And I thought pigs could not fly...
[Boston Globe] WASHINGTON ‐ There’s a ghost haunting Elizabeth Warren as she ramps up for a possible 2020 presidential bid and a reelection campaign in Massachusetts this year: her enduring and undocumented claims of Native American ancestry.
Warren says now, as she has from the first days of her public life, that she based her assertions on family lore, on her reasonable trust in what she was told about her ancestry as a child.
"I know who I am," she said in a recent interview with the Globe.
But that self-awareness may not be enough, as her political ambitions blossom. She’s taken flak from the right for years as a "fake Indian," including taunts from President Trump, who derisively calls her "Pocahontas.’’ That clamor from the right will only grow with her increasing prominence.
#4
Just working to 'defuse' the situation for her. They know this will be a big mark against her so they are trying to clean-air it early so when the election come around it'll be 'old news... move along...'.
[American Thinker] Now that the government is shut down, a whole 17% of it, the liberal media are in a panic. Over at Mother Jones they compiled a list of some of the things we are missing out on. Here's a partial list:
1. Head Start. Now "disadvantaged" parents will have to read to their kids like everyone else. But since we know that black dads are better than white dads at raising kids, there shouldn't be any problems.
2. Civil suits. The government will stop launching civil lawsuits. Good.
3. Phony flu vaccine. The CDC will stop pushing its phony flu vaccine.
4. Bathrooms at national parks. People will have to find another place to go to the bathroom in an environment target-rich with bushes.
5. Businesses trying to import cheap labor with work visas. They will have no choice but to hire Americans.
6. People who want flood insurance. People will have to bear the risks of buying a home next to raging rivers for a few days. Or maybe not buy homes there at all. Would that be such a terrible thing?
7. Economic reports. Somehow, we will have to do without government economic reports for a few days. Can we really manage?
8. No mine inspections. I expect that most mines will collapse without government inspections.
9. No refugee admissions. For this reason alone, the government should stay closed.
10. No Smithsonian. Let them charge admission and support themselves. That's how museums in the real world work.
11. Fewer tourists from the Third World. Tourists from third-world countries (who often overstay their visas) may have trouble getting into the country.
I find this list curious for what it didn't mention:
1. NASA. I suspect that even after a lengthy shutdown, all the planets and stars will be exactly where they were before it all started. What's the hurry?
2. The EPA. The EPA will be unable to harass law-abiding businesses for a few days.
3. The Department of Transportation. Payments for pork projects will be held up.
4. The National Endowment for the Arts. Artists will have to pay the cost of painting with their own excrement for a while.
5. The U.S. Institute of Peace. We'll have to cope with whatever wars break out while the USIP is out of action.
6. The State Department. Hopefully everyone will be sent home, forever. Once they've finished processing all those FOIA requests, that is.
7. The Department of Agriculture. Is it possible for farms to produce food without the DOA's help?
8. The Department of Commerce. Big businesses, which get export subsidies, will have to wait a little longer for its welfare checks.
9. The Department of Labor. Doesn't do a day's worth of work. Will not be missed.
10. The Small Business Administration. Small businesses will have to get loans in the private sector from organizations I think are called banks.
Lastly, I suspect that the DACA program, which President Trump eagerly restarted, will be closed during the shutdown. That's reason enough to keep the government shut down until ICE (which is not shut down) can round them all up.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/20/2018 9:10
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#3
The President and Chucky met at the Whitehouse over "cheeseburgers" to avert the shut down. I can't see a limousine liberal eating cheese burgers.
Posted by: Bill Cleretle2363 ||
01/20/2018 10:02
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#4
Re: Dept of Agriculture - not so much growing, most of it's money is spent on the Food Stamp Program - otherwise known as a subsidy for grocery stores.
#5
The President and Chucky met at the Whitehouse over "cheeseburgers" to avert the shut down. I can't see a limousine liberal eating cheese burgers.
Exactly - if you look at any Dem. photo op / campaign event over the past ten years, very, very few of them will touch 'fast food' or anything they think resembles it. Obama might have quaffed dog legs a hamburger or two, but that's it.
"Damn your dollars!" Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas railed at the United States and President Trump during his recent maniacal tirade.
Well, OK: On Tuesday, Team Trump took him at his word, cutting $65 million of the $125 million Washington sends to the UN outfit that handles Palestinian aid, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
Hey, Trump had warned Abbas long ago that PA funding was at risk if its leaders refused to engage in peace talks with Israel. We quit subsidizing obstructive failure
And Abbas' 2 ½-hour rant in Ramallah pretty conclusively showed that he's not remotely ready to do that.
First, he again specifically rejected any thought of playing along with the latest US effort to restart negotiations: "We told Trump we will not accept his project, the 'deal of the century', which has become the 'slap of the century'" - referring to US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
More, he denied the Jewish state's legitimacy, claiming, "Israel is a colonialist project that has nothing to do with Jews." How can Israel bargain with a guy who insists the Jews have no links at all to the Holy Land?
And he continues to defend PA payouts to terrorists ("heroic brothers") and their survivors, which leaves him in line for even more cuts in US aid. The House of Representatives last month passed the Taylor Force Act to further reduce PA funding if those payouts don't stop; Abbas' ravings only make it more likely that the Senate will go along.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summed it up nicely: Abbas "has torn off the mask and shown to the public the simple truth: . . . The root of the conflict between us and the Palestinians is their steadfast refusal to recognize the Jewish state in any borders whatsoever."
Plainly, lasting peace is off the table until Abbas makes way for a rational leader. The only real question is how much more damage he'll do before he goes. A rational leader coudn't get elected to lead an irrational people
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/20/2018
08:17 ||
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#1
Why the PA gets one thin dime in the first place is baffling. Isn't it amazing when the US President (and even with fair warning) does something that is as common-sensical as it gets?
But someone remind me--why had we continued to support the PA but were also quick to pass the (some would say, dubious) Magintsky Act? (To cover for US attempts to manipulate Russian politics?)
[American Thinker] Al Jazeera, my #1 information source for unbiased and accurate news (just kidding), nonetheless had an interesting story about black people who left America and moved to Africa because of...you guessed it: racism!
They have come from the big cities of San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. Thousands of them. And many refuse to return.
A new wave of African[-]Americans is escaping the incessant racism and prejudice in the United States. From Senegal and Ghana to [t]he Gambia, communities are emerging in defiance of conventional wisdom that Africa is a continent everyone is trying to leave.
I think it's great that black Americans are leaving s-holes like San Francisco and New York to go to places like the Gambia (and maybe "the Uganda" and "the Chad," too ‐ who knows?)
It is estimated that between 3,000 and 5,000 African[-]Americans live in Accra, the Ghanaian capital. They are teachers in small towns in the west or entrepreneurs in the capital and say they that even though living in Ghana is not always easy, they feel free and safe.
Very safe! So safe, in fact, that when the U.S. embassy in Accra issued a warning about crime a few months ago, it probably was just kidding.
Muhammida el-Muhajir moved from America to Accra because she believes that blacks in America are treated as second-class citizens.
You hear stories about the richest black people, like Oprah Winfrey, getting shut out of a store or Jay-Z not being allowed to buy [an apartment]. Those things happen.
Muhammida says locals are "confused" as to why an American would want to move to Ghana. Muhammida produced a documentary about "Blaxit," or a black exit from the United States.
She admits that there are some challenges to living in Ghana.
#1
Why is it that there is a butthurt response to this story? Instead of "bye-bye assholes" it's "your premise is invalid, nobody would ever leave America!"
#2
The response is probably because the original report is propaganda. 1000 something folks moving to Africa is not a movement but a trickle, a trickle compared to the flow in the other direction a trickle that is keeping their US citizenship so as to be able to return when they get tired.
The original article wasn't designed to encourage emigration but to bash the US.
#3
Back in the 60's a number of American blacks tried moving to Africa. It didn't usually work: they weren't welcomed as "black brothers" but held at a distance as members of a different tribe. And Americans of any color are money trees.
Posted by: james ||
01/20/2018 22:21
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[American Thinker] One reason for reading the output of left wing entities is that many are very well funded and thus have the ability to cover subjects that the media doesn’t have the resources to inquire into. Thus you get to read about plenty of developments that you wouldn’t otherwise be aware of. They also tell us of what they are afraid of and the things they fear might happen that will affect the credibility of the narrative. Hey yo, did I say something wrong? Is it the red tie ?
Thus Foreign Policy, a magazine in the stable of the Washington Post, just published an article complaining about how mean the Zimbabwe government is to the American ambassador, who is black. From that article:
The pro-government Sunday Mail called him an "Uncle Tom" and a "house nigger dressed in a fine suit" ‐ and that was just in his first week on the job; and:
When the U.S. Embassy here put out a statement in February denouncing the "continuing deterioration of the human rights situation in Zimbabwe," then-President Robert Mugabe’s spokesman responded by suggesting that American critics of the Zimbabwean government, including U.S. Ambassador Harry K. Thomas Jr., should "go and hang on a banana tree."
It seems that the Zimbabwean government isn’t taking the United States very seriously. The comedy gold is further down in the article when it mentions that "the United States now feeds roughly a quarter of Zimbabweans with "emergency food aid". What that looks like is shown in the this graph:
Zimbabwe’s ills are all self-inflicted, as are Venezuela’s (and most other places). They could feed themselves from their own efforts if they wanted to. But why bother if the United States is sending them all that free wheat? All the while they abuse the American ambassador with racial epithets “that the Ku Klux Klan doesn’t even use anymore.”
"Self-inflicted"...? New-think rubbish! All a very well planned and executed 1970's vintage hand-off of governance by the west. And the update? Fish Eagles home to roost, so to speak.
By the way, do African nations make a point of sending caucasian ambassadors to the United States? Just asking.
[Reuters] - James Comey, the former Federal Bureau of Investigation director who was fired last year by U.S. President Donald Trump, will teach a course on ethical leadership at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, the school said on Friday.
Comey has been by turns castigated and lionized by both Democrats and Republicans for overseeing high-stakes FBI investigations that overshadowed the election campaigns of Trump and his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, in 2016.
"Ethical leaders lead by seeing above the short term, above the urgent or the partisan, and with a higher loyalty to lasting values, most importantly the truth," Comey said in a statement released by the college, the country's second oldest.
Comey graduated from William & Mary in 1984 with a double major in chemistry and religion, and will teach for a full academic year beginning this fall.
The school's president, Taylor Reveley, praised his "abiding commitment to ethical behavior" in a statement.
Trump fired him last May, citing a memorandum by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that criticized Comey for his handling of the criminal investigation into Clinton's use of an unauthorized private email server while U.S. secretary of state.
At the time, Comey was also overseeing a counterintelligence investigation into possible Russian government efforts to influence the U.S. election and whether Russian officials had inappropriate contacts with Trump campaign officials.
Trump has also been highly critical of that investigation, calling it a "witch hunt" against him. Comey has pointed to such comments as the real reason he was fired.
Comey's firing forced Rosenstein to appoint Robert Mueller, another former FBI director, as special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation, which is ongoing. Mueller has since charged four people who worked for Trump's campaign or in his White House for lying to the FBI and money laundering.
Clinton has said she partly blames Comey for her loss to Trump in the 2016 election.
Comey oversaw the investigation into the mishandling of classified government secrets by her and her staff on the email server kept in her New York home.
In July 2016, four months before the presidential election, Comey made a public announcement closing the investigation, in breach of usual FBI practices, a step he said was necessary to maintain public faith in the investigation's integrity.
He said Clinton and her staff were "extremely careless" in handling classified information and that there was evidence they may have unknowingly broken laws, but recommended against prosecution.
#1
....will teach a course on ethical leadership at the College of William & Mary
With quarters on 'the farm' no doubt. He'll be well protected and kept away from the press by his handlers. He'll nearly be able to walk to work. What's not to like ?
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/20/2018 12:56
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#8
People will never see the memo, Frank. After all, it's classified, right? And classified information must be protected at all costs. Especially if it makes Democrats and RINOs look bad.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/20/2018 13:10
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Next: Overnight shipping.
When people in central Oregon's Madras, Culver and Metolius turn on their taps, untreated spring water flows forth. It costs them less than a penny per gallon.
A company in California buys that same water and sells it in big glass jugs for up to $8.60 a gallon around Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The jugs are flying off the shelves.
"The water's been doing really well," said Edwin Diaz, manager of Erewhon Market in Calabasas, a small city northwest of Malibu. "It's kind of a specialty item."
Fans are quenching their thirst for "raw water" ‐ water with no chemicals or other treatment that passes federal regulations because it's clean at the source.
"It's a no-brainer," said Lee Sayer, a musician in San Francisco and anti-fluoride activist who has been drinking raw water for months. "You have water that's processed through the earth through natural processes ‐ it's cleaned. And being that water has memory, it has a memory of tumbling through the rocks. It has micronutrients and I believe it's alive."
But don't look for raw water in Oregon stores. Way more ad nauseum at link.
#4
They are as concerned about the chlorine and fluoride as they are about the tasty bugs. And distillation is too complicated for them to understand. But point taken, g.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/20/2018 4:27
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#5
Yet people who drink well water generally have fewer diseases than those who live on city water; the presence of some microbes grants some immunities... works until you have a major bad bug like diphtheria.. Like that German fella said "That which does not kill us makes us stronger."
#6
"It's a no-brainer," said Lee Sayer, a musician in San Francisco and anti-fluoride activist who has been drinking raw water for months. "You have water that's processed through the earth through natural processes ‐ it's cleaned. And being that water has memory, it has a memory of tumbling through the rocks. It has micronutrients and I believe it's alive."
The first bolded statement was spot-on, for reasons unclear to the "musician"
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/20/2018 6:50
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#7
#5 cont'd - that being said, paying $8+ a gallon, even for "free-range, artisanal water" is just plain stupid...
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/20/2018 10:41
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#12
#5 Yet people who drink well water generally have fewer diseases than those who live on city water;
Correlation does not imply causation. It takes a critical number of people, about 40,000 living together, for a disease to become a constant presence. Anti-Vaxxer's drinking untreated water are throwbacks to the Dark Ages.
What's the difference between the NSA and daycare?
Daycare has adult supervision.
The agency tells a federal judge that it is investigating and 'sincerely regrets its failure.' I'm sure the janitor's head will roll for this.
The National Security Agency destroyed surveillance data it pledged to preserve in connection with pending lawsuits and apparently never took some of the steps it told a federal court it had taken to make sure the information wasn’t destroyed, according to recent court filings. I'd get rid of the entire chain from the folks who made that promise to those who should have overseen it and implemented it. They couldn't get a job as a mall cop after that.
Word of the NSA’s foul-up is emerging just as Congress has extended for six years the legal authority the agency uses for much of its surveillance work conducted through U.S. internet providers and tech firms. President Donald Trump signed that measure into law Friday.
Since 2007, the NSA has been under court orders to preserve data about certain of its surveillance efforts that came under legal attack following disclosures that President George W. Bush ordered warrantless wiretapping of international communications after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. In addition, the agency has made a series of representations in court over the years about how it is complying with its duties.
However, the NSA told U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White in a filing on Thursday night and another little-noticed submission last year that the agency did not preserve the content of internet communications intercepted between 2001 and 2007 under the program Bush ordered. To make matters worse, backup tapes that might have mitigated the failure were erased in 2009, 2011 and 2016, the NSA said.
"The NSA sincerely regrets its failure to prevent the deletion of this data," NSA’s deputy director of capabilities, identified publicly as "Elizabeth B.," wrote in a declaration filed in October. "NSA senior management is fully aware of this failure, and the Agency is committed to taking swift action to respond to the loss of this data."
In the update Thursday, another NSA official said the data were deleted during a broad, housecleaning effort aimed at making space for incoming information.
"The NSA’s review to date reveals that this [Presidential Surveillance Program] Internet content data was not specifically targeted for deletion," wrote the official, identified as "Dr. Mark O," "but rather the PSP Internet content data matched criteria that were broadly used to delete data of a certain type ... in response to mission requirements to free-up space and improve performance of the [redacted] back-up system. The NSA is still investigating how these deletions came about given the preservation obligations extant at the time. The NSA, however, has no reason to believe at this time that PSP Internet content data was specifically targeted for deletion."
An NSA spokesman declined to comment on Friday.
Defiance of a court order can result in civil or criminal contempt charges, as well as sanctions against the party responsible. So far, no one involved appears to have asked White to impose any punishment or sanction on the NSA over the newly disclosed episodes, although the details of what happened are still emerging.
"It’s really disappointing," said David Greene, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has been leading the prolonged litigation over the program in federal court in San Francisco. "The obligation’s been in place for a really long time now. ... We had a major dust-up about it just a few years ago. This is definitely something that should’ve been found sooner."
The last legal showdown over the issue may have actually compounded the NSA’s problems. In May 2014, an NSA official known as "Miriam P." assured the court that the data were safe.
The NSA is "preserving magnetic/digital tapes of the Internet content intercepted under the [PSP] since the inception of the program," she wrote, adding that "the NSA has stored these tapes in the offices of its General Counsel."
The agency now says, "regrettably," that the statement "may have been only partially accurate when made."
The latest NSA filing says the ongoing investigation indicates that officials did a "physical inspection" in 2014 to confirm the tapes’ presence in the counsel’s office storage space. However, "those tapes largely concerned metadata," not the content of communications the NSA intercepted.
The NSA says the impact of the misstatement and the deletion on the litigation should be "limited" because it has found back-ups of some content from about four months in 2003 and because it has a larger set of metadata from 2004 to 2007. That metadata should give a strong indication of whether the plaintiffs in the suits had their communications captured by the NSA, even if the communications themselves may be lost, the filings indicate. The NSA is also using "extraordinary" efforts to recover the data from tapes that were reused, it said.
Asked why the Electronic Frontier Foundation hasn’t publicized the episode, Greene said his group was waiting for the NSA to turn over data that the plaintiffs in the suits have demanded before considering next steps regarding the spy agency’s failure to maintain the records it said it was keeping.
"We don't know exactly how bad it is," the lawyer said, adding: "Even if you take them at their word that this was just an honest mistake, what it shows is despite your best intention to comply with important restrictions, it can be really difficult to implement. ... It shows that with the really tremendous volume of information they’re vacuuming up, it is impossible to be meticulous."
[Daily Caller] Stephen Paddock had hundreds of images of child pornography in his possession when he carried out the Las Vegas mass shooting on Oct. 1, according to a report released by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department on Friday.
The child porn was found on a Dell laptop computer in the Mandalay Bay hotel room from where Paddock slaughtered 58 people attending a Jason Aldean concert below. The report says that "several hundred images of child pornography were located on the computer’s hard drive. The investigation into the source of these images is ongoing."
Paddock’s younger brother, Bruce Paddock, was arrested in late October after police found child pornography on his computer at home.
Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said the investigation has yet to reveal a motive for the mass shooting, which was the deadliest in American history.
#1
Wasn't his hard drive missing? Maybe he had two computers. Anyhow, weird is weird.
Still, I would not trust a computer the cops got their hands on. What's the cyber equivalent of a throw down bag of weed?
Sounds like they're gilding the lily when obviously unnecessary. Habits are hard to break.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
01/20/2018 8:19
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#2
Since 'we' didn't have the computers, we can not assume it had anything. Today, relying upon the 'authorities' to tell the truth is a new low. If people can put malware on your computer, anyone to include your government can plant what ever they want on it. Voila! The accused is a pervert!
[Breitbart IS] TEL AVIV ‐ Glenn R. Simpson, the co-founder of the controversial opposition research firm Fusion GPS, stated in testimony it "makes sense" to him that the FBI paid for a trip to Rome by the former British spy who was contracted by Simpson’s company to produce the largely discredited 35-page anti-Trump dossier.
Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent, to do the work cited in the anti-Trump dossier. Last July, Steele reportedly traveled to Rome, where he met with an FBI contact to supply the agency with the anti-Trump dossier and other information he found during the course of his anti-Trump work.
Steele’s dossier reportedly served as some of the basis for the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and unsubstantiated claims of coordination with Russia.
The US government officially shut down at midnight on Friday after Democrats and Republicans failed to reach a last-minute deal to fund its operations, divided in a bitter dispute over immigration and border security.
In a dramatic late-night session, senators blocked a bill to extend government funding through February 16. The bill needed 60 votes in the 100-member Senate but fell short with only 50 supporting it.
Most Democrats opposed the bill because their efforts to include protections for hundreds of thousands for the young immigrants known as Dreamers failed.
...Until a funding deal is worked out, scores of federal agencies across the country will be unable to operate, and hundreds of thousands of "non-essential" federal workers will be put on temporary unpaid leave.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a stopgap funding measure on Thursday. But Republicans then needed the support of at least 10 Democrats to pass the bill in the Senate. While five Democrats ended up voting for the measure, five Republicans voted against it.
#4
This time is different. The dems know that if they don't get their influx of new rubber stamp voters it's game over. Expect a bumpy ride...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/20/2018 4:01
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#5
And the Flake contingent is on board because without a counter to the deplorables, it's game over for the GOPe also.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/20/2018 4:03
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#6
#4 But if they lose the public workers they lose everything - imagine a DMV worker who refuses to give driving licenses to illegals. Or a school teacher who concentrates on 3Rs instead of brainwashing.
#9
Re #1: 5 donks in Trump-leaning states put together a bill to do just that (Manchin, Heitkamp et al) - it'd be more believable if they weren't all the Senators whose jobs are at risk this Nov looking for cover in Red states..
#10
The stupid party won't hammer home a meme they've been handed - Illegals are more important to the Left than the lives and prosperity of the American people!
#12
The stupid party won't hammer home a meme they've been handed.
A groot verraad (great betrayal)? Yes, but don't expect the denial to end soon. More time is need for the re-writing of history, statue removal, street name changes, education and employment preferences, etc.
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units (YPG) claimed that their forces killed at least four Ottoman Turkish soldiers in the Afrin Canton tonight.
According to pro-YPG media, their forces reportedly killed the four Ottoman Turkish soldiers during the latter’s infiltration attempt into the Bulbul District of Afrin.
Meanwhile, ...back at the secret hideout, Scarface Al sneeringly put his proposition to little Nell... pro-Ottoman Turkish regime media have claimed that their forces killed several YPG fighters tonight, while also destroying a number of armored vehicles in Afrin and Menbeij.
In the coming days, the battle for Afrin is expected to intensify as Ottoman Turkish-backed fighters attempt to advance against the YPG forces.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2018
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[PacificPundit] All this talk about Trump’s "health" or "heart disease" got me thinking. Who looks better for their age. Bill Clinton or Donald Trump? Both men were born in 1946. Trump was born in June of that year while Clinton was born in August. This is how the two men looks today, both basically the same age minus a couple of months. Who looks better and in better health to you?
Here are some other recent pictures of Bill Clinton, technically a few weeks younger than Donald Trump: Gotta' hit the link And of course let’s not forget seizure queen Hillary Clinton. Everyone, all the so called experts thought she’d be in the Oval Office now with Bill Clinton getting interns once again. She’s actually a year younger than both Trump and BJ Bill. How is she looking these days?
I wonder, had Hillary Clinton been able to get enough of the dead vote in 2016, would CNN be declaring Hillary Clinton’s health bad too?
#4
The one pic of SlickWilly makes him appear to have cancer, aids, lungpuckeroo, terminal syph, wasting-away-disease and polio all at the same time. He must have had a mis-spent youth.
#9
Re: #7 - heard that attributed to Lincoln. When taken to task for saying he didn't like a political appointee applicant's face, re responded "Every man over 40 is responsible for what he looks like."
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) launched a massive offensive in the Deir Ezzor Governorate, tonight, targeting several areas under the control of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
ISIS reportedly began the attack by storming the SDF-held towns in the eastern part of Deir Ezzor, including Gharanej and al-Jahrah near the eastern bank of the Euphrates River.
While no gains have been reported, the Islamic State alleges that their fighters have killed more than 20 members of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
The Islamic State is currently attempting to break out of the Deir Ezzor Governorate and away from the Iraqi border, which they have been confined to for several months.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2018
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The statistics released by the Yemeni army, Friday, stated that at least 100 members of the Houthi ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews ... militia were killed in festivities that took place in Kataf Al Baq’e front in the province of Saada, their main stronghold north of the country, within a week.
The numbers confirmed that four field commanders were among the dead Houthis.
The Yemeni army found the bodies of three of them, in addition to the injury and the capture of dozens in fierce battles in Kataf Al Baq’e front in the province of Saada.
The dead Houthi field commanders found are: Mohammed Hassan Oufan, Saleh Mohammed Saad al-Rubai, Salahuddin Muhammad Nasser Ceylan.
The official news site of the Yemeni army stated that the Houthi militia suffered large losses in periodic festivities renewed from time to time since last Friday at Ktaf Al Baq’e.
Yemen’s army captured as well 34 members of the Houthi militia during a week of confrontations in their stronghold in Saada.
According to statistics, the Yemeni army destroyed at the same time more than 10 military vehicles, five units of armed machinery, a medium arms truck, and recovered an arsenal of weapons.
The Yemeni army has made significant progress in recent days in battles with the Houthis in their stronghold in Saada.
The army gained full control over a number of mountains, highlands and strategic hills, established full control of Ktaf Al Baq’e and secured the link between the provinces of Jouf and Saada, which connects Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic... with Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... , while it continues to advance towards the center of Ktaf.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2018
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[GEO.TV] As many as six more suspects were jugged Please don't kill me! in the Aasma rape, murder case by Mardan police on Friday, authorities informed Geo News.
DPO Mardan said that DNA samples of the suspects will be taken, adding that the authorities have conducted geo-fencing of the area.
Moreover, the district government has called an All Parties Conference on the matter today.
District Nazim Hikmayatullah Mayar informed that the conference will give its next course of action if rape and terror clauses are not added in the FIR.
Four-year-old Aasma went missing on January 13 from the Gujjar Garhi area and was found dead the next day at 3pm.
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Inspector-General of Police Salahuddin Mehsud confirmed on Wednesday that the minor was strangled to death, but added that the post-mortem report points towards sexual assault.
"Looks like the culprit’s intention was to sexually assault [the minor]," he told media while detailing the incident.
The minor’s post-mortem also shows signs of torture, the IG said.
The body was reportedly found in sugarcane fields.
Police joined the search after being informed of the incident at 9pm on January 13, the IG said.
Mardan RPO and DPO subsequently visited Aasma’s family on January 14 to record details about the incident, and an FIR was registered after Aasma’s body was found.
The IG said that an investigation team, headed by DPO Mardan, was formed to probe the case, and help from the counter-terrorism department was also utilised.
IG Mehsud commenting on the progress in the case said that a daily report is being prepared in the case.
’Police trying to conceal facts’
Mayar has alleged that the police are trying their best to conceal the post-mortem report.
Mayar said on Wednesday that according to the post-mortem report it is clear the girl was raped before being strangled to death.
The girl belonged to an unprivileged family and her father works as a labourer in a foreign country, he said, adding "we will ensure justice is dispensed."
He stressed that the district government will extend all help to the victim's family. "The incident highlights the criminal negligence of the KP government," he said, adding "not a single official of the KP government went to condole the victim's parents and no one took notice of the incident."
"ANP [Awami National Party founded by Abdul Wali Khan in 1986. Part of the PPP-led cabinet 2008-13. The ANP is considered left wing, advocating for secularism, democratic socialism, public sector government, and economic egalitarianism.... ] will use its democratic right and stage a protest against the government," he added.
However, there's no worse danger than telling a mother her baby is ugly... DPO Mardan Mian Saeed earlier in the day had negated the claims and said that the girl was strangled to death, and said the post-mortem report does not point towards rape.
There were torture marks on the body, he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2018
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[TheBlackSphere] The plot thickens in Puerto Rico.
The Democrats there believe they can make a "Katrina" of Maria, the hurricane that recently devastated the island sh*thole paradise. So they intentionally thwart attempts by President Trump to restore things to normal.
So months after Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, nearly half the island’s residents remain powerless. But FEMA sent hundreds of workers to the area to help restore the electrical grid, so why the delay? Materials.
Items critical to restoring the grid in Puerto Rico are missing. So over the weekend, FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began raiding warehouses. To there amazement, they found that Puerto Rican Electric Power Authority has been "hoarding" these critical items.
The intercept reported that FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers entered a warehouse in Palo Seco warehouse where they found hundreds of tension steel sleeves and nearly 3,000 items necessary for contractors helping Puerto Rico restore power.
Hard to imagine people putting politics before people. However, that’s modis operandi for Leftists.
The Democrats believe you must crack a few eggs to make an omelet.
Not long ago the Associated Press reported on this very issue.
FEMA has been desperately importing electrical rescue crews, trying to get the island back to full power. But the crews themselves have faced a massive shortage of equipment and necessary parts ‐ a shortage which puzzled the emergency management agency which has been importing the parts and materials since just days after Hurricane Maria hit.
The problem seems to be the PREPA, which received the materials but never distributed them. According to reports, PREPA failed to enter into "mutual aid agreements," that would have allowed the electricity provider to seek help from private utilities in completing the island-wide restoration project.
At the same time, the Intercept reports, the Puerto Rican government is trying to reform PREPA, which seems to be causing more problems than it’s solving.
At least for now, it seems that FEMA and other agencies are getting involved, trying to make sure that crews they manage are fully stocked and supplied so that power can return to Puerto Rico.
The Mayor of San Juan hates President Trump. She’s willing to do anything to disrupt his administration’s efforts to rebuild Puerto Rico.
As CNN reported,
Yulín Cruz said in an interview with CNN’s Leyla Santiago that a briefing with Trump on Tuesday preceded a "productive" discussion with administration staff, but she lamented the tone of the President’s remarks in the wake of back-to-back hurricanes
Trump has accused Yulín Cruz of taking a political angle to criticize his administration’s relief efforts, and Yulín Cruz said she was able to speak with the President briefly when he shook her hand at Tuesday’s event.
"I told him, ’Mr. President this is about saving lives. It’s not about politics,'" Yulín Cruz said. "That’s all the interaction that mayors had with him."
But for Cruz, it is about politics.
Take a look at Houston, in comparison.
The Category 4 hurricane brought winds in excess of 130 mph, dumped trillions of gallons of rain, led to 82 deaths in the region and caused damage estimated at nearly $200 billion. The Astros, along with donating $4 million to hurricane relief efforts, seized onto the "Houston Strong" message, similar to what the Red Sox adopted in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing en route to winning the World Series in 2013.
Houston didn’t fret.
The city’s major league baseball team won a World Series, and now the job of recovery begins. No politics, just good old American Spirit at play.
#2
Hoarding? Maybe.
Lost track, didn’t know what they were for, receiving put them in ‘frustrated cargo’, warehouse staff quit to rebuild their own homes, more likely.
#6
#5 - Rodriquez says she is "sorry her writing is being interpreted as anti-Semitic," adding that her "intention was not to offend, but to add to the public conversation."
She argues in her piece that recognizing "the Jew" as the "prototype of true power" with control over the United States should not be offensive.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/20/2018 6:47
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And on that note - its' the National Socialist Workers Party. The Left is the Left. It comes naturally to them.
#10
How much of this is organized corruption brought to light by the current disaster? Ex: Area "A" pays bribe and gets *cough* expedited repair and the lights come on. Area "B" is still waiting for first survey crew...
#11
"is trying to reform PREPA, which seems to be causing more problems than it’s solving." It all depends on what your definition of 'successful' is.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/20/2018 17:09
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#12
What kind of socialist ahole would do that to his neighbors - A Democrat, because everything, every f**king thing they say is BS, meant to sound reasonable and principled, when everything is about power, and the end justifies the means, and oh by the way makes them feel virtuous, crafty and that they are
winning.
[ATimes] What is not in doubt is that the military, or Tatmadaw, already faces another far more serious insurgent threat in the same state. Overshadowed by the refugee crisis and the storm of international diplomatic activity it has generated, Rakhine’s second front pits the Tatmadaw against a Rakhine Buddhist rebel force that is notably better equipped and trained than ARSA’s rag-tag rebels.
A recent upsurge of attacks by the so-called Arakan Army, or AA, suggests the ethnic Rakhine rebels are now preparing to take advantage of the army’s ongoing distractions in northern parts of the state to step up their infiltration of central townships.
The AA is not a new threat but it is determined, well-armed and well-funded. In contrast to the ARSA, it is a force that appears far more capable of planning and operating strategically.
Formed in 2009 in northern Kachin state under the umbrella of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the AA has drawn mainly on Rakhine migrant labor working in the jade mining complex of Hpakant to emerge as a force that is estimated at close to 2,000 combatants backed by a trained reserve.
Led by a youthful former student Tun Myat Naing who today styles himself as a ‘brigadier general’, the AA gained significant combat experience on the battlefields of the north, both with the Kachin and their northern insurgent allies. In Kokang region fighting in northeast Shan state in 2015, the small AA contingent was noted as punching well above its weight.
Even as it has been growing and fighting in the country’s north, the AA has also made efforts to turn its attention home to Rakhine state. Since 2015, that strategy has centered on establishing base areas in the rugged hill country of Paletwa in the south of neighboring Chin state. The remote but strategic township borders Bangladesh to the west and Rakhine state to the south.
From these base camps the AA has extended its footprint south across the state border deep into the Rakhine heartland. Its units have operated in the majority Buddhist townships of Kyawktaw, Mrauk-U , Min Bya, and Ponnagyun close to the state capital of Sittwe. From Paletwa and Kyawtaw the AA has also been able to infiltrate west into the majority Rohingya townships of Buthidaung and Rathedaung.
Initial indication of the shift south came in March 2015 with relatively minor attacks that, probably not by chance, coincided with heavy fighting in Kokang. But the dry season months of March and April 2016 saw a far more serious upsurge of activity as small but well-equipped guerrilla units infiltrated south.
The campaign included propaganda work in Buddhist villages, armed clashes with government forces and occasional use of relatively large improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to mine highways.
While the bulk of the group’s fighting force is understood to remain in the north, a growing contingent estimated to number up to 500 combatants is currently operating on the Chin-Rakhine front.
In notable contrast to ARSA, AA insurgents are equipped with support weapons in the form of rocket propelled grenades (RPG) and mortars that significantly enhance their capability for both ambushes and stand-off attacks on security force bases.
Back on its home turf, AA’s military capabilities are reinforced by distinct political advantages. At the tactical level, local roots and ability to tap into grass roots grievances in Myanmar’s poorest state appear to be paying off in terms of village-level support, or at least acquiescence.
Strategically, the AA also derives status as a member in good standing of the powerful northern ethnic opposition bloc – the so-called Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee (FPNCC) — which has pointedly declined to sign the so-called Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), the beleaguered centerpiece of the government’s floundering peace process.
The FPNCC has coalesced around Myanmar’s strongest insurgent faction, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), which has not let its own long-standing bilateral ceasefire with the Tatmadaw stand in the way of logistical and training support for ethnic allies in active hostilities with the army. The AA has been an important beneficiary of the UWSA’s carefully calculated strategic largesse.
[Inquirer] A top New People's Army leader in Mindanao and his wife surrendered to the Philippine military on Monday after months of negotiations. Military spokesman Benjamin Leander said Noel Legazpi, known as “Ka Efren,” spokesman for the NPA’s Far South Mindanao Regional Revolutionary Committee in the last 20 years, and his wife, Wendy, a member of the NPA medical team, turned themselves in with the help of South Cotabato Governor Daisy Avance Fuentes. Legazpi has been with the communist movement for 26 years.
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Ottoman Turkish border guard and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) clashed at the Tal Abyad Crossing in northern al-Raqqa tonight, pro-YPG activists reported.
According to the reports from this front, the Ottoman Turkish border guard fired several artillery shells towards the SDF’s positions in Tal Abyad.
This attack by the Ottoman Turkish border guard prompted the SDF to fire their own barrage of artillery shells and rockets towards the the former’s positions.
Tonight’s exchange of hostilities in northern Raqqa marks the first time this year that the Ottoman Turkish military and Kurdish forces have clashed inside this province.
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[NYPOST] Seven members of a cable TV crew were arrested at Newark Airport on Thursday after trying to film themselves passing a fake explosive device through a security checkpoint and onto a plane, according to reports.
The crew was working for the cable network CNBC, according to nj.com.
The fake explosive device was in a carry-on bag and never made it past security, Transportation Security Administration spokesman Michael McCarthy said.
“They failed, were caught and were arrested on multiple charges,” he said, without elaborating on the charges.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Makes my curiosity bone itch. Wonder what the water outage event was about,
[ALMASDARNEWS] Cross-border conflict between India and Pakistain has continued for the third day in a row, reportedly resulting in casualties on both sides of the border on Friday, leaving at least four dead.
The Pak military stated on Friday that Indian border forces initiated fire from their side of the frontier, killing two civilians in Pak Kashmire, and injuring five others. Meanwhile, ...back at the comedy club, Boogie ducked another tomato... Indian sources claimed that it was a Pak attack that started the day’s conflict, resulting in the death of one Indian civilian and one soldier, while wounding seven.
An Indian paramilitary officer who spoke to Iranian news outlet PressTV claimed that they responded to a Pak shelling of border outposts, which he called an "unprovoked violation" of the 2003 peace agreement. Pakistain, for its part, has summoned representatives of India to explain the reasons behind what Islamabad claims is a violation of the ceasefire committed by India.
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[ALMASDARNEWS] The Salafist tough guys once again clashed inside the East Ghouta region after Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham launched a surprise attack on Jaish al-Islam ...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In Sptember 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powereful... ’s positions.
According to opposition media, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham uncovered a Jaish al-Islam sleeper cell within the territory they control in the East Ghouta, prompting them to attack the latter and capture their fighters.
HTS stated that the captured fighters confessed that they were members of Jaish al-Islam and that they were hired to target the commanders of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham with IEDs in exchange for cash.
Jaish al-Islam and HTS strongly oppose one another, despite the fact they are both part of the rebel forces in Syria.
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[Al Jazeera] A teenage boy has been shot and killed by police after a juvenile hearing at an Ohio court during an altercation, local officials said.
Joseph Haynes, 16, was appearing for a hearing about a firearms charge against him at the Franklin County court in Columbus on Wednesday when a deputy sheriff struck him with a bullet in a hallway.
The teenager was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He's dead, Jim!
"At some point as the hearing was concluding there was an altercation that ensued involving the deputy and some of the family members," Franklin County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Rick Minerd told news hounds.
Jennifer Brisco, Haynes' lawyer, said the scuffles broke out when the officer threatened to arrest her client.
"Joseph was a little out of sorts because of how things went at the hearing," Brisco told The Columbus Dispatch, a local newspaper.
"The officer threatened to lock him up and a scuffle broke out," she added. "Joseph was resisting, and that's when there was a scuffle."
The deputy, who has not been identified for security reasons, suffered a black eye, bruises and abrasions after he was knocked to the ground, Minerd said.
The boy's grandmother acknowledged that her grandson grabbed the deputy's shoulder, but told the newspaper that the deputy should have used a taser instead of a gun.
"There was no reason why that cop would have been terrified of Joey," Geraldine Hayes said.
Meanwhile, ...back at the alley, Bugs Moroni was holding Slats from behind while his brother Greasy Thumb was pounding his face into paste ... Keith Ferrell, executive vice president of the Fraternal Order of Police lodge that represents Franklin County deputies, defended the officer, saying "he had no choice."
"This was a fight for (the deputy's) life at some point," Ferrell told news hounds on Thursday.
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01/20/2018
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#1
"Joey"
Will we get the 8th grade graduation pic, like Trayvon?
"He was a good boy, turning his life around, when that firearm jumped into his hand. He wanted to go to college start a family, and become a priest...or President"
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/20/2018 6:37
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[Al Jazeera] The US government will submit a motion to dismiss indictments for 129 of the 188 remaining Inauguration Day defendants, leaving 59 facing felony charges that could land them behind bars for decades.
"The government will be filing motions to dismiss without prejudice the indictment against the other remaining 129 defendants," William Miller, public information officer for the US Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, said in a press statement provided to Al Jazeera by email.
Announced on Thursday afternoon, the statement said the US Attorney's Office for DC made the decision in order to "focus its efforts on this smaller, core group that we believe is most responsible for the destruction and violence that took place on Inauguration Day".
During the inauguration of US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... on January 20, 2017, police surrounded, attacked and locked away Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try! more than 230 people during an anti-capitalist bloc march.
Those arrested included protesters, journalists, medics, legal observers and bystanders. A felony riot charge was subsequently dealt to 234 people. The charge carried up to 10 years in jail and a $25,000 fine.
The city alleges that the protesters are responsible for $100,000 in property damage, while police have been accused of using unnecessary force against the group, including while they were surrounded and posed no threat.
Twenty defendants reached plea deals in exchange for lesser sentences, while another 20 had their charges dropped altogether.
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#1
"while they were surrounded and posed no threat.". And it turns out chickens migrate. Snarc off.
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Houthi ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews ... forces destroyed nine Saudi military vehicles in the Najran Region in the last 24 hours, Yemen’s Saba News Agency reported this evening.
"The army and popular forces have launched ground attacks on Saudi soldiers and mercenaries’ gatherings, destroying nine military vehicles, firing ballistic missile on Najran Air Defense Camp over the past 24 hours," a military official told Saba News.
"A short-range ballistic missile was fired on Saudi air defense camp in border province of Najran, causing heavy losses at the air defense camp," the report added.
The Houthi forces have recently stepped up their attacks along the Yemeni border in a bid to deter the Saudi Coalition forces from launching more air raids over the northern part of the country.
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[Khaama (Afghanistan)] A man has been jugged Please don't kill me! on charges of raping his own mother in western Herat ...a venerable old Persian-speaking city in western Afghanistan, populated mostly by Tadjiks, which is why it's not as blood-soaked as areas controlled by Pashtuns... province of Afghanistan, the local security officials said Thursday. Ummm... What's that word I'm looking for?
The man was arrested from the vicinity of the 11th police district of the city of Herat with the security officials saying the police forces arrested the man after receiving complaints from his mother.
Provincial police front man Abdul Ahad Walizada confirmed the arrest of the man and said an investigation is underway from the detained individual or the alleged incident.
This is not the first time reports emerge regarding the sexual assault of the individuals on their own close relatives but numerous individuals have been arrested on similar charges from various of the parts of the country including Herat.
The local officials in Herat had earlier said a man has been arrested from the vicinity of Injil district after the security forces discovered that he had repeatedly raped his own daughter.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Whatever it is, man is not the word.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/20/2018 4:29
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[VladTepesBlog] Colorado news report on Fuqra: Terror in the Rocky Mountains. ...Fuqra, or Muslims of America (MOA), also known in English as Muslims of the Americas when they are talking about their Canadian and Caribbean ventures, and formally as The Muslims of America, Inc. (TMOA). The estimated 3,000 member group, mainly African-Americans, claimed 22 communities following the teachings of Pakistani Sufi cleric Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani across the U.S. in 2016, and is one of the American front groups of Jamaat ul-Fuqra or Jamaat al-Fuqra, the other being Quranic Open University. Jamaat ul-Fuqra was listed as a terror organization by the State Department in 1999 and is banned in Pakistan. They've been active in the U.S. for over thirty years. The Wikipedia page is quite interesting...
[PRESSTV] The International Energy Agency (IEA) says the United States would overtake Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... as the world's number two oil producer after Russia this year by relying on its massive shale oil production.
"This year promises to be a record-setting one for the US," the IEA wrote in its monthly market report as reported by media.
The IEA added in its report that the US had already been able to achieve the highest record of oil production over the past 50 years by producing 9.9 million barrels per day of oil. This, it added, had put the US neck-and-neck with Saudi Arabia, the world's second largest crude producer after Russia.
"Relentless growth should see the US hit historic highs above 10 million barrels per day, overtaking Saudi Arabia and rivaling Russia during the course of 2018 ‐ provided OPEC/non-OPEC restraints remain in place," it said in its report as reported by AFP.
In early 2016, oil prices plunged to as low as $30 per barrel in what many believed had been caused as a result of America’s shale oil production activities.
This provoked producing nations - both inside and outside the OPEC oil cartel ‐ to reach a deal at the end of 2016 to cut back production and drive prices higher.
Geopolitical tensions and a reduction in oil stocks have also contributed to the recovery.
Crude recently rose above $70 per barrel for the first time since 2014 after OPEC and non-OPEC countries agreed to extend their combined cutbacks until the end of this year.
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[PRESSTV] The secretary general of the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement has described his group as one of the most effective forces in the fight against terrorism across the Middle East region.
Speaking at a ceremony marking the martyrdom anniversary of Hezbollah fighters in Syria’s southwestern Quneitra region on Friday afternoon, His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah The satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb... stated that the sacrifices made by Hezbollah deaders were behind all victories over US-Israeli plots in the region.
He noted that the United States has long sought to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist outfit, and has even leveled unsubstantiated allegations of involvement in drug trafficking against the resistance movement.
Nasrallah then advised US statesmen to launch a full-scale investigation into the drug-related activities of their own intelligence bodies.
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#1
Funded by the billion's of jihad cash Obama Inc. gave Iran. Timmy can you say, "treason"? I knew you could.
#2
Spoken from under his daughter's bed in his armored bunker
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/20/2018 14:25
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#3
Funded by the billion's of jihad cash Obama Inc. gave Iran. Timmy can you say, "treason"? I knew you could.
Strange indeed. Trump is in office for 12 months and voilà! Hez and ISIS funding appears to have dried up and terrorism is in a mysterious state of remission.
[GEO.TV] Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa confirmed the death sentences of 10 hardcore faceless myrmidons on Friday, according to a statement issued by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR).
The 10 faceless myrmidons were awarded death sentences by military courts.
The convicts were involved in faceless myrmidons activities, killing of innocent civilians, attacks on educational institutions, killing of soldiers, attacking law enforcement agencies (LEAs) and armed forces of Pakistain, the statement added.
The faceless myrmidons were involved in the killings of 41 personnel and injuring 33 others. Arms and explosives were also recovered from their possession.
Besides the 10 awarded death sentences, another three convicts were awarded imprisonment for varying periods by military courts.
Particulars of the 10 convicts are as follows:
Sami ur Rahman & Azeem Khan
Rahman son of Gul Habib and Khan son of Shaiber, were both members of a proscribed organization and were involved in attacking LEAs and armed forces of Pakistain, resulting in the death of Major Muhammad Ihsan, 9 soldiers as well as 2 police officials and injuring 13 others. They were also found in possession of fire-arms and explosives. The convicts admitted their offences before the Magistrate and the trial court.
Arshad Bilal and Anwar Ali
Bilal son of Khadim Khan and Ali son of Fazal Ghaffar, were also members of proscribed a organization. They were involved in attacking armed forces of Pakistain which resulted in death of 9 soldiers and injured 9 others. They were also involved in destruction of Government Boys Primary School, Langer, Swat. They were found in possession of fire-arms and explosives. These convicts admitted their offences before the Magistrate and the trial court.
Muhammad Aleem and Fazal Aleem
Both sons of Abdul Rasheed. The convicts were members of a proscribed organization. They were involved in attacking Law Enforcement Agencies and armed forces of Pakistain which resulted in the death of 4 soldiers. They were also involved in destruction of Government Boys High School, Nangolai, Swat. The convicts admitted their offences before the Magistrate and the trial court.
Rasool Muhammed
Muhammed son of Ahmed Jan, was a member of a proscribed organization. He was involved in attacking LEAs and armed forces of Pakistain which resulted in death of 4 soldiers. The convict also abetted other faceless myrmidons in slaughtering of civilian Said Raheem as well as Assistant Sub Inspector Irshad Ali, Head Constable Sarwar Ali Khan and Head Constable Sher Ahmed. The convict admitted his offences before the Magistrate and the trial court.
Sohail Ahmed
Ahmed son of Usman Ali, was a member of a proscribed organization. He was involved in killing of innocent civilians and attacking LEAs of Pakistain which resulted in the death of 3 civilians, Sub Inspector Mustafa Khan, a constable of police and injuries to 4 others. He was also found in possession of explosives. The convict admitted his offences before the Magistrate and the trial court.
Naimat Ullah
Son of Ahmed, the convict was a member of a proscribed organization. He was involved in attacking armed forces of Pakistain, which resulted in death of 2 soldiers and injuries to 4 others. He was also found in possession of fire-arm and explosives. The convict admitted his offences before the Magistrate and the trial court.
Rahmat Ali
Ali son of Noor Said, was a member of a proscribed organization. He was involved in attacking armed forces of Pakistain which resulted in the death of a soldier. He was also found in possession of fire-arms. The convict admitted his offences before the Magistrate and the trial court.
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Summary: It is easy to get lost in the webs of tales about political crime and scandal that the media spin for us. Here James Bowman puts the stories about Trump in a useful larger context, so that we can better understand whatever comes next.
[JP]
On Friday, Turkey increased its shelling of the Kurdish-held Afrin enclave in northern Syria. According to the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) up to 70 artillery shells were fired during the night.
While Turkey has threatened to invade the Kurdish area, which it says is being controlled by terrorists aligned with the Kurdistan Workers Party, Syria has threatened to shoot down Turkish warplanes in case of any attack on Syria’s territory. The war of words in northern Syria puts the US and Russia in a bind because the US is allied with the Kurds in eastern Syria while Russia has been a close ally of the Syrian regime.
At the link the short and sweet of it is the US and Russia have pulled advisors away and Israel wonders about stuff. Sigh..
Posted by: 3dc ||
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#1
seen articles assuring us that YPG has nothing to do with PKK (Pushy Kurdish Kommies), but then we were also assured that Sein Fein had nothing to do with the IRA.
[ChiMil]
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) has been fully executing military training instructions issued by President Xi Jinping on January 3 by conducting drills at home and abroad involving its ground forces, navy, air force, rocket force and armed police, as the PLA's news media cautioned the troops on Thursday of imminent threats and to avoid complacency.
According to the PLA Daily, China's most advanced military aircraft including the J-20 stealth fighter jet, the Y-20 transport aircraft, the H-6k bomber, and the J-16, J-11B J-10C fighter jets have all conducted training exercises since the beginning of 2018.
The J-20 is conducting air combat training with other fighter planes including the J-16. The J-20 is also practicing beyond-visual-range air combat, and other aircraft, including the Y-20 and the J-10C, are training at unspecified airports on a "plateau region" in order to improve their capability in long-range military transport and air combat, the PLA Daily reported.
Potential military conflicts in plateau regions have been on the rise since the border friction with India last year, so increasing military training in the plateau region is highly necessary, a retired PLA officer who used to serve in the air force and asked not to be named, told the Global Times.
"India's ground force has some advantages in quantity in the border areas, so if conflict happens, China's air force needs to seize domination of the skies and immediately create an overwhelming advantage for China," said the officer.
Modern Navy, a WeChat public account run by the PLA Navy, reported on Wednesday that the PLA Marine Corps stationed in China's first overseas logistic base in Djibouti conducted a series of combat training missions including "countering reconnaissance from hostile aircraft, encountering combat in a desert, and tracking and annihilating terrorists."
Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), issued military training instructions to Chinese military forces during an inspection of a division of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) ground force in the Central Theater Command on January 3.
Xi ordered the creation of an elite combat force through real combat training, digitization, innovation and reform.
Apart from the air force and overseas marine troops, other units including the navy, the rocket force, ground force, the armed police and strategic support forces across the country are all conducting or have conducted real combat training missions in January, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
Increasing possibility of war
A commentary in the PLA Daily titled "A soldier without desire for war-preparedness is not a good soldier" was published Tuesday. The article criticizes military personnel in the PLA who refuse to face the possibility of war and have been paralyzed by peace.
"When the country is on the brink of becoming a great military power, it's also stepping into a period with high risks to national security. War is not far from us. Regional situations around China are complex and unstable, and dangers are hiding under the peace. China cannot afford a military failure, so we must be fully aware of potential crisis and be prepared for battle at all times," the article stated.
Experts say the possibility of military conflict around China has increased in recent years. "In regions like the Korea Peninsula, China-India border area and the Taiwan Straits, the PLA needs to be prepared for all possibilities. Our overseas interests in regions like Africa and the Middle East are also under threat due to local instability," said Xu Guangyu, a retired major general and senior adviser of the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association.
[ThePeople'sCube]
Comrade Flake (yes, that is his real name, maybe), says Trump is the new Stalin.
Jeff Flake Compares Trump to Joseph Stalin
The similarities are glorious:
1. Just like Trump, Stalin is not a real surname, but a revolutionary nom de guerre.
2. Stalin also took advantage of the free market economy to become a billionaire.
3. Stalin ran an international pageant "Miss Gulag" and "Collective Farm Apprentice."
5. Once in power, Stalin freed the capitalist economy of burdensome regulations, reduced the size of government bureaucracy, and cut taxes for individuals and businesses, causing an unprecedented growth of wealth, incomes, and employment.
6. Stalin was relentlessly attacked by the mainstream media, who called him names, disparaged his every move, and questioned his sanity. The Tsarist Deep State obstructed his policies at every turn.
7. Stalin was subjected to a special investigation by the Mensheviks over allegations that he colluded with the Russians to defeat the presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Trotsky, whom he later killed with an ice axe. The alleged plan to win the presidency included an occult ritual, in which hired prostitutes performed a ceremonial "golden shower" on the bed where the deposed Tsar had slept with his First Tsarina.
8. Stalin's only recourse against the attacks was to ridicule his opponents on Twitter.
9. Everything points to the fact that, just like Stalin, Trump will rule the country for 30 years and die in his bed at the peak of his personality cult, poisoned by Jewish doctors.
We can see, comrades, that Trump is literally Stalin.
While many will dismiss this statement as insane and unstable, I see this as an opportunity to spread the word to fellow travelers. Let this be our new rallying cry, which may allow us to run a real Stalin-like candidate from the Democrat side and thus cement our power over this unlawful country with its shameless capitalist wealth for good.
Always!
In Great Socialist Unity!
Your most humble Liquidator™,
Dimitri Kissov
The point is that these shutdowns did not have an effect on electoral outcomes. Part of the reason for this is that since 1995—when the GOP gained control of House and Senate—government shutdowns have occurred well in advance of the normal election calendar.
However, there hasn’t been a government shutdown in modern times while one party controlled the government. So, if there is political risk for congressional GOPers, aside from Trump’s fumbles and current poll numbers, it’s that they are in uncharted political waters.
Shutdown Impact On The Market
LPL Financial tracks the stock market during government shutdowns. In the cases above, the S&P was not highly affected by a shutdown:
Reagan 1981 -0.1%
Reagan 1984 -2.2%
Reagan 1986 -0.3%
Bush 1990 -2.1%
Clinton 1995 1.3%
Clinton 1996 0.1%
Obama 2013 3.1%
Government shutdowns have never cost the stock market more than a few points, thus they haven’t been something to worry about. Wall Street knows Washington is dysfunctional and that shutdowns have always been resolved in relatively short order.
#3
However, it appears the Dems care more about DACA than the military and citizens of this country. Make America Great Again and deport a Democrat politician.
[SFGATE] Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,politicians are targeting the expected windfall that companies in the state would see under the federal tax overhaul with a bill that would require businesses to turn over half to the state.
A proposed Assembly Constitutional Amendment by Assemblymen Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, and Phil Ting, D-the Socialist paradise of San Francisco ...where God struck dead Anton LaVey, home of the Sydney Ducks, ruled by Vigilance Committee from 1859 through 1867, reliably and volubly Democrat since 1964... , would create a tax surcharge on California companies making more than $1 million so that half of their federal tax cut would instead go to programs that benefit low-income and middle-class families.
"Trump’s tax reform plan was nothing more than a middle-class tax increase," Ting said in a statement. "It is unconscionable to force working families to pay the price for tax breaks and loopholes benefiting corporations and wealthy individuals. This bill will help blunt the impact of the federal tax plan on everyday Californians by protecting funding for education, affordable health care, and other core priorities."
Does this help explain Google and Amazon looking for new HQ sites?
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2018
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#1
Why half? A good Socialist would take it all, and then some all while declaring 'you didn't make that'.
#2
Tax cuts allow business to pay more and hire more. The communists must take that to keep the entitlement base on THIER plantation.
Posted by: Bill Cleretle2363 ||
01/20/2018 9:05
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#3
Their first instinct towards any good financial news about their constituents is to try and grab their money. This won't affect their decision to leave the state, not at all!
[ALMASDARNEWS] Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Friday that Israel was behind a recent car kaboom on one of the leaders of the Paleostinian movement Hamas, the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood, in the Lebanese city of Sidon.
"Everything indicates that the enemy Israel is behind the plotting of the blast targeting one of Hamas’ leaders in Sidon. We hope that it will be qualified as a crime and violation of illusory sovereignty," Nasrallah told the Al Manar TV channel, noting that the incident posed danger to the security of Leb.
On Sunday, Mohammed Hamdan was injured after an bomb planted in his BMW went off in Sidon.
The incident took place after on December 12 Washington and Tel Aviv had agreed upon the "general framework for future cooperation regarding Iranian malign activities", forming four joint teams to grapple with Iran’s activities in the Middle East region, including Tehran’s clout in Syria and its support for the Lebanese hard boy group Hezbollah.
The memorandum of understanding aimed to tackle the alleged Iranian threat, was reportedly signed during a meeting at the White House between US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and his Israeli counterpart Meir Ben-Shabbat.
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[Khaama (Afghanistan)] At least five big shots of the al-Qaeda terrorist network were killed in an operation of the Afghan cops in eastern Nangarhar The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country.. province of Afghanistan.
The provincial government media office said Friday that the big shots of the al-Qaeda network were killed in an operation conducted by the Special Forces of the Afghan intelligence directorate.
According to an official statement, the five senior al-Qaeda network leaders, hailing from Afghanistan, Pakistain, and Chechnya, were actively involved in planning and coordinating suicide kabooms in the country.
The statement further added that three of those killed hailed from Chechnya, one hailed from Afghanistan, and one of them was a Pak national.
At least two others have also been placed in durance vile ... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not... during the operation conducted in Shirzad district of Nangarhar province, the statement added.
The provincial government also added that the Afghan national killed in the operation has been identified as Mullah Sundi who was also famous as Siraj and was actively involved in spreading propaganda in favor of the terrorists.
At least four Ak-47 rifles, a PKM machine gun, a pistol and some ammunition were also confiscated, the statement said, adding that the local residents and security personnel have not suffered any casualties during the operation.
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01/20/2018
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Leb thwarted hard boys’ plans to attack places of worship and government buildings over the holidays after gaining rare access to an ISIS operative, the interior minister said Friday.
Nuhad Mashnuq said at a presser that an elite unit in Leb’s Internal Security Forces (ISF) had tossed in the clink Please don't kill me! an Iraqi ISIS commander in Beirut last June.
The commander, known as Abu Jaafar al-Iraqi, had been tasked by the ISIS leadership to establish an ISIS network in Leb, according to information presented at the briefing.
This network would not only carry out attacks in Leb, but could have potentially hosted top ISIS officials fleeing Iraq and Syria.
Full details of the operation and the current whereabouts of Abu Jaafar were not revealed.
But Mashnuq said that for five months after the Iraqi commander’s arrest the ISF kept tabs on him through a mysterious "volunteer," who had gained his trust and rented a home for him that was bugged by Lebanese authorities.
"This is one of those rare operations where you have someone this important in the terrorist organization, and you’re able to use him for five months to find out about the plans supposed to happen during the holidays, against places of worship and government buildings," Mashnuq told news hounds.
"The nature of this operation, as we explained, is unprecedented in the Arab world," he claimed.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2018
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MOSCOW — There are many valid critiques of U.S. President Donald Trump’s new direction for NASA. Few, if any, would be new. NASA has, for decades, been redirected by nearly every new administration to take office. But Russian government officials saw an opportunity for domestic attention and took a stab at it.
“A ‘resumption’ of flights to the moon? How nice,” Alexey Pushkov, a prominent Russian hawk and chairman of the information policy committee in the country’s upper house in parliament, wrote Dec. 19. “But how are the Americans going to get there without rocket engines? Already they can’t get to the [International Space Station] without ours.”
“Pushkov asked a reasonable question,” Zakharova began, “In my opinion, although the question is logical, the answer is obvious — they will be delivered there by ‘Russian hackers.’ As we all know, they can do anything,” she concluded.
Trump's remarks were met with ridicule in China, too, according to the China’s English-language Global Times news outlet. Social media users there posted jokes about Trump flying to the moon to take a selfie, while others commented on how every U.S. president comes up with such a plan.
[ALMASDARNEWS] A large force from the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) Elite Republican Guard has been redeployed to the Idlib Governorate, a military source told al-Masdar News this afternoon.
According to the military source, the entire 128th Brigade of the Elite Republican Guard has been redeployed from the Qalamoun Mountains to the Idlib Governorate, as they were given orders to aid the Tiger Forces in the ongoing offensive to capture the strategic Abu Dhuhour Airport.
The 128th Brigade was one of the main forces behind the Syrian Army’s successful campaigns in the Qalamoun Mountains; they are a battle-tested and well-trained combat unit.
Due to the poor weather recently, the Tiger Forces have been unable to storm the Abu Dhuhour Airport’s southern gates; however, with fresh reinforcements arriving, the attack should restart soon.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[ALMASDARNEWS] The jihadist rebels have once again been expelled from the northeastern countryside of the Hama Governorate, following another large-scale advance by the so-called Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS).
ISIS resumed their offensive in northeastern Hama, Friday, attacking Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham ’s positions near the Idlib axis.
Unable to withstand the Islamic State assault, HTS and their allies were forced to withdraw from northeastern Hama, leaving behind several areas for the terrorist group to capture.
As a result of this advance, the Islamic State has now reached the Syrian Arab Army’s front-lines in the northeastern countryside of Hama.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] A Lebanese military court handed down a six-month prison sentence to a journalist for presenting views critical of the army, a court official told AFP said Thursday.
Hanin Ghaddar, also a researcher known for her criticism of the powerful Hezbollah militias, was sentenced in absentia on January 10 over an expose at a conference in the United States, the source said.
Her sentence sparked outrage among fellow journalists and academics in Leb, where they said free speech and freedom of the press were once again being challenged.
The court official said the ruling found Ghaddar, a US resident, guilty of "defaming the Lebanese army, harming its reputation and accusing it of distinguishing between Lebanese citizens."
During a conference session in Washington in 2014, a recording of which is available online, she described the situation in Leb as "Sunnis being clamped down by Hezbollah and the Lebanese army versus Hezbollah militia being the untouchables."
Posted by: Fred ||
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[PRESSTV] The Israeli military is reportedly considering a plan to take over from police the control of the situation at a Paleostinian refugee camp and an Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem al-Quds amid ongoing tensions there over a controversial US policy shift on the occupied city.
Citing unnamed sources, Haaretz said the Israeli ministry for military affairs has confirmed the army is studying the plan to assume responsibility for the situation in the Shuafat refugee camp and the Kafr Aqab district in East Jerusalem al-Quds.
Those areas are in the jurisdiction of Jerusalem al-Quds, but are cut off from the rest of the occupied city by Israel’s Apartheid Wall, which has been under construction since 2002.
The International community designates Israel’s administrative control over East Jerusalem al-Quds as occupation since the regime invaded the area during the 1967 Arab War and then annexed it.
Clashes have intensified in the area since last month, when US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... ignored a consensus about the fate of the city, which many say should be decided in talks with Paleostinians, and declared that Washington was recognizing the entire Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel’s "capital."
Report say there has been almost daily festivities between Israeli forces and the Paleostinian protesters, especially the youths from the Shuafat refugee camp and the district of Kafr Aqeb. That has prompted the Israeli army intervene and control the situation in the neighborhoods of Jerusalem al-Quds, according to Haaretz.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
"Apartheid Wall"
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/20/2018 7:45
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[GEO.TV] The committee formed to probe the killing of Naqeebullah Mehsud has found the 27-year-old innocent, sources informed Geo News late Friday.
According to the initial investigation report, the committee has termed SSP Rao Anwar’s allegations against Naqeebullah baseless, sources said. In its report, the committee stated that there was no proof found of Naqeebullah being a terrorist. The 2014 FIR presented by Anwar was also bogus, it said.
The committee in its report has also recommended the registration of a case against Rao Anwar and other personnel involved in Naqeebullah’s killing. The name of Anwar should also be placed on the exit Control List (ECL), the initial investigation report stated.
’Justice will prevail’ The head of the committee, Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) Additional Inspector General Sanaullah Abbasi said that justice will prevail in the case and the outcome will be based on merit. Sanaullah Abbasi was speaking to Shahzeb Khanzada in Geo News programme ’Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada Kay Saath’.
Abbasi said the committee is investigating the case and interviewing several people in relation to the issue. He added that the team went again to observe the site of the incident and people will get to see justice in this case. The AIG in response to a question, said the team is under no pressure and added that they are ’prisoners of their own conscience’.
Suo motu notice Earlier on Friday, Chief Justice of Pakistain, Justice Saqib Nisar had taken notice of the suo motu ...a legal term, from the Latin. Roughly translated it means I saw what you did, you bastard... killing. The chief justice summoned a report from the Sindh police chief in seven days.
Following a hue and cry on social media and by relatives of the Wazoo native, an inquiry committee was formed under the chair of Counter Terrorism Department Additional IG Sanaullah Abbasi.
Posted by: Fred ||
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China is likely to use an electromagnetic catapult for fighter jets on its third aircraft carrier, experts said on Thursday.
The world's leading electromagnetic catapult technology was developed by a team led by Ma Weiming, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a Beijing-based expert, who asked for anonymity, told the Global Times on Thursday.
The technology will likely be used on China's third aircraft carrier - and second domestically made carrier - to revitalize the army through science and technology, he said.
The expert also said that the Central Military Commission has sent signals to adopt scientific achievements to enhance the military's combat capabilities and narrow the gap between China and other powers.
Li Jie, a Beijing-based naval expert, told the Global Times that security is the main concern for those who prefer steam-driven to electromagnetic catapults.
Globally, carriers launch aircraft via three basic methods: steam-driven catapult, electromagnetic catapult or ski jump.
China's first aircraft carrier, Liaoning, adopted the ski jump approach. Ten of 11 US aircraft carriers use steam catapults.
The USS Gerald R Ford is the only aircraft carrier that uses an electromagnetic catapult, experts said. The new catapult is believed to be more efficient and less damaging to planes.
Ma told media his team had conducted successful tests on the technology and are confident about its practical use.
As China has overcome the core technological problems of electromagnetic catapults, the technological advantage should be used to enhance combat capability, Li said.
#1
I think the ChiComms are a generation away from being a peer competitor with our Carrier Strike Groups and be able to project force globally
--Great you've figured out how to launch them. Next step is how to recover them.
--Current J-15 is WAY too heavy to carry enough gas/bombs to be anything other than a defender of the boat. They either have to build a bigger boat or a smaller airplane. I think they are building bigger boats.
--To go global, you have have fuel n food. ChiComms don't have a capacity to sustain their carriers for long term cruises.
The US has been doing this for 85 years. ChiComms can steal all the technology they want. What they can't steal is experience. Oh and here's another hint - NATOPS is written in blood.
Posted by: Bangkok Billy ||
01/20/2018 1:16
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What they can't steal is experience.
How many collisions have they recently had? I'm sure they don't have to spend time on 'human resource' training at the level American naval personnel face.
#5
Let the Chicoms waste their money on aircraft carriers. They were obsolete the moment the guided missile was perfected.
Posted by: Herb McCoy7309 ||
01/20/2018 2:18
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#6
I think the ChiComms are a generation away from being a peer competitor with our Carrier Strike Groups and be able to project force globally
That's what the USN thought about the IJN. Then came Pearl Harbor. And the Japanese had nowhere the amount of funding the Chinese are pouring into the PLAN. The Chinese spend about $200b on their military. When you adjust for salary differences* (about 7 to 1), the Chinese are probably spending about the same amount of money. Except they don't have expensive expeditionary forces stationed around the world. Bottom line is they will catch up faster than anyone expects, and I suspect they will be more or less even in a decade or so. Our allies in the region have been straddling the friends in hopes of keeping their trade relationships with China. One of these days, the Chinese will stage a grand tour of Asia, as they were wont to do periodically prior to the last 200 years of weakness. That is when our regional "allies" have to decide whether to become Chinese provinces or throw their lot in with US.
Isn't Thailand a Chinese province in all but name these days, what with their purchases of Chinese military junk equipment? What's the view from Bangkok?
#8
ZF - no doubt they can project power regionally and are spending money to catch up. However they are at least 10 years away from having all 5 CVs built let alone operational. Also they have zero amphibious capability. The ability to project globally requires multiple deployable CVs and the capability to seize/hold port facilities. Again they are not even close to being there. IMHO the PLAN submarine fleet is the wildcard.
Thailand - well you could say the same about Myanmar and Cambodia. PRC bought em plain n simple. I don't think the PRC will go all "Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" militarily - they're doing economically.
Posted by: Bangkok Billy ||
01/20/2018 8:44
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#9
I read the Chinese were putting their money into outdoor air purifiers.
[GEO.TV] Islam prohibits waging war against the Pakistain Army or killing any person who recites the Kalima, Maulana Sufi Mohammad, the leader of the banned Tehrik Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi (TNSM ...Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law) is a Pak militant group whose objective is to enforce their definition of Sharia law in Pakistain whether anybody wants it or not. It was founded by Sufi Muhammad in 1992, and was banned by President Musharraf in January, 2002 after Sufi dispatched several thousand yokels to Afghanistan to fight the infidel and ended up with most of them killed or captured and held for ransom. In 2007 TNSM took over Swat, which shows how well the banning worked. TNSM is the Pony League of Islamic militancy.. ), said on Friday, days after his release from an eight-year-long incarceration.
In an interview to a private news channel, the ailing 93-year-old holy man said the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... Pakistain (TTP) possess all signs of being apostates (Khawarij) and that the only punishment TTP chief Mullah Fazlullah ...son-in-law of holy man Sufi Mohammad. Known as Mullah FM, Fazlullah had the habit of grabbing his FM mike when the mood struck him and bellowing forth sermons. Sufi suckered the Pak govt into imposing Shariah on the Swat Valley and then stepped aside whilst Fazlullah and his Talibs imposed a reign of terror on the populace like they hadn't seen before, at least not for a thousand years or so. For some reason the Pak intel services were never able to locate his transmitter, much less bomb it. After ruling the place like a conquered province for a year or so, Fazlullah's Talibs began gobbling up more territory as they pushed toward Islamabad, at which point as a matter of self-preservation the Mighty Pak Army threw them out and chased them into Afghanistan... deserves is the death penalty .
He also said that the country would have been divided if it was not for the Pakistain Army, whose soldiers are like Mujahideen (holy warriors).
Earlier this month, the Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. High Court accepted Sufi Mohammad's bail plea and after his lawyer pleaded for his release as he had served a long time in prison despite his old age and deteriorating health condition.
This was his first interview to the media after his release.
Sufi Mohammad is the father-in-law of Mullah Fazlullah, the runaway head of the banned TTP who has waged war against Pakistain and is the country's most-wanted terrorist.
Further criticizing the activities of the TTP, Sufi Mohammad said that it is strictly prohibited in Islam to kill women and kiddies, and that those responsible for the massacre of children at the Army Public School in Peshawar were worse than infidels.
He also regretted the 2012 terrorist attack on Pak Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousufzai, saying she was a child and should not have been attacked, and added that he is not opposed to education of children. The TSNM chief also added that he had raised awareness in writing regarding permission for children's education.
Mohammad, who belongs to Maidan in Lower Dir district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, is facing trial in at least two cases registered in Swat ...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat... district including one in 2009 and another in 1995. He has been accused of committing sedition, waging war against Pakistain, and several other offences, and has previously termed the government, the Constitution of Pakistain, and the judicial system un-Islamic.
In the first case, the TNSM chief was charged under Sections 120-B (hatching criminal conspiracy), 121-A (waging war against Pakistain), 124-A (sedition), 148 and 149 (rioting) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Pakistain Penal Code.
The other case was registered at Swat's Kabal Police Station in June 1995 when Maulana Sufi Muhammad and his supporters tried to impose 'Shariah' in Malakand division with force. He was charged under Sections 121 and 121-A (war against Pakistain), 324 (attempted murder), 341 (wrongful restraint), and 353 (obstructing public servant) of the IPC.
Previously, the holy man was incarcerated Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! on November 20, 2001 in Kurram Agency ...home of an intricately interconnected web of poverty, ignorance, and religious fanaticism, where the laws of cause and effect are assumed to be suspended, conveniently located adjacent to Tora Bora... when he was returning from Afghanistan where he had gone along with thousands of his supporters to wage war against US forces.
He was released in April 2008 when the ANP-led provincial government entered into a peace deal with the TNSM in which the latter disassociated itself from attacks on security forces and government installations and promised to help it in restoring the writ of the state there.
However, a hangover is the wrath of grapes... Sufi Mohammad was arrested again after failure of the peace deal and the launching of the military operation in Malakand division. The government also restored the old cases against him and his followers.
His lawyer, Fida Gul, says that apart from the two cases, his counsel has already been acquitted or granted bail in 11 cases previously filed against him.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2018
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#1
Sufi Mohammad said that it is strictly prohibited in Islam to kill women and kiddies
He doesn't get out much, does he?
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/20/2018 8:35
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#2
One of the basic rules of Islam is demanding jihad on any muslim that does not himself perform jihad.
[GEO.TV] The BBC journalist who led the investigations into the fake degree mill, Axact, has revealed that he was offered a fake degree in business administration within 10 minutes of his call to the Axact office in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... despite the fact that he knew nothing about business.
BBC investigative journalists, Simon Cox, Helen Clifton and Matthew Chapman exposed that Axact from its Karachi office had sold thousands of fake degrees to customers in Britannia, including doctors, nurses and engineers.
The report was published on BBC websites (English and Urdu). The report aired on BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4 did a 40-minute programme on the scandal that had affected thousands of Britons.
Simon Cox told The News in an interview that as part of the investigation, Axact offered him a degree from fake online "Nixon University" costing $3,600 within 10 minutes after the BBC news hound called Axact.
"They showed me what it (degree) would look like. They showed me a course I was supposed to have taken. All they wanted to know was my credit card details and then I could get the degree delivered at my doorstep. They kept calling me and they were very persistent. They were concerned about getting money out of me."
The BBC news hound then got back in touch with the Axact weeks later to tell them that they are not a real university. "They tried to maintain this fiction that they did really exist and that they were in southern Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,. I kept asking them about the university’s address but they asked me about my address. They wouldn’t own up to the fact they didn’t exist. The first person I spoke to said they were in Washington, DC. The second person said they were in southern California. And when I countered them that they were lying, they said we have branches all over America. So they had an answer for everything."
The news hound said that the victims included those whose first language was English as well as those with English as second language. Simon Cox said that the BBC news hounds spoke to a large number of victims who were duped into buying worthless fake Axact degrees. "We talked to a victim from Israel who paid over $100,000 to Axact. This lawyer figured out that he was being fooled when Axact rang him pretending to be the American Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson. He realised that it couldn’t be true but by now he had paid over $100,000 and they wanted more. They wanted $200,000 from him."
Simon Cox said that the BBC investigation established that the USA remained the biggest market for Axact, followed by the Gulf Arab countries and Europe.
"We have obtained evidence that Axact sold over 200,000 degrees worldwide. It’s obviously going to be more than that now. We worked on this for a long time, for many months. In fact one of our teams had first worked on a fake degree story ten years ago. What’s interesting about the New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... and Canadian TV’s expose is that Axact should have been shut down years ago but it's back in business."
He said that the BBC investigation found that over 3,000 fake degrees were sold in the UK "to various professionals such as doctors, nurses, psychologists and lawyers, people in responsible situations". He said that most of these professionals had mainly original degrees and they needed "additional degrees" in order to get a promotion. "What was surprising was the scale and the number of the degrees they were selling here, and to the people they were selling to and the amount of money they were making."
He said it’s easy to dupe the ordinary people who seek help online. "When we told UK’s educational bodies about Axact’s activities in the UK, they were simply not aware Axact was operating again. They are using these loopholes where the UK can’t do anything. Because they will say it’s up to Pak authorities or American authorities because they are pretending to be an American university. When someone on phone tells you that you can buy a degree for $3,500 and you don’t have to do any kind of work, you know it’s not a genuine degree."
The BBC investigative news hound revealed that information about Axact continuing fake degree business came through various documents and sources who told the BBC that the company sold fake degrees through around 500 websites on full time basis.
"We were told that employees pretended to be Saudi ministers and American officials, they pretend to be from American universities. They would pretend anything to sell degrees. We know Axact employee played the part of American Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Another guy said they did fraud regularly and pretended to be politicians trying to fool people.
"We spoke to some people who worked for Axact and told us about how it works and talked about making money. He said a few years ago, Axact realised if you look on those website you see that these are fake universities. So they planned to make money from the people who already bought degrees. And they can keep going back to them again and again. And we have spoken to one victim from the UK who paid $600,000. Another UK victim paid $400,000. There are people in the UK we spoke to who have paid between $40,000 to $50,000 and this is from the initial purchase of fake degrees from maybe $5,000 or $10,000. Axact kept coming back and kept putting pressure on them with threats of shame exposes, deportation or arrests and prosecutions unless more money was paid. The customers paid more."
Simon Cox said that the BBC based its investigations on a combination of things including looking at the investigation done by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and "looking at a lot of documents, who had bought these degrees, how much they paid, where they were from and insiders who had worked there and knew how it worked, and we saw how they go back again and again and again until these customers had no money left and unless they get as much as they could".
He said the BBC found that the Axact continued to run fake university sites such as Brooklyn Park University, Neil Wilson University, Nixon University which exist only "online and don’t exist on the ground".
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2018
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The lanky, bespectacled man walked into a bank in a strip mall on Tucson’s northern edge with a gun, demanded that a teller hand over an undisclosed amount of cash and made his escape on foot.
Experts say the heist on Friday at the Pyramid Federal Credit Union branch represents a rarity in the world of bank robbery: The suspect, who was jugged Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try! the next day, is 80 years old.
And as it turns out, suspect Robert Francis Krebs has a decades-old criminal record for stealing from banks, including a 1981 robbery in Florida in which a branch manager and a teller were handcuffed and left in a vault.
Robert Francis Krebs served more than 30 years in prison for the bank robbery near Orlando and has a 1966 conviction in reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown ... home of Al Capone, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel,... for embezzling $72,000 from a bank where he worked as a teller. He also did time for theft and armed robbery convictions from Arizona dating back to 1980.
He was released from prison in Florida last summer and has since been found to have violated his probation because he didn’t disclose his whereabouts to authorities, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. Krebs, who is tossed in the clink Maw! They're comin' to get me, Maw! on a $50,000 bond, was booked on suspicion of armed robbery in the Tucson, Arizona, robbery. It’s unclear whether Krebs has yet been assigned an attorney.
Tucson police front man Officer Chris Hawkins said Sherlocks are trying to determine the motive behind Friday’s robbery.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2018
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#1
...trying to determine the motive behind Friday’s robbery.
Robert Francis Krebs does not sound like a muzz name.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/20/2018 4:43
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#2
3 hots and a cot. By choice
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/20/2018 6:38
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#3
Institutionalized. He wants back in
Posted by: John Frum ||
01/20/2018 10:45
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#4
He wants back in
Prolly just homesick. Hey, I wonder if he is any relation to Maynard G. Krebs.
#6
Why did he rob a bank? Because he wasn't in prison anymore. Not too many bank branches in prisons; you have to wait til you're out before you jack one.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/20/2018 14:25
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#7
Correctional facilities are failing to correct.
[atimes] China will soon start rolling out its next-generation rail technology across the country, and it is likely the futuristic trains won’t only have passengers on board.
Christened Fuxing, which means “renaissance” or “rejuvenation” in Mandarin, the bullet trains will be able to cruise at 400 kilometres per hour.
It is believed the trains have also been designed for a security role, as they will be capable of rapidly deploying troops, military materiel, weapons and other firepower if the need arises.
The People’s Liberation Army is reported to have tested a rail-mounted ICBM for the first time in 2015, with a Chinese media article noting the missile train was “a countermove in response to America’s global missile defence system and C-PGS (prompt global strike) program” of hypersonic missiles.
Observers believe that China’s DF-41 solid-fuelled ICBM, which is now hauled around the country on road transports and is capable of carrying 10 nuclear warheads to a range of 15,000 km, is likely to be adapted to a rail platform in the near future.
[THEHILL] The House on Friday once again rejected an effort by Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) to impeach President Trump, in a sign of inflamed partisan tensions ahead of a midnight deadline to avoid a government shutdown.
Green, who has agitated for Trump’s impeachment for months, forced a procedural vote on articles of impeachment following Trump’s Oval Office comments last week describing some nations as “shithole countries” while expressing a preference for immigrants from places like Norway.
It failed by a 355-66 vote, with three Democrats voting "present."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2018
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#1
355-66
I'd remember that ratio when the Civil War moves from Warm to Hot.
A lot of state and local legislation is being considered since the October shootings in Las Vegas. Columbia, South Carolina, for example, has passed a city ordnance banning the possession of bump stocks. Similar legislation is being considered in Washington state.
In a Facebook gun group, I keep hearing how you can do the same thing as a bump stock just by using the belt loops on your pants.
That misses the point. One murderous individual uses bumps stocks on his rifles to kill 58 people, so local and state politicians decide to do something about all the other shooters who not only do not possess such an attachment, but do not use it due to its lack of general utility. Out of all the rounds fired in all American rifles alone before the Las Vegas shootings, how is banning a practice going to help anyone? And how is a ban on a firearm attachment voted into law as consent of the governed.
We have a situation, and I doubt very many people have noted its practice, where leftists use the power of the law to attack their political opponents by constantly voting for more and more restrictions. The excuse is public safety, but the practice is what every tyrant since the beginning of time has done.
If... If... We didn't love Freedom enough. And even more - we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure. ... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.
I think we are in the aftermath.
Loads.
Rantburg's summary for arms and ammunition:
Pistol ammunition prices were mostly steady. Rifle ammunition prices were mostly steady.
Prices for used pistols were mostly higher. Prices for used rifles were mixed.
New Lows:
None
Pistol Ammunition
.45 Caliber, 230 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (4Q, 2017)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Red River Reloading, Silver Bear, FMJ, Steel Casing, .22 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 1,000 rounds: East Carolina Trading, Own brand, FMJ, Brass Casing, Reloads, .20 per round (From Last Week: -.01 Each After Unchanged (5 Weeks))
.40 Caliber Smith & Wesson, 180 Grain, From Last Week: -.03 Each
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Bulk Ammo Store, Own Brand, FN, Brass Casing, Reloads .18 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: East Carolina Trading, Own Brand, CRN, Brass Casing, Reloads, .17 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (6 Weeks))
9mm Parabellum, 115 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (3Q, 2017)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Extreme Reloading, Own Brand, RN, Brass Casing, Reloads .14 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: Fedarm, Own Brand, RN, Brass Casing, Reloads .13 per round (From Last Week: -.01 Each After Unchanged (5 Weeks))
.357 Magnum, 158 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (3Q, 2017)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Outdoor Limited, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel Casing, .23 per round
Cheapest Bulk: 1,000 rounds: Outdoor Limited, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel Casing, .23 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (3Q, 2017))
.38 Special, 158 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (4 Weeks)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Highland Lakes Ammo, Own Brand, FN, Brass Casing, Reloads .24 per round
Cheapest Bulk: 500 rounds: Fed Arm, Own brand, TMJ, Brass Casing, Reloads, .19 per round (From Last Week: -.05 Each After Unchanged (2 Weeks)
Rifle Ammunition
.223 Caliber/5.56mm 55 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (4Q, 2017)
Cheapest, 20 rounds: Able's, Wolf WPA, FMJ, Steel Casing, .20 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: Outdoor Limited, Wolf WPA, FMJ, Steel Casing, .20 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (4Q, 2017))
.308 NATO 150 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (3Q, 2017)
Cheapest, 20 rounds: LAX Ammunition, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel Casing, .32 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: SG Ammo, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel Casing, .30 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (2 Weeks))
7.62x39mm AK 123 Grain, From Last Week: +.01 Each
Cheapest, 20 rounds: Outdoor Limited, Wolf WPA, FMJ, Steel Casing, .20 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 1,000 rounds: True Shot Gun Club, Wolf WPA, Steel Casing, FMJ, .19 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (3Q, 2017))
.30-06 Springfield 145 Grain. From Last Week: Unchanged (4Q, 2017)
Cheapest, 20 rounds: Outdoor Limited, Wolf WPA, Steel Casing, FMJ, .54 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: United Nations Ammo, Wolf WPA, Steel Casing, FMJ, .53 per round (From Last week: Unchanged (4Q, 2017))
.300 Winchester Magnum 150 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (7 Weeks)
Cheapest, 20 rounds: LAX Ammunition, Prvi Partizan, Brass Casing, SP, .81 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: Target Sports USA, Prvi Partizan, Brass Casing, SP, .85 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged 9 Weeks)
.338 Lapua Magnum 250 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (2 Weeks)
Cheapest, 20 rounds: Outdoor Limited, Ten Ring, Brass Casing, SP, 2.15 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 200 rounds: Cabelas, Prvi Partizan, Brass Casing, HPBT, 2.80 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (6 Weeks))
.22 LR 40 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (2Q, 2017)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Ammo King, Aguila, RNL, .04 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 5,000 rounds: Outdoor Limited, Aguila, RNL, .04 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (2Q, 2017))
#2
Before knowing anything about the shooting (or about firearms), lefty lawmakers want to pass laws controlling bump stocks. So predictable and typical and stupid.
[Observer] However, the most serious such setback in recent years occurred in China, where in 2010 the CIA’s secret agents began disappearing, never to be heard from again. As many as 20 Chinese nationals who were on the Langley payroll went silent over a two-year period; they were jailed and, in at least a dozen cases, killed. Like Tehran, Beijing has no qualms about shooting traitors. One of the unmasked spies was shot in front of colleagues, in a government courtyard, to send a message about the consequences of collaborating with American intelligence.
Such a vast compromise was an indelible sign that something had gone seriously wrong inside the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. Practically the agency’s whole clandestine network inside China was systematically dismantled by Beijing’s counterspies, with lethal consequences. To any counterintelligence veteran, this meant one of two things: Langley had a well-placed Chinese mole or the CIA’s secret communications had been compromised.
This all looked eerily like the major-league mid-1980s disaster, when more than a dozen Soviets who were spying for the CIA—many of them senior intelligence officials—were arrested and, in most cases, executed. Virtually the whole stable of CIA’s agents in Moscow was taken out in a a few months, an unmissable sign that something had gone badly wrong. Debate raged over exactly what happened, and it took nine years for counterspies to identify CIA officer Aldrich Ames as a turncoat and the culprit in most (though not all) of those losses.
By 2012, when it became obvious that something similar had happened in China, a joint CIA-FBI investigation commenced and quickly got bogged down in the usual bureaucratic rivalries plus the lack of hard evidence. Codenamed HONEY BADGER, the top-secret inquiry repeated many of the patterns that plagued what became the Ames investigation. Now, as then, CIA officials were sheepish about contemplating the possibility of a mole at Langley—something that FBI agents considered plausible—and much attention focused on possible communications compromises. Sometimes sloppy tradecraft by CIA officers in handling their Chinese sources was looked at—but could it explain the loss of 20 agents, a whole spy network?
Now, we may be getting some answers, at last, with the announcement this week by the Department of Justice that it made an espionage arrest on Monday night. Arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York was 53-year-old Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former CIA officer, who had been a focus of counterintelligence investigation for years. Born Zhen Cheng Li, he emigrated to the United States with his family, served two years in the U.S. Army, and joined the CIA in 1994, working as a case officer until he resigned in 2007. Lee believed his career had stalled, and he left the agency disgruntled—which is always a potential warning sign to counterintelligence investigators.
Upon examining Lee’s career and what he had access to while working in CIA espionage operations, he looked like a good fit for a possible mole. However, his departure from the agency and subsequent move to Hong Kong (where, investigators believed, his new job had been arranged by Chinese intelligence) complicated matters. He was therefore lured back to the United States in mid-August 2012 for meetings in Honolulu, ostensibly for possible work on a CIA contract, and while Lee was busy, FBI agents, armed with a search warrant, took apart his hotel room.
What they found is spelled out in the DoJ affidavit: “two small books containing handwritten notes that contained classified information, including but not limited to, true names and phone numbers of assets and covert CIA employees, operational notes from asset meetings, operational meeting locations and locations of covert facilities.”
Possessing such information is a serious crime as a well a violation of the non-disclosure agreements that Lee signed when he joined the CIA. Moreover, it’s difficult to conjure up a benign explanation of why a former agency case officer took such sensitive and highly classified information home with him—and then traveled around the world with it in tow. FBI agents questioned Lee about his foreign contacts during his Hawaii visit, but during a total of five interviews while Lee was in the United States, they did not interrogate him about his “two small books.” Lee eventually returned to Hong Kong, a free man.
Investigators in Washington observed that the roll-up of the CIA’s agents in China halted after Lee’s trip to Hawaii, and although he remained the prime suspect behind Langley’s counterintelligence debacle, he remained out of reach in Beijing-controlled Hong Kong. His appearance in New York this week made him accessible to the FBI, which placed him in custody, apparently after attempting to get him to talk about his secret activities.
It should be noted that Lee has been charged with “unlawful retention of national defense information,” which can lead to 10 years in federal prison, but DoJ has made no mention of any connection to the 2010-12 spy disasters. Neither is there any indication so far that Lee will face charges relating to the deaths of CIA agents in China, notwithstanding that he’s still the top suspect in that investigation.
This wouldn’t be the first time that the FBI has arrested a turncoat on lesser charges in the hopes of coercing a confession to more serious crimes. However, if Lee doesn’t talk, prosecutors may be facing serious obstacles, particularly because the Intelligence Community never likes to see its secrets discussed in open court—especially when what’s revealed is unflattering.
This is a high-profile case that illustrates many of the IC’s persistent counterintelligence problems. In particular, the wisdom of using Chinese immigrants to spy on their native land seems unwise, given Beijing’s habit of ruthlessly exploiting Overseas Chinese for espionage. We can expect calls of “racial profiling” to appear soon, even though the only racial profiling here is done by Chinese intelligence by recruiting their co-nationals abroad for espionage against their adopted countries. Above all, if Jerry Lee is a traitor who got several CIA agents killed, he needs to face justice for that crime.
John Schindler is a security expert and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer.
#1
In particular, the wisdom of using Chinese immigrants to spy on their native land seems unwise, given Beijing’s habit of ruthlessly exploiting Overseas Chinese for espionage.
The issue is that their family members can be persecuted in their home countries. It's one thing to recruit a spy in China who doesn't have access to the identities of other spies, and quite another to allow a Chinese-born agent-runner access to the identities of Chinese assets back in his home country.
[ATimes] This most recent spasm of violence between state security forces and members of the ethnic Rakhine Buddhist community further complicates the state’s delicate ethnic dynamics and threatens to destabilize a wider geography beyond the border state’s northern reaches.
The events of January 16 and two high-profile arrests of ethnic Rakhine leaders have brought the ethnic group’s grievances to a violent fore, raising the specter of even greater conflict between security forces and the Arakan Army, a Rakhine insurgent group.
In Rakhine as elsewhere, the perceived failure of the central government to devolve power and pave the way for a genuine and inclusive federal system looms large. So, too, does the lack of flow-on benefits to the people from the central state’s exploitation of the nation’s abundant natural resources.
Much of Rakhine state’s population lives in poverty, ranking second in economic hardship to only neighboring Chin State. The Rakhine also feel that only abuses committed against the Rohingya are given airtime by the international community and Western media.
The recent mass killings of Hindus, as well as members of the Mro and Daignet ethnic minorities, have gone largely underreported. The government continues to impede and deny media access to Rakhine and has blocked an independent United Nations-mandated fact-finding mission.
These tensions, including between Buddhist Rakhine and Muslim Rohingya communities, have long boiled in Rakhine. But with the state’s northern region hemorrhaging Rohingya refugees and talk now turning to their repatriation, ethnic Rakhine grievances have pivoted back towards the central government again.
On January 16, a crowd gathered in an annual ceremony marking the demise of an ethnic Rakhine kingdom by invading Burmese forces over two centuries ago. The gathering had not been given official permission, according to authorities quoted in news reports.
Earlier that afternoon, a prominent Rakhine activist and writer named Wai Hun Aung was arrested over comments he made during an address in Rathedaung the day prior in which he urged Rakhine people to support the Arakan Army in its revolt against ethnic Bamar supremacy.
On December 18, former Arakan National Party (ANP) leader Aye Maung was arrested in Sittwe for making similar comments in support of the Arakan Army. He said Rakhine people were treated like “slaves” by the ethnic Bamar majority and that people were being organized in an armed struggle for freedom.
Both have been charged under the 1908 Unlawful Association act, colonial-era legislation frequently used to suppress dissent.
The crowd that amassed in Mrauk U on January 16 was not insignificant: state media reported the crowd swelled to as many as 10,000 people; other more conservative estimates, including a Reuters report, put the figure at around half that number.
In July 2017, a new jihadist group began advertising its presence in northwestern Syria. The outfit, Katibat al Ghuraba, or Katibat al Ghuraba al Turkistan (KGT), claims to be mainly comprised of ethnic Uighurs, but other ethnicities are represented in its ranks as well. It is unclear what its relationship is with the largest ethnic Uighur organization in Syria, the Turkistan Islamic Party, which is affiliated with al Qaeda. However, it has become more prevalent on social media in recent weeks, as it takes part in battles against the Assad regime alongside other jihadist groups.
#4
Maybe they see that the cheap labor is about to dry up and taking it out of the taxpayer's hide is Plan B...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/20/2018 4:36
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#5
Once again as the capitalist system creates efficiencies the taxes tied to the inefficiencies must be adjusted. With cars much more efficient with MPG, migration to cities over the last 25 years, electric cars.... the taxpaying driver community must pay more for the right to drive on poorly managed infrastructure
#7
There used to be this thing called 'capital budgeting' that took the need for infrastructure replacement into account. These anti-free enterprise asswipes have some nerve asking us to pay for someone else's neglect / mistakes.
#8
cheap labor is about to dry
Last I knew government employed no cheap labor except the military, and they aren't used in infrastructure jobs in this country.
#12
My local bridge projects receive FHWA funds via DOT/Caltrans oversight. I'm sure the bureaucracy eats their fair share, but at the local level our soft costs are about half the Caltrans rate. We run a lean operation.
That said, the constant gas tax increases are a also a measure of the leftist/statist effort to cut your transportation choices and free will (Mileage taxes). They HATE private vehicle ownership and freedom of choice. Wait til cars are driverless (no steering wheel) and you wanna take that pleasure/vacation trip two states over and the car says that trip "isn't authorized". Think that can't happen?
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/20/2018 15:50
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#13
#12 - Bingo. We have a winnah! DING DING DING!!!
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/20/2018 16:11
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#14
herding the future generations into urban hives allows for better control and governance. Hub cities are the goal, and urban sumps allow for better erosion of traditional American values of independence and individualism into group think and obedient serfs!
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Somali and US commandos stormed a camp for al-Shabaab ... the Islamic version of the old Somali warlord... myrmidon fighters in an overnight raid, killing at least four of the fighters and rescuing child conscripts, a Somali intelligence official said on Friday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said special forces raided the camp in Jame’o village in Middle Shabelle region. A local commander was among those killed, he said.
A second official confirmed the raid, which was carried out with the support of helicopters that later evacuated the young recruits.
Human Rights Watch earlier in the week accused al-Shabaab of the forced recruitment of hundreds of children in recent months. The recruitment of children is a long-standing practice of the al-Qaeda-linked group which faces growing military pressure across south and central Somalia.
It was not immediately clear how many children were rescued during the overnight raid.
US Arclight airstrike
Also on Friday, the US military said it had carried out an airstrike in Somalia that killed four members of the al-Shabaab myrmidon group.
A statement from the US Africa Command said the strike was carried out Thursday about 50 kilometers northwest of the port city of Kismayo ...a port city in the southern Lower Juba province of Somalia, at the extreme southern end of the country (assuming Somalia can be called a country). It is the commercial capital of the autonomous Jubaland region... . The statement said no non-combatants were killed.
The US military carried out more than 30 dronezaps last year in the long-chaotic Horn of Africa nation after President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... approved expanded military efforts against al-Shabaab.
The myrmidon group was blamed for the October truck bombing in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, that killed 512 people. Thursday’s US airstrike was the first since one early this month that killed two al-Shabaab Death Eaters and destroyed a vehicle carrying explosives, "preventing it from being used against the people in Mogadishu."
Last year, Somalia’s Somali-American president vowed that his government would drive the myrmidon group out of the country.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2018
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[ALMASDARNEWS] Despite the political disagreements between the Syrian government and Kurdish PYD, the former will continue to allow YPG units to reinforce the Afrin Canton from within their territory in Aleppo.
According to a military source in Damascus, the Kurdish YPG have been allowed to consistently reinforce the Afrin Canton from the government-held parts of Aleppo.
Reinforcements from the YPG traveled along the shared Hasakah-Aleppo Highway to the city of Aleppo, where they eventually made their way to the Afrin Canton in the northwestern part of the province.
The military source added that the YPG has sent several hundred reinforcements to the Afrin Canton over the last 48 hours.
On Friday, the Ottoman Turkish Minister of Defense stated after his meeting in Moscow that his forces were going to invade the Afrin Canton, despite the Syrian government’s disapproval and warnings.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2018
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For many years illegal aliens received full blown drivers licenses from the California Department of Motor Vehicles‐all they had to do, is what they do every day, LIE. In this case they were claiming they were here legally or citizens. It was never vetted, challenged or checked. Now a Court has determined that every person that gets a license in California is automatically registered to vote. Why should an illegal alien get the special drivers license, as 800,000 have. Instead claim citizenship and you get a license and a vote.
""We are very pleased that Californians will have easier access to voter registration," said Jeremiah Levine, an attorney with Morrison Foerster who represented the voting rights groups. "We are especially satisfied that changes will be made before California’s statewide and federal primary elections."
The state agreed to roll out a new program that will automatically register driver’s license applicants to vote unless they opt out. The program is part of AB 1461, dubbed the California New Motor Voter Act. Signed into law in October 2015, the new statute requires the DMV to forward records for all eligible applicants to the Secretary of State’s Office for registration unless those applicants elect not to register to vote.
Yup, the infamous League of Womens voters policy is to support corruption of the electoral process. No one is surprised. Then the Secretary of State, who refuses to remove illegal aliens from the voter rolls‐he won’t check the special drivers license list for illegal aliens against the voter rolls‐who believes it is OK for fraud in elections. April 1 may be the key date free elections, what is left of them, ends in California.
Golden State Settles Suit Over Moter-Voter Rules
NICHOLAS IOVINO, Courthousenews, 1/18/18
SAN FRANCISCO (CN) ‐ Starting this April, the more than 1 million Californians who renew their driver’s licenses by mail each year will be able to register to vote using one form under the terms of a new settlement agreement.
The settlement reached Jan. 10 ends eight months of litigation over California’s alleged violations of the National Voting Rights Act of 1993.
The League of Women Voters and three other groups sued the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles and Secretary of State’s Office in May 2017, claiming the state burdens would-be voters by making them fill out the same information on two separate forms to register to vote.
"We are very pleased that Californians will have easier access to voter registration," said Jeremiah Levine, an attorney with Morrison Foerster who represented the voting rights groups. "We are especially satisfied that changes will be made before California’s statewide and federal primary elections."
The state agreed to roll out a new program that will automatically register driver’s license applicants to vote unless they opt out. The program is part of AB 1461, dubbed the California New Motor Voter Act. Signed into law in October 2015, the new statute requires the DMV to forward records for all eligible applicants to the Secretary of State’s Office for registration unless those applicants elect not to register to vote.
"The League of Woman Voters of California lawsuit was settled last week in which the department agreed to continue implementing AB 1461 (The California New Motor Voter Program) according to our current schedule," DMV spokeswoman Jessica Gonzalez said in an email.
According to the lawsuit filed last May, California ranks "a dismal 46th in the nation" in its rate of registered voters. More than 5.5 million eligible voters were unregistered as of February 2017, according to state data.
In August 2017, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler refused to dismiss the suit, finding the National Voting Rights Act forbids making driver’s license applicants fill out duplicate information to register to vote.
A representative for the League of Women Voters California did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment Wednesday afternoon.
Other plaintiffs in the lawsuit include the ACCE Institute, California Common Cause, and National Council of La Raza.
#3
ok so maybe this will fly for state elections, but what about federal ones? seems like a slam dunk to me that any federal level vote could be challenged.
[TruePundit] The whole Las Vegas hero narrative appears to be one big lie.
Finally, we have the proof.
Pictures and video DO NOT lie.
But in Las Vegas we have learned the Clarke County Sheriff, the Las Vegas Metro Police Department and the FBI certainly do lie.
An their latest collective lie is a Big One.
We have previously written about this, and the dishonesty of law enforcement in Las Vegas since the massacre, so let’s do a quick recap.
From our Oct. 26, 2017 story:
A growing faction of FBI agents doubt Jesus Campos’ gunshot story that reportedly unfolded during the Oct. 1st Mandalay Bay massacre in Las Vegas.
FBI agents are experiencing similar frustration in Las Vegas, where they allege MGM is bullying FBI brass to bend and mold the shooting investigation to their corporate will and needs. At almost every turn FBI results and Intel have to be cleared with MGM, FBI insiders said. Hence, the ever-changing timeline of the shooting by alleged killer Stephen Paddock.
MGM Resorts, in short, is strong-arming and bullying the FBI led by Las Vegas FBI SAC Aaron Rouse, a disciple of embattled FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Rouse was appointed to the post by now-fired FBI Director James Comey.
If accurate ‐ and there is little reason to doubt veteran federal law enforcement ‐ this is certainly another black eye for the embattled FBI. We have already reported the Clark County Sheriff’s office is simply rubber stamping FBI decisions and has little autonomy of the probe.
Now onto Campos.
A growing faction of federal law enforcement sources dispute a number of gaping discrepancies from the information and timeline supplied by Campos and his MGM bosses. There are many. The largest is the story that any man who took a round to the thigh from the assault rifles employed by Paddock would be acting and active like Campos in the days following the shooting. And the moments following such trauma.
Was Campos actually shot? He has not been allowed to talk about it, no medical records have been provided, no doctors have verified, and officials have dismissed such a question as patently ludicrous. Campos is a damn hero, they maintain.
Perhaps he is truly a hero and did save lives but science and medicine, along with FBI naysayers, cast doubt on the official MGM-controlled narrative.
Officially the FBI and Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo maintain Campos took one bullet to the right thigh from over 200 rounds blasted at him from Paddock through the hotel suite doors. Campos, according to the official narrative, then kept working diligently alongside Las Vegas Metro Police to help subdue Paddock.
Lombardo said Campos still has the bullet lodged in his leg and will need surgery to remove it.
FBI insiders, military veterans, and trauma surgeons conclude that claim is quite unlikely.
"A 223 or 5.56 (ammo) round to the upper leg would put you in a world of hurt," a veteran agent said. "I see very few scenarios where you would be able to stand and assist anyone. He said he fled the hallway? How? What about massive blood loss?
"And who closed the wounds?"
The agent said the wounds created by the velocity of the ammo round would be "impressive."
Lombardo said Campos took a 223 round to the leg. Again, Lombardo maintains it is still lodged in his leg, even though medical experts agree such a round would turn a femur bone to dust and still blow through the other side of the thigh if it didn’t also explode his femoral artery.
Such a blow to the leg would drop even the biggest and baddest military veterans, leaving them incapacitated absent medical help. Ask any combat veteran.
But newly obtained photograph shows NO bullet holes in the breached hotel room door.
So how could Campos ‐ who never entered the room ‐ suffer bullet wounds if no bullets traveled through the hotel door?
The picture is below. Enlarge it. Zoom. Do you see 200 bullet holes?
We don’t see 200 rounds. We don’t see any rounds at a level that would hit Campos in the thigh. In fact, we are fairly sure the door has no visible bullet holes.
#1
Quite a story of supposition, alleged sources and fabricated opinion. The only verifiable detail, the door photos, show only two sides of the right entry door. The left may indeed be full of holes.
#3
So, why is LVPD and the FBI so invested in keeping everything under wraps? This seems to go far beyond protecting a case or going after other uncaught co-conspirators. A lack of transparency fosters conspiracy theories and begs the question: "What are they hiding?"
#4
I love a good conspiracy, and there are many, many curious things about this case. But layered on top of that is a liability claim with 851 victims (the new number of reported victims If I remember correctly). So this is lawyered up to stratospheric levels and every minute detail is considered by platoons of sharks and nervous nellies. Hence the glacial patterns.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Al Arabiya has received new footage and details surrounding the wedding of Hamza bin Laden, the son of al-Qaeda murderous Moslem group’s criminal mastermind Osama, when he was 17 years old in Iran.
The younger bin Laden is said to have married the daughter of al-Qaeda's second-in-command and deputy to current leader Ayman al-Zawahri, Abdullah Ahmad Abdullah, nicknamed "Abu Mohammed al-Masri".
The clip, which Al Arabiya was briefed on its details, was among the latest documents released by the CIA in regards to the Abbottabad ... A pleasant city located only 30 convenient miles from Islamabad. The city is noted for its nice weather and good schools. It is the site of Pakistain's military academy, which was within comfortable walking distance of the residence of the late Osama bin Laden.... files.
Hamza bin Laden’s wedding is estimated to have been held in 2005, four years after September 11 attacks and around the same time when al-Qaeda leaders had sought refuge in Iran.
Wedding guests The video showed a group of al-Qaeda leaders who are listed on the international terrorism list, including Mohammed Shawki al-Islambouli, the brother of the assassin of the late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, along with Kuwaiti Suleiman Abu al-Ghaith, son-in-law of the late Osama bin Laden ... who is now beyond all cares and woe... and the former al-Qaeda front man, along with Saif al-Adl, who was most probably responsible for documenting the wedding with his cameras.
Al-Ghaith is the husband of Fatimah bin Laden, who seemed to show no interest in appearing in the wedding video but was shown at one point telling one his stories with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri ... Formerly second in command of al-Qaeda, now the head cheese, occasionally described as the real brains of the outfit. Formerly the Mister Big of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Bumped off Abdullah Azzam with a car boom in the course of one of their little disputes. Is thought to have composed bin Laden's fatwa entitled World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders. Currently residing in the North Wazoo area assuming he's not dead like Mullah Omar. He lost major face when he ordered the nascent Islamic State to cease and desist and merge with the orthodx al-Qaeda spring, al-Nusra... during their presence in Kandahar.
Hamza also had a number of his brothers beside him, including Saad bin Laden, who was killed by a dronezap in Wazoo after he left Iran. He tells his brother Hamza in the video: "Hamza, the ninth brother to get married".
The video has also shown the wedding being held in two places, the first being inside a mosque and then the continuing at their residence in the compound which was chosen by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2018
00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda
[Al Jazeera] The police killing of a man in Karachi has sparked a social media outcry, as his family members reject claims by authorities that he was a member of the Pakistan Taliban, saying he was an innocent aspiring male model.
Police fatally shot Naqeebullah Mehsud, 27, during a raid on what they described as a "terrorist hideout" in eastern Karachi last week, according to a police statement.
He was buried in his native town of Makin, in the South Waziristan tribal district bordering Afghanistan, on Friday, family members told Al Jazeera.
So-called "encounter killings" are common in Pakistan. Rights groups say when police lack enough evidence for a court conviction, they extrajudicially kill suspects.
In 2016, police said they had killed at least 318 suspects during raids and shootouts in Karachi, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HCRP), an independent rights organisation.
"Some men in plainclothes came and abducted him from a restaurant in Karachi on January 3 [10 days before police said he was killed]," said Alamgir Mehsud, Naqeebullah's cousin. "Then on January 16, we were told that he had been killed by police. We got his body back the next day."
Naqeebullah, also known as Naseemullah, ran a popular Facebook page where he posted pictures of himself modelling clothes and hairstyles.
"He used to work in a garment mill in Karachi, and he used that money to fund his modelling," said Alamgir. "He was a sort of idol to young people from the Mehsud tribe in Karachi."
By late December, Naqeebullah's page had more than 14,000 followers, and he often posted light-hearted messages.
On September 16, he posted a warning to young people not to engage in the "Blue Whale Challenge", a reported social media campaign that encouraged self-harm.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2018
00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
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.
"Damn your dollars!" Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas railed at the United States and President Trump during his recent maniacal tirade.
[Reuters] - James Comey, the former Federal Bureau of Investigation director who was fired last year by U.S. President Donald Trump, will teach a course on ethical leadership at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, the school said on Friday.
[Daily Caller] Stephen Paddock had hundreds of images of child pornography in his possession when he carried out the Las Vegas mass shooting on Oct. 1, according to a report released by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department on Friday.
And of course let’s not forget seizure queen Hillary Clinton. Everyone, all the so called experts thought she’d be in the Oval Office now with Bill Clinton getting interns once again. She’s actually a year younger than both Trump and BJ Bill. How is she looking these days?
...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic...
Photo: United Wa State Army soldiers.
[Inquirer] A top New People's Army leader in Mindanao and his wife surrendered to the Philippine military on Monday after months of negotiations. Military spokesman Benjamin Leander said Noel Legazpi, known as “Ka Efren,” spokesman for the NPA’s Far South Mindanao Regional Revolutionary Committee in the last 20 years, and his wife, Wendy, a member of the NPA medical team, turned themselves in with the help of South Cotabato Governor Daisy Avance Fuentes. Legazpi has been with the communist movement for 26 years.
[NYPOST] Seven members of a cable TV crew were arrested at Newark Airport on Thursday after trying to film themselves passing a fake explosive device through a security checkpoint and onto a plane, according to reports.
[Al Jazeera] A teenage boy has been shot and killed by police after a juvenile hearing at an Ohio court during an altercation, local officials said. 
[Al Jazeera] The US government will submit a motion to dismiss indictments for 129 of the 188 remaining Inauguration Day defendants, leaving 59 facing felony charges that could land them behind bars for decades.
[GEO.TV] Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa confirmed the death sentences of 10 hardcore 
Summary: It is easy to get lost in the webs of tales about political crime and scandal that the media spin for us. Here James Bowman puts the stories about Trump in a useful larger context, so that we can better understand whatever comes next.
[JP]
[ThePeople'sCube]
[ThePeople'sCube]
[Observer]
[SFGATE] 
MOSCOW — There are many valid critiques of U.S. President Donald Trump’s new direction for NASA. Few, if any, would be new. NASA has, for decades, been redirected by nearly every new administration to take office. But Russian government officials saw an opportunity for domestic attention and took a stab at it.
Wazoo
[ChinaMil.com]
Kurram Agency
[GEO.TV] The BBC journalist who led the investigations into the fake degree mill, Axact, has revealed that he was offered a fake degree in business administration within 10 minutes of his call to the Axact office in 
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The lanky, bespectacled man walked into a bank in a strip mall on Tucson’s northern edge with a gun, demanded that a teller hand over an undisclosed amount of cash and made his escape on foot.
[atimes] China will soon start rolling out its next-generation rail technology across the country, and it is likely the futuristic trains won’t only have passengers on board.
[THEHILL] The House on Friday once again rejected an effort by Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) to impeach President Trump, in a sign of inflamed partisan tensions ahead of a midnight deadline to avoid a government shutdown.
[Observer] However, the most serious such setback in recent years occurred in China, where in 2010 the CIA’s secret agents began disappearing, never to be heard from again. As many as 20 Chinese nationals who were on the Langley payroll went silent over a two-year period; they were jailed and, in at least a dozen cases, killed. Like Tehran, Beijing has no qualms about shooting traitors. One of the unmasked spies was shot in front of colleagues, in a government courtyard, to send a message about the consequences of collaborating with American intelligence.
the Islamic version of the old Somali warlord...
...a port city in the southern Lower Juba province of Somalia, at the extreme southern end of the country (assuming Somalia can be called a country). It is the commercial capital of the autonomous Jubaland region...
[TruePundit] The whole Las Vegas hero narrative appears to be one big lie.
Zawahiri
[Al Jazeera] The police killing of a man in Karachi has sparked a social media outcry, as his family members reject claims by authorities that he was a member of the Pakistan Taliban, saying he was an innocent aspiring male model.
