[NBC] On the orders of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Justice Department prosecutors have begun asking FBI agents to explain the evidence they found in a now dormant criminal investigation into a controversial uranium deal that critics have linked to Bill and Hillary Clinton, multiple law enforcement officials told NBC News.
The interviews with FBI agents are part of the Justice Department's effort to fulfill a promise an assistant attorney general made to Congress last month to examine whether a special counsel was warranted to look into what has become known as the Uranium One deal, a senior Justice Department official said.
At issue is a 2010 transaction in which the Obama Administration allowed the sale of U.S. uranium mining facilities to Russia's state atomic energy company. Hillary Clinton was secretary of state at the time, and the State Department was one of nine agencies that agreed to approve the deal after finding no threat to U.S. national security.
Some interesting choices there. The Poles and the Latvians seem to have a better grasp of geography than the Estonians and the Lithuanians.
Posted by: Matt ||
12/21/2017 14:32
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#7
The Poles and the Latvians seem to have a better grasp of geography than the Estonians and the Lithuanians.
IMO, it's not so much a matter of geography as Donald-graphy: The Poles and the Latvians understand that the Don is tired of USA being meals-on-wheels to most of the world’s nasty little third-world despotisms, and Estonians and the Lithuanians don't.
#11
NATO is basically over. Once the Germans shifted over to dependance on Russian gas defending them against Russia because virtually impossible. Beyond that France and England are overrun and unwilling to really come to terms with it, Turkey is supporting hostile actors within Europe, and Greece is a third world nation and doesn't know it yet.
USA should craft a deal with the Commonwealth and a few others and replace NATO and the UN in one swoop.
#14
...Cut our payments by 50% for one month for every nation that voted for us.
I suspect they might come around right quickly.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
12/21/2017 19:36
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#15
You declare our decision "Null and Void"? Get off our lawn, punks. WhoTF do you think you are?
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/21/2017 20:09
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#16
BTW, per Fox - Haley is holding a reception Jan 3rd for those nation's ambassadors that abstained, didn't vote or voted with us. I think it's a message to the others
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/21/2017 20:13
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#17
Let US find out who Our Friends really are.
And, there are other plans and evidence to change anything now. Especially the Un-Just.
[FOX Insider] It’s time for a special Christmas edition of Final Thoughts. It may be winter, but it’s still melting season...snowflake melting season, that is.
Uh oh, have I already offended you?
In Britain for example, a new survey by insurance firm Aviva found that 72 percent of 16 to 24-year-olds there believe the term "snowflake" is unfairly applied to millennials. 74 percent of respondents took it a step farther, arguing that they believe the use of the label could have a negative effect on young people’s mental health.
And that my friends, is special snowflake syndrome at its finest.
So what is a snowflake? Well, allow me to explain.
#1
Nice speech. I will not comment on the young ladiy's appearance.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/21/2017 19:09
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#2
It just isn't millennials, the one thing that tipped me over the edge and had me resign my position was an official reprimand from my Program Manger VP for saying "Christmas Party" in an email to the business manager asking for what the budget for the "Christmas Party" was.
A lot of companies have gone completely over the edge on diversity policy.
Another one of our thousand cuts that needs to go away. Yesterday.
[WSJ] SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands‐This U.S. territory in the western Pacific is known for its epic World War II battle, white-sand beaches and the enduring culture of its indigenous Chamorro people.
But for a certain class of Chinese parents, Saipan has become known as the latest hot spot for birth tourism, a place where women can give birth to babies who will automatically acquire U.S. citizenship.
The Northern Marianas, an island chain that includes Saipan, is the only U.S. soil that Chinese can visit without a visa, after a change in immigration policy in 2009 allowed Chinese and Russian tourists visa-free entry for up to 45 days.
"It’s just like if God opened a window for you," said a Chinese father who works as a translator here after coming a few years ago to ensure his child would be born American.
The Northern Marianas pressed for the visa waiver to support an economy reliant on tourism, notably to Saipan’s casinos and gambling parlors. The number of Chinese visitors has risen substantially since 2009 and now represents 36% of tourists to the island, which is four to five hours’ flight from Shanghai and Guangzhou. Tourism accounts for 72% of Saipan’s economy.
The number of American babies born here to Chinese women who entered as tourists also climbed‐to 472 last year from eight in 2009‐according to the Northern Marianas government. Last year, for the first time, more Chinese tourists gave birth here than Americans.
"As long as you have birthright citizenship, it’s true this is something that can be exploited," said Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. "This is the first I’ve heard of Saipan," she said. "That’s actually quite clever."
U.S. authorities don’t have a tally of how many people come to the U.S. each year to gain birthright citizenship. An association of Chinese birth-tour operators estimated that 10,000 Chinese birth tourists came to the U.S. in 2012.
Chinese travel businesses offer competing packages to help Chinese mothers reach U.S. soil and provide them with lodging, hospital care and domestic help.
There is nothing illegal about birth tourism, provided the visitor has the funds to pay for required medical procedures and doesn’t intend to overstay, said Jaime Ruiz, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
In 2015, when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided nearly 40 locations tied to birth-tourism operations in Southern California, the search warrants cited suspected visa fraud, tax evasion and harboring illegal immigrants, among other charges. The related cases are ongoing, ICE said.
The translator in Saipan said immigration enforcement on the U.S. mainland had led more Chinese parents to consider Saipan. While birth-tourism packages to Los Angeles included guidance on how to qualify for a tourist visa, Chinese travelers to Saipan needn’t clear that hurdle.
American obstetrician Claire Grove said that when she came to work at a clinic on Saipan last year, she was surprised at how many Chinese women had come to the island to give birth.
She soon had a unique perspective on birth tourism.
Dr. Grove learned that Sen Sun, a translator, was running a business to help Chinese mothers deliver on Saipan. Concerned about what she believed to be Mr. Sun’s exploitation of illegal Chinese workers, Dr. Grove went to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
As a result of an FBI probe, the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Northern Marianas prosecuted Mr. Sun, leading to his Dec. 8 guilty plea of harboring illegal aliens in relation to his hiring of Chinese maids to care for birth tourists.
"They feel trapped without U.S. citizenship," Dr. Grove said of the maids. "They have no means to complain about not being paid or anything."
In his plea deal, Mr. Sun said he operated "an unregistered and therefore illegal business operation arranging travel, medical, and other services to pregnant foreign citizens," in which he charged women more than $15,000 each, before hospital bills. Sentencing is set for March.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the case against Mr. Sun, whose lawyer declined to comment on the case and on Dr. Grove’s accusation that Mr. Sun exploited his staff.
In China, websites advertising birth-tourism packages abound, with names such as GlobalBaby8.com, promising luxurious birth vacations to Saipan. The Chinese translator whose wife gave birth on Saipan said total costs can exceed $50,000.
"Everyone is feeling unsafe in China," the father said, citing among other things the political crackdown under President Xi Jinping. "We will do anything for our kids." The father still lives on Saipan with his wife and children, and fears they will be deported.
Recently in the obstetrics unit at Saipan’s main hospital, a pregnant Chinese woman walked down a hall in a hospital gown and pink slippers, trailed by her translator, past a painting of Chamorro warriors dueling in loincloths.
Doctors and administrators said the surge in the number of Chinese mothers is overwhelming health facilities. "It’s a strain for the community," said Esther Muna, CEO of government health provider Commonwealth Healthcare Corporation, which runs the hospital.
Ms. Muna said Chinese women in late stages of pregnancy presented difficulties when doctors didn’t know their medical history. In October, a Chinese mother died in childbirth on the island.
Saipan is leaving it to federal authorities to chase down immigration violators. The Justice Department in April said it was cracking down on immigration violations in the Northern Marianas, after the conviction of a Taiwan national for harboring a Chinese birth tourist who had overstayed.
"Federal and local authorities should know where birth tourists are being housed and should be able to identify overstayers," said Gregorio Sablan, the Northern Marianas’ congressional representative. "Cutting off visa-free travel to the Marianas for hundreds of thousands of visitors from China in order to prevent a few hundred birth tourists makes no sense from a business point of view."
#1
Guess where their loyalties will be when they grow up and are given jobs in our industry and government? The bigger question. By then will there be anything left to steal?
Ah. Another President Barack Obama initiative. Was this another phone&pen jobbie that Prsident Trump can as simply reverse, or was this something that Democratic congress did betweenh sessions devising the ACA?
#3
Guess where their loyalties will be when they grow up and are given jobs in our industry and government? The bigger question. By then will there be anything left to steal?
Taking the long view, nothing like an endless supply of Chinese resident agents with US citizenship and Passports.
Soetoro and team were really thinking ahead on this one.
NBC's Tom Winter, Pete Williams, and Ken Dilanian report that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has ordered DOJ prosecutors to interview the FBI agents who investigated possible corruption in the Uranium One deal and its players' links to the Clinton Foundation.
#1
We're still waiting out here Mr. Sessions to see if there are two systems of justice in this country--one for the Washingtonian elites and another for the rest of us. We hope your tardiness in these matters is only because of the gathering of information and your serious deliberation. These matters left over mostly from the last administration are most likely, the greatest threat to Constitutional law outside of the Civil War that we, as a country, have faced.
[USNI.ORG] Long forgotten flags captured by U.S. forces during an obscure 19th-century military action in Korea were uncovered during restoration work at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis last week. The well-preserved flags were rediscovered in the academy’s Mahan Hall when British ensigns seized as trophies during the War of 1812 were removed from their display cases.
When the display cases were opened for the first time since 1920, staff from the Naval Academy Museum found several dozen flags hidden behind the framework including the Korean standards that are still vivid.
Museum officials told USNI News the flags probably were stashed behind other trophies on display because there was a shortage of storage space. Over the years the location of the flags faded from memory. Current museum staff suspected the flags may be somewhere on the academy yard because they were listed in documents but no one was certain where they were.
The flags had been taken during a U.S.-Korean conflict linked to North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un according to Pyongyang.
In 1866, the American merchant ship USS General Sherman sailed to Pyongyang in attempt to open Korea for trade. The Koreans suspected that the true mission of the General Sherman was to loot their temples so they set the ship on fire and massacred the crew. The incident is still celebrated in North Korea as a strike against American imperialism with the claim that Kim Ung-u, a direct ancestor of Kim Jong Un, planned and led the attack though there is no historical evidence of his involvement.
In 1871, a U.S. expedition of five warships approached the Korean coast to establish diplomatic relations and inquire about the fate of the General Sherman. After the Koreans fired on the ships, the Americans launched an assault in which U.S Marines captured several coastal forts and removed the flags.
The trophies were sent to Annapolis in accordance to an order issued by President James K. Polk in 1849 stating that all enemy flags, standards, and colors were taken by the Navy be deposited at the academy. They were listed with their provenance along with other flags taken from actions against Great Britain, Mexico, the Confederacy and even pirates in the Catalogue of the Flags in the Naval Institute Hall, U.S. Naval Academy published in 1888.
The collection of flags was first placed into storage in 1901 when the Naval Institute Hall was demolished. A major preservation effort took place in 1911 to save many of the flags in that were starting to deteriorate. They were then placed on the ceiling of the auditorium in Mahan Hall before it was decided that they needed to be moved into cases to better protect them. Photographs of the Korean flags on display appear in a 1913 catalog that was updated to include the trophies taken during the 1898 Spanish-American War. Plans to construct more cases to keep all the flags on exhibit never came to fruition, resulting in many flags like the Korean standards being pushed to the back of cases and covered as other flags were put on permanent display.
In the years that followed, all but one of the Korean flags were forgotten. The approximately 15-foot square flag belonging to General Uh Je-yeon who was killed during the 1871 conflict remained on display at the academy until 2007 when it was sent to Seoul on long-term loan at the request of South Korean officials.
Prior to the loan arrangement, U.S. Senator Wayne Allard had proposed trading the general’s flag for USS Pueblo that had been captured by North Korea in 1968 and exhibited near the site of General Sherman incident. The State Department rejected the proposal as being unworkable due to the many complications pertaining to U.S.-North Korean relations. Additionally, the government still maintains that the Pueblo is illegally seized U.S. property and should be returned without barter.
All the flags found in the display cases at the Naval Academy have been removed and are awaiting preservation. The only flags now missing from those listed in the 1888 catalog are the standards captured during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) which were returned to Mexico as a goodwill gesture during the Truman administration.
Posted by: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy ||
12/21/2017
09:27 ||
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#1
...Um, yeah, no.
In Best Korea, everything up to and including the Creation Itself is linked to the Kims.
Give 'em back to the ROK.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
12/21/2017 19:38
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It's a great time to be studying to be pilot. Just ask Madison Wolf who has only a year of training left at the Metro State University of Denver.
"I've seen even just in the few years that I've been at it they've been offering more and more money," Wolf said. "They're just trying to get as many people as they can."
That's because a shortage of pilots is already hitting some sectors of the industry, mostly small regional airlines and ultra-low cost carriers.
Aviation analyst Mike Boyd says the major airlines are only just beginning to feel the pinch.
"There are restrictions, if you will, on how many pilots there are but it hasn't really hit home yet," Boyd said. "The real hit's going to be in the next three to five years."
The Boeing Pilot Outlook predicts a need for 117,000 new pilots between 2017 and 2036 in North America alone. Worldwide, the demand for new pilots will be an astounding 637,000 during the same period.
"I see the pilot shortage myself," Wolf said. "We're so short on instructors sometimes. Every few months the regional airlines kind of come through and sweep out all the qualified instructors." Sounds like we're eating our seed corn. The aviation schools need to compensate the instructors better than whatever the airlines might offer. Students will pay more because the goal will still be worth it.
MSU's Kevin Kuhlmann, associate chair of the Aviation and Aerospace Science Department, said airlines are going to aviation schools for new hires because they have few other choices.
"The regional carriers have started to enter into agreements with Collegiate Aviation Programs and entice students to come on board during their academic career," Kuhlmann said. "These kind of opportunities were not available five or more years ago."
Kuhlmann said the major airlines have plans to do the same ‐ recruit directly from universities instead of hiring from regional airlines or the military, both of which are trying to keep their own pilots from leaving.
Scott Frank just graduated from MSU and has already been tapped for an opportunity with a major airline.
"I do have the United internship that's due to start in the spring. I can pretty much skip that regional area and just go straight to United," he said.
Many, like Boyd, blame Washington for the dearth of qualified pilots. They cite the 2009 crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 near Buffalo, which the National Transportation Safety Board blamed, in part, on pilot error.
Congress then upped the flying hours pilots needed to qualify to fly commercially from 250 to 1,500.
"That sounds good," Boyd admits. "Politicians love it and they get all upset if you try to change it. But the fact is that wouldn't have prevented that crash because both the pilots (on the Colgan flight) had more than that."
The Air Line Pilots Association, International says the 1,500-hour rule must stay.
"We shouldn't be addressing a safety regulation to mitigate a commercial market problem," according to the association’s president, Capt. Tim Canoll.
ALPA also denies there is a shortage of qualified pilots to begin with, citing Federal Aviation Administration statistics that show 9,520 new pilots received their Airline Transport Certificates in 2016, qualifying them to fly large aircrafts used by major airlines.
The union compares that number to another from Future & Active Pilot Advisors, which shows the major airlines hired only 4,113 new pilots in 2016.
"There are twice as many pilots as there are jobs," Canoll said. "Those having trouble attracting that pilot to the job are the ones who aren't providing a living wage, a good work-life balance, a career progression and a good balance in benefits."
#1
So, American workers are winning while corporations have to pay more.
Tell me why they aren't importing H1Bs for this like they do every technical position? A vast influx of poorly qualified immigrants will be the solution to this problem, as it is to all labor problems.
Posted by: Herb McCoy7309 ||
12/21/2017 9:57
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#2
and which countries do you want the H1B pilots to come from?
"Allahu Akhbar!"
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/21/2017 10:36
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#4
As I recall, commercial pilots are FORCED to retire at age 60, no matter how fit they are. Extending this by even a few years would help alleviate the shortage.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
12/21/2017 11:13
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#5
Seems the over-60 folks would have the most experience and would be the best to pass it to the next generation of pilots.
#6
Both time and landing space are finite not including fudges like good weather. You'd think that someone would have calculated the 'safe' maximum you can staff to fit those limitations.
The Boeing Pilot Outlook predicts a need for 117,000 new pilots between 2017 and 2036 in North America alone.
Not anticipating any disruption for the next civil war.
[ConservativeTreehouse] In plain language the "Trump Project" was a joint 2016 FBI & DOJ counterintelligence operation to conduct wiretaps and surveillance upon the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Operatives within the FBI and DOJ who were politically aligned with the Hillary Clinton campaign, weaponized the DOJ and FBI to undermine her political opposition.
Those who have been walking the deep weeds have a pretty strong understanding of Deputy FBI Director Andrew "Andy" McCabe’s risk profile and his role in the 2016 "Trump Project". The Rosen report earlier today -based on investigators within the House Intelligence Committee- states McCabe has lost his memory around the timeline for the FBI’s FISA application and the Christoper Steele Russian Dossier as evidence therein.
...
It is increasingly clear the entire purpose of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe was not to investigate some nefarious and innocuous Russian election interference; but rather with a Trump victory the same people who weaponized the FBI and DOJ to conduct the "Trump Project" needed to generate a shield or firewall to protect them from sunlight. The Mueller probe is that shield.
Those who are seeking answers to the most critical questions are now running into the officials within the scheme using the Mueller probe as a defensive shield so they do not have to answer questions. This is the primary purpose of the Mueller probe:
...
Secondly, the same FBI and DOJ officials, along with career FBI and DOJ lawyers and administrators, who are at risk from exposure within the plot, do not want to answer questions in public hearings. They are using closed sessions under the auspices of everything therein being "classified". This venue and manner of testimony blocks congressional representatives from talking about the content publicly.
Everything is being structured to avoid public scrutiny. In essence these career co-conspirators are using the familiar DC system to protect themselves from ramifications of their plot reaching the public.
Having said that, it certainly appears we have one person on the side of justice who predicted this was going to happen. By all external appearances DOJ Office of Inspector General Michael Horowitz has moved proactively to set up as much transparency as possible upon his years-long investigation into the politicization of the FBI and DOJ. Continues
Posted by: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy ||
12/21/2017
09:01 ||
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[Task & Purpose] You know the story. On Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacked our nation. A few weeks later, we sent over a couple of Special Forces ODAs, a battalion of Army Rangers, and a few brave CIA paramilitary officers to extract a price from the responsible parties, as well as anyone who harbored them.
We were going to wage a war on terrorism. The good guys were gonna go get the bad guys.
Sixteen years, 2,407 American service members, three presidents, and $841 billion later, most Americans no longer care what we are doing over there or why we’re doing it.
[Newsbusters] On CNN's New Day Sunday, the show devoted a four-minute segment to the new children's book, Santa's Husband, which portrays Santa Claus as a gay man who gets married to another man. The segment included as guests the author, Daniel Kibblesmith, and illustrator Ashley Quach, with Kibblesmith recalling that he was partially inspired to write the book because of the complaints that are made each year about a "war on Christmas."
At 6:12 a.m. ET, CNN co-anchor Christi Paul plugged the interview: "There's a new children's book out this Christmas -- takes us inside Santa's wedding. We meet Santa's husband David. We're going to talk to the author and illustrator ahead."
#2
The author was not very imaginative. He could have made Santa and his partner drug addicted, black, "jolly" men who were unsatisfied with their male genders. They decided to have gender reassignment operations and were undergoing the process but Christmas stressed them out and resulted in a great deal of dysfunction in the relationship. This led to a break-up of the marriage and they ended up on the street, homeless and plying their trade in the oldest profession. (It wasn't bell-ringing for the Salvation Army and saying ho, ho, ho.) Both decided to go to therapy to work out their problems which went on for years. The climate-change believing children of earth were very disappointed for years until Santa and her partner were re-united and doing the work of Santa again. CNN would was very, very happy with this story.
WASHINGTON (AP) ‐ The Environmental Protection Agency says an internal task force appointed to revamp how the nation’s most polluted sites are cleaned up generated no record of its deliberations.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt in May announced the creation of a Superfund Task Force that he said would reprioritize and streamline procedures for remediating more than 1,300 sites. Pruitt, the former attorney general of Oklahoma, appointed a political supporter from his home state with no experience in pollution cleanups to lead the group.
The task force in June issued a nearly three dozen-page report containing 42 detailed recommendations, all of which Pruitt immediately adopted. The advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, known as PEER, quickly filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking a long list of documents related to the development of Pruitt’s plan.
After EPA didn’t immediately release any records, PEER sued in federal court in Washington.
Now, nearly six months after the task force released its report, a lawyer for EPA has written PEER to say that the task force had no agenda for its meetings, kept no minutes and used no reference materials other than Pruitt’s memo appointing them.
#8
Pruitt, the former attorney general of Oklahoma, appointed a political supporter from his home state with no experience in pollution cleanups to lead the group.
I wonder how many times that bolded phrase was used in stories about Federal political appointments between early 2009 and early 2017?
[Jpost] US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley glared at her colleagues at the UN Security Council Monday as she cast the lone nay vote against a draft resolution presented by Egypt to nullify US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Haley then berated her UN colleagues for their assault against US sovereignty and for their prolonged efforts to delegitimize Israel and blame the Jewish state for the absence of peace. In her words, "The United States refuses to accept the double standard that says we are not impartial when we stand by the will of the American people by moving our US embassy, but somehow the United Nations is a neutral party when it consistently singles out Israel for condemnation."
The liberal media, led by The New York Times chastised her.
"Punctuating America’s increasing international isolation, the United Nations Security Council demanded on Monday that the Trump administration rescind its decisions to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to put the United States Embassy there," the Times wrote in a purported news article.
While attacking Trump and Haley for isolating the US, the Times and its colleagues failed to explain what an international community-aligned US foreign policy looks like.
Notably, just such a policy and its consequences were the subject of a 15,000-word investigative report published Monday morning by Politico.
"The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook," by Josh Meyer, detailed how in the interest of advancing a policy supported by the international community, then president Barack Obama imperiled US public health, national security and its allies.
[The Hill via Right Scoop] The Trump administration on Wednesday approved the sale of lethal arms to Ukraine’s government as the country battles pro-Russian separatists in its eastern provinces.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the administration approved the sale of Model M107A1 Sniper Systems and associated equipment to the country at a value of $41.5 million. The administration has not yet moved to approve heavier arms requested by Ukraine’s government, including Javelin anti-tank missiles.
AND it’s also a tiny-thumb to the eye of Obama, whose former agents are now accusing Trump of appeasing Putin!
The move from the White House is a departure from the Obama administration, which frequently condemned Russian aggression in the Ukraine but refused to approve the sale of arms to the country’s western-aligned government.
[Jpost] ...In setting out this analysis, I am not taking sides. I am simply sharing my 50 years of experience as a criminal defense lawyer who has seen the criminal justice system up close, warts and all. As James Madison wrote in "Federalist 51": "Perhaps everyone will agree that if we were all angels, no state would be necessary, and if angels were the governors, they would require neither internal nor external constraints to ensure that they governed justly." Neither the Trump team nor the Mueller team are angels. They are human beings with human limitations. But an investigation of a president must be as close to angelic as any human endeavor can be. Otherwise the public will not have confidence in the results.
#5
a few more testimonies about the palace coup the FBI was trying to create and Mueller might just find himself below the fold in the Arts and Entertainment section of the WaPo
[Townhall] Last night, the Senate adopted the final version of a major tax overhaul that nonpartisan organizations all agree will boost economic growth, make the US corporate tax rate far more competitive on the global stage, and will cut taxes, on average, for every single income group in America. Every single Democrat who cast votes on the bill in both legislative chambers voted no. 'Resistance' now requires consigning your working class and middle-income constituents to higher tax burdens, apparently. Thanks to Democrats' unified failure, more than 80 percent of taxpayers will see an immediate cut, with less than five percent getting an increase -- a tiny group heavily tilted toward wealthier itemizers living in high-tax states. More than eight years from now, those percentages would have barely budged, with the vast majority of all taxpayers (including and especially the working and middle classes) receiving tax relief, totaling roughly $7,000 for the average family by that point. These are facts; facts that Democrats and their media allies have gone into overdrive to hide from the American people. Some of this propaganda push has entailed flat-out lying and laughable hyperbole:
#1
Prosperity? Hell no, it's about power. Beggars are easier to please. Besides its in the program to destroy the Middle Class in order to have more efficient plantation socialism.
#6
... with less than five percent getting an increase -- a tiny group heavily tilted toward wealthier itemizers living in high-tax states...
High tax states = blue states and that tiny group heavily tilted toward wealthier itemizers are people who work, produce value and pay taxes. Most likely many of them vote Republican so when they leave those high tax states they'll get even bluer and eventually go bankrupt just like Detroit. Sometimes I think that's Brown's plan. He wants to turn California into a Third World hell hole on a par with Venezuela so he can be the dictator like Maduro.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/21/2017 10:37
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#7
The problem that CA would have in this case is that people can leave freely. They had better get working on that.
But they reliably inform me they're anti-fascist...
Posted by: Bright Pebbles
Bright Pebbles, does the phrase "Heil Hillary" mean anything to you? That's the antifa favorite phrase.
BTW "Antifa", really stands for "Anti-First-Amendment!", they're trying to confuse us by saying it's "anti-fascist", not very successfully as most Americans apparently knows better.
[National Review] Comcast-NBC Universal and Wells Fargo have joined with several other businesses to announce plans to use money saved by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for investments and bonuses. Comcast will award $1,000 bonuses to over 100 thousand employees and invest $50 billion over the next five years in infrastructure, due not only to the passage of the GOP tax-reform bill but also the repeal of net neutrality. Wells-Fargo will match Fifth-Third’s $15 minimum wage hike and intends to reach up to $400 million in philanthropic donations.
Earlier today, AT&T, Boeing, and Fifth-Third Bancorp announced separate plans to invest in the U.S. and pay workers bonuses with the money saved thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. If President Donald Trump signs the bill, which passed both houses of Congress today, it will reduce the corporate tax rate by 14 percent, leading to a significant economic windfall for AT&T, Boeing, and other U.S. businesses. Fifth-Third will raise its hourly wage to $15 and pay over 13,000 employees a one-time bonus of $1,000 upon Trump’s signature. AT&T’s plan includes a $1,000 bonus awarded to 200,000 U.S. employees and a $1 billion investment in the United States.
President Trump reacted positively to the AT&T news, saying, "That’s pretty good, that’s pretty good," after reading the plan at a White House event. According to Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing will invest $300 million in "employee-related and charitable investment." Split into three $100 million chunks, the investment will support corporate charitable giving, workforce development, and infrastructure enhancements for Boeing employees.
#2
If I may:
Higher wages + bonuses = higher costs = lower profit margins = cost-cutting = layoffs + replace by robots.
This is a bunch of PR bullshit by banks to say 'thanks' to Trump for his corporate tax cuts. As a strong believer in small government, I love the idea of tax cuts. However, I'm rather dubious that corporations will pass this $ down to their workers in a sustainable way. Will there be fits and starts - like $1,000 bonuses from AT&T? Probably. Higher CEO salaries? Definitely. Wage increases? Maybe among the higher-value employees, but only temporarily among lower-wage workers who will be replaced by robots.
If there's a silver lining, it's that Bitcoin et al may eventually displace banks altogether. Screw bankers.
[Daily Caller] A former Planned Parenthood manager called the abortion organization "demonic" in a Wednesday interview, explaining why she left the abortion business.
"I knew what I was doing was wrong," Former Planned Parenthood Manager Ramona Trevino told TheDCNF in an exclusive interview. Trevino worked as the manager of a Planned Parenthood abortion-referral facility in Sherman, Texas, for three years before leaving in 2011.
"I am involved and it took a few years after working at Planned Parenthood to recognize my part in abortion even through referrals. I was still involved in a demonic organization," she said. "There’s no other word you can use for what takes place."
Trevino justified working at the Planned Parenthood because it was a non-abortion facility, realizing only after an extended period of time that she was still culpable for what goes on at other facilities. "They are being groomed as future abortion patients because Planned Parenthood promotes a promiscuous lifestyle," she said. "We’re not discouraging them from having sex at a young age. We have monthly quotas to meet. They’re just numbers," she said.
[PJ] Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe's closed-door interview with House Intelligence Committee investigators on Tuesday did not go well for him, Fox News' James Rosen reported in an exclusive on Wednesday.
According to congressional sources, McCabe's answers during his seven-hour interrogation conflicted with the testimony of previous witnesses, prompting one House investigator to tell Fox News, "It’s hard to know who’s telling us the truth."
The discrepancies have spurred Republican majority staff of the intel committee to issue fresh subpoenas next week for other Justice Department and FBI personnel.
Fox News reports that those personnel are likely to be "demoted DOJ official Bruce G. Ohr and FBI General Counsel James A. Baker, who accompanied McCabe, along with other lawyers, to Tuesday’s HPSCI session." Ohr -- whose wife Nellie worked for Fusion GPS through the summer and fall of 2016 -- is set to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee later this week, as well.
#4
McCabe claimed he could not recall – despite the reported existence of documents with McCabe’s own signature on them establishing his knowledge of the dossier’s financing and provenance.
This statement is very damning--McCabe invokes the Hillary defense? He's got to be eyeball deep in this and lying. McCabe is the number 2 guy at the FBI, he had to know what's going on with this and many other things under investigation as well.
McCabe has been asked to come back today. What's it going to take to refresh his memory and peel this onion of corruption?
Meanwhile the Dems are still trying to breathe life into the dead corpse of a feeble Trump-Russia collusion investigation. Get on with the burial of this stinking corpse. Have a little dignity and decorum. Quit $hitting in your pants and clean yourselves up.
#5
OK, McCabe, here's the deal: You give us the straight story and you get five years at Leavenworth instead of ten.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/21/2017 10:28
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Andy, please think of Jill. I hope you realize we'd really rather not go there unless we are forced to. Now, be a good chap and give us a hand with this tawdry matter won't you ?
[Newsweek] Cooking with canola oil is extremely common, but a new study might make you think before subbing it in for the ever-popular olive. Researchers from Temple University found that canola decreased learning ability, inhibited memory and led to weight gain for mice with Alzheimer’s disease.
[Breitbart] Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said he believed people in the FBI and the Justice Department were involved in "an orchestrated plan" to keep President Donald Trump from becoming president.
Jordan said:
I think they were putting together a plan to stop Donald Trump from being the next president of the United States. I think it’s amazing in spite of the fact that the Democrats were against him, the Republican establishment was against him, the mainstream press was against him. and now I believe the FBI and the Justice Department were against him, the American people still said that’s the guy we want to be the next president.
"But everything points to ‐ from what we learned several weeks ago that they paid to the dossier to the fact that I believe that fake dossier was used as the basis to get Warren to now what we learn about Peter Strzok and Bruce Ohr and the FBI and the Justice Department, respectively," he said, continuing, "Everything points to the fact that there was an orchestrated plan to try to prevent Donald Trump from becoming the President of the United States."
Furthermore:
When you look at the text messages and see the inherit bias that they had against President Trump. And then look at this idea that Peter Strzok thought he was — I believe — Mr. James Bond super secret agent at the FBI. The guy ran the Clinton investigations, interviewed Mills, interviewed Abedin, interviewed Secretary Clinton, changed the exoneration letter from the criminal standard of gross negligence to the non criminal standard of extreme carelessness, ran the Russia investigation, interviewed Flynn, this guy thought he was the guy charged with stopping President Trump from being the next president. I just don’t buy the spin and that text message is pretty clear. I’m afraid we can’t take that risk and need an insurance policy. I think that insurance policy was to use that dossier to prevent Donald Trump from becoming the next president.
He added, “To date, there’s not one bit of evidence that Donald Trump worked with the Russians to influence the election. But we know for a fact the Clinton campaign paid Russians. They paid Christopher Steele through the law firm, though Fusion GPS they paid Christopher Steele who actually paid Russians for this false, fake dossier information. So that’s the frustrating part. I want to get these people in. We need to subpoena Bruce Ohr. We need to subpoena his wife. We need to subpoena Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page. That needs to happen.”
#1
And then look at this idea that Peter Strzok thought he was — I believe — Mr. James Bond super secret agent at the FBI. The guy ran the Clinton investigations, interviewed Mills, interviewed Abedin, interviewed Secretary Clinton, changed the exoneration letter from the criminal standard of gross negligence to the non criminal standard of extreme carelessness, ran the Russia investigation, interviewed Flynn
If folks kept coming to me to solve these kinds of problems, I'd start asking "why?"
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean guards fired warning shots across the heavily militarized border with North Korea on Thursday as a soldier from the North defected, officials said, complicating efforts to ease tensions over the Pyongyang’s weapons programs.
A South Korean defense ministry official said up to 20 warning shots were fired at North Korean troops who approached too closely to the "military demarcation line", apparently in search of the missing soldier.
Thursday’s defection came about five weeks after another North Korean soldier suffered critical gunshot wounds during a defection dash across the border on Nov. 13.
[Ynet] Australian media say up to 19 people have been injured after a car drove into pedestrians on a sidewalk in central Melbourne.
Police have arrested the driver of the white SUV, which crashed into a cable car stop, but were not able to immediately confirm the cause of the incident or whether it was terrorism-related.
Media reports say up to 19 pedestrians have been treated for injuries, with 12 taken to hospitals, including a pre-school aged child in serious condition with head injuries. I suppose it could be a drank driver, but...
A man arrested after a car was driven into pedestrians in central Melbourne has a history of drug use and mental health problems, police have revealed as they said the incident is not believed to be terror-related.
Nutters have attacked for the glory of Allah, too. They just aren’t likely to be part of a highly choreographed and rehearsed plan with multiple attackers carrying guns and bombs.
The driver of the white SUV that ploughed into a crowd - leaving at least 14 people injured, several of them critically - in what officers believe was a "deliberate act" was a 32-year-old Australian citizen of Afghan descent.
The odds suddenly increased that this was a case of Sudden Jihad Syndrome.
There is no evidence or intelligence to suggest a link with terrorism at this stage,
...if terrorism is defined as having been been planned by an official ISIS/Al Qaeda/etc. ad nauseum attack planner and undertaken by trained ISIS, etc. cadres. But if it is someone who decided to kill for the glory of Allah, possibly but not necessarily encouraged by ISIS or Al Qaeda messages that Moslems around the world should undertake to attack unbelievers with whatever is at hand, then this could well be. Thank goodness for the bollards put up after a similar attack by what sounds like a paranoid schizophrenic — Christian variety — last January...
Melbourne's acting police commissioner Shane Patton said, adding that this is no known continued threat.
He added that a second arrested man, aged 24, is not believed to be involved. He was seen filming the incident with a mobile phone and was then searched by police, who found three knives in his bag.
Was a second terror attack averted?
In a terrifying incident during the pre-Christmas shopping rush, the four-wheeled drive vehicle rammed into a large number of pedestrians at high speed on the pavement outside Flinders Street railway station, one of the Australian city’s main transport hubs.
Earlier media reports suggested that a total of 19 people had been injured.
Police said 14 people had been taken to hospital for treatment, including several who were described as being critically ill.
The incident occurred when the vehicle struck a number of pedestrians in front of Flinders Street Station just after 4.30pm.
The Daily Mail describes the miscreant as a lone wolf, and has a good photo of the well groomed miscreant with a close-cropped beard held down on the ground by police, as well as a photo of the second man, who appears darker, with a bushy beard about 8” long, adding:
The driver was known to police and has a history of drug use, mental health issues and criminal history.
Update from the Daily Mail at 4:00p.m. ET:
Four are fighting for life in hospital after a car 'deliberately' ploughed into rush hour crowds in the heart of Melbourne.
A white Suzuki SUV with p-plates, driven by 32-year-old man of Afghan descent, who The Herald Sun have identified as Saeed Noori, crashed into a large group of commuters and shoppers at the corner of Melbourne's busy Elizabeth Street and Flinders Street at 4.41pm on Thursday.
The 32-year-old lone wolf driver was known to police and was arrested at the scene.
The driver, who is an Australian citizen, is under police guard at hospital with shoulder and hand injuries.
Victoria Police said the driver has a history of drug use, criminal history with a minor assault in 2010 and is on a mental health plan.
#1
Commander Russell Barrett: "We believe based on what we have seen that it is a deliberate act. The motivations are unknown. It is still the early days of the investigation."
Diyala (IraqiNews.com) Six non-combatants were killed and injured in a kaboom near a school in northeast of Diyala, a security source from the province said on Wednesday.
"A bomb placed near a school gate in abul Khanazeer village, caused death of two civilians and four others maimed," the source told AlSumaria News.
"Security troops transferred the maimed to nearby hospital for treatment, while the victims were taken to forensic medicine department," the source, who asked to remain anonymous, added.
Erbil (Iraqinews.com) Kurdish forces have launched a wide-scale arrest campaign in Sulaymaniyah to silence demonstrators, who have taken to the streets since Monday in protest at delayed salary payments and poor services.
“Kurdish troops have been heavily deployed at Halabja, Chamchamal, Ranya and Koysinjaq towns in Sulaymaniyah governorate, and have already arrested scores of civilians there,” Alsumaria News quoted Kurdish media outlets as saying.
“There is a heavy security presence in central Sulaymaniyah in particular,” it added.
Meanwhile, a well-informed source told Alghad Press that the Kurdish authorities have cut off internet services in Sulaymaniyah.
Internet service providers Korek Telecom and Fastlink have received orders from the Kurdish security to shut down the internet in Sulaymaniyah in the wee hours of Wednesday, the source said.
The Iraqi Kurdistan region has been witnessing a sweeping wave of protests since Monday as demonstrators took to the streets to protest against the austerity policy, recently adopted by the Kurdish government.
Anbar (Iraqinews.com) – Two Kurdish protesters were killed in clashes with security forces over the past two days, Ranya District Police said.
In a Wednesday statement, quoted by Baghdad Today, the Ranya District Police said, “The encounters between Kurdish forces and angry protesters left two people dead and several others injured,” the statement read.
“Security forces opened fire at protesters after several partisan headquarters and government institutions were set ablaze by them,” the statement added.
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) Civil defense in Anbar have cleared and destroyed 38.000 munition items left over from Islamic State militants’ presence and security forces battles against the group in the province.
Fawzi Yassin, commander of the province’s civil defense directorate, told Alsumaria News on Wednesday that teams, over the past two years, cleared and destroyed more than 38.174 projectiles from areas recaptured by security forces.
The removed explosives included rockets, bullet rounds and multi-sized projectiles, adding that efforts continue to clear the remaining areas.
Since 2015, United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) has cleared 390 priority locations in Falluja and Ramadi in Anbar province, removing more than 2,600 explosive hazards from areas reclaimed from Islamic State.
Leftover explosives continue to pose a threat at areas seized back from IS, occasionally leaving deaths among civilians, according to local news reports.
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) Three Iraqi soldiers were wounded as a rocket fired from Syria targeted their patrol in western Anbar, a security source from the province said on Wednesday.
“Three Iraqi soldiers were injured at the Iraqi-Syrian borders, near Qaim, after their patrol was targeted,” the source told Alghad Press. “The patrol was targeted by a rocket fired from Syrian lands.”
Baghdad (Iraqinews.com) ‐ Five 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.... hard boyz were killed in a repelled attack on the Iraqi-Syrian border on Wednesday, paramilitary forces said.
"Popular Mobilization Forces’ (PMF) 1st brigade repelled a fierce attack launched by Islamic State against Tall Safuk area on the Iraqi-Syrian border," the paramilitary forces said in a statement, quoted by Baghdad Today, on Wednesday.
"The two-hour attack left five IS hard boyz killed," the statement read, adding that the PMFs have detonated a vehicle owned by the assailants and seized another.
"The security situation is now under control," the statement concluded.
Earlier in the day, a Diyala-based provincial official warned of the return of Islamic State hard boyz to a border area between Diyala and Salahuddin provinces after the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from there.
Speaking to Alsumaria News, Abdul Khaleq al-Azzawi, a member of Diyala province council, said, "Islamic State hard boyz returned to Mteibijah border area between Salahuddin and Diyala provinces after Iraqi forces withdrew from there on Monday for unknown reasons."
Azzawi wondered how the "Iraqi military could take such a decision of withdrawal with no reasonable justification."
A military operation was launched earlier on Saturday to hunt down remnants of Islamic State at Mteibijah area in Iraq, the Iraqi military said.
Backed by paramilitary al-Hashd al-Shaabi, the troops advanced from three directions to clear Mteibijah area, the media office of the Iraqi Joint Operations Command said in a brief statement.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/21/2017
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As estimated by a team of AyPee reporters from things they were told and shown. Possibly the numbers are within the correct order of magnitude, but then one ponders the utter nonsense published in the Lancet about civilian deaths during the 2003 invasion. Read all the details at the link.
[IsraelTimes] NGO figures show Iraqi or coalition forces responsible for at least 3,200 civilian deaths in war against Islamic State.
Mosul (IraqiNews.com) Iraqi troops killed six Islamic State militants in a security campaign launched in southeast of Mosul on Tuesday, Anadolu Agency reported.
“The federal investigations and intelligence agency submitted information to the National Security Agency over presence of six out of 20 militants, who previously infiltrated into Mosul, are there at a residential house in al-Shaimaa region, southeast of the city,” Cap. Mohamed Atwan al-Ghanimi, of the agency, said.
“Joint troops of the agency and the army’s elite Counter-Terrorism Service headed toward the target after drawing accurate plan,” he added.
Troops, according to Ghanimi, urged the militants to turn in themselves. However, they rejected and started confrontations. The snipers began with opening fire against the militants from several directions.
“In less than 10 minutes, all the militants were attacked. No casualties were reported among troops and civilians,” Atwan said.
Efforts are made to look for the rest of the militants, after information showed they sneaked toward the center of the city from desert regions, according to the officer.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/21/2017
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#1
NGO figures show Iraqi or coalition forces responsible for at least 3,200 civilian deaths...
For varying definitions of "civilian"...
[DAILYCALLER] Left-wing billionaire donor George Soros ...either Ernst Stavro Blofeld or Auric Goldfinger come true... is illegally bankrolling a campaign to repeal the Eight Amendment of Ireland’s constitution, which protects "the right to life of the unborn," according to an independent government watchdog.
Ireland’s Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO), has ordered left-wing organization Amnesia Amnesty International to return a donation of more than $162,000 from Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF). The donation is in violation of the 1997 Electoral Act, which bars foreign organizations from giving donations of more than $100 for "political purposes," according to SIPO.
Amnesty has refused to return the donation, a defiant decision that OSF is supporting, British newspaper The Times reported on Wednesday. Amnesty has claimed that the law is unfair.
An OSF front man told The Times the group is "proud to be one of the sources of support for local advocacy efforts to bring Ireland’s abortion law in line with its commitments under international human rights One man's rights are another man's existential threat. law."
Posted by: Fred ||
12/21/2017
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Bad move George, better watch out for "the lads". They will come after anyone who tries to screw with their independance. After all, that fight is still a living memory in Ireland
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic... has decided to keep Yemen’s main Hodeidah port open for a month, the coalition said on Wednesday, despite a ballistic missile attack by the Iran-aligned Houthis towards the Saudi capital Riyadh.
The coalition, which controls Yemen’s airspace and access to its ports, last month blocked all entry points to Yemen after a similar missile attack on Riyadh’s international airport.
Saudi authorities had said that both missiles were intercepted without causing any casualties.
"Keen to maintain humanitarian aid to the brotherly Yemeni people and as a result of intensified inspection measures, the coalition command announces that Hodeidah port will remain open for humanitarian and relief supplies," the coalition said in a statement carried by Saudi state new agency SPA.
The coalition said that ships bringing in fuel and food supplies will also be allowed to enter for another 30 days while proposals made by the United Nations ...boodling on the grand scale... envoy to Yemen are implemented, it added.
The Red Sea port is the country’s main entry point for food and humanitarian supplies.
The coalition had accused Iran of sending the missile that was fired towards Riyadh in November, and the United States last week displayed what it said was evidence that it was provided by Iran. Tehran has denied the report.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/21/2017
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Residents of Setif city in Algeria were shocked by an act of vandalism on the statue of their famous city and its main monument, the Ain el-Fouara fountain.
The Salafist Algerian who vandalized the statue saw it as a disgrace, and just a "fetish" for a woman stripped of her clothes.
The video was widely shared on social media sites in Algeria on Monday, showing the Salafist climbing the statue, and destroying it using a hammer and an iron bar, specifically focusing on the marble face and chest areas of the statue.
The video shows citizens gathering around him, demanding him to stop, but he replied with violent threats to anyone who tried to approach him. The police eventually intervened and stopped him with the help of some citizens, while he violently resisted.
The Ain el Fouara statue, located in the heart of the city of Setif, is placed on top of a fountain built in 1898 by the French sculptor Francis de Saint-Vidal. It is considered one of the most important landmarks in Algeria, attracting thousands of visitors daily.
The statue has previously sparked debate in Algeria, where some view it as a display of a woman’s private areas shaming their modesty and dishonoring the people of the city.
But others see it as a historical and cultural landmark; a masterpiece for men and women to enjoy.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[ALMASDARNEWS] The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) launched a powerful assault in the southeastern countryside of the Aleppo Governorate, today, targeting the jihadist-held town of al-Ramleh.
Backed by heavy artillery, the Syrian Arab Army’s 4th Division and Elite Republican Guard managed to enter the town from its eastern flank this afternoon, following a fierce battle with the jihadist forces.
However, a poor excuse is better than no excuse at all... the Syrian Army’s success would stop there, as they soon found themselves outnumbered and nearly surrounded inside of al-Ramleh.
According to preliminary reports, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham captured eight soldiers and killed a half dozen others during the short-lived attack today.
The Syrian Army will likely make another attempt to capture this town in the coming days, as they continue their push towards the strategic Abu Dhuhour Military Airport in east Idlib.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[Khaama (Afghanistan)] New distressing reports have emerged regarding the violence against a child bride in Afghanistan sending shocking across the country as violence against women remain a critical issue in various remote parts of Afghanistan.
The child bride, Gul Hazar, who is now believed to be only 12-years-old now has disclosed the miseries she has faced since she got married.
Gul Hazar says she has faced various types of tortures from her in-laws family members who have on certain occassions attempted to murder her.
According to Gul Hazar, she was sent to the mountains by her father-in-law to collect fire wood and in return she was receiving the remaining foods of the dog of the family.
She disclosed the miseries she faced after she was brought to Feroz Koh city, the placid provincial capital of Ghor province.
The signs of brutal torture can clearly be seen on the body parts of Gul Hazar including her hands with her close relatives saying up to 150 torture signs can be seen on her body.
A relative of the child Sakhidad says the in-laws of Gul Hazar have even tortured the girl sexually and on some occassions the father-in-law and mother-in-law of the girl have inserted sticks in her vagina.
The doctors in Feroz Koh city have confirmed the girl has suffered tremendously from tortures which cannot be described in words.
In the meantime, the security officials in Ghor province are saying that the husband, father-in-law, and mtoher-in-law of the girl have been tossed in the calaboose Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please! The acting police chief of Dolina district Bismiallah Sediqi confirmed that the in-laws of the child have been arested an investigation is underway from the detainees who have been shifted to Feroz Koh city.
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#1
You've got to applaud this young Gul from Ghor province, who stood up and ultimately got her husband and in-laws imprisoned for torture.
[Breitbart] Will Smith delved into politics at a press event for his latest film Bright this week, calling the country’s current political environment a "natural reaction" to what he described as the more favorable years of Barack Obama’s presidency.
The 49-year-old actor ‐ who has previously teased a future run for public office himself ‐ did not mention President Donald Trump by name but speculated about the country’s future during Wednesday’s event in Beverly Hills for Netflix’s Bright, a dystopian police thriller directed by David Ayer that reportedly cost the streaming service $90 million.
"This is the purge, right?" Smith said, according to Indiewire. "This is the cleanse, this is what happens. This is the natural reaction to the amount of light that came into the world when Barack Obama was the president."
"We had to expect that [the pendulum] was going to go the other way," he added. "As a cleanse ‐ this is the darkness before the dawn."
[PHILADELPHIA.CBSLOCAL] Philadelphia election Commissioner Al Schmidt told state politicians this past week that there may be tens of thousands of non-US citizens who have registered to vote in Pennsylvania...
...perhaps they were the ones who turned PA red in 2016...
and that for their sake, state officials should try to contact them.
Commissioner Al Schmidt told a Senate committee that many of the non-US citizens who registered to vote in Philadelphia, perhaps unwittingly, did so through a glitch in the state’s motor voter system. While the known cases number only several hundred, he says they are all self-reported. Schmidt says more than 100,000 PA driver’s license numbers with Immigration and Naturalization Service indicators match with voter registration records. That doesn’t mean that there are that many non-citizens registered to vote, but...
"We’re not talking about an insignificant number here," said Schmidt. "We’re talking about a potentially very significant number of thousands and tens of thousands."
Schmidt says those people should be contacted. Besides the issue of election integrity, he says registering to vote ‐ even unintentionally ‐ will derail an immigrant’s path to US citizenship.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[Ynet] President Vladimir Putin ...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead... hailed Russian spies on their professional holiday Wednesday, saying they have thwarted more than 60 terror attacks in Russia this year.
In a Kremlin speech marking the 100th anniversary of the creation of the Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka, Putin emphasized that it
and Soviet-era successor agencies such as the KGB were an "inalienable part of our history."
Putin served with the KGB for 16 years and briefly headed the main state security agency that followed it, the Federal Security Service ... the successor to the KGB... , or FSB, before his ascent to the presidency. He said in his speech that "no matter how the times were changing, the majority of people who chose that difficult profession were true patriots and defenders of the state."
The Russian leader underlined that the fight against terrorism is a top priority, noting that Russia would continue working to "resolutely neutralize hotbeds of international terrorism" following its campaign in Syria.
[AlAhram] Italian oil and gas company Eni said on Wednesday that it had begun producing gas from Egypt's giant offshore gas field Zohr, the Mediterranean's largest ever gas discovery.
The mammoth gas field began production in record time, less than two-and-a-half years since its discovery in 2015, with potential gas reserves of 850bn m3, the company said on its website.
Once Zohr has reached full production, it will transform Egypt from a net importer to a net exporter of natural gas, helping the country achieve its aim of becoming a regional energy hub.
Experimental production from Zohr began last Saturday at an initial 350 million cubic feet per day (mcf/d), with gas transported from the field to the refinery in Port Said.
Zohr is a deepwater offshore gas field located in the 3,752km² Shorouk block in the Mediterranean Sea, 150km from the north coast of Egypt. It was discovered by Eni in August 2015. In February of the following year, the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS) granted Eni approval for the Zohr Development Lease.
In February 2017, BP acquired a 10 percent stake in Zohr from Eni subisidary IEOC Production for $375 million. Eni now holds a 60 percent stake in the Shorouk offshore concession, BP 10 percent, and Rosneft 30 percent, an acquisition the latter signed in October.
Zohr is being developed and operated by Belayim Petroleum Company (Petrobel), a joint venture between Eni subsidiary IEOC and the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC).
The first phase of the project is set to be completed by mid-2018, by which time production will have gradually increased to 1 bcf/d. It is set to reach 2.7 bcf/d by the end of 2019.
Investments in the field are estimated to be at least $12 billion in the first and second stages, petroleum ministry spokesperson Hamdy Abdel-Aziz told Ahram Online.
[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday won the top Democratic spot on the powerful House Judiciary Committee, beating back a challenge from Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) to fill the seat held by former Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) for almost a quarter century.
The House Democratic Caucus voted 118 to 72 in favor of Nadler, a 13-term Manhattanite known for his constitutional expertise.
The vote marks a victory for the seniority system that could have outsized implications if the Democrats win back the House in 2018 and the investigations into Russia’s election meddling turn up any damning evidence against the Trump administration.
Among the host of hot-button issues under the Judiciary panel’s jurisdiction is that of impeachment ‐ a factor highlighted by Nadler in pitching his colleagues in the weeks leading up to Wednesday’s vote.
After his victory, Nadler characterized the political moment as "a critical time" in the country’s history ‐ one he thinks he’s uniquely qualified to confront.
"Our efforts to hold the administration and those wishing to turn back history’s long arc towards justice accountable are central to the defense of progress and democracy," Nadler said.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/21/2017
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I thought they'd spend the money on lowering my bill.
#2
That is the question that they have to wrestle with now. Do they give the extra money to (1) customers in the form of lower prices, (2) employees in bonuses or higher wages, or (3) shareholders in the form of higher profits and dividends? Or, more realistically, what combination of the three? Interesting times for senior management, assuming they have the brains to make rational and economic decisions.
Posted by: Tom ||
12/21/2017 16:02
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[ALMASDARNEWS] The Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) Tiger Forces arrived in northern Hama this week with a big surprise from their previous operations in the Deir Ezzor Governorate.
Units from the Tiger Forces were seen armed with US-manufactured weapons that were seized from the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) during the two month long battle in Deir Ezzor.
According to a military source in Hama, the Syrian Army’s Tiger Forces are planning to use the US-manufactured weapons against the jihadist rebels in the upcoming battle for the Idlib Governorate.
Among the US-manufactured weapons transferred to the Idlib front were a large number of TOW missiles that were previously supplied by Washington to the rebel forces in Syria before they were later sold to the Islamic State.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/21/2017
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#1
Units from the Tiger Forces were seen armed with US-manufactured weapons that were seized from the Islamic State
[IsraelTimes] Some of the 7,000 hackers trained by Pyongyang pose as beautiful women on Facebook, strike online conversations and then send malicious ransomware files.
The messages are alluring, the pictures are attractive. But the women seeking to beguile South Korean Bitcoin executives could actually be hackers from Pyongyang in disguise, experts warn.
In the face of sanctions over its banned nuclear and ballistic missile programs, the cash-strapped North is deploying an army of well-trained hackers with an eye on a lucrative new source of hard currency, they say.
Continued on Page 49
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] As upcoming legislative and presidential elections in Libya are slated for next year, supporters of the former regime see a new opportunity for a comeback with Qadaffy’s son Saif al-Islam as president.
In preparation, various Libyan tribes loyal to the former regime inside the country and the displaced supporters of Qadaffy from outside the country are holding intensive meetings to plan the upcoming legislative and presidential elections and discuss the names of candidates for the parliament and the presidency.
"There are daily meetings between the tribal elders to agree on a final list for their candidacy in the legislative elections," said Ashraf Abdel Fattah, a member of the Supreme Council of the Libyan Tribes.
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[Ynet] Paleostinian President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... has arrived 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... for talks with King Salman ...either the largest species of Pacific salmon or the current Sheikh of the Burnin' Sands, King of the Arabians, Sheikh of the Burning Sands, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and Lord of Most of the Arabians.... and his heir, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, following a US decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
His visit to Riyadh on Thursday comes one week after heads of state from Moslem countries met in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... to reject and denounce 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 decision. Saudi Arabia and some of its allies were notably absent from that summit amid reports that the kingdom is privately pressuring Abbas to relinquish Paleostinian claims over east Jerusalem in exchange for continued US pressure against Saudi rival, Iran.
Also on Thursday, the UN General Assembly is expected to vote after the US vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have required the Trump administration to rescind its Jerusalem decision.
[IsraelTimes] Nour Tamimi joins her cousin, Ahed, in jug for 'assault and incitement'; Israeli troops clash with Paleostinians while escorting worshipers to Nablus holy site
The army tossed in the calaboose You have the right to remain silent... a second Paleostinian girl from the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh early Wednesday morning, in connection with an incident last week in which she and her cousin filmed themselves hitting and harassing soldiers outside their house.
The arrest of 21-year-old Nour Tamimi came a day after the arrest of her teenage cousin, Ahed. Ahed was remanded into custody for 10 days on Wednesday.
In the video, which was widely shared on social media on Monday, Nour can be seen wearing a black jacket and hitting and shoving one of the soldiers, while Ahed slaps and kicks them. The soldiers did not react.
Also overnight, the army led a group of some 500 Jewish worshipers to the Joseph’s Tomb holy site in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
During the visit, local residents clashed violently with the troops, throwing rocks and burning tires, the army said. The soldiers responded with mostly nonlethal riot dispersal weapons, like tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets. There were also live shots fired.
Paleostinian media reported that three people were shot and injured. The army said it was familiar with the reports, but would not confirm them.
Three of the Paleostinians who took part in the riot were arrested, the army added.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli security forces arrested 13 other Paleostinian suspects before dawn on Wednesday, the army said.
Later on Wednesday morning, Border Police officers arrested a Paleostinian teenage boy in Hebron after he walked toward them "with a knife in his hand" near the Tomb of the Patriarchs holy site in the city, a police spokesperson said.
Nour Tamimi’s cousin Ahed, who is a minor, was arrested in a pre-dawn raid on Tuesday. She is suspected of committing assault and incitement, according to the army.
Later on Tuesday, a military court decided to keep her in jug until Thursday. Her mother, who was also detained on suspicion of assault and incitement, is also being held until Thursday.
Nabi Saleh ‐ 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Ramallah ‐ has been the frequent staging ground for provoked festivities between Israeli soldiers and Paleostinians, specifically members of the Tamimi clan, which has a history of getting involved in highly publicized interactions with the IDF.
According to the Paleostinian Ma’an news outlet, at a violent clash in the village last Friday, a cousin of Ahed Tamimi was shot in the head with a rubber bullet and remains in a coma as of Tuesday afternoon.
Bassem Tamimi, the girls’ father, told the Walla news site that before the incident the soldier who sustained the slaps had entered the family home and harmed his son Muhammad, 14. "It was only on camera that he tried to come across as the moral soldier."
He told Ynet that he rejected what he called attempts by the Israeli media to portray the soldiers as victims. They were standing on his property, he added.
[IsraelTimes] 'Let them vote against us. We’ll save a lot,' says US president ahead of Thursday's General Assembly session.
US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... on Wednesday cautioned he could slash funding to countries that support a UN General Assembly resolution on Thursday that seeks to annul the United States’ recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
"They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us. Well, we’re watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We’ll save a lot. We don’t care," Trump said at the White House, according to Rooters.
On Tuesday, Nikki Haley ...Trump administration's ambassador to the UN. First woman to serve as Governor of South Carolina, and the second Indian-American governor in the country, after Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. At the age of 39, Haley was the youngest governor in the U.S., a distinction formerly held by Jindal. She is a Republican, which really grates on the Dems... , Washington’s UN envoy, warned countries that she would report back to Trump with the names of those who supported a draft resolution rejecting the US recognition.
"The president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us," she wrote to UN envoys. "We will take note of each and every vote on this issue."
The UN General Assembly will hold an emergency session on Thursday to vote on the proposed measure, after the US vetoed a similar resolution for the Security Council.
No country has veto power in the 193-nation General Assembly, contrary to the council, where the United States, along with Britannia, China, La Belle France and Russia, can block any resolution.
Paleostinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki on Wednesday accused Washington of "threatening" member countries of the UN General Assembly over the vote. Malki said American officials were "committing another mistake when they have distributed this famous letter trying to threaten countries, (and) threaten their sovereign decision to choose how to vote."
He spoke at a presser with his Ottoman Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu in Istanbul, shortly before both men left for New York.
"This is really a new definition of world order in politics and it seems that the American administration... are putting their stamp on a new political reality that many countries will reject," Malki said.
The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... and Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic... requested the urgent meeting on behalf of the Arab group of countries and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The two countries circulated a draft resolution on Tuesday that mirrors the vetoed measure, reaffirming that any decision on the status of Jerusalem has no legal effect and must be rescinded.
Malki said the UN session would show "how many countries will opt to vote with their conscience."
"They will vote for justice and they will vote in favor of that resolution that was presented by both Yemen and Turkey on behalf of the Arab group and OIC," he said.
After vetoing the measure in the UN Security Council on Monday, Haley noted that the US has given more than $5 billion to the Paleostinians since 1994, more than any other country and she said: "The United States has never been more committed to peace in the Middle East."
[DAWN] Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry informed the Senate on Wednesday that the government had been forced to negotiate with protesters of the Faizabad sit-in because it had been left alone in the matter.
Giving his comments on an adjournment motion about the Faizabad sit-in, Chaudhry said the Elections Act 2017 had been prepared by all parliamentarians, but only the government was targeted for the change in the Khatm-e-Naboowat oath.
He said no political party had taken the stance that the oath change was a collective mistake.
The fighting that spilled onto the streets following the sit-in could have huge consequences, Chaudhry said, adding that the government had decided to act against the protesters to comply with court orders and after receiving notice for contempt of court.
"This [Faizabad] sit-in ended, but it can be said that the end [of the protest] was not exemplary," he said.
Giving background of the sit-in, the minister said the first sit-in was staged in Pakistain in 2012. He said the sit-in had ended after an agreement with the protesters and the opposition had supported the government at the time.
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[THEHILL] Sen. Al Franken will step down on Jan. 2, a front man for the Minnesota Democrat said Wednesday.
Franken announced earlier this month that he would resign from the Senate in the face of sexual harassment allegations. But he did not announce a date for when he would officially leave the chamber.
Franken came under fire last month after multiple women accused him of inappropriately touching them. One woman said the comedian-turned-politician forcibly kissed her and groped her during a USO tour in 2006.
The allegations against Franken prompted numerous Democrats in the Senate to call for his resignation. The Senate Ethics Committee launched a probe into the allegations last month.
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#2
13. All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.
-- Peter's Evil Overlord List
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] A key Taliban ...Arabic for students... leader who was involved behind the recent wave of violence in southern Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... province has been killed in an Arclight airstrike.
The provincial government media office in a statement said the prominent Taliban Qari Fida Mohammad was among several killed as fighter jets bombed the Lions of Islam in Marjah district.
The statement further added that the airstrike was carried out today in the vicinity of Haji Baba roundabout.
According to Helmand provincial government, Qari Fida was a close aide to the shadow governor of the Taliban for Helmand Mullah Manan and was actively involved in recent violence in this province.
No further details have been given regarding the number of the Taliban gunnies killed or maimed in the airstrike.
However, death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate... the Helmand government said an investigation is underway and more details will be released as appropriate.
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Baghdad (Iraqinews.com) Three people were killed and injured in a kaboom north of Baghdad on Wednesday, a security source told Alghad Press.
"An explosive charge went off near a popular market at al-Falahat tribe in al- Tarmiyah town, north of Baghdad, killing one person and injuring two others," the source said.
A security force cordoned off the blast site, while ambulances carried the injured to a nearby hospital, the source added.
[IsraelTimes] Egyptian officials say security forces have clashed with jihadists near the airport of the northern Sinai city of el-Arish, killing five of them a day after a missile hit the facility during a visit by the defense and interior ministers.
The officials say an army captain was killed in Wednesday’s fighting in olive orchards near the airport. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
The festivities came a day after a missile hit the airport during a previously unannounced visit to el-Arish by Defense Minister Sedki Sobhy and Interior Minister Magdy Abdel-Ghaffar, who is in charge of police.
Ansar Bayt al Maqdis claimed Tuesday’s attack on Wednesday.
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] At least five ISIS faceless myrmidons including a shadow judge of the terror group have been killed in the latest operations of the Afghan cops in eastern Nangarhar The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country.. province of Afghanistan.
The provincial government media office in a statement said the faceless myrmidons were killed during the operations conducted in the past 24 hours in Khogyani district.
The statement further added that the operations are being conducted as part of the Silab-4 and 9 operations to eliminate the faceless myrmidons of the terror group from Nangarhar.
At least seven faceless myrmidons of the terror group were also maimed during the same operations, the statement said, adding that three areas including a village have been cleared from the presence of the terror group.
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[IsraelTimes] Israel’s Foreign Ministry says the number of countries that either opposed, abstained or were absent from the vote on the UN resolution rejecting US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is "hugely significant."
One hundred and twenty eight countries voted in favor of the motion and nine voted against. Thirty-five countries abstained.
A further 21 countries didn’t show up for the vote.
The vote shows that "not the whole world is part of this show," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nachshon says, immediately after the vote.
An image of the screen showing how each country voted can be seen here.
#4
Britain's Prime Ditherer is just trying to appease iSlam and remove the last hopeless Tories from any chance of considering her as in any way conservative.
[Al Jazeera] The European Commission, the executive body of the EU, has begun the process of enacting Article 7 of the EU Treaty against Poland, citing "a clear risk" of "a serious breach" in the rule of law due to perceived threats against an independent judiciary.
Over the past two years, "Polish authorities have adopted more than 13 laws affecting the entire structure of the justice system in Poland," the EC said in a statement on Wednesday.
The EC's concerns over the ruling, rightwing populist and nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party's policies have grown over the past two years, since the party won an outright majority in 2015 - the first party to do so since the transition from communism to democracy.
The EC says the PiS government's judiciary reforms stack the courts with friendly judges, by giving the president much discretionary power to extend the mandate of Supreme Court judges, and imposing a younger retirement age on already-serving magistrates, among other reasons.
These moves contribute to a "lack of an independent and legitimate constitutional review and judicial independence", the EC claimed.
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#1
Germans tend to forget that, whenever they push Poland, it allies with Russia.
#8
I'm getting tired of this temper tantrum that most of those countries pulled on us. Lets just pull our military out of those countries and let them fend for themselves using their own money.
Exception of course would be those countries that voted aith the US and maybe some leeway given to those countries that abstained from the vote (mostly because they wanted to but they had to appease their local citizens.)
the countries that abstained were: Antigua-Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, the Bahamas, Benin, Bhutan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cameroon, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Fiji, Haiti, Hungary, Jamaica, Kiribati, Latvia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, the Solomon Islands, South Sudan, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda and Vanuatu.
[IsraelTimes] 3 charged with plotting against politician and IDF's Arabic front man Avichai Adraee, before deciding that targeting a soldier or settler would be more feasible
Three Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,Lions of Islam were indicted Wednesday for planning to kidnap Likud MK Yehudah Glick and the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesperson.
Last week, Shin Bet security service incarcerated Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please! the head of the cell, Mo’ad Eshtiya, 26, along with 19-year-old twin brothers Mohammed and Ahmad Ramadan in the Paleostinian village of Tel near Nablus.
According to the incident filed against the three in the Samaria Military Court, the suspects backtracked on their original plans to abduct Glick and the IDF’s Avichai Adraee and were instead plotting to kidnap an Israeli soldier or settler.
Eshtiya looked up information on Glick and Adraee on the internet before deciding that kidnapping a soldier or settler would be more feasible, the indictment said.
Following the arrests, the Shin Bet said that the Nablus-area cell had been in contact with officials from the terror group in the Gazoo Strip, which was financing the operation.
According to Israel Radio, the terror cell’s goal was to use the attack to advance negotiations for the release of Paleostinian security prisoners currently in Israeli jails.
Glick, an activist for Jewish prayer at the Temple Mount, though not at the expense of Moslem prayer at the disputed holy site, was shot four times at close range by a Paleostinian assailant in 2014 and was severely injured. After recovering, he went on to become a Likud politician.
Speaking to The Times of Israel Wednesday, Glick thanked the security forces for their work in apprehending the terror cell members. "We must always remember that the quiet that exists in Israel is due to their efficient and dedicated activity," he said.
Glick pledged to continue serving the public "with all my strength."
"I am not afraid, but I certainly will continue to take all the necessary precautions," the politician added.
[DAWN] US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... , while unveiling his new national security strategy, reminded Pakistain that it’s obliged to help America because it receives "massive payments" from Washington every year.
"We have made clear to Pakistain that while we desire continued partnership, we must see decisive action against terrorist groups operating on their territory. And we make massive payments every year to Pakistain. They have to help," said the president while addressing his nation from the Ronald Reagan building in Washington.
This was the only reference to Pakistain in his speech, although the 56-page document that he released deals with it in more details, urging Pakistain to "continue demonstrating that it is a responsible steward of its nuclear assets".
The policy paper also says that "the United States continues to face threats from transnational Death Eaters and Lions of Islam operating from within Pakistain".
The new strategy, however, focuses more on the domestic front and identifies two "greatest transnational threats" to homeland security: Jihadist Death Eaters and international criminal organizations.
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Iran has raised the price of fuel by up to 50% during the next year's budget and will move to cancel the monetary support of more than 34 million people.
The price of the gasoline will reach 1500 tomans per liter (about 0.43 US cents), a 50 percent increase, and the diesel will rise to 400 tomans from 300 tomans, the government's website said on Tuesday.
The newspaper "Donya-e-Eqtesad" warned of fears of negative effects of high gasoline prices and quoted experts that the rate of inflation in the country will increase by 1% due to high fuel prices.
It also warned against cash subsidies to the poor and said cash support would be canceled for 34 million people next year.
At the parliament, Wali Dadashi, a front man for the (Article 90) Committee of the Iranian Parliament, said he was strongly opposed to raising energy and fuel prices in the country and considered it a wrong decision taken during bad economic conditions.
The rise comes of the fuel prices comes while Parviz Fattah, head of the Khomeini Supply Committee in Iran, recently revealed that 20 million people are under the extreme poverty line, according to global indicators.
Iran is witnessing labor protests against wage delays, low wages, rampant unemployment and poverty due to widespread corruption, which is reflected directly on the citizens and their standards of living.
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#2
diesel is even more subsidized than gasoline in Iran; current cost is about $0.09/liter
but since the Iran National Guard owns a lot of the truck companies, I suppose the subsidy will stay at this level
another problem is that many of the vehicles have disabled or poorly working emission controls - the schools were closed in Tehran a few days ago because of air pollution
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[IsraelTimes] Army says troops employed nonlethal riot dispersal methods at Qalandiya checkpoint clash; Red Islamic Thingy says one Paleostinian was injured by live fire
Some 800 Paleostinians took part in violent demonstrations across the West Bank on Wednesday, following calls by the Paleostinian leadership for another "day of rage" in response to US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... ’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The protests were originally called to protest the visit of US Vice President Mike Pence, who was due to arrive on Wednesday but postponed his trip.
The largest demonstration took place at the Qalandiya checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem, where hundreds of Paleostinians were clashing with Israeli troops, the army said.
Protesters were throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks at troops and setting tires on fire. The soldiers were responding with nonlethal riot dispersal weapons, including tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets. An army spokesperson said soldiers had not fired live rounds at protesters.
A front man for the Red Islamic Thingy disputed the claim, telling The Times of Israel that one of the 27 Paleostinians treated by the emergency service was injured by live fire.
In the Qaladiya festivities, four of the treated Paleostinians were maimed by rubber bullets, 16 by tear gas, one by a fall and one by a direct hit from a tear gas canister, the Red Islamic Thingyfront man said.
In Bethlehem, one was treated for tear gas inhalation, and another two for choking on tear gas in Hebron.
Additionally, one was injured by live fire at a protest in Beit Ummar, a Paleostinian village near Hebron.
On Sunday, Paleostinian Authority President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... ’s Fatah faction called for "angry" demonstrations to protest against a Wednesday visit to Jerusalem by Pence after Washington said it would recognize the holy city as Israel’s capital.
However, by candlelight every wench is handsome... the White House announced Monday that it had to delay Pence’s visit until an unknown date in mid-January as the Trump administration seeks to push through historic tax reform legislation.
[Al Jazeera] Air raids by a Saudi-led military coalition across Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic... have been blamed for killing 11 civilians, a day after 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 ... rebels fired a ballistic missile at the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
The deadly attacks came on the 1,000th day of the devastating war that has killed about 10,000 people and left millions facing starvation.
The pro-Houthi Al Masirah television channel said 11 people were killed - including women and kiddies - and 19 others maimed in Thursday's air raids in Saada province in the country's far north.
A Houthi source told The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... 's Anadolu news agency that Yemen's capital, Sanaa, was also struck by a series of air raids.
Fighter jets launched two attacks on Saada's Old Quarter, killing the 11 civilians, Abdelellah al-Ezi, head of the provincial health office, told German news agency dpa.
The aircraft later bombed the area as medical workers attempted to help the victims, al-Ezi said. "So far we have not been able to reach the area as jets are flying overhead," he said.
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[DAWN] Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal has alleged that a troika of some disheartened politicians, retired military officials and journalists is hatching conspiracies against the government.
Speaking on a DawnNews programme on Wednesday, he reiterated that the country was going through a sensitive phase and civil-military relations is the most sensitive fault line for the future of Pakistain. "If we manage to organise the civil-military relations, we will win the war for Pakistain," he said.
A lot of mistrust exists among politicians towards the establishment and within the establishment towards politicians, Iqbal said, adding that the government has to tackle the situation very carefully.
The minister said that according to his findings after thoroughly observing the history of martial laws in the country, no martial law was imposed because of a political failure or crisis. All the marital laws were triggered by army chiefs when they found their jobs in jeopardy, he said.
Talking about the visible vacuum in political circles, he said leadership plays a vital role in political parties and a vacuum is created when the politicianship ‐ particularly in the case of the PML-N ‐ is expelled in an unnatural manner.
He defended the "bitterness" in the tone of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf, then by the courts... and said it was justified. Explaining the reasons behind this bitterness, he maintained that despite showing his assets worth tens of millions of rupees, he was disqualified because he had been entitled to a salary of nearly Rs0.15 million.
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[THEHILL] Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday won the top Democratic spot on the powerful House Judiciary Committee, beating back a challenge from Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) to fill the seat held by former Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) for almost a quarter century.
The House Democratic Caucus voted 118 to 72 in favor of Nadler, a 13-term Manhattanite known for his constitutional expertise.
The vote marks a victory for the seniority system that could have outsized implications if the Democrats win back the House in 2018 and the investigations into Russia’s election meddling turn up any damning evidence against the Trump administration.
Among the host of hot-button issues under the Judiciary panel’s jurisdiction is that of impeachment ‐ a factor highlighted by Nadler in pitching his colleagues in the weeks leading up to Wednesday’s vote.
After his victory, Nadler characterized the political moment as "a critical time" in the country’s history ‐ one he thinks he’s uniquely qualified to confront.
"Our efforts to hold the administration and those wishing to turn back history’s long arc towards justice accountable are central to the defense of progress and democracy," Nadler said.
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#1
both are leftist Dem hacks.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/21/2017 8:51
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[DAWN] Two women were killed apparently in the name of honour in separate incidents, sources said on Tuesday.
A man shot his married sister dead in Thaneel Fatohi village located in the Saddar police area.
According to the villagers and police, the woman eloped with a man of Thaneel Fatohi village a few years ago and they had three children.
But the women and her family reached reconciliation recently.
"After the reconciliation she phoned her brother and asked him to visit her and her children," a village elder told Dawn.
He added that the brother of the woman came to her house and spent a night there.
"In the morning he opened fire on his sister killing her on the spot," the villager added.
The husband of the woman is already in jail in murder case.
The second incident occurred in Laiti village located in the area of Tamman cop shoppe where two brothers allegedly throttled their niece to death for the sake of honour.
According to investigating officer Khalid Mehmood, the 18-year-old girl bravely ran away with a boy a few weeks ago and her family members traced her and brought her back.
"The girl’s father was not present at his home as he worked out of Chakwal. At his behest his two brothers strangled the girl as they were angry on her elopement and they also feared that she might elope again," the IO told Dawn.
"We have jugged Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please! the father of the girl and are trying our best to trace the other accused," the IO maintained.
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] More details have emerged on Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... ’s ties with terrorism and the role played by its charities in spreading holy warrior ideology, in an article published by the American Center for Democracy on Tuesday.
The article listed three examples related to Qatar Charity’s (QC) activities in the Middle East, North Africa and even North America.
The report said: "QC was ranked first by the United Nations ...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense... for its relief efforts in the Syrian, Paleostinian, and Somali crises. Of course, there was no mention of Qatar’s involvement in the overthrow of the Qadaffy regime in Libya."
It added: "That was followed by $550,000 to aid Libyan refugees. However, death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate... a map provided by the QC itself that enumerates its historic activity around the world shows no activity at all in Libya."
And the QC statement that "Since the start of the Syrian war more than six years ago, Qatar Charity has helped about eight million Syrians," was never substantiated, according to the article.
It questioned a statement made by a front man for UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres’s over the terror blacklist list issued by the quartet (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... , Bahrain, the UAE and Egypt) which includes Qatari entities and personalities.
The article said that Guterres’s statement was rewarded by Qatar in August 2017 with a $8.5m donation to the UN "to finance aid workers on the ground in Syria."
It added: "It was the sort of donation ‐ supposedly with no strings attached ‐ that the UN loves and nations use to burnish a tarnished reputation."
Meanwhile in Canada, the EID Charity has been known for its involvement in teaching and training imams and preachers, the article said.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/21/2017
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[DAWN] Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... security forces on Wednesday foiled a terror bid targeting Balochistan Governor Muhammad Khan Achakzai in the Gulistan area of Killa Abdullah.
Balochistan Home Minister Sarfaraz Bugti, while addressing a presser in Quetta, said that the suspects, who had planned twin suicide kabooms targeting Achakzai, had been tossed in the clink Maw! They're comin' to get me, Maw! and suicide jackets, 16 rockets, 80 landmines, and other weapons had been recovered from their possession.
The attackers were identified as Hamid Bashir from Punjab, and Munawwar from Gulistan, Achakzai's hometown.
Bugti said the suspects belonged to the same terrorist group that was behind the deadly attack on slain Punjab 1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots.... home minister Shuja Khanzada.
According to initial reports, the attack on Khanzada was carried out by the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi ... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ... in retaliation for the killing of the former LJ chief, Malik Ishaq, in 2015.
Bugti added that "timely information ensured the terror bid was foiled in time, without the loss of life".
Posted by: Fred ||
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[Politico] In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.
The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.
Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.
They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.
#1
Project Cassandra was an attempt to provide an unending supply of blow for Obama while at the same time taking down the country? Also...
Cassandra of Greek mythology, was cursed to speak true prophecies that no one believed. A common version of her story relates how, in an effort to seduce her, Apollo gave her the power of prophecy: when she refused him, he spat into her mouth to inflict a curse that nobody would ever believe her prophecies. Another version has her fall asleep in a temple, where snakes licked (or whispered in) her ears so that she could hear the future.
"Cassandra" is Also a rhetorical device used to indicate that someone's B.S. is not to be believed.
#3
Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.
Same agency that stumbled upon the Awan car dealership money laundering and Paki intelligence operation in Falls Church....and allegedly mentioned it to no one ?
[FamilySecurityMatters] President Donald Trump on Monday (December 18, 2017) in what may well be remembered as an historic speech describing his new "America First" National Security Strategy, broke new ground by promising to protect U.S. critical infrastructures from "cyber, physical, and electromagnetic attacks."
After 8 years of the Obama Administration ignoring the existential threat posed by electromagnetic pulse (EMP), President Trump deserves the gratitude of his nation for being the first president to include EMP in his National Security Strategy.
In so doing, President Trump is keeping a promise made in the 2016 Republican Party Platform on which he ran and was elected:
Protection Against an Electromagnetic Pulse: A single nuclear weapon detonated at high altitude over this country would collapse our electrical grid and other critical infrastructures and endanger the lives of millions. With North Korea in possession of nuclear missiles and Iran close to having them, an EMP is no longer a theoretical concern - it is a real threat. Moreover, China and Russia include sabotage as part of their warfare planning. Nonetheless, hundreds of electrical utilities in the United States have not acted to protect themselves from EMP, and they cannot be expected to do so voluntarily since homeland security is a government responsibility. The President, the Congress, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the States, the utilities, and the private sector should work together on an urgent basis to... protect the national grid and encourage states to take the initiative to protect their own grids expeditiously.
The new National Security Strategy acknowledges the importance of protecting U.S. critical infrastructures from "cyber, physical, and electromagnetic attacks":
Critical infrastructure keeps our food fresh, our houses warm, our trade flowing, and our citizens productive and safe. The vulnerability of U.S. critical infrastructure to cyber, physical, and electromagnetic attacks means that adversaries could disrupt military command and control, banking and financial operations, the electrical grid, and means of communication.
Presidential recognition of the EMP threat hopefully will mobilize the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense to give EMP protection of military forces and civilian critical infrastructures high priority. That protection should include not only hardening key assets against EMP effects-but more robust and layered missile defenses.
President Trump's new National Security Strategy-reversing the Obama Administration's long neglect and weakening of National Missile Defense-promises to: Continues @ link.
#1
Our satellites could detect an inbound PME powerful enough to cause another Carrington Event and there would be little we could do. So, yes, hardening the power system would be a good idea.
#6
hardening the power system would be a good idea
Yup. Most of the very new systems control equipment is Mil Spec and RAD hardened. Lots of older stuff out there, though.
The really old controls from the 50's-60's or earlier mostly wouldn't be affected. Kind of like your old 'apocalypse truck' with points and carburetor vs. your kid's Acadia with HEI and fuel injection.
EMP burst(s) shouldn't physically affect the 'stupid' stuff like overhead lines, substation/distribution transformers and 'mechanical' switching components. It will be the monitoring and control systems for those that are susceptible.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
12/21/2017 8:31
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Gorb - Only if it's a pre-1975 Magnavox or similar ilk with a Cathode Ray Tube. But I share your concern. Where would I watch all the old Hogan's Heroes reruns on MeTV?
#10
At some point we'll see them sell Faraday panelling like wood panelling. Put it between the studs on your walls and place drywall over it so that nobody knows, and you'll be protected against all but really close EMP blasts.
#11
Put it between the studs on your walls and place drywall over it so that nobody knows, and you'll be protected against all but really close EMP blasts.
#14
Atsome point we'll see them sell Faraday panelling like wood panelling. Put it between the studs on your walls and place drywall over it so that nobody knows, and you'll be protected against all but really close EMP blasts.
In accordance with Murphy's law. the installers will forget to connect all the ground wires...
#15
and how's that Wi-Fi working in the farther rooms?
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/21/2017 21:15
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Gorb,
Place a surge protector between your AC outlet and your TV. A battery-backed UPS should do it.
As for your car, a jumper cable connected to the car frame or (metal) bumper and a conducting ground spike should protect it. Unless fatboy has a super-EMP weapon the main pathway to your electronics will be through your AC outlet.
Posted by: S. Sleater9697 ||
12/21/2017 21:18
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#17
and how's that Wi-Fi working in the farther rooms?
WiFi inside the Faraday Cage is GREAT. Walls, floor and ceiling get it bouncing around everywhere into all of the corners. That's why old SCIF rats all get cancer. Pick your poison.
[Ynet] A Canadian jury on Tuesday found a man guilty of possessing an explosive substance but cleared him and his partner of three terrorism-related charges after the government alleged they were trying to build a bomb with ingredients that included Christmas lights.
Just like the fellow who so damaged his belly (and nothing else) at the NY City Port Authority bus station in the name of ISIS recently. As for the Canadians, the only article we have in the archive can be seen here.
The Montreal couple, El Mahdi Jamali and Sabrine Djermane, were charged with trying to leave Canada to join a terrorist group, possessing an explosive substance, facilitating a terrorist activity and committing an offense for a terrorist group.
Jamali, now 20, was found guilty of a reduced charge of possessing explosives without a lawful excuse and acquitted of other charges.
Jamali was given credit for time served and ordered released during a Tuesday afternoon hearing. He was also prohibited from owning a firearm for 10 years.
Djermane, 21, was acquitted of all charges. The two were tossed into the calaboose since they were jugged Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please! in 2015, when they were teenagers.
”Go, and sin no more.”
Posted by: trailing wife ||
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[DAWN] IT is not just about the hostility of the government in Kabul; more troubling is the fact that the adverse sentiments in Afghanistan towards Pakistan are deeply entrenched in the public. The indignation has heightened over the past years, with most people in Kabul blaming Pakistain for their suffering. Those feelings are especially evident in urban and educated sections of Afghan society. There are very few who see Pakistain in a positive light.
This was very clear during my interaction last week with young students at a private university in Kabul. Education is one area that has seen massive progress over the last one decade in this country, despite worsening political instability and the spreading insurgency. Hundreds of thousands of students are enrolled in more than one dozen universities in the city ‐ a marked transformation from the days of the retrogressive Afghan Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... rule.
Most students I interacted with in a seminar shared similar views about Pakistain being a villain that is responsible for many of Afghanistan’s problems. Among the audience, there were many who were either born in Pakistain or whose parents had lived there as refugees for decades. Many complained about Pakistain supporting the bully boyz responsible for the death of thousands of Afghans. Distrust of Pakistain is palpable. It is hard to find anyone in the Afghan capital willing to speak in favour of Pakistain.
Ironically, there are many in the cabinet and several high-ranking officials in the Afghan government who spent a large part of their lives in Pakistain and benefited from its hospitality. The resentment is not restricted to any particular ethnic group ‐ it is across the board. Even former Taliban officials who now live in Kabul have little empathy for the country which once patronised them. One is not sure, however, about public sentiments in other parts of the country.
Of course, it is expedient for our civilian and military leadership to dismiss these growing anti-Pakistain sentiments in Afghanistan as merely inspired by ’enemy forces’. This state of denial is, however, not helpful in improving our image. Surely, one cannot deny that there has been a concerted campaign to slander Pakistain and make it a scapegoat for everything that has gone wrong in the war-torn country across the border. Yet one must not gloss over our flawed policies and attitude that are stoking public scepticism inside Afghanistan.
One of the major reasons for Pakistain’s growing isolation is that our entire Afghan policy is built around a skewed security paradigm while diplomacy has taken a back seat. Understandably, four decades of conflict in the region and Pakistain’s position as a front-line state has enhanced the role of the security agencies. But the formulation and implementation of policy should not be left entirely to the security establishment.
In fact, there is great need for diplomacy to take charge in times of conflict. Our foreign policy has suffered hugely because of its direction being determined solely by a national security paradigm that must be corrected in light of the fast-changing geopolitics of the region. Indeed, past baggage and Afghanistan being turned into a centre of a new Great Game does not make it easy for our policymakers to tread the tricky path.
But sticking to the old ways may not help deal with the challenges. Irrespective of whichever government is in power in Kabul we need to work with it and to respect its illusory sovereignty. Our obsession with a ’friendly’ Pakhtun-dominated government in the past has hugely contributed to public resentment against Pakistain.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[All Africa] The country's porous borders, the national electricity grid and a commitment to open Zimbabwe to investors is what President Emmerson Mnangagwa has so far tackled in his maiden State of the Nation address.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[DailyCaller] The used car dealership known as CIA never seemed like an ordinary car dealership, with inventory, staff and expenses.
On its Facebook page, CIA’s “staff” were fake personalities such as “James Falls O’Brien,” whose photo was taken from a hairstyle model catalog, and “Jade Julia,” whose image came from a web page called “Beautiful Girls Wallpaper.”
If a customer showed up looking to buy a car from Cars International A, often referred to as CIA, Abid Awan — who was managing partner of the dealership while also earning $160,000 handling IT for House Democrats — would frequently simply go across the street to another dealership called AAA Motors and get one.
“If AAA borrows a car to Cars International and they have a customer, it was simply take the car across the street and sell it, and then later on give the profit back or not,” Nasir Khattak, who ran the longstanding AAA dealership, testified in a lawsuit. “There was no documentation… If you go and try to dissect, you will not be able to make any sense out of them because there were many, dozens and dozens, of cars transferred between the two dealerships and between other people.”
Khattak did not explain why he would ruin his existing business to help the Awans. “All of those transactions was to support Cars International A from AAA Motors,” he testified. “That’s why I did not make any money from my dealership because my resources were supporting Cars International A.”
He said only Imran Awan knew what became of the money. “It was Imram, [Abid] Awan’s brother, who was running the business in full control,” he said.
Imran Awan and his family members were congressional IT aides who investigators said made unauthorized access to the House Democratic Caucus server thousands of times. At the same time as they worked for and could read all the emails of congressmen who sat on committees like Intelligence, Homeland Security and Foreign Affairs, they also ran a car dealership that took money from a Hezbollah-linked fugitive and whose financial books were indecipherable and business patterns bizarre, according to testimony in court records.
While Imran and Abid Awan ran their car dealership in Falls Church, Va. in the early part of the decade, Drug Enforcement Agency officials a few miles away in Chantilly were learning that the Iranian-linked terrorist group frequently deployed used car dealerships in the US to launder money and fund terrorism, according to an explosive new Politico expose.
The money that disappeared between the Awans’ dealership, some $7 million in congressional pay, the equipment suspected of disappearing from Congress under their watch, and their other side businesses — all while they displayed few signs of wealth and frequently haggled in court over small amounts of money — raise questions about whether the Awans might have been laundering money or sending it to a third party.
“Based on the modest way Awan was living, it is my opinion that he was sending most of his money to a group or criminal organization that could very well be connected with the Pakistani government,” said Wayne Black, a private investigator who served as law enforcement group supervisor in Janet Reno’s Miami public corruption unit. “My instincts tell me Awan was probably operating a foreign intelligence gathering operation on US soil.”
#3
There were signs that the House Democratic Caucus’ server “is being used for nefarious purposes” by the Awans, according to a House investigation, and “steps are being taken to conceal their activity.”
My instincts tell me we have not gotten to the bottom of this story with all the linkages and complicities. I have a sneaking suspicion that Debbie Wasserman Schultz, other Donks and members of the deep state ought to be squeezed hard (read as waterboarded if you want) until this mess gets unraveled.
#4
If the Awan's populated 'off site' server(s) as has been reported, the potential for the Awan's to have been milking the both cows (US Intelligence as well as Paki Intelligence) should be closely examined.
#6
In and out of every congressional office, and a proven transport route of only ten miles across state lines. Wonder what they were hauling in those cars?
[FOXNEWS] A spate of a sea lion attacks prompted authorities to close part of the Socialist paradise of San Francisco ...where God struck dead Anton LaVey, home of the Sydney Ducks, ruled by Vigilance Committee from 1859 through 1867, reliably and volubly Democrat since 1964... Bay to swimmers this week.
The Telegraph reports that three swimmers were attacked by sea lions in the space of a week around the same area in San Francisco Bay. The attacks prompted officials to close the Aquatic Park Cove, a popular spot for swimming near Fisherman’s Wharf, last week. The Cove re-opened on Wednesday.
Aquatic Park Cove is part of the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, which is run by the National Park Service.
The attacks prompted the closure of Aquatic Park Cove to swimmers on Dec. 15. The Cove was initially scheduled to re-open on Monday Dec. 18. However, a clean conscience makes a soft pillow... on Monday, officials announced that the site would be closed to swimmers until Wednesday.
On Thursday Dec. 14, San Francisco Fire Department reported that a swimmer was bitten on the arm by a sea lion in the waters off Aquatic Park Cove.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/21/2017
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#1
On Thursday Dec. 14, San Francisco Fire Department reported that a swimmer was bitten on the arm by a sea lion in the waters off Aquatic Park Cove.
Could it have been the result of an unwanted advance ?
#2
Water is a little cold for swimming. Temperatures vary from about 50 F in January to about 61 F in September. Maybe the sea lions thought that the swimmers were polar bears. [Sorry. I will go to my room now]
Posted by: S. Sleater9697 ||
12/21/2017 9:42
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[DAWN] Myanmar's army said on Tuesday it found 10 corpses in a mass grave in a largely Rohingya village in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state, the epicentre of a violent military crackdown that triggered a mass exodus of the Moslem minority.
Northern Rakhine has been gutted by violence that erupted on August 25, when the military launched a sweeping operation against Rohingya rebels who attacked police posts.
Since then hundreds of villages have been torched and some 655,000 Rohingya have fled over the border to Bangladesh.
Doctors Without Borders says at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in the first month of violence, while the UN has accused the army of waging an ethnic cleansing campaign with possible "elements of genocide".
Myanmar, a mainly Buddhist country, has aggressively denied the charges and largely blocked off access to the conflict zone.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/21/2017
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[Blue Lives Matter] Columbia, SC - A Columbia police officer was recorded fighting a suspect who was much larger than her, and had just assaulted a female and threatened others with a knife.
The incident happened at around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday at the BP S-Mart in the 1000 block of Elmwood Avenue, according to The State.
Donald Songster Brown, 39, punched a female in the face and threatened people with a knife while not allowing them to leave the store.
Brown then left the store and was confronted by a lone police officer.
At the start of the video, Brown ignored the officer's commands, and she responded by deploying her Taser. The Taser failed, and Brown tried to walk away.
The officer wasn't about to let him get away, and she charged after him, grabbed him by the back of his neck and tried to take him down. Brown was able to slip his jacket and escape the officer's grip. Good Samaritan black fellow comes to the officer's rescue as gutless white onlookers do nothing.
[FreeBeacon] Lawmakers are launching an investigation into Obama-era efforts to thwart a longstanding U.S. investigation into the Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah, according to multiple congressional officials and insiders who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.
The Obama administration worked behind the scenes to thwart a decade-long Drug Enforcement Agency investigation into Hezbollah and its highly lucrative drug trade in Latin America, according to a report in Politico. These officials are believed to have run interference on the investigation in order to avoid upsetting Iran and jeopardizing the landmark nuclear accord.
Senior Obama officials in the Treasury and Justice Departments are said to have undermined the DEA's investigation at multiple junctures in order to avoid angering Hezbollah's patron Iran, which could have jeopardized the landmark nuclear agreement.
Congress is now taking steps to formally investigate the reports, which multiple sources described to the Free Beacon as part of a larger Obama administration effort to overlook Iran's global terror operations in order to cement the nuclear deal.
Rep. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.), a member of the House Oversight Committee and chair of its National Security Subcommittee, told the Washington Free Beacon on Wednesday that he and other top lawmakers are examining evidence that could implicate top former Obama officials, including National Security Council official Ben Rhodes, the architect of the former administration's self-described pro-Iran "echo chamber."
"I've long believed that the Obama administration could not have done any more to bend over backwards to appease the Iranian regime, yet news that the Obama administration killed the investigation into a billion dollar drug ring that lined the terrorist group Hezbollah's pockets in order to save its coveted Iran deal may very well take the cake," DeSantis said. GDYUP!
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/21/2017 8:34
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#4
I suppose if Iran doesn't like it they can find us in breach of the "agreement". And if they don't, it just says how weak 0bumhole was when it came to negotiating with someone he isn't in control of.
#6
His policies towards the African American community probably couldn't have been any worse if Obama was a white supremacist.
Kill the jobs and import low skilled replacements. Increase gov dependency while promoting hostility between the communities and the police that keep the criminals down. All the while ensuring the flow of cheap drugs to their communities.
[ALMASDARNEWS] An exchange deal was reached between the Damascus authorities and the ISIS fighters holed up in Yarmouk Camp in southern Damascus.
The exchange deal’s terms are that in return for the Syrian Army’s release of female ISIS members and wives ISIS will return the bodies of two government fighters killed in the recent festivities in Tadamon district, which neighbors Yarmouk Camp.
Those deals are commonplace between all sides of the Syrian war. Multiple deals are struck on a routine basis between the Syrian government, ISIS, and the rebel forces over the exchange of corpses between the warring factions.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/21/2017
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[Free Beacon] Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) on Wednesday attacked AT&T by name for not passing along tax savings to its employees immediately after the telecommunications giant announced that it would do just that.
AT&T announced Wednesday that it will give $1,000 special bonuses to more than 200,000 "union-represented, non-management and front-line managers" and invest an additional $1 billion in the U.S., citing the House and Senate passage of the sweeping Republican tax reform bill as its reason for doing so.
"Congress, working closely with the president, took a monumental step to bring taxes paid by U.S. businesses in line with the rest of the industrialized world," said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO. "This tax reform will drive economic growth and create good-paying jobs. In fact, we will increase our U.S. investment and pay a special bonus to our U.S. employees."
"Since 2012, AT&T has invested more in the United States than any other public company," the company added. "Every $1 billion in capital invested in the telecom industry creates about 7,000 jobs for American workers, research shows."
Almost simultaneously with the AT&T announcement, Schumer gave a prepared speech attacking the notion of trickle-down economics and arguing that companies receiving tax breaks would just pocket the difference.
#6
I understand that $1000 is a drop of interest gained from the congressional sexual assault payoff slush fund, but that would go a long ways for me right now.
Especially since the health insurance I have to have, and I pay for in addition to the duty I owe for the good congressman's health insurance, went up some 30% this year.
[ZACentral] A federal judge has declared a mistrial in the case against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, saying U.S. prosecutors willfully withheld critical and "potentially exculpatory" evidence from the defense.
Judge Gloria Navarro
...a President Obama appointee in 2010...
dismissed jurors Wednesday, several weeks after the trial began against Bundy, his sons Ammon and Ryan Bundy, and militia member Ryan Payne, who were accused of leading an armed standoff with federal land agents in 2014.
Navarro cited five key pieces of information that prosecutors did not disclose: records about surveillance and snipers at the Bundy Ranch; unredacted FBI logs about activity at the ranch in the days around the standoff; threat assessments about the Bundys dating to 2012; and internal affairs reports about the BLM.
Withheld evidence at issue
Navarro methodically laid out her reasoning for about an hour, citing legal standards and case law, before delivering her ruling.
She said the evidence that was withheld could have been favorable to the accused and could have affected the outcome of the case.
Navarro stopped short of dismissing charges against the four men. It is unclear whether the case will be retried because Navarro did not rule whether the mistrial was with or without prejudice.
#4
The feds offered a deal to Bundy to let him out of jail and make this all go away.
He refused and stayed in jail.
This whole case is a complete embarrassment to the government and wouldn't be surprised if they sabotaged their own case just to keep it from going to trial.
[Huffpoo] A woman was thrown out of a Starbucks in Walnut Creek, California, earlier this month after she berated two Asian customers with racist insults.
The patron verbally attacked Annie An, a Korean international college student, after she heard An conversing in Korean with her tutor Sean Lee. An caught some video of the incident on her phone and shared it on Facebook.
In her post, An said that before she began recording, the woman told her, "This is America. Use English only." Later the woman allegedly added, "I don’t want to hear foreign language."
"... Oriental. I hate it," the woman can be heard saying in the video.
"I’m sorry, but they’re allowed to speak their language here," a Starbucks employee is heard responding.
"President Obama said that everyone in here in America ... should speak English," the woman says
"They’re completely allowed to use their own language," the employee reiterates.
At one point, the woman types on her laptop keyboard and declares, "You’re going to be in trouble when I get this letter out" ― before another customer notes, "You’re pressing numbers over and over again."
The Starbucks worker repeatedly asks the woman to leave and threatens to call the police.
Eventually police officers arrived ― An wrote that they were called by Starbucks ― and escorted the woman out of the establishment.
#3
I was once told to speak German in Germany. People get touchy when they can’t understand what you’re saying — they suspect you are talking about them.
To be fair, the time the trailing daughters and I were speaking in German in the Cincinnati grocery store checkout line, we were indeed talking about the lady behind us... who as it turned out also spoke German. I was mortified.
#4
I have a friend who was standing in line at the grocery store with her daughter, and they were speaking about the good looking guy ahead of them. In Hebrew. They were up to talking about how nice they thought his butt looked when he finished paying for his stuff. He picked it up and turned to them and said "Toda rabah" and left with a smile on his face. I guess sexual harassment wasn't a bad thing then. :-)
#5
To be fair, the time the trailing daughters and I were speaking in German in the Cincinnati grocery store checkout line, we were indeed talking about the lady behind us...
Reminds me of when myself and a buddy were riding a bus in Rio, the bus was packed! And these babes got on right behind us. One of the girls that was very well endowed was smashed right up against me. I was looking down her shirt and I said to my buddy: "This girl has a set of boobs that would put a Holstein cow to shame."
So this girl looks at me and smiles, looks at my buddy and says: "Wow, how many Americans are on this bus?" In perfect mid-western accented English. I know what mortification feels like.
[DAWN] Dera Ghazi Khan police on Wednesday booked a man for allegedly cutting off his wife's nose after the two failed to reconcile over a conflict, police said.
Rashid Hussain, a resident of Faridabad, had been engaged in a domestic dispute with his wife, Sameena, for three or four months, police said, as a result of which, Sameena had gone to live with her parents.
Hussain went to his in-law's house to reconcile with his wife, but when she refused to return home with him, he allegedly cut off the tip of her nose with a sharp knife, District Police Officer (DPO) Ahmed Nawaz Cheema told Dawn.
Hussain expeditiously departed at a goodly pace after cutting off his wife's nose, the DPO said.
Rescue 1122 officials rushed Sameena to a trauma centre for medical treatment. She is currently in stable, pH balanced condition, doctors have said.
Police started the paperwork but haven't done much else against Hussain at the Choti Zaireen cop shoppe under Section 334 of the Pakistain Penal Code, after which at least one raid team was formed to search for the suspect, DPO Cheema said.
He added that he was hopeful Hussain would be nabbed You have the right to remain silent... soon.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/21/2017
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Hopefully the NFL will denounce white Amish violence.
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.
[NBC] On the orders of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Justice Department prosecutors have begun asking FBI agents to explain the evidence they found in a now dormant criminal investigation into a controversial uranium deal that critics have linked to Bill and Hillary Clinton, multiple law enforcement officials told NBC News.
WASHINGTON (AP) ‐ The Environmental Protection Agency says an internal task force appointed to revamp how the nation’s most polluted sites are cleaned up generated no record of its deliberations.
[National Review] Comcast-NBC Universal and Wells Fargo have joined with several other businesses to announce plans to use money saved by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for investments and bonuses. Comcast will award $1,000 bonuses to over 100 thousand employees and invest $50 billion over the next five years in infrastructure, due not only to the passage of the GOP tax-reform bill but also the repeal of net neutrality. Wells-Fargo will match Fifth-Third’s $15 minimum wage hike and intends to reach up to $400 million in philanthropic donations. 
[Daily Caller] A former Planned Parenthood manager called the abortion organization "demonic" in a Wednesday interview, explaining why she left the abortion business.
[PJ] Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe's closed-door interview with House Intelligence Committee investigators on Tuesday did not go well for him, Fox News' James Rosen reported in an exclusive on Wednesday.
Andy, please think of Jill. I hope you realize we'd really rather not go there unless we are forced to. Now, be a good chap and give us a hand with this tawdry matter won't you ? 
Baghdad (Iraqinews.com) ‐ Five 
either Ernst Stavro Blofeld or Auric Goldfinger come true...
...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic...
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] New distressing reports have emerged regarding the violence against a child bride in Afghanistan sending shocking across the country as violence against women remain a critical issue in various remote parts of Afghanistan.
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...
...either the largest species of Pacific salmon or the current Sheikh of the Burnin' Sands, 
...Trump administration's ambassador to the UN. First woman to serve as Governor of South Carolina, and the second Indian-American governor in the country, after Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. At the age of 39, Haley was the youngest governor in the U.S., a distinction formerly held by Jindal. She is a Republican, which really grates on the Dems...
[DAWN] Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry informed the Senate on Wednesday that the government had been forced to negotiate with protesters of the Faizabad sit-in because it had been left alone in the matter.
[THEHILL] Sen. Al Franken will step down on Jan. 2, a 
Baghdad (Iraqinews.com) Three people were killed and injured in a 
[DAWN] Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal has alleged that a troika of some disheartened politicians, retired military officials and journalists is hatching conspiracies against the government.
... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf, then by the courts...
[DAWN] Two women were killed apparently in the name of honour in separate incidents, sources said on Tuesday.
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ...
[FOXNEWS] A spate of a sea lion attacks prompted authorities to close part of 
Curry favour with Iran whilst funneling money to Hezbollah and facilitating the only remaining US inner-city enterprise, a twofer. 
[Free Beacon] Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) on Wednesday attacked AT&T by name for not passing along tax savings to its employees immediately after the telecommunications giant announced that it would do just that.
[ZACentral] A federal judge has declared a mistrial in the case against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, saying U.S. prosecutors willfully withheld critical and "potentially exculpatory" evidence from the defense.
[DAWN] Dera Ghazi Khan police on Wednesday booked a man for allegedly cutting off his wife's nose after the two failed to reconcile over a conflict, police said.
