Obama Lies Fast and Furious Program "Begun Under the Previous Administration"

(ABC) Asked about the Fast and Furious program at the Univision forum on Thursday, President Obama falsely claimed that the program began under President George W. Bush.

“I think it’s important for us to understand that the Fast and Furious program was a field-initiated program begun under the previous administration,” the president said. “When Eric Holder found out about it, he discontinued it. We assigned a inspector general to do a thorough report that was just issued, confirming that in fact Eric Holder did not know about this, that he took prompt action and the people who did initiate this were held accountable.”

In actuality, the Fast and Furious program was started in October 2009, nine months into the Obama presidency.

Previous programs involving ATF agents allowing guns to “walk” across the border so as to trace them were run during the Bush presidency, but not this particular “field-initiated program.”

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Labor Department: Unemployment rates rise in 26 states

WASHINGTON (AP) — Unemployment rates rose in more than half of U.S. states last month, the latest evidence that hiring remains tepid across the country.

The Labor Department said Friday that rates increased in 26 states. They fell in 12 states and were unchanged in the other 12.

Unemployment also rose in seven of the 11 key swing states in this year's presidential election.

Nationwide, employers added only 96,000 jobs in August. That's below July's gain of 141,000 and the average of 226,000 jobs a month added in the January-March quarter.

The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent last month from 8.3 percent in July. But that was only because many people gave up looking for work. The government only counts people as unemployed if they are actively searching for jobs.

In August, unemployment increased in several competitive states in this year's presidential race.

The rate in Michigan rose to 9.4 percent from 9 percent. The rate ticked up a tenth of a point to 12.1 percent in Nevada, which has the highest unemployment in the nation. GOP nominee Mitt Romney campaigned in Nevada on Friday.

Unemployment rates also rose in five other battleground states: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Iowa.

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Anti-jihad 'savage' ads going up in NYC subway, some observant Muslims hint it may trigger Libya-style Muslim violence

NEW YORK (AP) — A provocative ad that equates Muslim radicals with savages is set to go up in the city's subway system as violent protests over an anti-Islamic film ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad sweep over much of the Muslim world.

A conservative blogger who once headed a campaign against an Islamic center near the Sept. 11 terror attack site won a court order to post the ad in 10 subway stations next Monday. The ad reads, "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad."

The ad was plastered on San Francisco city buses in recent weeks, prompting some artists to deface the ads and remove some of the words, including "Jihad," or holy war. The blogger, Pamela Geller, said she filed suit Thursday in the nation's capital to post the ad in Washington's transit system after officials declined to put up the ad in light of the uproar in the Middle East over the anti-Islam film.

Abdul Yasar, a New York subway rider who considers himself an observant Muslim, said Geller's ad was insensitive in an unsettling climate for Muslims.

"If you don't want to see what happened in Libya and Egypt after the video — maybe not so strong here in America — you shouldn't put this up," Yasar said.

But "if this is a free country, they have the right to do this," he said. "And then Muslims have the right to put up their own ad."

Geller, executive director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative and publisher of a blog called Atlas Shrugs, called an order by a federal judge in New York allowing the ads "a victory for the First Amendment" and said she wasn't concerned that her ad could spark protests like the ones against the depiction of Muslims in the video "Innocence of Muslims." Violence linked to the movie has left at least 30 people in seven countries dead, including the American ambassador to Libya.

"If it's not a film it's a cartoon, if it's not a cartoon it's a teddy bear," she said. "What are you going to do? Are you going to reward Islamic extremism? I will not sacrifice my freedom so as not to offend savages."

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Libyans storm Islamist militia base in Benghazi, burn it down

BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - Pro-government demonstrators stormed the headquarters of the Islamist Ansar al-Sharia militia in the Libyan city of Benghazi on Friday, aiming to evict fighters from the site, Reuters witnesses said.

Ansar al-Sharia has been linked to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi last week in which the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans died. It denies involvement.

Friday's action against the group appeared to be part of a coordinated sweep of militia headquarters buildings by police, government troops and activists following a mass public demonstration against militia units earlier in the day.

Chanting "Libya, Libya", hundreds of demonstrators entered, pulling down militia flags and torching a vehicle inside the compound, the group's main base in Benghazi.

The crowd waved swords and even a meat cleaver, crying "No more Al Qaeda!" and "The blood we shed for freedom shall not go in vain!"

"After what happened at the American consulate, the people of Benghazi had enough of the extremists," said demonstrator Hassan Ahmed. "They did not give allegiance to the army. So the people broke in and they fled."

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19 killed, 195 wounded during violent "Day of Love" protests in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (NewsLIVE) — Violent crowds furious over an anti-Islamic film made in the United States convulsed several cities across Pakistan on Friday in a day of state-sanctioned protests, and the nation's leading television station reported as many as 19 people were killed.

It was the worst single day of deadly violence in one Muslim country over the film, "Innocence of Muslims," since the protests began nearly two weeks ago in Egypt and later spread to two dozen countries around the world. Protesters have ignored the United States government's denunciation of the film.

The violence on Friday in Pakistan began with a television station employee dying from gunshot wounds during a protest in the northwestern city of Peshawar, and far bigger protests in the southern port of Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, left between 12 and 14 people dead, Pakistani news media reported. Geo, the leading television station, was reporting 19 deaths by late Friday around the country.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - [T]ens of thousands of people joined protests encouraged by the government in several cities including Islamabad, Karachi, Peshawar, Lahore, Multan and Muzaffarabad.

The bloodiest unrest erupted in the southern city of Karachi, where three policemen and two protesters were killed and 112 people wounded, according to Allah Bachayo Memon, spokesman of the chief minister of Sindh province. He said about 20 vehicles, three banks and five cinemas were set on fire.

Crowds set two cinemas ablaze and ransacked shops in the northwestern city of Peshawar, clashing with riot police who fired tear gas. At least five protesters were hurt and the ARY television station said an employee had been killed.

Mohammed Tariq Khan, a protester in Islamabad, said: "Our demand is that whoever has blasphemed against our holy Prophet should be handed over to us so we can cut him up into tiny pieces in front of the entire nation." [...]

In neighboring Afghanistan, police contacted religious and community leaders to try to prevent bloodshed. Protests in Kabul and the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif only attracted a few hundred people and no violence was reported, but a cleric told one crowd: "If you kill Americans, it's legal and allowable."

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Pakistan Ads Show Obama’s Cluelessness

(Commentary Magazine) Politico reports that the Obama administration is now running a TV ad in Pakistan, condemning the anti-Islam film that it’s been blaming for the anti-American violence across the Muslim world:

The Obama administration is airing ads on Pakistani television condemning the anti-Islamic film “The Innocence of Muslims,” a State Department spokeswoman confirmed Thursday.

“As you know, after the video came out, there was concern in lots of bodies politic, including Pakistan, as to whether this represented the views of the U.S. Government.  So in order to ensure we reached the largest number of Pakistanis – some 90 million, as I understand it in this case with these spots – it was the judgment that this was the best way to do it,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.

The ads show clips of President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemning the film in English (but dubbed in Urdu) in remarks they made last week, emphasizing that it was not produced or authorized by the United States government.

Imagine for a second that you’re a Pakistani enraged by the Muhammad video, and you are on your way to a violent riot at the U.S. embassy. Is a commercial of President Obama insisting the U.S. government had nothing to do with the film going to change your mind? The ad buy assumes that the rioters will act rationally when faced with the “truth.” But why should they, when they’re not acting rationally in the first place?

Rioting and setting things on fire is not an understandable or instinctive response to being insulted. That’s not a culturally or religiously-relative point, it’s a universal point. There are millions of devout Muslims in the U.S., many of them immigrants from countries like Libya and Egypt and Pakistan, and yet the YouTube video did not drive them to violent frenzies. Similarly, there are millions of devout Muslims in Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan who didn’t join in on the rampages outside U.S. embassies.

Those who engaged in violent riots this week and last did so for one reason: because they chose to. And why did they choose to? Maybe because there’s no real cost, and a whole lot of benefit. When top U.S. officials respond to wild tantrums across the Muslim world by pleading with crackpots like Terry Jones and blocking anti-Islam YouTube videos, it creates a moral hazard on two levels. First, it rewards these violent uprisings by handing a victory to the Islamist leaders who egged them on. Second, it hands anti-Muslim fringe figures an unhealthy amount of notoriety and power.

There’s nothing wrong with the Obama administration denouncing the anti-Islam film, in the context of condemning the riots. But that’s not what this is. This is a taxpayer-sponsored ad that repudiates a YouTube clip by a private citizen, while accepting the false premise that it was responsible for the violence. The intention is to ease the riots for the moment, but the long- (and short)-term consequence could end up being the opposite.

Malaysian Muslims burn US flag, threaten to kill Americans

KUALA LUMPUR: About 3,000 Muslims marched on the US embassy in Malaysia on Friday, burning an American flag, over a US-made film that has sparked anger in the Islamic world.

Although there was no violence, angry demonstrators declared their willingness to sacrifice their lives to defend the honour of Prophet Mohammed and warned "there will be consequences" over the film.

"We will not allow the prophet to be insulted. We are willing to sacrifice our lives and property," said Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man, an official with the opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), which spearheaded the march.

About 60 percent of Malaysia's 28 million people are Malay-Muslims.

Protesters shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) and held up signs denouncing the film, America and Jews.

One placard read: "Obama, our patience has its limit. Don't blame us if your citizens die. Blame yourself. U started it!"

Demonstrators handed a memo to an American embassy official, demanding a US apology, "maximum sentences" for the movie-makers and an investigation into whether there was a "planned agenda to provoke hatred and anger towards Muslims".

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Way to go, Barry. Muslims see us in a much better light since you took over...

Krauthammer: Collapse of the Cairo Doctrine

(WaPo) In the week following 9/11/12 something big happened: the collapse of the Cairo Doctrine, the centerpiece of President Obama’s foreign policy. It was to reset the very course of post-9/11 America, creating, after the (allegedly) brutal depredations of the Bush years, a profound rapprochement with the Islamic world.

Never lacking ambition or self-regard, Obama promised in Cairo, June 4, 2009, “a new beginning” offering Muslims “mutual respect,” unsubtly implying previous disrespect. Curious, as over the previous 20 years, America had six times committed its military forces on behalf of oppressed Muslims, three times for reasons of pure humanitarianism (Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo), where no U.S. interests were at stake. [...]

It’s now three years since the Cairo speech. Look around. The Islamic world is convulsed with an explosion of anti-Americanism. From Tunisia to Lebanon, American schools, businesses and diplomatic facilities set ablaze. A U.S. ambassador and three others murdered in Benghazi. The black flag of Salafism, of which al-Qaeda is a prominent element, raised over our embassies in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Sudan. [...]

Islamists rise across North Africa from Mali to Egypt. Iran repeatedly defies U.S. demands on nuclear enrichment, then, as a measure of its contempt for what America thinks, openly admits that its Revolutionary Guards are deployed in Syria. Russia, after arming Assad, warns America to stay out, while the secretary of state delivers vapid lectures about Assad “meeting” his international “obligations.” The Gulf states beg America to act on Iran; Obama strains mightily to restrain . . . Israel.

Sovereign U.S. territory is breached and U.S. interests are burned. And what is the official response? One administration denunciation after another — of a movie trailer! A request to Google to “review” the trailer’s presence on YouTube. And a sheriff’s deputies’ midnight “voluntary interview” with the suspected filmmaker. This in the land of the First Amendment.

What else can Obama do? At their convention, Democrats endlessly congratulated themselves on their one foreign policy success: killing Osama bin Laden. A week later, the Salafist flag flies over four American embassies, even as the mob chants, “Obama, Obama, there are still a billion Osamas.”

A foreign policy in epic collapse. And, by the way, Vladimir Putin just expelled the U.S. Agency for International Development from Russia. Another thank you from another recipient of another grand Obama “reset.”

Photo: FEMEN, a group famous or its radical protest methods, opened its first foreign office in Paris (NSFW)

(Source: Spiegel)

France bans protests over Mohammed cartoons

PARIS (Reuters) - France confirmed on Friday it would allow no street protests against cartoons denigrating Islam's Prophet Mohammad that were published by a French magazine this week.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls said prefects throughout the country had orders to prohibit any protest over the issue and to crack down if the ban was challenged.

"There will be strictly no exceptions. Demonstrations will be banned and broken up," he told a news conference in the southern port city of Marseille.

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Pic of the day

An Afghan protester shouts slogans in front of an effigy of U.S. president Barack Obama during a demonstration in Kabul, September 21, 2012. Credit: REUTERS/Omar Sobhani

You can't make this up: Pakistani protesters clash with police on Muslim "Day of Love"

This was triggered in part by Hillary's "smart diplomacy" apology ads on the Pakistani TV.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Demonstrators clashed with police in the Pakistani city of Peshawar on Friday as anger over insults to the Prophet Mohammad boiled over despite calls from political and religious leaders across the Muslim world for peaceful protest.

Western diplomatic missions throughout the Muslim world tightened security, with some closing down on expectation of big protests after Friday prayers.

An anti-Islam film made in America has enraged Muslims and led to days of protests across the Muslim world while cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammad published in a French magazine on Wednesday were expected to compound the anger.

Egypt's highest Islamic legal official said on Thursday Muslims should follow his example of enduring insults without retaliating.

But the call looked unlikely to calm the outrage.

"An attack upon the Holy Prophet is an attack on the whole 1.5 billion Muslims. Therefore, this is something unacceptable," Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf said in a speech to politicians, religious leaders and others.

Pakistan has declared Friday a "Day of Love for the Prophet Mohammad". Critics of the unpopular government said it was pandering to Islamist parties.

Protesters took to the streets of the Pakistani city of Peshawar, an old frontier town on the main road to Afghanistan, and torched two cinemas and clashed with riot police who tried to disperse them with teargas.

At least five protesters were hurt, a doctor at the city's main hospital said. The ARY television station said an employee had been killed.

Near the capital, Islamabad, protesters set fire to a motorway toll booth. The previous day, about 1,000 stone-throwing protesters clashed with police as they tried to force their way to the U.S. embassy.

The government shut down mobile phone services in more than a dozen cities as part of security arrangements ahead of protests expected on Friday.

The U.S. embassy in Pakistan has been running television advertisements, one featuring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying the government had nothing to do with the film.

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Israeli soldier, 3 Egyptian terrorists killed on Egypt border

A wounded Israeli soldier is wheeled into Soroka hospital in the southern city of Beersheba September 21, 2012. REUTERS/Dudu Grunshpan

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli troops on Friday killed three militants who infiltrated over the border from Egypt to launch an attack and an Israeli soldier also died in the clash, an Israeli army spokeswoman and Israeli media said.

The Israeli military declined immediate comment on reports of Israeli casualties.

"Three armed terrorists crossed the border into Israel and opened fire at troops securing workers who are building the border fence in the area ... They (attackers) were wearing flak jackets and were well armed and carried explosive belts," spokeswoman Lieutenant-Colonel Avital Leibovich said.

She said she did not have information on the identity or affiliation of the gunmen but added that soldiers from a joint male-female army battalion had been involved in the fighting and "managed to thwart a major incident."

An Egyptian security source said one of the gunmen died when a bomb he was carrying detonated and the other two were killed in a gunbattle with Israeli forces, adding that the nationalities of the gunmen were not immediately clear.

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Report: The entire story told by the Obama administration about the attack and murder of the Ambassador Stevens was a lie

The Hill: Whoa: Devastating CBS News Benghazi Report Slams Obama Administration

Feel-good story of the day: Two Iranian girls clobbered cleric over dress code admonishment

A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

Tehran, Iran (CNN) -- They may be a far cry from their Western counterparts fighting for the acceptance to breast-feed -- or go topless -- in public, but two girls clobbered a cleric recently in a small town in Iran when he admonished one of them to cover herself more completely.

The cleric said he asked "politely," but the girl's angry reaction and some pugilistic double-teaming with her friend landed the holy man in the hospital, according to an account Monday in the semiofficial Mehr News Agency.

Hojatoleslam Ali Beheshti said he encountered the girls on his way to the mosque in the village of Shahmirzad for noon prayers in late August.

He told one of the girls to cover up, the report said.

"She responded by telling me to cover my eyes, which was very insulting to me," Beheshti said. So he asked her a second time to cover up and also to put a lid on what he felt was verbal abuse.

She hit the man of the cloth, and he hit the ground.

"I don't remember what happened after that," he said. "I just felt her kicks and heard her insults."

Beheshti, who emerged from the infirmary three days later, said he did not file a complaint against the girls.

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State Department warns Americans against travel to Pakistan

Protesters use sticks to smash the windscreen and windows of a car during an anti-America protest march in Islamabad September 20, 2012. Credit: REUTERS/Faisal Mahmood

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. citizens should avoid travel to Pakistan, the State Department said on Thursday, in a fresh warning that follows numerous protests, demonstrations and rallies in Pakistan that U.S. officials said are likely to continue.

Officials upgraded their ongoing caution about the travel risks in Pakistan, explicitly advising Americans to put off any non-essential travel to the country. They also "strongly urged" those who are already there to avoid protests and large gatherings.

The State Department said the presence of al Qaeda, Taliban elements, and "indigenous militant sectarian groups poses a potential danger to U.S. citizens throughout Pakistan."

Thursday's warning follows a wave of anti-American demonstrations in predominantly Muslim countries, including a deadly protest in Libya last week that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.

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Iraq denies it provided airspace to Iran to ship arms to Syria

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq on Thursday denied a Western intelligence report that said Iranian aircraft had flown weapons and military personnel over Iraqi airspace to Syria to help President Bashar al-Assad battle an 18-month-old uprising.

The allegation, reported by Reuters on Wednesday, said arms transfers were organized by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Although charges that Iraq has allowed Iran to send arms to Syria are not new, the report said the extent of such shipments is far greater and more systematic than has been publicly acknowledged, thanks to a deal between senior Iraqi and Iranian officials.

The report also said Iran was dispatching trucks overland via Iraq westwards to Syria.

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Iran atomic chief admits Tehran misled IAEA

(Ynet) Head of Iran's Atomic Energy Agency Fereydoun Abbasi said Thursday that Tehran "occasionally" gave the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "false information" to protect Iran's nuclear facilities.

In an interview with the London-based al-Hayat newspaper, Abbasi said, "There is no choice but to mislead other intelligence bodies. Sometimes we show weaknesses we don't have. Sometimes we show strengths we don't have. Later this is evident in talks with the IAEA."

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Danish Mohammad cartoonist rejects censorship, says the West cannot let itself be muzzled by fear of offending Islamic sensibilities

VIENNA (Reuters) - The Danish cartoonist who outraged Muslims with a drawing of the Prophet Mohammad seven years ago has said the West cannot let itself be muzzled by fear of offending Islamic sensibilities.

Kurt Westergaard, whose lampoon of Mohammad in the Jyllands-Posten paper nearly got him killed by an axe-wielding assassin in 2010, told Austrian magazine News he had no regrets about his work and said freedom of speech was too precious to relinquish.

"Should we in future let ourselves be censored by Islamic authorities in deeply undemocratic countries? Should they be allowed to tell the German chancellor in future whom she should honor and whom not? Are we really this far along?" he asked, referring to Angela Merkel's citation of his work. [...]

"I can't even go shopping or sit in a cafe," the cartoonist said in the interview published on Thursday.

Westergaard said cartoons poking fun at Muslims could signal that Western cultures saw them as part of society. "But we don't understand one another," he added.

That was because "we have long found ourselves in a culture war" raging not just between the West and the Middle East but directly in Western societies where he said many Muslims seem not to understand or respect democracy and freedom of speech.

He said cartoonists could not hold back in their efforts to spotlight issues in a pointed way.

"It is already bad enough when people like politicians or journalists who work with words no longer prefer to say and write things that are obvious. We have got used to that, but fortunately not yet to (the idea) that bans on drawings also prevail in the meantime."

Obama Continues to Snub Israeli Leaders, Refuses All NY Meetings

Obama will not meet with either Prime Minister Netanyahu or Defense MInister Barak during their upcoming visits to NY.

But it's understandable. As seen evidenced in the above photo, he has a very busy schedule.

(INN) Tensions between Israel and the current U.S. administration further deteriorated last week when President Barack Obama refused to meet with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during his upcoming visit to New York, where he will address the UN General Assembly.

The White House insisted that the meeting would not take place due to the president’s pressing “campaign obligations” which would take him out of New York.

Obama has further snubbed Israeli leaders by refusing to meet with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who will also be in New York next week, WND news station reported.

Barak is scheduled to attend the 2012 Clinton Global Initiative, an annual summit of high-powered political and business leaders scheduled to overlap with the U.N. General Assembly.

While the President has not cited any pressing “campaign obligations” that would take him out of New York during Barak’s visit, he has, nonetheless, refused a meeting, WND reported.

While Obama will not meet any Israeli leader during their visits to New York, he will, however, find time to meet with Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi.

The president is also expected to meet Libya’s new prime minister, Mustafa Abushugar, though the meeting has not yet been announced, according to WND.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is also expected to attend the Clinton summit and efforts are reportedly underway to arrange a meeting between the GOP nominee and both Netanyahu and Barak, during their time in New York.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is set to address the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, September 26, which falls out on Yom Kippur.