It's all over the questionable websites in its full glory, like InfoWars,WND etc., but this seem more credible since it has a video of a Twin Falls City Council meeting where this is brought up."
Police are investigating a reported sexual assault of a minor near the Fawnbrook Apartments in Twin Falls, Idaho.
Residents say a young girl was raped by misunderstood Muslim youths at the complex. The assault was filmed by the youths.
Local MMVT reported:
"KMVT has confirmed that a reported sexual assault that possibly occurred near the Fawnbrook Apartments is being investigated by the Twin Falls Police Department. The incident allegedly occurred on June 2.
Twin Falls County Prosecutor Grant Loebs has confirmed the investigation to Idaho's First News, but he says there will be no charges filed in the case until the police investigation is complete."
The attack was discussed at the City of Twin Falls City Council meeting this past week.
A concerned citizen spoke to the council and asked about the child rape by teen migrants.
h/t Instapundit
Liberal billionaire George Soros donated $33million to social justice organizations which helped turn events in Ferguson from a local protest into a national flashpoint.
The handouts, revealed in tax filings from Soros's private foundation, were given to dozens of different groups which weighed in on the crisis.
Organizers from professional groups in Washington, D.C., and New York were bussed into the Missouri town to co-ordinate messaging and lobby to news media to cover events using the billionaire's funding.
#3
I look forward to reading this guy's obituary.
Posted by Raj
I don't turn in until 10:00 or 11:00. If you see his obit before then, ring me up. Oh wat the hell, call me regardless of the hour. That old casket dodger's demise should be well celebrated.
h/t Instapundit
At first glance, the liberal approach to Islam makes no sense whatsoever.
Liberalism is generally hostile to Christianity and it particularly seems to dislike anyone who has strong religious convictions that conflict with liberalism. This describes every devout Muslim on the planet.
...Liberals go on and on endlessly about a war on women and Islam treats women like garbage.
...Libs obsess endlessly about gun violence and constantly trash our troops when they accidentally kill civilians. In a large minority of the Islamic world (and a majority in many more fundamentalist countries), innocent women and children are considered fair game
...The Left has gone so insane over imaginary violations of "gay rights" that liberals are in favor of driving Christians out of any profession that caters to weddings and they insist that women have to use the bathroom with men because the less than .2% of men who "feel like" women would be uncomfortable using the men's bathroom. Meanwhile, Islam goes with homophobia the way peanut butter goes with jelly. There are a number of Islamic countries where being gay is a crime with jail or even DEATH as the penalty.
So, how can liberals continue to turn a blind eye to all of this?
As my friend Evan Sayet has explained, it has to do with the liberal emphasis on "indiscriminateness."
...There is no explanation for success if nothing is better than anything else and the greater the success the greater the injustice. Conversely and for the same reason, failure is de facto proof of victimization and the greater the failure, the greater the proof of the victim is, or the greater the victimization. And there is no bigger failure than Islamic Civilization
#1
I used to think it had to do with a common hatred of America. Recently it occurs to me that their common ground is far broader. What they both hate is modernity.
#2
Personally, I think liberals would view it as a huge vindication to their "cause" (whatever that is) if they could import a bunch of savages and show that they could be integrated into their version of Utopia.
#6
Simple, both have renounced humanity and have no souls. I see no difference between them as they have same goals in mind. Destruction of all humanity.
#12
The "they are non Muslim, we couldn't give a shit about them" attitude was basis of the child rapes occurring across the UK, only it is a well developed expression with grown men perpetrating the attacks and not minors.
My wife is a Turk and our girls are so that.
My grandmother suffered at the hands of the Nazis.
I thought I would never feel or say this but practicing Muslims need to be gassed. Muslims are a horrible horrible scourge on humanity.
They have no understanding of free thought. Their everyday existence sees their female's as slaves.
Dogs live a more respectful existence.
"TWIN FALLS, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) - KMVT has confirmed that a reported sexual assault that possibly occurred near the Fawnbrook Apartments is being investigated by the Twin Falls Police Department. The incident allegedly occurred on June 2.
Twin Falls County Prosecutor Grant Loebs has confirmed the investigation to Idaho’s First News, but he says there will be no charges filed in the case until the police investigation is complete.
Several unconfirmed reports concerning the case are circulating on social media. Both the Twin Falls Police Department and the prosecutor’s office have declined to comment publicly on the case while it is still under investigation."
The Obama administration is stalling a congressional inquiry into its ongoing refusal to uphold a U.S. law that would sanction Russia for selling advanced missile systems to Iran, according to recent communications between the State Department and Congress exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
President Obama has the authority under U.S. law to designate as illegal Russia’s recent sale to Iran of the advanced S-300 missile system, a long-range weapon that would boost the Islamic Republic’s military capabilities.
The administration has so far declined to exercise its sanction authority under law and has been stalling attempts by Congress to discern the rationale behind this decision, prompting accusationst hat the administration is ignoring U.S. law and “acquiescing” to the sale in order to preserve last summer’s comprehensive nuclear deal.
#1
But... but... we all know that Obama wants to kill and eat all the Russians!!! And we know this because he hasn't finished selling out Poland and Estonia yet!!!!!
Just when you thought the left couldn't be more immature....
Far-left activists aren't going away quietly -- or with a pleasant aroma.
Cheri Honkala, head of Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, is organizing the world's largest 'fart-in' to be held on July 28 at Philadelphia's Wells Fargo Center during Hillary Clinton’s anticipated Democratic nomination acceptance speech.
"We will be holding a massive bean supper for Bernie Sanders delegates on American Street in my Kensington neighborhood on the afternoon of July 28," Honkala says, TruthDig reports. Meaning that they will need to 'hold it in' until the event. Hoping areas hospitals are ready to treat the strained splinchers...
"We are setting up a Clintonville there, modeled on the Hoovervilles of the 1930s Wasn't that what the Occupy [bowel] Movement was all about? Oh that was Obama's...
where the poor and unemployed built shanty towns. The Sanders delegates, their bellies full of beans, will be able to return to the Wells Fargo Center and greet the rhetorical flatulence of Hillary Clinton with the real thing."
Activists have invited Bernie Sanders to join their bean supper, which Honkala has dubbed "Beans for Hillary." Will he be the one pulling everybody's finger to trigger the barrage?
Leftist author Chris Hedges will be offering a "nondemoniational" prayer at the dinner.
"I am happy to bless a meal that will be put to such effective political use," Hedges says, according to TruthDig. eh... yeah....
The "fart-in" ironically has its roots with the activist movement leader then-Hillary Rodham sidled up to in the 1960s: Saul Alinsky. She was the inspiration? How Ironic!
He promoted a "flatulent blitzkrieg" as a way to offend the elites of Rochester, New York.
When questioned about the level of maturity of such a stunt, Alinsky defended it, saying:
First of all, the fart-in would be completely outside the city fathers’ experience. Demonstrations, confrontations and picketings they’d learned to cope with, but never in their wildest dreams could they envision a flatulent blitzkrieg on their sacred symphony orchestra. It would throw them into complete disarray. You just can't make this up if you tried.
"For countless years, service members have given the "flag-folding speech" at military and civic events, including retirement ceremonies. Traditionally, this speech explains the colors, symbols, and history of the flag.
The flag-folding speech also contains several religious references, including, "Let us pray that God will reflect with admiration the willingness of one nation in her attempts to rid the world of tyranny, oppression, and misery. It is this one nation under God that we call, with honor, the United States of America."
The speech closes with, "God bless our flag. God bless our troops. God bless America."
In 2005, the Pentagon changed the speech to remove all references to the divine, substituting additional historical facts such as Neil Armstrong’s planting of an American flag on the moon in 1969. But many service members prefer the traditional speech and desire that version given at their own retirement celebrations.
Rodriguez retired from the Air Force in 2013 after 33 years of service to his nation. He has a clear and distinctive voice and is frequently asked to deliver the flag-folding speech at retirement ceremonies.
On April 3, 2016, Master Sergeant Charles Roberson was retiring from active duty. Roberson had heard Rodriguez give his stirring rendition of the traditional flag-folding speech and asked Rodriguez if he would give that speech at Roberson’s retirement celebration at Travis Air Force Base where Roberson served in the 749th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron.
According to a demand letter sent by First Liberty Institute on Monday, when the squadron’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Sovitsky, learned that Rodriguez would give the traditional speech mentioning God, he expressed his opposition and allegedly tried to block it. As Roberson explained in a video interview seen for the first time on Breitbart News, Roberson asked Rodriguez to press forward." Anybody know if I can get Block 4 of my DD-214 changed?
Posted by: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy ||
06/20/2016
09:08 ||
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[AEI] This is an updated and revised version of a CD post from last year that generated nearly 300 comments because of the controversial nature of the topic ‐ whether "the rich" pay their "fair share" of taxes or not ‐ so I expect another lively discussion this year!
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released its annual report titled "The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2013." In that publication, the CBO provides detailed data on American households for each income quintile in 2013 for: a) average household "market income" (includes labor income, business income, income from capital gains, and retirement/pension income), b) average household transfer payments (payments and benefits from federal, state and local governments including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)), and c) average federal taxes paid by households (including income, payroll, corporate, and excise taxes). Some of the key findings of the CBO analysis are displayed in the table above, with the data organized by household income quintiles. The data in the first four rows above appear in the CBO report (from Tables 1 and 3), and rows 5-8 above have been calculated separately based on data from the first four rows in the table.
Scott Greenberg and John Olsen of The Tax Foundation recently summarized some of the key findings of the CBO report in their post "Are the Rich Paying Their Fair Share Yet?", here are their main conclusions:
#1
But that doesn't include the state and local taxes - sales tax, property tax, personal property tax, excise tax, license taxes, mandatory health insurance. I bet the More Free Stuff folks would be surprised at just how much tax they pay.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/20/2016 7:58
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#2
Doesn't fit the narrative. Infringes upon the 'Thou Shall Covet' plank of the socialists and their game of 'Thou Shall Bear False Witness' program to support their 'Thou Shall Steal' game.
#3
Personally, I think a flat tax is the only fair tax, whether you make one dollar or a trillion. Otherwise, the folks at the lower end of the income spectrum gang up against the folks at the upper end of the income spectrum and have them pay for all kinds of crazy stuff. Seems unconstitutional to me.
#4
Otherwise, the folks at the lower end of the income spectrum gang up against the folks at the upper end of the income spectrum and have them pay for all kinds of crazy stuff.
That's what the Goths and Huns did to Rome, and we're witnessing in Venezuela. BTW, that's why the rich buy politicians to create byzantine tax codes to protect what they got.
[BBC] The presumptive Republican candidate in the US presidential election, Donald Trump, has suggested the country should consider using profiling to combat crime.
Mr Trump made the remarks when asked if he supported more profiling of Muslims in the US, in the context of last week's shooting at an Orlando gay club.
Profiling uses ethnicity, race and religion to determine whether a person has or is likely to commit crimes.
Critics say it could alienate Muslims.
In an interview with CBS, Mr Trump said other countries had "successfully" adopted the measure.
"You look at Israel and you look at others, and they do it and they do it successfully," he said.
#1
Profiling uses ethnicity, race and religion to determine whether a person has or is likely to commit crimes.
Employers and their Medical Insurers do it every day. Pick: Age, Race, affliction
active 60 y/o, white dude, tonsillitis Actuarial diagnosis: statistically likely throat cancer Recommendation: RIF(disability) Result: No Death, Hospitalization, Long or Short Term disability liability payouts required.
#3
Loretta Lynch said she wants to thoroughly profile the dead Omar Mateen. Why not profile these jihadi boneheads before they commit some horrific act?
[BBC] The De Karina chocolate factory has become a popular place on the itinerary for thousands of visitors each year to the Golan Heights.
Tourists fill the visitors' shop while next door in the factory, machines that resemble cement mixers and wheels churn rivers of white and brown chocolate.
It is hard to believe that a brutal civil war is raging in Syria just three miles away from a factory that specialises in producing boutique chocolates.
It is also hard to reconcile the apparent peace and tranquillity of this area with the fact that so-called Islamic State - or Isis - is believed to control parts of Syria that border Israeli-occupied Golan.
The chocolate factory takes its name from Karina Chepelinski, a chocolatier originally from Argentina.
[ABC] Omar Mateen bought nearly $9,000 worth of jewelry less than a week before he killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, ABC News has learned.
The purchase was made June 6 at the Kay Jewelers in Jensen Beach, Florida, which is near the Lotus Gun Shop where Mateen attempted to buy body armor.
Signet, which owns Kay Jewelers, would not confirm the purchase by Mateen, but issued a statement that they are "working closely with the authorities."
On Monday, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR unveiled its annual Global Trends Report, which found that persecution and conflict in places like Syria and Afghanistan raised the total number of refugees and internally displaced people worldwide to a record 65.3 million at the end of last year. Move over "Palestinians"
The business of UNHCR is displaced people, and business is good.
#1
The bulk of these people — nearly 41 million — were still living within their own countries. I heard on the radio this morning that Turkey has accepted the largest number of refugees - three million. That seemed odd, given the 65 million number, so I did a little looking around. Buried in a Slimes article was this nugget:
Never before had the United Nations documented so many “internally displaced persons,” as they are officially defined. The largest numbers were inside Syria and Iraq, but insurgencies in Nigeria and Somalia also scattered millions inside those countries.
So the official definition was changed/expanded, to 'move the goalposts'.
I, myself, was 'displaced' just two years ago! But I am OK, now. Thank you.
OK, so it was a voluntary displacement. And my employer paid my relocation expenses. But now I have to retire where my grandchildren live!
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/20/2016 8:25
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#2
I did preview, but missed the 41 million came from the Slimes article, not the radio. The bulk of these people — nearly 41 million — were still living within their own countries. That was part of the nugget, not part of my comment.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/20/2016 8:27
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[PJ] Unnamed sources have told the Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard that Clarence Thomas is considering retiring from the Supreme Court after the 2016 election. They say Thomas never planned to stay on the Court until he died, and has been considering retirement for a while.
After the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February, Thomas's retirement would leave only three conservatives on the Supreme Court: John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Anthony Kennedy -- and Kennedy has sided with the liberals on numerous issues, most notably gay marriage. It is already perhaps a bit generous to call the current 4-4 court divided between conservatives and liberals, but without Thomas it would shift into true blue territory.
The next president is expected to replace the seat left vacant by Scalia, and if Thomas retires, that would be two Supreme Court appointments right off the bat. And with two of the least popular major party nominees in history, half of America is almost guaranteed to end up very angry about the makeup of the court.
If Donald Trump becomes president and nominates two conservative justices (to replace both Scalia and Thomas), there would be a slight conservative edge to the court unless one of the conservative justices becomes more liberal. Trump laid out a stellar list of potential appointees, but will that be enough to rally conservatives to his cause?
Seen at Instapundit at 11:00 a.m. ET: UPDATE [FROM GLENN]: His wife Ginny says this is BS.
The horrific massacre of innocents in an Orlando nightclub is a tragedy of national and international proportions. The senseless, methodical killing of people just like us, in a place where they’ve come to relax, is an affront to our humanity and civilization.
It has immediately been dubbed "the worst mass shooting in American history" by many media organizations (and our President), looking to single out this event from the almost weekly incidents of gun violence that plague the U.S.
But this kind of categorization is very debatable and has been called out for "whitewashing" history. If we mean murder perpetrated by guns, the worst "mass shooting" in American history was the "Wounded Knee Massacre" in South Dakota, when 150-300 Native Americans were gunned down by the U.S. army in South Dakota.
[Reuters] Philippine police killed 11 suspected drug dealers during operations at the weekend, police said on Monday, adding to a surge of drugs-related killings since Rodrigo Duterte swept an election last month on promises to wipe out crime.
Duterte's single-issue campaign of tackling illegal drugs and other crime within six months, and his staunch advocacy of extrajudicial killings, struck a chord with Filipino voters. However, rights groups have rebuked him over concerns that, as president, he would live up to his nickname of "the punisher".
The more than 40 drug suspects killed since Duterte's May 9 election victory compares with the 39 deaths recorded in the four months before it, said National Police spokesman Wilben Mayor.
Duterte takes office on June 30 and has repeatedly reassured police they would have his full support if they killed criminals who resisted with violence. He has also warned that police found to be involved in the drug trade would suffer the same fate.
Speculation has been rife in Manila that some police involved in the drugs business were clearing the decks before Duterte takes office by eliminating criminals who could implicate them.
#2
Speculation has been rife in Manila that some police involved in the drugs business were clearing the decks before Duterte takes office by eliminating criminals who could implicate them.
Much the same could happen here if Trump wins and the Clinton Gang has to clean house. May need to dedicate a CSI unit just for Ft. Marcy Park....
[Daily Caller] During a Sunday morning interview on CNN's "State of the Union," United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch shifted part of the blame for Omar Mateen's deadly terror attack to the gun shop owner who refused to sell the terrorist a weapon.
Lynch told guest host Dana Bash that the shop owner had alerted the FBI to a suspicious person, whom he realized after the terror attack had been Omar Mateen, and that his actions were "exactly what that gun shop owner should have done." (VIDEO: FBI Director: "I Don't Think We Could Have Stopped Orlando)
#3
FBI missed a double-agent tip on the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941.
In 1941, Popov was dispatched to the United States by the Abwehr to establish a new German network. He was given ample funds and an intelligence questionnaire. Of the three typewritten pages of the questionnaire, one entire page was devoted to highly detailed questions about US defences at Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. He made contact with the FBI and explained what he had been asked to do. During a televised interview, Duško Popov related having informed the FBI on 12 August 1941, of the impending attack on Pearl Harbor. For whatever reason, either the FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover did not report this fact to his superiors, or they, for reasons of their own, took no action in regard to this apparent German interest in Pearl Harbor.
Wikipedia But I also saw it someplace over the weekend - in the newspaper, perhaps?
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/20/2016 8:07
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#4
Dammit, now I really am wondering if the shooter was allowed to 'slip thru' in order to push gun control...
Do I need to get sized for a tinfoil hat now?
#5
Dammit, now I really am wondering if the shooter was allowed to 'slip thru' in order to push gun control... facilitate follow-up monitoring and exploitation...
Do I need to get sized for a tinfoil hat now?
Two tinfoil hats please. Make mine a 7.125 or adjustable band.
#6
As I may have mentioned earlier,
IT'S DIVERSIONARY REPORTING.
Small localized horrific incidents to dilute the focus of the national collective.
200 Gays in Orlando: Oh, it's not me.
300 Runners in Boston: Oh, it's not me.
30 Bikers in Waco: Oh, it's not me.
3M reenact the Neolithic Revolution: Oh, well it could have been me but that's in Europe, the poor sods. Que Pasa, Hombre?
#8
#4 Dammit, now I really am wondering if the shooter was allowed to 'slip thru' in order to push gun control...
ell, there was "Fast ant and Furious". Congress voted for contempt of Congress for Eric Holder. The tin foil realm? Anything is possible with this regime.
#11
if the gun shop had told the FBI he was a muslim, the FBI would have arrested the shop owner, and subjected him to prosecution for hate crimes and anything else they could think up. FIFY
[Daily Caller] A Pakistani provincial government has allocated the equivalent of $2,870,385 for an Islamic school known as the "University of Jihad," which has produced some of the region’s worst terrorists.
The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, located along the Afghanistan-Pakistani border, will provide funds to Darul Uloom Haqqania Nowshera. The school is home to infamous terrorists such as former Taliban leaders Mullah Omar and Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, as well as the founder of the Haqqani Network, Jalaluddin Haqqani, and Asim Umar, the head of al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS).
"I am proudly announcing that Darul Uloom Haqqania Nowshera will get 300 million rupees to meet its annual expenditures," announced Shah Farman, a provincial minister, to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assembly in June.
Habibur Rehman, minister for religious affairs, told the News International that the large sum (300 million Pakistani Rupees) is a result of half the money being held over from the previous year. Now, half of the amount is slated to be paid out in 2016-2017, while the remainder will be provided next year.
[LI] Since 1967 -- when Israel liberated the Jewish holy sites in eastern Jerusalem -- the Temple Mount has been administered by agreement through the Islamic Waqf, a Jordanian-funded trust which oversees the site's day-to-day religious functions.
The Temple Mount is the most sacred site in Judaism, sanctified as the place where the Jewish Temples existed in biblical times. It's a place where Jews should have basic rights, including the freedom of movement and worship.
But as we've noted in several prior posts (see here, here, here) because of the profoundly discriminatory "status quo arrangement" set in place in 1967 and subsequently upheld by Israel's courts, Jews are prohibited from praying there for fear of potentially upsetting Muslim worshippers, stirring up tensions, and triggering violent Muslim backlashes.
[Breitbart] In the face of growing pressure on Planned Parenthood after revelations that it was selling human body parts, the Satanic Temple has launched a pro-abortion crusade to come to the aid of America’s largest abortion provider.
The Satanic Temple, an organization that combats Christian influence in American society, has staged a series of counter-protests at pro-life rallies and filed a lawsuit against the state of Missouri on behalf of one of its members who had to wait 72 hours to get an abortion due to Missouri state law.
According to reports, legislators have passed nearly 300 abortion restrictions in the past five years, resulting in the closing of "hundreds of clinics."
In what free speech advocates are calling a victory for freedom of the press, David Daleiden, the intrepid investigative reporter who unearthed Planned Parenthood's misdeeds, has been exonerated from the charges brought by the abortion giant.
[Breitbart] U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch revealed Sunday that the government will release the transcripts of the 911 calls made by the Orlando terrorist during the attack last Sunday -- scrubbed of any references to Islam or the Islamic State (ISIS).
She told Chuck Todd on NBC News’ Meet the Press that the "FBI is releasing a partial [printed] transcript of the killer’s calls with law enforcement, from inside the club," but added: "What we’re not going to do is further proclaim this man’s pledges of allegiance to terrorist groups, and further his propaganda."
Todd responded, incredulously: "We’re not going to hear him talk about those things?"
Lynch added: "We will hear him talk about some of those things, but we are not going to hear him make his assertions of allegiance and that."
#2
(i) But who stands with their victims?
(ii) Just how many Muslims you've killed via drones (never mind 1/4 million Syrians and unknown number of Iraqi)?
#17
Not stupid, but rather, a more zealous few showed what we really want to do by controlling what is seen, and the geriatric MSM media almost swallowed, but not quite, and poof, it was all a big effort not to hurt the feelings of the true muzzies and prevent the ISIS extremists from being validated, which they so crave from the West. These are not people you want running your government in any way! They have no sense of duty or morals or honor, only their reverence and greed for power.....just like Hilda.
[Breitbart] Earlier this week on Fox Business Network, actor Scott Baio said President Barack Obama's reluctance to say "Islamic terror" means "he's dumb, he's Muslim or he's a Muslim sympathizer."
"And I don't think he's dumb," Baio added.
He went on to wonder what the "end game" is.
"Is it to totally eliminate the United States as it was created and founded and the way it is now?" Baio asked. "I'm baffled by the lack of anything happening."
#4
Could I have the Alpha Centauri system for a vacation home?
Sorry, but Alpha Centauri - whose sole habitable planet is dominated by a Vegetable Intelligence, is where I exile vegetarian (meat is murder) activists.
#6
Sorry, but Alpha Centauri - whose sole habitable planet is dominated by a Vegetable Intelligence, is where I exile vegetarian (meat is murder) activists.
#6
A sensitive Endicott mendicant
Went West to teach Indians etiquette,
But laid down her Burden;
Just where isn't certain --
She took the wrong fork in Connecticut.
[RollingStone] I teach the Constitution for a living. I revere the document when it is used to further social justice and make our country a more inclusive one. I admire the Founders for establishing a representative democracy that has survived for over two centuries.
As much as we have a culture of reverence for the founding generation, it's important to understand that they got it wrong — and got it wrong often. Unfortunately, in many instances, they enshrined those faults in the Constitution. For instance, most people don't know it now, but under the original document, Mitt Romney would be serving as President Obama's vice president right now because he was the runner-up in the last presidential election. That part of the Constitution was fixed by the Twelfth Amendment, which set up the system we currently have of the president and vice president running for office together.
Much more profoundly, the Framers and the Constitution were wildly wrong on race. They enshrined slavery into the Constitution in multiple ways, including taking the extreme step of prohibiting the Constitution from being amended to stop the slave trade in the country's first 20 years. They also blatantly wrote racism into the Constitution by counting slaves as only 3/5 of a person for purposes of Congressional representation. It took a bloody civil war to fix these constitutional flaws (and then another 150 years, and counting, to try to fix the societal consequences of them).
There are others flaws that have been fixed (such as about voting and Presidential succession), and still other flaws that have not yet been fixed (such as about equal rights for women and land-based representation in the Senate), but the point is the same — there is absolutely nothing permanently sacrosanct about the Founders and the Constitution. They were deeply flawed people, it was and is a flawed document, and when we think about how to make our country a more perfect union, we must operate with those principles in mind.
In the face of yet another mass shooting, now is the time to acknowledge a profound but obvious truth – the Second Amendment is wrong for this country and needs to be jettisoned. We can do that through a Constitutional amendment. It's been done before (when the Twenty-First Amendment repealed prohibition in the Eighteenth), and it must be done now.
The Second Amendment needs to be repealed because it is outdated, a threat to liberty and a suicide pact. When the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791, there were no weapons remotely like the AR-15 assault rifle and many of the advances of modern weaponry were long from being invented or popularized. And yet, the basics remain the same: Propelling by fire a metallic projectile from a tube in order to poke a target.
Sure, the Founders knew that the world evolved and that technology changed, but the weapons of today that are easily accessible are vastly different than anything that existed in 1791. When the Second Amendment was written, the Founders didn't have to weigh the risks of one man killing 49 and injuring 53 all by himself. Now we do, and the risk-benefit analysis of 1791 is flatly irrelevant to the risk-benefit analysis of today. Sez you.
Didn't private communities and some individuals own cannons in those days, cannon which could be loaded with grapeshot or chains to clear entire streets of rabble, Indian raiders or, nearly a century later, Civil War armies?
Gun-rights advocates like to make this all about liberty, insisting that their freedom to bear arms is of utmost importance and that restricting their freedom would be a violation of basic rights.
But liberty is not a one way street. It also includes the liberty to enjoy a night out with friends, loving who you want to love, dancing how you want to dance, in a club that has historically provided a refuge from the hate and fear that surrounds you. It also includes the liberty to go to and send your kids to kindergarten and first grade so that they can begin to be infused with a love of learning. It includes the liberty to go to a movie, to your religious house of worship, to college, to work, to an abortion clinic, go to a hair salon, to a community center, to the supermarket, to go anywhere and feel that you are free to do to so without having to weigh the risk of being gunned down by someone wielding a weapon that can easily kill you and countless others. It also includes the Liberty to be able to secure those blessings from a growing and increasingly hostile government. The only way -- the only way -- to do that is to bear firearms.
The liberty of some to own guns cannot take precedence over the liberty of everyone to live their lives free from the risk of being easily murdered. It has for too long, and we must now say no more. It does take precedence and it will continue to do so. Don't like it? Afraid of being shot? Get a gun!
Finally, if we take the gun-rights lobby at their word, the Second Amendment is a suicide pact. As they say over and over, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. In other words, please the gun manufacturers by arming even the vast majority of Americans who do not own a gun. You lost me with that last sentence. Gun manufacturers don't drive gun sales. Fear of the further eroding of basic liberties does, such as proposing to repeal the 2nd Amendment. Using one or two amendments to destroy the others. That's what drives the fear that drives gun sales.
Just think of what would have happened in the Orlando night-club Saturday night if there had been many others armed. In a crowded, dark, loud dance club, after the shooter began firing, imagine if others took out their guns and started firing back. Yes, maybe they would have killed the shooter, but how would anyone else have known what exactly was going on? How would it not have devolved into mass confusion and fear followed by a large-scale shootout without anyone knowing who was the good guy with a gun, who was the bad guy with a gun, and who was just caught in the middle? The death toll could have been much higher if more people were armed. It would have been a mess to be sure, but it is a mess now with unarmed people. The bad luck of the victims of the nightclub was that they were shot by a government agent who had training in firearms, and who had jumped through all the legally required hoops to obtain a firearm. How this redounds to me and other private citizens who keep and bear their arms without shooting innocents can't be explained because it is a construct without any logic.
The gun-rights lobby's mantra that more people need guns will lead to an obvious result — more people will be killed. We'd be walking down a road in which blood baths are a common occurrence, all because the Second Amendment allows them to be. No question that more guns in the hands of more people will lead to more shootings. But there is also no question that more bloodbaths are coming for reasons that have zero to do with the number of firearms available. In case you haven't noticed, there is a war going on which pit people who want to be left alone against people who want to pit their very government against them, all for no other reason than political payback. Those who want to be left alone need and should have firearms and all the ammunition they can possibly acquire. The other side, in which this "Constitutional Professor" resides, needs government to disarm those people, all for the purposes of political payback for being conservative, or whatever intellectual construct that "empowers" them to set a government against fellow citizens.
At this point, bickering about the niceties of textual interpretation, whether the history of the amendment supports this view or that, and how legislators can solve this problem within the confines of the constitution is useless drivel that will lead to more of the same. We need a mass movement of those who are fed up with the long-dead Founders' view of the world ruling current day politics. A mass movement of those who will stand up and say that our founding document was wrong and needs to be changed. A mass movement of those who will thumb their nose at the NRA, an organization that is nothing more than the political wing of the country's gun manufacturers, and say enough is enough. Good luck with amassing a political movement that can never be more than something funded by those who love government and those who hate people who just want to be left to their very lives.
The Second Amendment must be repealed, and it is the essence of American democracy to say so. And gun owners, those who own ARs and AKs and .308s, will get the final say-so.
#5
This person is so tone deaf I don't know how he's employed.
Posted by: Charles ||
06/20/2016 7:07
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#6
...the essence of American democracy...
There's the problem. We're not a democracy, we're a republic. Our rights are not subject to the whims of popular sentiment.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
06/20/2016 7:16
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#7
As someone who teaches the Constitution for a living, he must not be very good - he implies the 3/5ths compromise was bad because it counted slaves as only 3/5ths of a person for representation, but to have counted them as whole persons would have increased the Congressional strength of the slave states.
#10
What I find amusing is that these "Constitutional scholars" overlook that the language is mostly negative. That the government will not do this or that Congress shall not do that. Must be inconvenient for these nanny-staters.
The Constitution lays down the laws that protect our rights from infringement by a grasping, power-mad government.
The Second Amendment guarantees that we have the tools to protect all our other rights.
Remember: while not all gun-grabbers are fascists, all fascists are gun-grabbers.
Posted by: regular joe ||
06/20/2016 9:24
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#13
The editorialist, who teaches at Drexel University's law school (now on its third name), writes frequently for the Rolling Stone on legal issues. Rolling Stone, like most of the legacy media, does not have the sales numbers it once did. In similar straits, Drexel's law school only opened for business in 2006, and its ranking and the caliber of its students reflects that.
#14
What I find amusing is that these "Constitutional scholars" overlook that the language is mostly negative.
That's because the Constitution does not grant any 'rights'. It simply acknowledges that the rights exist naturally (or are granted by God) and cannot be taken away. You can attempt to prevent those rights from being exercised (like the Gun-grabbers are now attempting to do) or restrict the exercise of those rights (Felons, etc...) but you cannot remove them.
#15
The real argument that these fascists have is that rights can't be God given as there is no God.
In my studies many years ago I read a definitive repudiation of this argument vis a vis natural rights but I can't recall the author.
I like to phrase it that all of your rights exist even if you are all alone on an island. You have no rights to anything of anyone else be it material or labor.
#17
In 1776 the history of the world up to that time was dominated by evil institutions and individuals and a subservient populace unable to defend itself from their depredations.
Although our governments have hardly been the quintessence of good, we remain a free people because we are armed and dangerous to those would enslave us.
#18
OK, everybody calm down. It's the Rolling Stone and nobody takes it seriously. There is a legal mechanism for changing the Constitution if this twerp thinks he can exercise it. But he won't.
#21
No need to assume. Statistical data shows CCW holders fire less, hit more and more often kill their targets then police officers. They also hit less innocent bystanders.
#22
I would bet that even with CCW holders firing and possibly hitting bystanders, the total body count would have been far less than what there was without them.
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] Unknown gunnies have kidnapped at least 4 people including two education officials in central Ghor province of Afghanistan.
According to the local government officials, the incident took place on Saturday as they were on their way to the central city of Ghor.
An official in the provincial education directorate cofirmed the incident and said it is yet not clear if the civilians have been kidnapped by the Talibs or gunnies belonging to any holy warriors group.
The anti-government armed murderous Moslem groups including the Taliban holy warriors have not commented regarding the report so far.
This comes as the Talibs have increased hostage takings in the country during the recent months, specifically in northern provinces.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2016
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[Al Ahram] The speaker of Libya's eastern parliament has declared martial law in areas under its control, a move intended to empower its military to respond quickly to infiltration by militias loyal to the rival, UN-brokered government in the capital, Tripoli ...a confusing city, one end of which is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn... Parliament Speaker Agila Saleh's declaration Sunday places the military on high alert and expands its powers.
The measure reflects the eastern administration's consternation as it comes under growing pressure by the international community to recognize the Tripoli-based national unity government.
Libya descended into chaos after its 2011 civil war, with Islamic turbans gaining in strength as two rival governments in the east and west vied for control. The UN-backed government arrived in Tripoli in March.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2016
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Aircraft Specs can be seen here
Recently, news that the first batch of China’s Xian Y-20 large military transport aircraft has been deployed to troops appeared on Weibo and in online military forums. However, the news hasn’t been confirmed by the PLA. People’s Daily Online interviewed military expert Xu Yongling on this issue and according to him, no more than 100 Y-20s will be deployed to troops in the future and in the next five to ten years, China may develop its third generation military transport aircrafts.
According to Xu, if the Y-20 has been used to equip the troops, then it only takes three and a half years from the maiden flight to actual use. The A-400M transport aircraft of the Europe took six years for this process. Since the maiden flight, the Y-20 hasn’t experienced any major technological difficulties; in addition that this transport plane doesn’t need so many experiments as the fighters, so it is believable that the Y-20 will be deployed to troops in the near future.
Some media previously reported that the PLA needs over 300 Y-20s to better meet the strategic need of the air force. Xu disagreed, “I think the total number of Y-20s used to equip the troops will not exceed 100.” This prediction is based on the transport needs of the PLA as well as the international strategic environment. Moreover, the cost is also a practical factor being taken into consideration.
“It is unlikely that we will invest so much in the second-generation military transport aircraft. In the next five to ten years, China may develop more advanced third generation military transport aircraft, the loading capacity and delivery distance of which will be greatly improved from the second generation,” Xu said.
(Source: People’s Daily Online; published 17.06.2016)
[DAWN] Adviser to Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj PrunefaceAziz ...Adviser to Pak Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on National Security and Foreign Affairs, who believes in good jihadis and bad jihadis as a matter of national policy... on Sunday said the United States wants Pakistain to act against the Afghan Taliban but "Pakistain cannot fight Afghanistan's war on its own soil".
In an interview with the state-owned Pakistain Television (PTV), Aziz maintained that US authorities have the "misconception" that Pakistain is backing certain Taliban groups or the Haqqani network, while in reality Pakistain has effectively demolished their whole infrastructure during Operation Zarb-e-Azb ..the Pak offensive against Qaeda in Pakistain and the Pak Taliban in North Wazoo. The name refers to the sword of the Prophet (PTUI!)... "Most of the groups fighting in Afghanistan are fighting from within Afghanistan, but the perception persists that Pakistain should take action against them," said Aziz.
Answering a question regarding the peace dialogue, the foreign affairs adviser stated that Pakistain had succeeded in forming the Quadrilateral Co-ordination Group (QCG) during last year's Heart of Asia Conference and the group had formed a good working mechanism.
"Our viewpoint was that you (NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... and ISAF) have been fighting for the last 15 years but could not bring peace, now dialogue remains the only option, even if the Taliban cannot occupy Afghanistan they can still continue the fight for years to come."
He, however, lamented that both Afghan authorities and Taliban are divided over the issue of talks.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[RUDAW.NET] With the disaster and tragedy that befell the Yezidis under the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) have come some positive aspects such as putting this community in touch with the outside world, giving its women a role in society and changing some of their social relations, argues Chnar Saad Abdullah, a sociologist and former Kurdish minister of Anfal and deaders affairs.
"Before, Yezidi women were passive and hardly played a role. As many lost their husbands, brothers and fathers, they now have to look after themselves." Abdullah says of thousands of Yezidi women and girls who survived the ISIS onslaught and abductions.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
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Top|| File under: Islamic State
#1
She says that in the past the community shunned or killed women for a simple love relationship outside the community, but the bitter reality of what happened under ISIS and the vast number of female victims has forced the community to accept them into society and not treat them differently.
"Before, if a girl was in love with someone from outside the religion, she would be killed. But now, so many girls were raped that the society simply cannot refuse them all. They are now looked at as victims, and nobody tries to kill them. That is a major change, as the society tries to break with the values it had before."
...values...
Sure is damn hard to root for anyone in that part of the world.
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] A senior Taliban leader was found maimed in a police vehicle as he was being shifted to Kabul ...the capital of Afghanistan. Home to continuous fighting from 1992 to 1996 between the forces of would-be strongman and Pak ISI/Jamaat-e-Islami sock puppet Gulbuddin Hekmayar and the Northern Alliance, a period which won Hek the title Most Evil Man in the World and didn't do much for the reputations of the Northern Alliance guys either.... apparently for treatment purposes.
The Taliban leader identified as Qari Zahir was the spy chief of the Taliban group and was found from the police vehicle in a check post in Khenjan district of Baghlan.
A security official speaking on the condition of anonymity said Qari Zahir was incarcerated I ain't sayin' nuttin' widdout me mout'piece! by the operatives of the Afghan intelligence, National Directorate of Security ...the Afghan national intel agency... (NDS).
The official further added that two coppers were also arrested in connection to the evacuation of the senior Taliban leader using the police vehicle.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Perhaps he will become much more wounded while in custody, if the authorities are aggressive in their interrogation.
Jeddah- Leader of the fourth military district Brig.Gen Ahmad Saif revealed that weapons used by Houthi and pro-Saleh militias (armed militants supporting ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh) are the same stock content offered by the U.S. in its mission to fight terrorism in Yemen.
The artillery was deployed at the time when Saleh was still in term, ruling Yemen. The U.S. administration aimed at supporting the mission on forming counter-terrorism units in Yemen. After delivery, the arms were stockpiled in Sana’a as to become of use once the counter-terrorism units are established, Brg.Gen. Saif told Asharq Al Awsat newspaper.
Brig. Saif added that the arms are estimated to be worth 500-million dollars, and most military officials were left unaware off, until the guns showed up in the battles.
Houthis, exploiting the artillery, randomly started using them first against civilians and later on against the Yemeni army. The guns are notably modern and developed. In their alliance with the ousted President, Houthi militias took over the 500-million-dollar stash of weapons.
The first usage of the high-caliber weaponry was noted at the fourth military district located south of Yemen. However, Yemeni military sources from all across frontiers have reported that the arms are gradually showing up in most battles.
Moreover, Brig. Gen. Saif pointed out that other than the acquired collection of U.S.- arms, Houthis are using a wide array of weapons. Anti-tank missiles (ATM) , Russian arms and modern day 12.7 caliber snipers are appearing in the insurgency’s hands during battles.
Nevertheless Brig. Gen. Saif confirmed that the perseverance of Yemen’s national army will not seize. Supported by the Popular Resistance, pro-legitimacy forces will continue with accomplishing victories and progress as to restore Yemen, Brig.Saif said.
(IraqiNews.com) Diyala – A source in Diyala Province said on Saturday, that three army members were wounded in the explosion of an improvised explosive device that targeted their patrol northeast of Baqubah.
According to information shared by the source, “This evening, an explosive device targeted an army patrol in al-Makhaisa area in Abi Saida vicinity northeast of the province,” noting that, “The explosion resulted in the wounding of three army members with different injuries, as well as inflicting material damage upon their vehicle.”
The information added, “A [security] force rushed to the area and transferred the wounded to a nearby hospital to receive medical treatment,”
(IraqiNews.com) Diyala – Diyala Police Command announced on Sunday, that seven people had been arrested on criminal and terrorism charges during search operations northeast of Baqubah.
The spokesman for Diyala Police Command, Colonel Ghalib Attiya, said in a statement obtained by Iraqi News, “Yesterday, a force from [Diyala] police conducted raid and search operations in the areas of al-Muqdadiyah and Abu Saida, northeast of Baqubah, and managed to arrest seven wanted persons on different charges, including two wanted [individuals] on charges of terrorism.”
Attiya added, “The arrested people were transferred to a detention center for interrogation.”
[ARA News ] DAMASCUS – A Russian military officer has died after being wounded in an explosion in the Syrian central province of Homs, officials said on Sunday.
Andrey Timoshenkov died of his injuries after a car bomb attack hit an aid convoy that was heading to Homs, Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
“Sergeant Andrey Timoshenkov, who was escorting a humanitarian convoy of the Russian Reconciliation Center, has stopped a car rigged with explosives by opening fire at it with small arms. Andrey received injuries incompatible with life in the explosion of the vehicle driven by a suicide bomber,” the ministry said.
Officials said that doctors at the Russian Hmeimim airbase in Syria’s Latakia province “fought for Timoshenkov’s life for over 24 hours”, but he passed away on Thursday, June 16.
Timoshenkov was granted a “posthumous state award” for his sacrifice, local media said.
According to the Russian media, the deceased serviceman was a marine from Russia’s exclave Kaliningrad Region.
At least 11 Russian forces have been killed since Moscow started its military operations in Syria on September 30, 2015, in support of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
GHALANAI: A landmine went off in Baizai tehsil here on Saturday, injuring three young boys, security sources said.
The landmine was planted by unknown persons at a place used by the people for taking rest underneath trees in Atmar Khel area.
Security sources identified the victims as Arif Khan, 18, Noor Ullah, 10, and his brother Abdullah, 11, who were playing when the blast struck. The injured were shifted to a Peshawar hospital for treatment. One of the injured was stated to be in critical condition.
After the incident, political administration with the help of levies and khasadar men conducted a search operation in the adjoining areas and arrested five suspects and shifted them to political lockup in Bahi Daag area.
Meanwhile, residents of Yousaf Khel area of Haleemzai tehsil took out a protest rally and blocked the main Peshawar-Bajaur Road on Saturday against suspension of power supply to their area.
The protesters demanded that the power supply suspended for last three days should immediately be restored.
They said power suspension had caused water shortage in houses and mosques, forcing people to come onto the roads.
They said an out of order transformer at the Ghalanai grid station could not be repaired despite passage of four months due to which the local people were bearing the brunt of power suspensions. They demanded of the KP governor to take notice of the matter.
[MilitaryTimes] Defense Secretary Ash Carter wants to open the door for more "lateral entry" into the military's upper ranks, clearing the way for lifelong civilians with vital skills and strong resumes to enter the officer corps as high as the O-6 paygrade. Never thought I'd see the day when the phrase "90-day Wonder" became obsolete.
#2
Going back to when I entered over 40 years ago, the pay charts always reflected senior officers with less than 2 years of service, see - 2016.
When Stilwell was 'relieved' of duty in WWII, they replaced him with a diplomat, but Chiang Kai Shek wanted a military officer, so the War Department made the man a 2 star IIRC. So the precedent is there. Same with the specialty branch of doctors, nurses, lawyers and padres. They hold their rank by their skill not by command authority.
#3
Yep, cyber warriors are much like doctors, lawyers, and nurses. They have skills that are needed, they are experts and need the authority to boss around a bunch of minions, and they are temporary, because not many would stay in a government job for a long time, but they could work for a few years and contribute a lot. And finally, no Service Academy educated General officer would appoint any of them to a non-technical command.
This is exactly what should happen and it is about time someone figured it out.
#6
"Defense Secretary Ash Carter wants to open the door for more "lateral entry" into the military's upper ranks, clearing the way for lifelong civilians with vital skills and strong resumespolitically connected leftists to enter the officer corps as high as the O-6 paygrade."
Revised to reflect the suspected real intent of Carter's move...
Posted by: Dave D. ||
06/20/2016 8:59
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#7
I can understand bringing in those qualified to an O-3 slot (like physicians, etc.), but O-6?! Really?
#9
You would only bring in one or two O6 types to run the units of misfit cybernaughts. They would have 20 years experience and an MBA, and never be promoted. Most of these folk will be o1-o3 to lead a group of NCOs and Warrants through enemy cyber terrain. The O5-O6 would be there to manage a bunch of them, keep the lawyers out of their way, and make sure that the pizza is delivered to the terminals on time.
#10
The military used to have a brevet rank where junior officers could be promoted to high levels of command when needed, then reduced to the previous rank when the war or need was over.
A modern version of this may work for at need fields. They would hold a temporary brevet rank with decent pay to compensate for the loss of civilian pay, but the rank expires if not renewed and the person can go back to civilian life when not needed.
#11
Been there. I was an RN in the AF 1993-1996. I was an LT. My charge nurse was an 03. The main nurse in charge was an O6, full bird col. This was at Travis AFB and the medical wing had about 500 employees. So you might need a specialist with an O6 pay grade to run the operation.
#12
They don't have the 'qualified' people to supervise contractors. The script kiddies are not going to conform to militarism (that spit and shine NCO) vice military (mission) nor to duty details. No attraction what so ever. Contractors can herd them, but we lack technical people who can watch the contractor. None in uniform in sufficient numbers if any at all. This would be the contracting officer or Technical Representative to the Contracting Officer. O6 probably is right for a very large or major contract. Lessor rank for lesser contracts or programs.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] US-backed Syrian forces edged closer to an ISIS stronghold on the border with The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... on Saturday while Russia’s defense minister visited President Bashar al Assad to discuss military operations.
The visit came only hours after the Syrian army and its Iranian-backed militias, which have been supported by Russian air power, lost several villages to turban rebels as they made significant advances in the countryside south of Aleppo.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the rebel capture of three villages from government control - Zeitan, Khalsa and Barna - had caused significant losses among government forces and their allies.
The villages lie in a strategic area near a main highway that links Aleppo with the capital Damascus. Government forces captured the area at the end of last year in a major offensive, assisted by Iranian-backed militias and Russian jets.
State media said Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited an airbase in the coastal Latakia province on Saturday after his talks with Assad in Damascus.
Russia’s military intervention in Syria in September helped turn the tide in Assad’s favor after months of gains in western Syria by rebel fighters, who were aided by foreign military supplies, including US-made anti-tank missiles.
Russia, which has been bombing opposition-held areas, is blamed by the opposition and rights activists for causing hundreds of civilian deaths and targeting hospitals, schools and infrastructure in what they say are indiscriminate attacks.
An escalation in Russian and Syrian air and artillery strikes in recent weeks around a highway to rebel held parts of the northern city of Aleppo has made the road virtually impassable, putting hundreds of thousands of people under siege and worsening their humanitarian plight.
A 48-hour ceasefire in Aleppo announced by Russia on Thursday has had little impact on fighting, and air strikes and shelling have continued in and around the city.
At least seven people died in rebel shelling of a neighborhood of Aleppo held by the Kurdish YPG militia at dawn on Saturday, the Observatory said.
Syrian helicopters also threw barrel bombs on several residential areas in opposition-held quarters.
Close to Manbij
Hundreds of people have been killed in Aleppo since peace talks broke off in April, as President Assad seeks to regain control of what was Syria’s largest pre-war city, now split between rebel and government sectors.
Washington and some other Western countries that have called on Assad to step down accuse Russia of focusing mostly on strikes against the moderate so-called Free Syrian Army ... the more palatable version of the Syrian insurgency, heavily influenced by the Moslem Brüderbund... (FSA), and less on attacking hardline ISIS Death Eaters.
On the border with Turkey, US-backed Syrian forces fought to the western entrance of Manbij city for the first time since a major offensive to seize the last territory held by ISIS bandidosDeath Eaters on the frontier, a source in the Syrian group said on Saturday.
The source from the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance - which includes the powerful Kurdish YPG militia, Arab fighters and is being helped by scores of US Special Forces - told Rooters its troops were now almost two km from the city center.
Since the start of the offensive on May 31, the SDF has taken dozens of villages and farms around Manbij but has held back from entering the city with many thousands of people still trapped there.
The SDF is one of a number of sides fighting in Syria’s complex civil war which has pitted rebels against Assad and is now in its sixth year.
The Observatory, which tracks violence across Syria, confirmed heavy fighting broke out for the first time on the edge of the city, adding that the bandidosDeath Eaters had rammed a suicide vehicle into an SDF outpost but gave no details.
Syrian government forces and some rebel groups are also fighting separate battles against ISIS. The SDF has largely avoided fighting government forces and focuses on battling the hardline Death Eaters.
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[RUDAW.NET] The leader of Iran’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDPI) defended the recent attacks on Iranian revolutionary guards by members of his party, dismissing claims that the action was against peace, saying that Iran’s peace was a product of "internal suffocation and dictatorship,"
"The Islamic Theocratic Republic wants to show an Island of peace in the war zone of the Middle East by using force and violence against different voices inside the country including Kurds and other nations," said KDPI leader Mustafa Hejri in a speech on Sunday. "They want to say the silence means satisfaction. That is not the true face of Iran."
KDPI Peshmerga have fought with Iranian soldiers in the town of Shno and surrounding areas in recent days which has led to the death of several on both sides.
"The current relative peace is due to dictatorship and internal suffocation," Hejri added.
The KDPI leader said his party has decided to move its Peshmarga forces into the Iranian Kurdistan after two decades of unilateral ceasefire that saw an end to military actions inside Iran since the late 1990s.
Hejri was speaking at a ceremony held in the capital city of the Kurdistan Region, Erbil, to honor six of his fighters who died fighting Iranian security forces in Shno last week.
"When the leadership council decided to send our forces back to Iran for political activities we knew the risks but we realized that we must sacrifice as we used to do in the past," Hejri told an audience of about 500 people including families of his Peshmerga forces, activists and representatives of other Iranian Kurdish political parties.
He labeled Tehran as a regional actor that not only is against its own Kurdish population but also against Kurds in Iraq, Syria and The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , saying that Iran interferers in the affairs of others by trying to "show that they have solutions,"
Hejri went on to say that Iran was behind some of the crisis in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq including the financial crisis, war with the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) and political unrest.
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The ISIS group tried Sunday to break a siege on their last holdouts in Sirte but were pushed back by fighters allied to Libya's unity government, a front man said.
ISIS fighters have been pinned down in parts of Sirte since forces allied to the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) launched an operation to dislodge them from the coastal city last month.
On Sunday pro-GNA forces said they clashed with the turbans who had launched a bid to break away from positions west of Sirte using "medium-sized" weapons.
"Our forces confronted them and forced them to retreat," front man Reda Issa told AFP.
"Two of our men were killed and five maimed" in the festivities around the Al-Ghrebat sector of Sirte, he said.
Militant groups took root in Libya in late 2014, taking advantage of the chaos and power struggles that followed the NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... -backed uprising that toppled and killed dictator Moamer Qadaffy in 2011.
The pro-GNA forces launched an operation to drive ISIS out of Sirte on May 12.
Last week they imposed a siege around the Mediterranean city and advanced into parts of it but the operation has slowed down with jihadists holed up in residential areas.
"The pro-government forces are advancing cautiously because ISIS fighters are barricaded inside homes and we are trying to avoid using heavy artillery to spare civilians who could also be inside," said Issa.
ISIS has counter-attacked during the past week, including with suicide kabooms that have killed at least nine pro-GNA forces.
Issa said the pro-GNA forces were now focused on trying to "bolster their positions on the outskirts of Sirte to reinforce the siege and provoke ISIS fighters to come out of hiding".
At least 166 pro-GNA forces have been killed and more than 500 have been maimed since the assault was launched last month, according to an AFP count based on reports from medical officials.
No casualty figures are available for the jihadists in Sirte, 450 kilometres (280 miles) east of the capital.
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[RUDAW.NET] Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) holy warriors have started packing equipment from inside government offices in the city of djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... and shipping them across the border into Syria, said a Kurdish official on Sunday.
"ISIS is busy transferring all the machines of Nineveh offices outside and wants to move them to Syria," Ismat Rajab, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) official for Mosul affairs told Rudaw.
Rajab said that the holy warriors fear the long-anticipated offensive against their Iraq stronghold.
"ISIS wants to transfer all the expensive machines to Syria because they know that the group has no future in Mosul," he added.
The group has been under intense attack on many fronts in both Iraq and Syria in the past several weeks, losing many territories to Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga.
The Iraqi army announced the recapture of Fallujah on Friday after an operation that lasted three weeks and more than two years of siege.
"Security forces have recaptured the center of Fallujah city," Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said.
Earlier this US officials reported that ISIS had begun moving its commanders and many fighters from Syria and Iraq to Libya as their new base of operations.
ISIS seized millions of dollars from Mosul banks after it captured the city in June 2014 and all government offices have since been run by the group.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2016
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#1
So we're looking for a heavily laden convoy of uHauls?
[DAWN] LAKKI MARWAT: The power loadshedding-hit people of Lakki have refused to let their children immunised against the crippling polio ...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set... disease.
The revelation came up at a meeting held at the district headquarters complex, Tajazai, on Saturday chaired by deputy commissioner Mohammad Bakhtiar Khan.
The meeting reviewed arrangements for the anti-polio campaign commencing from Monday. "The district administration has provided full cooperation to Pesco to curb power theft and improve recoveries but despite that loadshedding duration has not been reduced as per commitment," said Mr Bakhtiar.
He said the residents of several localities who had boycotted previous anti-polio drives to protest excessive outages were convinced through jirgas to vaccinate their children on the promise that the excessive loadshedding would be done away with, but the Pesco failed to honour its commitment.
The deputy commissioner said local residents were also confronted with acute water shortage as they could not run tube-wells owing to prolong electricity breakdowns.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2016
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[RUDAW.NET] The Kingdom 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... froze 117 bank accounts and jugged Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out! 240 suspects as part of its efforts to curb the financing of terrorism through private charity groups amid suspicions that it has overlooked terror financing on its soil.
"The kingdom has always been serious in its efforts in confronting terror financing. We are monitoring all transactions to banks," said Major General Mansour Al-Turki, a front man for the Saudi Interior Ministry, on Wednesday.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has also supported this claim. "Saudi Arabia is a partner in the fight against ISIS," Ayrault stated at a presser at the United Nations ...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense... in New York on June 10.
The Iraqi central government, however, has raised questions of Saudi Arabia’s possible connections with ISIS. Baghdad is demanding an explanation from Saudi Arabia after a senior Saudi official admitted to fundraising in the kingdom for ISIS murderous Moslems fighting in the Iraqi city of Fallujah.
"We are waiting for a clarification from the Saudi Government regarding its front man’s press statements regarding the collection of financial donations for ISIS within the kingdom due to the compassion of some people with it," reads a statement from Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "This case is considered as an obvious violation to the Security Council’s decisions."
Turki responded by claiming that any fundraising on behalf of Fallujah was for the "children of Fallujah."
Other critics of Saudi Arabia and their relationship with ISIS have been slow to relinquish their critique of the Kingdom. PixelHELPER, a Germany-based arts activist group against the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... and the countries suspected of funding the terrorist network, believe that Saudi Arabia is in fact funding the Islamic group and is thus responsible for the refugee crisis overwhelming the EU.
In May of 2016, the group projected an ISIS flag with a caption reading "ISIS Bank" on the Saudi Arabian embassy in Berlin.
The Saudis, and other Sunni Gulf monarchies, have been accused of overlooking the activities of private charitable organizations within their borders which are suspected of sending money to terrorist groups. Turki has sought to disprove this suspicion and has pointed out that the Saudis have been targets of attacks by ISIS.
Turki also said Riyadh seeks to clamp down on the financing of terrorist groups by banning private fundraising by charitable organizations or sending money abroad. All donations must now go through the state-controlled King Salman ...either the largest species of Pacific salmon or the current Sheikh of the Burnin' Sands, Cutodian of the Two Holy Mosquesand Lord of Most of the Arabians.... Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center which has been involved in relief services throughout the Middle East, including territories of the Islamic State and Houthi-controlled Yemen.
Additionally the government is increasing its monitoring of internet and television use for anyone they suspect of raising funds to support such terrorist groups and has set up a hotline for people to report anyone who they suspect might be raising funds for terrorists.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2016
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#1
We are not even halfway through the year. Maybe we will break 600 by Christmas. And not a word from O&Co or BLM (black lives matter). Just crickets.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/20/2016 0:33
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#2
Loooong hot summer = peak depopulation
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/20/2016 11:59
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#3
As someone said somewhere on Facebook, if gun control worked, Chicago would be one of the safest places in America.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
06/20/2016 12:30
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SH-60 Seahawk it ain't. More like an SH-2 Seasprite. Given the platform it's supposed to work from, that may be more appropriate.
The South Korea Navy received its first four Wildcat ASW helicopters on Monday, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported.
The Republic of Korea Navy (RoKN) has received its first batch of four AW159 shipborne anti-submarine warfare (ASW) helicopters from Ango-Italian defence company Leonardo-Finmeccanica.
The aircraft, which were delivered on 13 June, is part of an order for eight airframes announced in January 2013 under South Korea’s Maritime Operational Helicopter programme that seeks to boost the RoKN’s submarine prosecution capabilities. The helicopters are expected to be operated from the RoKN’s Incheon-class guided-missile frigates.
The AW159 Wildcat will serve in the ROK Navy in an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) role, though it is also capable of other missions such as anti-surface warfare (ASuW), intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), and search and rescue (SAR). ASW aircraft – including helicopters as well as fixed-wing aircraft such as the P-3C, also in ROK Navy service – use sensors and weapons to detect, track, and damage or destroy enemy submarines.
South Korea’s new Wildcat helicopters are capable of flying for more than three hours and cover a range of up to 265 nautical miles (490 kilometers). The helicopter utilizes sonar and active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar to locate and track submarines. The Wildcat can also be armed with torpedoes, depth charges, and Spike NLOS missiles.
Currently, the ROK Navy has a total of 39 ASW aircraft including 16 P-3C Orion fixed-wing aircraft and 23 helicopters (11 Lynx Mk.99 and 12 Super Lynx Mk.99A). The Lynx and Super Lynx helicopters – built by the British Westland Helicopters before their merger with the Italian Agusta in 2000 – are the predecessors to the AW159 Wildcat.
The addition of the eight total AW159 Wildcats – including the four just received and the remaining four expected by the end of this year – will bring the number of ASW aircraft in the ROK Navy up to 47. Additionally, the ROK Navy has ordered 30 KUH-1 Surion helicopters – built by Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) – some of which will be equipped for ASW.
South Korea is continually making efforts to improve the capabilities of the ROK Navy, both generally and to counter North Korea. Last week, the ROK Navy launched its most advanced frigate yet, the ROKSDaegu, capable of launching ground strikes on targets in North Korea.
[21stCenturyWire] Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov appeared to confirm the attack Friday, telling reporters it was difficult to distinguish different rebel groups from the air.
Translation: If you can not separate your forces from al-Qaeda and differentiate and designate exclusively "moderate" zones we can not do so either. Ho-boy.
[RUDAW.NET] Around noon this past Tuesday Iraqi soldiers launched an attack against a remote, dusty and windswept village called al-Nasr west of the Tigress River. They believed capturing this tiny village would bring them one step closer to djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... . I was there to see this rare battle of the Iraqi army so far away from Baghdad.
For more than two months the soldiers had camped out on a hill facing the village. White tents dotted the hillside. Discarded food containers, water bottles; empty bullet casings littered the ground as soldiers took shelter from the sun inside their tents or in the shade of their armors like an exhausted Roman army.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2016
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#1
Would it be such a great loss to just Dresden - or Hiroshima - the whole Mosul area?
(IraqiNews.com) Anbar – Anbar Police Command announced on Sunday, that 17 ISIS members were killed in the liberation battles in northern Ramadi, while emphasized the destruction of three booby-trapped vehicles.
Anbar Police chief, Major General Hadi Rezeeg, said in a press statement received by IraqiNews.com, “Today, a security force from the [army’s] Tactical Regiment, backed by the international coalition aviation, conducted an extensive military operation to liberate the areas of Albu Risha and Touwa in northern Ramadi from the ISIS control, killing 17 ISIS members and destroying 3 booby-trapped vehicles.”
Rezeeg added, “The areas controlled by ISIS in the northern axis are attacked regularly,” pointing out that, “ISIS members are trying to escape from the confrontation, while their areas are besieged in order to eliminate them in the coming hours.”
(IraqiNews.com) al-Anbar – The Federal Police chief, Lt. Gen. Raed Shaker Jawdat, announced on Sunday destroying two vehicles for ISIS, one of which was booby-trapped and driven by a “suicide bomber” in western Fallujah.
Jawdat said in a statement obtained by IraqiNews.com, “This morning, forces belonging to the Federal Police managed to destroy two vehicles for ISIS, one of which was booby-trapped and driven by a suicide bomber near the Old Iron Bridge that is located at the western axis of Fallujah.”
He added, “Our forces continue the [military] operations to free the central areas of Fallujah from ISIS.”
(IraqiNews.com) Anbar – Amiriyah Fallujah District Council in Anbar Province announced on Sunday, that the security forces managed to liberate the areas of Zawba region in northern Fallujah from the ISIS control.
Member of the district council, Khodier al-Rashed, said in a statement followed by Iraqi News, “The joint security forces managed, At noon today, to liberate the areas of al-Korosh, al-Sheit, al-Anaz and al-Basateen in the Zawba region from the ISIS control, killing tens of ISIS members.”
Rashed added, “The security forces detonated four booby-trapped vehicles driven by suicide bombers while they were trying to target the [advancing] troops.”
(IraqiNews.com) Anbar – The commander of the First Regiment in Karmat Fallujah Brigade Mahmoud Mardi Jumaili announced on Saturday seizing a prison belonging to the ISIS in central Fallujah holding 360 prisoners, including elements of the security forces.
Jumaili said in a press statement, a copy of which was obtained by Iraqi News, “The security forces discovered a prison belonging to the ISIS in Nezal neighborhood in the center of Fallujah, during the liberation operations of the city,” pointing out that, “The prison contained 360 prisoners, including civilians and security members.”
Jumaili added, “The majority of prisoners were arrested by ISIS since the occupation of the city of Fallujah, two years ago, and they are suffering from bad health conditions,” indicating that, “The arrested people were transferred to hospitals to receive medical treatment.”
(IraqiNews.com) al-Anbar – Media officials with the Ministry of Defense announced on Sunday killing nine terrorists and destroying five vehicles that had carried mono guns during an aerial strike by the international coalition on an ISIS convey near Heet west of the city of Ramadi.
According to information shared by the officials and obtained by IraqiNews.com, “The international coalition aviation, based on intelligence information by the Iraqi National Intelligence [Agency], conducted an aerial strike on a convey belonging to the ISIS terrorist gangs, resulting in the destruction of five vehicles that had carried mono guns, in addition to destroying a mortar detachment and killing nine terrorists that had an intention to target the center of Heet District from the area of al-bakr [using] booby-trapped vehicles.”
In a related context, the information added, “The international coalition aviation conducted an air strike against ISIS gatherings in the village of Kharba Shamam in Nineveh, resulting in the death of tens of ISIS elements,” pointing out that, “The [strike] was based on information by the General Directorate of Intelligence and Security.”
[NATION.PK] The sound of gunfire exchanged between Iraqi forces and the small pockets of ISIS murderous Moslems rang out across the besieged city of Falluja, American media reported on Sunday.
ISIS defenses collapsed as Iraqi special forces made rapid advances into the heart of the city Friday- their fiercest push yet to retake Falluja - but by Saturday morning, the battle waged on.
During a televised address, Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said "we promised you the liberation of Falluja and we retook it," the region's governor later declaring on Twitter that Falluja has "returned to the nation."
But, according to a CNN crew who accompanied troops into Falluja on Saturday, the city appeared far from liberated, despite claims to the contrary by the Iraqi government.
In a symbolic victory, troops from the Iraqi Federal Police raised the national flag over the mayor's office Friday, claiming control over the city center, something Iraq hasn't been able to claim in more than two years.
Posted by: badanov ||
06/20/2016
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Rome (AFP) - Virginia Raggi was elected Sunday as Rome's first female mayor, exit polls showed, in an electoral triumph for the populist Five Star Movement that represents a major setback for Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
For some reason populists are doing well in all sorts of places this year.
Exit polls gave Raggi around two thirds of the vote in a run-off contest with Roberto Giachetti of Renzi's centre-left Democratic Party (PD).
The 37-year-old lawyer and local councillor, a complete unknown only a few months ago, had been widely expected to claim the keys to City Hall. But the margin of her victory exceeded expectations with the exit polls pointing to her taking between 62 and 68 percent of the vote.
Polls suggested the PD had not suffered such big reverses elsewhere but the centre-left was in danger of losing control of the major northern cities Milan and Turin while holding on to Bologna and Naples.
Victory in Rome is a major coup for the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (MS5) founded by comedian Beppe Grillo only seven years ago.
The party has since established itself as the major opposition force in Italian politics and analysts say victory in Rome will give it a platform to mount a challenge to Renzi in national elections due in 2018.
Raggi successfully tapped into widespread anger among voters over the state of the capital's public transport and other services, widely seen as having been undermined by years of sleaze in the municipal administration.
‐ Time for change ‐
"It's time to change Rome," was the battle cry of her campaign, along with Five Star's constant refrain of "honesty".
Her cause in the capital was helped by the ousting of her predecessor, the PD’s Ignazio Marino, over an expenses issue and a much bigger scandal over organised crime's infiltration of the city administration.
In what is known as the "Mafia Capitale" case, dozens of local businessmen, officials and politicians are currently on trial for their involvement in a criminal network that ripped off the city to the tune of tens -- if not hundreds -- of millions of euros.
Scams abounded for years, from stealing the funds allocated to transport ethnic Roma children to school to paving the city's streets with wafer-thin surfaces, according to prosecutors.
Raggi has vowed to make such abuses impossible with far-reaching reforms of the way the local administration is run, as well as getting public services back on track.
But many analysts are sceptical about her ability to make a difference given her lack of experience and the city's huge structural problems, which include a debt mountain of over 13 billion euros ($14.7 billion).
Olympics not a priority
Raggi was a late entrant to politics, telling AFP recently that she had been inspired by the birth of her son Matteo to try and make her home city a better place for him to grow up in.
One area in which she is likely to make an immediate impact is on the credibility of Rome’s bid to host the 2024 Olympics.
She said during the campaign that she did not consider winning the Games as essential, arguing that the city has bigger problems it needs to address first.
"No Roman has asked me whether I back the Olympics," she said, in comments that will delight rival cities Paris, Los Angeles and Budapest. "They talk to me about transport, they talk to me about schools. (The Olympics) are not a priority, they're really not a priority."
Heavily armed fighters from Al Shabaab have carried out an ambush attack on military convoy belonging to Ethiopian troops serving with African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). The attack happened as AMISOM convoy were passing in an area, 20Km away from Elbur town, with Al Shabaab claiming to have inflicted heavy losses on the AU peacekeepers in the firefight.
Ethiopian forces have repulsed the Al Shabaab attack, and fended off the fighters who shot AK-47 riffle bullets on the convoy, according to Abdi Mohamed Hassan who is Elbur district commissioner.
African Union Mission in Somalia did not comment on ambush attack that Al-shabaab claimed to have incurred casualties against AMISOM soldiers.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/20/2016
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[Daily Excelsior] A Pak bully boy of Lashkar-e-Taiba ...the Army of the Pure, an Ahl-e-Hadith terror organization founded by Hafiz Saeed. LeT masquerades behind the Jamaat-ud-Dawa facade within Pakistain and periodically blows things up and kills people in India. Despite the fact that it is banned, always an interesting concept in Pakistain, the organization remains an blatant tool and perhaps an arm of the ISI... (LeT) was killed in a fierce shootout in South Kashmire district of Pulwama today while his two associates slipped out of cordon.
A joint operation was launched this afternoon by Special Operations Group of Jammu and Kashmire Police, Awantipora, 55-Rashtriya Rifles of Army and 110 Battalion of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) at Ladhoo, Pampore, in Pulwama district.
The operation was launched after the security forces received tip off about presence of three foreign faceless myrmidons of LeT hiding near the Khyber Milk plant in the area.
As the security forces cordoned off the area, the faceless myrmidons opened fire on them leading to a gunbattle in which one bully boy was killed. He has been identified as Khubaib alias Abu Qasim, a Pak national. One AK 47 rifle and two magazines were recovered from him.
His two associates managed to slip out of cordon under the cover of fire and dense vegetation. Security forces have launched massive man hunt against these two faceless myrmidons but could not trace out the two faceless myrmidons and later found the dead body of one of the bully boys.
Security forces have been after this group of faceless myrmidons for last several weeks and were tracking their movements. They are said to be recently infiltrated and were planning Fidayeen attacks in South Kashmire.
Security in South Kashmire is already on high alert after recent strikes by faceless myrmidons in Bijbehara and Anantnag in which 5 coppers including three BSF men and two cops were killed.
Police, Army and CRPF have launched massive searches against the LeT in South Kashmire to track down the two faceless myrmidons who carried out attack in Anantnag on police and were caught in a camera while carrying out the attack.
Police have rounded up over two dozen persons including Over Ground Workers of the LeT to trace out the bully boy duo. Police have already circulated posters of the two LeT faceless myrmidons in Anantnag district. These faceless myrmidons have been identified as Junaid Ahmad Mattoo son of Manzoor Ahmad Mattoo resident of Khudwani in Kulgam district and another bully boy as Ali, a foreigner.
This year security forces had major success against the faceless myrmidons and over 60 faceless myrmidons were killed so far.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2016
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[DAWN] KARACHI: An old family dispute took an ugly turn on Saturday afternoon when a man and his son were killed in an exchange of fire with his brother and two relatives in an under-construction bungalow in Nazimabad.
The three maimed attackers were jugged Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please! following the incident, police said.
According to Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... Central SSP Muqadas Haider, Qadeem Khan was supervising construction of his bungalow in Nazimabad-2 near Chhota Maidan when his brother, Khateeb Gul aka Attaur Rehman, with two relatives, Saeedullah and Asad, stormed the place and opened fire on him.
In the ensuing exchange of fire, five persons were maimed. They were shifted to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, where doctors pronounced Qadeem Khan and his son, Abdullah, dead on arrival. The attackers, Khateeb Gul, Saeedullah and Asad, were admitted to the hospital for treatment.
The SSP said the two brothers had an old matrimonial dispute though the installation of a water line in the under-construction bungalow triggered violence.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2016
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[Al Ahram] Syrian government forces advanced to within six miles (10 kilometers) of the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (IS) group-occupied Tabqa air base in the northern part of the country on Sunday, part of a push to try to unseat the holy warrior group from its de facto capital, Raqqa. They've been stuck there for a week.
Government forces recaptured the nearby Thawra oil field from IS myrmidons, according to a Syrian journalist Eyad al-Hosain, who is embedded with the army. The Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the army advanced to within seven kilometers (four miles) of Tabqa.
The Tabqa base, 45 kilometers (28 miles) from Raqqa, holds strategic and symbolic value in the government campaign on the IS capital. It was the last position held by government forces in the Raqqa province before IS forces of Evil overran it in August 2014, killing scores of detained soldiers in a massacre they documented on video. Raqqa itself became the myrmidons' first captive city.
A Syrian opposition coalition, meanwhile, called on The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... to investigate the deaths of at least eight Syrian refugees, including four children, who were allegedly rubbed out by border guards Saturday night while trying to cross the frontier.
A statement by the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces accused Turkish border guards of firing at a group of civilians trying to cross from Kherbet al-Jouz in northwestern Syria into Turkey's Hatay province, killing 11 people.
The coalition, which relies on Turkish political and financial support, said the incident "festivities with the generosity displayed by the Turkish government and brotherly people toward displaced civilians."
The Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the corpse count at eight. The Local Coordination Committees, an activist network, said at least one of those trying to cross was from Jarablus, a northern Syrian town under IS group control.
A senior Turkish official said "we are unable to independently verify the claims" regarding the shooting, but said authorities were investigating.
"Turkey provides humanitarian assistance to displaced persons in northern Syria and follows an open-door policy -- which means we admit refugees whose lives are under imminent threat," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity ... for fear of being murdered... in line with government regulations.
The Syrian war has pushed over 2.7 million refugees into Turkey, according to the United Nations ...the Oyster Bay money pit... . Turkey has tightened security along its border in recent months to prevent further inflows. The Observatory says border guards have rubbed out 60 refugees trying to cross since the start of this year.
Meanwhile, ...back at the secret hideout, Scarface Al sneeringly put his proposition to little Nell... Russia's defense ministry said a Russian soldier has died of wounds he suffered in a myrmidonsuicide kaboom in Syria, the military's 11th casualty since the start of its campaign there.
Sgt. Andrei Timoshenkov died at a hospital at the Russian base in Syria, the ministry said Sunday. It said Timoshenkov was protecting an area where the Russian military was handing out humanitarian aid to residents in Homs province on Wednesday and opened fire to stop a vehicle speeding up to the site. The car, rigged with explosives for a suicide attack, blew up, wounding the serviceman. He died the next day in a hospital.
Elsewhere, a suicide kaboom targeted the entrance to a park in the Syrian city of Qamishli, which is shared between government and Kurdish forces, killing three people, an hour after a memorial was held there for victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide.
"Had the bombing taken place earlier, there would have been a massacre," Qamishli resident and writer Suleiman Youssef told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named by telephone. Qamishli lies on Syria's northern border with Turkey.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2016
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Fierce fighting between Kenyan military and Al Shabaab fighters took place in Hosingow area in Lower Jubba region of southern Somalia on Sunday, reports said.
The Kenyan army has engaged in a “fierce” battle with Al-Shabaab fighters, according to local residents who said they could heard gunfire and sound of blasts as result of the attack.
The combat flared up early on Sunday morning after Al shabaab attack on KDF base in Hosingow town. Both sides have suffered unspecified number of fatalities and injuries.
During the confrontation, the warring sides have exchanged heavy and small weaponry that raged on for hours and could be felt distances from the battle zone, reports added.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/20/2016
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Donald Trump is parting ways with his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, CBS News has confirmed.
The presumptive GOP nominee's campaign spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, confirmed the news in a statement Monday.
"The Donald J. Trump Campaign for President, which has set a historic record in the Republican primary having received almost 14 million votes, has today announced that Corey Lewandowski will no longer be working with the campaign," she said in a statement.
"The campaign is grateful to Corey for his hard work and dedication and we wish him the best in the future."
Earlier this year, Lewandowski was charged with battery of former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields. Florida officials, however, decided not to prosecute him.
[Daily Excelsior] Police and Intelligence agencies have come across a major terror network, which could have presence in Civil Secretariat, the seat of the Government and the Government quarters for the Secretariat employees at Subash Nagar, Jammu among other areas, some of which were in the process of identification, as it has surfaced that one of the Government quarter was to be used as major hideout of the bandidosholy warriors for carrying out a fidayeen attack in Jammu.
Top police and Intelligence sources told the Excelsior tonight that one of the Government Quarter having No. 404 at Subash Nagar, falling under the jurisdiction of Bakshi Nagar cop shoppe, was raided tonight in a joint search operation by Intelligence sleuths and police parties of Udhampur and Bakshi Nagar, which had to be used by the bandidosholy warriors as a hideout for planning and executing the terror attack in Jammu.
"The Government quarter has been sealed after searches and recovery of an ATM card for further investigations," they said.
Hectic investigations by the State Intelligence agencies and police to find out the target of slain Lion of Islam Tanvir Ahmad Sultan son of Mohammad Sultan, a resident of Bemina, Srinagar, who was killed at Kud on June 13, revealed that the mobile telephone used by the Lion of Islam (Tanvir) till May 22, a day before terror attack at Tengpora, Srinagar, was active in Jammu for at least three months taking signals from a mobile tower around Subash Nagar during last winter.
As the Intelligence sleuths went further into the attack, they gathered clues that Tanvir Sultan had stayed around Subash Nagar for three months of the winter, when the Civil Secretariat, was in Jammu.
The joint teams of Intelligence and police then traced a key in the pocket of Tanvir Ahmad Sultan, which they seized. Investigators also established that Tanvir Sultan’s brother, Khurshid Ahmad is a Civil Secretariat employee and had been allotted Quarter No. 404 at Government Quarters at Subash Nagar.
The key found in possession of Tanvir Ahmad Sultan managed to open the lock of Quarter No. 404 at Subash Nagar, giving clear hints to Intelligence agencies and police that Khurshid Ahmad, a Civil Secretariat employee, presently in Srinagar, could be in-league with his brother and had given keys of his official quarter to him for camping there.
Intelligence agencies and police have sounded their Srinagar counterparts on the involvement of Khurshid Ahmad in giving keys of his Government quarter to Tanvir Ahmad Sultan. Police said they were keeping watch on Khurshid but in view of mourning in the family, he hasn’t been detained yet.
Tanvir Sultan, according to sources, had to reach Jammu and keep AK-47 rifle, pistol and 80 rounds, which were recovered from his possession after he was killed in an encounter at Kud on June 13, in the Government Quarter at Subash Nagar and create a Lion of Islam hideout there, which was evident from the recovery of key from his pocket, which opened the lock of Quarter No. 404.
Sources didn’t rule out dumping of some more weapons in the Government quarter before the bandidosholy warriors carried out a terror attack in Jammu.
Tanvir had stayed in the official quarter of his brother Khurshid Ahmad for three months during the winter and was well-versed with the area. Sources said Khurshid Ahmad was also staying in the same quarter, which has been authenticated by one of the local person, who knew Khurshid and used to have telephonic conversation with him on local shopping.
They added that since Khurshid Ahmad was well aware about the past of his brother Tanvir Sultan, who was involved in two fidayeen attack and had served PSA, he not only gave the keys of his official resident to Tanvir knowing his past but also allowed him full access to his quarter, which was evident from recovery of the quarter’s key from the pocket of slain Tanvir Ahmad Sultan.
"The Government quarter would have become potential hideout of the bandidosholy warriors and used to carry out terror attack in Jammu," sources said pointing to the investigations into the Kud encounter.
However, ars longa, vita brevis... alert CRPF and police personnel trapped Tanvir Sultan at Kud and gunned him down after he opened firing on them and passengers of the SRTC bus in which he was travelling from Srinagar to Jammu on June 13.
They added that whether Khurshid Ahmad was fully aware of his brother, Tanvir Sultan’s activities or not, would be known during further investigations but going by Tanvir’s past, which was known to all, his role has come under scrutiny of Intelligence agencies and police as the Government quarter allotted to him was going to become a potential hideout of the Lion of Islams.
Tanvir’s involvement is also suspected in the killing of a police constable at Tengpora, Srinagar on May 23 as the weapon snatched from the cop after the killing was the same Tanvir used in firing at Kud. Moreover, Tanvir’s mobile phone had switched off on May 22 and was not found on since then.
The Sherlocks were also working on the theory as to whether Tanvir Sultan was involved in more terror attacks after re-cycling into the militancy other than Tengpora and Kud.
His first involvement in the militancy had surfaced in 2003 when he had carried out fidayeen attack at Ali Jan Shopping Complex in Srinagar. He had been booked under FIR No. 145/2003 in which total 22 persons were accused.
He had carried out second attack at Pamposh Hotel in which there were 14 accused including him and all of them were booked under FIR No. 127/2002.
He was later booked under the Public Safety Act (PSA) in 2004. From 2004 to Tengpora attack, Tanvir Sultan hadn’t figured in any Lion of Islam attack.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2016
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[Khaama (Afghanistan)] The Talibs shot at least 6 civilians after accusing them of breaking Ramadan fast in western Herat ...a venerable old Persian-speaking city in western Afghanistan, populated mostly by Tadjiks, which is why it's not as blood-soaked as areas controlled by Pashtuns... province of Afghanistan.
According to the local officials, the incident took place in Obe district after the Talibs initially opened fire on residents of Tagab Yari area.
District police chief Sher Aqa Alokozai said he is aware of reports regarding an attack by the Talibs on civilians over alleged breaking of Ramadan fast.
He said the Talibs first shot two civilians and then opened fire on four others accusing of them supporting the two individuals who had broken Ramadan fast.
According to the eyewitnesses in the area, the local residents started clash with the Taliban holy warriors after they shot 6 civilians.
They are saying that 3 Taliban holy warriors were also maimed during the clash with the local residents.
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] A senior Taliban leader was killed in an ambush of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) in western Herat ...a venerable old Persian-speaking city in western Afghanistan, populated mostly by Tadjiks, which is why it's not as blood-soaked as areas controlled by Pashtuns... province of Afghanistan.
Local officials in Herat province said Mawlavi Alam was the group’s military commission chief for Badghis province and was killed as he was travelling to Herat province.
Provincial governor’s front man for Herat Jilani Farhad said Mawlavi Alam was ambushed by the Afghan forces in Keshk-e-Rabat district.
He said Mawlavi Alam was involved in major attacks that led to the killing of scores of security personnel and civilians.
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06/20/2016
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Top|| File under: Taliban
#1
Yeah, well here Amish trade children for debts.
Where's the moral balance?
PESHAWAR: Six key commanders of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan's (TTP) Mehsud faction surrendered to security forces near the Afghan border in Upper Kurram Agency Saturday night.
Former TTP chief Hakeemullah Mehsud's brother Ejaz Mehsud and uncle Khair Muhammad are among those who gave themselves up in the Shahidano Dhand area, security sources said.
According to security sources, the surrendered TTP commanders have been shifted to Dera Ismail Khan and will later be sent to a rehabilitation centre established by the Army in Swat for counselling.
#3
...Now that one of my Cleveland teams has won a championship, I should let you know that it's possible a man in a red suit and carrying a pitchfork may be around here looking for me and saying something about, "Time to pay up."
If he does, tell him you haven't seen me.
All kidding aside, this is a wonderful bit of happiness that my hometown should enjoy, because in a few weeks we'll be forever associated with the 2016 Republican Convention.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
06/20/2016 4:42
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#4
I don't think Cleveland won, so much as Golden State choked.
Posted by: Charles ||
06/20/2016 7:02
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#5
These things come in threes.
1) The Red Sox won the WS. I was in Boston and can appreciate what Clevelanders feel like.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Three people were killed in northeast Syria on Sunday when a jacket wallah attacked an event commemorating the massacre of Christians more than a century ago, state media and a security source said.
The attack in the city of Qamishli took place as locals gathered at a hall to commemorate the deaths of tens of thousands of Christians by the Ottoman army starting in 1915 in what is known as the Sayfo ("Sword") massacre.
A photographer working with AFP and attending the event said he heard the blast and saw pieces of flesh lying next to damaged cars.
"The suicide kaboomer tried to enter the hall where people were gathered but was stopped by local security forces, and he let 'er rip among them," a security source at the scene told AFP.
The security forces belonged to the Sotoro, a Christian militia based in Syria’s northeast.
"Three Sotoro members were killed and five maimed," the security source said.
One Sotoro member told AFP that the suicide bomber "let 'er rip near our checkpoint after he couldn’t reach his real target, Patriarch Ignatius."
Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II is the head of the Syriac Orthodox church and was leading the commemoration.
Syria’s state news agency SANA also reported three people killed in a "terrorist suicide kaboom" in
Qamishli but did not specify whether they were civilians or security forces.
Situated along the border with The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , Qamishli has been regularly targeted by suicide kabooms, many of which have been claimed by the ISIS jihadist group.
Control of the Kurdish-majority city is split between Kurdish militia and pro-government fighters.
Syriac Christians belong to the eastern Christian tradition and pray in Aramaic. They include both Orthodox and Catholic branches, and constitute around 15 percent of Syria’s 1.2 million Christians.
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06/20/2016
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(IraqiNews.com) Baghdad – On Sunday, a source in the Ministry of Interior said, that 11 people had been either killed or wounded in a bomb blast in southern Baghdad.
According to information shared by the source, and obtained by Iraqi News, it was stated, “An explosive device exploded, at noon today, near a popular market in al-Mahmudiya District in southern Baghdad, killing two persons and wounding nine others.”
The information added, “A security force rushed to the area and transferred the wounded to Mahmudiya Hospital to receive medical treatment and the dead bodies to the forensic medicine department, while cordoned off the area of the incident and barred approaching it.”
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Turkish border guards rubbed out at least 11 Syrians, mostly from one family, as they tried to cross into The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... from northwestern Syria, activists and a monitoring group said on Sunday.
At least two women and four children were among those killed in the shootings overnight as the refugees sought to cross into Turkey from the border village of Khirbet al Jouz, the Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Several activists in the area backed up the report.
Turkey has repeatedly denied accusations of its security forces firing on Syrians trying to cross the frontier, which has been closed for several months.
But the Observatory has recorded numerous incidents this year, and said Sunday’s toll was among the highest.
The Britannia-based Observatory said the group of eight had been displaced by fighting around the northern Syrian town of Manbij, held by ISIS and under attack by US-backed forces.
They fled northwest towards Idlib province and the border, but were killed "when Turkish border guards opened fire on them as they tried to cross into Turkey," said the Observatory.
It said that four of those killed were children, adding that eight people were maimed, some of them critically.
Since the beginning of the year, at least 60 people -- all civilians -- have been killed in fire by Turkish border guards, the Observatory said.
In May, Human Rights Watch ... During the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011, HRW received a pledge from the Foundation to Promote Open Society, of which George Soros is Chairman, for general support totaling $100,000,000. The grant is being paid in installments of $10,000,000 over ten years.Through June 30, 2013, HRW had received $30,000,000 towards the fulfillment of the pledge.... accused Turkish border guards of shooting and beating Syrian asylum seekers.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him... denied the reports, and the Turkish army says it only fires at armed smugglers, not at civilians.
But in its statement, the National Coalition expressed its "surprise and condemnation after this terrible tragedy against our brothers fleeing the regime.
"The deaths of defenseless Syrians contradicts the hospitality of the Turkish government and the Turkish people," it said.
Turkey is hosting over 2.7 million refugees from the conflict in Syria. Only a quarter of a million live in refugee camps, while the rest are in towns and cities.
More than 280,000 people have been killed since Syria’s conflict erupted in March 2011 with demonstrations against Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Terror of Aleppo ... ’s government.
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06/20/2016
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[Khaama (Afghanistan)] The Talibs suffered heavy casualties during an operation in the restive Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan.
The Ministry of Defense (MoD) said the operation was conducted in Charchino district by the Special Forces of the Afghan National Army.
According to MoD, the operations were conducted to suppress the insurgency activities of the Talibs which led to the elimination fo 47 murderous Moslems while 41 others were maimed.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2016
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#1
Unknown what government casualties were. Uncertain how honest the Taliban counts are. Controversial how useful body counts are. That said, the Taliban would appear to be suffering significantly more damage of late.
[LibyaHerald] A new militia made of of militants who fled Bengahzi in recent months tried to seize the industrial zone in Ajdabiya today but were forced to retreat by units linked to the Libyan National Army (LNA) of Khalifa Hafter.
The militia, known as the “Defend Benghazi Brigades”, is led by Islamist Ziyad Belam backed by Ismail Salabi, and is an attempt to reconstitute the Benghazi Revolutionaries Shoura Council which has been all-but defeated by the LNA.
According to the spokesperson of LNA’s Ajdabiya operations room, Akram Bu Haligha, a convoy of 40 armed vehicles headed to Ajdabiya two days ago from the south.
“The 101 brigade of the LNA were involved in a clash against the enemies forces at the area of the Man Made River project,” he said.
He accused the head of the central region Petroleum Facilities Guards (PFG) Ibrahim Jadhran of helping the militia enter Ajdabiya.
He added: “Even if we accepted that the Presidency Council is legitimate, this group has violated its [the Presidency Council’s] decision establishing a military operations room from Ajdabiya to Sirte and it prohibited all sides undertaking operations against others.”
Three weeks ago, the Presidency Council set up the Ajdabiya-Sirte oeprations room under the command of Colonel Yousef Rajeb Ageela, although most of the forces consist of PFG men. In an order aimed specifically at the LNA, the Council also insisted no miltary grouping other than forces under its command should undertake any activities in the area.
Since then the operations room has recaptured Ben Jawad, Nufliya and Harawa from the so-called Islamic State.
The accusation that Jadhran helped Ziyad Belam attack Ajdabiya is unlikely. Jadhran supports the Presidency Council and the Government of National Accord and yesterday had talks in Ras Lanuf with its defence minister, Mahdi Barghathi, accompanying him also to Nufliya and Ben Jawad. For his part, Barghathi who has spent much of the past two years fighting the BRSC and otehr militants in Benghazi has said that the “Defend Benghazi Brigades” are extremists and will be opposed.
It seems inconceivable that he would be making plans with Jadhran if the latter were at the very same time aiding and abetting the militants.
The new force does have the support, however, the Tripoli-based grand mufti Sadik Al-Ghariani and is allegedly backed by some businessmen from Misrata.
Ziyad Balam was head of the Omar Mukhtar Brigade in Bengahzi but was seriously wounded in an assassination bid there in October 2014. He was then flown to Turkey for treatment. After he returned to Misrata, he went to Tripoli and has never been back to Benghazi. He has reportedly been active in the eastern part of Jufrah distict, from where, it is suggested, he launched the abortive operation against Ajdabiya.
[AlArabiya] A Syrian jet bomber crashed just after take-off from Syria's Hama airport after it encountered a technical problem, a Syrian military source said on Sunday.
The military source, quoted by Syrian state media, did not say when the crash had occurred or provide any other details.
Several Russian-manufactured warplanes have crashed since the start of the year, mostly due to technical failures which defense analysts have generally attributed to age.
A rebel source told Reuters the plane that crashed was a Russian Mig 21 fighter but this could not be independently verified.
Posted by: badanov ||
06/20/2016
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[Army Times] You’ve asked for it, and the Army has heard you.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley on Thursday announced during a trip to Fort Hood, Texas, that soldiers will be able to roll the sleeves on the Army Combat Uniform.
But don’t start rolling your sleeves just yet, Army officials said. Milley is calling for a 10-day pilot at Fort Hood with the intention of continuing it for the rest of the Army.
Milley’s announcement is so popular that soldiers at Fort Hood are already rolling their sleeves, Army officials said. Army common sense needs a 10-day pilot program.
[AnNahar] Hizbullah ...Party of God, a Leb militia inspired, founded, funded and directed by Iran. Hizbullah refers to itself as The Resistance and purports to defend Leb against Israel, with whom it has started and lost one disastrous war to date, though it did claim victory... has suffered very heavy casualties in the southern countryside of the northern Syrian province of Aleppo, incurring the highest toll of deaths and injuries since the 2013 Qusayr battle, Syrian opposition activists have announced.
The party has lost at least 25 fighters in the festivities that have been raging for several days, the activists said, amid official announcements by the party about its deaths and reports about the disappearance of several members whose fate is still unknown.
"Hizbullah and the Iranians are dismayed by the fact that the Russian warplanes are not supporting them," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported, noting that the Syrian army and its allies "might anytime lose the town of al-Hader south of Aleppo should the absence of Russia's aerial support continue."
According to Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman, at least 186 combatants from both sides have been killed since Tuesday ‐ 86 from the regime and its allies, including 25 Hizbullah members, and 100 anti-regime Islamist fighters.
"The factions of the (al-Nusra ...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli sh-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ... Front-led) Army of Conquest seized the town of Khalsa and moved to Zitan and Birna before liberating them within only a few hours," the opposition Sham News Network reported, adding that "more than 50 members of the Shiite militias were killed in the three towns."
"Rebel forces are advancing towards the town of al-Hader and amassing their fighters around it," the network said, noting that "the town is the main stronghold of the Iranian forces and the foreign militias that operate under their command."
Hizbullah's intervention in the Syrian conflict alongside regime forces has helped Damascus achieve several military victories and allowed the party to clear most of the Lebanese-Syrian border region from rebels and jihadists.
#3
the battle for Aleppo has been going on now since 2012
Hezbollah became involved beginning in mid 2013
the Assad-Hezbollah-Iran-Russia side has far better equipment and is numerically superior but a lot of their assets are tied up protecting vital targets -- on the other hand the other side has the disadvantage of greater internecine conflict with perhaps a quarter of their casualties resulting from intra-alliance battle
(the Assad-Hezb- side has also had some intra alliance battles but fewer
Posted by: lord garth ||
06/20/2016 11:16
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Shiite Houthi ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews ... militia group in Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic... announced on Sunday the release of 276 government loyalists who had been held captive for months, in a gesture of good will.
The Houthis’ sabanews.net website said 200 detainees were set free in Rada, a town in the central province of Baida, and another 76 were let go in nearby Dhamar province.
The move was a sign of "good will" on the occasion of the Moslem fasting month of Ramadan, said the website, citing officials.
The detainees in Rada had been captured for allegedly "cooperating with the Arab military coalition and being loyal to the government" of UN-backed President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, an official there told AFP.
Those freed in Dhamar had been taken in on accusations they had been preparing to join government forces, the official added.
The releases come a day after the exchange of 194 prisoners in Taez, in southwestern Yemen, following tribal mediation unconnected to UN-brokered peace talks in Kuwait.
Those negotiations, now in their ninth week, have made no major breakthroughs, even on the issue of prisoners.
Earlier this month, the rebels freed 187 captives while 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... released 52.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2016
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Top|| File under: Houthis
[Iraq Sun] Exhausted, hungry and desperate, 30,000 people have poured out of Fallujah in the past three days as Iraqi forces stormed into the center of the city, pushing 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 into the northwest of the city.
Despite the searing Iraqi summer heat, many of those who have escaped are sleeping out in the open as refugee camps are now full. Others have managed to find refuge in warehouses or mosques.
The number of people who have managed to leave the city has topped 60,000.
The Norwegian Refugee Council, which is providing emergency food rations and bottled water to thousands of people, said the sheer numbers and a lack of camp coordination has made it difficult to reach all the newly arrived families.
"We implore the Iraqi government to take charge of this humanitarian disaster unfolding on our watch," said NRC Country Director Nasr Muflahi in a statement.
"We cannot continue to provide aid when we do not even know who is where and what they need," Muflahi said.
Prime Minister Haider al Abadi declared the Iraqi forces had been victorious in their fight to take control of the city.
But in Fallujah, ... the City of Mosques, which might have somthing to do with why it's not called Center of Prosperity or a really nice place to raise your kids... Iraqi fighters face snipers and bombs as they fight to eliminate IS forces of Evil from the city they have held for more than two years.
Some forces of Evil reportedly have sent their wives and children out of the city with the refugees.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2016
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Top|| File under: Islamic State
#1
Fallujah is not a city, but rather the center of a plague on humanity.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/20/2016 0:13
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#2
When we had our siege of Fallujah we attempted to be very careful with the mosques. I wonder if the Shia razed them all?
#3
WE were also careful with the people, and took care of "refugees" from the city. I can't imagine the people of Fallujah didn't expect the same thing again, only to find out that the Iraqi Government doesn't listen to the media.
Must be a shock that they have to pay for allowing scum to use their city freely.
Posted by: Charles ||
06/20/2016 6:59
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#4
the have entered the university of hard knocks.
Fallujah is such a cesspit and has a long history of fucking over everyone it can. Best thing to do is to level the fucking city and sow it with radiation so it can never be rebuilt.
QUETTA: Five suspected militants were killed in Balochistan’s Awaran district on Sunday evening.
A security official, not authorised to speak publicly, said security forces conducted an operation against the militants in the Mashkay area of Awaran.
“Five miscreants belonging to a banned militant organisation were killed during the exchange of fire,” said the security official.
Security forces claim to have recovered a sizeable amount of arms and ammunition from the possession of the militants. Forces also recovered anti-state literature and laptops from the militants safe haven.
Further reinforcements of security forces were called to the area after the skirmish.
Militants have conducted attacks against security forces and national installations in Balochistan, which has been plagued by an insurgency and growing sectarian killings for more than a decade.
Posted by: badanov ||
06/20/2016
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Algerian soldiers killed 14 armed Islamist militants in an ongoing operation south of the capital on Sunday, the defence ministry said giving a new toll.
It said the “terrorists” were killed in an ambush in a mountainous area of the Medea region, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Algiers.
Weapons, ammunition and an explosives vest were seized, it said.
The ambush was part of an ongoing operation against militants that began on June 9 and had so far led to the killings of 17 “terrorists” and the arrests of four others.
The authorities in the North African country use the term “terrorists” to refer to Islamist militants.
A brutal civil war in the 1990s between the government and Islamists claimed about 200,000 lives.
Despite adopting a peace and reconciliation charter in 2005 aimed at turning the page on the conflict, armed groups remain active in some areas.
At least 101 armed Islamists have been killed by security forces this year, according to an AFP count compiled from official bulletins.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2016
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[Khaama (Afghanistan)] The First Vice President General Abdul Rashid Dostum ...ethnic Uzbek warlord who distinguished himself fighting the Soviets and the Taliban. The story that he had a bad guy run over with a tank is an exaggeration. It was an armored personnel carrier... granted $15,000 to the family of each soldier martyred during the recent clash with the Pak forces in Torkham.
The Office of the First Vice President said the families of three soldiers who bit the dust in the clash received the assistance from Gen. Dostum.
The aid was delivered by the advisor of the First President in religious Mawlavi Mohammad Nabi to the families of three soldiers in Jalalabad city.
The aid includes cash and other materials including wheat, rice, oil, sugar, etc which were handed over to the families of the dear departed soldiers in the presence of provincial officials.
Mawlavi Nabi passed the message of Gen. Dostum to the families of the dear departed soldiers and hailed them for their bravery and dedication to defend the country.
Tensions intensified among the Afghan and Pak forces late on Sunday night after the Afghan border forces prevented the Pak security forces to work on the construction of a gate in Torkham.
The two sides engaged in deadly festivities for at least three times before diplomatic efforts were put in place to resolve the issue through negotations.
Both the Afghan and Pak security forces suffered casualties during the festivities that led to the closure of the crossing.
The Torkham crossing was finally reopened for the passengers and trucks earlier on Saturday almost a week that incurred heavy financial losses for the both sides.
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06/20/2016
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Seems an odd thing for the opposition party to do, but then they did have all those clever advisors sent over by America's Democratic Party. Had Labour (or whatever they called themselves last year) won, they could have done for Israel what President Obama was already doing for Israel, so perhaps it's just as well the hated Bibi somehow got so many more votes.
[IsraelTimes] In negotiations with PA leader ahead of 2015 elections, envoy for prospective PM learned a deal was possible 'on everything'
...so long as everything was defined as whatever the Palestinians wanted and even more.
Opposition leader Isaac Herzog held secret talks with PA President the ineffectual the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... during the 2014-2015 election cycle, and agreed to cede the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem to the Paleostinians as part of a future peace deal, according to report published on Thursday.
More than 50 Saudi-led forces were killed and injured as Yemeni army and popular committees launched a ballistic missile on their gathering in al-Jawf province.
Yemeni sources said at least 30 soldiers were killed while 24 others were injured in the rocket attack in al-Hazm governorate.ballsitic missile Yemen
The Saudi-led forces were gathering in Brigade 115 headquarters when a ballistic missile was fired, the sources said.
Among the killed and the injured are officials in the Saudi-led coalition which has been for more than a year launching an air campaign against Yemen, according to the sources.
Meanwhile, the sources added that ambulances rushed to the attack scene, amid high secrecy by the aggression forces on the losses.
[RUDAW.NET] A court in Norway officially charged the radical Kurdish Lion of Islam Mala Krekar
...I think they must mean Mullah Krekar, born in Iraq with the name of Najm al-Din Faraj Ahmad or possibly Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad or even Fateh Najmeddin Faraj...
Thursday for alleged terror links to a group based in Italia, according to online pages close to Krekar who is also wanted in Kurdistan region on multiple terror-related cases.
According to the charges, Krekar is accused of having criminal masterminded a ’terror group’ in Italia while serving a sentence at the Kongsvinger prison in Norway. Krekar has denied involvement. The court proceedings will continue till June 15 when a verdict is expected to determine his possible extradition to Italia for further investigations.
Krekar’s lawyer has said his client had no access to communicate with the group in Italia from his prison cell.
According to the charges, Krekar instructed the group through regular Skype meetings while in prison.
Mala Krekar was sentenced in March 2012 to 6 years in prison but was released in January 2015 after a judge reduced his sentence.
He has faced several legal charges in Norway, where he has lived since 1991 with his family.
Krekar, a flamboyant Kurdish Islamist in exile, is wanted in Kurdistan Region for terrorism charges dating back to late 1990s and early 2000 when he found the Kurdish jihadist group Ansar al-Islam, and declared a caliphate-like colony in southern Kurdish towns of Biara and Tawela in the run up for the 2003 US-led incursion to Iraq.
The US army demolished Ansar al-Islam strongholds in Biara and Tawela with Tomahawk and Cruise missiles during the Iraq invasion of 2003 and dismantled the group’s network.
Kurdish authorities say Ansar al-Islam were responsible for killing and torturing numbers of locals in the area who opposed the caliphate and want to try its leader Krekar for the charges.
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06/20/2016
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#1
The most famous of the Ikhwan to serve in Afghanistan was the Palestinian-born Shaykh Abdullah Azzam. When the Soviets forces crossed the Afghanistan frontier Abdullah Azzam, the Palestinian Muslim Brother, and Mullah Krekar -- (AKA) Najmuddin Feraj Ahmad, an Iraqi Kurd Salafist yet another graduate of Cairo's Al Azhar -- were teaching at the Islamic University at Islamabad, Pakistan. Krekar would later surface as leader of the terrorist Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam). It was following his move to Denmark in 1991 he made his mark in Europe as the Mullah Krekar. He should have been eliminated long ago.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] A Jordanian court sentenced a Norwegian man of Iraqi descent to 15 years in prison on Sunday for planning "terrorist acts" in the kingdom.
Khaled al-Rebai, 49, was also found guilty by Amman’s state security court of "possessing kaboom," according to the verdict delivered in front of Norwegian diplomats in the Jordanian capital.
Rebai was found not guilty of belonging to Iran’s Quds Force, the foreign army of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, an AFP correspondent said.
His lawyers said they would appeal the guilty verdicts.
Rebai was tossed in the clink Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! in July in possession of 45 kilograms of explosives in the northern town of Jarash.
Jordan said at the time it had foiled a "terrorist" attack due to be carried out by an Iraqi Quds Force member.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2016
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Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
that's 90 lbs of splodey. "For personal use, Officer"
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/20/2016 7:19
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The Yemeni government said yesterday that it will stay in the city of Aden until the country’s capital Sana’a and all other provinces are liberated from rebel control.
At a meeting with leaders of the factions of the peaceful Southern Movement yesterday, the Prime Minister of Yemen Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr said that “government ministers are trying to carry out their duties despite the limited powers”. The official news agency Saba said that the Prime Minister emphasised the importance of the participation of all political components in determining the future of the new Yemen during the next phase.
Bin Daghr said that he had listened to leaders of the peaceful Southern Movement’s observations about Aden, especially with regards to electricity, water, salaries and postal services during a meeting on Thursday evening. He also discussed the corruption that is prevalent in some government institutions and how to deal with this at the meeting. He stressed that the government is working hard to overcome the public services crisis and that providing electricity and securing water supplies were priorities.
[ARA News] QAMISHLO – The US-led coalition on Sunday launched several airstrikes on headquarters of the Islamic State (ISIS) radical group in northern Syria, killing and wounding a number of jihadis.
The airstrikes targeted ISIS positions in the city of Manbij, near the Turkish border, local sources told ARA News.
At least nine ISIS jihadis were killed, including ISIS senior leader Abu Hamza al-Ansari, and dozens were wounded in the coalition raids on Sunday.
“Al-Ansari was killed along with three of his escorts after one of the airstrikes hit a building where they’ve been hiding in Manbij city,” local media activist Nasser Taljbini told ARA News.
“Another raid targeted an ISIS security centre in Manbij and killed at least five militants and wounded 12 others,” the source reported.
In the meantime, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) advanced towards the ISIS-held city.
Speaking to ARA News, SDF commander in Manbij Adnan Abu Amjad said: “Our forces captured the Al-Kitab square in western Manbij after fierce clashes with ISIS militants.”
The commander added that the international coalition has intensified its airstrikes inside Manbij city to assist the SDF in their ground operations against ISIS.
Posted by: badanov ||
06/20/2016
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Top|| File under: Islamic State
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] At least 23 loyalists of the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group were killed in an Arclight airstrike in eastern Nangarhar The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country.. province of Afghanistan.
Security officials said Sunday that the faceless myrmidons were killed in an Arclight airstrike conducted in Achin district which is home to scores of ISIS loyalists.
The officials further added another ISIS Lion of Islam was maimed during the Arclight airstrike but it is yet not clear if the raid was conducted by the Afghan Air Force or the US forces in Afghanistan.
This comes as at least 21 ISIS faceless myrmidons were killed in a similar raid in Achin district last week, while at least 15 more were killed during a separate operation conducted in Achin earlier.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2016
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Top|| File under: Islamic State
[EXPRESS.CO.UK] The heir to the throne railed against the radicalisation of young British men by Islamist Death Eaters as he launched an impassioned defence of Britannia's "Christian" heritage.
Telling British muslims that they should show more respect for "the values we hold dear," the Prince revealed that he was terrified by the influence of radical preachers who spread their teachings on the internet.
In an unprecedented outburst, he said: "The radicalisation of people in Britannia is a great worry, and the extent to which this is happening is alarming, particularly in a country like ours where we hold values dear.
"You would think the people who have come here, or are born here, and go to school here, would abide by those values and outlooks."
He added that it was "frightening" that young British Moslems were being radicalised by "crazy stuff on the internet".
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2016
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Top|| File under:
#1
...Abdul, Mahdi, and Yusuf roll around on the ground laughing their asses off at the British prince...
#2
Nice Taqqiya statement you've got going there your highness.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/20/2016 0:15
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#3
Too fucking late, chuck. Now you get to experience Colonialism, from the receiving end. Your last, best (not very good, but still) hope is that your subjects vote to "Brexit" and then seal off the chunnel, and then vote to wall off your kingdom from the future caliphate of al-Andalus!
#4
I think Mommy told him that his views are unacceptable, so he'll be passed over for one of the Grandchildren. Now he's trying to backtrack in a vain hope to reverse the decision.
Posted by: Charles ||
06/20/2016 7:00
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#5
That will work about as well as leaving a pedophile alone in a day care and telling them they better follow the rules.
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.
[AEI] This is an updated and revised version of a CD post from last year that generated nearly 300 comments because of the controversial nature of the topic ‐ whether "the rich" pay their "fair share" of taxes or not ‐ so I expect another lively discussion this year!
The horrific massacre of innocents in an Orlando nightclub is a tragedy of national and international proportions. The senseless, methodical killing of people just like us, in a place where they’ve come to relax, is an affront to our humanity and civilization.
[Reuters] Philippine police killed 11 suspected drug dealers during operations at the weekend, police said on Monday, adding to a surge of drugs-related killings since Rodrigo Duterte swept an election last month on promises to wipe out crime.
Dammit, now I really am wondering if the shooter was allowed to 'slip thru' in order to 
[Breitbart] In the face of growing pressure on Planned Parenthood after revelations that it was selling human body parts, the Satanic Temple has launched a pro-abortion crusade to come to the aid of America’s largest abortion provider.
[Breitbart] U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch revealed Sunday that the government will release the transcripts of the 911 calls made by the Orlando terrorist during the attack last Sunday -- scrubbed of any references to Islam or the Islamic State (ISIS).
[Al Ahram] The speaker of Libya's eastern parliament has declared martial law in areas under its control, a move intended to empower its military to respond quickly to infiltration by militias loyal to the rival, UN-brokered government in the capital, 
...Adviser to Pak Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on National Security and Foreign Affairs, who believes in 
Jeddah- Leader of the fourth military district Brig.Gen Ahmad Saif revealed that weapons used by Houthi and pro-Saleh militias (armed militants supporting ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh) are the same stock content offered by the U.S. in its mission to fight terrorism in Yemen.
Eight year pilot leadership program nearing successful conclusion. 
[DAWN] LAKKI MARWAT: The power loadshedding-hit people of Lakki have refused to let their children immunised against the crippling 
[21stCenturyWire] Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov appeared to confirm the attack Friday, telling reporters it was difficult to distinguish different rebel groups from the air..jpg)
[RUDAW.NET] Around noon this past Tuesday Iraqi soldiers launched an attack against a remote, dusty and windswept village called al-Nasr west of the Tigress River. They believed capturing this tiny village would bring them one step closer to 
Rome (AFP) - Virginia Raggi was elected Sunday as Rome's first female mayor, exit polls showed, in an electoral triumph for the populist Five Star Movement that represents a major setback for Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.
[Al Ahram] Syrian government forces advanced to within six miles (10 kilometers) of the 
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
[AnNahar] 
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] The First Vice President General Abdul Rashid 
[EXPRESS.CO.UK] The heir to the throne railed against the radicalisation of young British men by Islamist 
