The latest North Korean missile tests come at time when the U.S. defensive shield is weakened, missile-defense analysts say, by this summer’s loss of a pair of warships specially outfitted for ballistic-missile defense (BMD).
A Standard Missile (SM)-3 launches for a test from the USS Fitzgerald, a guided-missile destroyer equipped perform ballistic-missile defense that is now out of commission due to damage from a collision with a commercial ship. Credit: U.S. Navy
A Standard Missile (SM)-3 launches for a test from the USS Fitzgerald, a guided-missile destroyer equipped perform ballistic-missile defense that is now out of commission due to damage from a collision with a commercial ship. Credit: U.S. Navy
Those two guided-missile destroyers ‐ the USS John S. McCain and USS Fitzgerald ‐ collided with commercial ships, cutting down immediate regional U.S. maritime BMD capability by at least 14 percent.
The chinks in the ocean-going parts of the shield and the subsequent tests, the analysts say, show a need to develop and deploy more space-based sensors to guarantee full and continuous missile-defense coverage. A more robust space-based layer would also provide a more encompassing picture of threats than ship- or land-based radars.
The U.S. does possess a constellation of satellites to warn of missile launches, but what it lacks is enough satellites to provide adequate tracking and target discrimination for a missile traveling through space.
#1
They can do this all they want. The bottom line is that they can be hurt by the trade sanctions. Trump seems to have taken the initiative and got inside of China's OODA loop.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/04/2017 15:34
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h/t Gates of Vienna
H.R. McMaster is the enemy within, who is quietly working to fill the Trump White House with Obama Pentagon staff members. Not only that, he is giving them senior National Security Council roles. Who are they?
You probably have never heard of them. They are Ylli and Ylber Bajraktari, Albanian-Kosovan brothers, who were high-ranking officials in the Obama administration. What positions did they hold?
As an Obama recruit, Ylber was deputy chief of staff to Secretary of Defense Carter. He played a pivotal role in developing the Obama administration’s foreign policy on Iran and Iraq. He also worked on the administration’s highly controversial nuclear deal with the Tehran regime. Are you shocked yet?
Ylli was special assistant to the Obama Pentagon’s deputy secretary, Robert Work. Now this is the chilling part of this story...his job was to dutifully insure that the top Obama officials’ visions were completed. If this does not alarm you, it should. Why are so many powerful foreign entities being brought in to fill high-level positions in our government? Ask yourself that question.
"Gaslighting is the attempt of one person to overwrite another person’s reality." ‐ Everyday Feminism.
"Narrative : 4. a story that connects and explains a carefully selected set of supposedly true events, experiences, or the like, intended to support a particular viewpoint or thesis: " ‐ some random online dictionary.
Note that the first definition includes the notion that a person has their own reality. That may have been sloppiness on the part of the article writer at Everyday Feminism, or it may be an assumption of the second definition and that your reality is carefully selected to support a particular viewpoint or thesis.
...But how does that work when we can each have our own reality?
If your reality, if your carefully constructed narrative to support a thesis of patriarchy and oppression isn’t objectively true, have you gaslighted yourself? Have you?
...lately I’ve been seeing charges and claims of gaslighting made when someone has been led to question their social and political narrative and become uncomfortable. If your narrative is a lie, it may be uncomfortable for you to question it, but it’s not gaslighting.
If I argue that women have been almost universally encouraged in any career ambition, and given outward and constant support for at least 30 years, hand-held and helped and even had much of our educational system rearranged specifically to cater to female learning styles, and you’re led to question your reality... I am not gaslighting you. I’m describing the truth of American life. Not my truth. The truth.
If I explain the negative effects on boys of all this promotion of girls, I’m describing the truth and I wish you’d listen because the situation is destructive and cruel.If I argue that women have been almost universally encouraged in any career ambition, and given outward and constant support for at least 30 years, hand-held and helped and even had much of our educational system rearranged specifically to cater to female learning styles, and you’re led to question your reality... I am not gaslighting you. I’m describing the truth of American life. Not my truth. The truth.
If I explain the negative effects on boys of all this promotion of girls, I’m describing the truth and I wish you’d listen because the situation is destructive and cruel.
#1
HISTORY 101
For those of you who slept through World History 101 here is a condensed version. Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter .The two most important events in all of history were:
1 . The invention of beer, and
2 . The invention of the wheel .
The wheel was invented to get man to the beer, and the beer to the man .
These facts formed the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups:
1 . Liberals.
2 . Conservatives .
Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture . Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery . That's how villages were formed .
Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to BBQ at night while they were drinking beer . This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement .
Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly BBQ's and doing the sewing, fetching, and hair dressing . This was the beginning of the Liberal movement .
Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women . The rest became known as girlie-men
Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy and group hugs, the evolution of the Hollywood actor, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide all the meat and beer that conservatives provided
Over the years, Conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant . Liberals are symbolized by the jackass .
Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water . They eat raw fish but like their beef well done . Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare . Another interesting evolutionary side note: most liberal women have higher testosterone levels than their men . Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals .
Conservatives drink domestic beer . They eat red meat and still provide for their women . Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, firemen, lumberjacks, construction workers, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, athletes, golfers, and generally anyone who works productively . Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living .
Liberals produce little or nothing . They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production . Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans . That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America . They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing .
Here ends today's lesson in world history .
It should be noted that a liberal may have a momentary urge to angrily respond to the above before forwarding it .
A conservative will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that it will be forwarded immediately to other true believers
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/04/2017 15:46
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#3
What AP said! :-D
Posted by: Barbara ||
09/04/2017 18:48
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#4
Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to BBQ at night while they were drinking beer . This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement.
[Fox] Members of a Connecticut police department stood in line to salute a terminally ill four-legged partner on its last trip to a veterinary hospital.
K9 Hunter, a German shepherd, served with the Middletown Police Department at the side of its handler, Officer Michael D’Aresta. The dog was diagnosed with an aggressive form of liver cancer just recently.
Officers bid farewell to Hunter Friday as D'Aresta cradled the canine in his arms on the final trip to the vet, where the dog was euthanized.
[The Hill] Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, who served as both the director of the NSA and the CIA, said Monday that some of President Trump’s rhetoric on North Korea "could lead to great danger."
"A very tough, but a very precise statement," Hayden told CNN’s "New Day," referring to the statement Secretary of Defense James Mattis made on Sunday after North Korea said that it successfully tested a miniaturized hydrogen bomb that can be placed on an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
"Which is a little bit different than some of the things the president has been allowing himself to say, Alisyn, which have been very tough, but very imprecise, and that could lead to great danger," Hayden told host Alisyn Camerota.
Trump has received criticism over the last month for some of his rhetoric in regard to North Korea, specifically comments in which he warned that North Korea would face "fire and fury" should it continue to threaten the United States.
"Secretary Mattis had very strong language, but it was about a North Korean threat, not a North Korean capability," Hayden explained.
"In other words, Alisyn, I think he was trying to make a distinction between ’we’re willing to pre-empt an imminent threat from North Korea but we’re not willing, it’s not our policy at least not yet, to conduct a preventive war to prevent the North Koreans from acquiring that kind of capability."
#5
Maybe General Hayden should have some tough talk for Pudgy and North Korea rather than Trump.
Posted by JohnQC
You can set your clock by these Klingon ramblings against Trump. They systematically rotate their bashings. I suppose they feel obliged to do so, being regime change specialists and puppet masters of the Deep State. If it were not such a serious issue it might be comical.
#6
It's after the weekend and the beginning of the new month. A muted conversation at the cocktail party or picnic, a quiet word aside when the remuneration is tendered. Perhaps even a pointed suggestion.
#7
and Alisyn has shown herself to be a CNN doofus
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/04/2017 12:41
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#8
Long term US strategic existence ends in eventual enslavement by somebody if we capitulate to a 4th world despot with an H-Bomb. Think about it. Every negotiation in the back of any oppositions mind - "They didn't stand up to a mentally ill spoiled brat. I can roll these pretenders."
#9
"if we capitulate to a 4th world despot with an H-Bomb. Think about it. Every negotiation in the back of any oppositions mind - "They didn't stand up to a mentally ill spoiled brat. I can roll these pretenders."
The Western reaction to 9/11 amounted to a political capitulation to 5th world warlords without any serious military assets after an asymmetrical mass fatality attack on the US.
The North Korea crisis is but one of the consequences of Western leaders' deliberate erosion of Western deterrence that has taken plane for over 15 years.
Why shouldn't Kim sponsor a VX terror attack in a Western nation that would kill a few thousand people? 9/11 didn't spell the end for Afghanistan, the Pashuns or the Taliban.
Why shouldn't he expect the West to cough up Danegeld payable to nuclear North Korea? Non nuclear Afghanistan got Danegeld as well.
During the Cold War rational adversaries would assess a potential US reaction to any aggressive move in light of America's reaction to Pearl Harbor.
h/t Instapundit
After two years of lectures about "principles" and "the Rule of law" by the establishment-loving hacks furious that normal Americans rejected them and elected Donald Trump, their performance last week demonstrated that their high-minded dedication to conservatism is all a fraud. It’s not about "principles" or "the Rule of Law." It’s only about holding on to power ‐ theirs.
[Houston Chronicle - 28 May 2016] As torrential rains have pounded the city in consecutive years, leading to repeated, heavy and deadly flooding, this inconvenient fact contributes to the region's misery.
Parts of Harris County have dropped between 10 and 12 feet since the 1920s, according to data from the U.S. Geological Survey.
State and local officials have made various efforts over the past 40 years to stabilize the ground, but some areas continue to sink - by as much as 2 inches per year.
Spring Branch, where Interstate 10 and Beltway 8 meet, has dropped 4 feet since 1975. Jersey Village, along Route 290 and to the west of Beltway 8, is almost 2 feet lower than it was in 1996. And Greater Greenspoint, where Interstate 45 intersects with Beltway 8, has given up about 2 feet in the last decade alone, according to USGS data.
"When you lose that much, it makes an area prone to floods when they weren't historically," said Mark Kasmarek, a hydrogeologist for more than 30 years with the USGS.
There is little mystery to why this is happening: The developing region draws an excessive amount of groundwater to keep itself quenched. Over the last century, aquifers here have lost between 300 and 400 feet, leaving the land to collapse.
The science behind this phenomenon is called subsidence.
#5
Put up more multi-million dollar houses there, it's all good. I wonder if that $100 improved house lot is still for sale by the city government of Finley, ND?
[American Thinker] Did President Trump have a right to be annoyed with Jeff Sessions for recusing himself? A plausible case can be made that Sessions didn’t have to do it, but then there’s an equally plausible case that he did. The real grounds for criticizing Sessions lie elsewhere: once he decided that he would need to recuse himself, Sessions had a duty to make sure that a replacement was on hand who was up to the task that Sessions had sidestepped. That he did not do. Rod Rosenstein has made one grievous mistake after another, with no end in sight.
Rosenstein’s most important error was the complete incoherence of his statement of the scope of the investigation in his order of May 17 appointing Robert Mueller as Special Counsel: "...any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump." Here he specified no particular actor (there are scores that this might refer to) nor particular actions, times or places, nor even crimes, because "links" and "coordination" are not in themselves criminal.
Think about what Special Counsel was being asked to do. Absent any specific allegations, he would need to do something akin to proving a negative. Proving that a specific event actually happened is possible because the details of that event tell us where to look, but proving that something never happened is impossible because it could have happened at any time or place and by action of any person. We could never exhaust all the possibilities. Similarly, for Special Counsel to reach the conclusion that no coordination ever took place is a logical impossibility: it would require that he retroactively monitor every moment of the life of every person involved in the Trump campaign, and that he seize every conceivable record of all such people. If he only asked for phone records, he would miss evidence in emails, but if he also asked for emails, he would miss evidence in written correspondence. And if he asked only for all of these, he would miss what diaries can tell him. And then there are text messages... But even all of this would not be enough: he would need to look into what other people’s records might tell him about each person’s activities. (But which other people? How many?) Mueller would have to do this for every single one of Trump’s campaign staff.
#3
Rod Rosenstein has made one grievous mistake after another, with no end in sight.
In hindsight, it doesn't seem like Rosenstein was a good appointment.
I didn't think Sessions should have recused himself right out of the box. How do you bring an end to this? Bringing an end to Special Counsel Mueller's witch hunt would invite a shit storm of criticism from the Dems and the left--there would be renewed calls for impeachment ad nauseam. It is hard to get good feelings from any Special Counsel investigation or witch hunt as some call them--especially right at the beginning of an administration. It was an effort from the start by the Deep State to control Donald Trump and keep him from fulfilling his promises to the electorate.
One has to recall how this Special Counsel came about. It was by a pissed=off Comey "colluding" with Mueller to establish a Special Counsel to stir up trouble for Trump. Comey, in doing so, may have broken the law by helping gin- up/promote the faked Trump-collusion meme, the Trump dossier, and by allowing illegal unmasking to occur.
Mueller seems to have an investigation looking for a crime instead of a crime needing an investigation. In a sense, it seems to usurp the function of a grand jury.
The American people hired Trump to do two things:
1. To drain the swamp.
2. To clean up the corruption mess left behind.
[Breitbart] In her Saturday opening statement on "Justice," host Jeanine Pirro called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to open a federal criminal investigation into the actions of Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director Jim Comey because Comey began drafting a letter exonerating Clinton from any wrongdoing before the FBI investigation was complete.
"Jeff Sessions needs to follow his prosecutorial instincts and open a federal criminal investigation into the actions of Hillary Rodham Clinton and impanel a grand jury immediately," Pirro argued.
She continued, "This woman should not get a free pass because she lost an election. Her reign was one of bold, brazen in your face pay-to-play corruption. And I’m not even talking about the hypocrisy of this so-called women’s rights activists which starts and ends with the women who accused her husband of wrongdoing and contributions to her foundation from countries that literally hate and kill women.
Pirro then said it is "time to go after" Comey.
"[J]im Comey ‐ he needs to be the target of an active criminal investigation for obstruction of justice, conspiracy and perjury," she demanded. "His prejudging an investigation before 17 witnesses and the target of that criminal investigation were even interviewed is the essence of public corruption. He lied to the senate judiciary committee when he said he only made the decision to not charge, which by the way was not his decision to make in the first place after the investigation was completed."
#1
Absolutely. Both Hilda and Comey lied like rugs to Congress in sworn testimony; we owe it to restoring public trust in the law. No one above or below the law.
#2
Here's hoping that Sessions is working quietly on a number of investigation without all the fanfare that traditionally accompanies such things and then one fine day everyone will be totally surprised by a flurry of indictments.
Recipient of the 2017 Rantburg Optimist Club Senior Fellow award
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
09/04/2017 11:15
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#3
Yeah, well, I can dream can't I?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
09/04/2017 14:14
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[Times of Israel] Two Jewish centenarians in Britain celebrated their 83rd wedding anniversary, becoming what is thought to be the country’s longest married couple.
Helen and Maurice Kaye, aged 104 and 105, celebrated their anniversary last week surrounded by their family at home in Bournemouth, the Jewish Chronicle of London reported Thursday, noting the longevity milestone.
The couple met when Maurice Kaye was a traveling salesman for his father’s clothing business. They have been together for 87 years.
"So much has changed, but we still have each other, thank God," he was quoted as saying. "We had a great day with fabulous entertainment from our gorgeous great-grandchildren. Now on to the next milestone."
Helen Kaye said: "I surprised myself how much I enjoyed it," referring to the anniversary party the couple had at their home approximately 100 miles west of London.
The couple have two surviving children, seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
[Wash Times] Iran, with support from Hezbollah and Hamas, is building missile sites in Lebanon and Syria.
Israel’s national existence is again being threatened, this time by a three-front war being engineered by Iran.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Russian city of Sochi on August 24 to attempt to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to restrain Iran’s actions.
Iran is extending its expansion in Syria, to which Russia is a party, from western Syria up to Israel’s doorstep on the Golan Heights. Iran, already heavily involved in Syria, is also deeply involved in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
Most of its involvement is through its Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces and proxy terrorist networks. As a result Israel is, justifiably, feeling surrounded.
What both leaders know, and Mr. Putin wouldn’t admit, is that Russia’s power to restrain Iran is limited. Gone are the days when America and Russia could exert a superpower’s near-total control over the actions of their allies and dependent or satellite states.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump has decided to scrap a program shielding from deportation immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children but will give Congress six months to craft legislation to replace it, sources familiar with the situation said.
The president decided to delay enforcement of his decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, the two sources said on Sunday. One source cautioned that the president could change his mind.
The decision to give Congress half a year to come up with a an alternative, first reported by Politico, represents a compromise of sorts after top Republicans and business leaders asked Trump to keep the program.
DACA, an Obama administration policy, protects nearly 800,000 young men and women often called "Dreamers" from deportation and allows them to work legally.
[Right Scoop] In a short but very effective video, Benjamin Netanyahu shows how the Palestinian Authority indoctrinates children to hate Israel and the Jews.
#1
Chose one - or embrace the power of "and/or".
(i) They were invented to commit genocide and failed to acquire any other purpose for themselves.
(ii) Because they're Muslims.
[Daily Caller] Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals announced his retirement Friday afternoon, affording President Donald Trump the opportunity to replace a legal titan on the Chicago-based federal appeals court.
Posner is one of the most consequential legal figures of recent times, exerting significant influence on the practice and study of law from his perches on the Seventh Circuit and the University of Chicago Law School faculty. Something of an intellectual gadfly, he has written 50 books, 500 academic articles, and several thousand legal opinions on a wide range of subjects, a prodigious output surpassing even Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes, Posner’s hero and perhaps the most lettered Supreme Court justice of his time. And Posner is almost certainly the most read jurist of recent decades: The Journal of Legal Studies says he was the most cited legal scholar of the 20th century.
Posner subscribes to a method of judging called "pragmatism," which seeks to balance the equities of each case and conform judicial rulings to the social, political, and economic arrangements of the times. He touted his commitment to pragmatism in announcing his retirement.
"I am proud to have promoted a pragmatic approach to judging during my time on the Court, and to have had the opportunity to apply my view that judicial opinions should be easy to understand and that judges should focus on the right and wrong in every case," he said in a statement announcing his retirement.
His vaunted pragmatism is often difficult to define, oscillating between libertarian law and economic theories and pure utilitarianism. What’s more, there are few in the federal judiciary as comfortable discarding precedent as Posner.
#1
The left has worked diligently through judicial fiat for literally decades to re-shape the country into the classic Soviet model. This is an absolute OUTRAGE !
#3
...There's also a school of thought that suspects Judge Posner wanted really bad to be one of the Supremes, and knows now he ain't gonna get it.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
09/04/2017 8:58
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#4
'...conform judicial rulings to the social, political, and economic arrangements of the times.' Any fad will due just as long as it doesn't involve actual Law of course.
#5
“I don’t know what ‘existing law’ means except views currently held by many judges, lawyers, and politicians,” he wrote for Slate in August. “Those views are likely to be fluid, changeable — in accordance with new social needs, attitudes, and authority. Law means one thing to conservatives, another to liberals. It has no fixity.”
One could argue that if the law is considered fluid, then you have no legal benchmarks or in a couple of words "no law."
#7
Just imagine if the judge goes back into private practice.
Client: "So, your judgeness, under this here contract can I stop shipping to my deadbeat customer?"
Posner: "That depends on the social, political and economic arrangements of the times. Your contract has no fixity. My fee will be $50,000 for that advice."
Client: "Sorry, judge, but our fee agreement has no fixity, and them there social whatever changed just about five minutes ago. You owe me $50,000."
Posted by: Matt ||
09/04/2017 13:35
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[PJ] The freelance workforce in the United States has exceeded 55 million people, which represents about 35 percent of the working population, and recent trends show the sector rapidly growing with about a million additions a year.
Some of these workers ‐ accountants and network developers, for example -- stand to make more money than in traditional jobs, while others are simply unemployed and forced to take whatever gig they can land. Then there are some who forgo the traditional 9-to-5 routine for a more flexible lifestyle ‐ so-called digital nomads who want to take their work with them around the world.
Freelance website Upwork and the Freelancers Union have commissioned an annual survey on this growing sector for the past three years. The study is conducted by independent research firm Edelman Intelligence, which queries around 6,000 American workers over the age of 18. The annual study showed most recently that the freelance population (which includes full-time and part-time freelancers) has grown from 53 million in 2014 to 55 million in 2016, a 4 percent increase.
The study divides freelancers into a number of categories, including traditional, full-time freelancers; individuals who work full-time jobs and pick up freelancing on the side; temporary contract workers; and freelance business owners.
The survey concluded that 63 percent of respondents started freelancing by choice, not necessity. Of the 55 million, 34.3 million people work as traditional freelancers and what is described as diversified workers (people who work a part-time job and fill out the rest of their schedule with freelance writing and/or driving for Uber, for instance). About 13.5 million are regarded as "moonlighters," individuals who work full-time and freelance on the side.
#2
It's largely how the video game industry runs. When a big project is completed, the workforce moves on to another project run by another company. Not even unusual for the subcontracted company studio to fold after a delivery to a major distribution label. Gypsy workforces.
#4
This will be interesting over time as the gig economy does not provide the kind of income stability and security of the classic 9 - 5 routine.
This makes it more difficult to do things like schedule having kids and saving for any big purchases (like a house) and saving for retirement.
My youngest is freelance (31) and it is very tough to coordinate with his wife who is a norm. They don't have kids yet partly because of the instability of the employment picture.
#6
Just part of the Obamacare-driven change from full time to part time workers without benefits.
Posted by: KBK
Skill and job progression, retirement pensions, medical beneifits, and the gold watch, yesterday's story.... and all so overrated. Mobility is the key.
[Guardian] A man who ran into the flames at the Burning Man festival’s burning ceremony has died.
Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen said the man ran through a human-chain of security officers at about 10:30pm Saturday during the Man Burn event at the counter-culture festival in the Black Rock Desert, about 100 miles north of Reno.
The sheriff says the man was rescued by firefighters and later died at the UC Davis hospital burn center in California.
About 70,000 people are attending the nine-day art and music celebration, which culminates with the burning of a towering 40ft-effigy made of wood. Attendees have tried to run into the flames as a symbol of rebirth.
Festival organizers did not immediately respond when asked for comment.
A man who died after running into a flaming pyre at the Burning Man festival in Nevada on Saturday was a Swiss resident, the sheriff’s office said.
Aaron Joel Mitchell, 41, was attending the annual art and music festival in the Nevada desert known for its ritualistic burnings, including its signature event, the burning of a huge effigy meant to symbolize rebirth.
According to the Pershing County Sheriff, Mitchell broke through a security perimeter and ran into the blaze, reported international media.
Firefighters had difficulty extracting him from the flames because part of the effigy structure was falling, said the sheriff. He was eventually pulled out and airlifted to a burns centre, but later died from his injuries.
On Sunday the sheriff’s office identified Mitchell, saying he was a US citizen who lived with his wife in Switzerland.
Swiss press reported that he lived in the canton of Thurgau.
#5
Burning man has a lot of the "Mad Max at the County Fair" vibe to it. If you're not prepared to be edgy and provocative, they all want to do the edgy and provocative at you.
Irony is dead, and these are the people that tortured it to death.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
09/04/2017 14:01
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#6
Get 70,000 people doing crazy sh*t out in the desert, enjoying the alkalai flat dust storms, and you get the real burning man. And the expense of medivac-ing from Nevada to Davis probably by air.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/04/2017 15:36
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#8
Actually, I've been to Burning Man over twenty times. (I live in the Black Rock Desert.) I've always found it to be a rather positive experience, irony and all. However, what this man did was inexcusable and selfish, showing little regard for others. In fact, he did it right in front of a friend of mine; a sweet young woman who wouldn't hurt anyone, and was rather traumatized by the experience. As I'm certain were a lot of other people who were simply enjoying themselves and minding their own business.
[Breitbart] Tensions are rising at some Australian universities amid concerns that the Chinese government is infiltrating teaching methods across the faculties, according to a report from news.com.au.
The concerns have arisen after multiple incidents of Chinese students demanding changes to teaching methods, as well as demanding apologies from lecturers about the way they explore certain topics.
The trend has led to concern across Australia of the growing threat of the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian ideology infiltrating universities and potentially influencing other students.
Some students have even posted footage online of lecturers going against the Chinese Communist Party’s ideology.
Last week, a student at the Chinese University of Newcastle uploaded footage of him arguing with a lecturer who referred to Hong Kong and Taiwan as independent countries.
"You are making us feel uncomfortable," the student tells business professor Nimay Khaliani. "You have to consider all the students."
"Exactly, all the students, not one set of students," replied Khaliani.
The incident reportedly went viral across Chinese media, with Newcastle University having to contact China’s consulate-general to resolve the issue.
Another incident at the University of Sydney reported in Chinese media involved IT professor Khimji Vaghjiani displaying a map with three regions currently disputed by China and India as part of India.
"Over 18 months ago, I used an out-of-date map, downloaded from the internet," Vaghjiani later said in a statement. "I was unaware that the map was inaccurate and out-of-date. This was a genuine mistake and I regret any offense this may have caused."
Recently, the publishing company Cambridge University Press ceded to pressure from Chinese authorities to remove an academic journal named China Quarterly, pulling 300 articles from their archives. However, they recently announced that the articles had been reinstated:
#3
Send the "students" home. No wtudents, no problem. There is no obligation on the part of universities in the US, Oz or anywhete else to admit foreign students.
[Ynet] Kenya's police say two officers were killed when gunnies attacked them at a church they were guarding by Kenya's Indian Ocean coast.
Coast Police Chief Larry Kieng said Sunday gunnies on a cycle of violence shot the two officers, killing one on the spot and the other died of injuries at a hospital. He said the gunnies took the officers' guns and drove off.
Somalia's krazed killer group al-Shabaab ... Somalia's version of the Taliban, functioning as an arm of al-Qaeda... is suspected as it has carried out similar attacks in Kenya in Dire Revenge for Kenyan troops fighting the krazed killer rebels in Somalia. Kenya's security forces have managed to limit al-Shabaab's attacks to areas near the Somalia border in the past year.
[Iran Press TV] An analyst says the FBI search of Russian consulates in the United States is a “serious breach of diplomatic protocol,” but the target is probably US President Donald Trump not Russia.
“Obviously the whole issue was a travesty, the fact of this tit-for-tat in closing embassies on one side and ... we do not know exactly where it is going to stop … we just do not know what is going to happen, it has gotten into kind of an escalation, it is hard to forecast, but the fact that the FBI had gone into the US trade council raises the question, 'what are they really looking for?'” William Jones, a member of the Executive Intelligence Review, told Press TV in an interview on Sunday. That'd be Lyndon Larouche's unbiased opinion.
“But given the fact that there is an arm of the FBI, an arm of the US intelligence community, which is going after President Trump … this may be something that is directed against the president himself,” he said.
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[IsraelTimes] PLFP terror group mourns death of 'fallen fighter Raed al-Salihi,' who was shot by soldiers during an arrest raid in August
Either we missed the arrest or the gentleman's name and affiliation were unknown when the arrest was reported, because this is the only report we have of arrests in Deheishe in August.
A Paleostinian official said Sunday that a 21-year-old Paleostinian man, Raed al-Salihi, has died of wounds he incurred during an arrest by Israeli soldiers in August.
According to Issa Qaraqe, head of the Paleostinian Committee for Prisoners’ Affairs, Salihi, who was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Paleostine terror group, was placed in durance vile Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'! in his home in the Deheishe refugee camp near Bethlehem on August 9.
During his arrest, Salihi was reportedly shot and critically maimed by IDF soldiers. Qaraqe said in a statement that Salihi was shot five times at close range.
He was being treated at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem.
A spokesperson for the hospital confirmed Salihi’s death.
The IDF said it was looking into the incident and was not immediately able to comment.
An image of Salihi holding a PFLP flag was shared widely on Paleostinian media.
The PFLP’s armed wing, the Abu Ali Mustapha Brigades, said it "mourned" the death of the "heroic fallen fighter Raed al-Salihi," in a statement published on its website.
[AlMasdar] For the third night in a row, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) launched a powerful missile assault in the eastern suburbs of Damascus, targeting the positions of Faylaq Al-Rahman and Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham.
Using surface-to-surface missiles, the Syrian Arab Army’s 42nd Brigade of the 4th Mechanized Division launched a vicious attack on the eastern Damascus suburbs of Jobar and ‘Ayn Tarma.
According to Al-Masdar field correspondent, Ibrahim Joudeh, the Syrian Arab Army’s 42nd Brigade launched more than 10 surface-to-surface missiles on the Islamist defenses, scoring several direct hits on well-fortified trenches and installations in Jobar and ‘Ayn Tarma.
Joudeh added that the primary target for the Syrian Army on Saturday night was Jobar’s Al-‘Arab District and ‘Ayn Tarma’s southeastern neighborhoods.
[AlMasdar] The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) carried out a special operation in east Damascus, Sunday, targeting one of the most important tunnels used by the militants of Faylaq Al-Rahman in ‘Ayn Tarma.
Led by the 105th Brigade of the Republican Guard, the Syrian Arab Army detonated their bombs inside the Faylaq Al-Rahman tunnel that connects the eastern bypass of the highway to the central district of ‘Ayn Tarma.
The Syrian Army destroyed the entire tunnel, killing and trapping scores of Islamist rebels that used it to resupply several fronts.
Following the destruction of the tunnel, the Syrian Arab Army launched a powerful ground attack near the ‘Ayn Tarma postal office, resulting in the capture of several building blocks.
The Republican Guard is now pushing deeper into ‘Ayn Tarma tonight in a new bid to take this imperative suburb located in eastern Damascus.
The Israeli press and liberals loathe Bibi, and have been hounding him, and therefore his wife, for years.
[An Nahar] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's wife has taken a voluntary lie detector test to try and dispel allegations she misused public funds, her lawyer said on Sunday.
National fraud squad detectives questioned Sara Netanyahu last month on suspicions she routinely claimed state payments for personal housekeeping expenses at the couple's official and private residences.
Private broadcaster Channel Two reported at the weekend that the attorney general was expected to announce charges against her by September 10.
"She took the test," Netanyahu family lawyer Yossi Cohen told Israeli public radio. "It's a very tough test. It's humiliating and she did it wonderfully."
He did not give details of the questions she was asked or the test results.
He said the decision to undergo the examination, at a privately operated polygraph facility, was taken "following the horrible mudslinging against her and after we heard that she is going to be put on trial."
Results of polygraph testing are not admissible as evidence in Israeli criminal trials.
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Anbar (IraqiNews.com) Warplanes from the United States-led coalition killed 22 Islamic State militants in western Anbar on Saturday, a senior paramilitary leader was quoted saying.
Qatari al-Obaidi, a commander at the tribal forces in Anbar, told Alsumaria News that coalition fighter jets killed 22 members of the extremist group who were in a convoy heading to the town of Annah (210 west of Ramadi) coming from Qaim.
He said seven vehicles driven by the militants were destroyed in the raid.
Islamic State militants are still holding the towns of Qaim, Rawa and Anna, in western Anbar, since 2014, when they occupied a third of Iraq to proclaim their self-styled “caliphate”. So far, there has not been a wide-scale campaign to retake those regions, but occasional offensives by government forces and allied Popular Mobilization Forces have managed to take over several surrounding villages.
The Iraqi government declared victory over Islamic State in Mosul, the group’s former capital in Iraq, in July, and said it was going to proceed towards other group holdouts, including Anbar. Government troops are currently preparing to expel the group from Hawija, southwest of Kirkuk.
Late July, Iraqi army warplanes reportedly dropped millions of messages on western Anbar telling locals that liberation offensives for the province were nearing, and advising them to stay away from militants’ deployments.
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[AlMasdar] The U.S. Coalition’s official spokesperson claimed on Sunday that their jets had killed 85 Islamic State (ISIL) terrorists and destroyed over 40 of their vehicles that were traveling from the Syrian-Lebanese border to Deir Ezzor.
“Hezbollah-ISIS update: 85 Daesh killed, 40 separate ISIS vehicles destroyed; @CJTFOIR NOT targeting or preventing aid to civilians,” the official Twitter account of Operation Inherent Resolve claimed on Sunday.
This claim comes just days after the U.S. denied their air assets were targeting the ISIL convoy that consists of 300 combatants and 500 civilians.
Both Hezbollah and Iran have urged the U.S. to halt their bombings in order to prevent the 500 civilians from being killed by Coalition jets; however, this has been ignored.
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#5
It gets IS and its minions out of Lebanon and away from the power-players in that miserable country.
It gets them out of Assad's territory and western Syria in general.
It coincides with Russia and Iran's intent to keep Assad in power.
It keeps the Syrian power balance, and the Mid-East power balance in general, intact and in favor of Russian, Iranian, Heb'allah (and to a lesser extent, Turkish) interests.
It becomes a 'Western' and Arab problem in eastern Syria and western Iraq.
ISIS is a convenient symbolic "rent an enemy." They're kinda like the Obama supporter who suddenly became an alt-right "white supremacist" in Charlottsville recently. It has helped Hezbollah pretend they're Fighting Isis every time they go out to shoot someone, just like Antifadah likes to pretend they're fighting naziism whenever they beat up whoever they're beating up this week.
#7
Arabic saying: "Me and my brothers against my cousins, me and my cousins against the stranger"
Why dig them out of a IED-festooned fortified village if you can talk them into going east and die fighting someone else? A Win-Win-Win if they kill someone(e.g. Kurds) in the process that are competing for power in the region.
Kandahar police chief general Abdul Raziq on Sunday said that the Afghan security forces are planning to conduct a joint military operation with foreign forces against the Taliban in the southern province.
Reports indicate that Kandahar’s Maiwand and Ghorak districts which have a common border with Sangeen and Nahr-e-Saraj districts in Helmand province have been under higher security threats.
Insurgents threaten the security of Kandahar from Helmand’s Nahr-e-Saraj and Sangeen districts, said Raziq.
“There is a problem in this region, we have jointly worked and made plans and the operations will be very lengthy, I assure the people of Helmand and Kandahar we will clear these areas of the insurgents,” he said during a visit to Maiwand.
Meanwhile a number of residents in Maiwand have said that the Taliban and drug smugglers are threatening security of Maiwand from Helmand’s volatile regions to make their way to other parts of Kandahar.
“Enemy forces are present in an area between Helmand and Kandahar, but we want to move on this direction, security forces are also coming from Helmand,” said Afghan police officer Shamsullah.
“We will fight with the Taliban,” said another officer Noor Mohammad.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) A civilian was injured in a southern Baghdad bomb blast, a police source was quoted saying on Sunday.
“A bomb, placed on the side of the road in Hor Rajab region, south of Baghdad, exploded on Sunday, causing injury of a civilian who was passing when the explosion took place,” the source told AlSumaria News.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the source added that “security services cordoned off the explosion spot and transferred the wounded to nearby hospital for treatment.
Violence in the country has surged further with the emergence of Islamic State Sunni extremist militants who proclaimed an “Islamic Caliphate” in Iraq and Syria in 2014.
A monthly count by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), which excludes security members deaths, said 297 Iraqis, were killed and injured due to violence and armed conflicts during the month of ِAugust. Baghdad was the most affected province with 45 deaths and 135 injuries.
Baghdad has seen almost daily bombings and armed attacks against security members, paramilitary groups and civilians since the Iraqi government launched a wide-scale campaign to retake IS-occupied areas in 2016. While most of of the explosions and attacks went without a claim of responsibility, Islamic State has claimed several incidents.
[Al Jazeera] Texas Governor Greg Abbott said on Sunday damage from Hurricane Harvey would likely reach $150bn to $180bn.
Harvey, which came ashore on August 25 as the most powerful hurricane to hit Texas in 50 years, has killed an estimated 47 people and displaced more than one million after causing wreckage in an area stretching for nearly 500km.
Abbott, who is advocating for US federal government aid to repair his state, said the damage would exceed that of Katrina, the storm that devastated New Orleans and surrounding areas in 2005, and Sandy, which overwhelmed New York City and the US northeast in 2012.
"Katrina caused, if I recall, more than $120bn but when you look at the number of homes and business affected by this I think this will cost well over $120bn, probably $150bn to $180bn," Abbott told Fox News.
"This is far larger than Hurricane Sandy."
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[Al Jazeera] Sri Lanka's president has vowed to protect a former army chief accused of crimes in the bloody final phase of the country's civil war.
"I state very clearly that I will not allow anyone in the world to touch Jagath Jayasuriya or any other military chief or any war hero in this country," President Maithripala Sirisena said on Sunday, addressing a convention of his Sri Lanka Freedom Party.
Sirisena's statement came a week after rights groups filed criminal lawsuits in South America against Jayasuriya, who until last week served as the country's envoy to Brazil, Argentina ...a country located on the other side of the Deep South. It is covered with Pampers and inhabited by Grouchos, who dance the Tangle. They used to have some islands called the Malvinas located where the Falklands are now. They're not supposed to cry for Evita... , Chile, Colombia, Peru and Suriname.
The lawsuits are based on Jayasuriya's role as a commander in the final phase of Sri Lanka's civil war in 2009.
They allege he oversaw military units that attacked hospitals and killed, disappeared and tortured thousands of people.
The suits had been filed in Brazil and Colombia and more were to come in Argentina, Chile and Peru. Suriname had refused to accept the petition.
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#1
who until last week served as the country's envoy to Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Suriname.
[Iran Press TV] United Nations ...an idea whose time has gone... Secretary General Antonio Guterres has one again called on North Korea to cease it illegal actions after Pyongyang announced the testing of a hydrogen bomb.
On Sunday, Guterres condemned the act as "yet another serious breach of the country's international obligations." That + $3.95 = 1 cup of coffee
"The secretary general reiterates his call on the DPRK leadership to cease such acts and to comply fully with its international obligations under relevant Security Council resolutions," said a statement released by the secretary general’s office.
The test was also slammed by the head of the UN atomic agency, who called it "an extremely regrettable act."
"This new test, which follows the two tests last year and is the sixth since 2006, is in complete disregard of the repeated demands of the international community," said Director General of the ineffective International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Yukiya Amano.
"Once again, I strongly urge the DPRK to fully implement all relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council and the IAEA," he added.
The test was also decried by, China, South Korea, Russia, and La Belle France.
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#5
Long term US strategic existence ends in eventual enslavement by somebody if we capitulate to a 4th world despot with an H-Bomb. Think about it. Every negotiation in the back of the oppositions mind - "They didn't stand up to a mentally ill spoiled brat. I can roll these pretenders."
#3
As my own mother aged, the two of us took many trips covering large parts of the USA. Particularly in California she noticed the huge cemeteries. I did not comment on them. At one point she told me, "They are using up too much space to bury all the dead people. The living people need the space. I want to be cremated." So that's what happened. When the time came I buried her ashes on the grave site of her oldest sister, who had been buried conventionally in a deep vault. That cemetery puts ashes 2 feet deep and so there is no chance of hitting the deeper gravesite. That same day my cousins also buried the ashes of their mother, my aunt 2 feet from my mother's spot. My aunt had donated her remains for research & her ashes weren't available for years. Years after that one of my cousins was buried over the same spot, 2 feet away. So now family has 4 burials in a single spot, still with room for more.
[Libya Herald] There is no plan to attack 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... , Tarhouna Municipal Council said today, vowing that the town would "not contribute to the spilling of a single drop of blood in Tripoli".
The council was responding to online reports that its Kani Brigade intended to push towards Tripoli via the old international airport at Gasr Ben Gashir.
This militia has earnt a violent reputation. Late last month, as part of a tit-for-tat vendetta, its members murdered ten people and destroyed houses in the villages of Rgaiat and Suq al-Khamis Emsihel on the road to Tripoli.
However, it's easy to be generous with someone else's money... the council protested that it continued to back the building of state institutions, the rule of law and national reconciliation. It added: "Libyans are living in a difficult political, economic, social and psychological situation. Our faith in God’s power and greatness remains strong despite our suffering".
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] An ISIS evacuation convoy trying to reach ISIS territory in east Syria has split in two, with some buses remaining in the open desert after others turned back into government-held areas, a US-led coalition fighting the group said on Sunday.
The Syrian government and Leb’s Hezbollah group offered the convoy of about 300 lightly armed fighters and about 300 family members safe passage a week ago in return for ISIS surrendering an enclave on the Syria-Leb border.
However, Switzerland makes more than cheese... the coalition has blocked the convoy from entering ISIS territory in east Syria, near the border withIraq, by cratering roads and destroying bridges, saying it opposes the evacuation deal as being "not a lasting solution".
"One group remains in the open desert to the north west of al-Bukamal and the other group has headed west towards Palmyra," the coalition said in an emailed statement.
On Saturday Hezbollah said all but six of the buses had safely crossed out of Syrian government territory and were nolonger the responsibility of it or the Syrian government.
It warned the United States that the buses in the desert included elderly people, pregnant women and casualties, and accused it of stopping humanitarian aid reaching the convoy.
The coalition said it had contacted Russia to deliver a message to the Syrian government that it would still not let the convoy pass, and that it had offered suggestions on how to save the civilians in it from suffering.
"Food and water have been provided to the convoy," it said, without giving further details.
The coalition has said it will not target the convoy directly while it contains civilians, but said in its statement it had struck about 85 ISIS fighters near the convoy.
It had also struck about 40 ISIS vehicles near the convoy including a tank, an artillery system, armed vehicles and transport vehicles seeking to help move the fighters in the convoy into its territory, it said.
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[RFE/RL] Eight children and four women -- originating from Kazakhstan and Russia -- who had been left behind in areas liberated from Islamic State rebels have been flown out of Iraq and Syria and have arrived in Russia. A plane carrying the women and children arrived in the Chechen capital Grozny on September 1.
Interfax news agency later reported from Grozny airport that Russia's children's ombudswoman Anna Kuznetsova and top Chechen officials had met the plane carrying the evacuees.
It was the largest group to be flown from Iraq to Chechnya, and the first to include adults. Last month, seven children were flown back on a similar flight. Iraqi officials have said that many foreign fighters who mounted a final stand in Mosul came from Russia, particularly Chechnya, and other former Soviet countries.
Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov has promised to bring back all the Chechen children in Iraq, saying that "the parents of almost all of them are dead." Kadyrov said on Instagram that the latest flight included a woman from Chechnya with three children.
Kuznetsova has gathered a list of more than 350 children who were reportedly taken by their parents from Russia to Iraq and Syria. State-controlled television reported in August that the Russian authorities were trying to return 48 such minors from Mosul.
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[AlMasdar] The Iraqi paramilitary, Harakat Al-Nujaba, issued a statement on Saturday that thanked the Lebanese Hezbollah movement for their contribution to fighting terrorism.
“The Lebanese Hezbollah advisers and commanders were beside the Popular Mobilization Forces [PMF or Hashd Shaabi] from the starting operation against Daesh…” the movement’s secretary general, Akram Kaabi said, as quoted by Iran’s Tasnim News Agency.
“Many Lebanese Hezbollah advisers were martyred in the fight against terrorism in Iraq,” Kaabi concluded.
This statement by Harakat Al-Nujaba comes just days after Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider Al-‘Abadi, slammed Hezbollah for transferring Islamic State (ISIL) terrorists from the Lebanese border to eastern Syria.
[Iran Press TV] At least five Saudi troops have been killed in a Yemeni retaliatory attack following the kingdom's Arclight airstrikes on its impoverished neighbor.
Four Saudi troops were hit by Yemeni snipers in 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... 's Alab border area, while another one was killed by Yemeni snipers at a military base in the 'Asir region.
Riyadh has been involved in more than two years of a devastating campaign against Yemen.
Meanwhile, ...back at the shootout, Butch clutched at his leg. Son of a Breech! he exclaimed with feeling...... at least two Yemeni non-combatants were killed after their car was targeted by Saudi jets in the western province of Ma’rib.
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[Free Malaysia] Malaysian police have arrested eight Abu Sayyaf suspects in Kuala Lumpur. The militants were captured in an operation in Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, on the eve of National Day on Aug 30, reported.
Among the those nabbed was an Abu Sayyaf leader, Hajar Abdul Mubin, also known as Abu Asrie. He was arrested with another Filipino, Abraham Embung, and six Malaysians of Filipino descent from Sabah. The six Malaysians are thought to be from Sandakan and working in Kuala Lumpur. Sources said that some of the six were working as security guards and were even members of the Civil Defense Corp.
Philippines intelligence sources say Abu Asrie is thought to be a member of the Jolo-based Lucky 9 group, which is involved in kidnap for ransom activities and are responsible for numerous cross border kidnappings along the east coast of Sabah. His group is believed to have links with the Abu Sayyaf group based in the jungles of Jolo, which is on the run following a full-scale war by Philippines security forces.
Sources said that Abu Asrie slipped into Malaysia in 2015 after meeting with Malaysian Islamic State militants Dr. Mahmud Ahmad, Mohd Najib Hussein and Muhammad Joraimee in Basilan.
Mahmud and several other Abu Sayyaf leaders, including Insalon Hapilon, who is said to be the leader of the Islamic State in southeast Asia, were involved with the Maute group in the attack on Marawi City.
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South Korea's military said Monday it conducted a combined live-fire exercise in response to North Korea's sixth nuclear test a day earlier.
The training involved the country's Hyunmoo ballistic missile and the F-15K fighter jets.
In the drill, the Hyunmoo surface-to-surface missile and the F-15K's long-range air-to-ground missile accurately hit designated targets in the East Sea, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).
The South's military, in particular, said the range to the simulated targets were set in consideration of the North's Punggye-ri nuclear test site in its northeastern province.
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[AlAhram] More than 10 soldiers died on Sunday and several others were maimed when al-Qaeda-aligned Shabaab snuffies stormed a base in southern Somalia, security sources said.
The snuffies drove a truck loaded with explosives to the main entrance of the base in Bulogadud, about 70 kilometres (40 miles) from the port town of Kismayo ...a port city in the southern Lower Juba province of Somalia, at the extreme southern end of the country (assuming Somalia can be called a country). It is the commercial capital of the autonomous Jubaland region... and then attacked the soldiers.
"There was an attack on the military base in Bulogadud this morning... the initial information indicates that more than 10 soldiers were killed," Abdulahi Mohammed, a security bigshot, said by phone.
"There was a boom-mobile blast and gunfire followed. The forces retreated from the base initially but they later regained control," he added.
Sources in a nearby village said the snuffies temporarily took control of the camp and the village.
"Some people in Bulogadud told us the snuffies looted the camp ... they burned down everything and left," Ahmed Mohamud, a resident said.
Shabaab grabbed credit for the attack.
"The Mujahedeen fighters took control of Bulogadud, there were many enemy deaths and three technical vehicles were looted," a brief statement on a pro-Shabaab website said, citing the group's Andalus radio.
Salahuddin (IraqiNews.com) A local source from Salahuddin province has revealed an unprecedented ‘overnight displacement’ by families of the Islamic State militants from north of the province, as liberation offensive nears.
“The western coast of Shirqat, north of Salahuddin, has seen an unprecedented displacement by families of the IS members that take place overnight toward unknown destinations, leaving their houses empty,” the source told AlSumaria News on Sunday.
“Complete liberation of Tal Afar in short time was a huge shock to IS members and leaders,” the source, who preferred anonymity, said. “The displacement of families is like a collective runaway, especially that the liberation offensives of Hawija and other regions are nearing.”
The Iraqi army said in September its forces recaptured the western coast of Shirqat, located south of Mosul, on the west bank of the Tigris river, after being surrounded for months by Iraqi troops and the pro-government Shi’ite militias. The eastern coast of Shirqat, is still under the IS control.
Pivotal regions that link between each of Diyala, Salahuddin and Kirkuk, are still held by the militants which poses threats to the liberated regions. Iraqi troops are urged to prevent the militants infiltration between Salahuddin and Kirkuk provinces, especially the regions stretching along Hamreen mountains and Al-Azeem town.
The government is expected to launch military offensives at the few remaining IS havens, including in Salahuddin.
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) Islamic State group imposed curfew on citizens in western Anbar regions, a security source was quoted saying.
“IS tightened measures on citizens in Qaim town, al-Ebeidi town and Okashat region. Curfew has been imposed since the morning,” the source told Baghdad Today.
“Tens of IS leaders arrived on Saturday evening to Qaim,” the source said adding that they likely “ran away from Aiyadhiya and Tal Afar.
Last week, the Defense Ministry’s War Media Cell said the air force bombarded six IS locations in Qaim, killing 94 members, including a senior security commander and a close aide to the group’s supreme leader abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Anbar’s western towns of Anah, Qaim and Rawa are still held by the extremist group since 2014, when it occupied one third of Iraq to proclaim a self-styled Islamic Caliphate. Iraqi troops were able to return life back to normal in the biggest cities of Anbar including Fallujah, Ramadi and others after recapturing them.
Fighter jets from the Iraqi army and the international coalition regularly pound IS locations in the province.
In late July, a military source was quoted saying that Lt.Gen Abdul-Amir Yarallah, commander of the Nineveh Operations, ordered to besiege IS havens in western Anbar preparing to invade them.
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) Islamic State has executed sixteen civilians in western Anbar towns, an informed security source said.
Speaking to Alghad Press on Sunday, the source said, “IS militants executed 16 youths in the evening in each of Annah, Qaim and Rawa towns over spying for security troops.”
Earlier on the day, the militant group reportedly tightened measures on citizens in Qaim, al-Ebeidi town and Okashat region. Curfew has been imposed since the morning. Tens of leaders, who likely ran away from Aiyadhiya and Tal Afar, arrived on Saturday in Qaim.
Last week, the Defense Ministry’s War Media Cell said the air force bombarded six IS locations in Qaim, killing 94 members, including a senior security commander and a close aide to the group’s supreme leader abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Anbar’s western towns of Anah, Qaim and Rawa are still held by the extremist group since 2014, when it occupied one third of Iraq to proclaim a self-styled Islamic Caliphate. Iraqi troops were able to return life back to normal in the biggest cities of Anbar including Fallujah, Ramadi and others after recapturing them.
Fighter jets from the Iraqi army and the international coalition regularly pound IS locations in the province.
In late July, a military source was quoted saying that Lt.Gen Abdul-Amir Yarallah, commander of the Nineveh Operations, ordered to besiege IS havens in western Anbar preparing to invade them.
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#1
East and West coasts of Shirqat:
These are the east and west banks of the Tigris that pass through Shirqat district.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
09/04/2017 11:55
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[Iran Press TV] Iraqi security forces have tossed in the calaboose ... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not... more than 250 ISIS infiltrators, who had disguised themselves as civilians and slipped out of Tal Afar in the wake of a joint multi-pronged operation by government troops and allied fighters to push the Takfiri ...an adherent of takfir wal hijra, an offshoot of Salafism that regards everybody who doesn't agree with them as apostates who must be killed... Death Eaters out of the northern city.
A security officer, speaking on condition of anonymity ... for fear of being murdered... , said police forces extracted 272 ISIS members at a refugee camp in Hammam al-Alil district, located about 25 kilometers south of djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... , on Sunday as they were screening the internally displaced persons there.
The officer added that the Lions of Islam will be transferred to a detention center after Eid al-Adha (Feast of Sacrifice) holiday, noting that the captured Takfiris come from Russia, the North Caucasus region of Chechnya, Afghanistan, La Belle France and Britannia.
On August 31, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the city of Tal Afar and the entire Nineveh province had been purged of the ISIS Takfiri terrorist group.
The recapture of Tal Afar was made possible with the help of Iraqi army soldiers, Federal Police Force, Counter Terrorism Service (CTS), pro-government fighters from Popular Mobilization Units ‐ commonly known by the Arabic word Hashd al-Sha’abi and the Interior Ministry's elite rapid response forces.
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#1
Lock them in some busses and tell Mattis where they are.
[Dhaka Tribune] A big shot of al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has called for attacks on Myanmar authorities in support of minority Rohingya Moslems, the SITE monitoring centre said on Saturday as thousands fled what they say is a government assault on their villages.
Myanmar’s roughly 1.1 million Rohingya pose one of the biggest challenges facing leader Aung San Suu Kyi, accused by Western critics of failing to support the Moslem minority that has long complained of persecution.
Khaled Omar Batarfi (also known as Abu Meqdad al-Kindi) a front man for AQAP AFP
Khaled Omar Batarfi (also known as Abu Meqdad al-Kindi) a front man for AQAP AFP
In a video message released by al Qaeda’s al-Malahem media foundation, Khaled Batarfi called on Moslems in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia and Malaysia to support their Rohingya Moslem brethren against the "enemies of Allah."
Batarfi, who was freed from a Yemeni prison in 2015 when al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula ...the latest incarnation of various Qaeda and Qaeda-allied groups, including the now-defunct Aden-Abyan Islamic Army that boomed the USS Cole in 2000... (AQAP) seized the port city of Mukalla, also urged al Qaeda’s Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) branch to carry out attacks.
"So spare no effort in waging jihad against them and repulsing their attacks, and beware of letting down our brothers in Burma (Myanmar)," Batarfi said, according to the US-based monitoring centre.
About 58,600 Rohingya have fled into neighbouring Bangladesh from Myanmar, according to UN refugee agency UNHCR.
Myanmar officials accuse the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) of burning homes. The group grabbed credit for coordinated attacks on security posts last week that prompted festivities and a large army counter-offensive.
But Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh say the Myanmar army is conducting a campaign of arson and killings to drive them out.
The Rohingya are denied citizenship in Myanmar and regarded as illegal immigrants colonists, despite claiming roots that date back centuries. Bangladesh, where more than 400,000 Rohingya live since they began fleeing Myanmar in the 1990s, is also growing increasingly hostile to the minority.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/04/2017
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] I think Hamad bin Khalifa, Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates... ’s real ruler and the father of its current emir, suffers from megalomania.
Megalomaniac people are extremely narcissistic and overconfident in such unjustified ways and they often feel that they can adapt circumstances and impossible geographic factors in their favor.
Those who suffer from this disease are usually heads of states like the emperor of Rome Nero who played music as he watched Rome burn and Adolf Hitler ...late Fuehrer of Germany, founder of the Third Reich, currently communing with his pals Himmler and Heydrich. He is reincarnated every few days as a politician somebody doesn't like... who believed that the Aryan race was gifted above all other races. Hitler thus believed he must rule the world so he mobilized armies and sparked wars that killed more than 50 million people across Europe.
One of the most famous Arabs who suffered from megalomania is Saddam Hussein who only finished a war to engage in another and whom no one dared oppose. There’s also Muammar Qadaffy ...Proof that a madman with money will be politely received for at least 42 years until his people get tired of him and kill him... who crowned himself as the king of kings in Africa and the leader of Africans.
Qadaffy squandered Libya’s wealth on causes which the Libyans have nothing to do with only because he felt that he was the last "rebel" whom God sent to support rebels across the world. Hamad bin Khalifa surrounded himself with a group of opportunists and imposters, which include Arab leftists, and members of the Moslem Brüderbund. They convinced him that he was born to lead.
They convinced him that the Arab world is waiting for him to spark the Arab Spring, topple regimes and let the winds of change rock Arab thrones so he assigns rulers and Doha can become like Damascus was for the Umayyads or Baghdad was for the Abbasids.
Lack of loyalty
Besides his megalomania, Hamad is a treacherous man who does not know loyalty. He can ally with you today and turn against you tomorrow. He remains convinced that the Arab Spring did not fail and that he will achieve his dreams.
Stubbornness is often associated with megalomania as one pursues mad dreams, squanders money like he does not fear poverty and lies to himself and says that everyone is conspiring against him and that any conflict must end with him standing and others getting eliminated.
I think the one who resembles Hamad bin Khalifa the most is Qadaffy as they are two sides of the same coin. Leftists and men with wild dreams also surrounded Qadaffy and became wealthy thanks to him, especially if they were willing to carry out his orders and execute his conspiracies.
Hamad is also surrounded by murderous Moslem Brüderbund figures and Arab leftists whose major platform is al-Jazeera television channel, which is Hamad’s favorite weapon to achieve his aspirations.
These figures are regular guests of the Amiri palace in Doha. They discuss the details of the channel’s programs with him as Hamad bin Thamer, the chairman of the board of the Al Jazeera Media Network, is of no worth whom none of the network’s employees take into consideration because he’s just a powerless figurehead. This is what Qataris say in their private gatherings.
What’s sad, especially for the people of Qatar, is that the lives of megalomaniac leaders ‐ as we’ve seen throughout history with Nero, Hitler, Saddam and Qadaffy ‐ end in disaster that brings about catastrophic results to their people.
A megalomaniac leader continues to commit mistakes while neglecting everyone. He despises everyone around him and insists on his stances and stubbornness until the final fall. Qadaffy’s yesterday resembles Hamad’s present! You will remember my words very soon.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/04/2017
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#1
Hamad bin Khalifa, Qatar’s real ruler and the father of its current emir, suffers from megalomania.
#2
Megalomaniac people are extremely narcissistic and overconfident in such unjustified ways and they often feel that they can adapt circumstances and impossible geographic factors in their favor.
[Mindanao Examiner] Philippine policemen, backed by soldiers, captured two communist militants and seized an arms cache on Friday in Kidapawan city in southern Philippines following a tip-off from villagers.
Captain Rhyan Batchar said security forces also seized 20 automatic rifles from Wowia Boton and George Cuyo, who are both members of the New People’s Army in the village of Katipunan. He said the two men are members of the NPA operating in North Cotabato province.
[AnNahar] Fierce festivities between 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.... group and pro-regime forces in central Syria have left over 150 fighters dead in 24 hours, mostly jihadists, a monitor said Sunday.
The Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 120 IS fighters "were killed in festivities in and around the town of Uqayribat in the eastern Hama countryside... along with at least 35 regime troops and loyalist militiamen."
The town is the jihadist group's last bastion in the central province apart from a handful of small villages.
Pro-government forces seized Uqayribat on Friday night, but IS responded with a counter-offensive on Saturday that left it in control of most of the town, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.
An intense barrage of artillery fire and Syrian and Russian air strikes on jihadist positions allowed pro-regime forces on Sunday morning to push the jihadists back out of the town and advance on villages to the west that remain under IS control.
IS has controlled Uqayribat since 2014, using it to launch attacks on regime-held areas and a strategically vital road Abdel Rahman described as "the only lifeline for the regime between Aleppo and central and southern Syria."
Regime forces, backed by heavy Russian air strikes, launched a major assault on IS-held parts of Hama in June.
"By consolidating their control of (Uqayribat) and ousting IS from the surrounding villages, regime forces could oust the organization from the whole of Hama province," Abdel Rahman said.
Other rebel groups still control parts of the province's rural north.
Hama, which borders on six other Syrian provinces, is strategically vital to the Assad regime, separating opposition forces in Idlib from Damascus to the south and the regime's coastal heartlands to the west.
IS has suffered multiple defeats across Syria and neighboring Iraq in recent months, notably in its main Syrian base of Raqa.
On Friday a U.S.-backed Kurdish-Arab coalition seized Raqa's Old City and was advancing on the jihadists in the heavily defended city center.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) began their offensive in May, capturing the city of Tabqa and a key dam nearby before entering Raqa city in early June.
Meanwhile, ...back at the bunker, his Excellency called the chief of staff and complained that the artillery was keeping him awake... pro-regime forces have advanced against IS in the eastern part of Homs province and western Deir Ezzor, where they have come to within 19 kilometers (12 miles) of the quiet provincial capital.
Syria's conflict has killed more than 320,000 people and displaced millions since it started with anti-government demonstrations in 2011.
[AlMasdar] The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and their allies continued their field operations around the strategic town of ’Uqayribat, Sunday, targeting 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.... ’s (ISIS) last positions in this region of central Syria.
Backed by the Russian Air Force, the Syrian Arab Army’s Tiger Forces and Qalamoun Shield managed to secure ’Uqayribat after inflicting heavy damage on the Islamic State’s remain positions in the eastern Hama countryside.
Following this attack, the Syrian Arab Army continued their push to Masadah and Rasm Qanbar, liberating both towns amid a mass retreat by the Islamic State from the battlefield.
According to the Syrian military, their forces killed more than 50 forces of Evil and destroyed several armored vehicles belonging to the Islamic State, paving the way for the army to liberate ’Uqayribat.
The Syrian Arab Army’s demining teams are now sweeping through ’Uqayribat to clear the entire town of mines and IEDs that were placed there before the Islamic State retreated.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/04/2017
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The Iranian judiciary on Sunday upheld 10-year jail terms for an American, two US-Iranian dual nationals and a Lebanese permanent resident of the United States for "collaborating" with Washington.
In a ruling that comes at a time of rising tensions following President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... ’s arrival in the White House in January, the Tehran prosecutor’s office said the four men’s appeals had been rejected.
Xiyue Wang, a Chinese-born American, was sentenced to 10 years in jail for "collaborating with foreign governments", said Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, quoted by the mizanonline website close to the judiciary.
He said the same sentence was upheld against two dual nationals for "collaborating with a foreign government", and Lebanese national Nizar Zakka, a US permanent resident, for working with the American government.
The dual nationals, businessman Siamak Namazi and his father Mohammad Bagher Namazi, were convicted in October 2016 along with Zakka and three others on charges of "spying" for Washington.
"Fabricated" charges
The State Department in July called on Iran to immediately release US citizens and other foreigners detained on "fabricated" national security charges, as Iran announced that Xiyue, a Princeton University researcher, had been handed a 10-year sentence for "infiltration" and espionage.
"We call for the immediate release of all US citizens unjustly detained in Iran so they can return to their families," a State Department official said.
"The Iranian regime continues to detain US citizens and other foreigners on fabricated national security-related charges," the official said.
"The safety and security of US citizens remains a top priority. All US citizens, especially dual nationals considering travel to Iran, should carefully read our latest travel warning."
Trump warned of "new and serious consequences" unless US nationals held in the Islamic republic were released, triggering criticism from Tehran of the detention of Iranian citizens in the United States.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/04/2017
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A key Taliban commander was killed in a foreign troops drone strike in northern Parwan province on Saturday night, local officials said.
The strike took place in Ezat Khil area of Jabal Saraj district of the province after Afghan security forces launched a ground operation and had foreign troops air support, Mohammad Masoum Farzayee, police chief of Jabal Saraj said.
“Troops came from Kabul and they launched a military operation in Ezat Khil and the foreign troops also provided support from the air in which Mullah Agha Gul, a Taliban commander and one of his fighters, were killed,” Farzayee said.
Mohammad Asim Asim, the provincial governor rejected the reports of a drone strike in the area but said that ground forces launched the operation against a group of Taliban insurgents in which “two of the insurgents were killed so far.”
Three security forces were also wounded in the operation, Asim said.
However, he did not provide further details.
The Taliban have not yet commented on the operation.
[Iran Press TV] American financial firms are expressing alarm over fears that an increasingly dysfunctional US Congress may fail to reach an agreement to raise the country’s debt ceiling.
Bitter divisions among Republican Party politicians and President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... ’s unpredictability could rule out a deal to raise the US debt limit before an October deadline, several lobbyists representing dozens of bankers, investors and credit rating agencies, told Rooters.
Trump’s attacks on members of his own party and his failure to denounce white supremacists at a violent protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, this month, has raised questions over the president’s ability to build consensus on the debt limit, one bank lobbyist said.
"Everyone is very worried," he added.
The debt ceiling is a legislative limit on how much money the federal government can borrow from the US Treasury Department to fund its budget deficits and meet financial obligations.
"The stakes here are incredibly high. The economic impact associated with debt default is so immense," said Rob Nichols, president and CEO of the American Bankers Association (ABA), one of the country’s key financial lobby groups.
"We’re monitoring this extremely closely and we will mobilize as needed throughout September," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/04/2017
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#1
Step 1: Put Congressmen on Obama Care and cut their salaries and perks in half. But offset that by giving them more holidays away from DC.
#2
Step 1: Put Congressmen on Obama Care and cut their salaries and perks in half. But offset that by giving them more holidays away from DC.
Step 2: Fire 70% of public employees (because they are unnecessary, considering that in 1960 only around 5% of American workers were in the public sector and now it's 20%).
Step 3: Deport the illegals, and put the head of any business that hires illegals into hard-time jail for five years.
Step 4: Decrease the pay of remaining public employees to be no more than what an average private worker makes.
Step 5: Oblige the fired hacks to choose between a) whatever jobs they can find in an illegal-free hiring environment for whatever pay that gives, or b) economic oblivion.
At which point the debt ceiling becomes way, WAY less of a big deal.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/04/2017 5:12
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#3
American financial firms are expressing alarm over fears that an increasingly dysfunctional US Congress may fail to reach an agreement to raise the country’s debt ceiling.
#4
Yep, those are the financial firms who's members rotate between their offices and those of the Treasury and Fed. The ones that have been inflating the economy since 2008 so all those mortgage paper and notes that went underwater are now back to their book values while we pay double for basic commodities (which strangely are not counted in the inflationary measure).
#5
The existing debt can never be paid off & will never be paid off. This is an impossible situation and will not last forever. But then neither will we.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] German Chancellor Angela Merkel ...current chancellor of Germany and the impetus behind Germany's remarkably ill-starred immigration program. Merkel used to be referred to by Germans as Mom... said Sunday that she would ask the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... to call off membership talks with The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , amid escalating tensions between Berlin and Ankara.
"I don’t see them ever joining and I had never believed that it would happen," she said during a televised debate with Martin Schulz, her Social Democratic rival in elections later this month.
She added that she would speak with her EU counterparts to see if "we can end these membership talks".
Merkel’s tough stance came after Turkey locked away You have the right to remain silent... two more German citizens this past week "for political reasons", infuriating Berlin.
The arrests brought the number of German political prisoners in Ottoman Turkish custody to 12, at a time when ties between the two NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... allies were already at an all-time low.
The plunge in relations began after Berlin sharply criticized Ankara over the crackdown that followed last year’s failed coup attempt.
The arrest of several German nationals, including the Ottoman Turkish-German journalist Deniz Yucel, the Istanbul correspondent for the Die Welt newspaper, further frayed ties.
Yucel has now spent 200 days in jug ahead of a trial on terror charges.
German journalist Mesale Tolu has been held on similar charges since May, while human rights When they're defined by the state or an NGO they don't mean much... activist Peter Steudtner was arrested in a July raid.
After Steudtner’s arrest, Germany vowed stinging measures impacting tourism and investment in Turkey and a full "overhaul" of their troubled relations.
Ottoman Turkish President Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him... , for his part, has also sparked outrage after charging that Germany is sheltering plotters of last year’s coup, as well as Kurdish Lions of Islam and terrorists, and demanded their extradition.
Erdogan added to the tensions this month when he urged ethnic Turks in Germany to vote against Merkel’s conservatives and their coalition partners, the Social Democrats, in September 24 elections.
The escalating tensions have split the Ottoman Turkish community in Europe’s top economy, the largest diaspora abroad, which is a legacy of Germany’s "guest worker" program of the 1960s and 70s.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/04/2017
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#1
Me too. Does my vote count?
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/04/2017 15:49
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#2
Incirlik should be a ghost town
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/04/2017 17:07
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Maybe it matters, maybe it doesn't but the author is whiter than an egg salad sammich on white with mayo.
The future of life on the planet depends on bringing the 500-year rampage of the white man to a halt. For five centuries his ever more destructive weaponry has become far too common. His widespread and better systems of exploiting other humans and nature dominate the globe. Not just white folks, but do go on.
The time for replacing white supremacy with new values is now. And just as some whites played a part in ending slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow segregation, and South African apartheid, there is surely a role whites can play in restraining other whites in this era.
Beneath the sound and fury generated by GOP presidential candidates, Fox News, website trolls, police unions and others, white people are becoming aware as never before of past and present racism. And of anti white racism.
Admittedly, this encouraging development is hardly the dominant view. To the contrary, given the possibility that Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson or one of their ilk might become president, white supremacist ideology seems to be digging in harder than ever.
I don’t take this lightly. Once upon a time I foolishly thought that there was no way that Ronald Reagan could get elected president. Lesson learned. Now is the time to start contingency planning for intensified resistance to mass deportations of immigrants, atrocities against Muslims and extreme danger to African Americans. Atrocities not committed by Moslems noticeably absent. The author's concern is an example of the soft bigotry of low expectations.
That said, it would be a mistake to focus only on the negative. Recently the New York Times ran Gordon Davis’ op-ed "What Woodrow Wilson Cost My Grandfather". It is still generating debate. (Gordon Davis and I are both “alumni” of the Northern Student Movement, a 1960s civil rights group.) Davis was writing in the context of the student-led protest at Princeton University over the veneration of its former president, Woodrow Wilson. The controversy stems from Wilson’s viciously racist speech and behavior particularly when he was president of the United States. Tenor of the times. And leftists always want to deny their very background.
A subsequent Truthout article by Harvey Wasserman, “Princeton Students Are Right, Woodrow Wilson Was Way Worse Than You Think,” complements the critique. Most of the 776 comments on the NY Times article (as well as 1,600 more on a followup Times editorial) were the predictably negative responses usually heard regarding white racism. Many said some version of, “that was a long time ago when values were different.” Others took the tack that “nobody is perfect and the good things Woodrow Wilson did outweigh the bad of his racism, so let it rest.” A reasonable reaction to historical data.
But there was also a substantial undercurrent voiced by those who were open-minded enough to learn.
Following are NY Times comments on the article:
Jim K. New York, NY 2 days ago
As a former Princeton professor, I applaud the students for raising this issue. It’s not about erasing history, but confronting it honestly. This beautiful column makes clear how Wilson’s policies, based on his deeply racist and white-supremacist views, destroyed the lives of thousands of black families. Why should we publicly venerate this person? Why should elitist Northern universities get to insist that we overlook this man’s systematic, consequential racism, while every Southern municipality and retail store is expected to rid itself of monuments and souvenirs of their racist politicians and soldiers. Let’s indeed, every American community, take stock of the deeply embedded racism that has been a part of our history (North and South), recognizing that a thoroughgoing accounting will involve reconfiguring our public and institutional spaces in many ways. Because that has yet to be done, and the younger generation of Black militants will, rightly, not be content until it is.
JPBarnett Santa Barbara 1 day ago
It’s sad that after having been through 12 years of grade school in CA and graduating from a UC, I just learned this about Wilson. It’s silly that I’m surprised I didn’t learn of his racism I suppose, but I’m glad I do now. My opinion is forever changed.
Good for you.
Many commenters were startled to learn about a long known but rarely taught side of Woodrow Wilson. White people have a lot to be surprised about. The very nature of white supremacy requires sanitized teaching about slavery, the genocide of indigenous people, the reach of U.S. militarism and many other topics. A lot of unrelated topics.
Very few in the US do not know about the Indian Wars, but very few wish to beat themselves over the dead, or to punish themselves decades after the fact, especially if their family didn't partake in actions against Indians. Would the author punish himself if he finds his family had as little as a tangential involvement in actions against minorities? I doubt it.
Fortunately, gains from past struggles give African Americans increased opportunities to expose what was previously deliberately obscured. Ta-Nehisi Coates is the best known of a new generation of black, indigenous, Hispanic and white writers, scholars and activists revealing ugly realities hidden from most of us. Hidden = obscure
Even the New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks has acknowledged this development. “So much of the national conversation this year has concerned how to think about past racism and oppression, and the power of that past to shape present realities: the Confederate flag, Woodrow Wilson, the unmarked sights of the lynching grounds. Fortunately, many people have found the courage to tell the ugly truths about slavery, Jim Crow and current racism that were repressed by the wider culture.” If David Brook is a conservative, then I'm Josef Stalin's lovechild.
Admittedly, new information does not necessarily translate into social change. Cherished and deeply rooted beliefs are not easily surrendered. I often think of how long it took for the arguments of Copernicus and Galileo that the earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around, to be accepted. Ideas and habits are stubborn. Systems resist change. Powerful institutions have vested interests in preserving the status quo. That is true. It could take a flamethrower to dig out the parasites in government.
By way of example, a recurring concern of those responding to the Times’ Woodrow Wilson op-ed was, “Where will it all end? Will we have to destroy Mount Rushmore?” some asked. Maybe we should. Not just because it honors slave owners Jefferson and Washington, Mount Rushmore is also a powerful symbol of brutality and racism toward indigenous people. Sez you.
As idigenous (sic)
scholar Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz points out in her book, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, “The most prominent struggle has been the Lakota Sioux’s attempt to restore the Paha Sapa, or Black Hills, where the odious Mount Rushmore carvings have scarred the sacred site. Called the ‘Shrine of Democracy’ by the federal government, it is anything but that; rather it is a shrine of in-your-face illegal occupation and colonization.”
White racism distorts how we think about virtually everything, including history itself. No one will dismiss Bill O’Reilly’s goofy books about Jesus or Lincoln or Patton or Reagan as irrelevant because, “oh, that was a long time ago, it’s got nothing to do with me now.” As a general proposition people appreciate that we can discover in the present important things we didn’t previously know about the past. Discovery, yes. Use as a cudgel applied to political enemies, no.
Not so when it comes to race in the USA. Not for some people anyway.
This matters a great deal. In many years of anti-racist work, I have discovered that whites who deny any connection to the racism of the past will also generally deny any connection to the racism of the present. “Please don’t tell me,” cry deniers of systemic white racism. One step removed is the view that we should “accept” the history but must take the good with the bad. This is sometimes known as the “warts and all” theory of history. A variation is the convenient idea that slavery was the “original sin.” Sin, of course, in the Western Christian point of view is inevitable and immutable. If the author were a Christian, he would know that God's love includes forgiveness for past wrongs you have committed. You cannot blame people for the wrongs of their forebears, it is black letter English common law. The best you can do is to pass laws that apply to the living, which this country has done. It will have to be good enough. Anything else is a recipe for violent insurrection.
This takes an especially pernicious twist when white racism deniers argue that there has always been slavery as though that itself somehow makes it justified. It’s not true that every society over all time has enslaved people. But even if it were true, the kind of slavery on which the U.S. was built is unlike any other that preceded it. It co-evolved with capitalism and it conflated slavery with “race”—plantation capitalism as the Rev. James Lawson calls it. CSU Fresno scholars Blain Roberts and Ethan J. Kytle put it this way recently in theNew York Times: “New research has gone further, exposing how American capitalism and democracy — once thought to be antithetical to slavery — emerged hand-in-hand with it.” If the author read US history he would know that slavery would have collapsed on its own without the war, because of -- capitalist economics. Slavery, as has been shown throughout history, costs the oppressors far more than had those enslaved been employed as a free people.
Hard as it may be for propaganda-conditioned whites to grasp, global race-based capitalism is not a system of the past with lingering effects. It is a living, breathing organism of the present. It is a unitary thing. It is therefore not a good thing with warts. It is one thing. The “good” things always comes packaged with the “bad” thing. The mechanics of how it often works has a name: grand bargains. Here the author is projecting his own views onto those he opposes. No sale. The mother of all grand bargains is the U.S. Constitution which accommodated slavery in several ways, including the notorious three-fifths clause. While the Constitution was by no means the first grand bargain, it solidified a pattern that continues to this day. The New Deal, as Ira Katznelson demonstrates in his book Fear Itself, was another grand bargain that combined “progressive’ achievements such as union rights and Social Security with reaffirming the power of Dixiecrats and the institutions of Jim Crow. The author fails to mention all the above were Democratic Party institutions which survived the New Deal era by 20 years.
Katznelson is white. So am I. So are many others now writing and speaking honestly and openly about the enduring power of white racism. That is valuable because it strengthens the idea that whites can come to terms with reality, past and present, as opposed to the myths we are encouraged to believe. As we do so, another world does become possible. When you write "honestly and openly about the enduring power of white racism", and condemn your race for something the living did not do, you are paving the way for your own demise.
Of course white people can’t “save” the world. That mindset is the problem not the solution. But we can help. As Vietnam antiwar leader Rennie Davis points out, it is when we stop being invisible to each other that we start to become a movement.
#8
It's just a communist explaining that the massive advances in living standards white capitalism have brought are now bad and we still need communism (with him as king) to correct this.
#13
Author is another in a long line of utopian trollers. The "new values" are the same old values dating back to Cain & Abel, one man to rule them all, the masses being nothing more than slaves.
#17
Actually, I agree. I think all white men should go on strike for a month or so. Most farmers, truck drivers, policemen, firemen, construction workers, railroad engineers, factory workers, etc. are white.
So, after a while when the food stops getting grown, harvested and delivered; when calls to police are largely unanswered; when buildings burn to the ground because almost no firemen respond - then people will see what it is like with no white men around.
Of course, this will never happen. Most white men have families that they need to feed and protect.
Note: I am not being racist here. MOST of the people (roughly 3/4) in the US are white. Half of them are men. Most of the workers in the fields I mentioned are men.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
09/04/2017 14:04
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[An Nahar] General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim on Sunday called for a drastic solution for the security situation in the restive Paleostinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hellhole.
"It should be addressed once and for all, because it represents a security gap in the Lebanese and Paleostinian entities," Ibrahim told Radio Voice of Leb (93.3) when asked about the Ein el-Hellhole security file.
Commenting on the removal of 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.... bandidosturbans from the Lebanese-Syrian border following separate but simultaneous operations by the Lebanese army and 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... on both sides of the frontier, Ibrahim said: "Militarily, IS’ threat has become something of the past."
"But this does not negate the possibility of a security breach inside Leb," Ibrahim added, while noting that "this has become more unlikely and can easily be exposed."
The restive camp had witnessed a week of deadly festivities last month between the secular Fatah Movement and small Islamist groups led by the bandidosturbans Bilal Badr and Bilal al-Orqoub.
By longstanding convention, the Lebanese army does not enter Paleostinian refugee camps in Leb, leaving the Paleostinian factions themselves to handle security.
Ein el-Hellhole -- the most densely populated Paleostinian camp in Leb -- is home to some 61,000 Paleostinians, including 6,000 who have fled the war in neighboring Syria.
Several armed factions including krazed killer groups have a foothold in the camp which has been plagued for years by intermittent festivities.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/04/2017
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#1
And we know exactly what he means by "once and for all".
[ScienceAlert] A hydrogen bomb is different than a regular atomic bomb, like the ones the US dropped on Japan near the end of World War II. Collectively, the two A-bombs that the US detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed more than 200,000 people.
But an H-bomb is an entirely different beast. It can be up to 1,000 times more powerful than an A-bomb, according to nuclear experts. Here's why. Just a little primer to help understand "blast radius"...
#3
The sign of a good teacher is someone who can simplify and make understandable difficult concepts. I like the simple narrative and bomb pic explanations and also the Asteroid impact fill-in-the-blanks solution to the effects of an impact.
[AlMasdar] The Syrian Arab Army (SAA), alongside the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), seized new points along the Jordanian border, Saturday, inching their way closer to the strategic Tanf Base in southeast Homs.
Led by elements of the 5th Legion, the Syrian Arab Army and their allies attacked garrisons 169 and 170 after taking control of garrisons 165, 166, 167, and 168 three days ago.
According to a field source, the Syrian Arab Army took control of garrisons 169 and 170 on Saturday, killing and wounding scores of militants from the Free Syrian Army’s (FSA) Jaysh Assoud Al-Shariqah.
The source concluded that the Syrian military is going to keep pushing towards the Tanf Base, where they hope to pressure the Americans and their allies to abandon this installation near the Iraqi border.
[AlMasdar] Minutes ago, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) liberated a new oil field in the Deir Ezz..or countryside to close-in on the provincial capital.
Led by the Tiger Forces, the Syrian Arab Army took full control of the Al-Kharrata Oil Field after overrunning the Islamic State’s (ISIL) front-lines in the western countryside of Deir Ezzor.
The Al-Kharrata Oil Field is only 15 km away from the 137th Artillery Base in western Deir Ezzor; it has been the target of several attacks by the Islamic State in the past.
At the same time another Syrian Army unit stormed the Islamic State’s last positions west of Al-Shoula, resulting in their subsequent advance to the town’s outskirts.
The Syrian Arab Army’s rapid advance has forced the Islamic State withdraw from a large part of western Deir Ezzor, leaving much of this desert region absent of terrorist combatants.
[AlMasdar] The elite Tiger Forces of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), driving towards Deir Ezzor, have come to within less than twenty kilometers of the besieged city after another major advance in the past 12 hours.
Today, the Tiger Forces, striking southeast of their positions on Bishri mountain chain, secured a vast desert space within which a number of small unnamed hills were also taken possession of.
Specifically, this most recent advance now puts vanguard units of the Syrian Army just 18 kilometers away from besieged army forces within Deir Ezzor city.
[AlMasdar] Russian Aerospace Forces continue to aid Syrian government troops by launching airstrikes on self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS, ISIL) targets in Deir ez-Zor on Saturday, according to the Ministry of Defence of Russia, with the aim of liberating the city from IS control.
As a result of the Russian aviation Su-35 airstrikes, two tanks, two ammunition depots and supplies of weapons and fuel were reportedly destroyed.
Also targeted were the weapons of militants who drove armoured vehicles into the area of the settlement of Deir ez-Zor at night and tried to regroup the retreating forces by creating fortified areas on the Syrian troops’ route.
[AlMasdar] Jets from the Russian Aerospace Forces destroyed at least nine armored vehicles belonging to the Islamic State terrorist group (outlawed in Russia) in the Deir Ezzor Governorate this weekend, the Defense Ministry said on Saturday.
“Within the last two days, the Russian aircraft destroyed nine armored vehicles, including two tanks, 6 artillery positions, one self-made MRLS, three depots, a command station and more than 20 trucks carrying fuel, weapons and ammunition,” the Russian ministry said.
“On a road connecting Deir ez-Zor and Rasafe, the military destroyed a big convoy of the IS twelve trucks with ammunition and weapons, as well as off-road vehicles with installed high-caliber machine guns, anti-aircraft guns and mortars,” the Defense Ministry added.
“With the effective support from the Russian Aerospace Force, the Syrian governmental forces continue tightening the circle around the IS grouping near Akerbat in the Hama Province,” the ministry said. “Russian aircraft Sukhoi Su-34 and Su-35 destroy newly revealed objectives of the IS terrorists.”
“The time between identifying a goal and destroying it is a few minutes,” the Defense Ministry said.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/04/2017
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[An Nahar] The official results of DNA tests conducted to determine whether nine bodies found near the eastern border belong to Lebanese troops kidnapped and killed by 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.... group will be released on Tuesday, the soldiers’ families said.
"The tests took some time due to scientific and medical reasons," the relatives told al-Hayat newspaper in remarks published Sunday.
A ministerial source meanwhile told the daily that by Saturday, "the bodies of seven out of nine soldiers had been identified."
Eight bodies had been recovered last Sunday while the body of a ninth soldier was located on Tuesday as part of a 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... -led deal with IS. The jihadist group offered the information about the troops’ burial site in return for being allowed to withdraw to eastern Syria.
Hussein Youssef, the father of slain soldier Mohammed, demanded "accountability for every person who took part in the kidnap operation and for anyone who decided not to liberate our sons the moment they were captured or shortly afterwards."
Youssef also demanded "the execution of the detainee Omar Miqati, who filmed the crimes of the execution of the martyr soldiers Ali al-Sayyed and Abbas Medlej."
Miqati has been described as a senior IS official.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/04/2017
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#4
Pretty soon every lowlife gangbanger in the country will be headed to Sunny Cal for the free money. This will work great until they run out of taxpayers.
#13
I live 30 miles from Sacramento and see this as further proof of the Appeasement Mindset that has taken over the state. Don't annoy the minorities and give them things and they won't bother you if you stay in your little enclaves. Now it's devolved to buying them off. What you subsidize you get more of, what you feed grows. The bleed over of gangbangers into the whitebread parts of my county is just starting.
#14
They follow Section 8 housing expansions around here, NoMoreBS.
Same thing, free sh*t.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
09/04/2017 20:19
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#15
Anybody can not kill people. The money must only go to those who would, absent the money, kill people. How do you tell the difference? To qualify for money for not killing people, you have to kill someone so the city can tell that you're really qualified, and not somebody who just doesn't kill people for free. So after an applicant shows up, is the application admissible in a murder trial.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
09/04/2017 21:19
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[AnNahar] Iran has tested its home-grown air defense system, designed to match the Russian S-300, the head of the Revolutionary Guards' air defense has said.
"In parallel with the deployment of the S-300, work on Bavar-373 system is underway," Farzad Esmaili told state broadcaster IRIB late Saturday.
"The system is made completely in Iran and some of its parts are different from the S-300. All of its sub-systems have been completed and its missile tests have been conducted."
Bavar (which means "belief") is Tehran's first long-range missile defense system, and is set to be operational by March 2018, he added.
In 2010, Iran began manufacturing Bavar-373 after the purchase of the S-300 from Russia was suspended due to international sanctions.
Russia resumed the sale following the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers which lifted sanctions, and Iran's S-300 defense system became operational in March.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] A five-man team of mine-planting experts were killed on board a military boat belonging to the Houthi ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews ... militias while trying to plant mines off the coast of Midi by shelling from Yemeni National Army, a front man in the fifth military zone reported.
The source said that the naval forces spotted the boat's movements as it approached one of the islands in the sea, where naval forces of the National Army forces were present. They destroyed the boat with a missile and killed all members of the engineering team on board.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/04/2017
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The United States will launch a "massive military response" to threats from North Korea, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said Sunday.
He spoke after President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... met with his national security advisers following a test of what Pyongyang said was a hydrogen bomb able to fit atop a missile.
"Any threat to the United States or its territories, including Guam, or our allies will be met with a massive military response, a response both effective and overwhelming," Mattis said.
He added: "Kim Jong-Un should take heed of the United Nations ...the Oyster Bay money pit... Security Council's unified voice. All members unanimously agreed on the threat North Korea poses and remain unanimous in their commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
"We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea, but as I said, we have many options to do so."
His comments came after Trump warned the time for "appeasement" was over and threatened drastic economic sanctions.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/04/2017
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#1
I'm not sure about the meaning of 'threats' in this context.
North Korea has made statements massively threatening the US & allies for years.
Nuclear tests, missile tests & the use of WMD (VX) abroad should count as massively threatening action.
Is this about action that will be taken if the US believes an attack is imminent?
[An Nahar] A hand grenade went kaboom! by accident at 8:00 am Sunday in the al-Briksat neighborhood of the Ein el-Hellhole Paleostinian refugee camp, causing no casualties, the National News Agency reported.
The camp had witnessed violence overnight after a dispute over "children playing with firecrackers" escalated into an armed clash between the Islamist Usbat al-Ansar and Jund al-Sham groups.
The clash in the camp’s al-Tawari neighborhood resulted in the wounding of a relative of a senior Usbat al-Ansar official after he was shot at the hands of Jund al-Sham member Hassan M., aka al-Shibel, the agency said.
The restive camp had witnessed a week of deadly festivities last month between the secular Fatah Movement and small Islamist groups led by the Lions of Islam Bilal Badr and Bilal al-Orqoub.
By longstanding convention, the Lebanese army does not enter Paleostinian refugee camps in Leb, leaving the Paleostinian factions themselves to handle security.
Ein el-Hellhole -- the most densely populated Paleostinian camp in Leb -- is home to some 61,000 Paleostinians, including 6,000 who have fled the war in neighboring Syria.
Several armed factions including hard boy groups have a foothold in the camp which has been plagued for years by intermittent festivities.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/04/2017
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Diyala (IraqiNews.com) Five Islamic State leaders were killed on Sunday as Iraqi fighter jets bombarded one of the group’s locations in northeast of Diyala, a military source said.
“A fighter jet targeted on Sunday evening an IS location in Basateen al-Makheisa region, northeast of Diyala,” Lt.Ghassan al-Ebeidi, of the Iraqi army said in press remarks.
“The shelling left five IS leaders killed,” he added.
Last week, five militants were killed in an airstrike launched by Iraqi jets in Wadi Thilab, located in Neft Khana basin, northeast of Diyala.
Attacks launched by Islamic State militants against security troops, the pro-government forces and civilians surged over the past few weeks in northeast of Diyala, which urge the Iraqi forces to prevent the militants infiltration between Salahuddin and Kirkuk provinces, especially the regions stretching along Hamreen mountains and Al-Azeem town.
IS holds pivotal regions that link between each of Diyala, Salahuddin and Kirkuk, posing threats to the liberated regions.
Government and military commanders are expected to wage operations at other IS havens across the country, including Diyala.
Violence in the country has surged further with the emergence of Islamic State Sunni extremist militants who proclaimed an “Islamic Caliphate” in Iraq and Syria in 2014.
Posted by: badanov ||
09/04/2017
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[An Nahar] A lonely monkey at an Israeli zoo has found a way to soothe her maternal urges: by adopting a chicken.
Niv, an Indonesian black macaque, has spent the past week caressing, cleaning and playing with the bird at the Ramat Gan Safari Park near Tel Aviv.
"It seems that Niv, who is four years old and has reached the age of sexual maturity, has difficulty finding a partner," the zoo's spokeswoman Mor Porat said.
"This probably explains the maternal instinct she expresses to this chicken."
The bird, which doesn't have a name, could easily escape through the bars but chooses to stay near Niv.
"These kinds of relationships are rare," Porat told AFP. "Sometimes macaques kill and eat chickens that enter their pens or play with them until they die."
To avoid such a tragic end, officials separated Niv and her feathered companion from the other macaques -- apart from her mother, who is often the target of hostilities from other females.
Porat said the chicken "seems very happy to have found a surrogate mother. At night they sleep together."
A few months ago, Niv attempted to adopt a previous chicken, but it spurned her advances.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/04/2017
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#1
A few months ago, Niv attempted to adopt a previous chicken, but it spurned her advances.
#5
I still remember our border collie doing his duty & keeping our cat from going next door & eating the dog food at a neighbor's house. I actually saw the dog pick the cat up by the nape of his neck, carry him back to the front porch, dropping the cat & giving the cat a good tongue-lashing by barking at it.
How is this new? They've been singing this song since the beginning of the democracy movement.
[An Nahar] Bashir al-Assad "cannot be the solution" for Syria after six years of conflict, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Friday, returning to a position questioned in July by President Emmanuel Macron.
"We cannot build peace with Assad," Le Drian said on French radio RTL.
"He cannot be the solution," Le Drian said.
"The solution is to establish... a timeline for political transition that can lead to a new constitution and elections, and this transition cannot happen with Bashir al-Assad."
Macron said in July that the removal of the Syrian president was not a "prerequisite" for peace in the wartorn country, and that he did not see a "legitimate successor" to the leader who has been in power since 2000.
Gay Paree had been a key supporter of the opposition to Assad's rule since the start of the conflict in 2011 which has since killed more than 320,000 people and displaced millions.
But Macron said that the fight 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.... (IS) group was a priority for La Belle France, which has endured a string of terror attacks that have killed more than 230 people since 2015, some planned in Syria.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/04/2017
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#2
I don't see Macron as the solution for France but that's just me.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
09/04/2017 11:07
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#3
After watching Mubarak, Kadafie, Saddam Hussein... Assad had no choice but to fight to hold onto power. If the French do not want Assad involved with Syria he will need treated like the others mentioned.
It has become a truism in the continuing North Korean crisis to say that there is no good military option, but in fact there is.
The fact is that if a carefully planned swarm attack of low-flying cruise missiles was launched against the North Korean artillery massed across the frontier, just 35 miles from the immense South Korean capital city, Seoul, as well as at all North Korean missile launchers, and research and missile storage facilities, it would denuclearize the North and eliminate its power of intimidation against the South.
As the attacks occurred, the U.S. could warn North Korea, directly and via China, that if any attack were launched against any American or allied sites, the North Korean regime would be obliterated, but that if there were no military response, the United States and its allies would not seek regime change in the North or the reunification of Korea.
It is inconceivable that, in these circumstances, the Chinese would not sternly counsel Pyongyang to stand down. China does not want a nuclear North Korea, or a reunited Korea, which would shortly become a second Japan in industrial and strategic terms, immediately adjacent to it.
All the tired palaver about negotiating patiently with China about constraining North Korea is practically beside the point. It won't unmake North Korea as a nuclear military power. And it won't deter Iran from becoming one, now at the end of the 10-year life of the shabby agreement President Obama sponsored with that terrorism-supporting country.
Iran and North Korea have exposed the fraudulence of the non-proliferation regime, in which the existing nuclear powers made the spurious promise to pursue joint self-disarmament. The best that can be salvaged is a nuclear club from which psychopathically governed countries such as North Korea and Iran are excluded.
President Trump said on Tuesday that "All options are on the table." There is only one that will work, and it should be very seriously considered.
#1
"The fact is that if a carefully planned swarm attack of low-flying cruise missiles was launched against the North Korean artillery massed across the frontier, just 35 miles from the immense South Korean capital city, Seoul, as well as at all North Korean missile launchers, and research and missile storage facilities, it would denuclearize the North and eliminate its power of intimidation against the South."
I enjoy Mr. Black's opinions, but it has to be pointed out that there aren't enough cruise missiles in the entire US inventory to do this, never mind the fact that even if there were, the sight of all those launch platforms lining up would probably get someone's attention.
And the Chinese meant EXACTLY what they said - as long as we don't shoot first, they'll stay out of it. That means something like this brings the PRC in on Kimmie's side.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
09/04/2017 6:14
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#2
And the Chinese meant EXACTLY what they said - as long as we don't shoot first, they'll stay out of it. That means something like this brings the PRC in on Kimmie's side.
It's not like we haven't seen it happen previously.
#4
I like the idea of carpet bombing better than cruise missiles. Maybe use the cruise missiles for an initial strike on command and control but followed immediately with massive, heavy bombing.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
09/04/2017 11:25
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#5
I have read that some / many of the N Korean artillery emplacements were originally installed underground, and will not be exposed to possible air attack until a few minutes before they might be used. To deal with that, the US could drop autonomous bulldozes from cruise missiles to dig those out /sarc
#9
I have read that some / many of the N Korean artillery emplacements were originally installed underground, and will not be exposed to possible air attack until a few minutes before they might be used.
Built long before laser designators were cheap and popular. Then there is the problem when the firing port is covered by debris loosened from above.
#11
Both China and Nork have their regime stability as their primary objective. For this reason China won't get involved militarily. Any kind of blockade would send their economy into chaos.
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.
[The Hill] Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, who served as both the director of the NSA and the CIA, said Monday that some of President Trump’s rhetoric on North Korea "could lead to great danger."
[Houston Chronicle - 28 May 2016] As torrential rains have pounded the city in consecutive years, leading to repeated, heavy and deadly flooding, this inconvenient fact contributes to the region's misery.
[American Thinker] Did President Trump have a right to be annoyed with Jeff Sessions for recusing himself? A plausible case can be made that Sessions didn’t have to do it, but then there’s an equally plausible case that he did. The real grounds for criticizing Sessions lie elsewhere: once he decided that he would need to recuse himself, Sessions had a duty to make sure that a replacement was on hand who was up to the task that Sessions had sidestepped. That he did not do. Rod Rosenstein has made one grievous mistake after another, with no end in sight.
[Breitbart] In her Saturday opening statement on "Justice," host Jeanine Pirro called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to open a federal criminal investigation into the actions of Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director Jim Comey because Comey began drafting a letter exonerating Clinton from any wrongdoing before the FBI investigation was complete.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump has decided to scrap a program shielding from deportation immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children but will give Congress six months to craft legislation to replace it, sources familiar with the situation said.
[Guardian] A man who ran into the flames at the Burning Man festival’s burning ceremony has died.
Somalia's version of the Taliban, functioning as an arm of al-Qaeda...
North Korea
[RFE/RL] Eight children and four women -- originating from Kazakhstan and Russia -- who had been left behind in areas liberated from Islamic State rebels have been flown out of Iraq and Syria and have arrived in Russia. A plane carrying the women and children arrived in the Chechen capital Grozny on September 1.
[Iran Press TV] At least five Saudi troops have been killed in a Yemeni retaliatory attack following the kingdom's 
[Free Malaysia] Malaysian police have arrested eight Abu Sayyaf suspects in Kuala Lumpur. The militants were captured in an operation in Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, on the eve of National Day on Aug 30, reported.
South Korea's military said Monday it conducted a combined live-fire exercise in response to North Korea's sixth nuclear test a day earlier.
[Iran Press TV] Iraqi security forces have 
[Dhaka Tribune] A 
[Mindanao Examiner] Philippine policemen, backed by soldiers, captured two communist militants and seized an arms cache on Friday in Kidapawan city in southern Philippines following a tip-off from villagers.
[AnNahar] Fierce 
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The Iranian judiciary on Sunday upheld 10-year jail terms for an American, two US-Iranian dual nationals and a Lebanese permanent resident of the United States for "collaborating" with Washington.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] German Chancellor 
[An Nahar] General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim on Sunday called for a drastic solution for the security situation in the restive Paleostinian refugee camp of 
North Korea
[An Nahar] A lonely monkey at an Israeli zoo has found a way to soothe her maternal urges: by adopting a chicken.
by Conrad Black
