(CNSNews.com) ‐ Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the Judiciary Committee chairman, on Sunday promised to find out "who’s telling the truth, what actually happened," in the days after President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.
Graham said he will subpoena former Acting Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appear before his committee, "if that’s what it takes."
Graham told CBS’s "Face the Nation" that "everybody in the country needs to know" if Rosenstein suggested wearing a wire into the White House to secretly record the president; and whether Rosenstein suggested invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office.
Both allegations surfaced in a CBS "60 Minutes" interview with McCabe (details below).
Graham on Sunday promised to "get to the bottom of it."
#5
They will play the famous Stephen Colbert Defense™: "Whenever you catch me in a blatant falsehood it was a 'Joke', not a perjury and/or something libelous, because I am a Comedian!"
A paper published Monday in a well-known science journal begins with the following sentence: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a pair of grape hemispheres exposed to intense microwave radiation will spark, igniting a plasma." A universally acknowledged truth indeed... but what causes this microwave marvel?
If you’re not familiar, putting grapes into a microwave to make sparks has become a popular YouTube trick. This new research from Canadian scientists shows that worthwhile advances can come from anywhere, even by studying something sort of silly.
"This is a regime that hasn’t been significantly studied before," one of the paper’s authors, Pablo Bianucci from Concordia University in Montreal, told Gizmodo.
The trick usually shows two grape halves connected by a thin sliver of skin. After a few seconds of being microwaved, they begin to spark. Though various explanations exist online, researchers wanted to study the phenomenon more rigorously.
The researcher imaged both sliced grapes and hydrogel beads‐made from a material that absorbs lots of water‐as they sparked in the microwave. They realized quickly that the grape skin wasn’t required in order to get the sparks, as evidenced by the sparking in the hydrogel beads, held together only by their weight and the shape of the dish they sat in, according to the research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The specific geometry of two touching water-filled circular objects in an electromagnetic field creates resonances concentrated at the point where the spheres or half-spheres intersect. This becomes a very small hotspot with a high energy density, enough to create plasma out of the ions in the region where the objects touch.
Is the research worth publishing in a journal as high-profile as PNAS? The paper’s editor, University of Illinois chemistry professor Catherine Murphy, certainly thought so. "The fact that they were rigorous enough to pass through the process of peer review is a testament that they’re doing a good job on the technical end," she told Gizmodo.
But the paper is far more than a gimmick, Murphy said. This sort of research on directed energy could find important use in other directed-energy systems, such as explosives or high-intensity laser pulses. Additionally, the paper presents a way to image electric fields in these sorts of physical setups, and could lead to advances in photonics more generally.
Plenty of quirky things could yield useful scientific results if you apply rigorous thinking and conduct a well-thought-out experiment, as demonstrated by this work. Also, so we’re clear: If you accidentally burn your house down microwaving grapes, it’s not my fault.
[NWO Report] The result of a new, independent audit of the last years of President Obama’s term, 2015 and 2016 ‐ show an almost criminal attempt to cover-up gross mismanagement of funds and a wealth of errors.
Thetruthdivision.com reports: Here’s what Audit Report 2017-FO-0005, released Wednesday, notes:
"The total amounts of errors corrected in HUD’s notes and consolidated financial statements were $516.4 billion and $3.4 billion, respectively.
There were several other unresolved audit matters, which restricted our ability to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to express an opinion."
That is a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse.
The audit continues, noting exactly why they made a "check-up" of the department:
"Our objective was to express an opinion on the fairness of HUD’s consolidated financial statements in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) applicable to the Federal Government. This report presents our reissued independent auditor’s report on HUD’s fiscal years 2016 and 2015 (restated) consolidated financial statements, including an update to our report on HUD’s internal controls."
#1
Year to date perhaps but not end of fall to date. Back in the winter of 2016-2017, there was more snow in the mountains and more rain in the foothills and valleys.
for snow see
https://squawalpine.com/skiing-riding/weather-conditions-webcams/squaw-valley-snowfall-tracker/?tab=ui-id-3
Posted by: lord garth ||
02/20/2019 8:07
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#2
So two of the last three winters have had mega snow packs? Could it have anything to do with the unusually low number of sun spots lately? Or just high SUV sales?
#3
AND when all of this gift from God melts, the run off will go straight to the Pacific because California has no infrastructure to capture storm water and snow melt runoff.
Thanks to the environazis who won't let anyone build a dam or create a reservoir.
#7
AND when all of this gift from God melts, the run off will go straight to the Pacific because California has no infrastructure to capture storm water and snow melt runoff.
And when we have a dry cycle Newsom will tell us we can only take three five-minute showers a week.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/20/2019 13:14
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#8
Rotary snow blower over UP Railroad near Donner Pass (The Hill):
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/20/2019 13:44
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#9
I better make my cow fart more while driving it around in my SUV.
#10
actually, California's reservoirs are already at normal or above normal levels with the exception of Oroville which is being held down because of structural concern. This is before the spring melt and despite 2017-2018 being a dry year
#1
Russia is loyal until the very bitter end of your cash flow. Then they'll freeze your accounts and pretend they don't know you, like any good banker.
#1
So many people are so surprised that a government program has been captured for the benefits of certain participants, mission be damned. What the hell do you think has been going on with schools for the last 50 years?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/20/2019 8:07
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[The National Interest] Led by Formosa TV (FTV) chairman Kuo Pei-hung’s Formosa Alliance, pro-independence advocates in Taiwan have recently sparked controversy with a call for a referendum on whether the democratic island-nation should declare de jure independence. Deeply unsatisfied with what they regard as President Tsai Ing-wen’s far too cautious, if not "concessionary," approach to China, the Alliance, along with like-minded members within Taiwan’s deep-green camp, is likely to field its own candidate in next January’s general elections and has pressured Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to select someone else for the race.
Through their calls for a more muscular response to Chinese encroachment and for a referendum on sovereignty, the Alliance has attracted firm responses from a number of American academics (among them Richard Bush of the Brookings Institution) as well as the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the United States’ de facto embassy in the absence of official diplomatic ties‐and those responses have been highly unfavorable to the referendum cause. In both cases, the principal source of concern is the belief that a unilateral change to the "status quo" in the Taiwan Strait, such as could occur should a referendum be passed, would be both potentially destabilizing and contravene the United States’ longstanding "one China" policy.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) has also indicated it would deal "carefully" with the referendum issue, adding that "as a responsible government, the administration has to take into consideration Taiwan's role in maintaining peace and stability in the region." Revisions to referendum laws enacted by the Tsai administration, which have lowered the thresholds for the initiation and passage of referenda, have strategically left out plebiscites on constitutional change and anything that touches on the Republic of China’s (Taiwan’s official designation) sovereignty.
#1
It's much more complicated in Taiwan than external viewers understand.
First never forget the high high high illegal alien contingent who can't vote. These are in the main ChiCom tourist who just stayed for various reasons. In the small nation these folks are not included in the census counts but likely number between 10 to 12 million out of an population of 23.5 million. That makes the real population closer to 35 million with 1/3 illegals.
The Taiwanese native populations and tribes tend to be pro-independence as they were ruled by non-Chinese for most of their history and see no special relationship with China.
The Nationalist (KMT) and others came over under the US 7th Fleet protection when the KMT lost the civil war in China to the communists. At this point in time Taiwan was only under Chinese rule for 4 years. The people in Taiwan tended to see the KMT and Nationalist refugees as invaders. My parents saw this directly in their first landlord when they went to Taiwan. He had been an iron and steel kingpin under the Japanese rule. The KMT came over starving poor and with weapons. Generals took his iron and steel factories for themselves and treated him like a war criminal when he complained. Secret police, shakedowns, beating theft the whole nine yards. He had an antique hobby and gold so he would buy, likely looted, antiques from the same KMT refugees with gold so they could eat. He moved the antiques out of the region. Eventually, my parents helped him buy his way out of the country with bribes. He ended his life an old man in Cleveland painting endless works of pigs representing the KMT and Chinese refugees. His kids did fine here with PHDs from MIT.
The dislike between the two groups is intense enough that many of the Chinese who came with the civil war or their children have moved elsewhere. The Taiwanese background are now strongest in the south half of the nation and have no longing to be part of China.
This division is on glaring display in their Whitehouse. It was the Japanese Governor's palace when it was part of Japan. The US and the English bombed it. They have exhibits of the wartime bombing and display them as war crimes by America. Of course most KMT don't see it that way but were not the population bombed. The displays exist for internal political reasons. I was pretty disgusted when I saw them.
Tourism: For China, Taiwan is their Florida in the wintertime. A place for Chinese Snowbirds where the food and written language are culturally similar and all the people can speak Mandarin. (It doesn't mean all will speak Mandarin to the ChiComs and the written language is Classical Chinese characters and not the simplified stuff Mao forced on China)
[Daily Caller] The United States is forecast to reach another milestone in oil output next month thanks to rising production in the country’s biggest shale formations.
The Energy Information Administration (EIA), a government agency that tracks U.S. energy production, is expecting the country’s seven major shale formations to increase output by 84,000 barrels per day in March. The increase will bring total oil production in the U.S. to a record of around 8.4 million barrels per day (bpd).
The Bakken region in North Dakota, for example, is expected to reach a record-setting 1.45 million bpd by March. The Eagle Ford region in Texas is projected to climb to 1.44 million bpd ‐ the highest monthly output that formation has seen since January 2016. The Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico is slated to see the highest rate of increase, with analysts expecting the region’s production rate to reach a record 4.024 bpd.
The EIA also projected major growth for gas production. The agency expects U.S. natural gas output to reach a record 77.9 billion cubic feet per day by March. If those numbers reach fruition, it would be the 14th consecutive monthly increase in U.S. gas production.
The record-setting numbers come at the heels of President Donald Trump’s "energy dominance" agenda.
[Daily Mail] The family of ISIS bride Shamima Begum today vowed to take Home Secretary Sajid Javid to court to stop him taking away her British citizenship.
The remorseless 19-year-old is in a Syrian refugee camp with her newborn son but Mr Javid has moved to ensure she will never allowed back into Britain after she fled to join Islamic State.
The Home Office will argue that because Begum's mother was born in Bangladesh her daughter is entitled to dual citizenship meaning she would not be left stateless, which is illegal under international law.
But Begum's family says she does not have a Bangladeshi passport and has never been there, making Mr Javid's decision illegal, they claim.
The teenager, who fled Britain with friends aged 15 and married a Dutch jihadi, has been unapologetic about ISIS' crimes and said the Manchester Arena suicide bombing could be considered 'retaliation'.
She also insists that the British public should be 'sympathetic' towards her and should be allowed back to London with her baby on human rights grounds.
But last night Sajid Javid last night moved to block her return to Britain arguing that taking away her British citizenship is 'conducive to the public good' on terrorism grounds.
Posted by: 3dc ||
02/20/2019
06:51 ||
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"...an exploding passport". Another reason I read rantburg; for the commentary.
Posted by: Roger Smith ||
02/20/2019 13:54
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#8
Related: Hoda Muthana is not a U.S. citizen. #NEW #breaking @SecPompeo on American #ISISBride:
“Ms. #Hoda Muthana is not a U.S. citizen and will not be admitted into the U.S. She does not have any legal basis, no valid passport, no right to a passport, nor any visa to travel to the U.S.”
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
02/20/2019 15:55
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#9
well...bye
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/20/2019 19:24
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#11
I mean... in my mind, the most logical solution would be to remove her from the "refugee" camp and execute her rather than continue this ridiculous discussion in the first place. Whether or not she should legally be allowed to return if she remains alive, she should be killed for her crimes, so the point is moot. Or should be.
Doreen Boyd remembers the first time she saw a hint of slavery from space. A satellite image from 2017 of Rajasthan state in India showed a brown oval that looked like a dusty high school track. But it was nothing so innocuous: She knew it was a brick kiln, one of tens of thousands across South Asia that are often run on forced labor. Boyd, director of the data program at the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, realized such imagery could help her tally the kilns, enabling organizations on the ground to target slaveholders at the sites. “You can’t see slavery directly, but you can infer it,” she says.
A surge in the number of Earth-observing satellites, along with improvements in algorithms that can interpret the deluge of data they provide, are putting modern slavery under a spotlight. This week, at a conference in New York City sponsored by the United Nations University (UNU), computer scientists, slavery experts, and policy strategists presented the latest efforts in their fields and brain-stormed ways to work together. “We’re doing team science,” says Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, an expert in peace studies at the University of San Diego in California who has interviewed slaveholders at kiln sites like those the Rights Lab studies from space.
Some 40.3 million people are held in bondage today, according to the latest estimates from the Inter-national Labor Organization, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. But finding them is hard. “People affected by this are often hidden from the gaze of the state,” says James Cockayne, director of UNU’s Centre for Policy Research in New York City, who helped organize the conference. Boyd estimates, however, that one-third of all slavery is visible from space, whether in the scars of kilns or illegal mines or the outlines of transient fish processing camps.
[THE LID] Victor Davis Hanson had a superb article at American Greatness on Monday, proclaiming the death of the Deep State coup attempt against Trump and offering an autopsy of it. The autopsy is gripping, and I can’t recommend strongly enough that you read it in full. The scope of what was attempted, and the losses in institutional trust and integrity, are breathtaking. There’s another issue however, all of the legitimate counterintelligence investigations that were ignored while the Deep State was trying to overturn the Trump presidency.
I do think Hanson is right to say that the coup attempt, as we can legitimately call it ‐ since there was never any evidence of Russia-Trump "collusion" to interfere with the 2016 election ‐ has failed. The attempt he outlines, involving the Department of Justice, the FBI, and a slew of Obama officials at the NSC and other vital agencies (e.g., State, CIA), has been too thoroughly exposed to continue.
Indeed, Hillary Clinton is in no position to keep paying anyone to pump air into it. And whatever the DNC’s involvement was in 2016, the leadership has changed since then, and the party itself is undergoing a transformation only dimly understood right now. If DNC HQ is pulling strings in a current effort to unseat Trump in an untimely, extra-electoral way, there’s no sign of it.
#1
If Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff (Ds-CA) and others have their way, the Democrat-led House will spend the next 23 months invading the lives of as many Trump associates and family members as necessary to draw blood from Trump himself.
Look into the House investigator's (Waters, Schiff, etc.) backgrounds and dealings. There is most likely plenty there. Why else are they getting so aggressive when going after Trump? Cover up. Meanwhile, prosecutions need to move ahead rapidly. If the Trump admin. doesn't cut out the cancer, the country's future looks dim.
Either Hillary or an evil twin of Hillary will return to do evil.
#2
I do not consider the discussion of implementation of the 25th Amendment to be a coup attempt. The people who would have to participate would largely be the President's own appointees and a majority of them would have to agree that he was not capable of discharging his duties. It is not an unreasonable thing for discussion, and in this case came nowhere near implementation.
That's a good look, Nick. Your military tools stopping aid from coming to your starving sick masses...
[Thomson-Rooters] Venezuelan troops will remain stationed along the country's borders to prevent territorial violations, the defense minister said on Tuesday, ahead of the opposition's plan to bring in humanitarian aid to alleviate an economic crisis.
President Nicolas Maduro has rejected offers of foreign food and medicine, denying there are widespread shortages and accusing opposition leader Juan Guaido of using aid to undermine his government in a U.S.-orchestrated bid to oust him.
Guaido has said that aid will enter Venezuela from neighboring countries by land and sea on Saturday. The United States has sent tons of aid to Colombia's border with Venezuela, but Maduro has refused to let it in.
In comments broadcast on state TV, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino said the opposition would have to pass over "our dead bodies" to impose a new government. Guaido, who has invoked the constitution to assume an interim presidency, denounces Maduro as illegitimate and has received backing from some 50 countries.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday warned members of Venezuela's military who remain loyal to Maduro that they would "find no safe harbor, no easy exit and no way out."
"You'll lose everything," Trump told a crowd of Venezuelan and Cuban immigrants in Miami.
Venezuelan authorities have closed the maritime border with the Dutch Antilles, a regional navy chief told Reuters on Tuesday, preventing boats and aircraft from arriving from the islands of Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire.
Vice Admiral Quintero Martinez did not give a reason for the closure, though Venezuela's opposition have said they plan to bring humanitarian aid into the country from Curacao on Saturday, which Maduro's government has pledged to block.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/20/2019
06:24 ||
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[WarZone] For weeks now, Venezuela has been in the grips of a political battle between President Nicolás Maduro and opposition leader Juan Guaido, who the United States and dozens of other countries have recognized as the country’s legitimate head of state.
The plane spotting community is now among those intently watching the situation for signs of curious air traffic, or a potential U.S. military intervention. So, it certainly turned heads when a U.S. Air Force RC-135V Rivet Joint spy plane made an unusually public appearance recently in the Caribbean Sea. But Rivet Joint missions in the region are more common than many people might know and this sortie may not necessarily have been related to the crisis in Venezuela at all.
Expert military aviation tracker and friend of The War Zone @aircraftspots was first to notice the RC-135V, serial number 63-9792, using the callsign Gismo 84, in the Caribbean on Feb. 14, 2019. The airliner-sized intelligence gathering platform subsequently linked up with a KC-10A Extender tanker, Spur 57. This isn’t uncommon for Rivet Joint flights, which can be many hours long as the planes fly long tracks close to target areas gathering valuable intelligence.
Open source intelligence. The military can turn the transponders off, but that's not always practical or treaty compliant. There are plenty of hobbyists that follow this stuff, and bragging about your hobby is sort of the point. There's a whole community that does the same thing with military space assets. All you need is a telescope.
Like being photographed on a public sidewalk, there is no expectation of privacy.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/20/2019 9:20
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[American Thinker] Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, published in 1866, explored the theme of morally justifying crime for its greater good and benefit to society. Fast forward 150 years from Russia to the American political deep state, where similar righteous themes are playing out.
Former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, in May 2017, was in the middle of a Deep State coup to try to remove President Donald Trump from office using the 25th Amendment. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was also part of the plan, allegedly offering to "wear a wire" to record the lunatic rantings of President Trump to use as justification to nullify the results of the recent presidential election. The latest is that two more Trump cabinet members may (or may not) have signed on to the coup.
Someone from the New York Times might call this patriotism, acting out of a higher moral calling to stop someone unfit and unsuited to be president, an outsider not from the establishment club. As Trump once said of himself during the campaign, he was an "existential threat" to the deep state establishment. "Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt establishment with a new government controlled by you the American people." A clear and present threat to the Deep State.
Others will call McCabe’s actions a coup, a treasonous attempt to subvert an election. Then having failed, ramped-up effort to remove a duly elected president from office, either by impeachment or by considering invoking the 25th Amendment.
Former FBI Director James Comey, an integral part of this coup attempt, wrote a book entitled Higher Calling: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, a title justifying his transgressions for the so-called greater good to society. His greater good was suppressing justice when it suited him and his establishment peers by ignoring or suppressing the legitimate investigation into Hillary Clinton’s illegal handling of classified email. This evolved into subverting justice by initiating a FISA warrant and spying -- first on a presidential candidate, then president -- based on unverified political opposition research presented to a FISA court as verified intelligence.
[Townhall] Government watchdog Judicial Watch has issued a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Justice for documents surrounding official efforts to oust President Trump through the 25th amendment.
Here's what they're looking for:
All records of communication of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the Office of the Attorney General Jeff Sessions, or the Office of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussing the 25thAmendment or presidential fitness. Additionally, the lawsuit seeks all recordings made by any official in the Office of the Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General of meetings in the Executive Office of the President or Vice President.
The lawsuit comes after DOJ failed to respond to requests for documents filed in September 2018. Earlier this week, fired Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe told 60 Minutes there were discussions to remove President Trump from office and said it was his duty to solidify the Russia investigation before he was fired.
“It is no surprise that we are facing an immense cover-up of senior FBI and DOJ leadership discussions to pursue a seditious coup against President Trump,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton released in a statement. “This effort to overthrow President Trump is a fundamental threat to our constitutional republic so Judicial Watch will do everything it can in the courts to expose everything possible about this lawlessness.”
[Daily Beast] CNN staffers are upset and confused about the network’s decision to hire a partisan political operative to oversee its 2020 campaign reporting.
On Tuesday, a CNN spokesperson confirmed to The Daily Beast that the network has hired Republican political advisor Sarah Isgur as the politics editor helming CNN’s 2020 coverage. The move was first reported by Politico.
Throughout her decade-long career in Republican politics, Isgur has served as an advisor to Ted Cruz and Mitt Romney, and was Carly Fiorina’s deputy campaign manager for the 2016 Republican primary. Until last year, Isgur was a top spokesperson for former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Department of Justice.
A CNN spokesperson said Isgur will not be involved in the network’s DOJ coverage, but will guide TV and digital coverage of the 2020 election, occasionally offering on-screen analysis.
The hiring was met with a negative internal reaction, especially because many CNN staffers have been largely left in the dark on the controversial decision. While other marquee hires are often announced internally, as of Tuesday afternoon the company has not circulated any guidance to staff about Isgur’s new role, leading employees to wonder how much of a role she will have in day-to-day political reporting.
#2
CNN staffers are upset and confused about the network’s decision to hire a REPUBLICAN partisan political operative to oversee its 2020 campaign reporting.
That's whats really ticking them off
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/20/2019 6:49
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#3
No institutional bias there. (do I need to put a /sarc on that?)
CNN staffers are upset and confused about the network’s decision to hire a partisan political operative a person of color to oversee its 2020 campaign reporting.
Now that is made clear of what intolerance is about.
#6
The hiring was met with a negative internal reaction, especially because many CNN staffers have been largely left in the dark on the controversial decision.
(Reuters) - The U.S. Transportation Department said on Tuesday it will cancel $929 million in federal funds awarded by the Obama administration for a California high-speed rail project and is "actively exploring every legal option" to seek the return of $2.5 billion the state has already received.
California Governor Gavin Newsom said last week the state will dramatically scale back a planned $77.3 billion high-speed rail project that has faced cost hikes, delays and management concerns, but will finish a smaller section of the line.
The Transportation Department’s Federal Railroad Administration said in a letter it wanted to halt funding because the state had "failed to make reasonable progress." It cited Newsom’s announcement to scale back the project.
Newsom, in a statement, linked the Trump administration action to California leading 15 other states in challenging what he called "the President’s farcical ’national emergency,’" to obtain funds for building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
"This is California’s money, and we are going to fight for it," Newsom said of the rail funds.
[AlAhram] A Ottoman Turkish appeals court upheld a ruling to jail journalists and executives from the opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet, the paper said on Tuesday, adding that its employees will be sent back to prison to serve the remainder of their sentences.
A court last year sentenced 14 staff of Cumhuriyet - one of the few remaining voices critical of the government - to jail on charges of terrorism and supporting a U.S.-based holy man blamed for organizing an attempted coup in July, 2016.
Human rights organizations have voiced increasing concern about media freedom in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire.... , accusing President Tayyip Erdogan of using the abortive putsch as a pretext to quash dissent.
Cumhuriyet said that an appeals court had found the trial lawful and approved the convictions against its staff. The court’s decision finalizes prison sentences under five years and the rest will now go to a higher court.
Journalists Kadri Gursel and Hakan Kara, cartoonist Musa Kart, lawyer Bulent Utku, and accountant Emre Iper will be sent back to prison to complete their sentences, all of which are less than five years, Cumhuriyet said.
Editor-in-chief Murat Sabuncu, prominent journalist Ahmet Sik, Hikmet Cetinkaya, Orhan Erinc, Akin Atalay and Aydin Engin will appeal against their sentences, all longer than five years, at a higher court, the paper added.
The staff of Cumhuriyet were charged with supporting the network of Fethullah Gülen ... a Turkish preacher living in Pennsylvania whom the current govt of Turkey considers responsible for all the ills afflicting Turkey and possibly the entire world... , the Moslemholy man Ankara holds responsible for the failed 2016 coup attempt. They have denied the charges.
Since the failed coup, more than 77,000 people have been jugged Please don't kill me! pending trial, while about 150,000 civil servants and military personnel have been sacked or suspended from their jobs. Widespread operations and arrests are still routine.
Ottoman Turkish authorities on Tuesday carried out three separate operations against alleged followers of Gulen’s network across the country, ordering the arrests of 311 people.
Authorities ordered the arrests of 53 military personnel from the army, air force and navy, the Istanbul prosecutor’s office said in a statement. The state-run Anadolu news agency said three other operations were underway the coastal province of Izmir and Ankara.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
02/20/2019
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#1
Jeez, they've been acting on this for going on three years now. Erdoğan and his cronies are slackers.
The 1933 National Socialists were much more efficient, but they were German.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
02/20/2019 10:28
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[AlAhram] Egypt's Court of Cassation upheld on Monday an earlier criminal court decision to place 241 people on the country's terrorist list.
In May 2018, the Egyptian gazette published a decision by the Cairo Criminal Court to place 241 people on the terrorist list for joining the Wilayet Sinai terrorist organization.
The cassation court's decision was based on a memo by the High State Security Prosecution saying that the suspects worked to restructure the organization and attract new members to carry out hostile plans against the Armed Forces, the police and the judiciary.
The court highlighted that this cell has been implicated in several attacks targeting police and army personnel in April 2017.
Wilayat Sinai is the self-proclaimed name of the terrorist group formerly known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which declared allegiance to ISIS in November 2014.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
02/20/2019
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[Wash Examiner] A truck driver who claimed to be hauling strawberries aboard his tractor trailer from Mexico into the U.S. was arrested Saturday after customs officers stationed at a border crossing found nearly $13 million worth of methamphetamine on board.
The driver, a 42-year-old Mexican man, was flagged down and inspected by a Customs and Border Protection officer working at the Pharr International Bridge.
The truck was directed to the cargo processing center's massive, noninvasive X-ray machine, which CBP uses to scan a vehicle for illegal items without having to open it up. The truck was moved to the cargo processing center's docks where drug-sniffing dogs alerted law enforcement to narcotics.
When the truck was unloaded, CBP officers found 350 packages of methamphetamine that weighed 906 pounds. The meth was worth $12.7 million in street value.
[Free Beacon] According to a new report produced by the Government and Accountability Office (GAO), at least $1 billion in food stamp benefits are "trafficked annually," meaning they are fraudulently used. The extent of the fraud is uncertain, the GAO warns, estimating the abuse of the program could be as high as $4.7 billion.
About 20 million lower-income households receive benefits from the $64 billion Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, to buy food. But GAO found that instead of being used for food, many stores are defrauding the program by "selling" cash instead of food.
"For example, a store might give a person $50 in exchange for $100 in benefits ‐ then pocket the difference," GAO explains.
The Food Nutrition Service (FNS) within the U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees SNAP and is responsible for authorizing and overseeing retailers.
#3
Well, yeah, fewer clients collecting the same or more benefits. In Washingtonese, that's a "cut..."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/20/2019 8:41
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#4
Don't forget about the EITC fraud, though it's hard to pin down an accurate annual fraud total - suffice to say it starts at $1 billion per annum. This is known as a 'refundable credit', which means you get the credit / refund even if you have little to no Federal tax liability.
Oh - and Google buries the critical search results amongst the Mother Jones type articles telling us there's no fraud to see here, move along.
#6
I was standing in line at a gas station convenience store outside of Richmond VA off of route 95. A woman attempted to purchase cartons of cigarettes with EBT cards. She requested the cashier to ring up an eligible purchase. The cashier would have none of it and basically kicked her out of the store. As I exited the store I noticed New York plates and a backseat full of cigarette cartons. Probably a very profitable scam as they buy the EBT cards for less than 50 cents on the dollar and then buy low tax smokes to be sold in New York at 200% plus mark up.
#8
The proposed solution will be to allow the EBT cards to be used like any other debit card, for toilet paper...and beer.
Don't forget marijuana.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/20/2019 12:53
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#9
Food stamps are a joke. People used to come in all the time at the gas station I was working at, buying mounds of pop and junk food and whatnot on their EBT cards, all at incredibly high gas station prices mind you. I was at a big corporate store that would never do the cash fraud itself, but all the locally owned Arab stores will do it, at least in the poorer areas of town. 50% is what a store will do, a lot of people will sell them for a better price to people that don't work for a store though (think a friend or family member).
[AlAhram] Egypt's security forces killed 16 holy warriors in North Sinai governorate on Tuesday morning in two raids.
According to the ministry of interior, the ministry's national security department identified two terrorist hideouts from which a number of attack were going to be launched against vital institutions and figures in the city of El-Arish.
Ten of the bad boyz were potted in an empty plot of land in Ubaidat district, El-Arish city after they opened fire on security forces conducting the raid.
The second hideout was in an under-construction house in Abu Eita district, where six holy warriors were also killed after opening fire on police forces.
Firearms, ammunition, and explosives were found at the hideout.
On Saturday, Egypt's armed forces said that 15 Egyptian military personnel were killed during an attack on a security check point in North Sinai. Seven Death Eaters were also killed in the attack.
The military has been carrying out Operation Sinai 2018, a counter-terrorism campaign, since February 2018. The campaign involves land, naval and air forces, as well as the police and border guards.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
02/20/2019
01:41 ||
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[FOX] A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a lawsuit filed by an advocacy group hoping to halt construction of former President Barack Obama's $500 million presidential center on Chicago's South Side can proceed.
U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey, who was nominated to the federal bench by Obama in 2014, ruled that Protect Our Parks has standing to sue the city because it represents taxpayers with concerns that providing land in Jackson Park to the Obama center violates their due process rights. The judge indicated that he doesn't want the litigation to drag on, and that he'll limit any fact-gathering before the trial to 45 days.
The proposed Jackson Park site is seven miles from downtown Chicago, is near low-income neighborhoods where Obama worked as a community organizer, and lies just blocks from the University of Chicago, where Obama was a law professor. It is also close to the home where the Obamas lived until he won the presidency in 2008.
#3
This library would be a good place to keep all the documentation of how bigly Obama screwed America for eight years. A repository for copies of the indictments, espionage, evidence destruction, pay-for-play, phony charities, treason, etc., discovery, trial transcripts, testimony, prosecutions, sentencing results,
#9
it will never be big enough for him. He will show up on the grand opening and never return. No reason to visit the 'surrender to enemies' wing or the 'golf' wing or the 'obamacare' wing since he lived it. However, the 'phone and pen' display may be interesting.
#11
It is NOT a Presidential Library; there may be access to documents but it would be at computer terminals at one room in the Center - of course people could do that at their home.
It might have various memorabilia, e.g., Michele's dresses and of course a souvenir shop but whatever else it is not a library.
Posted by: lord garth ||
02/20/2019 12:34
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#18
Judicial Watch should be the operator of the Chicago Obama Library.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/20/2019 15:56
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#19
Exhibits: Mysterious Mom,
Hall of Dads; Diorama: Hammam;
Those columns, that chair,
Deadly drone, "Uh," "I," CAIR,
Bows, Apologies, Prize of Salaam.
Posted by: Large the Fragrant6589 ||
02/20/2019 21:03
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[KhaamaPress] The Military officials in South of Afghanistan are saying that 45 Lions of Islam were killed or maimed during the operations in Zabul province in past one week.
The officials further added that over the last week the 205th Corps has aggressively pursued the Taliban ...Arabic for students... in Arghandab and Mizan districts of Zabul. Clashes with the snuffies have been offensive operations towards the Taliban backed by the use of Afghan artillery.
"These recent festivities have resulted in 33 snuffies killed and 12 maimed. Additionally, during these operations against the Taliban, the 205th Corps discovered 45 IEDs along the roads which were cleared by the Army engineers," the officials said.
According to the military officials, these operations come on the heels of a large attack from the Taliban last week against an ANA checkpoint in Arghandab District which killed the soldiers manning that checkpoint.
The 205th Corps confirmed that over the last month, there were approximately 50 attacks against ANDSF, mostly check points. Of these attacks, less than 5 resulted in a loss of infrastructure and were reoccupied by friendly forces within 24 hours. Additionally, there were 25 attacks against ANDSF that were repulsed by the 205th Corps and mitigated by the use of offensive attacks against the Taliban and were solely fought and won by Afghan Forces.
General Iman Nazar, 205th Corps Commander said "Our brave Soldiers risk their lives every day to protect our country. They have adapted to recent Taliban attacks and offensively reacted to take the fight to the Taliban."
Rahmatullah Yarmal, Governor of Zabul said "The 205th Corps brigade in Zabul has seen recent attacks, but continue to fight and see success, with the support of the people, to make our province safe."
[KhaamaPress] At least two Lions of Islam were killed as they were placing an Improvised Explosive Device in a graveyard in southern Kandahar province, the security officials said.
Provincial Police Chief Gen. Tadin Khan said the incident took place late on Monday in the vicinity of Arghandab district.
Gen. Tadin Khan further added that the Lions of Islam were busy planting an Improvised Explosive Device in a graveyard when the explosives went off prematurely, leaving two Lions of Islam dead.
The anti-government armed Lions of Islam including Taliban ...mindless ferocity in a turban... have not commented regarding the incident so far.
The anti-government armed Lions of Islam including Taliban often use Improvised Explosive Device as the weapon of their choice to target the security forces.
However, today is that tomorrow you were thinking about yesterday... in majority of such attacks the ordinary civilians are killed while Talibs also sustain casualties in some premature IED kabooms.
[KhaamaPress] The Afghan forces have seized up to 100 weapons of various during separate operations which were conducted in different parts of Kabul city.
The Ministry of Interior (MoI) in a statement said the Counter-Narcotics Police Forces seized 39 pistols and some munitions during in Pul-e-Charkhi area of the city.
The statement further added that the pistols and munitions were loaded in a vehicle and were being transported to Kabul but the police forces managed to stop the vehicle and confiscate the weapons in Pul-e-Charkhi entrance gate.
At least two people have been tossed in the clink Please don't kill me! in connection to the transportation of weapons and are in police custody for further investigations, the Ministry of Interior said.
The Ministry of Interior in a separate statement said the intelligence and Special Forces of police conducted an operation against a weapons cache in Asia Bini area of the city in the 13th police district of the city and confiscated 55 weapons including 15 Ak-47s, a Ak-74, and 39 pistols.
h/t Instapundit
Jesse Singal points out that most black Virginians want Gov. Ralph "Blackface" Northam to stay in office (58 percent ‐ more support than Northam has among whites). Most Latinos don’t want to be called "Latinx". Only nine percent of Native Americans want the Washington Redskins to change their name. This signals that progressives have a class problem.
#2
conservative whites in the U.S. are, on average, so conservative that it’s hard to argue in good faith a different progressive communication strategy could sway anything but a tiny subset of them.
But that hasn't stopped the media's quest, has it.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/20/2019 14:56
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h/t Instapundit
The Jussie Smollett case, in which a young black, gay actor has apparently concocted a tale of being attacked by two white men wearing MAGA hats and shouting anti-gay slurs, is just the latest example of how desperately media elites want to confirm their favored narrative about America: that the country is endemically and lethally racist, sexist, and homophobic, and that the election of Donald Trump both proves and reinforces such bigotry.
The truth: as instances of actual racism get harder and harder to find, the search to find such bigotry becomes increasingly frenzied and unmoored from reality. IMO, if you keep looking for something, you'll eventually find it.
In 2013, a black was six times more likely than a non-black to commit murder, and 12 times more likely to murder someone of another race than to be murdered by someone of another race.
In 2013, of the approximately 660,000 crimes of interracial violence that involved blacks and whites, blacks were the perpetrators 85 percent of the time. This meant a black person was 27 times more likely to attack a white person than vice versa. A Hispanic was eight times more likely to attack a white person than vice versa.
In 2014 in New York City, a black was 31 times more likely than a white to be arrested for murder, and a Hispanic was 12.4 times more likely. For the crime of “shooting” — defined as firing a bullet that hits someone — a black was 98.4 times more likely than a white to be arrested, and a Hispanic was 23.6 times more likely.
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) – Two Iraqi children were killed Tuesday in a bomb blast in the western province of Anbar, a security source said as the country still suffers from almost daily bomb attacks by Islamic State militants.
Speaking to Almaalomah news website, the source said that an explosive charge went off in al-Nassaf area, west of Fallujah in Anbar, while a group of children were playing there.
“The explosion left two children dead,” the source said, adding that a security force rushed to the blast site and started to search for any other explosives at the scene.
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) – An Iraqi mayor has said that army troops have freed five people, who were kidnapped by Islamic State militants last Friday in western Iraq.
Mayor Hussein al-Akidi of Rawa city in the western province of Anbar told SNG News that an army force launched a military operation in al-Madham district, west of Rawa, to free the five civilians, who were kidnapped while gathering desert truffles in the desert of the province.
The troops managed to flee the abductees and moved them to a safe place, the mayor added.
On Monday, a security source said that 12 Iraqi people, including five security men, were kidnapped by the militant group in Umm al-Jedaan area, west of Anbar province.
Two of the kidnapped security men were found later dead, the source said.
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) – Iraqi border guards have found bodies of six people, who were kidnapped by the Islamic State terror group in Najaf governorate on Monday.
The bodies were found in Umm Jezan area, some 150 kilometers away from Nukhayb town in Anbar, Iraqi website Alghad Press quoted a military force affiliated to the Popular Mobilization Forces as saying in a statement.
Preparations are underway to move the bodies to the forensic medicine department, the statement read.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
02/20/2019
01:13 ||
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[IsraelTimes] French police arrest two teenagers in a suburb of Gay Paree on suspicion that they maimed a person while firing an air rifle at a synagogue on Shabbat.
The two teenagers lightly maimed a passerby near the synagogue of Sarcelles on Friday by shooting a lead projectile into his calf, the AFP news agency reports. A court clarifies that they are not being investigated as suspects in an anti-Semitic hate crime over the incident.
The two alleged shooters are aged 15 and 16, the Le Gay Pareeien newspaper reports.
They staked out the synagogue from a balcony overlooking the building on Friday night, as worshipers began to gather there.
Moise Kahloun, the president of the Jewish community of Sarcelles, says he does not believe the attack was anti-Semitic. "This is not an anti-Semitic attack, just kids who shot at random."
[IsraelTimes] Despite renewed US sanctions on Iran, the Islamic Theocratic Republic’s oil exports have risen in the first 1.5 months of 2019 and have been higher than expected, the Rooters news agency reports, citing tanker data and industry sources.
Shipments averaged between 1.1 and 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) in January, higher than was first thought, the report says.
So far in February, they have been at 1.25 million bpd, it adds, citing data from Refinitiv Eikon.
[IsraelTimes] The jacket wallah who carried out last week’s attack that killed 27 members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards was a Pakistain national, the force’s Sepah news agency reports.
"The suicide bomber was named Hafez Mohammad-Ali and was from Pakistain," Brigadier General Mohammad Pakpour, commander of the Guards’ ground forces, is quoted as saying on the sidelines of a commemoration service in Tehran.
One other member of the krazed killer cell that planned the attack was also a Pak citizen, the head of the Guards’ ground forces, Brigadier General Mohammad Pakpour said.
Iran has repeatedly blamed Pakistain for sheltering Lions of Islam connected with attacks in the border area, although Tuesday’s remarks appear to be the first time Tehran has said Pak citizens were directly involved in the attack.
Iran also accuses regional rival 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... of promoting violence among members of Iran’s Sunni Moslem minority. Pakistain and Saudi Arabia deny any role in attacks in Iran.
Three Iranians from Sistan and Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... province in southeast Iran were also part of the cell and two of them have been enjugged Maw! They're comin' to get me, Maw! , according to Pakpour. The guards announced three arrests in the case on Monday.
Remnants of the car used in the suicide kaboom were given to the police, Pakpour said. Once the owner of the car was identified, intelligence and security forces carried out arrests.
The Lions of Islam had planned to carry out multiple attacks, Pakpour said: "This group had prepared a lot of ammunition and equipment."
[Ynet] The corpse count from an attack last week by button men in northwestern Nigeria has doubled to more than 130, the Kaduna state governor said on Tuesday, adding it appeared to have been a deliberate plan to "wipe out certain communities."
Governor Nasir el-Rufai did not elaborate on what he meant. Those killed in last week's attack were mainly from the Fulani ethnic group, who are usually Moslem and have been involved in festivities in recent years with people from the Adara ethnic group, who are predominantly Christian.
h/t Instapundit Her mother was an internationally famous cancer researcher and the daughter of P.V. Gopalan, a high-ranking Indian diplomat from the Brahmin caste. Her father was a professor of economics at Stanford who served as an adviser to multiple Jamaican prime ministers.
As a Los Angeles Times article described her, she was the "privileged child of foreign grad students".
Senator Harris, who had previously opposed drug legalization, denied that she opposed marijuana legalization. "Half my family’s from Jamaica, are you kidding me," she retorted.
Her family is from Jamaica. But Senator Harris is cynically playing on stereotypes about drug use.
Donald Harris’ Stanford bio describes him as an "economic consultant to the Government of Jamaica and as economic adviser to successive Prime Ministers". He had been a Fellow at Cambridge and a Fulbright Scholar in South America. He had even done consulting work for the UN and the World Bank.
The Harris family is descended from slave-owner Hamilton Brown. His grandfather, Joseph Alexander Harris, was a landowner.
And the Harris family does not find Kamala's pot joke amusing.
#2
Senator Harris, who had previously opposed drug legalization, denied that she opposed marijuana legalization. "Half my family’s from Jamaica, are you kidding me," she retorted.
Kamala Harris seems to be cut from the same cloth as Obumble. She even has her own "choom gang."
h/t Instapundit
[DailyBeast] Nick Sandmann, the Kentucky high school student at the center of a viral confrontation with a Native American elder in front of the Lincoln Memorial last month, has filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Washington Post. According to a press release from the law firm Hemmer, DeFrank, and Wessels, the suit alleges that the Post "ignored basic journalist standards" and waged "malicious attacks" on Sandmann by "falsely accusing him" of instigating the tense standoff with Phillips. The lawsuit claims the Post's coverage "caused permanent damage to [Sandmann's] life and reputation" because the paper "wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented, biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump" by targeting Trump supporters. The suit further claims the newspaper published "False and Defamatory Accusations," proving itself to be a "loud and aggressive bully with a bully pulpit." Sandmann and his attorneys seek $50 million in compensatory damages and $200 million in punitive damages to "teach the Post a lesson it will never forget." The suit also notes that $250 million is the same amount Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the newspaper for in 2013.
Pocket change for Mr. Bezos, perhaps, but meaningful to everybody else threatened by similar law suits.
#5
They're argument is going to be that the kids were public personalities and this is a threat to the 1st Amendment.
1) the media by its actions made them public, they were never public before hand.
2) the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment makes the definition of 'public vs private personalities' incompatible with the document as written.
3) the media which has no problems going after other business for product failures and endangerment should be held to the same standard.
4) the 'press' in the 1st Amendment was referring to the technology of the age, the intent was the free distribution of information not a corporate institution.
5) Given the pols and courts have upheld encroaching controls on 2nd Amendment rights, its only fitting and payback to do the same to billion dollar Infotainment businesses.
#6
Justice Thomas wrote a minority opinion arguing that the Supreme Court case immunizing the media in this way should be reviewed. I think it was Sullivan...
#9
A bunch of factors favor this teen's lawsuit:
he is a juvenile, no record of political activity (he bought the MAGA hat in DC), first time he ever traveled out of state, he did absolutely nothing in response beyond standing and smiling. Mainstream media got nothing except a bunch of high priced jury consultants who will need to pack this jury well to win.
#10
Might be difficult to prove that Bezos knew in advance that these kids would be subject to death threats as well as all the other social media harassment they have endured but, if I was on the jury, I'd believe it.
$250 million is a paltry sum for the richest man in the world. They should go for $10 billion. You have to make it hurt the guy.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/20/2019 13:22
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#11
If the lawsuit doesn't hurt him, Bezos will think he can keep on libeling anybody he wants with impunity.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/20/2019 13:25
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#12
The suit is against the WaPo, not Bezos. $250M is what he paid for the DC Pravda WaPost
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/20/2019 14:58
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#13
I suppose the Post could always apologize.
[snicker]
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/20/2019 17:46
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#14
Bobby, my bet is that it is too late for that.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
02/20/2019 19:01
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h/t Instapundit
[NBCChicago] Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx recused herself from the investigation into the alleged attack into "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett.
First Assistant State's Attorney Joseph Magats will be the acting state's attorney for the matter, a spokesperson said in an emailed statement Tuesday. No further explanation was given as to why Foxx recused herself.
"Out of an abundance of caution, the decision to recuse herself was made to address potential questions of impartiality based upon familiarity with potential witnesses in the case," the spokesperson said in an email.
Chicago police still want to re-interview Smollett about the night he says he was attacked, but it's unclear if or when the "Empire" actor will comply.
#1
Prediction: charges filed and pressed to remind hollywood leftist mafia to not act the fool on great lakes leftist mafia turf; technicality gets charges dropped but gonna have to leave town.
Acting and activist career is over; maybe Babylon Bee isn't so far off him getting a job in media.
[PAGESIX] Scenes featuring Jussie Smollett on the hit TV show "Empire" have been drastically cut amid the whirlwind of controversy surrounding his alleged hate attack, according to a report Tuesday.
The actor, who plays gay singer-songwriter Jamal Lyon on the show, was supposed to have nine scenes and a big musical performance in the second-to-last episode of Season 5, production sources told TMZ.
But five scenes and the musical number have been axed.
Smollett’s character is also no longer the focus of his remaining four scenes, which will now feature an ensemble of characters.
The 36-year-old actor is spending far less time on set as a result. He’ll be working Friday and possibly Thursday but won’t be rehearsing.
"Empire" scriptwriters have been scrambling over the last 24 hours to revise this season’s scripts.
Smollett claims he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack near his reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown ... home of Al Capone, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel,... apartment Jan. 29, but suspicion has since emerged that he paid two friends to help stage the assault.
There’s a 50/50 chance that a grand jury will begin weighing an indictment as early as Tuesday, TMZ said. Smollett could be charged with felony filing a false police report.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/20/2019
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#1
They weren't cut there is no video; he was on the wrong side of the camera when performing.
[TranslateTheWeb] More than four-fifths of the respondents (84.6 percent) rate the German-American relationship as negative or very negative. Only 10.4 percent find it very positive or rather positive. A clear majority (57.6 percent) argues for a greater distance between Germany and the United States. Only 13.1 percent want a closer approach; 26 percent want to keep the current arrangement. ...
Almost half of respondents (42.3 percent) consider China a better partner for Germany than the US. Conversely, only 23.1 percent believe that the US is a more reliable partner than China. ...
[Concerning Germany’s current foreign policies,] only 18.6 percent see a positive impact, 34 percent a negative. ...
Asked about the currently most dangerous global trouble spots, only 1.9 percent of the respondents named the expansion of the Russian zone of influence. The growing influence of China is seen by 2.2 percent as the biggest threat. ...
This poll shows that today’s German Government does not represent the German public ‐ at least not on these central issues of German foreign and national-security policies. One may say the same thing about the US: that its Government does not represent its public (on practically everything, actually). Someone tell me why we're allied with them again? They're a bunch of ungrateful jerks who gleefully take advantage of the free security we provide while shitting all over the fact that we provide it. USA out of NATO, USA out of Europe. If we have to pay to have allies who hate us, then fuck them.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
02/20/2019
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#4
...As the old joke goes, they've never forgiven us for World War II.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
02/20/2019 4:33
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#5
The hammer is about to drop.
Trump Receives Report on U.S. Security Threat of Car Imports
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has submitted his recommendations to Trump, the department said in a statement on Sunday in Washington, without offering any insights into the findings. Trump has 90 days to decide whether to act on the findings.
Commerce started the investigation in May under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, the same provision the administration used last year to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum. The car probe covers imports of vehicles including SUVs, vans and light trucks, as well as auto parts. American and foreign-based auto manufacturers have been lobbying against it.
Ross had until Sunday to deliver his findings to the president, who has the final say on whether to impose tariffs. Trump has threatened levies of as much as 25 percent on foreign-made vehicles. Companies and governments from Europe to Asia have warned Trump that tariffs on car imports would hurt the U.S. economy and disrupt the global auto industry.
#13
they must have forgotten what Russia did too them in WW2.
Most of the wars they've been involved in through their entire history were wars they've started. So, it's natural enough for them to assume that there will be no war if they don't start it.
#14
To be fair, the current relationship between President Trump and Chancellor Merkel is fairly adversarial, so I would chaaracterize it as negative, too. And if being a reliable partner is defined as saying the things we want to hear, China probably is more reliable.
This is entirely orthogonal to whether it is better for Germany to have a partner who demands she live up to her commitments instead of accepting promises she has no intention of keeping.
Indeed. When Germany hosts a Chinese or Russian base on its soil, I'll believe that these poll reactions reflect deeply-held beliefs. Heck, when Chinese- or Russian-speakers become more common in Germany than English-speakers, I'll start paying attention.
#18
I was married to a German (from Hamburg) and only one of her German relatives was anti-American (at least openly in front of the Yank). That was her Grandfather (too young for the war).
The one East German I know is more pro-American than most Americans. The guy still visits the US every other year or so..
[DAWN] 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... said on Monday a top justice official’s reported discussions about invoking the Constitution to remove him from office were part of an "illegal and treasonous" push against him.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein raised the possibility of removing the president in 2017 after Trump fired FBI director James Comey, according to Andrew McCabe, who replaced Comey as the bureau’s acting director.
McCabe and Rosenstein "look like they were planning a very illegal act, and got caught.....," Trump said in a series of tweets.
"This was the illegal and treasonous ’insurance policy’ in full action!" Trump has often attacked the federal investigations into his campaign’s links to Russia as a "witch hunt" aimed at sabotaging his presidency.
The "insurance policy" he cited refers to an ambiguous text message a top FBI investigator sent to his lover in August 2016 that alludes to their concerns about then candidate Trump, which the president often points to as evidence of a "deep state" conspiracy against him.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/20/2019
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I was wondering when the word "sedition" would come up...
Posted by: ed in texas ||
02/20/2019 7:42
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#3
Treason? What else can you call it? Time to get rid of the wasteful Mueller Dem lynch mob hiding behind the color of law. Time to declassify, dump and prosecute all involved.
[IsraelTimes] ImageSat International says 3 of 4 launchers from powerful Russian anti-aircraft system appear ready for use; Israel has threatened to destroy battery if used against its jets.
The fourth launcher, which has not been seen in the raised position, does not appear to be operational, according to ISI.
The satellite imagery company said it was "possibly an invalid, dummy or a different element that serves as deception."
#1
So if they light those things up...we learn all about them.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
02/20/2019 0:52
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#2
While my Inner War Nerd is excited to see these babies in action, I suspect the Russians are reluctant to fire them up. Getting your state-of-the-art air defense system waxed by the Juice is bad salesmanship.
[TheDrive] Who needs the Concorde, anyway? On Monday, somewhere over norther Pennsylvania, a Virgin Atlantic-flown Boeing 787 Dreamliner traveling from Los Angeles to London managed to go where few commercial planes have gone before: to a speed of 801 miles per hour.
As The Washington Post brought to light, pilots and aviation nerds were a-twitter about the Boeing's speed last night, taking to journalism's favorite social medium to broadcast their delight at seeing the giant numbers appear.
There is, of course, a catch: that 801-mph Vmax was the plane's ground speed, or the rate at which it was passing over the chilly landscape of PA below. As far as the 787 was concerned, however, it was still well within the performance envelope it was designed for, zipping along close to its established cruising speed of around 560 miles per hour.
How? It's a matter of airspeed versus groundspeed, of course.
Groundspeed, as it sounds like, is how fast a plane appears to be traveling from the vantage point of an observer on the solid, unmoving ground below. If you were the Flash and wanted to keep pace with the 787 above you yesterday, you'd have to be running along at 801 miles per hour to match it. Airspeed, on the other hand, is how fast a plane is traveling compared to the air around it‐for example, how fast it might look to a balloon floating along in the same air. In the case of yesterday's speeding Dreamliner, that wind was a jet stream current flowing from west to east at faster-than-normal speeds; as The Washington Post pointed out, a weather balloon lofted from central Long Island's Upton, New York clocked the jet stream yesterday at a record 231 miles per hour. With wind that strong at the aircraft's back, even a 225-ton 787-9 can pick up a nice speed boost‐in this case, enough to push it to speeds never before seen for its type, at least from the ground.
So from the perspective of the FAA's ground-based tracking systems, the Virgin Boeing would seem to be going supersonic over the Northeast, while the passengers and crew would have felt as though their plane was cruising along at a nice happy Mach 0.85 or so. Until, that is, they landed at London Heathrow's Terminal 3 at 8:22am local time Tuesday, 48 minutes ahead of schedule.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
02/20/2019
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[IsraelTimes] Small blazes burn grasslands in Eshkol region forest before firefighters extinguish them; Paleostinians riot along Strip’s northern border.
A balloon carrying an incendiary device from the Gazoo Strip sparked at least one fire in southern Israel on Tuesday, the first such arson case in several months, authorities said.
The blaze burned grasslands in a wooded area outside the community of Kibbutz Kissufim in the Eshkol region. It was quickly extinguished, according to the Israel Fire and Rescue Services.
Continued on Page 49
TORONTO (Reuters) - Netflix Inc said on Tuesday it is creating a production hub with two studios in Toronto that is expected to create 1,850 jobs per year.
Netflix will lease Cinespace Studios, a Toronto-based film studio comprising four sound stages, office space and support space that measures 164,000 square feet, and Pinewood Toronto Studios, which measures 84,850 square feet, the streaming company said in a statement.
It did not disclose the size of its latest investments or the duration of the leases.
In October 2017, Netflix secured government approval to start a C$500 million ($377 million) production unit in Canada, in its first such unit outside the United States.
Netflix leases British Columbia-based Martini Film Studios, along with other sites in Canada like Calgary and Montreal on a production-by-production basis.
The Toronto studios will work on production for upcoming series and films like horror anthology series "Guillermo del Toro Presents Ten After Midnight" and the film "Let It Snow."
[CBS PITTSBURGH (KDKA)] ‐ An online petition to sell the state of Montana to Canada for $1 trillion has gone viral.
The Change.org petition has more than 8,000 signatures so far.
"We have too much debt and Montana is useless," says the petition. "Just tell them it has beavers or something"
Ian Hammond, the petition creator, wants to sell The Treasure State to the nation's neighbor to the north for $1 trillion to help pay down the national debt.
A lot of Montanans appear okay with the idea.
"This Montanan totally supports the idea," Michelle Erb said.
Others who signed the petition are thinking about moving before the sale takes place.
"If this pans out, I think I'll move to Montana before the transfer takes place," one person who signed the petition wrote.
To see more about the petition, click here. Photo and a video at link
Posted by: Seeking Cure For Ignorance ||
02/20/2019
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#1
Trump is offering to throw in California to Mexico for free.
[DAWN] LAHORE: Samanabad police on Monday reportedly jugged Book 'im, Mahmoud! a man and his wife for allegedly torturing their 10-year-old daughter over petty issues.
Suspects Sheikh Nadeem and his wife, Ayesha, used to torture minor Manahil by burning her body with an electric rod.
The police also recovered the girl with multiple burns on her body and shifted her to a local hospital where doctors confirmed the cruelty in the initial report.
A police official said some neighbours heard cries of the girl and rushed to the house where they found Ayesha subjecting the girl to severe torture.
He said Manahil was her stepdaughter and the neighbours alerted the police when they saw Ayesha inflicting torture on her.
The police recovered the girl from the house and shifted her to the hospital in a critical condition.
Manahil told the police that her stepmother and her father used to burn her body on petty domestic issues.
A neighbour, Osama Saghir, told the police that the couple had been subjecting the girl to torture for the last couple of weeks.
The Samanabad police started the paperwork but haven't done much else against both the suspects on the complaint of Saghir and handed over the case to the investigation police for further action.
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Satire? Perhaps.
[Babylon Bee] KANSAS CITY, MO‐After a lengthy dispute with his wife this morning, local man Lee Branscom expressed his great sorrow and regret over whatever he did in her dream last night that had her so ticked off at him, sources confirmed Tuesday.
He attempted reasoning with her, using the "lame excuse" that he had no control over what dream Lee does, but after that failed, he resigned himself to apologizing for every action of the imaginary version of himself.
"Honey, I know in your dream I hijacked a school bus, blew up the Empire State Building, and cheated on you with every other eligible woman in America, and for that, I am deeply sorry," he said, putting his arm around her. "What else did I do again? Well, whatever it was, I apologize."
"I love you so much, and I'm so sorry that I hurt you in that way," he said.
"I'm just not really sure you mean it," she replied. "You don't seem like you really regret telling me you're leaving me to join the UFC and then laughing as your head turned into a hot air balloon and you vomited out hundreds of 1-Up mushrooms and then disappeared down a green pipe." She insisted that Branscom list off each of the things his dream self did and apologize for them individually.
#6
For a long time when conflict broke out on the home front I would tell Mrs Cesare that she was approaching the frontier. Finally after a protracted difference of opinion, I told her she was right on the border. Never having asked before she demanded to know, Border of what exactly?
I replied 'The Magical Land of I don't Care How Big Your F-ing Tits Are'. Ever since she has only probed the frontier seemingly to make sure that the border still exists.
#8
Personal favorite is being asked for an opinion, in a what is your opinion? form, when the decision is already made, mapped, diagrammed, and concluded.
The real fun is when I can sniff out the trap, and purposefully take a devil's advocate position.
[DAWN] Indian police are often complicit in killings carried out by cow vigilante groups, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday, calling on authorities to take tougher action to halt lynchings.
The slaughter of cows ‐ revered by Hindus ‐ is a powder-keg issue in secular India. Men accused of killing or trading in cattle have increasingly been targeted since the Hindu nationalist government came to power in 2014.
Critics have accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi's governing party of pandering to fringe groups to win votes.
Read: Holy cows and Hindu crusaders cloud Modi's Indian reform drive
"Calls for cow protection may have started out as a way to attract Hindu votes, but it has transformed into a free pass for mobs to violently attack and kill minority group members," said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch (HRW).
"Indian authorities should stop egging on or justifying these attacks, blaming victims, or protecting the culprits," Ganguly said.
At least 44 people were killed in such attacks between May 2015 and December last year, the report said.
Thirty-six of the dead were Moslems and in almost all cases, police initially stalled investigations, ignored procedures, or were complicit in the killings and cover-ups, HRW alleged.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
If they killed ALL the cows at once, this would never be a problem again and they could just import beef from America/Canada if they wanted it. Or they could stop acting like savages.
[DailyCaller] California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is hoping to pull National Guard troops away from the U.S.-Mexico border to help protect his state’s struggling marijuana industry.
Faced with competition from a robust black market, the legal cannabis industry in California has not experienced the growth that supporters had expected. Newsom ‐ who enjoyed hundreds of thousands in campaign donations from the marijuana lobby ‐ wants to aid the industry by redeploying at least 150 California National Guard troops from the U.S.-Mexico border and instead use them to combat illegal grows in Northern California.
"There are legitimate concerns in Northern California, particularly as it relates to illegal cannabis grows. They are getting worse, not better," Newsom stated last week, according to the Los Angeles Times. "I want to see more enforcement."
California citizens voted to legalize recreational marijuana in November 2016, and the law officially changed in January 2018. Proponents initially anticipated a thriving cannabis industry within the country’s most populous state. California officials, for example, estimated there would be up to 6,000 licensed cannabis shops within the first few years and that the industry would bring up to $1 billion a year in revenue.
Instead, the state only issued 547 temporary and annual licenses by December 2018, and California is only expected to rake in $471 million in revenue this fiscal year. New Frontier Data, a firm that analyzes marijuana sales, estimated the black market accounts for as much as 80 percent of the marijuana sold in the state. California’s illegal pot market is estimated to be four times that of the legal market.
Beyond a thriving black market, experts blame California’s lackluster marijuana sales on complex and burdensome regulations by the state government.
Newsom’s plan to target drug cartels and illegal grows comes after he blasted the Trump administration’s security prioritization at the U.S.-Mexico border. The Democratic governor announced on Feb. 11 that he would be pulling most of the state’s 400 National Guard troops from the southern border, rebuking an agreement his predecessor made with President Donald Trump in 2018 to beef up border security.
#1
...I've always said that one of the problems with legalizing weed was that the bad guys weren't going to just give up and go away. And since the State:
A)Has forecast specific income from said weed sales,
B)Expects constant specified growth in said income, and
C)Has already made pretty damned specific plans for said income,
they're going to do whatever is necessary to make sure they get that money and no one else does - and if that includes armed force and flat-out trampling of the Fourth Amendment along the way, so be it.
In other words, if you think the War on Drugs was bad before...wait till you see how bad it gets now that we've won it.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
02/20/2019 4:51
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#4
south carolina already budgeted the taxes from a 1.6 billion dollar mega millions ticket bought last year. Only problem is that no one cashed in the ticket. if no one claims the money. the money will revert back to all other states and SC will be in a huge budget hole!
[Breitbart] A well-funded and subversive leftist movement of teachers in the United States threatens to tilt the political balance nationwide in the direction of Democrats across the country as Republicans barely hang on in key states that they need to hold for President Donald Trump to win re-election and for Republicans to have a shot at retaking the House and holding onto their Senate majority.
This teachers union effort, called #RedforEd, has its roots in the very same socialism that President Trump vowed in his 2019 State of the Union address to stop, and it began in its current form in early 2018 in a far-flung corner of the country before spreading nationally. Its stated goals‐higher teacher pay and better education conditions‐are overshadowed by a more malevolent political agenda: a leftist Democrat uprising designed to flip purple or red states to blue, using the might of a significant part of the education system as its lever.
The movement takes its name from a political organizing tool first seen in Florida in 2010, when teachers union members wore red to express political opposition to public school reform proposals under consideration at that time in the state and encouraged parents and political activists from other unions to join them. Continues.
PUNTO FIJO, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuela on Tuesday shut the maritime border with nearby Dutch Caribbean islands ahead of an opposition effort to bring in humanitarian aid from foreign territories including neighboring Curacao despite the protests of President Nicolas Maduro.
Maduro has rejected offers of foreign aid, denying there are widespread shortages and insisting that the country’s economic problems are the result of sanctions by Washington.
Opposition leader Juan Guaido, who has been recognized by dozens countries as the legitimate head of state, has said that food and medicine provided in part by the United States will enter Venezuela by land and sea on Saturday.
The closure blocks movement of boats and aircraft between the western Venezuelan coastal state of Falcon and the islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao, said Vice Admiral Vladimir Quintero, who heads a military unit in Falcon. He did not provide a reason.
[Owensboro Times] Spectators attending the 2019 "Bull Bash!" held at the Owensboro Sportscenter Saturday night witnessed an event that surprised and shocked many as two men were thrown into the air by a bull during a game titled "Cowboy Pinball." Another man was seen being aggressively pinned against a wall during the event by the same bull.
According to witnesses, the "Cowboy Pinball" game required participants to stand in circles that were drawn for each of the 23 volunteers who signed a waiver beforehand, which warned them of potential injuries, accidents and even death, according to officials who run the event. SEBRA ‐ the company who runs the Bull Bash across the country ‐ refused to share a copy of the waiver with Owensboro Times when one was requested.
Laura Alexander, general manager of the Owensboro Convention Center and Owensboro Sportscenter, said the Sportscenter staff was unaware that the event’s producers were playing this game until it was announced Saturday night.
#2
Our postmaster participated in one of these last fall and was very nearly killed. Haven't seen him back at work yet. IIRC crushed hip, broken ribs and various internal soft tissue injuries. I could not believe they used full grown 'bull-riding' bulls for this instead of the yearlings they use in the professional clown routines.
[The Christian Post] Liberal Lutheran Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber unveiled a sculpture of a vulva made entirely of old purity rings to protest evangelical purity culture and presented it to pro-abortion second-wave feminist Gloria Steinem.
Bolz-Weber, the founding pastor of Denver’s House for All Sinners and Saints, showed off the sculpture ‐ which was made by melting down the old jewelry ‐ during the 2019 Makers Conference last week.
"Every single thing and person that seemed so powerful and inescapable, I name them and then I just go ’footnote,’" Bolz-Weber told conference attendees. "I mean, seriously, Pontious Pilate? He’s a footnote. Your bully from middle school? Footnote. Your depression? Footnote. Your s----y boss? Footnote. All of those things are very real, and the harm that they have on us and the world is also real."
"But to me, the whole point of having faith is it allows us to believe in a bigger story than the one we tell ourselves. Those purity rings are a footnote," she declared, unveiling the sculpture.
"The [rings] we couldn’t melt down spell out the word ’freedom’ and were woven into this heart," Bolz-Weber said, gesturing toward the sculpture.
"Isn’t it amazing?" she said while presenting the sculpture to Steinem amid audience applause.
#8
HFASS's website claims that "at this point we are a community of around 500+ people (with 100-200 showing up most Sundays)." Involvement of "pastrix" (now retired to pursue career as "public theologian") is described at bottom of page. Lots of worshipful coverage and preachifying on YouTube, all as amusing/discomfitting as you'd expect.
In 1986, at age 17, Bolz-Weber started getting tattoos, and the ones on her arms mark the liturgical year and the story of the Gospel. Bolz-Weber briefly attended Pepperdine University before dropping out and moving to Denver.[6] She says that she became an alcoholic and drug abuser and often felt like one of "society's outsiders".
By 1996, after 10 years, Bolz-Weber became sober and, as of 2016, has remained so for twenty years.[5] Prior to her ordination, she was a stand-up comedian and worked in the restaurant industry.[7]
Bolz-Weber felt that she heard the call to service in 2004 when she was asked to eulogize a friend who had died by suicide.[8] In 2008, Bolz-Weber was ordained as a pastor.[7] She started her own church, the House for All Sinners and Saints, which is often shortened to just House.[8] One third of her church is part of the LGBT community, and she also has a "Minister of Fabulousness", Stuart, who is a drag queen.[6] Her church is also very welcoming to people with drug addiction, depression, and even those who are not believers of her faith.[9] Bolz-Weber spends nearly twenty hours each week writing her weekly ten-minute sermon.[7]
In 2018 she called for women to send her their purity rings to be melted down into a vagina sculpture as part of healing the psychic damage of the purity movement of the 1990s.[10]
Bolz-Weber speaks at religious conferences and is a guest speaker at other churches.[11][8]
Bolz-Weber writes for Christian Century and Sojourners.[12] In addition her books include Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television, reviewed in Christian Century[13] and The Daily Sentinel (TX),[14] and Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint reviewed in Publishers Weekly,[12] Booklist,[15] and Sojourners Magazine.[16][17] In 2015 she released Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People.[18]
[IsraelTimes] Doha said frustrated by lack of progress on various infrastructure projects in Strip, particularly stalled plans for a high-voltage power line from Israel.
Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... ’s envoy to the Gazoo Strip, Mohammad al-Emadi, has warned its Hamas, a regional Iranian catspaw, rulers that Doha will not extend payments for the territory’s electricity supply beyond April, the Kan public broadcaster reported Monday night.
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[DAWN] In a video message, Prime Minister Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who ain't the sharpest bulb on the national tree... on Tuesday said Islamabad will take action if Delhi shares any actionable evidence concerning last week's suicide kaboom in occupied Kashmire's Pulwama area which had targeted Indian paramilitary soldiers. This is the VBEID attack claimed by Jaish-e-Mohammad. A Jaish-e-Mohammed youth terrorist named Adil Ahmad Dar, a Kashmiri local, was identified as the attacker.
While offering cooperation and another chance at a dialogue over the Kashmire issue, the premier also warned India against any act of aggression, saying Pakistain will not hesitate in retaliating to a provocation. "Yeah! Youse guys better not hit us back!" However, nothing needs reforming like other people's bad habits... he made it clear that he hopes better sense will prevail. A Pak organization, lodged and commanded within Pakistain executes a mass casualty strike in India, and India's not supposed to get mad?
The premier explained he had wanted to respond to the attack right away because Delhi had accused Pakistain of having a hand in the attack, "but we had a very important visit from the crown prince of 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... , we had an investment conference happening that we had been preparing for for a long time," he explained. "Y'see, we were too busy then. I was having my hair done, and it had been simply ages since I had a pedicure..."
"Therefore, I decided not to respond then, because the attention would have been diverted away from the visit and onto this issue. This is why I am responding [now], now that the crown prince has left. And this [message] is for the Indian government," he said.
"First of all, you accused Pakistain. First with the worst in everyone's mind...
[There was] no evidence. Except for Jaish-[e-Mohammad's claims...
You never thought: 'What would be in it for Pakistain?'," Other than keeping the Kashmire potty stirred...
he said. "Would even a fool do such a thing to sabotage his own conference? And even if he [the crown prince] had not been visiting, what benefit would Pakistain get from it [the Pulwama attack]?" "Oh, by the way, Prince, throw in a few billion to help liberate the oppressed Kashmiris."
"Why would Pakistain, at this stage, when it is moving towards stability ─ we have fought a war against terrorism for 15 years, 70,000 Paks have bit the dust, terrorism is receding, peace and stability are returning ─ what benefit would we get from it [the Pulwama attack]?" he asked.
"You wish to remain stuck in the past, and each time something happens in Kashmire, you want to hold Pakistain responsible. Instead of trying to resolve the Kashmire issue, start a dialogue or move forward, you want to make Islamabad your whipping boy again and again," the prime minister said, addressing Delhi.
"I am telling you clearly, this is naya Pakistain. It is a new mindset, a new way of thinking. We believe that it is in our interest that our soil is not used for carrying out terrorist attacks in other countries, nor do we want outsiders to come and carry out terror attacks here. We desire stability," he asserted.
"Today, I would like to make the Indian government an offer. Any sort of investigation you wish carried out regarding this incident about the involvement of any Pak, we are ready [for it].
"If you have any actionable intelligence that a Pak is involved, give it to us. I guarantee you that we will take action ─ not because we are under pressure, but because they [any individuals found involved] are acting as enemies of Pakistain."
"If someone is using Pakistain's soil [to carry out terror attacks elsewhere], it is [akin to] enmity with us. It is against our interests."
The prime minister added that whenever Pakistain tries to initiate dialogue with India, Delhi's precondition is that terrorism must be talked about.
"We are ready to talk about terrorism. Terrorism is a regional issue [...] We want terrorism in the region to end," he stated. "Pakistain has been the worst affected by terrorism [...] Therefore, we are ready to talk with you."
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[IsraelTimes] Joan Ryan, former head of Labour Friends of Israel, slams Corbyn as ’a man who has presided over the culture of anti-Jewish racism and hatred of Israel’.
An eighth politician has quit Britannia’s Labour Party over its handling of anti-Semitism and Brexit, boosting a new breakaway group from the UK’s main opposition party.
Joan Ryan announced late Tuesday that after four decades in the party she was leaving Labour to sit with the newly formed Independent Group in Parliament.
Continued on Page 49
[IsraelTimes] Police say dozens of worshipers tried to breach a closed off area of the holy site that has been at the center of recent tensions; several Paleostinians reported injured.
Paleostinian worshipers clashed with Israeli police on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount on Tuesday, trying to force their way into an area of the flash-point holy compound that has been closed for years. Police said 19 Paleostinians were locked away I ain't sayin' nuttin' widdout me mout'piece! The incident follows a similar confrontation on Monday in which Paleostinians tried to break the gate that Israel placed on the closed area last week after the Moslem Waqf religious council broke into the area and held prayers there.
Paleostinian medics reported that several protesters were maimed in the standoff.
The Gate of Mercy, or Golden Gate, was sealed by Israeli authorities in 2003 because the group managing the area had ties to Hamas, a regional Iranian catspaw,, and it has been kept closed to stop illegal construction work there by the Waqf, which Israeli officials believe has led to the destruction of antiquities from periods of Jewish presence in the area.
Israeli police responded by summoning the head of the Waqf, Sheikh Azzam al-Khatib al-Tamimi,
...any relation to the anti-Israel Fatah activist Tamimi clan of Nabi Saleh village, whose children are known for screaming at and slapping stoic Israeli soldiers?
for questioning, but the summons was later canceled, apparently following pressure from Jordan, according to the Haaretz daily.
The closure drew an angry rebuke from Amman, with a letter from the Jordanian foreign ministry to its Israeli counterpart calling the closure a violation of the status quo and demanding the reopening of the gates and the removal of all Israeli security forces.
In an English-language statement on Tuesday, the office of Paleostinian Authority President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... accused Israel of attempting to impose a "division" of the mosque compound.
According to Haaretz, the Jordanian government, which controls the Waqf, enlarged its council from 11 to 18 members last week. For the first time, Paleostinian Authority officials and religious leaders were installed in the body, which has historically been made up of individuals close to the Jordanian monarchy.
The change is a bid by Amman to begin to share responsibility for the holy site, the location of the biblical Jewish Temples, and now of the al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock shrine, which in recent years has become an epicenter of tensions between Israelis and Paleostinians.
The newspaper said the ongoing tensions at the site are part of the reason for the expansion of the Waqf council by Jordan. Amman first considered the move in the wake of violent protests that followed a terror attack in which Paleostinian button men killed Israeli coppers guarding the Temple Mount in mid-2017.
Israel installed metal detectors at the compound’s entrances following that attack, triggering weeks of protests by Paleostinians. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally ordered the detectors removed after regional allies warned that the fight over the holy site was strengthening the hands of Islamist factions throughout the region.
Jordan believes its influence at the Temple Mount was eroded by those events, while Paleostinian leaders who led the protests saw their influence grow.
Paleostinian fears about purported Israeli plans to change the 52-year arrangement on the Temple Mount ‐ where the Waqf maintains administrative control and the Israel Police security control ‐ have become a daily staple in Paleostinian political rhetoric and media reports in recent years. Multiple car-rammings, stabbings and shootings have been attributed by Paleostinian attackers to the alleged efforts by Israel to alter the status quo at the site, according to which Jews may visit but not pray there.
[DAWN] The United States is urging Pakistain not to oppose moves to put Jaish-e-Mohammad ...literally Army of Mohammad, a Pak-based Deobandi terror group founded by Maulana Masood Azhar in 2000, after he split with the Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin. In 2002 the government of Pervez Musharraf banned the group, which changed its name to Khaddam ul-Islam and continued doing what it had been doing before without missing a beat... and its leader Masood Azhar on a UN list of global terrorists, diplomatic sources told Dawn.
"This message has been conveyed to Pak officials in Islamabad and to Pak diplomats in Washington," one of the sources said.
Earlier this week, India urged the international community to support its move to place Jaish and its leader on a UN list of gunnies that would also require Pakistain to take punitive action against both.
However, a good lie finds more believers than a bad truth... the Indian media reported on Monday that New Delhi "would only push" for this "if China indicated its support".
In the past, China blocked several Indian moves to achieve this target.
India once again sought international support for its move after this week’s terrorist attack in Pulwama that killed more than 40 Indian soldiers.
But a Chinese official indicated on Friday that while Beijing strongly condemned the terrorist attack in Pulwama, it was not yet ready to support India’s UN moves against Jaish and Masood Azhar.
"Given China’s statement, India is unlikely to push the Azhar ban in the UNSC until they get a green light from China," The Times of India reported.
In Washington, however, the Pulwama attack generated great sympathy for India.
"We stand with India as it confronts terrorism. Pakistain must not provide safe haven for gunnies to threaten international security," tweeted US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo.
In a separate statement, the State Department called on "all countries to uphold their responsibilities pursuant to UN Security Council resolutions to deny safe haven and support for terrorists".
US National Security Adviser John Bolton telephoned his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval and then issued a statement, reminding all UN members, including Pakistain, to "uphold UNSC responsibilities to deny safe haven and support for terrorists".
But his statement did not include two key points that an Indian statement on the Doval-Bolton call attributed to him:
US support for India’s "right to self defence" and offering "all assistance to India".
The words attributed to Mr Bolton were interpreted in India as indicating US support for any possible Indian military action against Pakistain.
But the points that the Indian media built its narrative on were also missing from US media reports on the Pulwama attack and its consequences.
Instead, the media pointed out that the attack had placed Washington "in an awkward position".
The media noted that Washington wants Islamabad’s help to end the war in Afghanistan and senior US officials have cautiously praised Pakistain’s help in recent months toward the Afghan grinding of the peace processor.
"President Trump’s emphasis on a pullout from Afghanistan increases Pakistain’s importance to US regional policy," one such report claimed.
"The US government might continue to condemn Pakistain for providing terrorist groups with a safe haven, but that would be the possible extent of its support for India," argued a Stanford scholar Asfandyar Mir in an article he wrote for The Washington Post.
"As important as the long-term India-US relationship may be in the eyes of US strategists, the needs of the conflict in Afghanistan ‐ and Pakistain’s role there ‐ are likely to take precedence in the short run," he wrote.
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[IsraelTimes] A jacket wallah killed two coppers and maimed three more while he was being pursued near Cairo’s famed Khan el-Khalili tourist marketplace, Egypt’s Interior Ministry said Monday.
The kaboom in the Gamaliya district was a rarity for a central area of the capital, after progress from a security crackdown under President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
A body was seen on the street behind areas cordoned off by dozens of police and soldiers after the kaboom, which shattered windows and blew curtains off nearby balconies. Egypt’s renowned al-Azhar mosque is nearby.
Officials said the suspect was being chased by coppers as he was believed to have planted an bomb last week near a mosque.
"As security surrounded the man and was set to arrest and control him, an bomb in his possession went off," the ministry said.
It said the man was pursued "as part of the interior ministry’s efforts to search for the perpetrator" behind the targeting by an bomb of a security detail stationed near a mosque in Giza on Friday.
Security had defused the device then, the ministry said.
The corpse count from a late-night suicide kaboom near Cairo's famed tourist market rose to three on Tuesday after a police officer died of his wounds, Egyptian security officials said.
All three fatalities in the attack late Monday near Khan el-Khalili bazaar in the heart of Cairo were coppers. The kaboom also maimed two other coppers and a woman, the officials said.
[AlAhram] Egypt's interior ministry said on Tuesday that the jacket wallah who went kaboom! behind al-Azhar Mosque on Monday had been planning further attacks.
Upon searching the 37-year-old man's apartment in Cairo's Darb al-Ahmar, police found a number of bombs and raw materials used in making explosives. Police also found a time bomb in the apartment, prompting an evacuation of the building.
The suicide bomber went kaboom! on Monday in Darb al-Ahmar as police were attempting to arrest him, killing three coppers and injuring others.
The man, identified as El-Hassan Abdullah, was wanted in connection to a bombing last Friday in Giza and police were monitoring his movements, according to the ministry.
[IsraelTimes] Fleeing jihadis demand to leave along with evacuated civilians; around 1,000 may have made off with some $200 million in cash, CNN reports.
More than 300 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.... fighters surrounded in a tiny area in eastern Syria are refusing to surrender to US-backed Syrian forces and are trying to negotiate an exit, Syrian activists and a person close to the negotiations said Monday.
The development comes amid the Islamic State group’s last stand in the village of Baghouz, where murderous Moslems are hiding among hundreds of civilians and preventing them from leaving. It also will likely further delay a declaration on IS’s territorial defeat that US-backed Syrian forces were hoping to make last week.
A person familiar with the negotiations said the murderous Moslems are asking for a corridor to the rebel-held northwestern province of Idlib, and demand that they be allowed to leave along with the evacuated civilians. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the talks, which he described as taking place indirectly.
It was not clear how the current standoff would be resolved.
The Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group that monitors the civil war in Syria, said another request by IS to be evacuated to neighboring Iraq was also rejected. The group said that IS released Sunday 10 SDF fighters it had been holding, adding that it was not clear what, if anything, the forces of Evil would get in return.
CNN, quoting a senior military official, reported Monday that at least 1,000 fighters fleeing Syria in the past six months into western Iraq may have made off with at least $200 million in cash.
From a self-proclaimed caliphate that once spread across much of Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State group has been knocked back to a speck of land in Baghouz in Deir el-Zour province, on the countries’ shared border.
In that tiny patch on the banks of the Euphrates River, the fighters are holed up in what SDF officials described as a small tented village, atop a network of tunnels and caves with the civilians ‐ some of them possibly hostages.
The SDF and the coalition have battled to uproot them from villages and towns on the eastern banks of the Euphrates since September.
The DeirEzzor 24, an activist collective in eastern Syria, said several trucks loaded with foodstuff entered IS-held areas in Baghouz in Deir el-Zour on Monday morning. The group also reported that IS released 10 SDF fighters Sunday without saying whether the supplies of the foodstuff were in return for the release.
DeirEzzor 24 said that the truce reached between IS and the SDF last week has been extended for five more days as of Sunday.
[Ynet] Air strikes targeted Islamic State's last pocket in eastern Syria late on Tuesday as US-backed fighters pressed for a victory that would bring the jihadists' self-proclaimed caliphate to its bloody end.
Dozens of trucks earlier headed towards Baghouz, a village on the banks of the Euphrates at the Iraqi border where hundreds of Islamic State holy warriors were making their last stand.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
02/20/2019
00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Islamic State
#1
i know how it should be resolved.Kill the shit out of every last one of them.
Posted by: chris ||
02/20/2019 7:58
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#2
Kneel and expose your neck. You'll get an exit
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/20/2019 8:41
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#3
McSssssschtain Bussssssch Company is out of businessssssch...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/20/2019 10:02
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#4
Yeah, they're dragging civilians around with them for shields. This could get really ugly really fast.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
02/20/2019 10:30
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#5
Where the fuck would they get $200M in cash?
Posted by: Jack Bonaparte7513 ||
02/20/2019 12:27
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[CWBChicago] Two Lakeview brothers who were previously considered "persons of interest" in Smollett’s purported attack told police during interrogations last week that Smollett staged the hate crime because he was upset that the threat letter did not get enough attention, ABC7 Chicago reported Monday afternoon. Detectives are investigating their claim.
Meanwhile, the FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service has been quietly working on the origins of Smollett’s letter for nearly a month. Giving it far more "attention" than he knew.
Late Monday, CWBChicago received confirmation that the letter case has been before a federal grand jury and multiple subpoenas have been generated over the course of the investigation.
In a conversation on Feb. 8th, before police met with brothers Ola and Abel Osundairo, a leading source within the Smollett attack investigation called the hate crime a "false flag" and said "There is a direct line between (the letter) and (the purported attack)." In the same conversation, the source hinted at what was to come: "This is not a whodunit. It's a how-many-people-dunit."
Whoever mailed the letter "made an enormous mistake," we were told. Federal charges were "certain."
A law firm partner who asked not to be identified by name spoke with us about the federal problems ahead for whoever mailed the letter: "If they have Smollett on the letter, he’ll be facing ’terroristic hoax’ charges, a felony. There may be federal obstruction charges as well."
All in all, the federal legal options are numerous: "If they want to bury him, they can."
Meanwhile, the Osundairo brothers are reportedly holed up in a Chicago hotel with police protection. CWBChicago has been doing yeoman's work on this...
CHICAGO (CBS) ‐ The two brothers involved in the Jussie Smollett attack told police that Smollett was behind creating a racist letter that was sent to the actor on the set of his show, "Empire," according to two sources with first-hand knowledge of the investigation.
And when that letter did not get a "bigger reaction," Smollett orchestrated the attack a week later with the two men–Ola and Abel Osundairo, sources said. Also Tuesday, sources said the two brothers were seen on a ride share video camera before being dropped off near the location of the attack.
#3
Besoeker - I thought I spotted something to that effect yesterday. I'm not in the mood to go find it until I've had three cups of coffee (never to be confused with Morning Joe).
#9
Snopes fact checked the Babylon Bee’s story about him getting hired at CNN
That would be Snark of the Day were it not an actual thing. Jeez, Snopes!
Was he in contact with Kamilla Harris?
I'm more than a little suspicious about the timing of this fake hate crime vs Kamilla's anti-lynching bill. My spider sense is tingling...
[IsraelTimes] Eissa Muhamad has been living in the departures lounge in Addis Ababa since November, after his home country twice refused to repatriate him.
A migrant from Niger deported by Israel last year has been trapped in bureaucratic limbo at the airport in Æthiopia’s capital for the last three months after his home country has twice refused to take him back.
Twenty-four-year-old Eissa Muhamad has been living in the departure lounge at Addis Ababa’s international airport since November, when his travel papers expired while he was bounced back and forth between Israel and Niger.
Continued on Page 49
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.
(CNSNews.com) ‐ Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the Judiciary Committee chairman, on Sunday promised to find out "who’s telling the truth, what actually happened," in the days after President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.
[NWO Report] The result of a new, independent audit of the last years of President Obama’s term, 2015 and 2016 ‐ show an almost criminal attempt to cover-up gross mismanagement of funds and a wealth of errors.
[Daily Caller] The United States is forecast to reach another milestone in oil output next month thanks to rising production in the country’s biggest shale formations.
[Townhall] Government watchdog Judicial Watch has issued a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Justice for documents surrounding official efforts to oust President Trump through the 25th amendment. 
(Reuters) - The U.S. Transportation Department said on Tuesday it will cancel $929 million in federal funds awarded by the Obama administration for a California high-speed rail project and is "actively exploring every legal option" to seek the return of $2.5 billion the state has already received.
... a Turkish preacher living in Pennsylvania whom the current govt of Turkey considers responsible for all the ills afflicting Turkey and possibly the entire world...
[Free Beacon] According to a new report produced by the Government and Accountability Office (GAO), at least $1 billion in food stamp benefits are "trafficked annually," meaning they are fraudulently used. The extent of the fraud is uncertain, the GAO warns, estimating the abuse of the program could be as high as $4.7 billion.
I recommend a significant downsizing. 
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) – Two Iraqi children were killed Tuesday in a bomb blast in the western province of Anbar, a security source said as the country still suffers from almost daily bomb attacks by Islamic State militants.
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) – An Iraqi mayor has said that army troops have freed five people, who were kidnapped by Islamic State militants last Friday in western Iraq.
[IsraelTimes] The 
[DAWN] US President 
[DAWN] Indian police are often complicit in killings carried out by cow vigilante groups, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday, calling on authorities to take tougher action to halt lynchings.
[Owensboro Times] Spectators attending the 2019 "Bull Bash!" held at the Owensboro Sportscenter Saturday night witnessed an event that surprised and shocked many as two men were thrown into the air by a bull during a game titled "Cowboy Pinball." Another man was seen being aggressively pinned against a wall during the event by the same bull.
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
[IsraelTimes] Police say dozens of worshipers tried to breach a closed off area of the holy site that has been at the center of recent tensions; several Paleostinians reported injured.
[DAWN] The United States is urging Pakistain not to oppose moves to put 
[CWBChicago] Two Lakeview brothers who were previously considered "persons of interest" in Smollett’s purported attack told police during interrogations last week that Smollett staged the hate crime because he was upset that the threat letter did not get enough attention, ABC7 Chicago reported Monday afternoon. Detectives are investigating their claim.
