[Kansas City Star] The seizure of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon by armed anti-government extremists has attracted national attention and raised questions about whether the takeover is a powder keg about to blow.
But experts who monitor the anti-government movement say an even greater concern is lurking behind the confrontation that erupted Saturday at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in the high desert of eastern Oregon.
The militia movement, they say, is in the midst of a massive growth spurt at levels even greater than in the early 1990s after the Waco, Texas, standoff and the siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. It peaked after the Oklahoma City bombing.
"It's bigger than anything we've seen before," said Leonard Zeskind, president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights. "And it's not simply a resurgence of the '90s militia movement; it's different in many ways. Now it's much broader."
The growth of an "insurgent militia movement," Zeskind said, is the result of a combination of events, including a renewed effort to strengthen gun control laws and the revival of the white nationalist movement over the Confederate flag issue.
#1
Leonard Zeskindis an American human rights activist, and president of the Institute for Research & Education of Human Rights (IREHR).
He worked in industry for thirteen years. Since 1982, he has been a community activist and human rights advocate. He is known for his research into extreme right, racist, and anti-Semitic organizations in the United States.
He is a lifetime member of the NAACP, and has served on the board of directors of the Petra Foundation, and the Kansas City Jewish Community Relations Bureau. Wiki Link
#3
Hall makes some excellent points at #2. Unfortunately at this point, gov't overreach may be irreversible. The 'beltway party' has been in power far too long.
[Boston Herald] OSLO, Norway -- The latest on the stream of refugees and other migrants crossing Europe.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico says his government will not allow Muslims to create "a compact community," and says that integrating refugees is impossible.
Slovakia has a tiny Muslim community of several thousand. Fico's government filed a legal challenge last month to a mandatory plan by the European Union to distribute migrants among members of the bloc.
Fico said Thursday his government sees what he calls a "clear link" between the waves of refugees and the Paris attacks and the sexual assaults and robberies during the New Year's Eve festivities in Germany. He says: "We don't want what happened in Germany to happen here."
Fico says "the idea of multicultural Europe has failed" and that "the migrants cannot be integrated, it's simply impossible."
#1
Muslims are an immigrant community that defines the assimilation of a member of their community into the host country's culture as a death penalty offense.
Even if individuals among the immigrants wish to assimilate they don't have a path to assimilation.
Accepting immigrants who hate the host country and see themselves as conquerors is a recipe for internal war.
That is the reason for Islam's bloody, bloody borders.
[War on the Rocks] According to a recent poll, Americans are more pessimistic about terrorism than at any time since 9/11. The CNN/ORC survey (full results in .pdf format) asked, "Who do you think is currently winning the war on terrorism -- the U.S. and its allies, neither side, or the terrorists?" Forty percent of respondents said that the terrorists were winning, while a mere 18 percent believed that the United States and its allies were winning. After the killing of Osama Bin Laden in May 2011, just 9 percent believed the terrorists had the upper hand.
This recent poll, conducted in mid-December after the San Bernardino attacks, is hardly a fluke. Others have found U.S. fears of terrorism to be at or near all-time highs. "Although other issues -- particularly economic ones -- often crowded out terrorism as a topic of daily concern," explain my Cato colleague John Mueller and co-author Mark Stewart, "terrorism has won an apparently permanent space in the American mind."
The fact that Americans remain fearful of terrorism is surprising in several respects. Judged in purely probabilistic terms, terrorism poses a far less significant threat to human life than a host of hazards, from lightning strikes, to collisions with animals, to falling household furniture. "An American's chance of being killed by a terrorist," note Mueller and Stewart, "has been, and remains, one in four million per year with 9/11 included in the calculation, or one in 110 million for the period since 2001." More Americans have been killed by weather incidents in the last two weeks than have been killed by attacks by Islamist extremists on U.S. soil in the last 14 years.
#1
Something, something, about expectations of a competent government providing security. Maybe what they're saying is that while they understand no one can do anything short of early warning on weather, terrorists are something competent government should effectively deal with. Just maybe they're saying that they don't believe the 'people in charge' are doing their job and exposing everyone to unnecessary threats to life and liberty while they, the 'people in charge' virtue signal how marvelous they are for not doing those things that actually enhance security.
[DAWN] THE condemnation by the All Parties Hurriyat Conference of the Pathankot air force base attack is a welcome addition to the chorus of criticism that all right-thinking and sensible people in India, Pakistain and the disputed Kashmire region have added their voice too. Dialogue alone can resolve the Kashmire dispute and the other outstanding issues between India and Pakistain. That is a reality that the krazed killer groups are in denial of. So for peaceful means to prevail over militancy, it is important that all political forces come together to marginalise those seeking to change reality through violence. The Pathankot attack could have been a disaster, but the fallout has been manageable so far precisely because the politicianship in the region has not given in to fear. The Indian government could have tried to deflect serious domestic criticism of its response to the attack by trying to shift the blame on Pakistain. It has not. Similarly, Pakistain could have bristled at the clearly unsubstantiated allegations that were bandied about in India in the early stages of the attack; instead, at the highest levels, cooperation has been pledged.
The Hurriyat's condemnation could be seen as a response to the claim by the United Jihad Council that some of its members carried out the Pathankot attack. In the complex world of intra-Kashmire politics, the fortunes of both the Hurriyat and the krazed killer groups have waxed and waned over the years. For a while, it appeared that the APHC may be in terminal decline: divided by internal rivalries and lacking charismatic leaders who could energise and mobilise the Kashmiri people. But for all its internal problems, the APHC's insistence that dialogue, especially between India and Pakistain, is the only way to find a solution to Kashmire has helped it retain its relevance, and even influence. With dialogue taking centre stage once again -- something the Pathankot attack presumably intended to change -- the Hurriyat is rightly trying to enhance the space for all pro-dialogue forces. The days of militancy in Kashmire must end -- and soon.
Yet, it is India too that must consider whether its policies in Kashmire are creating more room for groups with a violent agenda -- and thereby reducing the space for elements favouring dialogue. The unrest in India-held Kashmire is not a figment of the Pak imagination nor is it a fiction created in Kashmire to justify violent agendas. In fact, the repressive military presence in India-held Kashmire and the policies of the centre that accentuate communal tensions there have created dangerous tensions that are never far from the surface. The APHC itself has been treated by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as an enemy, even though Mr Modi's partner in Srinagar, the now-deceased Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, was in favour of giving the APHC more space. When pro-dialogue forces are treated as the enemy, it is usually krazed killer forces that benefit.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/08/2016 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
Where is that tiny violin? it's around here somewhere...
A sheriff says a "woman with means" whose fugitive teenage son used an "affluenza" defense to avoid prison after killing four people in a drunken-driving wreck has complained about the conditions in her Texas jail cell.
Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson said at a news conference Friday that he responded to Tonya Couch's complaints by saying it "is a jail, not a resort."
Couch made an initial appearance at court Friday on a charge of hindering the apprehension of a felon.
Authorities believe Couch and her 18-year-old son, Ethan Couch, fled Texas in November as prosecutors investigated whether the teenager had violated his probation.
The mother and son were arrested in the Mexican resort city of Puerto Vallarta late last month.
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.
[Boston Herald] OSLO, Norway -- The latest on the stream of refugees and other migrants crossing Europe. 
