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Today: 61 articles and 167 comments as of 19:06.
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Area: WoT Operations    WoT Background    Non-WoT        Politix   
Crowd storms US Embassy compound in Baghdad
Today's Headlines
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Page 1: WoT Operations
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Page 2: WoT Background
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Page 3: Non-WoT
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10 18:49 ruprecht [10]
2 10:34 Thing From Snowy Mountain [7]
3 14:32 Herb McCoy [4]
3 07:08 g(r)omgoru [13]
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Page 6: Politix
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15 23:55 James [13]
14 14:45 trailing wife [9]
11 23:06 Besoeker [5]
8 13:53 JohnQC [11]
-Short Attention Span Theater-
Town Hall predictions for the new year!
Hit the link. A hat tip for finding this to an old Rantburg repair guy in Oklahoma
Kurt Schlichter has things to say.

Posted by: 3dc || 12/31/2019 00:54 || Comments || Link || [5 views] Top|| File under:


-Land of the Free
The mass murder that didn't happen because Texans are smarter than New Yorkers, Californians and progressives everywhere
[The American Thinker] In the fantasy world inhabited by progressives, passing laws to restrict gun ownership and the carrying of firearms prevents violence. The precise opposite is the truth, as demonstrated convincingly by John Lott, whose research led him to change his position on gun control once he discovered the facts. His book More Guns Less Crime is required reading for anyone who wants to be honest about preventing the death of innocent Americans.

Yet the two coastal states that regard themselves as smarter and more sophisticated than the denizens of flyover country refuse to acknowledge this truth and maintains laws the restrict or even prohibit gun ownership and the bearing of arms in public places.

Worshippers in a suburb of Fort Worth, Texas heroically demonstrated the wisdom of our Founders and the superiority of Texas-style governance yesterday when an attempt was made to slaughter a large number of people at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement (can you imagine a pair of names more likely to elicit scorn from elitists?). Armed parishioners fought back and shot the gunman dead before he was able to slaughter more than two of them. NBCDFW reports:

Two parishioners and the gunman are dead after a shooting at a White Settlement church Sunday, officials say.

The shooting was reported at about 11 a.m. at the West Freeway Church of Christ in the 1900 block of South Las Vegas Trail.

During the service, a man went in and fired a weapon. Two church members, who were members of the parish's security team, returned fire and killed the shooter, who was pronounced dead at the scene, White Settlement Police Chief J.P. Bevering said.

You can watch the attack take place and be quelled here:
Posted by: Besoeker || 12/31/2019 00:22 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Yah, well maybe better practiced and prepared.
Posted by: Skidmark || 12/31/2019 9:46 Comments || Top||



#4  Praise the Lord and Pass the ammunition.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 12/31/2019 11:22 Comments || Top||

#5  If they'd been really smart, the perp would have been incarcerated for drug and vagrancy violations before he could get hold of a gun.
Posted by: Abu Uluque || 12/31/2019 12:54 Comments || Top||

#6  The victory of regular folks over criminality, a silver lining in the dark cloud of a church attack. May God comfort the bereaved families.
Posted by: Dron66046 || 12/31/2019 13:49 Comments || Top||


Afghanistan
Taliban unbound?
[DAWN] AFTER having fought a flawed war in Afghanistan for 18 years ‐ termed by scholars Samuel Moyn and Stephen Wertheim as "the infinity war" ‐ the US is now looking for a flawed peace. The ongoing US-Afghan Taliban
...the Pashtun equivalent of men...
talks appear to be less about Afghanistan’s peace than about the end of America’s war.

The prospective deal may lend credibility to Trump’s claim that he has fulfilled his campaign promise to end America’s endless wars, and give the hard boyz a nod of legitimacy. It could also help avoid an immediate meltdown in Afghanistan. But peace will remain elusive. With both Kabul and the Taliban aspiring for full power, a sliver of which each may be willing to share with the other, the conflict is bound to continue.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred || 12/31/2019 00:00 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under: Taliban


Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Review: Judgment in Moscow: Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity by Vladimir Bukovsky
[NYReviewOfBooks] Vladimir Bukovsky, who gained world renown as a leader of the Soviet human rights movement, died of congestive heart failure in Britain on October 27, but his legacy lives on. His book Judgment in Moscow—published in Russian, French, and German more than twenty years ago and now appearing in English for the first time—is an eye-opening account of the ways in which the post-Stalin Communist Party leadership responded to the challenges it faced at home and abroad. Bukovsky expertly analyzes secret documents copied from the Soviet archives to show how the decaying Kremlin regime cynically used coercive psychiatry and incarceration in labor camps to suppress dissent, while pursuing highly effective “active measures” against the West to further its aggressive foreign agenda. The book also tells the story of Bukovsky’s personal struggle against the arbitrary lawlessness of the Soviet system, and later against the Communist bureaucrats and former KGB officials who remained in Boris Yeltsin’s government after the August 1991 coup.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 12/31/2019 00:00 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under: Commies

#1  So not only is it illegal to remove tags from mattresses butt Russian bookers cannot pe e on them either umkay!
Posted by: Chesney Sforza7038 || 12/31/2019 15:21 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Politix
2020 Census Bureau Data: Blue States Projected to Lose Congressional Power in 2022
[Breitbart] A series of blue states are set to lose political power in 2020 for the 2022 midterm elections, newly released data from the Census Bureau suggests.

After years of projections that congressional reapportionment in 2020 would see red states lose political power to blue states that have been inundated with illegal and legal immigration over the last decade, analysis of Census Bureau data predicts that it is blue states that will, in fact, lose congressional seats.

Brookings Institute analysis released to Axios reveals that red or red-leaning swing states like Texas and Florida, for example, are set to gain two to three congressional seats each in the new year. Meanwhile, President Trump-supporting states such as Arizona, Montana, and North Carolina are all expected to gain at least one congressional seat each.
Oh? How utterly fascinating. Do tell us more.


Posted by: Besoeker || 12/31/2019 00:04 || Comments || Link || [6 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Come again?
Posted by: Lex || 12/31/2019 1:33 Comments || Top||

#2  That's assuming that a realistic census takes place?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 12/31/2019 2:31 Comments || Top||

#3  I will do my part to cancel out one illegal alien in the California 2020 census.
Posted by: boomerc || 12/31/2019 4:51 Comments || Top||

#4  Federal court challenges in 4..3..2..
Posted by: Procopius2k || 12/31/2019 11:23 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
Citizenship Amendment Act of India a hope for refugees
[JPost] - Do the non-Muslim minorities of Islamic nations have a right to life? Can those minorities be left to their fates, living as refugees in India from decades and unwilling to return to their homeland? And how many more generations should pay the cost of the political neglect of the past?

These were some of the questions before the Indian government when it decided to introduce the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) 2019. After passing with the majority in both houses of the Indian Parliament, the CAB now turned into the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which reflects that despite routine disagreements and differences overall, an element of sensitivity prevails in Indian politics.
Note. CAA doesn't take anything from Muslims. It simply extends some compassion to the victims of Islam in Indian subcontinent.
...Under the narrow definition of justice and minority, the non-Muslim minorities have been facing religious persecution in some of the Muslim nations for decades. It is a harsh reality of our times that their voices often fail to draw the attention of the global community. Somewhere an urge exists (in parts of mainstream media and academia) that any discussion on minority issues should include the Muslim community, even if the demographic/political realities of a region suggest something else.

India’s Citizenship Act brought new hope to the refugees living in India. The CAA 2019 seeks to grant Indian citizenship to refugees belonging to the six minority communities ‐ Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian ‐ which migrated to India (before December 2014) after facing violent religious persecution in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, three Muslim-majority nations belonging to India’s immediate neighborhood.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 12/31/2019 03:12 || Comments || Link || [7 views] Top|| File under:


Polio mess
[Dawn] THE outgoing year has proved a devastating one for the anti-polio campaign. As 2019 progressed, reports about the number of polio cases and the mismanagement of the campaign itself went from bad to worse. At least 119 cases have been reported so far, making the previous year’s tally of 12 look almost paltry by comparison. What is also unnerving are the reports of the large number of children who were missed in the vaccination drives. Health authorities in Sindh have revealed that out of the 9m children targeted in the recent polio drive earlier in the month, some 297,000 children were not vaccinated against the crippling disease. The highest number of children who were not administered the vaccine were from Larkana division, followed by Hyderabad division, Shaheed Benazirabad and then Mirpurkhas. Though the number of children may not seem that high given the target of 9m, there are reasons why the matter should still be of concern. The first is that polio officials in Sindh had claimed at the conclusion of the immunisation drive that they had achieved ‘101pc coverage’. In fact, this puzzling assertion was not limited to Sindh; even the Ministry of National Health Services claimed that 99pc children under the age of five had been immunised across the country in the latest vaccination drive.

The other reason is the constant emergence of new polio cases from Sindh and KP, even in winter that is usually seen as as the low-transmission season. Immunisation drives carried out in the colder months are important for building up herd immunity in children, which is more difficult to achieve during the summer. The fact that polio cases keep emerging is a sign that immunisation drives carried out earlier in the year may also have missed their intended targets. The battle against polio is long and Pakistan has just begun its struggle anew. Perhaps it is time to review our anti-polio efforts and make them more transparent and credible for the collective benefit of millions of children across the country.
Posted by: trailing wife || 12/31/2019 00:00 || Comments || Link || [11 views] Top|| File under:


Israel-Palestine-Jordan
New year will bring Israel advantage over Iran
[Ynet] Islamic Theocratic Republic has completed its role in Syria, ensuring that Assad's regime survived the civil war, but despite their vital participation in keeping him in power, the Iranians are becoming less welcome in Damascus.

IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi predict that 2020 will bring Israel a high probability of war with Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan, the abbreviation IRGC is a cognate form of Stürmabteilung (or SA), the term Supreme Guide is a cognate form of either Shah or Führer or maybe both, and they hate Jews Zionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
and its proxies on the northern border.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife || 12/31/2019 00:00 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Iran


Science & Technology
Mindfulness training may lower blood pressure (Caution - Coffee Snort Alert)
[Medical News Today] Long believed to be a calming activity, a new study provides evidence of the benefits of mindfulness in reducing high blood pressure.

There is anecdotal evidence that meditation and mindfulness training may be able to reduce high blood pressure and hypertension. However, clinical confirmation of these claims has been scarce until last month, when researchers published a new study in the journal PLOS One.

The authors report the results of a Mindfulness-Based Blood Pressure Reduction (MB-BP) program specifically designed to "evaluate acceptability, feasibility, and effects on hypothesized proximal self-regulation mechanisms."

Participants who enrolled in the MB-BP program experienced significant reductions in blood pressure levels that were still in effect at follow-up examinations 1 year after the trial.

Hypertension is a significant risk factor for heart disease, which is the leading cause of death in the United States and globally. However, doctors can find hypertension challenging to treat.

"We know enough about hypertension that we can theoretically control it in everybody ‐ yet in about half of all people diagnosed, it is still out of control," according to lead author Eric Loucks, associate professor of epidemiology, behavioral and social sciences, and medicine at Brown University in Providence, RI.

Posted by: Besoeker || 12/31/2019 00:00 || Comments || Link || [12 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I'll take "name-calling" for $100
Posted by: Mercutio || 12/31/2019 9:03 Comments || Top||

#2  Now where have I seen that graphic before?
Posted by: Frank G || 12/31/2019 9:05 Comments || Top||

#3 
Posted by: Skidmark || 12/31/2019 10:40 Comments || Top||

#4  Where's the part of the pyramid where you put a can of whip ass on the person f#cking with you and driving up your blood pressure?
Posted by: JohnQC || 12/31/2019 23:02 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
Black anti semitism
back in 1992, Henry Louis Gates had this opinion piece in the NYTimes
While anti-Semitism is generally on the wane in this country, it has been on the rise among black Americans. A recent survey finds not only that blacks are twice as likely as whites to hold anti-Semitic views but -- significantly -- that it is among the younger and more educated blacks that anti-Semitism is most pronounced.

The trend has been deeply disquieting for many black intellectuals. But it is something most of us, as if by unstated agreement, simply choose not to talk about....
Posted by: lord garth || 12/31/2019 00:00 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  In the last two generations "African Americans" been given every possible advantage, yet failed to prosper. In fact, as a group, they're worse off then at the start of "Civil Rights" movement. This generates enormous resentment against whites in general. We seen it in both public statements of African American (pseudo*) intellectuals and actions of the black underclass.
However, whites - as a group - are dangerous. Some push back. Jews don't.


*A peace of parchment doesn't make one an intellectual - at best, it's an acknowledgement of what was already there.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 12/31/2019 2:27 Comments || Top||


#3  It's a tribal thing. Territory. There is only space for one most favored community in America.
Posted by: Dron66046 || 12/31/2019 4:05 Comments || Top||

#4  As long as the Left owns both communities, they have no problem with moving any of them up and down the ladder of hierarchical standing. They get the vote and resources. Divide and conquer.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 12/31/2019 6:36 Comments || Top||

#5  They don't owe the orthodox.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 12/31/2019 7:07 Comments || Top||

#6  the Bureau of Justice Statistics released its 2018 survey of criminal victimization. According to the study, there were 593,598 interracial violent victimizations (excluding homicide) between blacks and whites last year, including white-on-black and black-on-white attacks. Blacks committed 537,204 of those interracial felonies, or 90 percent, and whites committed 56,394 of them, or less than 10 percent. That ratio is becoming more skewed, despite the Democratic claim of Trump-inspired white violence. In 2012-13, blacks committed 85 percent of all interracial victimizations between blacks and whites; whites committed 15 percent. From 2015 to 2018, the total number of white victims and the incidence of white victimization have grown as well.

Blacks are also overrepresented among perpetrators of hate crimes—by 50 percent—according to the most recent Justice Department data from 2017; whites are underrepresented by 24 percent. This is particularly true for anti-gay and anti-Semitic hate crimes.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 12/31/2019 9:21 Comments || Top||

#7  People don't want to talk about this, and without talking about it there's no getting past a dangerous self-emasculation in the war against terror and crime. It is a politically incorrect dialogue after the civil rights movement. But you do have a communal problem. A significant portion of American citizenry actively hates the majority.

Anybody that hates 'white' America and claims to be American is lying. They have a vision for a different nation altogether. They are simply biding their time, increasing their numbers, encroaching on national domains as they go. Anybody like that is anti-American and a potential ally to the enemy. It is very much the same pattern as that of global islamism. Paralyze the prey with guilt and projections of victimhood, appeal to their humanist naivete. Simultaneously stripping them of their means, knowing that your more extremist cousins are exploiting, targeting and harassing them into non-existence or capitulation.

Here's a verbose, 'from-the-heart' piece of class-warfare by a professional, committed wakandan, about America's police culture. It is truly telling, in that it displays the real sentiment and intensity of the angst behind these people's facade of civility. A lot of blaming police and excuses of poverty and frustration, and no apology whatsoever. A 'righteous rage' at a police that should not exist as far as the writer is concerned.
Posted by: Dron66046 || 12/31/2019 13:33 Comments || Top||

#8  Dron,

Per the astute analyst Shelby Steele, they're enabled by white guilt.
Posted by: Lex || 12/31/2019 15:41 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
29[untagged]
7Govt of Iran Proxies
5Taliban
4Govt of Iraq
4Govt of Iran
3Commies
2Islamic State
2Hezbollah
1al-Shabaab (AQ)
1Govt of Pakistan
1Houthis
1Jamaat-e-Ulema Islami
1Moslem Colonists

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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.
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Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
tu3031
badanov
sherry
ryuge
GolfBravoUSMC
Bright Pebbles
trailing wife
Gloria
Fred
Besoeker
Glenmore
Frank G
3dc
Skidmark

Two weeks of WOT
Tue 2019-12-31
  Crowd storms US Embassy compound in Baghdad
Mon 2019-12-30
  Qais al-Khazali was a close associate of Qassem Suleimani - killed by USAF.
Sun 2019-12-29
  Iraq launches new military operation against ISIS 4 provinces
Sat 2019-12-28
  US civilian contractor killed and several US and Iraqi personnel wounded in Kirkuk rocket attack
Fri 2019-12-27
  Libya's Tripoli-based govt makes formal request for Turkish military support, Turkey gets ready to rock
Thu 2019-12-26
  Jihadists suffer heavy losses in failed attempt to retake strategic southeast Idlib town
Wed 2019-12-25
  Boko Haram abducts 17 fishermen in Cameroon’s Far North region
Tue 2019-12-24
  Merry Christmas - Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht, Peter Alexander
Mon 2019-12-23
  Islamic State just issued this statement that claims the Battle of revenge is on
Sun 2019-12-22
  France kills 33 militants in Mali raid: president
Sat 2019-12-21
  Berlin police Foiled ISIS Terror Attack at Christmas Market
Fri 2019-12-20
  Government of National Accord in Libya have officially requested that Turkey intervenes militarily in the civil war
Thu 2019-12-19
  ISIS captures new ground in eastern Syria after launching powerful attack against Syrian Army forces
Wed 2019-12-18
  Assailants attack several protest camps in north and south Lebanon
Tue 2019-12-17
  Backer of Iraq anti-government protests killed in Baghdad


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