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1 US soldier killed, 2 wounded in Taliban attack in Helmand
Today's Headlines
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7 18:41 Chaith Oppressor of the Lutherans1517 []
-Lurid Crime Tales-
Mormon church condemns Bundy militia in Oregon
[Wash Times] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released a statement condemning the armed anti-government protesters who took over a building Sunday in a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon.

"While the disagreement occurring in Oregon about the use of federal lands is not a Church matter, Church leaders strongly condemn the armed seizure of the facility and are deeply troubled by the reports that those who have seized the facility suggest that they are doing so based on scriptural principles," the church said in a statement.

"This armed occupation can in no way be justified on a scriptural basis. We are privileged to live in a nation where conflicts with government or private groups can -- and should -- be settled using peaceful means, according to the laws of the land."
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/06/2016 09:58 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  according to the laws of the land

Like by re-sentencing 'criminals' after they have served their time?
Posted by: Bobby || 01/06/2016 13:01 Comments || Top||

#2  This Bundy cat is giving off "fringe kook politician/con artist" vibes like Ron Paul.

I suspect that if everyone would just calm down and ignore this scam artist, he would go away. If only to stay a few steps ahead of the bill & debt collectors.
Posted by: Nguard || 01/06/2016 16:51 Comments || Top||


Caribbean-Latin America
Venezuela Opposition Controls Congress After 17 Years
[ABCNEWS.GO] Venezuela's opposition took majority control of the National Assembly on Tuesday after years in the political wilderness, setting the stage for a potential power struggle with embattled President Nicolas Maduro.

Lawmakers were sworn in during a heated parliamentary session that saw pro-government representatives walk out in protest after pushing their way onto the dais as the new leadership tried to lay out its legislative agenda.

It's the first time in 17 years that opponents of the socialist revolution begun by the late President Hugo Chavez have controlled the legislature, and many leaders seemed rapt in disbelief.

The opposition won a two-thirds majority in a landslide election victory last month, giving it unprecedented strength to challenge Maduro's rule. But that key super-majority is now in doubt after a government-stacked Supreme Court barred four politicians from taking their seats at the last minute while it considers allegations of electoral fraud. As a result, only 163 of 167 politicians were sworn in during Tuesday's ceremony.

Earlier in the day, hundreds of opposition supporters accompanied the incoming politicians past a heavy military barricade to the neoclassical legislature downtown. A few blocks away, a much larger crowd of government supporters gathered outside the presidential palace to lament the inauguration of what they call a "bourgeois parliament" intent on "legislating slavery."
Posted by: Fred || 01/06/2016 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Commies

#1  "legislating slavery."

Pure Projection. Marxism is the new slavery.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 01/06/2016 13:29 Comments || Top||

#2  Unfortunately, just as in some other countries, Venezuelan Congress is a body without any real power.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/06/2016 17:05 Comments || Top||


China-Japan-Koreas
5.1 Mag Quake Detected At Nork Nuclear Test Site
A 5.1-magnitude earthquake detected near North Korea's nuclear test site appears to have been artificial, according to South Korea's meteorological service, raising the prospect the isolated regime tested a nuclear device. As Bloomberg reports, the "earthquake" follows North Korea's threat in September that it is ready to use atomic weapons against the U.S. at any time and that its main nuclear facility was fully operational. The Pentagon is reportedly "looking into" the quake reports.
Posted by: Raj || 01/06/2016 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  training accident or another of pudge's former advisors getting a new and original ticket to the hereafter?
Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom || 01/06/2016 0:26 Comments || Top||

#2  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/world/asia/north-korea-hydrogen-bomb-test.html

NKOR says H-Bomb tested.
Posted by: 3dc || 01/06/2016 0:31 Comments || Top||

#3  Don't look at the flash!!!!!! Read "A Canticle For Leibowitz" by Walter Miller Jr. while there's still time.
Posted by: Canuckistan sniper || 01/06/2016 0:32 Comments || Top||

#4  As per #2, YUUUPPP.

China feeling the heat - I fear PLA-led, unilateral Chinese mil aggression in East Asia andor IOR will come sooner than everyone thinks.

GOOD THING WE HAVE THE MIGHTY "RED LINE" WARRIOR OBAMA IN THE WH ... ... OH, WAIT!

* FYI MILBLOGGERS = are wondering iff IRAN + PAKISTAN may covertly the Hydrodgen Bomb as well, given their histories of Military-Nuclear collusion wid NOKOR???
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 01/06/2016 1:49 Comments || Top||

#5  Apparently Pudgy = NOKOR tested a MINI H-BOMB, besides also successfully test-firing a SLBM???

Again, iff NOKOR now has SLBM capability, DITTO IRAN + PAKISTAN???

KJU is also quoted as saying that his country NOKOR has now successfully joined the world community of "advanced nuclear nations".
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 01/06/2016 2:13 Comments || Top||

#6  #3 Avoid the Fallout shelters and protect the Holy Blueprints.
Posted by: Shipman || 01/06/2016 15:04 Comments || Top||


Suspected Bus Attack in China Kills 14
[ALMANAR.LB] Fourteen people were burned to death and 32 injured after a public bus went up in flames in a suspected arson attack in China on Tuesday, state media said.

Police have identified a suspect in the incident, according to a post on a verified social media account of state broadcaster CCTV.

The broadcaster posted pictures of the 33-year-old man and personal identifying information, adding that police were "investigating and pursuing" him for his role in "a serious crime". It did not give any indication of a possible motive.

Earlier, officials in Yinchuan, the capital of the remote Ningxia region where the incident occurred, said only that the bus had "suddenly caught fire" near a public square.

A total of 32 people were being treated in hospital, according to CCTV, with eight suffering from "serious injuries".

In past years, there have been several cases of attacks on Chinese public transportation, especially buses.

In 2013 a suicidal man started a fire on a bus in eastern China that killed 47 people including himself, state media said.
Update from An Nahar at 11:15 a.m. ET:
A man suspected of setting a public bus on fire in northern China, burning 17 people to death, had told friends he planned violence, reports said Wednesday, citing social media postings in which he agonized over unpaid debts.

Police captured Ma Yongping, 33, Tuesday after the blaze engulfed the vehicle in flames in Yinchuan, the capital of remote Ningxia region.

Ma, a college graduate who had studied in Japan, had accumulated more than 300,000 yuan ($46,000) in debts while a contractor on an engineering project, much of it salaries for his workers, according to an article on Chinese news site Sina which was removed shortly after it appeared on Wednesday.

The company refused to pay him, it said, and according to the Beijing Youth Daily, on the morning of the attack he sent a message to friends on chat application WeChat saying: "At a time when even a person's basic rights can't be guaranteed, he has a right to take action to fight for (them)."

Under interrogation, Ma told police he purchased two jerry cans of petrol at a filling station and used a lighter to set the bus aflame, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.

Chinese citizens have sometimes turned to violence against innocents in attempts to publicize their plight after failing to obtain redress for low-level disputes.
Mr. Ma is not a jihadi, so moved to Page 3: Non-WoT.
Posted by: Fred || 01/06/2016 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Olde Tyme Religion
Vatican paper slams Charlie Hebdo's anti-God cover
[WASHINGTONTIMES] The Vatican's semi-official daily newspaper condemned French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo
...A lefty French satirical magazine, home of what may well be the majority if the active testicles left in Europe...
for its portrayal of God as an assassin in a special edition marking the one-year anniversary of a terror attack on the publication.
"Father O'Malley, put your suicide vest on and get over there!"
A million copies of the issue are set to hit La Belle France's newsstands on Wednesday with a cover featuring a bearded man representing God with a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder, the Agence La Belle France-Presse reported.

"One year on: The murderer is still out there," the cover reads.

In a commentary, the Vatican paper Osservatore Romano said: "Behind the deceptive flag of uncompromising secularism, the weekly is forgetting once more what religious leaders of every faith unceasingly repeat to reject violence in the name of religion -- using God to justify hatred is a genuine blasphemy, as Pope Francis has said several times."
Posted by: Fred || 01/06/2016 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Pope Gramsci I is wrong about this.

Vast numbers of Muslim clerics and religious leaders are perfectly comfortable with directing their own to commit mass amounts of violence not in a fringe fashion but as a core tactic for the spread of Islam.
Posted by: no mo uro || 01/06/2016 5:04 Comments || Top||

#2  When Spanish Jesuits brought to the New World a Liberation Theology that had been rejected in Europe, their Marxist-tainted movement found particularly fertile ground in two places --Paraguay and Argentina. In time, even Paraguay rejected the movement while it lived on in Argentina. In the Southern Cone few trust an Argentinian and no one trusts an Argentine prelate. However, the Vatican seemed blissfully unaware of that situation.
Posted by: Gerthudion White4991 || 01/06/2016 8:01 Comments || Top||

#3  On the other hand, unlike with Muslims, the Vatican will not be dispatching a hit squad.

Charlie Hebdo is free to publish what they want. The Vatican is free to condemn what they want.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia || 01/06/2016 13:50 Comments || Top||


Science & Technology
Hackers cause electricity 'blackout' in Ukraine
More on this story from late yesterday afternoon.
In a worrying sign of potential cyber attacks to come, thousands of people in Ukraine were left without electricity after hackers hit electrical substations, it has been claimed.

The power outage in the country, first reported by local news sources on December 23, took a regional control center offline and has been blamed on malware.

It's believed the BlackEnergy Trojan -- which started out as a tool to create denial of service (DDoS) attacks in 2007 and has since been developed into sophisticated malware -- was used to cause the blackout.
More at the link. And other links on the same story:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/malware-found-inside-downed-ukrainian-power-plant-points-to-cyberattack
https://ics.sans.org/blog/2016/01/01/potential-sample-of-malware-from-the-ukrainian-cyber-attack-uncovered
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2016-01/05/cyberattack-power-electricity-ukraine
http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/01/first-known-hacker-caused-power-outage-signals-troubling-escalation/
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2440469/ukraine-investigating-suspected-russian-cyber-attack-on-power-grid
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 01/06/2016 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Russia flexing it's muscles?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/06/2016 10:58 Comments || Top||

#2  Judging from the logs on my web site, I'd say there are just as many hackers in Ukraine as there are in Russia. IMHO they deserve each other.
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 01/06/2016 12:28 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
Social Security: Surge of children named Mohammed up 10,000%
[Washington Examiner] The number of U.S. newborns named "Mohammed" has jumped 100-fold since 1964, one way of determining the growth of second and third generation Muslims, according to a leading immigration watchdog.

Based on Social Security Administration baby name figures, there were only 29 babies born with one of the spellings of Mohammed in 1964. That has surged to 2,931.

The Center for Immigration Studies used the statistics to determine the growth of the Muslim community, a statistic the federal government doesn't chart.

"Given the fact that some U.S.- or European-born Muslim terrorists (such as Syed Farook in San Bernardino) have been menacing Western societies, are there any statistics on the growth of the second-generation Muslim populations?" blogged CIS Fellow David North.

The growth in babies name Mohammed grew until the 9/11 attacks, when it fell. Wrote North, "Note the drop after 2001, presumably a reaction to the events of 9/11, and then the sharp increase from 2004 to 2014, of more than 1,000."
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/06/2016 09:24 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:


Government
Actual 'Veterans' hard to find in executive level VA jobs
[Daily Caller] Despite a long-running government-wide push to hire veterans, only 13 percent of the top officials managing Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare system medical facilities are veterans and only two of those facilities are run by doctors who served in the military, according to an analysis by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The DCNF analysis examined the biographies of the 300 top employees who run VA's 75 medical centers and regional offices, including directors, chiefs of staff and associate and assistant directors. (See interactive database below and here.) The original Veterans Preference Act in federal employment became law in 1944.

Viewing the 13 percent figure, it's almost as if the VA wants to ensure that, if veterans do work for the agency, they don't have the power to make changes.

Retired Navy Seal officer Gilberto Serrano, for example, told TheDCNF he applied for "at least 20" jobs at the VA. He has two master's degrees, a background in finance at major corporations, and spent three years volunteering doing financial analyses for the Puerto Rico VA.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/06/2016 05:52 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Why am I not surprised?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/06/2016 6:12 Comments || Top||

#2  I'll bet donating to Democrats gets you a sinecure more than any experience in either medical, business or defence does...
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 01/06/2016 7:16 Comments || Top||

#3  Jerry Pournelle's
Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 01/06/2016 8:08 Comments || Top||

#4  Also conflicts with 'diversity' directives from the Emperor. The disparate impact of sticking white males with defending the country for over two hundred years, reduces the opportunity of other groups.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 01/06/2016 11:37 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
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1al-Qaeda in Arabia
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has dominated Mexico for six years.
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Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
Steve White
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tu3031
badanov
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Bright Pebbles
trailing wife
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Two weeks of WOT
Wed 2016-01-06
  1 US soldier killed, 2 wounded in Taliban attack in Helmand
Tue 2016-01-05
  44 ISIS Bad Guys die in battles near Fallujah
Mon 2016-01-04
  38 die in Kurd, ISIS battles in Raqqa
Sun 2016-01-03
  Fierce Fighting Erupts Between Afghan Forces, Taliban In Marjah
Sat 2016-01-02
  Death sentences for nine 'hardcore terrorists' in Pakistan
Fri 2016-01-01
  New Year's Eve terror attack thwarted in NY
Thu 2015-12-31
  ISIS executes 40 civilians in Ramadi
Wed 2015-12-30
  Blue on Blue: 38 Bad Guys die in bombing attack in Nangarhar
Tue 2015-12-29
  North African al-Qaeda says top figure killed in ambush
Mon 2015-12-28
  Iraqi airstrike kills ISIS Top Dawgs
Sun 2015-12-27
  Syrian Rebels Mourn Loss of Leader, Name Replacement
Sat 2015-12-26
  One Killed as Bomb Blast Rocks Ahmadi Mosque in Bangladesh
Fri 2015-12-25
  30 ISIS Bad Guys die in Fallujah
Thu 2015-12-24
  ISIS troops forced out of Ramadi
Wed 2015-12-23
  Driver Shouting 'Allahu Akbar!' Runs Down 11 French Pedestrians

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