is too ingrained to be toppled. The Jews control the media and the finance – both powerful instruments to keep a government in check. 


As far as India is concerned, it is too complicated to comment. We have the tendency to be delusional and wallow in pseudo morality, revel in our ‘glorious’ past, run away from the present and dream of a great future without any basis! And worse is, if some crumbs of praise comes our way, we roll over with total glee and feel we have conquered the world!

I am not being disparaging. I am only worried that we are not gaining ground and instead are taking one step forward and two steps back because of our ingrained ideas and weakness to false praise!

As an End Statement, I may add that Google has it to make us believe that the Arabs (read Islam) are delighted that Obama has won the Nobel Prize! End of Obama in the US and back to a Bush clone the next time around?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[agnivayu]

Interesting how White's are concentrated in the North, almost a natural move of the races. Lighter skin is better at higher latitudes. Seems in the future, Canada and Northern U.S. may become a New White nation (in 50-100 years or so timeframe)

White's generally are paranoid about losing their racial identity.

[acharya]

<!--QuoteBegin-agnivayu+Oct 10 2009, 06:24 AM-->QUOTE(agnivayu @ Oct 10 2009, 06:24 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Interesting how White's are concentrated in the North, almost a natural move of the races.  Lighter skin is better at higher latitudes.  Seems in the future, Canada and Northern U.S. may become a New White nation (in 50-100 years or so timeframe)

White's generally are paranoid about losing their racial identity.
[right][snapback]101870[/snapback][/right]
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It is natural if you look at the history from 1200 to 1800 AD in North America.

The native american population, Mayan civilization had about 100M people in the region. With the Spanish colonization in 1500s and english/French colonization after that has decimated the native american population. Now the natural population is emerging with the native population increasing in the southern states and moving towards the north as the white population and its replenishment from Europe is relatively decreasing.

[ramana]

Nemisis

Chalmers Johnson

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->    By the subtitle, I really do mean it. This is not just hype to sell books—“The Last Days of the American Republic.” I’m here concerned with a very real, concrete problem in political analysis, namely that the political system of the United States today, history tells us, is one of the most unstable combinations there is—that is, domestic democracy and foreign empire—that the choices are stark. <b>A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can’t be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, like the old Roman Republic, it will lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship.</b>

    <b>I’ve spent some time in the book talking about an alternative, namely that of the British Empire after World War II, in which it made the decision, not perfectly executed by any manner of means, but nonetheless made the decision to give up its empire in order to keep its democracy. It became apparent to the British quite late in the game that they could keep the jewel in their crown, India, only at the expense of administrative massacres, of which they had carried them out often in India. In the wake of the war against Nazism, which had just ended, it became, I think, obvious to the British that in order to retain their empire, they would have to become a tyranny, and they, therefore, I believe, properly chose, admirably chose to give up their empire.</b>

    As I say, they didn’t do it perfectly. There were tremendous atavistic fallbacks in the 1950s in the Anglo, French, Israeli attack on Egypt; in the repression of the Kikuyu—savage repression, really—in Kenya; and then, of course, the most obvious and weird atavism of them all, Tony Blair and his enthusiasm for renewed British imperialism in Iraq. But nonetheless, it seems to me that the history of Britain is clear that it gave up its empire in order to remain a democracy. I believe this is something we should be discussing very hard in the United States.
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[ramana]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->OPED | Monday, October 12, 2009 | Email | Print |


West’s double-talk

Premen Addy

<b>The West was gripped by paranoia at the prospect of a united Germany, fearing that a reinvigorated country would pose a threat to European peace and stability. Today Germany is Europe’s industrial juggernaut. Post-Cold War verities have triumphed over Cold War fears</b>

Brought up on a dodgy diet of Western human rights and ethical pieties on the Berlin Wall, public opinion in these parts was programmed to believe that the great and good in Nato and the EU were all for pulling it down and reconstituting a divided Germany into a single democratic entity. Did not President John F Kennedy stand before the infamous concrete watch-towers and declare to swelling applause from the natives that he, an American, was also a Berliner? He spoke the words in German, which added to the theatre. But good theatre demands the willing suspension of disbelief from audiences.

Never a true believer in the ritual pronouncements of Western rectitude, I was aware that <b>the USSR — with Stalin still the dominant force in the Kremlin — had proposed the reunification of Germany as a neutral state a full half century and more ago. The West shot this down, preferring a divided Germany, whose larger and most productive part would continue as its embedded Cold War security construct for Continental Europe.</b>

Almost a half century later the Berlin Wall came tumbling down and with it crumbled East Germany’s Communist regime and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, Nato’s mirror image. At about this time <b>the Indian President Shankar Dayal Sharma, on a visit to the UK, made a courtesy call on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 10 Downing Street. Her host was accompanied by a senior Indian diplomat (the source of this story), who was privy to the exchanges that followed. Britain’s ‘Iron Lady’ took the precautionary step of banishing her note-taker and principal foreign policy aide, Sir Charles Powell — she wanted no undesirable leaks even from a someone so trustworthy — before letting her hair down on past German iniquities and the dangers a reinvigorated German people would pose to European peace and stability. Her decibels rose and with it her venom. Shankar Dayal Sharma, gasping for breath in this anti-German dust storm, was rescued by his escort’s intervention. The emollient diplomat soothingly explained that an Indian President was scarcely the right person to repose such exoriating confidences, especially about a country with whom India had friendly ties.</b>

But the page had barely turned when the most red-blooded Thatcherite in the British Cabinet, Sir Nicholas Ridley, invited Dominic Lawson, then editor of the pro-Tory Spectator magazine and son of Nigel Lawson, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the first Thatcher Government, for an extended private conversation in the sanctuary of his home.

All being fair in love and war and politics, <b>Lawson placed a strategically concealed tape in the bushes in the sylvan setting of the Ridley rose’s garden, where the Minister, not smelling treachery, spoke passionately but none too wisely about the looming German threat. Reference was made to Adolf Hitler coupled with a tirade against Germany’s myriad sins of omission and commission. The ferocious broadside was recorded verbatim and duly published. The politician’s favoured ruse of being wrongly quoted was clearly unfit for purpose. A traumatised Nicholas Ridley, in keeping with his aristocratic roots and mien, did the honourable thing by falling on his sword and resigning. He has been gathered gloriously to his fathers, his duty done. No samurai could ask for more.</b>

The latest turn in an unfolding saga concerns a young Russian researcher in the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow, who flew into London with a set of documents, which he reckoned would be of interest to the British Press. Publishing these, The Times ran the risk of damnation by Thatcherite loyalists such as <b>Andrew Roberts, the Cambridge academic long wedded to the proposition of Britannia ruling the waves in company with Uncle Sam.</b>

So what dark secrets were revealed? <b>Nothing more nor less than Thatcher’s fraught encounter with Mikhail Gorbachev, in which she tried to talk him out of beating ceremonial retreat from East Germany and bringing down the Berlin Wall. She was gripped by paranoia at the prospect of a united Germany, fearing the wakened demons of its Nazi past.</b>

She summoned a conclave of leading British historians of Germany to Downing Street to read the German runes. Her German counterpart, chancellor Helmut Kohl, let it be known that he found Thatcher the most disagreeable of foreign leaders.

On German unification she was apparently joined at the hip by French President Francois Mitterrand, who with a touch of Gallic wit pronounced that he loved Germany so deeply that he wished for two Germanys! His top aide Jacques Attali swore that, faced by a unified Germany, he would desert planet Earth for a less stressful existence in another galaxy. In such manner has post-Cold War truth triumphed over rancid Cold War fiction.

To which I shall add my own afterword. Russian oil and gas pipelines constructed on the seabed of the Baltic, say some, bypass Poland and the Baltic states for a possible Russo-German condominium of the future. Of special relevance was the appointment of <b>former German chancellor Gerhard Schroder </b>as head of Russia’s state-owned Gazprom oil and gas company in Germany. <b>Mr Schroder, in an interview with a German news magazine, has told of his desire to build a Russo-German association on the lines set out for Germany and France by Konrad Adenaur and Charles de Gaulle</b>.

Germany is Europe’s industrial juggernaut, its exports are the largest of any nation, its engineering skills a continuing marvel. <b>The global financial meltdown is the doing of the US and the UK.</b> The Anglo-Saxon economic model is now a discredited nostrum with much of Continental Europe. <b>German industry from Bismarck’s time has been drawn to the Russian market and Russia’s abundant natural resources.</b>

The European Union and Nato are set to continue, but maybe as looser constructs, which will allow Berlin (and perhaps Paris) greater diplomatic and strategic space.

<b>Hans Seekt, the Weimar Republic’s foremost military figure, disturbed by his country’s estrangement from Russia, penned a pamphlet in the last days of 1932 entitled “Germany between East and West.” In it he warned prophetically that alienating Russia would one day have Poland on the Oder: Word becoming flesh in the aftermath of World War II.</b>

Germany now has the experience to cultivate East and West proportionately since the world today is being becoming.
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The Brits were passing the Empire torch to the US who didnt understand the burden of Empire. Read the earlier book also that I posted above: Nemesis by Chalmers Johnson.

[dhu]

<b>The liberal paradox</b>

Pratap Bhanu Mehta

[Guest]

<b>Continental Congress</b> 2009

[dhu]

<b>Karzai's brother said to receive payments from CIA</b>

<!--QuoteBegin-excerpt+-->QUOTE(excerpt)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the CIA, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former US officials. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

F<b>ort Hood mass shootings: 3 soldiers kill 11; One gunman, Major Malik Nadal Hasan, shot dead</b> l<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Three U.S. soldiers went on a chilling rampage at the sprawling Fort Hood Army Base in Texas on Thursday, killing 12 people and wounding 31, officials said.

The motive for the bloodbath was unknown.

At least one gunman opened fire with two handguns just after 2:30 p.m. at the Soldier Readiness Center, where troops prepare for deployment, the Army said.

He was shot dead by military police. Several news outlets identified him as Major Malik Nadal Hasan.

Two other suspects were in custody, said Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, the base commander.

"It's a terrible tragedy. It's stunning," he said.

President Obama called it a "horrific outburst of violence," stressing that the victims were those who volunteered to protect the nations.

"It's difficult enough when we lose these brave Americans in battles overseas. It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil," Obama said.

When the shooting began, emergency sirens blared across the massive base and officials warned the population of nearly 34,000 to take cover as they hunted for the gunmen.

The base - the largest military installation in the world - was locked down and the public address system crackled with calls for blood donors.

Two hours later, the hunt appeared to be wrapped up.

The carnage began inside the Soldier Readiness Center, and there were unconfirmed reports of a second shooting at a nearby theater where a graduation ceremony was scheduled.

Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson said many of the victims were collecting their final deployment papers.
<b>The shooters were in military uniform, witnesses said.</b>
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[Guest]

<b>Who is Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan?</b>

[ramana]

Looks like there were more than Maj Malik. he was armed withe two handguns, yet four SWAT team members were injured. The casualties shows that there were more than one shooter.
Another thing he is said to be a psychiatrist. Could be an immigrant who enlisted in the forces and didnt want to go to Iraq or Afghanistan.


Nadal seems to be Arabic name. Abu this and that.
What about the others in custody?