24 hr rule
[Fox News] The gunman who opened fire Friday morning at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida, fatally shooting three people, has been identified as an aviation student from Saudi Arabia as investigators are looking into whether the attack is terrorism-related.
The gunman was confronted and taken out by a pair of responding officers. Two people were killed at the scene while a third victim died after being rushed to a local hospital. Seven others suffered injuries and are undergoing treatment, including the two officers, one of whom was shot in the arm and the other in the knee. Both are expected to survive.
#7
If there was any kind of "sponsorship" on the part of a politician or military person, we need to know who they are.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/06/2019 16:10
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#8
Saudi air force 2nd lieutenant, according to the Daily Mail article linked above, which has a bad photo of the miscreant. He ran amok shortly before 7 a.m, in a classroom building, killing three and wounding eight. The article adds:
A person familiar with the program said that Saudi Air Force officers selected for military training in the United States are intensely vetted by both countries.
The Saudi personnel are 'hand-picked' by their military and often come from elite families, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they did not have permission to speak to a reporter. Trainees must speak excellent English, the person said.
The Saudi king call President Trump to offer condolences. If the young man was indeed carefully vetted, apologies may also be in order, and a serious investigation of all involved on the Saudi side.
#9
On Wednesday a sailor shot up the Pearl Harbor naval base before committing suicide — he’s still not been publicly identified nor his purpose explained.
Today this. Is it coincidence, or is something more going on?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/06/2019 16:57
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#13
^ re Patrick AFB:
The 45th Space Wing first reported the threat, which they say prompted evacuations in the “immediate area” for safety reasons at 3:31 pm.
An “all-clear” was given at 4:30 p.m..
#17
9/11 wasn't even close to being a wake-up call for the powers that be. I was still a "moderate" and a "Democrat" when it occurred, but I was flabbergasted that ALL of the media talking heads were cautioning me and others to "not jump to conclusions". 9/11 was my wake-up call, I found an article at The Belmont Club site regarding 3 conclusions regarding the west and Islam and nothing about the world to me would ever be the same.
But one has to only look at the not-give-a-damn TSA phoniness to be sure that "our betters" didn't learn ANYTHING.
[Jpost] IDF soldiers, along with Shin Bet, Border Police and Israeli police forces arrested eight wanted Paleostinians in the West Bank on Thursday night, suspectedly involved in terrorist activity, civil terrorism and violent demonstrations against civilians and security forces.
[IsraelTimes] Russia’s Rusatom nuclear firm has halted work at Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility,
... a heavily fortified facility inside a mountain ringed by anti-aircraft batteries that has about 1,000 centrifuges. It’s monitored by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency...
Russia’s Interfax news agency says.
The announcement comes weeks after 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 JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... announced it would restart nuclear enrichment there, breaking the 2015 nuclear deal.
The TVEL unit of Rusatom, which makes nuclear fuel components, says in a statement that Iran’s decision to resume uranium enrichment at Fordo makes it impossible to produce radioactive isotopes for medical purposes.
The isotopes in question are tellurium and xenon, for those interested in such things.
The company notes that uranium enrichment is technologically incompatible with production of such isotopes. It adds that Iran would need to disassemble the centrifuges used to enrich uranium and decontaminate the room to continue the medical project.
The company says it had informed Iran of its decision.
[IsraelTimes] The military is preparing for the resumption of protests along the Gazoo ...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamaswith about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... border Friday.
According to Channel 13 news, the Israel Defense Forces has set up Iron Dome batteries in case the violence devolves into rocket fire.
"We are ready, since we know that Hamas, a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth", is behind this," an army spokesperson says, according to Ynet. "We will respond with restraint if they don’t come near the border. If there is violence we will use whatever force is necessary."
The army also says that Hamas is responsible for any casualties.
Channel 13 reports that officials sent a message to Hamas via Egypt and the UN that it’s up to the terror group to ensure that protests do not get out of hand.
#1
JPost: Approximately 4,000 Palestinians are protesting at the border with the Gaza Strip on Friday, December 6, after three weeks of Hamas refraining from conducting and financing the demonstrations at the border fence.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 37 people have been injured so far during fence riots, while the IDF is using means to disperse demonstrations against rioters. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, four protesters were shot with live ammunition by IDF forces, while 10 were injured by rubber-coeated bullets. Reports also indicate that a paramedic was injured in the riots.
The injured include 10 children and one paramedic from PRCS, east of the Gaza Strip.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/06/2019 13:22
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#2
The hudna is over.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
12/06/2019 13:35
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#6
Anyone think of dumping huge loads of non-kosher pork and pork by products on the Gazooks? Easily obtained from the Kurdish regions they eat pork don't they?
Posted by: Matt ||
12/06/2019 9:36
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#3
And according to the MSM, Trump is going to rip food stamps away from 700,000 poor, deserving souls. Looks like they'll only have about three months to find work.
"...The labor force participation rate has never been higher than 67.3 percent, a level achieved in the early months of 2000. The Trump-era high was set last month at 63.3 percent. Economists say retiring baby boomers account for some of the decline since the turn of the century...."
A lot of people think the reason for the decline in the labor force participation rate from 2000 is because the Obama regime loosed the disability rules (intentionally to make the Unemployment rate better). Once people start getting disability, it takes a lot for them to leave that money stream behind and go back to work. This makes the current situation more remarkably in that while about 9 million people are on SS disability (and receive an average of over $1k per month), the rate of application has decrease substantially during the Trump admin. It peaked at about 2M during 2010 and is now about 1.5M. In fact, the total number of people on disability has actually decreased during the Trump admin despite the aging population.
Posted by: lord garth ||
12/06/2019 11:00
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#5
the total number of people on disability has actually decreased during the Trump admin despite the aging population.
They went on disability because they couldn’t find work, in many cases. Now they’ve reached age 62, when they can get Social Security pension instead — more money and no questions makes that very attractive.
#8
That would be 266,000 people buying things and paying sales taxes they might not have been able to do before. Possibly even paying some income taxes as well. All around, good news.
#12
although most conversions from SS Disability to SS regular are at 65 and older,
Final daughter’s father just turned 62, and is very pleased that even at the reduced rate he gets at that age instead of waiting, he gets more income and better health care than he did on disability.
[American Thinker] December 2015 was a pivotal month in many respects.
During the first week of December 2015, Donald Trump began to establish a substantial lead over his Republican primary opponents.
Vice President Joseph Biden traveled to Ukraine to announce, on December 7th, a $190 million program to "fight corruption in law enforcement and reform the justice sector," but behind the scenes explicitly linked a $1 billion loan guarantee to the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who had been investigating the energy company Burisma, which employed Biden’s son Hunter.
On December 9, 2015, the reported whistleblower Eric Ciaramella held a meeting in Room 236 of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building with Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Center, which was 59%-funded by Barack Obama’s State Department and the International Renaissance Foundation, a George Soros organization.
Also attending that meeting was Catherine Newcombe, attorney in the Criminal Division, Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, with the U.S. Department of Justice, where, among other duties, she oversaw the Department's legal assistance programs to Ukraine.
By December 2015, Paul Manafort was undoubtedly considering approaching the Trump campaign to rejuvenate his U.S. political bona fides and mitigate the legal and financial difficulties he was experiencing at the time.
From the beginning of his association with the Trump campaign, Roger Stone, a long-time Manafort partner, made a strong case to Trump to bring in Manafort, who would officially connect to the campaign immediately after the February 1, 2016 Iowa caucuses.
Based on events occurring during the same period, were Obama Deep State operatives aware of Manafort’s intent and already intending to use his past questionable practices and links to Russia against Trump?
Such awareness of Manafort’s plans could have been obtained either through FBI surveillance, which began in 2014 and ended in early 2016, or through information provided by Manafort associates, for example, Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked for Manafort and was a FBI and Department of State asset, not a Russian agent as later painted by the Mueller investigation.
#1
Sounds like Obama abused to power of his office for his own personal gain.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/06/2019 12:37
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#2
Can't wait for Zero and the whole crew - Plugs, Nuland, Chalupa, Hillary, Glenn Simpson, LIsaLisa and Loverboyz, the whole stinking conspiratorial band - to be deposed in the Senate trial.
[AlAhram] Egypt's Ministry of Interior said in a statement on Thursday that security forces killed three bandidoshard boyz in a shootout in North Sinai.
"The operation was part of the ministry's efforts to track and arrest bandidoshard boyz involved in hostile operations that have claimed the lives of many in the Armed Forces, police and among civilians," the ministry said.
"Information was gathered by the National Security Agency regarding the presence of bandidoshard boyz in the Jalbana area in North Sinai, and that they were preparing to carry out a series of attacks against the Armed Forces and police," the statement said.
"Upon the approach of police forces, the terrorist group opened fire, prompting police to fire back and kill three terrorists," the ministry said.
Security forces seized two automatic rifles, two grenades, rounds of ammunition and a pistol.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/06/2019
08:14 ||
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[8 views]
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[Washington Examiner] Elizabeth Warren's fast rise in the 2020 Democratic primary field is over.
The Massachusetts senator's poll numbers shot up consistently in late summer and early fall, largely at the expense of first-tier rivals former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
But her rise in support also brought added scrutiny, including how Warren, 70, planned to fund her "Medicare for all" plan, which would effectively end private health coverage in favor of a government program. Unlike Sanders, 78, who forthrightly says taxes on middle-class earners would rise in order to pay for his proposed version of Medicare for All, Warren says hers would be covered by a wealth tax on individuals with fortunes over $50 million.
The more Warren's talked about the details, the less support she's earned.
A RealClearPolitics average of national primary polls Thursday placed Warren in third place, at 14.2% support, behind Sanders, at 15.6%, and 77-year-old Biden, leading the pack at 27.8%.
That spread is a dramatic reversal from two months ago when Warren was in a statistical tie for first place with Biden. At the time, Warren was .3 percentage points behind Biden, with 26% support, compared to his 26.3%.
Since then, Warren has faced a cascade of polls showing her support in free fall. A Morning Consult survey taken Oct. 7-12 found Warren at 21%. By late November, the same organization found her support at 15%. A CNN survey taken at the same time found Warren earning 14% of support.
NAIROBI (AP) ‐ Steven Lacchin grew up a fatherless boy, but he knew some very basic facts about the man who was his father.
He knew Lacchin, the name on his Kenyan birth certificate, was his dad’s name. He knew that Mario Lacchin abandoned him and his mother.
When he was older, he learned that his father was an Italian missionary priest ‐ and that in leaving, he had chosen the church over his child.
What he did not know is that less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) away, another man was on a quest to prove that Mario Lacchin was his father, too.
These two men would find each other thanks to an Associated Press story that appeared on the front page of Kenya’s main newspaper. All agreed that they bore a marked resemblance, but they underwent genetic testing to be certain.
Were they indeed half-brothers ‐ sons of the same Father?
[Townhall] One symptom of a society in crisis is the unreliability or even corruption of its own auditors.
After all, when the watchmen have lost moral authority to watch, who can be believed or trusted? Or, as the Roman satirist Juvenal famously put it, "Who will guard the guardians?"
It was recently reported that FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith altered an email to bolster a suspicious FBI effort to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant authorizing the surveillance of Carter Page, a onetime employee of the Trump campaign.
If true, Clinesmith helped the FBI successfully delude the court into granting what was likely an illegal request to spy on the Trump campaign. Clinesmith was reportedly expelled from special counsel Robert Mueller's legal team for cheering on opposition to the Trump presidency by writing "Viva la resistance!" in a text message discussion.
After FBI Director James Comey was fired, he leaked his own memos of private and confidential conversations with the president. Whether Comey would go to jail hinged on how the FBI would categorize his memos post facto -- as merely "confidential," or as "secret" or "top secret."
Two of the adjudicators were Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, former Comey friends and FBI subordinates. The FBI eventually ruled that the leaking of the memos was not felonious. Page and Strzok, who were involved in an amorous relationship, were later dismissed from Mueller's team for exchanging texts that showed bias and hatred toward Trump, the object of their team's investigation.
We are awaiting the results of investigations being conducted by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz and federal prosecutor John Durham. Both are examining whether the nation's top investigators at the FBI, CIA and DOJ were themselves corrupt.
#3
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a Latin phrase found in the work of the Roman poet Juvenal. It is literally translated as "Who will guard the guards themselves?", though it is also known by variant translations, such as "Who watches the watchers?" and "Who will watch the watchmen?".
Ducjduckgo can't find anything on #2.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/06/2019 14:27
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#4
Nos Custodimus ipsos custodes
is latin for "we watch the watchers".
[Forbes] Topline: China is to waive tariffs on some U.S. soybeans and pork imports as the world’s two biggest economies worked on an interim deal to end the 17-month-long trade war.
China placed tariffs of 25% on the agricultural products in July 2018, in response to the White House’s move to impose tariffs on Chinese goods over the alleged theft of American intellectual property.
Beijing had promised in September to lift the tariffs that lifted taxes on soybeans imports to 33% from 3% but the new tax exemption only applies to some firms and some imports.
China’s finance ministry has not shared any further detail on the waiver of the agricultural tariffs.
Washington and Beijing are currently ironing out an interim "phase one" deal to wind down the trade battle that has rattled markets, and cost Chinese exporters and American farmers billions.
The waiver was announced just days before a new set of U.S. tariffs on $160 billion of Chinese goods kicks in on December 15.
Key background: China’s tariffs on soybeans, the U.S.' most valuable farming export, have resulted in U.S. sales to China falling 90% since 2017. As a result, the Trump administration has forked out some $28 billion in aid to American farmers hit by the sales drop. It has also pressed China to raise its imports of soybeans from U.S. as a goodwill gesture in anticipation of a trade deal.
China has moved to increase imports of soybeans from Argentina and Brazil to lessen its reliance on the U.S. but a an outbreak of African swine fever may have forced Beijing’s hand on pork imports. Hundreds of millions of pigs have been culled, or died, from the disease in China sending domestic pork prices through the roof.
Additional fact: China is the world's largest importer of soybeans, bringing in tens of million on tonnes each year.
#4
"Beijing had promised in September to lift the tariffs that lifted taxes on soybeans imports to 33% from 3% but the new tax exemption only applies to some firms...
It is worth noting that the US's ADM controls the world market for soybeans.
#6
China is hurting bad from the trade war. You don't hear about it, because obviously the mainstream media would rather eat glass than report that Trump is succeeding at anything.
Pork, the staple of Chinese cuisine, is through the roof right now.
The US is the Saudi Arabia of food. We have the most intensely fertile ground on the planet and the best transportation system to get the food to market. Hell, we're the Saudi Arabia of oil, too. We're self-sufficient, which means we can tell the whole world to fuck off with their bullshit.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
12/06/2019 9:28
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#7
..the DeBeers of soybeans?
Agricultural Snark of the Day
the mainstream media would rather eat glass than report that Trump is succeeding at anything.
The local hippy weekly was blasting Trump for driving up the price of French wine via tariffs, but last I looked that has not happened yet.
#10
What d’you suppose someone could charge them for prime wild boar in a variety of sizes from suckling to Old Man? Get it inspected and approved, and make money at both ends by charging the landowners for clearing their property of the pests.
#18
Found that one out when I tried to buy deer sausage and the butchers looked at me like I had grown a third eye.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
12/06/2019 15:18
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#19
It's feral, not wild, TW.
You are talking dictionary definitions, g(r)omgoru, not marketing. But I can work with free range instead. Have President Trump sign a regulation permitting the sale of safely harvested and inspected free range boar meat exclusively for the foreign market for the duration of this emergency. As long as the emergency is not specifically defined as Chinas’s (what — you don’t think the destruction caused by free range boars is an emergency wherever they spread?), everyone will be happy until Congress gets around to passing an actual law making it permanent.
Texas has a program which takes captured wild and processes them for food banks, under the inspection of the USDA to prevent the processing of diseased hogs.
You can find stuff like deer sausage at local or craft butchers, likely farm raised. However, especially where hunting is popular, some butchers will process the day's hunt and may offer truly wild game and meat items.
Perishable shipping has come a long ways. They may only ship Monday, and you may have to purchase the 2-day shipping rate, but I have never had a problem. Middle of Summer, purchase meat from Louisiana, shows up not just totally frozen, but like it could have been fine three days later. After a few orders you have a nice collection of freeze bags to use in your own cooler and do away with sloshing ice. Also these operations tend to be Mom & Pop businesses who employ a number of locals.
#23
Can't sell wild game at retail. Agricultural products only.
Posted by Herb McCoy
Because starving Chinese demands standards in Herb's world
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/06/2019 18:25
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#24
China has tough regulations on all imports. What, you think they're stupid? They want to spend money on imports when they could keep the cash circulating inside their own economy?
More playground insults. Keep 'em coming, children.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
12/06/2019 18:28
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#25
tough regs on things they want to restrict, idiot. They need the food, NOW. They'll take whatever they have to to keep teh masses fed and non-revolting. FOAD trollboy
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/06/2019 18:30
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#26
More playground insults
"Your dad wants to return to the gold standard!"
"Oh yeah? Well, your mom looks like Miltion Friedman!"
Ah, those golden school days...
[CBS News] A blind prisoner convicted of killing his estranged girlfriend by setting her on fire in her car was put to death Thursday in Tennessee's electric chair. Lee Hall, 53, became only the second inmate without sight to be executed in the U.S. since the reinstatement of the nation's death penalty in 1976.
Hall was pronounced dead at 7:26 p.m. at a Nashville maximum-security prison, prison officials said. He chose the electric chair over Tennessee's preferred execution method of lethal injection ‐ an option available to inmates in the state who were convicted of crimes before January 1999. He also became the first blind inmate in U.S. modern history to die by electrocution.
A witness to the execution said that Hall's final words were that "people need to learn forgiveness and love and make the world a better place." Old Sparky just did
#2
Nearly 30 years from conviction to execution. I agree that capital punishment should only be invoked when the facts are absolutely clear, but that;s friggin' ridiculous.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/06/2019 12:05
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#5
Nah, bring them down to Texas, put them in glass jars to back in the Houston Sun. Put the jars someplace nice and public with each jar having a sign listing their crimes. Allow them water but no food. Setup up cameras so people can watch online. I'm sure Vegas will have a betting pool on who winds up crispy first.
[Ynet] In a deal, worth some $115 million, 8 radar systems capable of detecting incoming targets - from a mortar shell to a ballistic missile - are expected to be supplied to the NATO nation over a period of 8 years
[Breitbart] The House Intelligence Committee report released by chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) on Tuesday cites no constitutionally permissible grounds for impeachment against President Donald Trump ‐ other than tweets.
Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution provides that impeachment shall be for "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Notably, the Framers of the Constitution ruled out "maladministration" as a reason.
In Schiff’s 300-page report, Democrats failed to cite any specific grounds for impeaching the president.
Notably, though Schiff and others attempted to argue that the president had possibly committed "bribery" by allegedly asking the president of Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden in exchange for U.S. aid, there is no discussion of bribery whatsoever in the report ‐ other than references to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s claims that Biden might be guilty of bribery because his son was on the payroll of Ukrainian gas giant Burisma.
The only references to any "crimes" allegedly committed by the president is a discussion of "witness intimidation."
Schiff and his Democrat majority attempt to argue that President Trump committed that crime by tweeting criticism of several witnesses against him, including calling them "Never Trumpers" and drawing attention to their testimony.
The report also cites Trump’s tweets criticizing former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch during her testimony, which clearly did not obstruct her testimony and which she would not have known about had Schiff not read them ‐ partially ‐ to her in the middle of the hearing. (Among Trump’s criticisms was that "the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him," which Yovanovitch could not explain.)
#2
#1 Deep state are desperate to cover up their ukraine scams! It's as obvious as Epstein was and similarly ignored by the MSM.
A key feature of The Shitshow is the Redirect: taking an obvious flaw or failure of one's own party, group, office or institution and attempting to assign this failure to one's opponents.
So top Democrats' family members' widespread pilfering of corrupt Ukrainian and Chinese companies while Biden and John Kerry were VP and Sec-State magically redirects the public to ... phantom corruption on the part of OrangeMan.
So the exploitation of foreign intelligence officers and foreign prosecutors, and manipulation or outright fabrication of "dirt" by paid campaign operatives working on behalf of the Clinton campaign in Russia, Ukraine, Malta, London, and Rome in order to influence a presidential election, magically redirects to .... ridiculous "collusion" charges and now, no clear accusation at all against OrangeMan.
We see you, folks.
We know you're lying and making sh!t up.
We recognize a Shitshow when it's staged before us.
#5
The demoncrats will be very stupid to actually vote to impeach. Schiff WILL be brought in front of the Senate to testify. So will all his cronies, the documents they are hiding, the Bidens, the Clintons, etc. The whole house of cards could come crumbling down.
And I have never accused the demoncrats of being smart.
[The Hill] The U.S. tax burden fell to the fourth lowest among advanced economies following passage of the GOP tax law, according to data released Thursday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The report found that the share of the economy devoted to paying taxes in the U.S. in 2018 fell by a whopping 2.5 percentage points, by far the largest of any of the 36 countries in the group.
Only Ireland, Chile and Mexico had a lower tax burden than the United States, which came in at 24.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), well below the 34.3 percent average.
France had the highest tax burden, amounting to 46.1 percent of GDP.
The trend in the U.S. differed from most of the countries on the list, most of which saw taxes go up in the past decade.
"Across the last decade, 26 OECD countries reported higher tax-to-GDP ratios in 2018 than in 2008, with the greatest increases in Greece and the Slovak Republic. Among the remaining 10 countries, tax levels in 2018 remained more than six percentage points lower in Ireland and more than two percentage points lower in Hungary and Norway," the report noted.
#2
Have tax receipts gone up as a result of the improving economy? Not long ago we had a piece on government debt going through the roof. It would be awfully nice to see that coming down — we know that federal employment numbers have fallen slightly...
#6
Just got a letter telling me I get a 1.6% increase in Social Security next year. The same letter informed me I will be taking home 40 bucks less than now because the amount I pay for Medicare has increased.Yea for me.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/06/2019 12:13
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[Free Beacon] Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) on Thursday discussed a new bill that would discourage foreign leaders from taking Americans hostage.
Cotton introduced the "Global Hostage Act of 2019" with Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) in November. The bill aims to place onerous sanctions on countries that imprison American citizens, most notably the Iranian regime.
"The legislation I propose is designed to make American hostages not a precious source of leverage against our country but rather the surest way to one’s own destruction," Cotton said during a conversation with the Hudson Institute.
Cotton said the sanctions will restrict foreign persons and their families from coming to the United States and taking advantage of the education system and other opportunities if their native lands take Americans hostage. The sanctions would deter countries such as Iran from unjustly detaining U.S. citizens.
The bill states that the United States will use "extradition to try and convict the individuals who have participated in, or are responsible for ordering, controlling, or otherwise directing, the hostage-taking or detention." Cotton said lawmakers need to take action to protect Americans visiting foreign nations.
"It would make the world safer for America’s travelers," Cotton said. "From businessmen seeking markets overseas to missionaries spreading the light of the gospel on foreign lands to newcomers visiting their family in the old world."
Cotton said there have been some misconceptions surrounding American hostages, and he argued the Iranian regime lies about its willingness to use prisoner releases as bargaining chips.
Posted by: Besoeker ||
12/06/2019
03:05 ||
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#1
and to the ChiComs over Hong Kong
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/06/2019 6:47
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#2
How about having the heads of the various gov'ts declared as wanted on Kidnapping charges by the International Court. I'm sure that would have an immediate effect.....besides hilarity, I mean
[PJ] Just a few days ago, I predicted that Trump won't be impeached. Of course, today we saw the announcement that Nancy Pelosi has directed the Judiciary Committee to start drafting articles of impeachment based on the hearing yesterday.
Now, that means a committee chaired by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-Moria) is supposed to start coming up with a list of charges. Apparently, this is supposed to include bribery, abuse of power, and damned if conspiracy and collusion with the Russians isn't back, Mueller investigation be damned.
You might think this would cause me to rethink my prediction, but it doesn't.
Let's hypothetically assume articles of impeachment were voted and sent to trial in the Senate. Then what?
Who is subpoenaed first? It's going to be a race among Adam Schiff, Eric Ciaramella, and Mark Zaid (Ciaramella's lawyer). Followed by Schiff's staffers, Vindman again, other Democrat members of the HPSCI.
You can expect extensive declassification. In particular, of transcripts of the closed-door meetings that Schiff won't release. (Hint: Classification is under the president's authority, not a Congress member's.)
After yesterday, you can expect extensive subpoenas of communications records.
You can expect (yet another) rehash of the last three years, and you can bet that the GOP will be out for blood.
You can expect a concurrent effort to expel Schiff from the House. (No, members of the House can't be impeached. But they can be expelled.)
You can expect every witness from the Schiff hearings to be re-called and examined by hostile questioners, and you can bet Mitch McConnell won't shush the Republicans.
You can expect most of the upper levels of the Obama administration to be subpoenaed: if they appear, they will be examined in ways that would make a proctologist squirm; if they resist, you can bet an attempt will be made to compel them, and "no one is above the law" will be the watchword on Republican lips.
Given the number of actual crimes that appear to be involved, the fallout could be expensive. No one will go to actual jail ‐ nobody at that level goes to jail ‐ but they could lose clearances, pay millions in lawyer fees, and become laughingstocks.
If it comes to trial and Trump is acquitted, especially when the evidence against the Obama administration comes out, it probably means a massive election victory for Trump and the GOP. If it comes to trial at all, then it'll be happening during Iowa's caucuses and many of the major contenders will need to be at the trial ‐ or they won't show up, and the Trump oppo ads will be solar fusion fire.
I still think the risks are too great for the Democrats. Instead, we'll see this "drafting of articles of impeachment" drag on, "vaster than Empires and more slow," because they get all the political benefits of keeping IMPEACHMENT IMPEACHMENT IMPEACHMENT in the news, with none of the risks.
[Medium.com] Shameless pedophile Jeffrey Epstein inherited his espionage business from ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, whose father British media magnate Robert Maxwell, was a super spy for Israel’s Mossad. Here, in another excerpt from the newly released book "Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales," former Israeli spy Ari Ben-Menashe tells how Epstein ran a complex intelligence operation.
Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli spy and alleged "handler" of Robert Maxwell said of Epstein: "Maxwell introduced him to us, and he wanted us to accept him as part of our group. Ben-Menashe claimed that Epstein and Ghislaine were already dating in the late 1980s, and that Maxwell Senior grew fond of the young upstart.
"Epstein was hanging around with Robert Maxwell and the daughter was hanging around there too, and that’s how they met," he told author James Robertson in an interview from Montreal. "Just two young souls, they met."
"Maxwell sort of started liking him, and my theory is that Maxwell felt that this guy is going for his daughter," Ben-Menashe said. "He felt that he could bless him with some work and help him out in like a paternal [way]."
According to the former spy, the ultimate order to embrace Epstein and involve him in the ongoing arms deals came from "the bosses" at Israeli intelligence headquarters.
"They were agents of the Israeli Intelligence Services," he told James Robertson.
"Later on [Ghislaine] got involved with Israeli intelligence together with him. But not in this arms deal with Iran business," Ben-Menashe also told Zev Shalev, former CBS News executive producer and investigative journalist for the website Narativ.
"These guys were seen as agents. They weren’t really competent to do very much. And so they found a niche for themselves ‐ blackmailing American and other political figures."
He told Robertson, "Mr. Epstein was the simple idiot who was going around providing girls to all kinds of politicians in the United States. See, fucking around is not a crime. It could be embarrassing, but it’s not a crime. But fucking a fourteen-year-old girl is a crime. And he was taking photos of politicians fucking fourteen-year-old girls ‐ if you want to get it straight. They would just blackmail people, they would just blackmail people like that."
#4
Remember the documents that exposed illegal NSA spying on Americans? One of their tactics was to have the truth attached to unsavory characters, so as to discredit it. Yup, it was in the slideshow presentations. It's one of the ways they took down "Occupy Wall Street".
I find it very easy to believe that Epstein was engaged in blackmail. It makes a ton of sense. It answers the question, "who benefits?"
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
12/06/2019 2:57
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#7
Nobody said he didn't blackmail your assholes, Besoeker. All I'm saying Mossad wouldn't involved in this kind of amateur shit - because it always backfires. And, given that people predisposed to believe any kind of shit about the Jews, on flimsiest of evidence...
Calvinists, Presbyterians whatever, they're all alike, they're everywhere. You simply can't trust them.
Ja, ja, ja #11, if it looks like a duck. I'm going with #9 and "intelligence operation" (probably multilateral), until something more plausible comes along.
No one has yet to explain Epstein's apparent wealth. Appears to be little interest in his tax returns, and where is Ms. Maxwell ?
#14
The guy was obviously engaged in blackmail, and blackmail was obviously the source of at least part of his vast fortune. He had no other profession.
He was not a "money manager": no trading presence that any of the major counterparty trading houses ever saw; no trading or investment strategy that anyone ever heard or read; no supporting staff of back-office professionals or accountants or lawyers without whom a billion-dollar investment fund simply cannot operate.
His two skills in life were moving money across and through offshore vehicles and persuading wealthy and powerful American and British men to join his parties and give him huge sums of money.
Add to the above the extraordinarily rare incidence of ubiquitous spy cameras set up in his various romper rooms, and blackmail is the obvious conclusion.
#16
You know, the constant playground insults used to irritate me. But now, they cheer me up. They mean you don't have any actual arguments. If you did you would use them.
The NSA's method was to take the truth, add a portion of obvious untruths, and put it in the mouth of odious people for transmission. We have hard proof of this. We know that's how they operate.
We also know it's highly illegal for them to run intelligence operations against America, but they did it. Not a single person went to prison.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
12/06/2019 9:25
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#17
Fair enough, Herb.
So: Who benefited from Epstein's blackmailing activities?
#18
I think the claim of blackmail is patently ridiculous, something out of a plot for a Hallmark movie. I may have only a limited sampling of humanity, but it does cross several fields of endeavor over time. No, no billionaires but more than a few millionaires.
All I can tell you is that making some form of blackmail demand to any of the self made, successful men I have known would get you a free tour of the Titanic, complete with the concrete overshoes.
#22
All the photos at his parties. Ya had to know it was going on. The young girls up front, the Madam in the background. This is classic we have you and we have witnesses... Why did these people allow this to happen to themselves? Even strip clubs don't allow photos, and for a reason.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
12/06/2019 10:32
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#23
My error Lex. TW, could u pls restore Lex's comment. Again, my apologies. I-fone posting from a Peletron. ..bad juju
#27
Well, maybe our ruling class is actually sicker than anyone imagined.
Me, I see the sums involved, combined with the absence of any serious deployment of the billions in any legitimate investments, and think that these must have been payoffs.
#34
How about if Epstein was just a pimp with some high dollar sporting ladies and an extremely wealthy clientèle? I mean, blackmailers aren't usually all that chummy with their victims like Epstein was with Bill and Andrew. The videos are troubling though and could have been transmitted all kinds of places. Hey, I got it! What if it was Clinton who got the videos, either for blackmail of merely for his own prurient interest?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/06/2019 12:49
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#40
All I can tell you is that making some form of blackmail demand to any of the self made, successful men I have known would get you a free tour of the Titanic, complete with the concrete overshoes.
People like Prince Andrew are NOT successful or self made. They are to the Manor born. He was a money laundered and high level blackmailer. And you don't fit concrete overshoes to an individual that has dark allies in the background.
Holmes actually ran a company. She took money, hired employees, staffed laboratories, built and tested prototypes, signed deals with real customers like iirc Safeway.
Likewise, Madoff actually had a fund, actually traded, actually paid employees to clear trades, report gains & losses, prepare the books. He was a crook, he pillaged his business, but he actually ran a real business.
In contrast Epstein had nothing. No books. No reports, no audited financials. No one on Wall Street can point to any major trades he did. He was a ghost.
#43
The Holmesian paradox, the dog that didn't bark! There is no way you can be this invisible financially yet prominent socially, unless you are protected by those that govern for whom you serve a purpose, however nefarious...
#44
Well, I'm no expert on the matter but if I had to make a guess at the age distribution of the demo in question I would think it would more or less approximate the distribution for that favorite platform for every young female exhi8itionist self-expressionist, Instagram.
Here's the under-45 estimated age distribution for Instagram, as of late 2018 (87% of total Instagram users):
Ages 13–17: 57 million (7%)
Ages 18–24: 270 million (32%)
Ages 25–34: 270 million (32%)
Ages 35–44: 131 million (15%)
Even if you assume that the, uh, working woman distribution is slightly younger than the Instagram distribution, you'd still find a median age of somewhere around age 28, with a similar standard deviation (no pun intended) of maybe 9-10 years.
Hence my guesstimate that the under 18 crowd is >1 s.d. or not likely to be more than 16% of total, and probably a lot lower.
In short, underage prostitution -- in our wealthy, civilized, normal society anyway -- seems unlikely to be as common as you think.
But YMMV. That's just my guess based on Instagram data extrapolation.
#46
#24 Good question. A) I have no idea IF there were cameras there. B) How about security? Which of the alleged players is NOT a solid candidate for some type of cardio event? Do you want the former president, British prince et al being shown across while some teenager is panicking under a blanket too frightened to get help? That sounds to me at least like the simple straight line. Of course not many straight lines around Epstein.
Just a thought, but I still find it nearly impossible to accept, doesn't mean it isn't so I have been wrong before.
#47
#41 read his wiki page starting with 1980es - quite a lot of finantial activity. IMO somebody who made money in gray area and tried to join the elite - by throwing extra-fun parties. And then things started going bad.
#51
#40 Regardless of what animus you bear the Windsors the point is Andrew was one of many according to the great thesis. I took the most extreme, end game from what I know of the individuals I described.
But Princelings notwithstanding, have you given any serious thought to what extreme money buys? Imagine you never wait in line again, for anything ever. Airport security? Not for you. Grocery store, bank, DMV...not for you. Now let's just fill that in, you also don't give a laughing G/D about what anybody thinks.
Again, I took an end game mainly to illustrate what should be an obvious point. But if you would indulge in some momentary reflection I think you would realize that well over half the target, victim population couldn't care less. Donald Trump with the NY Daily News front page years ago is a perfect example. He sent his minions out to buy every last copy he could, had ornately framed versions posted around Trump towers including behind his desk. Then, he had copies hand delivered to many friends and enemies alike.
Short story long, you're going to have to work pretty hard to intimidate people with that kind of zort with information of any kind. But if you do, I hear there is still room on the Mezzanine deck albeit a couple of dark, cold, wet miles down.
[USA Today] Four people died in a shootout Thursday after jewelry robbers stole a UPS truck and led Florida police on a high-speed chase, the FBI said.
The truck driver, a bystander and both suspects were killed in Miramar, about 20 miles from the site of the initial robbery, FBI Special Agent in Charge George Piro said during a news conference.
Police in Coral Gables responded to the robbery at a Regent Jewelers store shortly after 4 p.m., Chief Ed Hudak said, and were met with gunfire from two suspects.
The suspects then fled in a truck and hijacked the UPS delivery truck about 20 minutes later, Piro said, taking the driver as a hostage. Police chased the suspects until they stopped in one of the middle lanes of a busy roadway, caught behind a wall of other vehicles waiting for a red light to turn green.
Police approached the truck, and the suspects opened fire amid rush hour traffic. Piro said the suspects had shot at police during the chase, too.
#3
Ref #1: Some may view this as 'virtue signaling' but I have set my prejudices aside and discounted the involvement of the fringe Lev Tahor (Pure Heart). Jeffrey Epstein is already dead, so he can be taken off the list was well.
Cousins Lamar Alexander and Ronnie Jerome Hill died along with UPS driver Frank Ordonez and an unidentified bystander during Thursday's gun battle with police. (WFAA News Dallas)
#7
The FBI is investigating whether the two gunmen killed inside the UPS truck were involved in two previous robberies in South Florida, according to CBS Miami's Jim DeFede.
Ordonez's brother, Roy, said he had been with UPS for five years, CBS Miami reported. A coworker told the station that Thursday marked Ordonez's first day as a driver after having completed his training.
According to Ordonez's Facebook page, he leaves behind a 1-year-old daughter, CBS Miami reported.
Local 804, a union that represents UPS workers in New York, have created a GoFundMe to help Ordonez's family with funeral costs.
[Federalist] As several people fall out of the Democratic presidential campaign clown car, a few hitchhikers hopped aboard the journey to their convention this summer in Milwaukee. However, those (Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg) bumming a ride represent everything that the radical left-wing of the Democratic Party now abhors.
Steyer and Bloomberg embody toxic masculinity, white superiority, privilege, and class that Democrats have been railing against. They must not have gotten the memo that they are persona non grata in the Democratic Party today. They do not check any boxes in the liberal insidious game of identity politics. No matter how one triangulates these two, they do not meet the intersectionality of gender, race, and class. Neither are female, transgender or gay‐neither are African-American or other supposedly oppressed minority. In fact, they represent the oppressors and the filthy rich. I must admit, this is classic. The radical left-wing has worked very hard to remake the Party, and now men like Steyer and Bloomberg are in for a treat.
Steyer’s attempt at a high wire act to get across the chasm created by these crazy Democrats will be awkward. He may not want to try this stunt without a safety net. Steyer will have to use more self-tanning spray and talk about all the lefty causes he finances. His big issue is global warming‐an issue voters are becoming less interested in. Ask the governors of Montana and Colorado who had their one-trick pony message that fossil fuels are destroying the planet and that we have to destroy capitalism to save it, how that worked out‐their campaigns crashed and burned.
#1
It's going to be a brokered convention, and the DNC insiders will select the nominee on the second or third ballot.
Which means either Gropey Joe Plugz, or ... yes, it's twoo, it's twoo...
H I L L A R Y.
Which would be fine w Bloomberg and Steyer. Aside from vanity, their bids are ultimately about keeping Bernie Trotsky and Fauxcahontas out of the White House and away from their bank accounts.
"When someone says it's not about the money, it's about the money."
[Washington Examiner] What a great opportunity Nancy Pelosi just handed to President Trump and Senate Republicans!
Now the country can finally find out what the national media have been so desperately trying to hide.
The House speaker announced Thursday morning that Democrats were moving forward with the impeachment effort by drafting up formal charges against the president. In other words, we’re now getting to the part where we can actually find out why Trump did what he did in that midsummer phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
It's taken for granted that Senate Republicans simply won't convict Trump out of party loyalty. But they can make their decision about so much more than that.
The New York Times on Wednesday reported disapprovingly on Rudy Giuliani’s continued efforts in Ukraine to find evidence that the country interfered in the 2016 election and that Joe Biden, along with his middle-aged son Hunter, were corrupt in their own dealings in Ukraine.
"Even as Democrats intensified their scrutiny this week of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s role in the pressure campaign against the Ukrainian government that is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry," the report said, "Mr. Giuliani has been in Europe continuing his efforts to shift the focus to purported wrongdoing by President Trump’s political rivals."
Wow, he was doing that even as Democrats intensified their scrutiny?! What a shock.
The media have been denying the clear evidence for months, dismissing Ukraine’s 2016 election meddling as a "conspiracy theory" and accusing anyone who so much as publicly questions their narrative of participating in a "Russian disinformation campaign."
With regard to the Bidens, journalists and cable news hosts will only allow that maybe there was an "appearance" of impropriety when Joe Biden, as vice president, demanded Ukraine fire a state prosecutor who had been investigating a shady energy company that was paying Biden’s son Hunter for ‐ well, we still don’t know what. But that’s where the story always ends, and the media loses its curiosity. Instead of asking further questions or gathering facts, we are told from there on that there's just no evidence of any wrongdoing by the Bidens, and that questions about it are "baseless."
h/t Instapundit
[CNSNews] On Thursday ‐ the same day House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced Democrats will proceed with articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump ‐ the president’s approval jumped to 52%, its highest level in more than two months.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 52% of likely U.S. voters approve of President Trump’s job performance, while 47% disapprove. This represents a three percentage point improvement from the previous day, when 49% approved and 50% disapproved.
[AlAhram] Several thousand men backing a paramilitary force close to 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 JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... flooded the Iraqi capital's main protest camp on Thursday, worrying anti-government demonstrators who have denounced Tehran's role in their country.
The men arrived in Tahrir (Liberation) Square in apparently coordinated marches from different parts of the capital, waving sticks, Iraqi flags and the logo of the Hashed al-Shaabi armed network. Some carried portraits of Hashed fighters killed in fighting against jihadists as well as pictures of the country's top Shiite holy man, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.
The Hashed had backed the Iraqi government but after a dramatic intervention by Sistani last week, it dropped its support. The embattled prime minister, Adel Abdel Mahdi, resigned at the weekend.
Many units within the Shiite-majority force have been trained or equipped by Iran.
The demonstrators occupying the square for weeks have explicitly criticised Iran for backing an Iraqi political elite they see as corrupt and inept. They have insisted that all current figures in power are tainted with graft and have been wary of political parties seeking to coopt the youth-dominated movement.
The new arrivals on Thursday mixed in with thousands of other protesters in the square, who appeared worried although no confrontation or skirmishes took place.
"They've ruined it," one protester said, as another muttered, "It's going to get messy."
Mass rallies have rocked the capital and Shiite-majority south since early October, first denouncing government graft and a lack of jobs before moving to broader demands for deep-rooted regime change.
Nearly 430 people have been killed and 20,000 maimed since demonstrations erupted, according to an AFP toll compiled from medics, police and a national commission. The victims' families have been demanding justice for their loved ones, and many of them hit the streets of Iraq's southern Diwaniyah on Thursday. They joined thousands of other protesters, mostly teachers and students taking part in a general strike, AFP's correspondent said.
"The authorities are putting off the issue of who killed our sons and brothers in the protests," said Assaad Malek, whose brother died in protest-related violence.
"They should take a tough stance and severely punish the officers and SWAT forces who killed my brother," he added.
A verdict for security force members accused of violence against protesters in Diwaniyah was scheduled for Thursday, but the session was indefinitely postponed.
In the southern hotspot of Nasiriyah, hundreds hit the main protest camp in the city centre, joined by delegations from the province's powerful tribes.
Tribal dignitaries intervened last week to tamp down tensions between protesters and security forces after more than two dozen people were killed in a bloody crackdown.
[IsraelTimes] Anti-government protesters say at least 15 people have suffered stab wounds in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, the epicenter of their movement, after political parties and Iran-backed militia groups briefly joined them, raising fears of infiltration by authorities.
Lawmakers convened a parliament session Thursday to amend laws governing compensation to include victims of military operations, according to the session agenda seen by The Associated Press.
There were over a dozen knife attacks by the late afternoon when protesters aligned with political parties and Iran-backed militias withdrew from Tahrir, three demonstrators and a witness say. There were no fatalities.
Another protester who requests anonymity says the attacks, “might have been perpetrated by the parties or someone who wants to ignite problems with the parties.”
Iraqi officials have repeatedly warned of infiltrators within the peaceful protesters seeking to coopt the movement.
These people are nuts who believe in magic money trees.
[AlAhram] French rail operator SNCF announced that 90% of high-speed trains will be canceled on Friday due to the strike.
French police fired tear gas and charged hooded protesters on Thursday at a demonstration in Gay Paree against President Emmanuel Macron's pension reform plan.
The tensions broke out close to the place de la Republique square in the east of Gay Paree, where thousands had massed to protest planned pension reforms.
A construction trailer was overturned and set on fire, sending a huge plume of smoke into the sky.
Authorities said around 285,000 people had taken part in rallies across the country by midday, a figure that did not include the several thousand at a Gay Paree march that began at 2:00 pm.
Gay Paree deployed 6,000 police for the march.
Railway workers, teachers and emergency room medics launched on Thursday one of the biggest public sector strikes in La Belle France for decades, determined to force Macron to abandon plans to overhaul the country's generous pension system.
Public transport unions said they would extend until at least Monday their open-ended strike.
Union leaders are demanding that Macron scrap his plan for a "universal" system that would do away with 42 "special regimes" for sectors ranging from rail and energy workers to lawyers and Gay Paree Opera employees, which often grant workers higher pensions or early retirement.
Critics say the changes would effectively require millions of workers in both the public and private sectors to work beyond the legal retirement age of 62 if they want to receive the full pension they have been promised.
French rail operator SNCF said Thursday that it had cancelled 90 percent of all high-speed TGV trains and 70 percent of regional trains for Friday amid the strike.
SNCF said that services would "still be very disrupted" on the second day of the biggest transport strike in the country in years, with the Eurostar service to Britannia and the Thalys service to northern Europe ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... set to be "very heavily disrupted".
Also French Civil Aviation Authority instructed airlines to reduce their flight scheduled by 20% on Friday, Dec 6, to and from Charles De Gaulle, Gay Paree-Orly and regional airports.
The Eiffel Tower and the Orsay museum were shut because of staff shortages, while the Louvre, the Pompidou Centre and other museums warned that some wings and exhibits were closed.
And "yellow vest" protesters, who have staged weekly demonstrations since last year demanding improved living standards, blocked roads in several cities including Le Havre on the Atlantic coast, where the heavily used port was also shut according to the CGT.
[RADIOSHABELLE] The Somali security agency has arrested suspected al-Shabaab ...... the Islamic version of the old Somali warlord... members on Tuesday in possession of a hand grenade.
The National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) said the suspect was arrested while on a mission to carry out attacks and will be brought before the court for charges.
"The security agencies nabbed al-Shabaab terrorist while in a mission to hurl a hand grenade but he was arrested without causing any harm," NISA said on its twitter.
"The relevant agencies will be accountable." It added.
This is the second arrest within a week by Somali security agencies.
On 23rd November a suspect was arrested with help from the public after planting explosives in a parked car in the KM5 Zobe area.
[RADIOSHABELLE] At least 15 people were reported to have died in a fresh inter-clan battle erupted in central Somalia on Thursday, local residents said.
The festivities took place at Afbarwaaqo village in the Mudug region, where two armed tribal militias are fighting for control of land and Dire Revenge killing is said to be igniting the skirmish.
Local elders began efforts to ease the deadly combat and mediate between the two warring sides, according to a villager who spoke to Radio Shabelle by phone.
Somalia has been beset by clan conflict since the former military regime was ousted in 1991 by power-hungry warlords who then fought for the country’s control.
[RADIOSHABELLE] Galmudug ...a semiautonomous region in central Somalia, bordering Puntland on the north. Galmudug is not trying to obtain international recognition as a separate nation, but rather considers itself autonomous within the larger Somali federalism, for what that's worth... security forces have conducted security operations in the past hours in some neighborhoods of the city of Adado located in the Galgadud region.
The operation led the capture of a driver who killed two children in an area near the town, according to the local police.
The children who were from same family had been killed in the car incident, and security officials said they would investigate further in the tragic event.
In recent years, Galmudug forces have intensified security operations in Galgadud and Mudug regions in efforts to avert attacks and killings as well as maintain the stability.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Sudan’s new civilian prime minister said Thursday he saw progress on removing his nation from a US blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism as he paid a landmark visit to Washington.
Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who has embarked on ambitious reforms and peace initiatives since his transitional government took over in August after decades of military rule, is the first leader of Sudan to visit Washington since 1985.
The United States agreed Wednesday to restore full diplomatic relations after more than two decades but still classifies Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism, a major impediment to would-be investors who fear repercussions in the world’s largest economy.
"Over the last two to three days here in Washington, the elephant in the room is the issue of the delisting of Sudan from the state sponsors of terrorism," Hamdok said at the Atlantic Council, a think tank.
Hamdok, a British-educated former diplomat and UN official, said the blacklist had an impact not only on investment but on efforts to relieve Sudan’s debt and to usher in a broader "opening" of the country.
He said the discussions were "progressing very well."
"We’re making progress on this, and we hope we’ll be able to reach a conclusion," he said.
US officials, while voicing support for Hamdok, say that removal from the list is a legal process that requires a formal review over a six-month period.
[Dhaka Tribune] A Dhaka court on Wednesday delivered the verdict in the Holey Artisan Bakery attack case, sentencing seven New JMB bully boyz to death and acquitting one of all charges.
The July 1, 2016, carnage saw 23 people killed, including 17 foreigners and two coppers, and ended when an army commando team stormed the cafe premises in Gulshan and shot the five attackers dead the next day.
The seven condemned to death are: Md Aslam Hossain alias Rashed alias Ryash, Jahangir Hossain alias Rajib Gandhi, Abdus Sabur Khan alias Sohel Mahfuz, Hadisur Rahman Sagor, Rakibul Islam Regan, Shariful Islam Khaled, and Mamunur Rashid Ripon.
The court ordered hanging them till death, apart from fining them Tk50,000 each.
The verdict, pronounced by Judge Md Majibur Rahman of the Anti Terrorism Special Tribunal, drew shouts of "Allahu Akbar" from the convicts, who showed no remorse.
Of the seven, Jahangir, Aslam, Shariful, and Sabur, were among those who planned the attack, Hadisur and Ripon supplied the arms, and Regan was the religious trainer of the attackers.
Jahangir also recruited the five cafe attackers: Nibras Islam, Mir Sabeh Mubashir, Rohan Imtiaz, Khairul Islam Payel, and Shafiqul Islam Uzzal.
The eighth accused in the case, Mizanur Rahman alias Boro Mizan, was acquitted of all charges as the charges were not proved beyond doubt by the prosecution.
All eight were either top leaders or members of New JMB, a splinter faction of banned Death Eater outfit Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh The JMB is said to be the youth front of Al Mujahideen, the parent organization that began working toward establishing Bangladesh as an Islamic state in the mid 1990s, which remains obscure and probably defunct today. Other organizations, such as Jama'atul Jihad, JMB, Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB), Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), Hizbut Tawhid, Tawhidi Janata, Islami Jubo Shangha, Islami Shangha, Al Falah A'am Unnayan Shanstha and Shahadat-e al Hiqma are believed to be part of the Al Mujahideen network. The JMB at its peak was reported to contain at least 100,000 members, and an alleged 2,000-man suicide brigade, few of whom actually exploded. JMB allegedly received financial assistance from individual donors in Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Libya. Reports have claimed that funding of JMB by international NGOs like Kuwait based Society of the Revival of Islamic Heritage (RIHS) and Doulatul Kuwait, Saudi Arabia based Al Haramaine Islamic Institute and Rabita Al Alam Al Islami, Qatar Charitable Society and UAE-based Al Fuzaira and Khairul Ansar Al Khairia. The top leadership of JMB was captured in 2005 and hung in 2007, which pretty much shot their bolt. , or JMB.
The accused were brought to the Dhaka Metropolitan Sessions Judge Court premises around 10:15am, where security was beefed up ahead of the verdict in the case filed for the deadliest terror attack in Bangladesh’s history.
The state counsels said they were happy with the verdict and will appeal to a higher court if necessary, against Boro Mizan’s acquittal.
Defence lawyers said the witness testimonies and evidence were inconsistent, and they will definitely move to the higher courts challenging the verdict.
Inspector General of Police Dr Javed Patwary said the police was pleased with the sentencing, save for the acquittal of Boro Mizan. He said they will ask the prosecution to appeal against it.
[ALMASDARNEWS] Over 250 Ottoman Turkish-backed bandidosmurderous Moslems have been killed since the start of Operation Peace Spring in northern Syria, the Ankara-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) said on Thursday, as reported by the Anadolu News Agency.
Citing the SNA command, the Anadolu report said that at least 251 bandidosmurderous Moslems have been killed in two months.
In addition to the 251 killed, the Anadolu report also said some 760 SNA bandidosmurderous Moslems were maimed, along with one fighter that is still missing-in-action (MIA).
Operation Peace Spring was launched by the Ottoman Turkish-backed bandidosmurderous Moslems in early October of this year. Since the start of this operation, the Ottoman Turkish-backed bandidosmurderous Moslems have captured two border towns from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
However, some men learn by reading. A few learn by observation. The rest have to pee on the electric fence for themselves... despite their initial success, the Ottoman Turkish-backed bandidosmurderous Moslems have failed to capture any other major border points in northern and northeastern Syria. This is due to the fierce resistance put up by the Syrian Democratic Forces and Syrian Arab Army (SAA).
The Syrian Army has now taken hold of several crossings along Syria’s northern border, as per their agreement with the Syrian Democratic Forces, they have access to all border points that were under the control of the SDF.
[Daily Mail, Where America Gets Its News] Marine vet and retired farmer, Merle Gorman, 83, confronted Joe Biden, 77, during a campaign stop in Iowa on Thursday
Gorman claimed Biden sold access to the Presidency by allowing his son Hunter to serve on the the board of a Ukranian gas company while he was vice president
Biden reacted in rage after the accusation, describing Gorman as a 'damned liar'
Gorman has since told reporters he was not satisfied with Biden's response
'The exchange speaks for itself... He didn't have the guts to explain the situation, and that's what I wanted' Gorman told The News York Post
Gorman, who said he voted for Barack Obama, said he liked Elizabeth Warren and would also gladly see Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker or Andrew Yang on the ticket.
“I would love any of them except Joe Biden,” he said. “He’s been there all his life …”
“I don’t have any ill feelings toward Joe Biden,” he continued. “But he’s had his day in there and I’m not fond of lifetime politicians.”
Gorman stressed he wasn’t a supporter of President Trump.
Someone tell me why we're allied with these assholes again?
[ElPais] Spain will press ahead with the creation of a tax on certain digital services as soon as a government is formed, according to sources from the caretaker executive. This so-called "Google tax" could, however, raise the ire of the United States, which has already threatened France with reprisals over a similar levy.
Sources close to the caretaker finance minister pointed out that the planned Spanish legislation does not target companies according to their country of origin, and argued that the ideal approach would be for such measures to be approved on a joint basis across either European Union (EU) or OECD countries. But there are no plans for this to happen before the end of 2020 at the earliest. That is why countries such as France have already come up with their own regulations, which has in turn prompted a response from Washington. After US President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs of up to 100% on French products, on Monday the EU closed ranks, announcing that it would respond "united" to a measure of this kind. Russia resurgent, yawn. China enlisting European countries in B&R, snooze. Huawei installing equipment all over Europe, zzz. Americans retaliating against unfair European protectionism? THAT'S WHERE WE DRAW THE LINE, FUCKERS! That's where Europeans get angry and start passing legislation. I swear, we can't get out of NATO fast enough.
The levy designed by Spain included a tax rate of 3%, which would be applied to certain digital services from tech giants whose global revenues exceed €750 million and whose earnings in Spain are greater than €3 million. The decree defined three taxable factors in which the participation of end users is decisive for the creation of value: advertising aimed at the users of a digital interface (webpage, technological platform, software or social network); the supply of a platform that allows users to locate other users to trade with them (such as online retailer Amazon); and finally, the sale or transfer of data collected from the users of a website or platform. Custom-crafted law just for American companies. Fuck you assholes. Make your own fucking companies - oh, but you can't. All you pricks can do is sit and watch while we innovate and then get angry about it.
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[DW] At least 57 people have died after a boat carrying migrants colonists was shipwrecked in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Mauritania, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Wednesday.
It was one of the deadliest disasters this year among people making the dangerous attempt to reach Europe ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... The IOM said a further 83 migrants colonists who were on board swam to shore.
The vessel, carrying at least 150 people including women and kiddies, had been low on fuel as it approached Mauritania, the United Nations ...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense... migration agency said in a statement.
Survivors are being helped by the Mauritanian authorities in the northern city of Nouadhibou, said the IOM.
FLEEING GAMBIA ... The Gambia is actually surrounded by The Senegal on all sides but its west coast. It has a population of about 1.7 million. The difference between the two is that in colonial days Senegal was ruled by La Belle France and The Gambia (so-called because there's only one of it, unlike Guinea, of which there are the Republic of Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, New Guinea, the English coin in circulation between 1663 and 1813, and Guyana, which sounds like it should be another one) was ruled by Britain...
Survivors reported that the boat had left Gambia on November 27. An unknown number of injured people were brought to hospital.
"The Mauritanian authorities are very efficiently coordinating the response with the agencies currently present in Nouadhibou,'' said Laura Lungarotti, Mauritania's chief of mission with the migration agency.
More than 35,000 Gambian migrants colonists left the small country of just over 2 million and arrived in Europe between 2014 and 2018, the IOM reports.
A 22-year stint ofthen-President Yahya Jammeh's oppressive rule impacted the country's economy, contributing to the high number of people trying to migrate to Europe. Many ended up stranded in Libya and Niger. However, the man who has no enemies isn't anybody and has never done anything... after Jammeh was forced to cede power in 2017, some Gambians have started to return.
[ToloNews] Abdul Rashid Dostum ...ethnic Uzbek warlord who distinguished himself fighting the Soviets and the Taliban. The story that he had a bad guy run over with a tank is an exaggeration. It was an armored personnel carrier... , first vice president, on Thursday at a gathering in Jawzjan said that a large-scale military operation will be launched in the north of Afghanistan against "insurgents."
Gen. Dostum said that in the past three months in Sheberghan, the capital of the Jawzjan, "ISIS" fighters have increased their influence in north of the country.
Earlier this week General Austin Scott Miller, commander of US and 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... Forces in Afghanistan, and acting Defense Minister Asadullah Khalid, met with Gen. Dostum in Jawzjan and discussed the security situation in the north of Afghanistan.
"We discussed the situation in the north where the security threat is at a high level." Dostum told news hounds, adding: "After the meeting, will let you know when and where the operation will be launched."
Currently, the ISIShard boyz have increased their activities in Faryab, Sar-e-Pul ...a city and eponymous province in northern Afghanistan, population about 500,000. Demographically it is majority Tadjik and Uzbek. There are small Pashtun, Arab, and Hazara communities, of which the Hazaras mostly don't bother anyone... , Jawzjan, Balkh and Samangan provinces, according to the local officials.
"The information shows that ISIS has encampments in some areas where security forces do not have a presence. But we assure you that the Afghan forces, with the aid of Resolute Support, will eliminate ISIS or al-Qaeda troops that are active in those areas," said Gen. Wali Mohammad Ahmadzai, commander of 209 Shaheen Military Corps.
Faryab-Jawzjan and Jawzjan-Balkh highways are insecure, and the residents of the provinces have been urged to stay off the highways.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Russia is ready by the end of this year to extend the New START nuclear arms control treaty without extra conditions and further discussion, President Vladimir Putin ...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances... said on Thursday, Interfax news agency reported.
The New START accord, which expires in February 2021, is the last major nuclear arms control treaty between Russia and the United States and limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads they can deploy.
The pact, which was signed in 2010 by US President Barack Obama teachable moment... and then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers.
The treaty, which can be extended by another five years, envisages a comprehensive verification mechanism to check compliance, including on-site inspections of each side’s nuclear bases.
Its expiration would remove any limits on Russian and US nuclear arsenals for the first time in decades.
Arms control advocates have argued that the failure to extend the pact would be highly destabilizing at a time when Russia-US relations have sunk to the lowest levels since the Cold War.
Putin and other Russian officials have repeatedly voiced concern about Washington’s reluctance to discuss the treaty’s extension.
"Our proposals have been on the table, but we have got no response from our partners," Putin said.
In Washington, a Pentagon brasshat suggested the Trump administration is not interested in an immediate extension and sees no rush anyway as New Start doesn’t expire until February 2021.
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#1
The COBRA BALL is an Air Force airborne intelligence platform (RC-135) which carries infrared telescopes for tracking ballistic-missile tests at long range. The COBRA BALL aircraft, operating out of Eielson AFB AK, allow the United States to monitor every reentry vehicle flown from Russian test ranges, to determine the capabilities of each Russian missile, new or old.
Wow, at least 14 9M133-1 AT and 7 9M133-1 TB (Thermobaric) Dehlavieh ATGM seized by the USS Forest Sherman on the way to Yemen, along with other hardware. Iranian produced version of the potent Kornet ATGM- seen in use in the big houthi ambush a few months back. via @LMartinezABCpic.twitter.com/u62uRmDhLI
[INQUIRER] State Rep. Movita Johnson-Harrell, a West Philadelphia Democrat, said Wednesday that she would resign after prosecutors charged her with stealing more than $500,000 from her own nonprofit and spending it on family vacations, designer clothing, furs, personal bills — and her bid for the legislature.
State Attorney General Josh Shapiro said Johnson-Harrell engaged in “brazen corruption” and systematically tried to cover up her crimes by falsifying records and financial statements.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Good riddance. She (Democratic Pennsylvania State Rep. Movita Johnson-Harrell, the first female Muslim representative in the state’s legislature) forgot the first rule of government graft: launder the money through a relative's "business" or "charity".
#6
I'm surprised they disclosed her party affiliation
But it took a reporter from The Blaze to reveal that she is the first Muslim elected to the Pennsylvania legislature. I wouldn’t even have wondered, except for the curiously hijab-like head wrap in the photo.
[Aljazeera] Libyan and US officials accuse Moscow of deploying private contractors to key battleground areas for General Haftar.
Officials in Libya's UN-recognised government say they plan to confront Moscow over the alleged deployment of Russian mercenaries to fight alongside their opponents in the country's civil war.
Libyan and US officials accused Russia of deploying fighters through a private security contractor, the Wagner Group, to key battleground areas in Libya in recent months.
They say the Russian fighters are backing renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar, whose forces have been trying for months to capture the capital, Tripoli, where the UN-recognised Government of National Accord is based.
The GNA has documented between 600 and 800 Russian mercenaries in Libya and is collecting their names on a list to present to the Russian government, according to Khaled al-Meshri, head of the GNA's Supreme Council of State.
"We are going to visit Russia after we collect all evidence and present to the authorities and see what they say," al-Meshri told The Associated Press last week.
He did not say when the visit would take place. Moscow has repeatedly denied playing any role in Libya's war.
#2
"We are going to visit Russia after we collect all evidence and present to the authorities and see what they say," al-Meshri told The Associated Press last week.
[ALMASDARNEWS] Pentagon sources disclosed details described as "sensational" about allegations of Iran’s intention to launch attacks in the Middle East using "suicide planes".
Newsweek magazine published a lengthy report saying 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 JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... was currently using "drones" to control US military sites and a number of other military and security sites in the Middle East.
The magazine quoted US military personnel in the Middle East as saying as the suicide drones would be "used for Iranian foreign operations."
Military and intelligence officials told Newsweek, who declined to be identified that the"US forces are using new technologies to overcome drones, especially those using C4i (control of headquarters, communications and computer) near US positions in the region."
"This activity also indicates that a number of Iranian-friendly regional militias, operating under the orders of the Quds Force, are conducting surveys in preparation for future attacks using drones," the officials said.
"These planes have been developed and tested by Tehran since 2014 and can carry explosives over long distances," the sources said.
Newsweek further quoted a Pentagon official as saying that "these threats from Iran are still continuing because Iran continues its actions, and US forces take all measures to defend itself, and that it is exercising caution to avoid provoking or escalation."
As Gen. Sean Robertson, a Pentagon front man, said: "We continue to monitor the regime’s activities closely in Iran, its military and its proxies, and we are well placed to defend US forces and their interests as needed."
A Pentagon brasshat said there were signs of possible future hostilities by Iran amid mounting tensions between the Islamic Theocratic Republic and the United States.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Isn't that cute. Can their drones handle a MOAB?
[NewsBreakingLive] A businessman from Fairhope, Alabama, who had publicly announced he was running for president in July, has been arrested on two felony charges, WKRG-TV reports.
Jacob Daniel Dyas was reportedly arrested after he turned himself in in connection to an incident that took place in November. Dyas has been charged with willful abuse of child and domestic violence strangulation.
Dyas announced that he was running for president on July 4th from Mount Rushmore. He is the owner of Dyas Construction Management LLC in Fairhope.
Dyas was also arrested on domestic violence-charges in 2010. In the past, he has also run for Congress and the Baldwin County Commission
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] US President Donald Trump ...dictatorial for repealing some (but not all) of the diktats of his predecessor, misogynistic because he likes pretty girls, homophobic because he doesn't think gender bending should be mandatory, truly a man for all seasons...... on Thursday criticized Tehran for cracking down on protests and said the United States will stand with protesters in Iran.
Trump made the comments to news hounds ahead of a meeting at the White House with the permanent representatives of the United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... Security Council.
Later at a meeting with UN diplomats at the White House, President Trump called the crackdown on demonstrations in 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 JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... "brutal" and said the United States would react "strongly" to any threat from Iran to its interests in the region.
"They’re killing a lot of people and they’re arresting thousands of their own citizens in a brutal crackdown," Trump said at a meeting with UN diplomats at the White House.
Calling it a "horrible situation," Trump warned that any new threat from Iran "will be met very strongly."
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[ALMASDARNEWS] A large Russian military convoy was reported to have made their way to the front-lines near the town of ’Ayn ’Issa in northern al-Raqqa.
According to reports, a Russian military convoy consisting of over 15 trucks was seen traveling north to ’Ayn ’Issa’s front-lines, as they continue to deploy their troops inside th al-Raqqa Governorate.
The reports said the Russian trucks were carrying military and logistical equipment, along with several soldiers.
At the same time, a U.S. military convoy was seen traveling along the Hasakah-Aleppo Highway last night, as it made its way through the al-Raqqa Governorate and border city of al-Qamishli.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Lebanese President Michel Aoun ...president of Leb, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hizbullah... said on Thursday he hoped a new government would be formed quickly to carry out essential reforms in a country grappling with the worst economic crisis since its 1975-90 civil war.
More than one month since Saad al-Hariri resigned as prime minister in the face of mass protests against Leb’s ruling elite, Sunni businessman Samir Khatib appears on course to be designated as the new premier in formal consultations on Monday.
Leb’s long-brewing economic crisis has grown more acute since protests began on October 17, spiraling into a financial crunch that led banks to impose informal capital controls as dollars became scarce and the local currency weakened.
The designation of a new prime minister, who must be a Sunni Moslem according to Leb’s sectarian power-sharing system, will be followed by talks to form the new government that is expected to include technocrats and politicians.
A senior political source said once Khatib is designated, the cabinet was expected to be formed quickly because major parties had already reached an agreement on its make-up.
Aoun, speaking during a meeting with heads of professional syndicates, said the new government’s priorities would include "achieving the essential reforms in different sectors" and fighting corruption, a statement from the presidency said.
There were some signs of opposition. Christian politician Samir Geagea ...Geagea was imprisoned by the Syrians and their puppets for 11 years in a dungeon in the third basement level of the Lebanese Ministry of Defense. He was released after the Cedar Revolution in 2005... - whose Lebanese Forces A Christian political party founded by Bashir Gemayel, who was then bumped off when he was elected president of Leb... party holds 15 of parliament’s 128 seats - said the proposed new cabinet would be made of establishment technocrats, out of touch with protesters calling for broader change.
But the prospects of a prime minister being designated helped the Lebanese pound to strengthen. Dollars were being offered on a parallel market at 1,980 pounds compared to 2,030 pounds on Wednesday, a dealer said. The official rate is 1,507.5 pounds.
Leb’s economic crisis is rooted in decades of state waste and corruption that have made it one of the world’s most heavily indebted states.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Paleostinian officials expressed "great concern" on Thursday over a report by the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor that includes a warning that Paleostinian stipends to attackers and their families could constitute a war crime. *snort*
Paleostinian Foreign Affairs Minister Riad Malki said the prosecutor’s office’s report was "based on misleading narratives of a political nature ... rather than an objective and accurate description of the relevant facts."
The Paleostinians have long sought redress with international bodies such as the ICC for what they consider Israeli crimes. President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ...aka Abu Mazen, a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial. While no Yasser Arafat, he has his own brand of evil, just a little more lowercase.... ’s government appeared to have been caught off guard by the language of the criticism found in the report.
The Paleostinians have long paid stipends to the families of people killed or imprisoned as a result of fighting with Israel. The Paleostinians say these payments are a national duty to families affected by decades of violence. But Israel argues the fund encourages violence by paying the families of attackers.
Earlier this year, Israel withheld millions of dollars in tax revenues it collected on behalf of the Paleostinian Authority equal to the sum of the Paleostinian stipends.
Abbas has repeatedly said he will not halt the payments, which totaled approximately $330 million - around 7 percent of the Paleostinian Authority’s $5 billion budget - in 2018.
Thursday’s report, released in the Hague, highlighted possible crimes by both Israel and the Paleostinians that are under investigation, including Israel’s use of sometimes deadly force against protesters along the Israel-Gazoo ...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamaswith about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... border fence, and Paleostinian bully boy rocket fire and use of human shields in Gaza.
At the Paleostinians’ request, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda opened a preliminary investigation in 2015 into alleged violations of international law following the 2014 war between Israel and Paleostinian forces of Evil in the Gaza Strip.
Thursday’s report said the prosecutor "believes that it is time to take the necessary steps to bring the preliminary examination to a conclusion."
[Dhaka Tribune] Indian police shot dead four men suspected of raping and killing a vet in the southern city of Hyderabad last week, the BBC reported on Friday. The men had been in police detention.
Police said the men had been taken to the scene of the alleged crime and were shot after they tried to attack police there, BBC Telugu said. And I, for one, believe that's just how it happened.
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Article dated July 06, 2019. Guys, please check the article date before posting — we’ve had a rash of old articles posted recently — and we don’t always catch them before they’re published.
Many thanks.
—trailing wife for the moderators at 1:40 a.m. ET
[Washington Examiner] New Koch-Soros foreign policy think tank headed by Iran deal advocates.
Trita Parsi and the group's other four co-founders, Andrew Bacevich, Stephen Wertheim, Eli Clifton, and Suzanne DiMaggio, are all pro-Iran deal advocates, as well as harsh critics of U.S. foreign policy and of Israel.
See brief bios of the membership at the link — troo believers, all.
Parsi, the founder of the National Iranian American Council and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, was a prominent and instrumental go-between for the governments of Iran and the U.S. during the nuclear deal negotiations.
The new Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, funded with $500,000 each from the libertarian and left-wing billionaires, says it is named for President John Quincy Adams, who said that America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”
The new think tank was announced earlier this week in an op-ed which said the new group “is one of the most remarkable partnerships in modern American political history” and that Koch and Soros believe “the United States must end its ‘forever war’ and adopt an entirely new foreign policy.”
Koch has given millions to right-leaning causes through the Charles Koch Institute, which also advocates a noninterventionist foreign policy. Soros, a strident critic of U.S. foreign policy, has given billions to left-wing causes around the world through his Open Society Foundations.
Soros also helped bankroll pro-Iran deal lobbying efforts, donating tens of thousands of dollars in an effort to promote the agreement. Soros' organizations donated to the Ploughshares Fund, which Obama foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes credited as part of the "echo chamber" the administration created to convince Congress and the press to back the deal. Ploughshares has also funded Parsi's nonprofit organization.
#5
The Kochs are actually (Charles esp) brilliant businessmen. Soros is a market manipulator who made his fortune by trashing Britain's finances.
But whatever the source of their wealth, their not-unreasonable call for more restraint in US foreign policy is undermined by their repulsive shilling for Iran and for de facto open borders with Mexico.
#7
When I was a kid I always thought there was no such thing as too much money. Now, well, I would still like to be independently wealthy but not to the extent where I begin to believe I am suddenly a great visionary.
Why aren't these a$$holes out on a yacht or hunting elk, gambling, womanizing...enjoying their own Lives? Is it a dearth of imagination or is there a dollar amount to be avoided at all costs.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the occupiers of Greek Asia Minor... will host a summit on Syria in February with the leaders of La Belle France, Germany and Britannia amid ongoing tensions over the conflict, President His Enormity, Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan the First ...Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey. In Anatolia did Recep Bey a stately Presidential Palace decree, that has 1100 rooms. That's 968 more than in the White House, 400 more than in Versailles, and 325 more than Buckingham Palace, so you know who's really more important... said in comments published Thursday.
It follows their meeting on Tuesday in London on the sidelines of the NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... summit.
Deep differences remain over Turkey’s offensive in October against Kurdish Death Eaters in northern Syrian, who had been a key ally for the West against the ISIS.
That triggered a bitter verbal exchange between Erdogan and French President Emmanuel Macron ahead of the NATO summit.
But Macron said their four-way meeting had helped "clear up misunderstandings" despite the continuing refusal by Western powers to label Syrian Kurdish Death Eaters as terrorists.
"We agreed that we would do this four-way summit at least once a year. The second summit will be in Istanbul in February," Erdogan said, according to state news agency Anadolu.
He criticized the insistence of the three leaders on when Turkey would leave northern Syria.
"We said to them, ’What is your business there? Do you have a border?’ No. ’Are you harassed by any fire?’ No. ’Are there attacks?’ No."
Russian President Vladimir Putin ...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances... is also due to visit Istanbul on January 8, with Syria and energy issues on the agenda.
[THEFEDERALIST] Former Women’s March leader and current Bernie Sanders ...The only first openly Socialist member of the U.S. Senate. Sanders was Representative-for-Life from Vermont until moving to the Senate for the rest of his life in 2006, assuming the seat vacated by Jim Jeffords. He ran for the 2016 nomination for president, to be cheated out of it by Hillary Clinton, then went back to being a socialist, waiting for 2020 to roll around... campaign surrogate Linda Sarsour attempted to explain controversial comments she made at the 12th Annual Conference for Paleostine, which took place in reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown ...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel... this past weekend. True to her noxious brand, the Paleostinian-American activist compared Jewish self-determination to white supremacy in a full-throated speech that only a hateful artist of her caliber could manage.
"Ask them this: How can you be against white supremacy in the United States of America and the idea of living in a supremacist state based on race and class but then you support a state like Israel that is built on supremacy; that is built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everybody else?" Sarsour asked. She elaborated, "How do you then not support the caging of children at the U.S.-Mexican border, but then you support the detainment and the detention of Paleostinian children in Paleostine. How does that work, sisters and brothers?"
Sarsour later attempted to clarify her comments, alleging that her critique was directed towards the Israeli government for its recent passage of the Nation State Law, not towards the collective Jewish people. As Jewish Telegraph Agency explains, the relatively new legislation declares "that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, that national self-determination in the State of Israel is ’unique to the Jewish people,’ and that Hebrew is the state’s language ‐ while Arabic, previously an official language, is now designated as having ’a special status in the state.’"
Given Sarsour invoked a common trope used by famous Ku Klux Klanner David Duke, which compares Zionism to white supremacy, Sarsour’s alleged "clarification" does little to quell concerns that she is not simply a raging antisemite. The abject reality of her current explanation is that it fails to comport with her earlier statement.
Furthermore, for someone supposedly well-versed in critiques of Israel, the conflation of Jews with the Israeli government should not occur with such discomfiting ease. Yet she used the word "built," suggesting the very foundation of Israel is centered upon Jewish supremacy. Intentional or not, the anti-Zionist mask slipped, and what lies beneath is rather ugly.
[DAILYWIRE] George Nader, a convicted pedophile that special counsel Robert Mueller used in his Russia investigation, was indicted on Tuesday for allegedly concealing millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions to then-Democratic presidential candidate Crooked Hillary Clinton ...former first lady, former secretary of state, former presidential candidate, Conqueror of Benghazi, Heroine of Tuzla, formerly described by her supporters as the smartest woman in the world, usually described by the rest of us as The Thing That Wouldn't Go Away... "The Justice Department refers only to an unidentified 2016 presidential candidate, but campaign finance records make clear that the candidate was Clinton," Politico reported.
In a statement, the U.S. Department of Justice wrote:
According to the indictment, from March 2016 through January 2017, Khawaja conspired with Nader to conceal the source of more than $3.5 million in campaign contributions, directed to political committees associated with a candidate for President of the United States in the 2016 election. By design, these contributions appeared to be in the names of Khawaja, his wife, and his company. In reality, they allegedly were funded by Nader. Khawaja and Nader allegedly made these contributions in an effort to gain influence with high-level political figures, including the candidate. As Khawaja and Nader arranged these payments, Nader allegedly reported to an official from a foreign government about his efforts to gain influence.
"The indictment noted that political committees that received funding unwittingly submitted false disclosure reports and were presumably victims of the plot," The Washington Post reported. "Still, Clinton apparently attended numerous events, including small gatherings, with Nader, who on July 19, 2016, messaged the foreign official a photograph of him with Candidate 1’s spouse ‐ an apparent reference to Bill Clinton ...former Democratic president of the U.S. Bill was the second U.S. president to be impeached, the first to deny that oral sex was sex, the first to have difficulty with the definition of the word is... ‐ at Khawaja’s home.”
[I24NEWS.TV] New satellite images of an apparent cargo transfer from Tehran to Syria containing a variety of missiles last month suggest 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 JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... may in fact be planning a "Dire Revenge attack", as estimated by Israeli and US intelligence.
The images dated November 21, 2019, provided by "Intelli Times " and "Satellite Pleiades from Airbus Defense & Space", show a large cargo trailer on the runway of the Iran-operated T4 military base located in the Homs District in central Syria.
The images were taken after a plane left the Iranian capital in the early morning hours and landed at the base, unloading three containers onto semi-trailer trucks generally used by the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Syria to move and deploy air, ground and cruise missiles.
Over the last two weeks Iran has been moving around heavy cargo to the T4 base, as part of its preparation for an attack the likes seen back in September on the Saudi oil fields.
The cargo deployment came one day after the Israel Air Force (IAF) conducted strikes on several Iranian targets that reportedly killed some 23 people, the majority of them Iranian.
Israel reportedly refrained from targeting the T4 base due to its division into three areas controlled by the Russian, Iranian and Syrian army ‐ raising challenges that would require precise coordination with Moscow, on top of the base’s more formidable security arsenal that includes S-300 anti-aircraft missiles.
#UPDATE: @i24NEWS_EN EXCLUSIVE: New satellite images of an apparent cargo transfer from Tehran to Syria containing a variety of missiles last month suggest Iran may in fact be planning a "revenge attack", as estimated by Israeli and US intelligence. https://t.co/O5N7y2OijC
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] OPEC ministers finished a marathon meeting on oil markets Thursday night amid expectations that the exporters’ club will announce deeper cuts in supply on Friday.
Ministers remained tight-lipped after the ministerial session ended soon after 11pm at the group’s Vienna headquarters, with Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman telling news hounds: "The OPEC meeting is finished. We will have a meeting tomorrow and everything will become clear for you."
He was referring to a meeting scheduled for Friday, where OPEC ministers will try to nail down output cuts to be shared with exporters outside the group, including Russia, Kazakhstan and Oman.
Earlier in the day, a Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee recommended that OPEC and allied exporting countries remove another 500,000 barrels per day from the world market, according to Russia’s Energy Minister Aleksander Novak.
apart from gratuitous anti Trump inserts and some PC stuff about how hoax hate crimes hurt minorities (it is the WaPo after all), it is a pretty good report -- it covers how the cop figured out it was a hoax and how he got the perp to confess
‘Heil Trump’ and an anti-gay slur were scrawled on an Indiana church right after Trump’s election. The investigation led to an unlikely suspect — and the discovery of a hate crime hoax.
That’d be Nathan Stang, the gay, Trump-hating music director of the vandalized St. David’s Episcopal Church.
Posted by: lord garth ||
12/06/2019
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[AMGREATNESS] Rep Devin Nunes (R-CA) explained on Fox News Wednesday night how House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff ...Showboating U.S. Representative for California's 28th congressional district since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, Schiff has served in Congress since 2001. He currently serves as the chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. In a manner reminiscent of Joe McCarthy, on March 22, 2017, in a interview with Chuck Todd on MSNBC Schiff claimed there was “more than circumstantial evidence now” that Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Russia." Todd followed up by asking if he had seen direct evidence of collusion and Schiff responded that there was "evidence that is not circumstantial and is very much worthy of investigation... (D-CA) obtained the phone records of President Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani. Nunes told host Tucker Carlson that as far as he knew, the action the Democrats took to spy on the president’s allies was unprecedented and that he was considering "legal remedies" to protect his civil rights. Democrats obtained the phone records as part of their impeachment inquiry and according to critics, in possible violation of basic civil liberties.
"When Democrats gained control, they had subpoena power," Nunes, the ranking Republican on the Intel Committee, said. He explained that Schiff had informed the minority that he had subpoenaed some telephone numbers, but did not disclose who the numbers belonged to, and because everything was being done secretly in the congressional SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility), no one was allowed to talk about it.
When asked who was subpoenaed, Nunes explained that Democrats subpoenaed AT&T, which handed over the records without a fight.
"Why would AT&T give those up?" Carlson asked in horror.
"That’s a good question," Nunes replied. "AT&T should have at least gone to court to try to see if what they were going to do was the right thing."
"Could they do that with my phone records or your phone records?" Carlson wondered.
"It appears like they could," Nunes replied. "If Adam Schiff wants to go out and subpoena ... they’ve now set a precedent." He explained that Schiff could try it again with any other number, "send it to AT&T, and AT&T is going to comply."
#2
Shows the need to pull the plug on these Swamp critters--in the courts and criminal justice system, in the voting booths, in Congress and in the media (sunlight is a good disinfectant).
#3
When the shoe is on the other foot, I don't want to hear one single G*d D*mn GOPe congress thumb-sucker saying "We can't just sink to their level..."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/06/2019 17:07
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[Philly Inquirer] HARRISBURG ‐ State Rep. Movita Johnson-Harrell, a West Philadelphia Democrat, said Wednesday that she would resign after prosecutors charged her with stealing more than $500,000 from her own nonprofit and spending it on family vacations, designer clothing, furs, personal bills ‐ and her bid for the legislature.
State Attorney General Josh Shapiro said Johnson-Harrell engaged in "brazen corruption" and systematically tried to cover up her crimes by falsifying records and financial statements.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/06/2019
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#1
Hows that different to what went on at the clinton global slushfund?
#10
No I be like a Foundation where de peeps gimme dey money and I be like I'm on' spend it on good causes 'n' shit like you know a Maserati and spa treatments ...
#12
Crooked morons, jpal. Embrace the power of and.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/06/2019 12:24
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#13
She was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for the 190th district on March 12, 2019 during a special election held after Vanessa Lowery Brown resigned due to her conviction on corruption and bribery charges.
The terrorist group of #ISIS has released new footage from southern #Libya showing its militants moving freely in broad daylight searching houses for what they say the “infidels”. Warlord Khalifa Haftar’s armed groups claim they have full control of the entire southern region. pic.twitter.com/tJMivwTG49
[AnNahar] Chants demanding complete regime change have echoed across Iraq for weeks, but what first brought demonstrators onto the street was the profound poverty of one of the world's most oil-rich countries.
Iraq is ranked the 12th most corrupt country in the world. A recent government probe found over $450 billion in public funds were lost to embezzlement, fake contracts or salaries for so-called ghost employees since 2003.
And that is what has kept them there, with protesters brushing off the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi as failing to root out the rampant corruption that denies them jobs and public services.
In the southern protest hotspot of Diwaniyah, one of the poorest agricultural areas in the country, Umm Salah has joined rallies every day outside the provincial council.
Continued on Page 49
#3
No matter what 'ism' is applied, there will always be one percenters. It's the nature of the man beast. Throw in what BP wrote to add to the compounding.
#8
I admit I haven't been paying close attention what with all the rest of the world on fire, but I wonder how much of this is protests against government corruption and how much is traditional Iraqi Sunni vs Shia.
And yes, I realize those two categories are not mutually exclusive.
[FOXNEWS] A Texas congressman slammed his fellow Democrats Wednesday after "not one person of color" was called as an expert to testify during the first day of impeachment hearings conducted by the House Judiciary Committee.
Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, rebuked his colleagues in a speech on the House floor before the committee hearing began. Three legal scholars later testified at the request of Democrats in the first Judiciary Committee impeachment inquiry hearing. Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, was the sole witness called by the GOP.
"I rise because I love my country, but I also rise today with heartfelt regrets. It hurts my heart, Mr. Speaker, to see the Judiciary Committee hearing experts on the topic of impeachment — one of the seminal issues of this Congress — hearing experts... and not one person of color among the experts," Green told the House floor.
[MENREC] Rep. Ilhan Omar ...Somali-American Dem representative from Minnesota. She is apparently married to her brother and may be her own grandmaw on her mother's side... compared President Trump to notorious mob boss Al Capone, suggesting he, like the noted gangster, should “get to serve time.”
Capone, once dubbed by the American media as “Public Enemy No. 1,” is known for a variety of high-level and violent crimes, including the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, in which seven gang rivals were murdered in broad daylight.
Omar sees a striking similarity between Trump and Capone.
“I’ve used examples where you’ve had mob bosses who have committed atrocity after atrocity, have violated our criminal codes of conduct, and we got them on one narrow case,” she told MSNBC’s Ari Melber, “but they get to serve time.”
#3
Spoken by a women who got into USA via fraud, fraudulently married her own brother, suspected of election funding irregularities, and has ties to Muslim Brotherhood.
[ToloNews] At least "three Taliban ...Arabic for students... were killed in an Afghan Air Force air assault" in northern Kunduz province, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) said in a statement on Thursday.
The air assault took place on Wednesday night after the air forces targeted hard boyz in Chahardara district of the province, the statement said, adding that "four other Taliban were arrested by Afghan commandos during operations in the district."
According to the statement, Afghan cops during the clearing operation in Kunduz city "destroyed two bad boy strongholds and also seized bombs and weapons."
"Sayedullah Kandahari, Madra-e-Jame Uzbakha, Taloka-e-Se, Mawlawi Rahman and Haji Naqashband villages were cleared of hard boyz during the operation," it added.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The United States has not only re-emerged as the world’s largest oil producer, but the superpower is playing a pivotal role in global oil market balance through its foreign policy, choking off exports from 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 JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... over the past 18 months, analysts say.
While Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... and other oil exporters met in Vienna to consider the next phase of their three-year-old deal to restrain global supply, it would be easy to forget that Iran has been forced to cut exports by more than 2 million bpd over the same period thanks to Washington’s increasingly effective policy of "maximum pressure."
Iran’s oil exports have fallen from 2.5 million barrels per day in 2017 to 120,000 bpd today, according to the US State Department. At the same time, US oil production has risen dramatically from 8.9 million bpd in January 2017 to 12.9 million bpd at the end of last month, overtaking Russia and Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer, according to the US government’s Energy Information Agency.
"US foreign policy has played a pivotal role in global oil supply," said Roger Diwan, Vice President at IHS Markit, an advisory firm. "Even though US foreign policy is driven by politics rather than market factors, the result has been that the sanctions have made space for the US production to make it to the market," he added.
Brian Hook, US special representative for Iran, told Al Arabiya last month that progressively tighter US sanctions had succeeded in denying the regime in Tehran $36 billion in annual revenue from oil exports that it used to fund its ballistic missile program, and finance violent groups across Iraq, Leb, Syria and Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of... The US imposed heavy sanctions on Tehran when it pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, but it was careful to offer waivers to Europe ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... an and Asian consumers of Iran’s oil to prevent the measures from causing oil prices to skyrocket. It has progressively removed these waivers as market conditions have allowed.
"We had to grant a handful of oil waivers at that time because we faced a very tight oil market and there wasn’t enough supply in the system relative to demand that would have allowed us to zero out Iranian imports without also spiking the price of Brent crude oil," Hook said in the interview last month. "We’ve got a very good job of balancing our economic interests and our national security interests. As soon as we faced a much more liquid oil supply and not as much demand as supply, that put us in a position to zero out all imports of Iranian crude oil."
Posted by: Fred ||
12/06/2019
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#1
Hug a fracker!
Them knuckle dragging field hands have done more for American security and the economy than the entire Ivy League State Department has done in generations.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Europe ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... an powers will demand 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 JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... stop violating their nuclear deal or potentially face renewed UN sanctions, but with Tehran locked in conflict over US sanctions, there appears to be little scope for compromise when they meet on Friday.
The meeting comes amid heightened friction between Iran and the West. Tehran has rolled back its commitments under the 2015 deal in response to Washington’s pullout from it last year and reimposition of sanctions that have crippled its economy.
The Europeans and Tehran on Thursday clashed over Iran’s ballistic missile program before senior diplomats from the remaining parties to the deal, Britannia, China, La Belle France, Germany and Russia, meet with Iranian officials in Vienna on Friday.
As the accord has slowly eroded, the Europeans have been torn between trying to save it and responding to Iran’s breaches, which have increasingly tested their patience.
Iran’s violations have included exceeding the maximum amount of enriched uranium it is allowed under the deal and resuming enrichment at Fordow, a site buried inside a mountain that Iran hid from UN nuclear inspectors.
"I think the window for a negotiation and to save the deal is barely open," said a European diplomat.
The Europeans are considering triggering a mechanism in the deal that could lead to the reimposition of UN sanctions.
Three diplomats said the political decision was unlikely to be made until January, when Iran is expected to reduce further its commitments to the pact, under which it curtailed its nuclear activities in return for relief from sanctions.
"The European parties to the deal should know that the clock is ticking for them. They try to keep Iran in the deal but then take no action against America’s bullying and pressure," said a senior Iranian official.
Tehran has repeatedly criticized the three European powers for failing to shield Iran’s economy from the far-reaching US sanctions, which have driven away foreign companies interested in doing business there.
Highlighting the widening gap between the two sides, Iran’s foreign minister on Thursday said the three had shown their "miserable incompetence" in fulfilling their commitments.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/06/2019
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#1
Kabuki theater 101. Meanwhile, they're working the back channels to sell more useful stuff to the regime around the embargo.
[ALMASDARNEWS] A fierce firefight broke out between the Ottoman Turkish-backed turbans and Syrian Democratic Forces in northeastern Syria this evening, local activists in the Tal Tamr District reported.
According to these reports, the Ottoman Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) launched an attack on the Syrian Democratic Forces’ (SDF) positions near the town of al-Qasimiyah; this prompted an intense exchange of hostilities.
While no ground has been gained by either party, the local activists report heavy gunfire and shelling in the western part of the Tal Tamr District.
Despite U.S. President Donald Trump ...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party... ’s announcement of ceasefire in northeastern Syria in late October, festivities between the SDF and Ottoman Turkish-backed turbans continue, especially in the ’Ayn ’Issa and Tal Tamr areas.
The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...Qatar's satrapy in Asia Minor... ’s justification for these attacks by their allied turbans is because the Syrian Democratic Forces are still inside the safe zone that was setup by Ankara.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/06/2019
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Top US diplomat Mike Pompeo visited Morocco on Thursday, the highest-ranking American official to travel there since the election of President Donald Trump ...Oh, noze! Not him!... Pompeo met his Moroccan counterpart Nasser Bourita to discuss the "threat" posed by Iran’s attempts to "broaden its regional influence", as well as the conflicts in Libya and unrest across the Sahel region ... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas... , Bourita said in a statement.
The State Department has called Morocco an "essential partner" in Washington’s broader diplomatic strategy, which includes normalization of ties between Arab countries and Israel.
The visit followed Israeli media reports that the country’s officials were hoping for a "breakthrough" in normalizing ties with the North African country in the coming days.
Neither Pompeo nor Moroccan officials made any public mention of such efforts during his visit.
Egypt and Jordan remain the only Arab countries to have peace treaties and formal diplomatic ties with Israel.
"We have a great relationship between our two countries," Pompeo said, as he began his meetings in Rabat. "We make our people safer in each of our two countries."
The trip comes after Pompeo announced last month that the United States no longer considered Jewish settlements in the West Bank to be illegal.
The decision broke with decades of international consensus that the settlements are illegal and a major barrier to peace with the Paleostinians.
The king of Morocco last month called for an end to "the policy of colonization in the occupied Paleostinian territories" and reiterated his support for a two-state solution.
This is followup to: Homeland Security wants to force all travelers including US citizens to undergo face scans when leaving or entering the United States
[NBCNews] The Trump administration said Thursday it no longer plans to propose a regulation next year that would require all travelers ‐ including U.S. citizens ‐ to be photographed when entering or leaving the United States. anybody who thinks they aren't already being photographed and ID'd is fooling themselves. Try and obscure your face on entry, see how that works out for ya
The proposed regulation was slated to be issued in July by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as part of the Trump administration's regulatory agenda. The agency said Thursday after consulting Congress and privacy experts it would not move forward.
"There are no current plans to require U.S. citizens to provide photographs upon entry and exit from the United States. CBP intends to have the planned regulatory action regarding U.S. citizens removed from the unified agenda next time it is published," the agency said.
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., credited public pressure with the decision, which he called "a victory for every single American traveler who flies on a plane."
Posted by: Seeking Cure For Ignorance ||
12/06/2019
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#1
‐ including U.S. citizens ‐ to be photographed when entering or leaving the United States.
[THEHILL] Fox News contributor and podcaster Dan Bongino launched a news aggregation website on Wednesday designed to rival the Drudge Report.
The Bongino Report comes as some Trump supporters have grown increasingly agitated with the direction of the Drudge Report, which has taken a noticeable turn against President Trump in recent months after being staunchly in the former real estate mogul's corner leading up to and after the 2016 presidential election.
Bongino began teasing his project last month. He previously revealed on social media that the new media platform will feature "exclusively conservative and libertarian content." In promoting his new platform, Bongino accused Drudge of abandoning the conservative movement and added that he "never will."
"Drudge has abandoned you. I NEVER will. Check out, and bookmark, the Bongino Report today," he wrote to his 1.3 million followers.
#10
"You have commented 0 times on Rantburg." Third time I've seen this in a week. You guys don't like my sense of humor? I make myself laugh. Is it the bumper stickers? Anyway.
For me it's Insty, Lucianne, AoSHQ, and Rantburg. That's it. Since maybe around 9/11 or so, but can't really remember dates.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
12/06/2019 15:59
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#11
You have commented 0 times on Rantburg.
Are you clearing your cookies or anonymizing your IP, Whiskey Mike? Otherwise, it’s possible you found a bug in Fred’s latest update. Because I remember you from the early years — I always look to see what you have to say.
Important: Daesh is ostensibly over, and terrorism increased in #DeirEzzor in a different way represented by Iran and its militias, that were selected very carefully by it for the purpose of increasing terrorism in the region. Watch it here :https://t.co/MKUrjqFdQU
[NATIONALREVIEW] Fox News commentator Chris Wallace criticized Democrats on Wednesday for refusing to question the lone witness brought by Republicans during the day’s impeachment hearings.
Republicans called on Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, to be their witness opposite three professors summoned by Democrats. Turley has previously testified in the 1998 impeachment hearings against Bill Clinton ...former Democratic president of the U.S. Bill was the second U.S. president to be impeached, the first to deny that oral sex was sex, the first to have difficulty with the definition of the word is... , giving background on the impeachment process.
During the 45 minute hearing on Wednesday morning, "only once did [the Democratic counsel] ask Jonathan Turley any questions," Wallace told Fox News.
"Why is he talking to the three and not [Turley]? Because the Democrats, who have the majority, called three Democratic, pro-Trump-impeachment law professors and they wanted to focus on them, and they didn’t want to hear anything from Jonathan Turley," Wallace went on. "This was not a search for justice or wisdom; this was a search for trying to make a case."
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/06/2019 8:22
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#3
Sometimes folks like Wallace need to shore up their bonifieds as a Conservative before returning to Trump bashing. This was as good an opportunity as any.
[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] Former Secretary of State John F. Kerry endorsed former Vice President Joe Foreign Policy Whiz Kid Biden ...The former Senator-for-Life from Delaware, an example of the kind of top-notch Washington intellect to be found in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body... 's presidential candidacy on Thursday.
"I believe Joe Biden is the President our country desperately needs right now, not because I’ve known Joe so long, but because I know Joe so well. I’ve never before seen the world more in need of someone who on day one can begin the incredibly hard work of putting back together the world Donald Trump ...the Nailer of NAFTA... has smashed apart," Kerry said in a statement, according to the Biden campaign. "There’s never been a time more urgent for leadership at home that can work for the middle class and tackle existential issues like climate change where we are moving dangerously backwards."
Kerry, who served in the Senate for nearly 30 years, also called Biden "uniquely the person running for president who can beat Donald Trump" while also being able to "get to work on day one at home and in the world with no time to waste."
#3
his Heinz Stepson is equally corrupt as Hoover Biden
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/06/2019 8:14
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#4
Has there ever been a Democrat presidential wannabe who made an honest living? Marrying rich widows doesn't count I'm thinking Jimmy Carter he was an honest down to earth peanut farmer.
[NBCNews] Birds have been shrinking as global temperatures rise and the climate warms, a new study published Wednesday in the journal Ecology Letters has found.
Research led by scientists at the University of Michigan examined more than 70,000 bird specimens from 52 North American migratory bird species collected between 1978 and 2016. The researchers found that body sizes for all 52 species shrank consistently over that 38-year time period while the length of wingspans grew, which suggests that birds may be forced to adapt ‐ sometimes in dramatic ways ‐ to climate change. Or perhaps adapted to tall buildings in Chicago?
Or to more predatory birds chasing them. The populations of predatory birds had crashed by the early 1970s, reportedly as a result of DDT use. Since DDT was banned, predator bird populations have grown significantly.
"Other studies have found a relationship between temperature and body size similar to what we found, but this is the most consistent result," said Benjamin Winger, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and the study’s senior author. "What we don’t know is the extent to which the shrinking bird is an adaptive response to climate change. Are they able to keep up with warming temperatures or are they lagging behind?"
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Seeking Cure For Ignorance ||
12/06/2019
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[17 views]
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#1
Could hardly find a non-giant turkey in the store two weeks ago.
#6
I think climate change has impacted the scientific community by evolutionary evidence of smaller brains in climate scientists over the last 40 years. Brain size is negatively correlated with the size of climate change protestor signs and the audio level of their screams and shrieking about ocean levels.
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.
[Jpost] IDF soldiers, along with Shin Bet, Border Police and Israeli police forces arrested eight wanted Paleostinians in the West Bank on Thursday night, suspectedly involved in terrorist activity, civil terrorism and violent demonstrations against civilians and security forces. 
...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 
[IsraelTimes] The military is preparing for the resumption of protests along the 
[American Thinker] December 2015 was a pivotal month in many respects.
[Washington Examiner] Elizabeth Warren's fast rise in the 2020 Democratic primary field is over.
NAIROBI (AP) ‐ Steven Lacchin grew up a fatherless boy, but he knew some very basic facts about the man who was his father.
[Townhall] One symptom of a society in crisis is the unreliability or even corruption of its own auditors.
[The Hill] The U.S. tax burden fell to the fourth lowest among advanced economies following passage of the GOP tax law, according to data released Thursday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
[Medium.com] Shameless pedophile Jeffrey Epstein inherited his espionage business from ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, whose father British media magnate Robert Maxwell, was a super spy for Israel’s Mossad. Here, in another excerpt from the newly released book "Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales," 
[Federalist] As several people fall out of the Democratic presidential campaign clown car, a few hitchhikers hopped aboard the journey to their convention this summer in Milwaukee. However, those (Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg) bumming a ride represent everything that the radical left-wing of the Democratic Party now abhors. 
[Washington Examiner] What a great opportunity Nancy Pelosi just handed to President Trump and Senate Republicans!
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
...... the Islamic version of the old Somali warlord...
[Dhaka Tribune] A Dhaka court on Wednesday delivered the verdict in the Holey Artisan Bakery attack case, sentencing seven New JMB 
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
...ethnic Uzbek warlord who distinguished himself fighting the Soviets and the Taliban. The story that he had a bad guy run over with a tank is an exaggeration. It was an armored personnel carrier...
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...
...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 
Military and intelligence officials told Newsweek, who declined to be identified that the"US forces are using new technologies to overcome drones, especially those using C4i (control of headquarters, communications and computer) near US positions in the region."
...president of Leb, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hizbullah...
[Dhaka Tribune] Indian police shot dead four men suspected of raping and killing a vet in the southern city of Hyderabad last week, the BBC reported on Friday. The men had been in police detention.
...the occupiers of Greek Asia Minor...
...The 
...former first lady, former secretary of state, former presidential candidate, Conqueror of Benghazi, Heroine of Tuzla, formerly described by her supporters as 
...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 
...Showboating U.S. Representative for California's 28th congressional district since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, Schiff has served in Congress since 2001. He currently serves as the chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. In a manner reminiscent of Joe McCarthy, on March 22, 2017, in a interview with Chuck Todd on MSNBC Schiff claimed there was “more than circumstantial evidence now” that 
[Philly Inquirer] HARRISBURG ‐ State Rep. Movita Johnson-Harrell, a West Philadelphia Democrat, said Wednesday that she would resign after prosecutors charged her with stealing more than $500,000 from her own nonprofit and spending it on family vacations, designer clothing, furs, personal bills ‐ and her bid for the legislature.
...Somali-
...Arabic for 
...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 
...Qatar's satrapy in Asia Minor...
...Oh, noze! Not him!...
...former Democratic president of the U.S. Bill was the second U.S. president to be impeached, the first to deny that oral sex was sex, the first to have difficulty with the definition of the word 
...The former Senator-for-Life from Delaware, an example of the kind of top-notch Washington intellect to be found in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body...
[NBCNews] Birds have been shrinking as global temperatures rise and the climate warms, a new study published Wednesday in the journal Ecology Letters has found.
