Suspicious Packages Found in Dozens of Locations After Bin Ladin Death

Looks like Muslims aren’t thrilled about the justifiable killing of that pedophile degenerate Osama Bin Ladin. From MassLive:

In Massachusetts on Tuesday, there were at least four incidents involving suspicious packages.

An unknown white powder was found in envelopes addressed to Attorney General Martha Coakley and U.S. Sen. Scott Brown in downtown Boston, as well as in an envelope addressed to the court clerk at Greenfield District Court. A similar substance was reportedly found in the John F. Kennedy Federal Office Building in Boston.

Preliminary reports all indicated the substances weren’t dangerous, but further tests are being conducted at state labs.

The Greenfield incident prompted officials to evacuate and close the Franklin County Courthouse Tuesday afternoon. The courthouse later reopened and it was business as usual on Wednesday, according to court personnel.

In New York City, perhaps the most vigilant municipality in the country, a suspicious package report from Times Square came in just as officials at a news conference held at Ground Zero urged the public to remain calm and vigilant in the face of new threats from terrorist groups across the globe.

The New York Police Department moved in quickly and determined the package was only a bag of garbage. But despite the high volume of such reports since Sunday, officials are playing it safe, carefully investigating each incident and hoping for the best.

According to the Associated Press, there were 62 suspicious package reports in the city on Monday, compared to just 18 a week prior when bin Laden was unknowingly living out his last days in a suburb of Parkistan’s capitol city.

More reports mean more running for the police, but NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly urged the public to report anything and everything that looks out of the norm.

[…]

In downtown Augusta, Georgia, on Tuesday, a United Parcel Service driver alerted authorities after discovering a suspicious package addressed to the president in a mailing drop box. Augusta police secured the scene and the package and turned over the investigation and all evidence to the Secret Service a short time later.

There has been no word as of this report about what was inside that package or what was “suspiciously” written on the return address label.

The Los Angeles Police Department responded to at least two suspicious package reports on Tuesday, including one that shut down a major train line for three hours. Both incidents turned out to be harmless, but served as a reminder that just because bin Laden is dead, the movement he fathered lives on.

In other parts of the country, suspicious package reports closed a road in Nashville, created panic in the heart of Philadelphia and caused the evacuation of a busy neighborhood in San Francisco.

Stay alert out there. h/t N.T.A.

World Food Prices Near Record as Inflation Accelerates

From Bloomberg:

World food prices rose to near a record in April as grain costs advanced, adding pressure to inflation that is accelerating from Beijing to Brasilia and spurring central banks to raise interest rates.

An index of 55 commodities rose to 232.1 points from 231 points in March, the United Nations’ Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization said in a report on its website today. The gauge climbed to an all-time high of 237.2 in February before dropping 2.6 percent in March.

The cost of living in the U.S. rose at its fastest pace since December 2009 in the 12 months ended in March, the same month in which Chinese consumer prices rose by the most since 2008. The European Central Bank raised interest rates on April 7, joining China, India, Poland and Sweden in a bid to control inflation partly blamed on food costs. Costlier food also contributed to riots across northern Africa and the Middle East that toppled leaders in Egypt and Tunisia this year.

“There seems to be some easing for a lot of commodities, but whether this is demand rationing, we have to wait and see,” Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist at the FAO, said before the report. “If the weather is good, if plantings expand, I think we could see some relief in food prices.”

Hope you’re prepared.

Prepare for Jihad Escalation in Wake of Bin Laden’s Death

Like all Americans I was overjoyed when I heard Osama Bin Ladin was gunned down like the yellow dog he was. This was justice, and it came ten years too late.

But it is naive to think, as many talking heads are putting forward, that this will be celebrated in the Muslim world. If you don’t think even moderate Muslims in the Islamic world lionize Bin Laden you’re living in a fantasy world – and I know many on the Left and the Right are. If nothing else, the fact that this announcement was made so far away from Friday prayers, and the muted, conciliatory tone Obama took in making the announcement, should tell you the truth about Muslim support for killing Bin Laden.

From Bloomberg:

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh denounced the U.S. killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, while a Palestinian Authority spokesman said his death will be “good for peace.”

“This is a continuance of the U.S. policy of atrocities,” Haniyeh told reporters today in Gaza City.

Hamas, which is considered a terrorist group by the U.S., European Union, and Israel, is scheduled to sign a reconciliation agreement with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah faction this week in Cairo.

The AP has more detail:

The U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority welcomed bin Laden’s killing as “good for the cause of peace.” Its rival and prospective power-sharing partner, Islamist Hamas, deplored his death.

“We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior,” said Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas administration in Gaza, which faces a challenge from al Qaeda-inspired groups that consider it too moderate.

“We regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood.”

Those who revered bin Laden were still in denial about his death but many in the Arab world felt it was long overdue.

[…]

A rival view sees bin Laden as the only Muslim leader to take the fight against Western dominance to the heart of the enemy — in the form of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001.

“Bin Laden defended the dignity of Muslims and now the U.S. and the West will answer for their occupation,” said Egyptian Abdullah Ali, a Salafist taxi driver in his 60s.

Abdel-Qader Abu Shaaban, a 53-year-old Palestinian from Gaza, described bin Laden’s killing as “a very criminal act.”

Tareq al-Zumar of Egypt’s Islamist group al-Gama’a al-Islamiya, which took up arms against the state in the 1990s said: “Bin Laden will become a symbol of resistance to occupation… The U.S. killing of bin Laden will undoubtedly galvanize reaction and retaliation attempts.”

Saudi Arabia, the scene of al Qaeda attacks to oust what bin Laden called the “godless” Saudi royal family, said it hoped his killing would help the international fight against terrorism and stamp out the “misguided thought” behind it.

But there was disbelief and sorrow among many Saudis.

He would be a loss to all Muslims because he had good qualities. He portrayed Muslims in a good and strong way… He is the person that left the worldly riches for jihad,” said one man taking a cigarette break outside his office in Riyadh.”

Islamic “scholars” have already begun fanning the flames by claiming we desecrated this toad’s body:

CAIRO – Muslim clerics said Monday that Osama bin Laden’s burial at sea was a violation of Islamic tradition that may further provoke militant calls for revenge attacks against American targets.

Although there appears to be some room for debate over the burial — as with many issues within the faith — a wide range of senior Islamic scholars interpreted it as a humiliating disregard for the standard Muslim practice of placing the body in a grave with the head pointed toward the holy city of Mecca.

Sea burials can be allowed, they said, but only in special cases where the death occurred aboard a ship.

Bin Laden’s burial at sea “runs contrary to the principles of Islamic laws, religious values and humanitarian customs,” said Sheik Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand Imam of Cairo’s al-Azhar mosque, Sunni Islam’s highest seat of learning.

A radical cleric in Lebanon, Omar Bakri Mohammed, said, “The Americans want to humiliate Muslims through this burial, and I don’t think this is in the interest of the U.S. administration.”

Muslims with they’re leftist allies rioted this weekend over Terry Jones. Imagine what our radicalized Muslim population are ready to do now. Get prepared for lone wolf terror attacks, especially Mumbai style assaults. Stay out of areas heavily populated by Muslims and store some extra food and water at home if you haven’t already.

Dollar Burns as Fed Policies Come Home to Roost

I told you to start buying stuff you need. Everything is going to get more and more expensive as the dollar drops. From Financial Times:

Please respect FT.com’s ts&cs and copyright policy which allow you to: share links; copy content for personal use; & redistribute limited extracts. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights or use this link to reference the article – http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9a977da0-6bfd-11e0-b36e-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1KJsREqHL

The dollar dropped to its lowest level in more than two-and-a-half years on Thursday as buoyant risk appetite prompted investors to sell the currency to fund carry trades.

Analysts said robust corporate earnings figures had boosted hopes over global growth, while the prospect that US interest rates would remain at ultra-low levels was fuelling demand for carry trades, in which low-yielding currencies such as the dollar are sold to finance the purchase of riskier, higher-yielding assets elsewhere.

Market rumour that the People’s Bank of China was poised to implement of substantial, one-off revaluation of the renminbi also weighed on the US currency.

The dollar index, which tracks its progress against a basket of six leading currencies, fell 0.8 per cent to 73.785, its weakest level since August 2008. Traders said the stage could now be set for the index to target the record low of 70.698 it hit in March 2008.

The dollar also dropped 0.9 per cent to a 16-month low of $1.4641 against the euro, fell 1 per cent to a 16-month trough of $1.6560 against the pound, lost 0.8 per cent to a record low of SFr0.8817 against the Swiss franc and plunged 0.7 per cent lower to Y81.93 against the yen.

The Australian dollar, which with its relatively high yield and commodity-linked status has been a favourite target for carry trade investors, surged to a fresh 29-year high against the dollar, rising 0.6 per cent to $1.0758.

Lee Hardman at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ said dollar weakness continued to be mainly driven by widening expectations of monetary policy divergence between the Federal Reserve and other major central banks.

He said the downgrade of the outlook of US sovereign debt by rating agency Standard & Poor’s on Monday had reinforced this dynamic by increasing expectations that the Fed would have to keep interest rates at ultra-low levels for longer to offset the negative impact from the expected fiscal tightening.

Mr Hardman added, however, that while near-term concerns over monetary policy divergence and heightened US fiscal concerns were genuine, he believed there was a strong case that current dollar weakness was overextending.

“With market liquidity thinning heading into the Easter holidays, it provides the ideal conditions for a dollar undershoot relative to fundamentals,” he said.

This weakness is coupled with some of the worst crop yields in recent history – especially things like cotton. Time to go out and buy the things you will need next year,because you won’t be able to soon.