[Wash Times] WOFFORD HEIGHTS, Calif. -- Angel Gilberto Garcia-Avalos had been deported five times in just the past four years, yet each time he has managed to sneak from Mexico back into the U.S., where he ended up in more mischief: driving without a license, attempted burglary and felony weapons charges.
In August, he graduated to full-fledged mayhem, sparking a fire in the Sequoia National Forest that has already cost the government $61 million and left some of the country's most beautiful landscape scarred for years to come.
Garcia, who pleaded guilty last month and faces 13 months in prison, had only recently been released from the Kern County Jail. He likely would have been deported again, but local authorities were unable to report him to immigration authorities because of California's new sanctuary city law, which prohibited the sheriff from communicating with federal agents.
Federal agents now say they will kick Garcia out of the country once he serves his latest sentence, but the damage has already been done.
At a point along State Highway 155 through the Sequoia National Forest, the smell of cedar gives way to the stench of soot. Ash-blackened trees above and below the roadway show the path of the blaze.
Investigators determined that the spark came from a Nissan Maxima that Garcia was driving over a rough dirt trail near Cedar Creek. Garcia tried to drive over a berm and hit a tree. The hot muffler on his car ignited grass parched by...
Con't.
#1
At this point, let him work off his debt to society replanting the forest. When the last tree and understory plant is clearly thriving, drop him off in Mexico City with just the clothes on his back.
[NewsCut] Bob Hoover, a World War II fighter pilot, a former Air Force test pilot, and the chase plane pilot for Chuck Yeager when he broke the sound barrier for the first time, was 94.
A lot of the greatest pilots who ever lived will tell you that Hoover was the greatest pilot who ever lived.
Having been shot down over Nice, France during his 59th mission in World War II, Hoover spent 16 months as a POW, spending much of the time in solitary confinement as punishment for two dozen escape attempts. Finally, he succeeded just before the end of the war by stealing a German fighter.
Had he remained at the POW camp a few days longer, the Allies likely would have reached him. But now he faced possible extinction at the hands of any friendly pilot who would presume his Focke Wulf was manned by the enemy.
Hoover said he hugged a cloud ceiling at about 4,000 feet, figuring he would duck up into it if he was spotted by any Allied aircraft. He planned on flying west until he saw signs of Allied territory. "I wanted to see windmills to be sure," he explained. That would signal friendly Holland.
By the time he reached Holland, Hoover said, "My gas tank was registering close to zero." He chose to land while he still had full control of the fighter, and selected an open field. Hoover dropped the fighter’s landing gear and settled in. Con't.
[NY Post] A former Secret Service officer who published an explosive tell-all from his days guarding the Bill and Hillary Clinton White House is planning to file a defamation lawsuit against his detractors, The Post has learned.
A lawyer for Gary Byrne, whose book "Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate," has sent notices to Media Matters for America and David Brock informing them that he intends to file suit.
"Officer Byrne will bring legal action against you, in your personal capacity, and against Media Matters," a lawyer for the former Secret Service officer wrote to Brock, a loyal Clinton ally and the founder of the liberal advocacy group Media Matters.
The letter requests Brock and Media Matters to "hold" all records and communications associated with their communications regarding Byrne -- including "Any communication(s) between David Brock and The Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton" regarding the former Secret Service officer, suggesting there might be collusion between the campaign and her defenders.
#3
The honourable is a courtesy descriptor for anyone who has achieved eminence in American politics, JohnQC. The fact that it is usually appended with high sarcasm is immaterial.
[Iran Press TV] Tens of thousands of pro and anti-government protesters have gathered on the streets of Venezuela's capital Caracas.
During Wednesday’s mass rallies, in which over 20 people were maimed and 39 were detained, the opponents accused President Nicolas Maduro of violating the constitutional order and blocking a recall referendum aimed at removing him from power.
They also called for his immediate resignation.
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10/27/2016 00:00 ||
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Oil prices fell more than 1 percent on Tuesday, with US crude breaking below $50 per barrel for a second straight day ahead of weekly data that could show a build in domestic inventories, Reuters reported.
Producers' verbal jockeying about the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries' (OPEC) planned output cut weighed further on the market, analysts said, noting Iraq's resistance to the plan and its rising output for October.
Brent crude futures fell 64 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $50.82 a barrel by 12:52 p.m. EDT (1652 GMT). US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures fell 60 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $49.92.
Trade group American Petroleum Institute will issue at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT) a weekly report of crude stockpiles and other oil supply-demand data, ahead of an official report by the U.S. government's Energy Information Administration on Wednesday. Analysts polled by Reuters expected the data would show crude stocks rose 800,000 barrels last week, after a drop of more than 5 million barrels in the week to Oct. 14.
"The sentiment is it's a bit more negative," said Scott Shelton, energy futures broker with ICAP in Durham, North Carolina. "There are some expectations that we can see a crude build."
A rallying dollar, which makes greenback-denominated crude less affordable to holders other currencies weighed further on oil, as did falling Wall Street share prices.
The market is also "a bit rubbery in the knees" due to uncertainty around OPEC's planned production cut, said Donald Morton, who runs an energy-trading desk at Herbert J. Sims & Co in Fairfield, Connecticut.
Before this week, prices rose about 13 percent over a three-week span after OPEC announced on Sept 27 its first planned output cut in eight years to combat the steep slump in crude prices, which are far below 2014 highs above $100 a barrel.
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Russia on Oct. 26 withdrew its request to refuel a fleet of Russian warships in Spain, amid pressure from NATO, which raised concerns that the ships could be used to ramp up air attacks in Syria. Vasily Nioradze, a spokesman at the Russian Embassy in Madrid, said Oct. 26 that the request has been canceled, but he gave no details.
The Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and support vessels have streamed through the North Sea and English Channel in recent days heading to the Mediterranean Sea. Russia announced earlier this month that the Admiral Kuznetsov, part of its Northern Fleet, would be sent to the eastern Mediterranean to boost its naval forces in the area.
Judging from the photo, the 2010 upgrade to the carrier allows it to burn wood and peat...
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking at a meeting of alliance defense ministers in Brussels on Oct. 26, said the deployment raises concerns that air assaults could increase in Syria, notably in the besieged city of Aleppo.
“It’s a decision which has been taken by individual allies whether they provide fueling and supplies to Russian ships,” AFP quoted Stoltenberg as saying in Brussels.
“But this time I have conveyed a very clear message that we are concerned about the potential of this carrier group to increase attacks in Aleppo,” he added. “All allies are aware of our concerns; they share our concerns about Russian airstrikes against Aleppo.”
Britain also weighed in, with U.K. Defense Secretary Michael Fallon saying on Oct. 26 that “we would be extremely concerned if a NATO member should consider assisting a Russian carrier group that might end up bombing Syria.”
The Spanish Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Russian Navy ships had been stopping in Spanish ports for years and that requests “are approved case by case, depending on the characteristics of the vessel.”
Spain, a NATO member, regularly allows Russian war ships to stop in Ceuta, which faces the British territory of Gibraltar on Spain’s southern tip. While Ceuta is part of the EU, its NATO status is unclear. At least 57 Russian navy ships have stopped in Ceuta between 2011 – when Moscow started to regularly use the port facilities there – and August 2015, according to the conservative U.S. think tank Heritage Foundation.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/27/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
Plume does look like something out of WWI.
OK, question: would Russia have sailed without an agreement to refuel in Ceuta? That is, did somebody reneg on an agreement, or is this a puppet show?
[IsraelTimes] Soviet records show a number of agents in high Israeli places, including politicians, military engineers and a senior general.
KGB files reportedly revealed the existence of an extensive Soviet spy ring in Israel, encompassing Knesset members, senior IDF officers, engineers, members of the Israeli intelligence community, and others who worked on classified projects.
Top-secret KGB documents reported on by the Hebrew-language daily Yedioth Ahronoth Wednesday detailed the extent of the network of agents run by the Soviet secret service.
The documents were copied over a period of 20 years by Vasili Mitrokhin, a senior KGB archivist who defected to the UK in 1992. His edited notes on various KGB operations were released in 2014 and are stored in Churchill College in Cambridge; his handwritten notes remain classified by MI5.
The archivist’s notes on the KGB comprised some of the most complete information available on Soviet intelligence operations. A team from Yedioth was given access to the documents relating to the KGB’s work in Israel and discovered the extent of the agency’s network in the Jewish state.
One of the Soviets’ prime goals was to penetrate the Israeli political system. In the 1950s the KGB targeted the left-wing Mapam party and according to the records recruited at least three MKs. One of those is referred to by the KGB code name "Grant," and the archive claims that he lived "in Kibutz Shoval, near Beersheba."
Mitrokhin wrote that the agent was MK Elazar Granot, who went on to serve as the head of the party and was a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the 1980s. Granot was said to have been recruited before 1967’s Six Day War by KGB agent Yuri Kotov, but the connection between them ended when the Russians closed their embassy in 1967.
Granot’s son Dan told Yedioth that he remembered Kotov’s nighttime visits from his childhood. The Soviet agent would arrive in a diplomatic car "bringing excellent vodka with him and great Hungarian sausages."
Still, Dan Granot said that his father "had no access to classified information, so that even if he would have wanted to, he didn’t have the option of being a spy."
Another agent revealed by Mitrokhin documents was code-named "Boker" and was a senior engineer in a top-secret national project. A third was "Jimmy," who had access to classified information about the Israeli aerospace industry, and was involved in building the ill-fated Lavi aircraft. Another soviet spy was part of the team behind Israel’s Merkava tank.
But the Russians’ greatest recruitment was an IDF general. In 1993, when the archive came to London, MI6 passed the name of the general and relevant information to Israel’s Shin Bet security service. A veteran of the intelligence service told Yedioth that the Shin Bet did not reveal the name "but I understood from them that it was a huge shock to receive this information from the British. Given the state of health of the general and, in my opinion, also because of the embarrassment it would cause to the IDF and the State of Israel, it was decided not to act against him or bring him to trial."
"To the best of my knowledge he passed away shortly afterward," he added.
Yet despite all those Israeli spies, the Soviets' pet Arab countries still could not defeat Israel in either wars or peace... and these revelations ought to further reduce the stature of the Israeli Left.
Yedioth said it would release more details in its Friday issue.
These documents led to an earthquake in intelligence agencies all over the world: Spies were exposed and captured in the UK, La Belle La Belle France, Germany, the US and elsewhere, while Russian intelligence suffered the greatest blow in its history. Some 1,000 Russian agents are estimated to have been exposed by these documents thus far. In the days before Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks, Mitrokhin's leak was considered one of the biggest of its kind in the history of intelligence agencies the world over.
#1
"bringing excellent vodka with him and great Hungarian sausages."
'Vodka and sausages' are so... yesterday, so minor league. Top Secret emails over unclassified homebrew computer servers, tawdry sexual exploits, and huge sums of foreign money, now were talking major league.
#3
The two books written by he official historian of the MI5 Christopher Andrew around the year 2000 would explain the background of this story. I didn't see any paper headlines then.
h/t Instapundit
On paper, the Air Force plans to start mothballing the A-10 in 2018, with the last Warthogs sent to the boneyard by 2021. But last month Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James said that the retirement of the A-10 would likely have to be delayed further as the military continues to rely on the low-and-slow attack plane for close-air support (CAS) missions flown against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria. Even more telling, the Air Force Material Command (AFMC) is bringing the depot line for A-10 maintenance and repair back up to full capacity, according to Aviation Week.
#1
Can someone comment on the OV-10 Bronco experiment apparently going on in Iraq currently? Not a replacement for the A-10, but another, relatively cheap ( Always wondered about the A-1 Skyraider as a great plane for CAS missions in a insurgency conflict) way to use airpower without breaking freakingly overpriced Air Supremacy Fighters.
[Army Times] The Army just bought a new sniper rifle.
The Army wanted to acquire a shorter, lighter, more accurate, more ergonomic and more reliable gun for marksmen, according to Program Executive Office Soldier's product portfolio. The new Compact Semi-Automatic Sniper System should be easier to carry and use in close quarters than the M110 without sacrificing performance or accuracy, PEO said.
The FedBizOpps.gov award notice said H&K will produce a maximum of 3,643 rifles over 24 months, as well as spare parts and depot support, at a max contract value of $44.5 million. There's a minimum purchase of 30 rifles for quality assurance testing.
The Army did not immediately respond to requests for comment, nor did Heckler & Koch. It is unclear from the FedBizOpps posting which model rifle won the contract, and whether it's a commercially available gun, modification of one, or a new weapon.
The gunmaker's website lists two precision rifles, one of which fits the Army's desire for a rifle smaller than the M110: the G28. The gas-operated rifle fires the same 7.62mm ammunition (NATO standard) as the M110. Heckler & Koch lists a minimum length of 96.5 cm (about 38 inches) and weight of 5.8 kg (12.7 lbs). That makes it nearly 6 cm (2.5 inches) shorter and 1.3 kg (3 lbs) lighter than the M110 (unloaded and without a suppressor).
She's a good cat, farm stock, just won't finish the hunt and the critters figure it out fairly quickly. Now that being said, we had a turtle race entry escape its pen, got into some tall grass. Sat on the porch and watched the cat hunt down this turtle - dang turtle even placed.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Wednesday he wanted U.S. troops out of his country, perhaps in the next two years, underlining his intention to press ahead with a major realignment of his country’s foreign and security policies.
He said this while in Beijing.
It is not the first time Duterte has made this kind of threat, but his two-year timetable for a U.S. military exit appeared designed to reinforce his break-the-mold message to Washington and neighbors in Asia, particularly powerhouse China.
So far, however, his administration has failed to follow through on previous pledges to remove a small contingent of U.S. counterterrorism troops from the southern island of Mindanao or to notify Washington of an end to military exercises.
The United States “has received no formal communication from the government of the Philippines expressing a desire to make specific changes to our relationship or alliance,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday at a news briefing in Washington. “The United States remains committed to our pursuit of shared objectives” in keeping with the “seven-decade alliance between our two countries,” he said.
Earnest said Duterte’s comments appear to be “rhetoric at this point,” although they do “contribute to some uncertainty.” He said there were no plans yet for President Obama to meet with Duterte at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Peru next month, but he did not rule it out.
Rhetoric or not, we need to wait the guy out. We wouldn't want the Chinese to have basing rights in the Philippines.
The Philippines is one of the oldest U.S. allies in Asia and hosted permanent U.S. military bases until they were evicted in 1992. It is also an important Pentagon counterweight to China, whose expansion plans into the South China Sea have dismayed the Philippines and other nations.
“I want to be friends to China,” Duterte told an audience of business representatives in Tokyo, the Associated Press reported. “I do not need the arms. I do not want missiles established in my country. I do not need to have the airports to host the bombers.”
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/27/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
We wouldn't want the Chinese to have basing rights in the Philippines.
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.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[NY Post] A former Secret Service officer who published an explosive tell-all from his days guarding the Bill and Hillary Clinton White House is planning to file a defamation lawsuit against his detractors, The Post has learned.
Oil prices fell more than 1 percent on Tuesday, with US crude breaking below $50 per barrel for a second straight day ahead of weekly data that could show a build in domestic inventories, Reuters reported.
Russia on Oct. 26 withdrew its request to refuel a fleet of Russian warships in Spain, amid pressure from NATO, which raised concerns that the ships could be used to ramp up air attacks in Syria. Vasily Nioradze, a spokesman at the Russian Embassy in Madrid, said Oct. 26 that the request has been canceled, but he gave no details.
[IsraelTimes] Soviet records show a number of agents in high Israeli places, including 
