[Daily Caller] Former President Barack Obama demanded unspecified "common-sense gun safety laws" after the Florida school shooting on Wednesday that left 17 people dead.
"We are grieving with Parkland. But we are not powerless. Caring for our kids is our first job. And until we can honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep them safe from harm, including long overdue, common-sense gun safety laws that most Americans want, then we have to change," Obama wrote in a statement posted to Twitter.
Obama did not specify what exact actions he is calling for, or whether they would have prevented Wednesday’s tragedy.
#2
If I remember correctly the largest number of children killed in one incident was in Waco when the Clinton administration's ATF was trying to enforce gun control on the Branch Dividians.
#3
Predictable. Dems are one-trick ponies. They don't really want to do anything about immigration, crime, terrorism, economy, taxes, disturbed people and mass shootings or just about anything else that's hard. They are big on hypocrisy, corruption, PC, identity politics, double-standards, climate change and fundamental changing destroying the country.
To kill cops. Oh...wait. You meant Bureau of Land Management. Nevermind
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/15/2018 15:04
Comments ||
Top||
#9
I'm probably being paranoid here, but didn't this happen right before the House was going to vote on national CCW reciprocity? And didn't Las Vegas happen right before a vote on removing suppressors from the NFA?
#10
QANON is paranoid too. I am not sure that I am drinking the cool-aid but I decided to look for my tin-foil hat.
Posted by: B. White5295 ||
02/15/2018 18:04
Comments ||
Top||
#11
Did anyone call for new laws controlling rental trucks after jihadists ran down people in France? Gun control takes aim at the 2nd Amendment. A disarmed population is not a free population. Look at Chicago. Restrictive gun laws but many shootings.
[Townhall] Every place you look in Robert Mueller's investigation, the same names keep popping up: FBI agent Peter Strzok and sleazy, foreign private eye -- or "British intelligence agent" -- Christopher Steele.
So it's rather important that they both are Trump-hating fanatics, and one was being paid by Trump's political opponent in a presidential campaign.
Steele is the author of the preposterous dossier that sparked the special counsel investigation, and Strzok is the FBI agent involved at every crucial turn of both the Trump and Hillary investigations.
As we found out from the House Intelligence memo, Steele told Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr that he "was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president." (Ohr's wife worked for Fusion GPS, and, like Steele, was being paid by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.)
In the hands of Trump-obsessive Peter Strzok -- he of the estrogen-dripping texts to his Trump-hating FBI lawyer mistress -- the dossier was used to obtain a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act against Trump's alleged "foreign policy adviser," Carter Page.
The FISA warrant against Page constitutes the last crumbling piece of the "Russia collusion" story.
Strzok was the person who instigated the Russia investigation against Trump back in July 2016. He was the lead agent on the investigation into whether Hillary, as secretary of state, sent classified information on her private email account. (Conclusion: She had -- but it wasn't any of the FBI's business!) He volunteered for the Mueller investigation and remained there, right up until his Trump-hating texts were discovered by the inspector general of the FBI. (He was also, one surmises, the authority for many of the media's lurid, anonymously sourced claims about how the investigation was proceeding.)
Most strangely, Strzok was the FBI agent who asked Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, about his phone call with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.
There was nothing wrong with Flynn's conversation with Kislyak, but Flynn later pleaded guilty to lying to an FBI agent about it, based on a secretly recorded intercept of the phone call. The question remains: Why was any FBI agent even asking about a perfectly legitimate conversation? No one seems to know. But we do know the name of the FBI agent who asked: Peter Strzok.
Aside from Strzok's girl-power text to his mistress upon Hillary becoming the first female presidential nominee -- "About damn time!" -- his most embarrassing message to her was about the Russia investigation:
"I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office (FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe) -- that there's no way (Trump) gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40 ..."
The media have tied themselves in knots trying to explain this text as meaning anything other than its obvious, natural meaning. To wit: "Although the worst is unlikely (Trump wins/you die before age 40), you still prepare by taking out 'insurance' (we take Trump down with the Russia investigation/your family gets a payout)."
[Business Insider] After a massive battle that saw up to 300 pro-government fighters killed at the hands of the US and its local allies, the Syrian Democratic Forces, it looks like Syrian President Bashar Assad's military will mount another offensive.
Pro-Assad Al Masdar reported on Monday that Syria's 5th Legion and several units from Hezbollah are preparing an attack on ISIS near Deir Ezzor, in the country's east. Al Masdar seemed to confirm that the Syrian troops planned to encounter US-backed forces in a subsequent story on Wednesday.
But Syria's own state-run media said in November that Deir Ezzor had been liberated from ISIS. Western assessments of Syria no longer say the terror group holds territory there.
Instead, the US and the SDF hold much of eastern Syria, where the Syrian Army and its Lebanese and Iranian backers will head. Al Masdar announced the offensive would begin in three weeks and move under the cover of Russian airstrikes and with Iranians, who are thought to have 70,000 fighters in Syria.
Those fighters may well meet the 2,000 or so US troops in Syria, but despite the numerical advantage, pro-regime forces have fared poorly against the US.
In a battle between pro-government forces and US-backed forces on February 7, 500 Syrian-aligned soldiers launched an attack on a well-known headquarters of the SDF with 122mm howitzers, Russian-made tanks, and multiple launch rocket systems. According to the Pentagon, they only wounded one SDF fighter.
Posted by: Besoeker ||
02/15/2018
07:28 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
[Free Beacon] An increase in the number of policemen, driven by an Obama-era boost in federal funding, led to drops in violent and property crime, including a reduction of one murder per every 11 police officers, a new paper argues.
The analysis, authored by Princeton Ph.D. candidate Steve Mello, examines what Mello identifies as a natural experiment in the relationship between the number of police and the rates of crime in a given jurisdiction.
Specifically, Mello focuses on the increase in police funding that came when a newly elected President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, allocating some $2 billion to the Department of Justice for police hiring grants, mostly through the Department's Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program. COPS grants were issued based on a "fuzzy cutoff," meaning a city's chances of receiving a grant jumped substantially if its scoring by DOJ (a combination of factors including crime rate and current police force size) passed a certain threshold. That fuzzy cutoff creates two natural groups for comparison: Those that received COPS funding and those that didn't.
Mello demonstrates that, while "high and low scoring cities follow[ed] similar trends in police and crime prior to the application year," cities above the threshold saw a 3.6 percent increase in police. This translated into a 4.8 percent decline in violent crimes and a 3 percent decline in property crimes for cities over the threshold, over average, an effect which Mello ties directly to the increase in police.
#4
More "cops" doesn't necessarily mean less crime. Police Officers actively pursuing and arresting the bad guys and fugitives with active arrest warrants does result in less crime. The dirty secret in the big cities is the existence of tens and even hundreds of thousands of arrest warrants that they don't care about. They just wallow in the pool of criminals and complain they don't have enough resources to fight the crime the criminals are committing.
My point is that more officers in the large bureaucratic departments does not immediately equal more work...
#5
Hard to imagine how this works. Since when do cops arrive before or during a crime? Don't they just show up after the fact and write a report? Isn't that why we carry guns?
h/t Instapundit
[AmericanThinker] As someone who has followed Russia for four decades, I perceive Carter Page as a bit of a naif. Our assessments of Russian foreign policy, by all accounts, are diametrically opposed, and Page’s inclusion, along with Mike Flynn, on the Trump campaign’s foreign-policy team gave me yet another reason not to vote for The Donald. With all due respect for Page’s native intelligence and high level of education, he comes across as what Lenin pithily called a "useful idiot."
...Indicative of this attitude is the surreptitiously taped characterization of Page by the Russian intelligence operative who vetted him in 2013 for possible recruitment: "I think he is an idiot." Apparently, however, Page didn’t even qualify as a useful one‐the operative decided he was not even worth recruiting.
This assessment should be borne in mind, since Trump’s detractors, to the contrary, have decided that Page is extremely useful indeed, albeit in an entirely different way.
...Make no mistake: If the account in the Steele dossier were true, it would represent a quantum leap in Russian risk-taking with regard to manipulation of foreign elections. Things like hacking and leaking, or planting slanted stories, are low-cost, low-risk activities impossible to trace back to senior Russian officialdom. However, if the Russian leadership were taking the gamble of personal involvement in such a high-risk scheme, would it trust a man whom their own intelligence services had assessed as worthless?
...It’s hardly a secret that, for a broad swath of the U.S. political classes and the American press, the removal of Trump has become the Holy Grail, the goal to which all other things must be subordinated. In this sacred endeavor, Carter Page is useful in ways that even the most cynical Russian handlers could hardly have imagined. And if his dignity and reputation must be utterly trashed in the process‐well, so much the worse for Page. Mind you, the ruling elites would do anything to undermine political opponents, not just in USA. Right now chief legal authority in Israel decides whether Israel's PM should stand trial for receiving a gift of cigars.
#1
Equally disturbing is Stephanopoulos’ mendacious assertion that Page was “recruited by a Russian agent.” Of course Page was not “recruited.” He was only vetted for a possible recruitment attempt—and found to be not worth the effort.
Why do we assume the Russians cannot recognize a plant ?
It would indeed be a waste, all of that legend building, training and travel. Surely he can be used elsewhere.
#2
The Ingraham interview of Page a week or so ago made Page look like a well-educated but naïve and hinky.
Page became a tool, not of the Russians but by those here who were desperate to take down Trump. Page was used as a means to an end. It looks more and more like he did nothing other than have a profile that could be distorted and used for the purpose of obtaining a FISA warrant.
Trump was open, while campaigning, about the danger and threat he presented to the Deep State. The left did not expect HRC to lose. In fact, the Podesta emails indicated that Trump was the person who HRC and her associates most wanted HRC to run against--he was supposed to be the candidate who was the most easily beatable. The Dems made the mistake of believing their own bullshit; all their bought polls said she was going to win. When she lost, panic ensued and plans were activated to take down Trump. Some of these plans appear to still be ongoing and difficult to dismantle. Swamp dwellers are still screwing around. A few well-placed indictments of Swamp Dwellers and Shadow Government members might put a chill on their plans and activities. It's not like the evidence is not all around.
#3
Page was used as a means to an end. It looks more and more like he did nothing other than have a profile that could be distorted and used for the purpose of obtaining a FISA warrant.
The employment of Page was likely a two-stage operation:
1. Exploit Page's well documented Russian history and contacts to gain approval of the FISA warrant.
2. Exploit Page's access into a more urgent target, the Trump campaign.
#4
I have come to the conclusion that Carter Page was a deliberate plant in the Trump Administration. If the truth be known, he was recruited by the FBI to give them a door into the Trump Campaign.
There are no coincidences in the world. It is NOT a coincidence that Carter Page sent emails to various contacts in the Trump Campaign the day AFTER the FISA warrant was approved. The timing is too convenient to be a coincidence. Those emails allowed the FBI to throw their net over the Trump Campaign to spy.
Carter Page is playing the dunce. I will play the contrarian card. Those tapes calling Page an idiot, who said it and who got the recording. As invested as the FBI and CIA were in sabotaging Trump, I believe they could have manufactured a bunch of stuff to support their narrative. I believe Page has been coached and groomed to play the naïve useful idiot for the press.
#5
Thereare no coincidences in the world. It is NOT a coincidence that Carter Page sent emails to various contacts in the Trump Campaign the day AFTER the FISA warrant was approved.
#6
Notice how SUDDENLY the Russian collusion narrative and the Mueller "investigation" and the Shiff(less) democratic memo have disappeared from the media?
I've scoured the internet for the latest developments in this below the surface civil war and all I hear are crickets. Obviously, the media has decided to not cover the negative blow back on their false narrative.
OR...are the Klingons merely regrouping and plotting their next attempt to discredit Trump? Or is the Stormy Daniels thing their last good shot before calling it a day?
Is the kitchen getting too hot and are they all running for cover now that we know the media was signed sealed and delivered, with money no less, to support his crap...and Sid Blumenthal of all people? Really? Who could honestly trust anything that Slimy Sid says??? They used it as "intelligence?" And they used Cody Shearer???
Talk about acceleration of commitment to a failing endeavor.
#8
Last week, I was trying to answer the question:
"Who is Carter Page?" Haven't yet read Pages's testimony. It's possible Page was groomed and a plant. I also checked with a guy very high up in Merrill Lynch during the time 7 years Page was reported to be there. He did not know him. I wonder if Carter Page was blackmailable?
Something very quietly is happening out there. It’s not being touted, and it’s a little bothersome that it isn’t being touted. The Democrats are showing remarkable discipline here in not touting what is very quietly happening out there. And what is very quietly happening out there is that the Democrats are winning elections. They have recently begun to win elections. They are winning special elections. They are winning local and state elections.
This is a massive and it’s apparently, to date, a very successful grassroots effort that is being funded by George Soros, primarily, but there are others.
h/t Instapundit
[Axios] The international aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (or Doctors Without Borders) said on Wednesday that it had fired 19 people connected to 24 sexual harassment cases last year, per Reuters. The group has investigated 40 complaints of sexual misconduct, it says.
Oh, Oxfam loves kids and they'll father 'em,
Returning anon for to bother 'em
In illegal amours
On your tropical shores
So the sun never sets upon Rotherham.
leaving "Hogarthian whores" on the cutting room floor. Sigh.
#4
"All the girls get prostate checks before puberty. It's our rule"
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/15/2018 13:33
Comments ||
Top||
#5
You wonder why so many heavily lefty organizations are centers of sexual misconduct till you remember back in college all the guys who went left to pickup chicks, then it starts to make sense. 'Follow the p*****g' is right up there with 'follow the money'.
[IsraelTimes] Rakhmat Akilov mowed down pedestrians last April, killing 5 and injuring 10; prosecution has demanded a life sentence
If he is jailed for life, how is he to be extradited?
An Uzbek asylum seeker who confessed to wanting to mow down "infidels" in an April 2017 Stockholm truck attack that killed five people and maimed 10 pleaded guilty to terrorism charges on Tuesday as his trial opened.
...the known wolf and forged documents dealer, whose truck attack harmed considerably fewer than he'd planned because his bomb didn't explode, demonstrating that Allah did not approve.
appeared in the Stockholm courtroom, where he was charged with terror-related murder and attempted murder, handcuffed amid tight security, wearing green prison clothes and with a shaved head and a beard, accompanied by his lawyer, Johan Eriksson.
Akilov, whose Swedish asylum application had been rejected in 2016, had sworn allegiance to 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.... terror group on the eve of his assault in one of Europe’s safest cities, though the jihadist group never grabbed credit.
On the afternoon of Friday, April 7, Akilov stole a beer delivery truck and barreled down a bustling pedestrian shopping street, swerving wildly to hit as many people as possible. He was tossed in the clink Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! hours later.
Five people were killed ‐ a British man, a Belgian woman and three Swedes, including an 11-year-old girl.
"Yes, it was Akilov who drove the truck that day," his lawyer Johan Eriksson told the court. "Akilov took the truck ... and drove it the way the prosecutor described. He killed five people and physically injured 10."
The prosecution has requested that he gets a life sentence and is extradited from Sweden.
He has said he wanted to punish Sweden for participating in the international coalition against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.
Throughout the nearly 10-month probe, Akilov has been cooperative, according to his lawyer and the prosecution.
Three interpreters were at hand during the trial, which is expected to end May 9. A verdict is expected before the summer.
Akilov had said he offered to the Islamic State group to carry out an attack in Stockholm on behalf of the group. It was not clear whether the group had accepted his offer.
Investigators have found internet chat logs with unknown people in which Akilov discussed becoming a martyr and swore allegiance to IS between January 12, 2017, and the attack on April 7, as well as a memory card with "material that can be connected to IS," including execution videos.
The construction worker, who was 39 at the time of the attack, was subject to deportation from Sweden ahead of attack as his asylum application had been rejected.
Akilov had been ordered to leave Sweden in December 2016. Instead, he went underground, eluding authorities’ attempts to track him down. Sweden’s domestic intelligence agency has said it had nothing indicating he was planning an attack.
Security was high Tuesday, with heavily armed coppers and scores of news hounds going through metal detectors before entering the courtroom.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
02/15/2018
00:04 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
[FDD's LWJ] Pakistani terror groups Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) launched two attacks against security forces this week in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Both attacks targeted Indian military facilities and together resulted in the deaths of six Indian security personnel and one civilian. Eleven others were injured, including six women and children, according to reports. Both JeM and LeT are US designated terror groups that operate openly in Pakistan and support and maintain active insurgencies in the Jammu and Kashmir region.
In the first attack, which took place on Feb. 11, JeM terrorists snuck into the Sunjwan army camp in the city of Jammu during pre-dawn hours and began firing on Indian security forces. The jihadists were armed with assault rifles, grenades and a grenade launcher, and engaged Indian soldiers in a gunfight that lasted more than 30 hours. When the fighting ceased, three fighters were killed by Indian security forces. Five Indian soldiers and one civilian were killed during the Sunjwan camp attack, and 10 others were wounded. The casualty totals made the Feb. 11 assault the most deadly terror attack in India since a 2016 Uri military camp attack, also attributed to JeM, that killed 17 soldiers and wounded dozens.
The Indian government has labelled the Sunjwan attack a “ceasefire violation,” saying that they have evidence the attack was orchestrated by “handlers” within Pakistan, according to Reuters. They also warned that “Pakistan will pay for this misadventure.”
Just two days later, two LeT terrorists attempted to storm a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) headquarters in the city of Srinagar. Police opened fire on the two LeT fighters, who fled. The CRFP then clashed with the LeT members for 27 hours before cornering and killing them. One CRPF officer was killed and another was wounded during the fighting. LeT commander Mehmood Shah and spokesman Abdullah Ghaznavi claimed credit for the attack.
“The freedom fighters of Lashkar-e-Taiba continue to seize control of the stronghold in Karan Nagar (Srinagar),” Ghaznavi said in a statement released to local media, according to Kashmir Dispatch. Ghaznavi also stated that the Feb. 11 assault on the Sunjwan army camp was carried out by JeM.
Both attacks are consistent with the LeT and JeM’s historical trends of targeting Indian military facilities, camps and outposts.
[Bloomberg] Even as the Kremlin denies any official link to them, scores of Russian mercenaries wounded in U.S. strikes in Syria are being treated at Defense Ministry hospitals.
The wounded were brought to military hospitals in Moscow and St. Petersburg, according to two people in contact with them, after more than 200 fighters died in last week’s failed assault on a base held by U.S.-backed forces in Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor region. The death toll’s rising as some of the wounded succumb to their injuries, according to one of the people.
Russia’s denied any official involvement. There’s no "specific detailed information" on what happened and while there may be Russian citizens in Syria, "they don’t belong to the Russian armed forces," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call Wednesday.
The incident shines a light on a little-known weapon in the Kremlin’s hybrid-war arsenal. Mercenaries, who’ve been active in the conflicts in eastern Ukraine and Syria, allow Russia to deny official involvement in operations when things go wrong. Fighters involved in the Feb. 7 assault in Syria were linked to Wagner, two people familiar with the matter said, a shadowy private military contractor which has a training camp at a commando base in southern Russia.
The U.S. Treasury named Dmitry Utkin as Wagner’s leader last June as it sanctioned him for sending fighters to eastern Ukraine. Utkin was photographed next to President Vladimir Putin at a Kremlin reception in late 2016, held to honor him and others for their service to Russia, for which they have received state awards, according to Peskov.
“I AM Roman Sergeyevich Zabolotny, born in 1979, and I have been taken prisoner,” says a Russian-speaking man in a video released last month by the jihadists of Islamic State (IS). A second soldier, his right eye swollen shut, sits silently in grey robes. Both were reportedly captured during a battle near Deir ez-Zor, a city in Syria’s east and the site of a recent offensive by Russian and Syrian government forces. Yet the Russian defence ministry denied that any of its soldiers had gone missing. Friends and relatives told Russian media that the men had gone to Syria not with the Russian army, but as part of a shadowy mercenary force known as “Wagner”.
The group has come to play a key role in Russian operations in Syria. Though Russian law officially bans private military companies (PMCs), a St Petersburg-based independent news site, Fontanka.ru, reported in late 2015 that ex-soldiers were being recruited to serve in Wagner by a former special-forces officer, Dmitry Utkin. Numbering as many as 2,500 men, the group is believed to have figured heavily in operations around Palmyra in 2016, serving as “shock troops” alongside the Syrian army, says Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian security at the Institute of International Relations in Prague. Though the Russian army has not acknowledged Wagner’s existence, Mr Utkin was photographed late last year alongside President Vladimir Putin at a Kremlin reception for military officers in honour of Day of Heroes of the Fatherland. This summer America added him to its list of officials sanctioned for involvement in the Ukraine conflict of 2014, where the group is said to have got its start.
...
For now, the Wagnerians still operate in a grey zone. Fontanka.ru recently reported that their role has expanded to include seizing oil wells held by IS for a newly-formed Russian company, Evro Polis. As for the two captives, their fates are probably sealed, says an MP from the home region of one of them. “There’s a 99% chance that Roman and the second prisoner are no longer among the living.”
Baghdad (Iraqinews.com) – Two civilians were injured Wednesday in a bomb blast near popular markets in western Baghdad, a security source was quoted as saying.
Speaking to Alghad Press, the source said, “An explosive charge went off near busy street markets at al-Maamel area in western Baghdad.”
“The explosion left two civilians wounded,” the source said, pointing out that the security forces cordoned off the blast site and allowed ambulance to carry the injured to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Baghdad (Iraqinews.com) – The Baghdad Operations Command denied on Wednesday media reports published on social networking websites about detonating a booby-trapped vehicle near the headquarters of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) party in western Baghdad.
In a statement, a copy of which was obtained by Baghdad Today news website, the command described as “groundless” the news published on the INC’s Facebook page about a car bomb blast near its headquarters at al-Mansour district, west of Baghdad, on Tuesday night.
The command explained that security forces were suspicious about a car parked near the party’s premises, but after inspecting it they found out that it was not booby-trapped.
The command, therefore, called on all media outlets and news websites to seek accuracy before publishing any news of such a kind and to take information only from reliable sources.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) A police conscript has been killed as gunmen opened fire against him in west of Baghdad, a security source said on Tuesday.
Speaking to Baghdad Today website, the source said, “unidentified gunmen opened fire against a police conscript in al-Bakriya region, west of Baghdad.”
“The victim succumbed to death near his house,” the source added.
Baghdad (Iraqinews.com) – Two civilians were wounded Tuesday in a bomb attack near street markets in northern Baghdad, a security source was quoted as saying.
In a press statement to Alghad Press, the source said, “A bomb placed near busy street markets went off in al-Rashdiya neighborhood, north of Baghdad, leaving two civilians wounded.”
“Ambulances rushed to the blast site and carried the injured to a nearby hospital for treatment,” the source added.
Baghdad (Iraqinews.com) – Six people were killed and injured Tuesday in a bomb explosion in western Baghdad, a security source was quoted as saying.
Speaking to Baghdad Today news website, the source said, “An explosive charge went off near busy street markets in al-Radwaniyah area, west of Baghdad.”
“The explosion left a citizen dead and five others injured,” the source said, adding that ambulances rushed to the blast site and carried the injured to a nearby hospital for treatment, while the dead was moved to the forensic medicine department.
[DAWN] A man was tossed in the slammer Book 'im, Mahmoud! for allegedly wounding his aunt and murdering her husband in an apparent "honour killing" in the Manghopir area of Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... , police told DawnNews on Wednesday.
According to Station House Officer (SHO) Manghpoir Haji Sanaullah, the couple ‐ Rozi Khan and Zainab ‐ had entered a free will marriage in 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... last year and moved to Karachi where they had rented a house in Wandi Sharif Goth, Manghopir. Several members of Balochistan's Marri tribe also live in the area.
Though several of their relatives opposed the marriage, Zainab's mother and one of her brothers had consented to it, police said.
According to police, the chief suspect had arrived at the couple's house on Tuesday night with at least five other accomplices. He opened fire on Rozi, who died from a shot to the head.
The suspect then tried to shoot at Zainab, but his gun malfunctioned, leading him to attack her with sticks and a knife, leaving her injured. She is currently being treated at the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital.
The suspect, who sustained wounds after Zainab put up resistance, later went to a private hospital in Gulshan-e-Maymar with a friend and claimed his injuries were a result of a robbery incident. However, today is that tomorrow you were thinking about yesterday... acting on a tip, the police arrested him while he was undergoing treatment.
Six people, including Zainab's nephew, have been nominated in the first information report (FIR) lodged at the Manghopir cop shoppe with Rozi's brother, Mangal Khan, as the complainant.
The primary suspect's friend who accompanied him to the hospital is also being treated as a suspect; however, he has not been nominated in the FIR.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
[Al Jazeera] Pakistain has banned two charities linked to Hafiz Saeed ...founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba and its false-mustache offshoot Jamaat-ud-Dawa. The United Nations declared the JuD a terrorist organization in 2008 and Hafiz Saeed a terrorist as its leader. Hafiz, JuD and LeT are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Pak intel apparatus, so that amounted to squat... , the alleged criminal mastermind behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed more than 160 people.
Saeed, founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba ...the Army of the Pure, an Ahl-e-Hadith terror organization founded by Hafiz Saeed. LeT masquerades behind the Jamaat-ud-Dawa facade within Pakistain and periodically blows things up and kills people in India. Despite the fact that it is banned, always an interesting concept in Pakistain, the organization remains an blatant tool and perhaps an arm of the ISI... (LeT), has been designated a "terrorist" by the United Nations ...an organization originally established to war on dictatorships which was promptly infiltrated by dictatorships and is now held in thrall to dictatorships... and had a $10m bounty placed on him by the US in 2012.
Rana Sanaullah, law minister for 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.... province, said on Wednesday that Pakistain's interior ministry had issued a notification against the Saeed-founded Jamaat-ud-Dawa ...the front organization of Lashkar-e-Taiba... (JuD) charity, as well as its associated organization, the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF).
"We've received the interior ministry directions, and according to that, Hafiz Saeed and his charities, like JuD and FIF, have been banned to operate in Pakistain," Sanaullah told Rooters news agency.
"As per the instructions, we have already started taking over all the facilities, offices, schools, dispensaries and seminaries which belong to the JuD and FIF."
Rawalpindi commissioner Nadeem Aslam told Rooters that officials had "taken over all the JuD and FIF assets" and that the "takeover was complete".
The move by Pak authorities came days before a key meeting by the Financial Action Task Force, a global money-laundering watchdog, that will consider a US-sponsored motion to place Pakistain on a list of countries failing to prevent "terrorism" financing, Rooters reported.
Pakistain's Geo News reported that President Mamnoon Hussain on Friday amended the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 "to proscribe entities banned by the United Nations (Security Council) Act 1948".
In 2002, Pakistain banned the LeT as a "terrorist" organization, and, since 2008, authorities say they have been abiding by UN sanctions that subject JuD to an assets freeze, arms embargo and international travel ban.
Under house arrest since January 2017, Saeed was released in November after a court in Pakistain rejected a government application to extend his detention under anti-terrorism laws, saying there was no evidence to support the application.
He denies any involvement in the Mumbai attacks or connection to LeT, which has been blamed for a series of deadly attacks against Indian security forces and civilians, mostly in the disputed territory of Kashmire.
Saeed says he now heads JuD, which has been designated by the UN and US as a front for LeT.
In August, the LeT launched a political party, the Milli Moslem League (MML), and took part in a by-election in the eastern city of Lahore.
Election banners for MML's candidate, Muhammad Yaqoob Sheikh, prominently featured images of Saeed.
However, a poor excuse is better than no excuse at all... two months later, the Election Commission of Pakistain rejected its registration due to its links with JuD and FIF.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[Al Jazeera] Jacob Zuma, South Africa's embattled and controversial president, has announced his resignation in a televised address to the nation. More dance time in the offing? It really is his first love.
"I have to come to decision to resign with immediate effect," he said late on Wednesday in Pretoria.
Zuma's resignation followed weeks of intense public pressure to step down amid longstanding corruption allegations.
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) formally asked Zuma, 75, to resign on Tuesday. He initially refused, saying he did not understand why he was being told to step down.
The party later announced plans to hold a no-confidence vote against him on Thursday in parliament.
"It is my party that placed me the representative of the people. It is my party that availed me," Zuma said in his speech from Union Buildings.
"Make no mistake, no leader should stay beyond the time the people they serve. No leader should seek an easy way out because they could face a life without the perks of political office."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
[Dhaka Tribune] BNP leaders and activists have started observing a 6-hour hunger strike in Dhaka, demanding the release of its Chairperson Khaleda Zia from jail. I had a six hour hunger strike last night. I slept right through it.
The members of BNP started the hunger strike as part of its countrywide program on Wednesday morning.
The program began around 10am in front of the Jatiya Press Club. It will continue until 4pm.
Several Hundred leaders and activists, including party standing committee members Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, Moudud Ahmed, Nazrul Islam Khan, Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury, joined the programme amid tight security by police.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[1 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistain Proxies
[DAWN] Mashal Khan's family on Wednesday filed an appeal in the Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. High Court (PHC) challenging the acquittal of 26 people in the 23-year-old student's mob murder case.
The appeal, filed by Mashal's brother Aimal Khan, argues that the decision by the Haripur Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) should be set aside and those acquitted should be awarded capital punishment as substantial proof against them exists.
The appeal states that the 26 men acquitted on all charges admitted to their involvement in a procession that was held right after their release from custody following the ATC's decision. Video proof of their involvement is also present, among other things, making the prosecution's case against them very strong, read the appeal.
The ATC's decision, the appeal argues, would "encourage the respondents to commit such acts in the future".
The acquittal is also against the principles of Qisas, it says, adding that the evidence of the men being present at the scene of the crime with the common objective to kill has not even been contradicted in the court.
Following the submission of the petition, Aimal said that a total of five appeals will be filed in the case on a step-by-step basis.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[PopularMilitary.com] The needs of the Army and the quality of the recruits it is acquiring have changed, so the Army is adapting. One of the many changes coming to Army Basic Training (BCT) is the removal of grenade qualification from basic training, which could happen as early as this summer.
So the Army has decided to dedicate more time for recruits to become physically fit and develop discipline by spending more time on drill and ceremony, inspections, and learning military history.
"We are finding that there are a large number of trainees that come in that quite frankly just physically don’t have the capacity to throw a hand grenade 20 to 25 to 30 meters. In 10 weeks, we are on a 48-hour period; you are just not going to be able to teach someone how to throw if they haven’t thrown growing up." That's the ticket. They can't do it anymore, so drop the requirement. Or maybe recruit among Palestinian-Americans.
#1
This is stunning. So is the idea that drill and ceremony, inspections, and history class will cure this situation.
Posted by: Roger ||
02/15/2018 1:12
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Solution is fairly simple. Set up a plywood board or some such with a typical target painted on it (series of alternating red and white circles). Set it up at 60 feet. have recruits spend a set amount of time everyday throwing baseballs at it.
Eventually they will be able to hit the target. Move target further away (up to 120' or so) as training progress.
For added bonus, cut small hole in middle of target, perhaps twice the size of the baseball or slightly larger. Get ball through hole, get excepted from KP or some such.
Resume normal grenade training after that.
If they cannot complete baseball throwing and hit target in a week, wash them out.
Since baseball viewing and participation is at a serious decline, what other throwing plays can kids do?
#4
FUCK D&C. And Fuck a parade. Go down to the TASC, get training grenades, and take them to the field.
Garrison Army never was and never is a way to win a war. Train on the tasks that save lives.
Many think that basic exercise is the answer. To a point it is. But what really matters is E&E, Tactical driving, shooting, Grenades, running horse trails and train tracks, 12 mile ruck marches, and everything else everyone is exposed to in war.
Boot shiners are for boot lickers and it never taught me discipline. It wasted my time and increased my learning curve.
The real work did not get done.
#5
When I was in basic training the grenade throw was a part of the PT test. I believe the distance was sixty feet.
When I go to the PX or the medical facility the men and women I see look more physically fit than did the average draftee in the Middle Paleolithic. They certainly were by the time I retired, and the ones I worked with 2004-2007 certainly were -- and they weren't combat arms.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018 2:32
Comments ||
Top||
#6
Harcourt has it at #3. How about a few games of 'Aunt Sally' and we'll call it a day. No loud noises or dangerous bits of iron flying around. Sticks it is !
#7
It's all part of a number crunchers idea of how long basic training should be. They try to shove into 90 days the development of a soldier which should take 120 days or more. Something jumps up needing attention and time gets shifted from one 'priority' to another. However, the machine says they have got to move in the production line regardless. The Puzzle Palace doesn't want to hear that Physical Ed has been dropped from a lot of school systems and even when it is still there its been made 'equal'. You know instead of two sets of standards (like your service PT tests), they just go with the lowest common denominator. That means if you want physically qualified soldiers you better well add more time to getting them fit right at basic. Mother nature doesn't care what your plans are, body development and prep are going to go at their own pace. Of course you could add a PT test for application and entry, but I'm pretty sure that would mess up your recruiting numbers (which you destroy careers over).
#8
Some troops can be jacks of all trades --
Berets and big blades and nice shades --
But others, just hatching,
Are better at catching
Than pitching-- er, throwing grenades.
#9
When my kid graduated Marine Boot Camp in 2000, we took him to the San Diego zoo the next day. The kid behind us at the gate wore his USMC uniform. My son said he lost so much weight in basic that none of his civilian clothes fit him anymore.
There might be a lesson for the Army in there, somewhere.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/15/2018 9:00
Comments ||
Top||
#10
Maybe they should drop the sensitivity training and focus on push-ups.
#11
Well every body has pretty well covered it. I keep thinking of the Italian gentleman who said of the Pope , "You no palya the game, you no maka the rules."
Yep, Phys Ed is now optional in most high schools after the sophomore year. They don't teach phys ed in Junior High School (who came up with this term middle school anyway?). They discourage football and consider baseball hazardous. They charge a fee of a couple of hundred dollars to participate in team sports. They encourage "civilized games" like soccer which does not develop the upper body.
Most young people don't contribute to the family with summer jobs, usually unskilled labor.
#18
....or remove the protective bunker on the grenade range and make it Go-No Go training.
Arguably the most famous and skilled slingers of the ancient world were those from the Balearic Islands in the western Mediterranean. They underwent similar vigorous training from a very early age. Parents gave a sling to their children as their first toy so that they would become familiar with it as quickly as possible. Once familiarity had been achieved, a piece of bread was placed on a stake in front of the children. The parents withheld food from their children until they could successfully hit the bread and knock it off the stake.
[Washington Examiner] The Air Force on Monday revealed its long-range plan to eventually jettison its supersonic B-1 and stealthy B-2 bombers earlier than planned while keeping the venerable B-52, an aging Cold War workhorse that first flew in 1954 and was last built in 1962, flying into the 2050s.
The Air Force confirmed that it plans to send its two newer bombers into early retirement, but keep the B-52 in the inventory well past its 100th birthday.
"With an adequate sustainment and modernization focus, including new engines, the B-52 has a projected service life through 2050, remaining a key part of the bomber enterprise well into the future," said Gen. Robin Rand, Air Force Global Strike Command commander, in a statement issued by the Air Force.
But today’s B-52 has evolved from the planes first flown in the '50s. The Stratofortress has undergone numerous upgrades and modernization over the years, including the addition of an advanced communications system that displays real-time intelligence feeds overlaid on moving maps.
The B-1 conventional bomber and the B-2 stealth bomber are also getting upgrades in the Air Force budget, but eventually their mission will be taken over by the new B-21 long-range stealth bomber, now in the design stage. B-1s were supposed to fly into the 2040s and B-2s until 2058, but the new plan moves their retirement up to the early 2030s, Air Force Magazine reported.
While the B-52 will continue as a conventional bomber, it will also carry the new long-range stand-off nuclear cruise missile.
The Air Force budget request for fiscal 2019 includes money to replace the B-52’s "inefficient and aging engines," according to the Pentagon budget overview.
"The Air Force will update the B-52 bomber fleet and fund development of replacement engines," said Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson. "We will also continue necessary B-1 and B-2 modifications to keep them relevant until the B-21s come on line."
The Air Force plan calls for the B-1s and B-2s to be "incrementally retired," once enough B-21s are operational. "If the force structure we have proposed is supported by the Congress, bases that have bombers now will have bombers in the future," Wilson said. "They will be B-52s and B-21s."
The Air Force has 76 B-52s based primarily in Barksdale Air Force Base, La.; Minot Air Force Base, N.D., and Andersen Air Force Base, Guam.
In all, 744 B-52s were produced by Seattle, Wash., and Wichita, Kan., plants between 1952 and 1962, according to Boeing, the maker of the iconic plane.
#3
Pardon the ignorance, but I thought the B-1 was subsonic. The original spec was supersonic, high level bomber but was changed to make the B-1 less expensive. Am I wrong?
#7
They reduced top speed from Mach 2.2 to 1.25 and were able to increase subsonic cruise speed from 0.85 to 0.96 Mach. So it's cruise is just under the speed of sound.
#8
Budget sense lining up with common sense. What a difference a change in administration makes.
Posted by: B. Bluetooth7028 ||
02/15/2018 15:19
Comments ||
Top||
#9
Yes, it has been over 30 years since the reengining idea was first raised. About time they do that for the BUFF. I like the idea of the eight smaller but proven efficient engines, gets away from tight ground clearances with the bigger nacelled high bypass engines that the twin ETOPS commercial jets use.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/15/2018 18:28
Comments ||
Top||
[ALMASDARNEWS] The chairman of the Yesh Atid Party, Yair Lapid, presented a bill to the Israeli Knesset this week that would recognize the 1915 genocide of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire.
However, corruption finds a dozen alibis for its evil deeds... the bill to recognize the Armenian Genocide was ultimately rejected by the Israeli Knesset after a lengthy discussion this week.
"There is no reason that the Knesset, which represents a nation that went through the Holocaust, shouldn’t recognize the Armenian Genocide and have a remembrance day for it," Yair Lapid stated, as quoted by the Jerusalem Post.
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely previously said that the country would not take an official stance on the matter, "in light of its complexity and diplomatic repercussions and because it has a clear political connection," the Jerusalem Post stated.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
[ALMASDARNEWS] The US-led Coalition to defeat the ISIS terrorist group (banned in Russia) has intentionally destroyed 90 percent of Syria’s town of Raqqa, Syrian permanent representative to the United Nations ...aka the Oyster Bay Chowder and Marching Society... Bashar Jaafari told the UN Security Council on Wednesday.
"This coalition has deliberately destroyed 90 percent of the city of Raqqa," Jaafari said. "This coalition has not felt to uphold its commitment to neutralize the mines left behind by ISIS."
The statement follows the February 12 blurb by the advocacy group Human Rights Watch, saying that landmines planted by the ISIS terrorist group in the Syrian city of Raqqa have killed or maimed hundreds of civilians, including more than 150 children.
The actual number of victims is surely higher, as many people died before reaching medical assistance and those deaths were not necessarily reported, the release said.
As the release defined, ISIS planted scores of antipersonnel mines in Raqqa before US-led forces liberated the city in October 2017, including mines, booby traps or improvised bombs (IEDs), and most appeared to be victim-activated and therefore banned under international law.
In October, a spokesperson for Operation Inherent Resolve, the US military’s operational name for the intervention against ISIS, reported that hundreds of suspected ISIS members and their families were allowed to flee Raqqa in convoys arranged by US-backed forces. According to Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS Brett McGurk, the turbans placed bombs in almost every single building the city’s downtown.
The terror seized Raqqa in 2013 and declared the city to be the capital of their self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria the following year. In December 2017, Syrian Democratic Forces, with the support of the US-led international coalition, began operations to retake Raqqa, which the SDF said was liberated in October.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
#1
So, ISIS leaves behind a shitload of active mines / IED's but Uncle Sugar gets blamed for destroying the city. Do I have that right?
#6
ISIS planted scores of antipersonnel mines in Raqqa before US-led forces liberated the city in October 2017, including mines, booby traps or improvised bombs (IEDs), and most appeared to be victim-activated and therefore banned under international law
Jaafari should let ISIS know, personally, face-to-face. They'll surely stop
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/15/2018 9:00
Comments ||
Top||
#7
You people have no core. You shift with moving islams.
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) Officials at Iraq’s Anbar province have recommended to resolve tribal disputes at the province before pushing forward with the repatriation of displaced civilians linked with 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.... bully boys.
Baghdad Today quoted Naeem al-Kaoud, chairman of Anbar’s security committee, saying that "any decision to return ISIS (Islamic State) families could be catastrophic".
According to al-Kaoud, "the rule at tribal areas is that anybody who commits a killing, his family is expelled until a reconciliation is reached".
He added that, "until present, there is no framework for tribal reconciliation, and the government is required to sponsor that issue".
Kaoud argued that "certain parties want to accelerate the repatriation of refugees to the province for political reasons to use those families’ votes in elections".
Iraq declared victory over Islamic State snuffies in December, ending months of military operations to retake areas occupied by the group since 2014. Anbar’s Rawa was the last IS bastion recaptured by Iraqi forces.
But many officials and observers have voiced concern over a wave of unrest as the families of civilians slain by the Lion of Islam group could seek Dire Revenge from others that had some of their members drafted by the group.
Iraqi local authorities had reportedly isolated IS fighters’ families at some provinces and prepared for their social and psychological rehabilitation before returning to their home regions
Posted by: trailing wife ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
Ok, but they ought to be able to nail him for being a bloody-handed slum lord, which is almost worse.
[Ynet] A French court acquitted a man charged with harboring Islamic holy warriors after they carried out the 2015 Gay Paree attacks, bringing a surprising end Wednesday to the first criminal trial from the country's deadliest holy warrior violence since World War II.
The presiding judge said the Gay Paree court found Jawad Bendaoud, 31, a confirmed street criminal, not guilty of providing lodging to two of the attackers and helping them hide from police when they were the most-wanted criminals in La Belle France.
Addressing Bendaoud at a verdict hearing, Judge Isabelle Prevost-Desprez said the evidence was "insufficient to prove your guilt."
Bendaoud, who was standing behind a glass-enclosed dock, blew kisses to the public and his lawyers upon hearing of his acquittal. He faced up to six years in prison if he was convicted of harboring terrorists.
Bendaoud denied knowing the identity of the men to whom he rented a small flat in Saint-Denis. One of the two men he sheltered was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected ringleader of the Gay Paree attacks.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
#1
I'm trying to square 'confirmed street criminal' with a 31 year-old property owner in a fairly pricey Paris suburb. Anyone? Ferris?
#2
Click on his name to see the articles about him in the Rantburg archive, Raj. According an earlier article about this drug dealer,
Bendaoud, who has a long criminal record, said he had previously rented the grubby flat to Eastern European gangsters without asking questions.
And he’d rented this particular apartment to several of his countrymen for a three-day period. Providing temporary hideouts to gangsters is no doubt a lucrative business, given the evident risk he ran. One shudders to think what happened to his condemned properties and his income during the three years he sat in jail since his arrest.
I'm quite familiar with rental properties, so I tend to think along the lines of, for instance, 10% down on a property, a picture of the house in question and all that. Maybe he's in a shithole section of that otherwise fine Paris suburb (even in Quincy, MA!), it didn't seem to make a lot a lot of sense unless the cash he was taking was a phenomenal amount, and I think that's the missing part.
#4
One shudders to think what happened to his condemned properties and his income during the three years he sat in jail since his arrest.
Most likely a relative (read - older brother) kept it afloat as a de facto property manager, or it all went to shit and got sold in the proverbial fire sale. There's very little middle ground in this one.
[Breitbart] In a judicial proceeding Nigeria’s courts have deemed unprecedented, the federal government announced it would begin to process 700 Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... suspects awaiting trial at a military detention proceeding on Monday.
The Kainji military facility counts "at least 1,000 suspected members" of Boko Haram among its inmates, according to Nigeria’s Daily Trust newspaper. Abuja has begun moving towards the rapid processing of these individuals in order to lift as much of the burden on the nation’s weakened military as possible. According to the newspaper, almost half of those detained‐"about 468 persons"‐"are expected to be released for want of evidence."
Continued on Page 49
Some Twitter accounts for Kurds reporting the conflict are being restricted by Twitter late today.
A night video claims to show more US Military Equipment and Military Personnel moving into the Rojava area under the cover of darkness.
Heartbreaking pictures of elderly Kurdish killed and of very severe injuries to small Kurdish children are appearing frequently as Turk Air and Artillery assets pound civilian areas. One picture shows an elderly mankissing his dead elderly wife over her heart as she is about to be taken away from their bombarded home.
In Turkey PKK guerillas executed a successful attack on the Turkish military.
1- Afrin city center: the Turkish invasion army and its Jihadist factions have shelled the city center of Afrin and the road junction of Ain Hajar last night until 11 AM this morning.
Yesterday at 7 PM, Ashrafiyeh and Terannda neighborhoods were a target for the Turkish brutal artillery shelling.
2-Sharra: Fierce clashes broke out between our forces and the Turkish jihadists in the vicinity of Sarinjik and Darqliya villages accompanied by indiscriminate artillery shelling by the Turkish army and its Jihadist factions. After repelling the attackers, the Turkish jets conducted raids on Darqliya village. Since the early hours of this morning, the Turkish artillery shelled Deir Sawan village causing damages to civilian homes. The shelling lasted until 11 AM.
3-Shiyeh: all of the villages in Shiyeh township were a target for the Turkish heavy weapons, which started last night until 11 AM this morning.
Also the Turkish invasion army and its Jihadist factions brutally bombed the middle-Chaqala village since the early morning until the preparation of this report.
4- Raju: Fierce clashes broke out between our forces and the Turkish invasion army and its Jihadist factions in the vicinity of Qudah village since yesterday at 6 PM, where our forces repelled their attacks and seized some pieces of weapon, while the enemy fled away from the battlefield.
The Turkish heavy weapons targeted the hill of Qudah village since the early morning, accompanied with heavy raids on the hill.
5- Belbeleh: our forces engaged with the Turkish invasion army last night at 7 PM, causing heavy losses within the ranks of the enemy, where our forces destroyed a Turkish tank.
Since the mornings hours, the Turkish recconnaisance aircraft did not miss the atmosphere in Belbeleh township, as the Turkish jets continues to target all of the hills and villages in Belbeleh.
SDF-Media Centre
14-FEB-2018
Posted by: Ulaigum Ebbineng7056 ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[18 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] A jacket wallah was incarcerated Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please! before he manage to carry out an attack using the a cycle of violence packed with explosives in Lashkagah city, the historic provincial capital of Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... province.
The provincial government media office in a statement said the would-be suicide bomber was arrested from the vicinity of Nawa district in Zhar Sahib area.
The statement further added that a cycle of violence packed with explosives was also confiscated before the suicide bomber manages to take it to Lashkargah city for the attack.
The anti-government armed krazed killer groups including the Taliban ...Arabic for students... hard boyz have not commented regarding the report so far.
This comes as a suicide bomber handed himself over to the security forces nearly ten days ago, shortly after he was deployed to Lashkargah city by the krazed killer groups for an attack.
The Helmand governor’s office in a statement said a suicide bomber who was sent by the Taliban group to carry out a suicide kaboom in Mukhtar area in Lashkargah city, has surrendered to the security forces.
The statement further added that the suicide bomber refrained to carry out the attack and today handed himself over to the police forces in the city.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Taliban
[RADIOSHABELLE] At least one person was confirmed dead and three others were maimed in an kaboom in Mogadishu on Tuesday evening, an official said.
Abdulaziz Ali Ibrahim, the front man of Somalia’s Ministry of Internal Security has confirmed that the blast has occurred at KM4 junction after an bomb went off.
The kaboom resulted from an improvised bomb [IED] that went kaboom! as it was playing by homeless children in the night.
He added at least three civilians has sustained in the incident and were admitted to the hospital for medical treatment.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under: al-Shabaab (AQ)
[PowderedWigSociety] The first thing I noticed about Barack Hussein’s official presidential portrait was the fact that our 44th president, seated in a cheap chair, appeared to be suspended in a hedge. What the hell is up with that?
Secondly, I could hardly focus my attention on the subject of the painting due to the annoyingly distracting background with repeating patterns like antebellum wallpaper. Note the red boxes showing duplicated patterns. There are additional.
"Repeating patterns that look like antebellum wallpaper is a Wiley thing and is a recurring feature in much of his work, or rather the work of artists (to be kind) in China, where much of Kehinde Wiley’s art is produced ("painted" is not exactly the right word).
Note the repeating patterns in the Hussein portrait, like so many layers of a fabricated PDF birth certificate, successfully sold to the American people by Hussein and his trained seals in the mainstream media as the real deal.... Continues.
#3
Haven't read the article yet, and, not keeping close tabs on "modern" "art," I've only flipped quickly through a few instances of PlaidMan's "work," but who cares? I gotta throw down my sippy cup right now and scream:
1) I. Knew. It. All of it. Textbook hustle, right?
2) I LOVE this guy. I've been waffling about going visual for years, and THIS cat, of all people, has reached down like Sistine Jehovah to yank me across the line (ow, my finger!). Me and, probably, hundreds of other people. Thanks, Mr. [DDGs] Wiley.
#4
I believe it's a good thing - anything to keep reminding you (Americans) about Obama era and increasing your determination that it never should happen again.
#5
B.O. is tasteless and tawdry, over-busy, and utterly unlike any other presidential portrait. The background distracts from what should be the central focus. One of his hands (the right) is anatomically incorrect, and it looks like he sat so long for the portrait that he was being overgrown by the plant life. Yuck.
Madame Obama's portrait is merely bad. It looks more like a sketch. Her dress is better done than her features. Ptui.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018 2:52
Comments ||
Top||
#6
Birth certificate, extended family, passport, books, education, phony baloney Chicago job, senator no-show, presidency, Nobel Peace Prize, Kudzu portrait.... all in the same category.
#9
Made in China. Like Barack Hussein’s birth certificate, his portrait is the work of an untalented manipulator who hires other artists to paint his work
Ya mean 6-sticky-fingered Soetero wasn't Born in the U.S.A.? It was all a fake?
[RADIOSHABELLE] Two Kenyans have been executed by al-Shabaab ... Somalia's version of the Taliban, functioning as an arm of al-Qaeda... fighters for allegedly spying for Somalia and Kenyan intelligence services in Kunyo Barrow town, Lower Shabelle region.
Hassan Yussuf and Mohammed Hassan from Marsabit county were executed by dagger-wielding forces of Evil on February 12.
Security sources said the militia forcefully gathered locals to witness the killings which they had announced earlier on Saturday using vehicle-mounted loudspeakers.
The locals in the area have witnessed regular executions carried out by the al Qaeda-linked terror group. The Lions of Islam kill those found guilty mainly by firing squad, throat slitting and stoning.
The foreign al-Shabaab fighters, mainly from Kenya, have witnessed rampant executions by the group who accuse them of being moles.
So far, more than 20 Kenyans have been executed. They include Jared Mokaya, Faraj Abdulmajid, Ahmed Yusuf, Ahmed Nur, Abdi Osoble, Abdullah Talal and Hashim Othman.
Last year, the forces of Evil publicly beheaded four men accused of spying.
The group confirmed the executions which took place after the men were found guilty by an al-Shabaab court in Jamame district of Lower Jubba region, some 70 km (43 miles) north of Kismayu.
Al-Shabaab fighters have carried out many attacks in Kenya in retaliation to the contribution of Kenya Defence Forces soldiers to the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... Mission in Somalia.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[4 views]
Top|| File under: al-Shabaab (AQ)
#1
"Wrong ones. Try again"
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/15/2018 8:52
Comments ||
Top||
[Al Jazeera] Zim-bob-we opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has died aged 65 after a battle with cancer, party officials have said. At least he hung on long enough to see Bob and Grace shown the door.
Elias Mudzuri, a vice president of the Movement for Democratic Change party, reported Tsvangirai's death in a post on Twitter on Wednesday.
"It is sad for me to announce that we have lost our icon and fighter for democracy," Mudzuri wrote.
Tsvangirai had been in and out of hospital in South Africa after revealing in 2016 that he had colon cancer.
Read more about Tsvangirai here, and watch a 2009 interview with him here.
He served as prime minister under ex-President Bob Muggsy Mugabe Nonagenarian President-for-Life of Zim-bob-we who turned the former Breadbasket of Africa into the African Basket Case. Dumped in November 2017 when the Missus decided she wanted to be president, and opposed heer might against Crocodile Mnangawa Important safety tip: If your opponent goes by the name Crocodile andf your title is Shopper in Chief let him win.... in a 2009-2013 unity government.
Obert Gutu, party front man, confirmed Tsvangirai's death on Twitter, calling him "a political icon, a humble and tenacious fighter for the creation of a peaceful, stable, democratic and progressive nation state in Zim-bob-we".
Last week, Tsvangirai had taken to Twitter to play down speculation that his illness was terminal.
"I have cancer and [am] not feeling too well, but I am stable and the process is under control. ... I am recovering," he wrote on February 6.
Al Jazeera's Haru Mutasa, reporting from Harare, said that people in Zim-bob-we's capital were "shocked" at the news of his death. Sounds like he was too.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
[Al Jazeera] The United Nations ...the Oyster Bay money pit... has expressed its deep concern about ongoing ethnic fighting in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo ...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material... , warning that the violence that has forced tens of thousands to seek shelter in neighbouring Uganda "may spread further".
More than 22,000 people fled festivities between Hema herders and Lendu farmers in Ituri province last week, according to the UN's refugee agency (UNHCR).
This marked a dramatic increase in the number of people crossing Lake Albert to reach Uganda in search of safety, bringing the overall figure since the start of the year to 34,000.
The latest influx follows what a UNHCR spokesperson called "the latest and biggest wave" in an outbreak of violence that started in the area in December.
"A number of local monitors have confirmed to us that more than 1,000 houses have been burned in Djugu, Ituri territory, which is the epicentre of the violence. The displaced say that groups of gunnies set houses on fire and killed civilians," Andreas Kirchhof told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[10 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Hasn't changed much since Joseph Conrad's captaincy of a river steamer in the Congo over 100 years ago.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/15/2018 18:38
Comments ||
Top||
#2
I thought it was Kerry in Viet Nam, Abu-Alaska?
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/15/2018 20:02
Comments ||
Top||
#3
I wonder how much African life has changed in the last few thousand years. Sure tastes in clothes are different and everyone has the latest gadgets like cell phones and AKs, but is the culture any different? I suspect the DRC isn't some kind of outlier, but a regression to the mean.
As for Kerry, pity he never found Marlon Brando after all that time looking for him up around the Cambodian border.
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants... ) is aiming to increase the number of the international forces in the framework of the train, advise, and assist mission to close to 16,000 during the year 2018.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told news hounds in Brussels on Tuesday that "At least twenty-eight Allies and partners are increasing their troop contributions to our training mission in Afghanistan."
Stoltenberg further added "We are aiming to have close to 16,000 personnel there this year. Up from around 13,000 last year."
"This is a clear sign of our continued commitment to Afghanistan’s security," he added.
Stoltenberg had earlier said that the new international forces will train, advise, and assist the Afghan Special Operations forces.
This comes as the Afghan government and its international allies are optimistic regarding the growing capabilities of the Special Operations forces.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
[All Africa] President Mnangagwa has, with immediate effect, appointed Deputy Commissioner-General Tandabantu Godwin Matanga as substantive Commissioner-General of the Zim-bob-we Republic Police (ZRP).
The announcement was made by Public Service Commission (PSC) chairman Dr Mariyawanda Nzuwah in a statement yesterday.
Dr Nzuwah said President Mnangagwa made the appointment "in terms of the Section 221 (1) and (2) of the Constitution of Zim-bob-we Amendment No. 20 as read with Section 340 (1) (e and f) to appoint Cde Tandabantu Godwin Matanga as the substantive Commissioner-General of the Zim-bob-we Republic Police with immediate effect".
Cde Matanga was born on February 5, 1962 in Chipinge.
In 1978, a 16-year-old Matanga crossed the border into Mozambique where he joined the liberation struggle.
He was deployed for training in Romania and Egypt in 1979.
"Following his return from Mozambique, Comm-Gen Matanga was attested into the Zim-bob-we Republic Police as a patrol officer in October 1982. Through hard work and innovation, Cde Matanga acquired vast experience in the Zim-bob-we Republic Police, rising through the ranks to Deputy Commissioner-General in 1992, a rank that he held until his recent elevation to Commissioner of Police," said Dr Nzuwah.
Comm Gen Matanga holds several professional qualifications in Active Field Artillery, Management and Financial Management.
"The Chairman, Police Service Commissioners and the Secretary to the Police Service Commission wish Cde Matanga success in leading the Zim-bob-we Republic Police for peace and security of our nation," he said.
Commissioner-General Matanga was appointed Acting Comm Gen on December 19, last year following the retirement of the then Commissioner General, Dr Augustine Chihuri.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
[DAWN] Afghan officials are carrying out at least two tracks of talks with the Taliban ...Arabic for students... , it has been learned, even after a month of brutal bombings and attacks by the gunnies that killed nearly 200 and despite 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 angry rejection of any negotiations for now.
The persistence of the back-channel contacts reflects the desire to keep a door open for reconciliation even as the Afghan government and its top ally, the United States, fumble for a strategy to end the protracted war, now entering its 17th year. Rifts within the Afghan government have grown vast, even as the Taliban gain territory and wage increasingly ruthless tactics.
The United States has unleashed heavier air power against the Taliban and other krazed killers. After the string of Taliban attacks in recent weeks, Trump angrily condemned the group. "We don’t want to talk with the Taliban," he said. "There may be a time but it’s going to be a long time."
Still, Afghanistan’s intelligence chief Masoom Stanikzai and its National Security Chief Mohammed Hanif Atmar continue to each talk separately to the Taliban, say those familiar with the backdoor negotiations. The problem, however, is that neither is talking to the other or to the High Peace Council, which was created by the government to talk peace with the Taliban, they said, speaking on condition of anonymity ... for fear of being murdered... to discuss the contacts.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Taliban
[DAWN] DERA ISMAIL KHAN: The newly-appointed deputy commander of the Tehrik-e-Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... Pakistain (TTP), Mufti Noor Wali, will take over his new position in the banned hard boy group after formal approval by TTP chief Maulana Fazalullah, according to sources.
They said the group’s central shura and Mehsud circle Taliban approved Wali’s appointment in a meeting held on Monday.
During the meeting, Qari Azmatullah was made Wali’s naib (deputy).
Forty-year-old Wali hails from Gorgoray area of Sararogha tehsil and belongs to Mechikhel, a sub-clan of the Mehsud tribe.
He was a seminary student and remained a qazi (judge) of Sharia court established by the founder chief of TTP, Baitullah Mehsud. The sources said Wali had taken part in attacks in Wazoo and Afghanistan.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[11 views]
Top|| File under: TTP
[ALMASDARNEWS] For the second night in a row, the Russian Aerospace Forces have been launching powerful Arclight airstrikes over the Hama and Idlib governorates.
According to a military report from Hama, the Russian Aerospace Forces began the night by conducting several airstrikes over the northern countryside of the Idlib Governorate.
These airstrikes were concentrated on the Taftanaz Military Airport area, with at least two bombs actually hitting the installation itself.
What’s interesting about the Russian bombing of the Taftanaz Airport tonight is that the Ottoman Turkish Army visited this military installation on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, ...back at the abandoned silver mine, there was another kaboom... in southern Idlib, the Russian Aerospace Forces launched several airstrikes over the town of Khan Sheikhoun in a bid to obstruct the jihadist supply route to northern Hama.
The Russian Aerospace Forces would then bombard northern Hama, striking the Jaish al-’Izza controlled towns of al-Lataminah and Kafr Zita.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under: Sublime Porte
[DAWN] Four Frontier Corps ...a provincial paramilitary force. Total manpower is about 80,000. They are tasked to help local law enforcement in the maintenance of law and order, and to carry out border patrol and a..the Antwerp-based Salafist organization that had campaigned to introduce Sharia law to Belgium before single-handedly making Belgium the highest per capita supplier of jihadis to Syria in Europe. There was a big trial in Antwerp in 2015, but most of those convicted were in absentia...nti-smuggling operations.... (FC) personnel bit the dust when unknown assailants shot up their vehicle in Quetta on Wednesday, DawnNews reported.
Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Quetta Razzaq Cheema said the security personnel were on routine patrol when attacked by miscreants in Dukkani Baba area of Sariab Road.
Police and personnel of other law enforcement agencies reached the spot as investigation into the incident went under way. Security was tightened in the area to apprehend the culprits involved in attack while the bodies have been shifted to Civil Hospital Quetta.
Police termed the incident as another act of assassination in the city.
The AFP reported that the Tehrik-e-Taliban ...Arabic for students... Pakistain (TTP) grabbed credit of the attack. Funeral prayers of the dear departed were held at FC Headquarters in the city.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[DAWN] A Senate special committee on Wednesday asked the Foreign Office (FO) to approach the German Embassy in Islamabad to extradite Pakistain International Airlines' (PIA) former CEO Bernd Hildenbrand for his alleged involvement in the unauthorised renting and subsequent sale of an Airbus-310 belonging to the national carrier last year.
Hildenbrand and retired Air Commodore Imran Akhtar (brother of former director general of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Rizwan Akhtar) are under investigation in Pakistain ‐ the former for reportedly having flown the said Airbus to Germany and the latter for selling the same for the price of scrap in Germany.
A German national, Hildenbrand had his name on the Exit Control List but was still allowed to leave the country for a month in June 2017 on the intercession of the German Embassy.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[ALMASDARNEWS] The so-called Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) kicked off a new offensive in the southern suburbs of Damascus on Tuesday, targeting Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham ’s positions in the strategic Yarmouk Camp District.
ISIS began the offensive by storming Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s positions along Haifa Street; this would result in a short, but violent battle.
The Islamic State assault would ultimately prove too much for the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham fighters, as the latter retreated from all the buildings they controlled along Haifa Street.
As a result of this advance, the Islamic State now controls most of the Yarmouk Camp, leaving only the northern axis of the district still rebel-held.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
#1
War is expensive. Where are the supplies and ammo coming from?
Posted by: B. White5295 ||
02/15/2018 16:56
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Whoever has the money to gain control of the oil wells via proxy Islamic forces.
[ALMASDARNEWS] The rebel force in northern Hama fired several missiles at one of Syria’s most important power plants tonight, resulting in a number of powerful kabooms that could be heard throughout the government and rebel held towns in the area.
According to a local NDF source, the Salafist tough guys scored several direct hits on the Mhardeh Power Plant from their positions in al-Lataminah and Kafr Zita.
As a result of this attack, the Mhardeh Power Plant was badly damaged, leaving millions of Syrians without power along the coast.
In particular, the Mhardeh Power Plant feeds electricity to millions of Syrians living in the densely populated provinces of Hama, Tartous and Latakia.
Repair units have been unable to reach the Mhardeh Power Plant because of the ongoing missile strikes around the predominately Christian town of Mhardeh.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[11 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
#2
Mhardeh is not a small facility. ~700-MW Gas-Fired Steam Turbine Russkie design. Five 150MW turbines (de-rated) and it looks like the 'Rebels' took one completely out.
If one turbine fails (in this case catastrophically), the other ones would shut down by design.
Looks like they now have the other four up and running, though.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
02/15/2018 11:21
Comments ||
Top||
[IsraelTimes] Security forces on Wednesday foiled an attempt to smuggle a number of pipe bombs into the Samaria Military Court ‐ the second such incident in as many days at the West Bank facility.
A Border Police guard in charge of security checks at the entrance to the courthouse noticed three Paleostinians acting suspiciously outside, the Israel Police said in a statement.
The guard approached them and, after noticing that one of the suspects was holding what appeared to be a pipe bomb, aimed his weapon at the group while calling for backup. The officer also demanded that they remove their clothes, a standard procedure when security forces fear a suspect may be carrying a concealed bomb or weapon.
Another of the suspects was holding a plastic bag that security guards suspected contained at least one pipe bomb, the statement continued. The suspect threw the bag to the side, and a subsequent search revealed that he was carrying at least another two pipe bombs.
The incident was still ongoing in the early afternoon, police said, with the three suspects still at the scene while security forces waited for sappers to neutralize the suspected improvised bombs.
On Tuesday a Paleostinian man was stopped as he tried to smuggle a pipe bomb packed with metal shards from knives into the same courthouse.
The Samaria Military Court has been targeted several times in the past few months by Paleostinians carrying pipe bombs.
[Ynet] IDF forces, in conjunction with Border Police, police and Shin Bet forces, jugged Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'! 18 people in the West Bank on suspicion of involvement in terrorism and violent riots.
In addition, raids in the area turned up weapons, thousands of shekels in terror funds and a vehicle worth dozens of thousands of shekels.
Deacon Blues, the article updated after you’d submitted it; this is the latest before the midnight rollover. Thank you for getting us started.
[NBCMiami] The suspect was identified as 19-year-old former student, Nikolas Cruz.
A former student opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at a Florida high school Wednesday, killing at least 17 people and sending hundreds of students fleeing into the streets in the nation's deadliest school shooting since a gunman attacked an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.
The shooter, who was equipped with a gas mask and smoke grenades, set off a fire alarm to draw students out of classrooms shortly before the day ended at one of the state's largest schools, officials said.
Authorities offered no immediate details on the 19-year-old suspect or any possible motive, except to say that he had been kicked out of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which has about 3,000 students.
Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said the suspect was expelled from the school "for disciplinary reasons," and that Cruz had an AR-15 and multiple magazines in his possession.
Tweleve of the victims were found dead inside the school. One of the victims have been identified as the school's football coach, Israel said.
The Sheriff said they've begun to investigate the suspect's social media and described it as "very disturbing."
He called the shooting a "horrific, homicidal and detestable act."
Psychopath, paranoid schizophrenic, bipolar, bad reaction to antidepressants, gang initiation, Sudden Jihad Syndrome? No doubt it will be revealed.
We've somehow created a generation of teenage monsters. Perhaps it has something to do with the electronic boxes and games. If we are still worthy of being saved, God rescue us from this terrible curse.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I blame 'justice delayed.'
Now if the perpetrators knew they'd get swift (5 days or less) very painful public justice involving harsh chemicals, fire, insects, and or impalement, culminating in prolonged, certain death......
Of course you'd have the odd one or two suicidal maniac, but the penalty might give others pause.
Heinous acts call for heinous measures. Somehow it must stop !
#4
This boy’s problems started a long time ago.
Easier to push victims of abandonment thru a poorly run system into the future than address the psychosocial issue immediately.
#12
The DSM-V does not recognize or offer diagnosis of psychosis in adolescents.
We've had enough cases of marginalized children and young people, bullied or ostracized, abused by parents, siblings or family, that eventually commit horrific crimes. The entire paradigm of diagnosis is flawed. The fact that all of these factors lead to similar conclusions in the progression have been proven time after time and both law enforcement and the mental health community refuse to go there with anything meaningful in the way of treatment and or identification.
I can tell you from the pictures, the boy is a fair skinned red head. The term red headed step child is operative here. If he were adopted by Hispanic parents and living in a Hispanic community, the taunting and verbal abuse of a red head could be horrific.
I can speak of this, I had some nasty moments in elementary school because I was a red head. I developed a nasty right cross and a good jab, other than a few trips to the principle, I put an end to that crap when I stood up for myself.
Now schools won't let kids stand up for themselves and condone the bully. In fact, teachers are the worst bullies in a school setting.
The kid was on a path to this for a long time and no one helped or cared. Intervention could have helped him and saved lives but...
#13
There are hints of Autism in stories, don't know if that's true or not. Too much swirl of smoke right now
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/15/2018 10:47
Comments ||
Top||
#14
I'm pretty sure some day they'll determine that anti-depressants and other drugs have a 1% chance of causing this type of behavior and that if the doctors that prescribe the drugs do not keep a very close watch and moderate dosage you end up with a monster.
I read a blog of a woman who started taking such drugs and seriously started planning all sorts of crazy stuff until she realized something was seriously wrong and told all to her psychiatrist. It was chilling and I can imagine for a teen it might be easier to slip into that sort of state.
#16
Ref #15: Blinding flash here, but there is an extremely high incidence of alcoholism in Russia. Parents wishing to adopt Russian children are generally advised of potential difficulties and outcomes.
Sorry, but as long as the ACLU keeps His commandments of Love, Honor, Respect and You Will Not Murder out of our schools or children will do just the opposite.
#18
The Daily Mail updated as of 8 a.m. ET. With lots of photos. Sorry it’s not properly, but I’m rushing out the door.
REVEALED: Expelled gunman in gas mask and armed with smoke grenades 'SET OFF fire alarm so he could draw students into halls for maximum devastation' before shooting dead 17 people
Former student Nikolas Cruz, 19, opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida
Broward Sheriff Scott Israel confirmed that 17 people had been killed and dozens more were injured
Cruz was armed with at least one AR-15 rifle and had 'multiple magazines' when he stormed the school
Investigators are now looking into whether Cruz may have pulled the fire alarm to draw people into halls
The teenager had been expelled from the school last year for unknown 'disciplinary reasons'
Police say the shooter managed to evade police by fleeing the school with hundreds of terrified students
He was tracked down in a nearby neighborhood after authorities reviewed surveillance footage
Traumatized students said that once they heard reports of a mass shooting at the school they knew it would be Cruz, while one teacher said he had been identified as a potential threat to his classmates last year
Some students barricaded themselves inside their classrooms while others were seen sprinting away from the school as police and SWAT teams swarmed the building
A student who claims to know Cruz said the suspected gunman was a 'troubled kid' and obsessed with guns
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri Second son of Rafik Hariri, the Leb PM who was assassinated in 2005. He has was prime minister in his own right from 2009 through early 2011. He was born in Riyadh to an Iraqi mother and graduated from Georgetown University. He managed his father's business interests in Riyadh until his father's assassination. When his father died he inherited a fortune of some $4.1 billion, which won't do him much good if Hizbullah ...Party of God, a Leb militia inspired, founded, funded and directed by Iran. Hizbullah refers to itself as The Resistance and purports to defend Leb against Israel, with whom it has started and lost one disastrous war to date, though it did claim victory... has him bumped off, too. ruled out entering government with the political wing of Hezbollah, at a political rally in Beirut on Wednesday.
"We refuse any alliance with Hezbollah," Hariri told supporters of his Future Movement party seated in the auditorium of the Beit international hall.
The prime minister was attending a ceremony commemorating the 13th anniversary of his father’s liquidation.
Rafic Hariri, also a former Lebanese prime minister, and 21 others were killed in a massive kaboom outside the St. George Hotel in Beirut in 2005.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under: Hezbollah
Getting back to normal: kittens stuck in trees and little ones stuck in soup pots.
[Iraq News] Iraqi rescue teams have managed to release a toddler in Kirkuk province from entrapment inside a small cooking container, Alsumaria News reported on Wednesday. "Here, dearie! There's tasty things waiting for you in the oven! Have a look!"
"Hansel! Don't do it! It's not an oven! It's a pressure cooker!"
His father made a rescue call to Iraqi civil defense teams to pull out the child from a concave, deep cooking container, Qais Abdel-Razek, a spokesman of civil defense service, told the network.
The kid was in a good condition, he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
[DAWN] The Supreme Court wondered on Wednesday whether a person ineligible to become a member of the National Assembly could be chosen to head a political party.
A three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar was hearing a set of petitions challenging the Elections Act 2017, filed by Pakistain Tehrik-e-Insaf ...a political party in Pakistan. PTI was founded by former Pakistani cricket captain and philanthropist Imran Khan. The party's slogan is Justice, Humanity and Self Esteem, each of which is open to widely divergent interpretations.... chief Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who is the lightweight's lightweight... , Awami Moslem League chief Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, the Pakistain Peoples Party and 10 others.
"Can a thief or member of a drug mafia [also] become the head of a party?" the bench asked, as it deliberated a number of points regarding the eligibility of a person to hold a party's top office.
Justice Ijazul Ahsan wondered how a person disqualified by the court over not being sadiq (truthful) and ameen (righteous) and who could not be elected as a member of parliament become a party's head.
But Advocate Salman Akram Raja, who was representing the PML-N, argued that while a person disqualified under Article 62(1)(f) could not be elected to the parliament, the Constitution of the country imposes no bar on such a person to lead a party.
"Do all the basic rights of a disqualified person as a human end with a disqualification?" Raja asked. He asked whether such a person also loses the right to organise and the right to freedom of expression.
"All the rights of such a person remain intact but they cannot become the head [of a party]," remarked Justice Ahsan, to which Raja said that members of a political party could not be prohibited from choosing a party leader of their choice under Articles 17 and 19 of the Constitution.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[10 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[Dhaka Tribune] Hackers from North Korea pulled off one of the biggest cyber heists in history when they stole $81 million from Bangladesh’s central bank, America’s top spymaster told politicians on Tuesday.
National Intelligence Director Dan Coats told Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that North Korea poses a major threat to cybersecurity globally and the US in particular.
Criminals from the hermit state developed and launched the WannaCry ransomware in May 2017, judging from technical links to previously identified North Korean cyber tools, tradecraft, and operational infrastructure, he said.
"We also assess that these actors conducted the cyber theft of $81 million from the Bangladesh Bank in 2016," Coats said when testifying on the assessment of the intelligence committee on worldwide threats.
Hackers broke into Bangladesh Bank computers and issued fake payment orders tricking the Federal Reserve Bank of New York into paying out $101 million to accounts in Sri Lanka and the Philippines.
Bangladesh has managed to recover parts of the money. Its central bank says it will sue Manila-based Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation from where the money disappeared.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
[BALTIMORESUN] Baltimore City Council committee voted Tuesday morning to support a bill that would bar restaurants from including sodas and other sugary drinks in kids meals, a move supporters say could improve children’s health. Ofergawdsake, how did any of us ever reach adultery without this kind of politicians looking out for us?
Under the proposed measure, city restaurants would be required to offer water, milk or real fruit juice on children’s menus. They would still be allowed to serve soda to children if accompanying adults order it.
An advocacy group called Sugar Free Kids said the measure could help reduce the amount of sugar in childrens’ diets.
"They’re drinking way too much sugar," said Shawn McIntosh, the group’s director. Encouraging children to pick healthy drinks while eating out could lead to them choosing the same refreshments at home.
But McIntosh acknowledged that the measure would be "baby steps toward changing the culture."
The full council will consider the bill later this month.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[10 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Why not outlaw desserts as well? I guarantee there's a lot more sugar in a slice of carrot cake than there is in a can of Pepsi.
#4
It's good to see that Baltimore is finally addressing the important issues rather than getting sidetracked by unimportant distractions like an incompetent mayor and corrupt police department... oh yeah and the Ravens
#6
I blame the sugar. Gives'em the jitters. Impairs proper sight picture and alignment. Also plays hell with magazine reloading. Banning the dreadful soda is the least we can do.
[DAWN] The 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.... government has started the process of taking over seminaries and health facilities run by Jamaat-ud-Dawa ...the front organization of Lashkar-e-Taiba... (JuD) in Rawalpindi as it has taken control of the Hudabia Madressah on Chakra Road and asked the Auqaf department to assume its administration.
The district administration has also taken control of four dispensaries run by the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF) ‐ the charity wing of JuD ‐ located on Chakra Road, Naseerabad, and adjoining areas of the city.
The federal government has barred companies and individuals from giving donations to JuD, FIF and other organizations on the United Nations ...an organization originally established to war on dictatorships which was promptly infiltrated by dictatorships and is now held in thrall to dictatorships... Security Council (UNSC) sanctions list.
Last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistain issued a notification to all companies, prohibiting them from donating money to the entities and individuals listed under the UNSC sanctions committee’s consolidated list.
The UNSC sanctions list includes the names of Al Qaeda, the Tehrik-e-Taliban ...Arabic for students... Pakistain, 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 ...
, JuD, FIF and Lashkar-e-Taiba ...the Army of the Pure, an Ahl-e-Hadith terror organization founded by Hafiz Saeed. LeT masquerades behind the Jamaat-ud-Dawa facade within Pakistain and periodically blows things up and kills people in India. Despite the fact that it is banned, always an interesting concept in Pakistain, the organization remains an blatant tool and perhaps an arm of the ISI... After this, the Punjab government started the process of taking control of the seminaries and health facilities run by JuD and FIF in the province. Last Friday, the provincial government directed the Auqaf department to take control of the seminaries.
"The provincial government handed over a list of four seminaries in Rawalpindi to the district administration. The district administration teams have visited the seminaries but JuD has denied any link with the madressahs," said a bigwig of the district administration while talking to Dawn.
However, death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate... he said, the government had taken control of Madressah Hudabia ‐ which comprised a college, a school and a seminary ‐ and started conducting an audit of its finances to check details of the funding and the expenditures.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under: Lashkar e-Taiba
[Beyond Socrates' Knee] Earlier this week, US Advisors with their Kurdish allies repelled an attack on their base in Western Syria near Deir Ezzor. According to US official sources, the group was a "battalion size" movement that included up to 200+ Russian "mercenaries" with an organization called Wagner Group. The US associated forces called in air and artillery support decimating the forces and turning the attack back.
[SABANEWS.NET] The army and popular forces have waged military operations on Saudi army and its mercenaries' gatherings and sites, Killing and wounding dozens over Tuesday, according to army media reports combined by Saba News Agency on Wednesday.
In the border province of Jizan, artillery force of the army and committees shelled Saudi soldiers and mercenaries' gatherings in Faridha, Moanaq and Kars sites.
Also in Jizan, Saudi soldiers' military vehicle was bombed by an bomb in Bojan site, killing all its crew.
In Najran border province, gatherings of Saudi soldiers were targeted by artillery shells in front of Khadhra crossing, Shurfah and Shabakah sites.
In Saudi border province of Asir, dozens of Saudi-paid mercenaries and soldiers were killed and maimed during repelling their intensified advance into Alab area which continued from Tuesday night until Wednesday morning under the cover of air from Apache helicopters, warplanes and reconnaissance.
Also in Asir, missile bombardment targeted mercenaries' gatherings in customs, Hanjer censorship, Fill-Shaibani, Khazan and Qanasin hills.
In Taiz province, a surprise offensive operation was carried out on mercenaries' sites in Mafalis area of Haifan district, destroying weapon and killing and wounding dozens.
In western coast front, military vehicle of mercenaries was destroyed by an bomb, killing and wounding all its crew, while gatherings of aggression force and military vehicles were shelled by artillery, leding to the deaths and injuries in their ranks.
In Nehm district, an offensive operation was waged on sites of mercenaries in Qarn area, killing and wounding dozens.
In Marib province, an infiltration attempt was foiled into Fatem mountain of Harib-Qaramish district, leding to the deaths and injuries in their ranks.
In Hajjah province, the army and committees repelled mercenaries' infiltration toward Medi desert, although heavy air cover, inflicting heavy losses on enemy.
Dozens of the Sudanese mercenaries were killed and maimed after they failed to achieve any progress in Medi
Also in Medi, the warplanes launched more than 30 strikes and 100 rockets was waged by Apache.
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... province of Jawf, the army and popular forces destroyed Saudi-paid mercenaries' military vehicle by an bomb in Utemah front, killing all its crew.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: Houthis
[Al Jazeera] An elite South African police unit has raided a home of the influential Gupta family in Johannesburg as part of an investigation into corruption and influence peddling with the government.
Wednesday's raid in the northern suburb Saxonworld comes as the country waits to see if President Jacob Zuma would resign after being asked to do so by the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party.
The Gupta family, an Indian-born South African business family, is central to the corruption allegations pitted against Zuma.
It is alleged that the president gave the family undue access to sensitive state information, government contracts, as well as a role in hiring and firing of cabinet ministers.
These accusations became known in local parlance as "state capture".
Zuma's presidency has been characterised by allegations of corruption and racketeering in a tenure that has tested both the resolve of the ANC and government to hold its own to account.
Both Zuma and the Guptas have denied any wrongdoing. "No, no! Certainly not!"
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
[DAWN] The federal government wanted a de novo trial of Axact
...the secretive Pakistani software company accused of taking hundreds of millions of dollars from scams involving fake degrees, non-existent online universities and manipulation of customers across 197 countries...
chief executive officer Shoaib Ahmed Sheikh and other members of the company in the fake degree case.
This was stated by Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Raja Khalid Mehmood Khan during the hearing of the appeal filed by Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) against the acquittal of Mr Sheikh before a division bench of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) headed by Justice Athar Minallah.
When the bench resumed the hearing of the FIA’s appeal on Tuesday, the DAG requested the court to remand this case back for a re-trial.
This article starring:
Axact
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
Kuwait (IraqiNews.com) Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi has said that Iraq has five million internally displaced persons, in addition to refugees from Syria. More than half of them were repatriated.
During his speech at the Kuwait International Conference for the Reconstruction of Iraq on Wednesday, Abadi said, “there are more than five million internally displaced persons in Iraq. There are also refugees from Syria. The government managed to repatriate more than half of them at their regions.”
Earlier today, the Migration and Displacement Ministry said three million refugees were returned back to their liberated regions in provinces of Anbar, Salahuddin and Nineveh except for Mosul’s Old City as most of the houses were destroyed during the offensives.
Kuwait (Iraqinews.com) – Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah has pledged $1 billion in loans and $1 billion in direct investments to help rebuild Iraq, KUNA reported.
The Kuwaiti emir made the pledge during the official inauguration of the Kuwait International Conference for the Reconstruction of Iraq (KICRI) on Wednesday.
The $2 billion will be channeled into reconstructing and rebuilding Iraq, which announced victory over the Islamic State group last December.
The Kuwait International Conference for the Reconstruction of Iraq kicked off Monday with the participation of several donor countries and a group of regional and international institutions.
The gathering aims at garnering necessary support for the reconstruction of Iraq following a great victory achieved over Islamic State group.
The three-day conference is co-chaired by the European Union, Iraq, Kuwait, the United Nations and the World Bank.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) The European Union plans to earmark 300 million euros for the support of development projects in Iraq, the Iraqi ambassador to Brussels was quoted saying.
Speaking to state-run newspaper al-Sabaah, Jawad al-Hindawi said EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, will declare Wednesday “a strategic support for Iraq worth 300 million euros”.
She will make the announcement during her address before the Iraqi reconstruction donors conference hosted by Kuwait, he explained.
Hindawi explained that the package had been approved by the European Commission and the foreign policy council, but is awaiting approval from the European Parliament.
The ambassador said an estimated USD1 billion could be added to that number for the next three years.
Hindawi added that the expected EU package is separate from what is to be provided by each European country individually.
Since 2015, Hindawi said, the European Union provided Iraq with 575 million euros for development, humanitarian, security and political assistance.
At least 70 countries are taking part in the conference through which Iraq hopes to rehabilitate its war-ravaged economy and infrastructure with at least USD100 billion.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) The United States and Iraq signed on Tuesday a memorandum by which the latter receives USD3 billion in financial aid for transportation and other reconstruction-related projects.
The declaration, quoted by Sputnik news agency, was made by U.S. State Secretary Rex Tillerson during a conference of donors to Iraq reconstruction which began in Kuwait on Monday.
Tillerson said the memo, signed by U.S. bank Exim and the Iraqi finance ministry, provides for USD3 billion for transport and other projects in Iraq.
He said U.S. firms had previously signed a deal worth USD2 billion for the Iraqi electricity sector, adding that another project worth USD350 million would see works starting soon.
Kuwait (Iraqinews.com) – U.S. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson has pledged another $200 million to restore security in Iraq and Syria following the defeat of Islamic State there.
Speaking at an anti-Islamic State coalition ministerial meeting, which kicked off in Kuwait early on Tuesday, Tillerson stressed the importance of providing necessary support for attaining stability in the two countries.
So far, 95 percent of Iraqi and Syrian territories have been liberated from the Islamic State group, Baghdad Today news website quoted the top U.S. diplomat as saying.
He also stressed his country’s support for efforts exerted by the U.S.-led anti-IS international coalition to support Iraq’s stability and reconstruction.
Tillerson further warned that IS might turn into a rebel movement in Libya, Afghanistan and the Philippines.
The meeting involving the 74-member alliance is part of efforts to up the fight against terrorism and examine a strategy the coalition has concocted in its battle against IS.
It will be divided into two sessions, with the first tackling the fight against IS and the second examining anti-terrorism efforts.
The meeting is also part of a series of international conferences that took place in order to build a formal coalition to destroy the IS, which had taken over large portions of Syria and Iraq in 2014.
Kuwait (Iraqinews.com) – French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian stressed on Wednesday that the reconstruction plan of Iraq should cover all Iraqi provinces and regions, notably the Kurdistan Region.
According to Basnews website, Le Drian called on donor countries taking part in the Kuwait International Conference for the Reconstruction of Iraq (KICRI) to incorporate the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region in the reconstruction plan of Iraq, saying that Erbil has made great sacrifices and shouldered a heavy burden over the past period.
He also stressed the importance of ending a dispute between Baghdad and Erbil, which erupted following a referendum the Kurdistan Region held in September for independence from Iraq.
Le Drian pointed out that it is the time now to reconstruct all villages, towns and regions that were targeted by the Islamic State group or remained marginalized throughout the Iraqi history.
Sulaimaniyah (IraqiNews.com) Kurdistan Region’s Sulaimaniyah Airport has denied reports that the central government in Baghdad had partially lifted an embargo it had it had imposed on flights to and from the facility.
In a statement on Tuesday, the airport’s press service said it had not yet received any response from the Iraqi government regarding the lifting of the embargo.
Some media outlets had circulated a government bulletin telling that Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had approved flight exceptions for Kurds eager to perform Islamic “Umra” pilgrimage (performed in the holy lands in Saudi Arabia).
The Baghdad-based Iraqi government had imposed an embargo on flights on Kurdistan’s Sulaimaniyah and Erbil airports following a vote for independence the autonomous region’s government ran in September, which Baghdad deemed illegal.
Recent reports have pointed to imminent talks between both governments to resolve pending disputes over the administration of the region’s airports as well as other contentious subjects.
As part of talks to end the crisis, Baghdad has asked to hand over management of the airports to its central aviation authorities.
In January, Shafaq News quoted Taher Abdullah, Sulaimaniyah Airport chief, saying that passengers numbers at the terminal declined by 86% after the embargo. He said that the airport had used to record the arrival of 50.000 per month before the embargo, which declined after the measure to 6000-7000 per month.
[EMGN] Tanja Brandt is a German photographer who has dedicated her career towards photographing animals and wildlife. In one of her most recent projects, Brandt shot photographs of a highly unlikely pair of friends ‐ Ingo, the Belgian shepherd; and Poldi (Napoleon), the one-year-old owlet.
[DAWN] MOBS do many things in Pakistain: they harass women, they burn down buildings, they torch cars; they are guilty of devastating Gojra, of tearing the bodies of Muneeb and Mughees Butt to pieces, cheering the killer of a governor, mourning the death of a dictator. They are guilty also of the murder of a man named Mashal Khan. For anyone who needs to refresh their memory of the horror, in the parade of horrors that ticks by on news channels every day, he was the man killed by a mob after being dragged out of his hostel room at Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan.
Mashal Khan was a student of mass communications; but to his murderers he was merely a target of vengeance and hatred, all the poison of intolerance cast on a single body. Such was the level of brutality that the mob continued beating him long after he was dead. Weeks later it turned out that university officials had conspired with students who disagreed with Mashal Khan’s liberal views and orchestrated the attack. A number of them were suspended from their positions as the investigation proceeded. The student who ultimately shot Mashal Khan was also identified.
Mashal Khan was murdered last April, and last week there was the beginning of accountability for the murderers who take refuge in mobs. On Feb 7, an ATC judge announced the verdict in the Mashal Khan case at Central Jail Haripur. Per the verdict, one man was sentenced to death, five were given life sentences, and 25 other men, all accused in the case, were sentenced to three-year imprisonment. Twenty-six of the 57 men accused of the crime were acquitted. According to the judgement, there was not enough conclusive evidence that the 26 men who were set free had committed any overt act in the killing of Mashal Khan ‐ although it appeared that they were identified in the video of the lynching.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[11 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[ALMASDARNEWS] 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... , in an indication that it is serious about shaving off the sharp edges of its Sunni Moslem ultra-conservatism, has agreed to surrender control of the Great Mosque in Brussels.
The decision follows mounting Belgian criticism of alleged intolerance and supremacism that was being propagated by the mosque’s Saudi administrators as well as social reforms in the kingdom introduced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ...Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia as of 2016.... , including a lifting of the ban on women’s driving, the granting of women’s access to male sporting events and introduction of modern forms of entertainment.
Relinquishing control of the mosque reportedly strokes with a Saudi plan to curtail support for foreign mosques and religious and cultural institutions that have been blamed for sprouting radicalism. With few details of the plan known, it remains unclear what the curtailing entails.
It also remains unclear what effect it would have. A report published last month by the Royal Danish Defence College and three Pak think tanks concluded that madrassas or religious seminaries in Pakistain, a hotbed of holy warrior religious education, were no longer dependent on foreign funding. It said that foreign funding accounted for a mere seven percent of the income of madrassas in the country.
Like with Prince Mohammed’s vow last November to return Saudi Arabia to an undefined "moderate" form of Islam, its too early to tell what the Brussels decision and the social reforms mean beyond trying to improve the kingdom’s tarnished image and preparing it for a beyond-oil, 21st century economic and social existence.
The decision would at first glance seem to be primarily a public relations move and an effort to avoid rattling relations with Belgium and the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... given that the Brussels mosque is the exception that confirms the rule. It is one of a relatively small number of Saudi-funded religious, educational and cultural institutions that was managed by the kingdom.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Saudi Arabia
[Iraq News] Confrontations have occurred between the shia-led paramilitary troops and the Iraqi army in the western side of djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... , an informed security source was quoted saying on Wednesday.
Speaking to Shafaq News, the source said that shootout took place after festivities with Sayyid al-Shuhadaa brigades, which works under the umbrella of al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces), at the entrance of the fourth bridge in west Mosul, which left a soldier maimed.
"Troops of the same brigade tossed in the calaboose Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! four police conscripts at the entrance of al-Tayaran district, south of Mosul," the source, who preferred anonymity, added.
The forces, according to the source, "arrested the police personnel while being on duty at a checkpoint in the district."
PMFs, an alliance of more than 60 mostly Shia militias, have been actively engaged in the government’s campaign that ran since October 2016 against the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... , which declared a self-styled "caliphate" from Mosul in June 2014. The troops contributed to the campaign by regaining control over IS holdouts near the Syrian borders. It is considered one of the largest militias in Iraq. It was established in 2014 by a fatwa (religious edict) to fight the Islamic State.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran Proxies
#1
Sunni/Shia friendship events
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/15/2018 13:20
Comments ||
Top||
[DAWN] A MUCH delayed legislative intervention, though only in the form of a presidential ordinance, may finally allow Pakistain to align its domestic law with international obligations. Days before an important Financial Action Task Force meeting in Gay Paree ‐ a meeting in which many believe action could be taken against Pakistain for non-compliance with terrorism-financing and money-laundering rules ‐ the government has perhaps acted to forestall punitive action against the country. Therein lies a problem. Has Pakistain done the minimum it needs to prevent punitive action by the international community for allegedly harbouring murderous Moslem groups, or is this the beginning of a genuine attempt to rid Pakistain of all forms of militancy whether externally directed or internally? The timing, on the eve of the meeting, and the method, a presidential ordinance that can be promulgated overnight as opposed to an act of parliament, suggests that the former may be true.
Welcome as the latest move to include UN-designated banned groups in a Pak list of proscribed organizations is ‐ ending the earlier ambiguity ‐ there need to be sustained efforts against all murderous Moslem groups in the country. At every point, there have been and continue to be explanations and unconvincing justifications for Pakistain’s inability to adopt zero tolerance against militancy. Too often, the arguments against a zero-tolerance policy have been embedded in expedient reasons. Sometimes it is that Pakistain is not in a position to absorb a blowback from holy warriors who find themselves suddenly under pressure from the state, at other times the justification offered is that Pakistain does not need to militarily act against groups that have not taken up arms against the Pak state and society. But the quasi-justifications always have the effect of allowing a significant part of the militancy, terrorism and extremism spectrum to continue to proliferate in the country. At some point ‐ arguably, a point that has long since been passed ‐ it is important to have ideological clarity about who are the enemies of peace, stability and constitutional democracy in the country and to fight them with determination and consistency.
The unfortunate reality is that Pakistain appears to have neither the will nor the capacity to stamp out militancy of every stripe and colour ‐ despite persistent official claims to the contrary. Time and again, the state has insisted that Pakistain’s fight against militancy is its own. That is unequivocally and undeniably true. But it makes little sense to claim a fight as necessary to the stability and long-term existence of Pakistain and yet not adopt a zero-tolerance policy against militancy. Pakistain does not and should not need external pressure and cajoling to shut down networks of militancy that are inimical to modern, peaceful societies based on the rule of law. Organisations like the LeT, JeM and affiliated groups ought to have no space in present-day Pakistain.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/15/2018
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistain Proxies
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.
[Townhall] Every place you look in Robert Mueller's investigation, the same names keep popping up: FBI agent Peter Strzok and sleazy, foreign private eye -- or "British intelligence agent" -- Christopher Steele.
[IsraelTimes] Rakhmat Akilov mowed down pedestrians last April, killing 5 and injuring 10; prosecution has demanded a life sentence.jpg)
[DAWN] A man was 
...the 
...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire.
[Washington Examiner] The Air Force on Monday revealed its long-range plan to eventually jettison its supersonic B-1 and stealthy B-2 bombers earlier than planned while keeping the venerable B-52, an aging Cold War workhorse that first flew in 1954 and was last built in 1962, flying into the 2050s.
... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
Somalia's version of the Taliban, functioning as an arm of al-Qaeda...
...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka 
[DAWN] DERA ISMAIL KHAN: The newly-appointed deputy commander of the Tehrik-e-
[DAWN] A Senate special committee on Wednesday asked the Foreign Office (FO) to approach the German Embassy in Islamabad to extradite Pakistain International Airlines' (PIA) former CEO Bernd Hildenbrand for his alleged involvement in the unauthorised renting and subsequent sale of an Airbus-310 belonging to the national carrier last year.
Second son of Rafik Hariri, the Leb PM who was assassinated in 2005. He has was prime minister in his own right from 2009 through early 2011. He was born in Riyadh to an Iraqi mother and graduated from Georgetown University. He managed his father's business interests in Riyadh until his father's assassination. When his father died he inherited a fortune of some $4.1 billion, which won't do him much good if 
North Korea
[SABANEWS.NET] The army and popular forces have waged military operations on Saudi army and its mercenaries' gatherings and sites, Killing and wounding dozens over Tuesday, according to army media reports combined by Saba News Agency on Wednesday.
[DAWN] The federal government wanted a de novo trial of 
[DAWN] MOBS do many things in Pakistain: they harass women, they burn down buildings, they torch cars; they are guilty of devastating Gojra, of tearing the bodies of Muneeb and Mughees Butt to pieces, cheering the killer of a governor, mourning the death of a dictator. They are guilty also of the murder of a man named Mashal Khan. For anyone who needs to refresh their memory of the horror, in the parade of horrors that ticks by on news channels every day, he was the man killed by a mob after being dragged out of his hostel room at Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan.
Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia as of 2016....
[Iraq News] Confrontations have occurred between the shia-led paramilitary troops and the Iraqi army in the western side of 
[DAWN] A MUCH delayed legislative intervention, though only in the form of a presidential ordinance, may finally allow Pakistain to align its domestic law with international obligations. Days before an important Financial Action Task Force meeting in 
