[Breitbart] FedEx announced Friday it will commit to more than $3.2 billion in wage increases, bonuses, and American capital investment due to the recently passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
"FedEx believes the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will likely increase GDP and investment in the United States," FedEx wrote.
FedEx revealed in its statement that it will spend more than $200 million in increased compensation, about two-thirds of which will go to hourly workers, and the remainder will go to increases in performance-related incentive plans for salaried personnel.
FedEx also suggested it will contribute $1.5 billion to the FedEx pension to ensure that it remains "one of the best-funded retirement programs in the country."
The shipping company also wrote in the statement that it will invest "$1.5 billion to significantly expand the FedEx Express Indianapolis hub over the next seven years. The Memphis SuperHub will also be modernized and enlarged in a major program the details of which will be announced later this spring."
The American economy continues to thrive under President Donald Trump. Reports suggested that an excess of one million Americans will receive a bonus of up to $3,000, thanks to the tax cut bill.
[GCaptain] North Korea shipped coal to Russia last year which was then delivered to South Korea and Japan in a likely violation of U.N. sanctions, three Western European intelligence sources said.
The U.N. Security Council banned North Korean exports of coal last Aug. 5 under sanctions intended to cut off an important source of the foreign currency Pyongyang needs to fund its nuclear weapon and long-range missile programs.
But the secretive Communist state has at least three times since then shipped coal to the Russian ports of Nakhodka and Kholmsk, where it was unloaded at docks and reloaded onto ships that took it to South Korea or Japan, the sources said.
Continued on Page 49
[Washington Examiner] The Justice Department has given Congress less than 15 percent of the texts between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page ‐ and that is all Congress is likely to get, at least until department experts finish an effort to recover an unknown number of previously lost texts that were sent and received during a key five-month period during the Trump-Russia investigation.
There is much confusion over some basic facts of the Strzok-Page texts. How many are there? How many relate to the two most politically-charged investigations in years, the Trump-Russia probe and the Hillary Clinton email investigation? How many have been turned over to Congress? And how many are left to be turned over to Congress?
The answers are complicated, but here is what I have been able to figure out from conversations with the Justice Department and Capitol Hill investigators.
The Justice Department has identified about 50,000 Strzok-Page texts. But that is apart from the texts between Dec. 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017 that were declared missing a week ago but are now being recovered. So, the total is apparently 50,000 plus the currently unknown number of formerly missing texts.
But that number refers only to the Strzok-Page texts that were sent and received on FBI-issued Samsung phones. There are a number of instances in the texts in which the two officials say that they should switch the conversation to iMessage, suggesting they continued to talk about FBI matters on personal Apple phones. For investigators, those are particularly intriguing texts ‐ what was so sensitive that they couldn't discuss on their work phones? ‐ but the number of those texts is unknown. And of course, they have not been turned over to Congress.
How many texts have been turned over? There appears to be some disagreement on that. A Justice Department official estimated that 4,000 texts have been turned over, while a Capitol Hill source put the number at 7,000. The difference might be traced to counting some exchanges as one text, or some other unimportant reason. But in any event, the total number appears to be in the 4,000 to 7,000 range, which includes all the texts handed over on two separate occasions.
Two or more sides disagree on who runs the country. And they can’t settle the question through elections because they don’t even agree that elections are how you decide who’s in charge.
That’s the basic issue here. Who decides who runs the country? When you hate each other but accept the election results, you have a country. When you stop accepting election results, you have a countdown to a civil war.
[ABC] Next week, skywatchers will be able to glimpse a rare phenomenon: a super blue blood moon.
The event may sound like a complicated tongue twister, but it's really just the confluence of three celestial occurrences.
After the full moon on New Year’s Day, another is scheduled to light up the night sky on Wednesday, Jan. 31. This is considered a blue moon because it is the second full moon of a month. A super moon is when the full moon appears larger and brighter to the naked eye. Raul Malo and The Mavericks 'Blue Moon'
[WSJ] The new year brings many a revisiting of the Hillary Clinton email server case, including one at the hands of the Justice Department inspector general (that’s where all those FBI text messages are coming from), though his inquiry likely defines the matter too narrowly to get at the really important issues.
We should also stress that some kind of a revisiting would be bedeviling a Clinton administration now if Hillary Clinton had been elected instead of Donald Trump.
Way back in 2014, had Mrs. Clinton returned her "personal" emails and devices to the State Department instead of destroying them, it would have closed matters for most Americans.
After all, the Obama administration knew of and condoned her private server, amounting to an implicit endorsement of her unorthodox handling of classified materials.
But she didn’t, and the administration was not about to prosecute its heir apparent, especially after she became the sole alternative to Bernie Sanders and then Donald Trump.
President Obama’s public statements on the case could not have been clearer. He essentially directed his Justice Department that Mrs. Clinton did nothing wrong, as arguably a president is entitled to do.
The part that never made sense was why FBI Director James Comey intervened to do the president’s bidding so the Justice Department wouldn’t have to.
It was unnecessary and improper. Whatever its wisdom, no serious person of either party believes the outcome was anything but predetermined. Mr. Comey simply intruded himself as a more plausible vehicle to carry out the administration’s will on the "matter" than Attorney General Loretta Lynch would have been. That much is clear by applying even the minimalist interpretation to the text messages of his lead investigator on the case, Peter Strozk, as well as other evidence surfaced by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
Mr. Comey gave different reasons in public and private for his action. In closed congressional session, he pointed to intercepted Russian intelligence that he said could be used to discredit the Justice Department. That is, he relied on information from one or more U.S. intelligence agencies. It doesn’t tax the imagination to suppose Mr. Comey and fellow intelligence officials were operating on a shared premise that a Clinton presidency was inevitable and needed to be protected from email-related risks.
Since then, Obama intelligence officials have leaked intelligence and planted scurrilous innuendo about Mr. Trump, apparently aimed at giving credibility to the "collusion" narrative and discrediting his victory. But what Mr. Comey did was worse. Again, I’m not saying it was realistic or desirable that Mrs. Clinton be prosecuted, but the choice not to prosecute was a political decision that the Obama administration and Obama Justice Department had a duty to make and to own.
The American people are not idiots. They would have considered the reasons, spoken and unspoken, understood the complexities, and come to their usual, wildly divergent views about the propriety of the Obama decision.
Instead, Mr. Comey lied to the electorate in the middle of a presidential race. He lied when he said the FBI conducted a thorough, apolitical investigation of the candidate of the party in power. He lied when he said the evidence alone exculpated Mrs. Clinton and her aides. He withheld from the public information about Russian intelligence activity that appears to have been a pretext for his intervention.
When the partisan red mist clears, his surviving plausible defense will be that Mrs. Clinton was certain to win and needed to be protected from any attempt to use the controversy over her missing emails to weaken her. But Mr. Comey had no business prejudging the election based on his personal estimate that Mr. Trump was as unacceptable to the American people as he was to Mr. Comey and his Obama administration colleagues.
It almost slips by unnoticed, by the way, that all this was the consequence of the Obama Democratic Party’s hostaging itself to Mrs. Clinton‐the same Mrs. Clinton whose law-firm billing records, under subpoena for two years, magically turned up on a table in the White House in the run-up to the 1996 election, while the world muffled its astonishment and skepticism.
In fact, the reaction was not dissimilar to the one that greeted Friday’s report that Mr. Trump tried to fire Robert Mueller back in June but was stopped by his staff. Consider it another reminder, like the Clinton email case, that law and politics inevitably meld at this level.
Mr. Trump rightly fears that the Mueller investigation is becoming an open-ended inquiry into obstruction and/or his financial past. His best defense is to be a successful president. He needs to win an endorsement from voters this fall and keep the House in GOP hands. If he doesn’t, the hard reality is that Mr. Trump can blame himself for what comes next.
#1
Perjury must have been decriminalized since everyone who has lied to Congress (Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Loretta Lynch, James Clapper, et al) under oath has walked.
[Townhall] Well, when you’re backed into a corner, there really is nowhere to go. That’s where the Democrats are on this tax bill. Even after they shut down the government over illegal aliens, companies continued to signal their intention to dole out bonuses to their workers. In all, over 250 companies have given out bonuses, with over three million workers benefitting from the GOP tax plan. Bonuses have ranged from $1,000 to $3,000 depending on the company. The tax plan has become more popular. So, what to do now? Well, just marginalize $1,000+ bonuses as "crumbs."
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has done it, with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) adding that a $1,000 bonus won’t go that far. Yeah, remember when Democrats were appalled that the payroll tax cuts wouldn’t be extended in 2011, which would have added an additional $40 in workers paychecks? This is quite the 180-degree turn. And now shutdown Chuck is getting on the "crumbs" bandwagon (via Free Beacon):
#4
This is just the basic default position of the Democratic Party, that all funds should be given to the government. There's really no other way to read it.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/27/2018 17:18
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#5
There's a losing strategy. We probably don't have to worry about anyone telling them since no one can tell them anything. Let them keep digging.
#8
Well, knowing some of the watering holes and expensive dining spots most of these democrats take lunch and eat dinner, $1000 might cover the tab.
They are so out of touch they don't realize that what they spend on lunch at Sans Souci would buy groceries for a family of four for a month...and gas...and pay the utilities.
[The National Interest] On November 8, 1950, a flight of four straight-winged jets swooped down on an airfield at Sinuiju, North Korea‐on the Korean side of the border with China. The F-80 Shooting Stars raked the airfield with their six nose-mounted .50 caliber machine guns as black bursts of antiaircraft fire tore the sky around them.
The Shooting Stars had arrived a few months earlier, in response to North Korea’s overwhelming invasion of its southern neighbor using Soviet-supplied tanks, artillery and aircraft. After a rough early period, a UN counterattack had turned the tables: these F-80s from the Fifty-First Fighter Wing were flying out of U.S.-occupied Pyongyang, striking the remaining North Korean forces near the border with China.
After completing their third pass, Maj. Evans Stephens and his wingman Lt. Russell Brown climbed to twenty thousand feet so they could cover their two wingmates. Suddenly, Brown spotted the silvery glint of around ten jet fighters streaking towards them from higher altitude across the Chinese border. He radioed the other element to abort their attack run‐MiGs were coming!
*As has been pointed out, the F-80s didn't last long - they quickly got shifted over to ground attack work, and were eventually supplemented there by the F-84 Thunderjet.
*The very few North Korean pilots capable of flying MiGs did indeed get whacked fairly quickly, but they were replaced by Russian and Chinese pilots who were a heck of a lot better - until we brought in the F-86 Sabre.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/27/2018 17:56
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[IJR] It has been over a year since retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis took the oath of office as secretary of defense. remember ISIS?
Despite what his old callsign of "Chaos" implies, which actually stands for Colonel Has An Outstanding Solution, and while it was made tongue-and-cheek at the time, it brings a mantra that many in the military and civilian population hoped Mattis would take with him to his new job.
Approved overwhelmingly for the Cabinet position ‐ Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) was the sole dissenting vote and who did not respond to multiple requests for comment ‐ the majority thinking in "the Swamp" was that Mattis would be one of the best in Trump's administration. She's an idiot who thinks her paltry resume, anatomy, and #Resist will make her POTUS in 2020
His first year has been marked with significant accomplishments, and he continues to enjoy being the most popular member of Trump's Cabinet. IJR was able to get comments from members of Congress and others to see how they think he has done so far....
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/27/2018
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[American Thinker] Two years ago, as then-secretary of State John Kerry was boasting in Davos about Obama’s deal with Iran, he acknowledged that some of the $150 billion given to the mullahs in Tehran "will end up in the hands of the IRGC or other entities, some of which are labeled terrorists. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that every component of that can be prevented." He was right. We don’t know how much money went to fund Iran’s global terrorist activities. And we know even less about the billions in untraceable cash that was supposedly delivered to the mullahs or the recipients of that cash. How about investigating that? There should be ample evidence to prove Kerry and his boss President Obama have willfully engaged in terrorist financing and money laundering. That is unless the pertinent emails and documents related to the payments to Iran had been lost or destroyed.
After the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was implemented on January 16, 2016, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who wished to lift all sanctions on Iran, kept complaining that "On paper the United States allows foreign banks to deal with Iran, but in practice they create Iranophobia so no one does business with Iran." As much as the Obama administration wanted to comply, it needed congressional support to do that. Thus, the Obama administration decided to circumvent U.S. anti-money laundering laws to help Iran’s economy.
#1
...the Obama administration instructed Treasury to find “the mechanism” through which untraceable cash could be delivered to the Iranian terrorist regime.
The logistics of orchestrating financial bribes to rogue nations requires deliberate planning.
#3
Provided he is given a second term, I can see The Donald and Mattis dropping the hammer on selected Iranian sites during the November 2019 to January 2020 timeframe.
#4
That "agreement" with Iran is NOT a treaty. A treaty as to be ratified by congress. Zero and Fred Munster used this crazy crap multi national memo as a binding document to give money and support to Iran...basically because Zero didn't want Israel to win the next big blow up in the middle east.
What everyone has missed ignored is that none of the cash transfers and release of bank accounts should have happened without approval of Congress.
Or was it really a really big fat ransom for those six sailors disguising the real transfer?
[American Thinker] In any criminal investigation where the suspect is not immediately known, the first question usually asked is who would have the most to gain? As we follow the bread crumbs of the text messages of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and await release of the House Intelligence Committee’s memo regarding the collusion between the DNC, the Hillary Clinton campaign, the DOJ, and FBI to interfere with the 2016, ensure the election of Hillary, and the defeat or impeachment of Donald Trump, the answer to that question is clear -- one Barack Hussein Obama.
Can it be believed that as key players in the Obama administration like Strzok and Page, as well as FBI Director James Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, number 4 at Justice Bruce Ohr, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and many others were linked in a vast criminal conspiracy to keep Hillary Clinton out of prison and Donald Trump out of the White House, that Barack Obama was blissfully unaware of all this? Rather, it can be plausibly argued that he was orchestrating it.
Perhaps not directly or by explicit orders, but rather by discussing the threat to his legacy Trump represented with his progressive minions and then simply saying, as crime bosses throughout history have done, "You know what needs to be done. Do it."
This scandal did not occur in a vacuum any more than did the weaponizing of the IRS to target the Tea Party and other conservative groups before Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign occured in a vacuum. The agencies under Obama’s control have been politicized before and used to intimidate and destroy his political opponents
Last September, I argued that Comey had the fix in for Hillary and we now know that he began writing his exoneration memo significantly before interviewing Hillary and other key witnesses. The exoneration memo underwent key edits in which Strzok, who interviewed Hillary and those witnesses, some of whom were granted immunity, was involved. But now, as the layers of this rotting onion are peeled away, it has become clearer that Comey did not act on his own initiative. This fish is also rotting from the head.
Back in April, 2016, President Obama gave an interview in which he seemed to have foreknowledge that Hillary Clinton would be exonerated for her "carelessness" and did not "intentionally" mishandle classified emails, words that Comey would use just a few months later:
#1
Perhaps not directly or by explicit orders, but rather by discussing the threat to his legacy Trump represented with his progressive minions and then simply saying, as crime bosses throughout history have done, "You know what needs to be done. Do it."
[BBC] A suicide bombing has killed at least 40 people and injured 140 others in the centre of Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, officials say.
Attackers drove an ambulance laden with explosives past a police checkpoint into a street that was closed to public transport. It happened near the old interior ministry building and offices of the European Union and High Peace Council.
The Taliban have said they carried out the attack. A week ago, Taliban militants killed 22 people in a luxury Kabul hotel.
Witnesses say the area - home to foreign embassies and the city's police headquarters - was crowded with people when the bomb exploded on Saturday at about 12:15 local time (08:45 GMT). Plumes of smoke were seen from around the city.
Officials said the death toll would probably continue to rise as casualties were brought to hospitals for medical attention.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/27/2018 7:28
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#2
update: 63 dead, 151 injured
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/27/2018 7:33
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#3
With relationships btwn the U.S. and Pakistan in the ditch, there appears to be an uptick in car bombings. Probably little more than a coincidence.
I don't recall seeing any mention of the specific 'types' of explosives. Military grade explosives might still be a bit difficult to obtain. One might assume Home Made Explosives (HME) components imported from one of Pakistan's twelve or so giant fertilizer factories could be the source.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/27/2018 9:26
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#5
Now 95 dead, about 163 wounded. The BBC is doing a good job keeping up with the updates from Kabul. And I’m sure that map is particularly useful to those Rantburgers who have been there.
[Buzz via Right Scoop] This will definitely be a popcorn event. Crazy Maxine Waters is going to give a response to Trump’s State of the Union speech.
From Buzzfeed:
One of President Donald Trump’s fiercest critics on Capitol Hill will address the country just after next Tuesday’s State of the Union.
Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, will speak at the top of a BET News special after Trump delivers the State of the Union, a BET spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. The program, "Angela Rye’s State of the Union," is part of a broader partnership announced just days ago between the network and the Democratic strategist and political commentator. Rye will executive produce news programs with a sharp focus on issues facing black Americans. The programs will run quarterly, BET said in a release.
The spokesperson said activists and some elected officials will analyze Trump’s first year in office on the program, and will talk about "building black politics and the value of engagement across today’s socio-political landscape."
I can’t wait!!! She’s going to be spitting and sputtering and probably cursing!! It’s gonna be awesome!
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/27/2018 8:21
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#6
Thanks to mental giants such as James Brown Maxine Waa-waa and Nancy "Stretch" Pelosi, the GOP might have an easy go next election (with a wee bit of help from Q-Anon).
#14
I hope they show the audience. This is going to be like a Gallager show with everyone in the front row holding up plastic sheets to protect themselves from all the flying spittle coming from the stage.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/27/2018 17:15
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#15
Peanuts, popcorn, get your Cracker Jacks! This is almost too good to be true. A racist Dhimmicrat scam artist mentally hindered by over use of medical leeches.
#16
Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, will speak at the top of a BET News special after Trump delivers the State of the Union
Golly. The Black Entertainment cable channel’s news special following the president’s speech. What percent of the population will be watching that, do you suppose? For information, I mean, not for snark opportunities.
[Express] Laura Huhtasaari, a 38-year-old former teacher, is trying to bring anti-immigration populist ideas back to mainstream Finnish politics and her campaign for the presidency has seen her reputation soar ahead of the first round of voting on Sunday.
Her Finns Party has employed tactics from a variety of populist politicians, echoing Donald Trump with her "Finland first" slogan and French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, who used nationalism as a key theme in her campaign.
Her eurosceptic rhetoric sounds a lot like that of former Ukip leader Nigel Farage, even telling of her admiration for the 53-year-old’s Brexit campaign as she told supporters to "take their country back".
She said: "I look at Nigel Farage’s example. It took 17 years, but Brexit came.
[Ha'aretz via Breitbart] Former President Barack Obama told a Jewish congregation in Manhattan Thursday that he is "basically a liberal Jew" as he defended his administration’s record on Israel and his decision to criticize Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria.
Ha’aretz reports:
The event at Temple Emanuel in Manhattan marked the first time that Obama spoke publicly about Israel since leaving office.
Obama defended his decision to abstain at a December 2016 UN Security Council vote denouncing Israeli settlements. He explained that vetoing the resolution would have hurt “our credibility on human rights.” He also stated that “to be a true friend of Israel it is important to be honest about it, and the politics of this country sometimes do not allow for it.”
Obama said that the situation in the West Bank was “not sustainable” in the long term and could endanger Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state. He warned that settlements could make the creation of a Palestinian state practically impossible if they continued to grow at the current pace.
One attendee told Ha’aretz that the former president grew “visibly frustrated when he spoke about the settlements.”
[Breitbart] In an interview with USA Today, the former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) said President Donald Trump’s alleged "shi*hole countries" comments were "racist."
Bush said, "When you call Haiti, whether it’s an ’s-house’ or an ’s-hole,’ I mean it really doesn’t matter, you disparage a lot of people that love this country that are here making a contribution and making a difference. Why? Why do you do that?"
He added, "It’s very frustrating, and it is racist to say ‐he may not be a racist, but the comments are racist, and at some point you gotta call him out on it."
Kirkuk (IraqiNews.com) Iraqi forces found on Friday a new mass grave of people executed by Islamic State militants in west of Kirkuk, a security source was quoted saying.
National Iraqi News Agency (NINA) quoted the source saying that Popular Mobilization Forces ran into the grave in al-Riyad region. He said it contained the relics of citizens of southern and western Kirkuk executed by the militants during the occupation of Hawija, their former bastion southwest of the province.
As Iraqi troops recaptured areas held by Islamic State militants since 2014, they have regularly run into mass graves of civilians and security agents executed by militants over accusations of fleeing the group’s havens or collaborating with security forces.
Hawija (IraqiNews.com) Iraqi government teams have begun removing tens of thousands of war leftovers from Islamic State’s former bastion in Kirkuk province.
The health and environment ministries said in a statement on Friday that their teams began removing 130.000 items left over by the war against the Islamic State in Hawija, a former group stronghold southwest of Kirkuk.
The process, carried out in cooperation with the military and police, comes in preparation for the return of refugees.
The government declared the recapture of Hawija in September.
Explosives planted by the group across its bastions in Iraq have caused deaths even after the liberation of those regions by the Iraqi forces.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
01/27/2018
01:52 ||
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Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Eleven people were killed and injured as two kabooms took place on Friday, north of Baghdad, security sources said.
"A bomb went off near the industrial district in Taji region, north of Baghdad, leaving four persons injured," the source told Baghdad Today website.
Earlier on the day, a security source said seven people were killed and injured in an kaboom, north of the capital.
"A bomb went kaboom! near stores in al-Mushahada region in Tarmiyah, northern Baghdad," the source said.
"The blast left two people killed and five others maimed," the source said. "Ambulances rushed to the blast scene and transferred the maimed to hospital and the victims to forensic medicine department."
Diyala (IraqiNews.com) A paramilitary personnel was maimed in a kaboom, northeast of Baquba, a local source from Diyala province was quoted saying on Friday.
"A member of al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces) was maimed as a bomb, placed on the side of the agricultural road in Qurret Tabah region, went kaboom! during a campaign launched at some regions," the source told AlSumaria News.
"Security services cordoned off the kaboom scene and started combing the region fearing further kabooms," he added.
Earlier on the day a source from PMFs revealed the outcome of an operation at northern Diyala regions.
"Troops destroyed two rest houses of Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... hard boyz in a village between Qurret Tabah and al-Udhaim regions within an operation that was carried out earlier on the day," the source told Baghdad Today website.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
01/27/2018
01:52 ||
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Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) An Iraqi soldier was killed and an officer was maimed while trying to deactivate a booby-trapped vehicle in Babil province, south of Baghdad.
The Joint Operations Command’s War Media Cell said the pair were deactivating the vehicle which was abandoned at Jurf al-Nasr region before it went kaboom!.
Babil has been relatively stable on the security level, but witnessed some attacks against civilians and security troops.
#1
Bless their hearts and may their names live on in Iraqi history but FFS, BLOW THE DAMNED THINGS IN PLACE. Okay, so you have to replace some windows....
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
01/27/2018 5:52
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[ToloNews] Statistics by the United States Air Force show that 4,300 bombes have been dropped by foreign troops in Afghanistan in 2017, targeting Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... and other terrorist groups in parts of the country.
According to the US Air Force figures, the number of Arclight airstrikes in 2017 was twice than of those carried out in the past two years ‐ 2015 and 2016.
US Air Force also has said this year they will bring in more airplanes to Afghanistan and will increase their support to the Afghan cops on the battlefields.
According to the figures, US and Afghan Air Force have conducted an average of 15 airstrikes daily in 2017 in south of Afghanistan.
The Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan said following the announcement of Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... ’s new strategy for South-Asia and Afghanistan, the number of airstrikes against forces of Evil has increased significantly.
"Airstrikes are up significantly in 2017 primarily due to the South Asia policy which President Trump has signed and allowing us to go after both the Taliban and ISSK (ISIS) where they are. It is going to allow us to pursue them. The rules of engagement are now different," Resolute Support Mission (RS) Public Affairs Director Thomas Gresback said.
In the meantime, NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and structure.... Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that NATO will send in another 3,000 military trainers to Afghanistan to train Afghan forces.
Stoltenberg said the international community will not let Afghanistan to turn to a safe haven for krazed killers.
"Allies and partners are also adding three thousand more trainers to the Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan, helping prevent Afghanistan from ever again becoming a safe haven for international terrorism. Afghanistan has taught us that prevention is better than intervention," said Stoltenberg.
Afghan Defense Ministry meanwhile said the Afghan Air Force has changed their tactics and that they are carrying out airstrikes with a new approach to eliminate terrorists.
"We have increased our attacks and also we succeeded to eliminate a great number of the enemy's strongholds, equipment and personnel by operations carried out by air and ground forces," Defense Ministry deputy front man Mohammad Radmanish said.
"There will be significant results if these (military) operations are conducted in good coordination," former military officer Gen. Ahmad Shah Sangdil said.
The new remarks about the increase of airstrikes and sending in more advisers and trainers expressed amid currently over 20 provinces of the country are insecure and nearly 14 districts in different locations have collapsed to the Taliban.
In addition to this, recently Taliban has advanced toward Farah city fighting against Afghan cops. Despite ongoing fights in Farah city outskirts, fights also have been ongoing in parts of Kunduz province.
Salahuddin (IraqiNews.com) Security troops have locked away Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! two Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... members in east of Salahuddin province, a security source said on Friday.
"The Rapid Response troops received accurate information that located two IS members, who have arrest warrants issued against them. Troops then carried out an operation and managed to arrest them," the source told AlSumaria News.
The operation was carried out in the vicinity of Tuz Khurmatu region, east of Salahuddin.
"The arrested members were transferred to detention cells to be then taken to investigation and judicial authorities," he added.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
01/27/2018
01:52 ||
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[Khaama Press] At least two foreign holy warriors fighting in Talibs ranks were killed during the operations in eastern Nangarhar The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country.. province of Afghanistan.
The Nangarhar governor’s office in a statement said the holy warriors were killed late on Thursday night during an operation of the Afghan Special Operations Forces.
The statement further added that two other bully boy identified as Nsrullah and Pahlwan were also tossed in the calaboose Drop the rosco, Muggsy, or you're one with the ages! during the operation.
The operation was conducted in the vicinity of Lalpur district of Nangarhar, the statement said, adding that two cycle of violences, one vehicle and some explosives were also confiscated.
The anti-government armed bully boy groups including the Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... holy warriors have not commented regarding the report so far.
[Khaama Press] A suicide kaboom rocked Kandahar city earlier this evening leaving at least fourteen people dead or maimed.
The provincial police chief General Abdul Raziq confirmed an kaboom has taken place in the vicinity of the 11th police district of the city.
He said the target of the kaboom was the police vehicle and the blast has taken place in Aino Mina township.
According to Gen. Raziq, at one person was killed and four others including a civilian were maimed.
However, facts are stubborn; statistics are more pliable... the provincial hospital officials are saying that the dead bodies of four people have been shifted to the hospital along with ten others with the injuries.
No individual or group has so far grabbed credit behind the incident.
[IsraelTimes] The assault, which intended to use Kalashnikov rifles and bombs in multiple crowded spaces, was foiled by the arrest of a Moroccan member of the cell
The Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group planned a Gay Paree-style attack on crowded areas in Barcelona weeks before its November 2015 rampage in the French capital, according to a report published in a US magazine.
An IS network had planned to attack crowded public places in Spain’s second city in September 2015 but was disrupted by the arrest of the operative at the center of it, Moroccan national Abdeljalil Ait el-Kaid, according to the report published in CTC Sentinel, a US-based publication that researches terrorism.
"Investigators have learned the disrupted plot to strike Barcelona was meant to be similar to the one later executed in Gay Paree, and was meant to also involve operatives from La Belle France and Belgium with whom el-Kaid was meant to link up with," it said.
"As with the Gay Paree attacks, the Barcelona plan was to involve the use of Kalashnikov rifles and bombs in multiple crowded spaces, such as concert halls, dining areas, and sports events," it added.
The report, published in the January edition of CTS Sentinel, was prepared by two top researchers on global terrorism at the Real Institute Elcano, a Madrid think tank.
It was based on interviews with police, intelligence officers, and judicial officials with knowledge of the case, as well as judicial documents that are not subject to a gag order.
El-Kaid lived in Torrevieja on the Mediterranean coast of Spain until September 2014, when he left to join the Islamic State group in Syria.
There, he allegedly joined the circle of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Belgian who allegedly led the cell that carried out the Gay Paree attacks that killed 130 people.
El-Kaid was incarcerated Drop the rosco, Muggsy, or you're one with the ages! in June 2015 in Warsaw, Poland, while in transit from Istanbul on his way back to Spain on Abaaoud’s orders, to prepare the attack in Barcelona, according to the report.
This plot was not related to the attacks in Barcelona and the nearby seaside resort of Cambrils in August 2017 that killed 16 people, according to the researchers.
The only survivor among the 10 button men who carried out the killing spree in Gay Paree on the night of November 13, Salah Abdeslam, is due to appear in court in Belgium early next month.
The heavily armed jihadists attacked the national stadium, bars and restaurants in the French capital, as well as the Bataclan concert venue, in a bloodbath claimed by IS.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
01/27/2018
00:39 ||
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[DAWN] Billionaire investor George Soros ...either Ernst Stavro Blofeld or Auric Goldfinger come true... launched a scathing attack on tech giants at the Davos summit on Thursday, calling them monopolies that could be manipulated by authoritarians to subvert democracy.
During an annual dinner he hosts at the World Economic Forum, held this week in the Swiss alpine resort, Soros turned his sights on a host of subjects including US President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... and the speculation frenzy surrounding the bitcoin cryptocurrency.
But much of the Hungarian-born financier's ire was reserved for the tech giants of Silicon Valley who, he argued, needed to be more strictly regulated.
"Facebook and Google effectively control over half of all internet advertising revenue," the 87-year-old told diners during a speech.
"They claim that they are merely distributors of information.
The fact that they are near-monopoly distributors makes them public utilities and should subject them to more stringent regulations, aimed at preserving competition, innovation, and fair and open universal access."
He predicted that tech giants would "compromise themselves" to access key markets like China, creating an "alliance between authoritarian states and these large, data rich IT monopolies."
"This may well result in a web of totalitarian control the likes of which not even Aldous Huxley or George Orwell could have imagined," he warned.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2018
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#1
It's not commie enough for this foreign mfer. What everyone in the world needs to do to you right now is FUCK YOU.
You are a worthless Ahole with money screwing up the world. But there are many of those but you are the worst.
#7
I'm on FB but rarely. I prevent FB addiction by the simple of un-following (not un-friending) EVERYBODY. Makes for an extremely quiet, dull & uninviting FB page. Hardly any reason to go there anymore.
The word is that BATF’s proposed ban of rifle bump stocks has opinion running against the ban by a ratio of six to one.
Switching gears, somewhat, the Huffington Post ran a statistical summary of school shootings since the start of the year. The writer said that 11 school shootings have taken place in 2018. The problem is that once you break down the 11 incidents, you find only six shootings involved a firearm discharged on the grounds of an elementary or secondary school. Of those six, one involved a non student committing suicide, one was a student committing suicide and two involved shots fired from outside the grounds. Of the six, two resulted in actual harm to students.
Of the 11, one involved a pellet gun shot by a non student at a bus, while the rest were at post secondary institutions.
It is no surprise that Michael Bloomberg's Everytown organization is compiling statistics in such a dishonest manner. Only the mounds of cash Bloomberg shoves at his hirelings could allow anyone to make those claims seem like a set of horrific tragedies.
In fact, the statistical display is so bad I won't even concede in any public debate that any school shooting is unacceptable, if the deceptive manner in which these numbers are compiled are allowed to stand or even be entertained as fact by government policymakers.
One last thing: Weatherby, Inc., the firearms manufacturer based in California has quit California and plans to move to Wyoming. The double whammer of business destroying regulations and an antigun environment has finally taken its toll. Weatherby now joins Magpul, which left Colorado for Wyoming in 2013 because of its magazine ban.
Loads.
Rantburg's summary for arms and ammunition:
Pistol ammunition prices were mostly steady. Rifle ammunition prices were mostly higher.
Note: It should be noted that, rounding to the half cent, .22LR ammunition is now $0.03 each at Bud's Gun Shop, the lowest price since this column was begun.
Prices for used pistols were mixed. Prices for used rifles were mixed.
New Lows:
None
Pistol Ammunition
.45 Caliber, 230 Grain, From Last Week: -.01 Each After Unchanged (4Q, 2017)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Bulk Ammo Store, Own Brand, FN, Brass Casing, Reloads, .21 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 1,000 rounds: East Carolina Trading, Own brand, FMJ, Brass Casing, Reloads, .20 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (2 Weeks))
.40 Caliber Smith & Wesson, 180 Grain, From Last Week: -.01 Each After Unchanged (2 Weeks)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Bulk Ammo Store, Own Brand, FN, Brass Casing, Reloads .18 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: East Carolina Trading, Own Brand, CRN, Brass Casing, Reloads, .17 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (6 Weeks))
9mm Parabellum, 115 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (3Q, 2017)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Extreme Reloading, Own Brand, RN, Brass Casing, Reloads .14 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: Fedarm, Own Brand, RN, Brass Casing, Reloads .14 per round (From Last Week: +.01 Each
.357 Magnum, 158 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (3Q, 2017)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Outdoor Limited, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel Casing, .23 per round
Cheapest Bulk: 1,000 rounds: Outdoor Limited, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel Casing, .23 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (3Q, 2017))
.38 Special, 158 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (5 Weeks)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Highland Lakes Ammo, Own Brand, FN, Brass Casing, Reloads .24 per round
Cheapest Bulk: 500 rounds: Fed Arm, Own brand, TMJ, Brass Casing, Reloads, .19 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (2 Weeks)
Rifle Ammunition
.223 Caliber/5.56mm 55 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (4Q, 2017)
Cheapest, 20 rounds: Able's, Wolf WPA, FMJ, Steel Casing, .20 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: Outdoor Limited, Wolf WPA, FMJ, Steel Casing, .20 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (4Q, 2017))
.308 NATO 150 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (3Q, 2017)
Cheapest, 20 rounds: LAX Ammunition, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel Casing, .32 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: SG Ammo, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel Casing, .30 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (3 Weeks))
7.62x39mm AK 123 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (2 Weeks)
Cheapest, 20 rounds: Outdoor Limited, Wolf WPA, FMJ, Steel Casing, .20 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 1,000 rounds: True Shot Gun Club, Wolf WPA, Steel Casing, FMJ, .19 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (3Q, 2017))
.30-06 Springfield 145 Grain. From Last Week: Unchanged (4Q, 2017)
Cheapest, 20 rounds: Outdoor Limited, Wolf WPA, Steel Casing, FMJ, .54 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: United Nations Ammo, Wolf WPA, Steel Casing, FMJ, .53 per round (From Last week: Unchanged (4Q, 2017))
.300 Winchester Magnum 150 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (8 Weeks)
Cheapest, 20 rounds: LAX Ammunition, Prvi Partizan, Brass Casing, SP, .81 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: Target Sports USA, Prvi Partizan, Brass Casing, SP, .85 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged 4Q, 2017)
.338 Lapua Magnum 250 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (3 Weeks)
Cheapest, 20 rounds: Outdoor Limited, Ten Ring, Brass Casing, SP, 2.15 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 200 rounds: Cabelas, Prvi Partizan, Brass Casing, HPBT, 2.80 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (7 Weeks))
.22 LR 40 Grain, From Last Week: -.01 Each After Unchanged (2Q, 2017)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Bud's Gun Shop, Federal, RNL, .03 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 5,000 rounds: Outdoor Limited, Aguila, RNL, .04 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (2Q, 2017))
TULSA, Oklahoma - Police say they were forced to fire pepper balls into a crowd outside a Tulsa apartment complex late Thursday after residents threw rocks at officers at the end of a police chase.
It happened in front of the Savannah Landing Apartments in the 1100 block of East 60th Street at 9:45 p.m.
This after officers stopped a 2003 Silver Chevy pickup for not having a tag light and other traffic violations. They say the driver circled complex several times before police used stop sticks, deflating several of the truck's tires.
Police had to break out the windows of the pickup to get the driver out, and while they were doing that, apartment residents began yelling at them and throwing rocks.
They say at one point, police had to use pepper balls to keep the crowd back.
[ATimes] The argument the Air Force carefully avoids is that US aircraft don’t operate singularly. The F-22 is a strategic long-range pure stealth fighter bomber; the F-35 is a new tactical stealth plane that can play a role against North Korean missile sites. Much of North Korea’s largely obsolete Air Force is food for F-15s and F- 16s.
While nothing ever works exactly as advertised, combinations of coalition aircraft can keep the skies clear and go to work on the main strategic targets (long range missiles and nuclear facilities), leaving the A-10 with a prime role of blasting North Korea’s armored forces.
The A-10 is the perfect aircraft to blast any plans Kim Jong-un has to dominate the Korean peninsula. If his army is chopped up and decimated, he will only have himself to blame. And if he survives, he will remember the A-10.
#1
The F-35 should be a fairly good wild weasel plane if it is fielded in enough numbers.
Although... my suspicion is, in any war with North Korea, we'd eventually wind up fighting China directly rather than indirectly. So we'd probably need more of F-22, F-35, _and_ A-10's.
#3
Remember the Macnamara's TFX Program that was supposed to give us a multi-service/multi-role/multi-everything fighter?? Same thought process and probably the same results: a low payload bomber.
#4
There is no way in hell we have enough "operational" A-10s for the job.
But who knows, maybe the three working B-1s can make up the difference. It would take one or two years just to fill the backordered parts to make it a clean go.
What you say about ending up with a bomber is exactly the point - the Lightning is a first-day light bomber with a pretty good air-to-air capability. Politically and for treaty reasons, we can't call it a bomber (that's one big reason the F-117 had an 'F' number) and although you could make a VERY good case for it getting an A-series number (and the late, lamented Aardvark, for that matter) USAF internal politics would never allow it - the leadership will slash every tire and throw a thermite grenade in every cockpit before another official A-for-Attack bird sees USAF service again.
Now, all that of course does not mean the Lightning can ever replace the Hog at what the Hog does so very well - it can NOT. It is too fragile, has too short a loiter time, and cannot carry enough of the proper ammo. The difficulty here is that no other aircraft ever will either, and in a future Korean conflict the Hog may well be doomed before it starts. TFA states correctly that the DPRKAF will probably be swept from the skies right quickly...but the grim fact is that the Hog has never yet been in a fight where it was up against an enemy that can truly fight back. The Norks will have more than enough anti-air capability remaining on the ground to make using the Hogs a dicey proposition at best.
None of that is a reflection on the Hogs or their maintainers - heck, I used to be one (21TFS/55FS)back in the day, and I know the aircrews will push their attacks to the limit. But the truth is that their will probably be not enough Hogs against the potential threats to their mission.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/27/2018 10:18
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#7
"Remember the Macnamara's TFX Program that was supposed to give us a multi-service/multi-role/multi-everything fighter?? Same thought process and probably the same results: a low payload bomber."
But does it have port holes?
Seriously, what are we going to use for CAS?
Drones?
#12
At the US Open Tennis mens final one year, a group of A10s did the flyover, and of course I got all excited and gave the people around me a brief talk on it's capabilities- anyway I was left to enjoy the tennis in peace from then on.
#13
"newc,according to my AF officer son, yes - drones are the future of CAS. Someday."
Well, there was a special kind of effectiveness with having an actual Human who could immediately correct action by call - a roving over-watch. I wonder what kind of delay the drone presents?
[AA.TR] At least nine Paleostinians were maimed by Israeli army gunfire on Friday amid festivities that erupted on the Gazoo Strip’s eastern border with Israel, according to the Paleostinian Health Ministry.
The injured Paleostinians sustained gunshot wounds to the feet and legs during festivities that broke out near the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gazoo Strip, the ministry front man Ashraf al-Qadra said in statement.
None of them suffered life-threatening injuries, he added.
Earlier on Friday, dozens of Paleostinian youths marched toward Gazoo’s fraught border with Israel, where they hurled stones at Israeli troops stationed on the other side.
According to an Anadolu Agency correspondent at the scene, Israeli troops responded to the protesters with teargas, rubber bullets and live ammunition.
The Paleostinian territories have remained tense since Dec. 6, when U.S. President Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, drawing condemnation from across the Arab and Moslem world.
Since then, at least 19 Paleostinians have been martyred -- and thousands more injured -- in fierce festivities with Israeli forces in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gazoo Strip.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2018
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#1
None of them suffered life-threatening injuries, he added.
[ALMASDARNEWS] Among yet another series of Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... weapons stockpile recently uncovered by the Syrian Arab Army in the country’s eastern province of Deir Ezzor was an interesting find: air-to-air missiles.
In previous days, the Syrian Army discovered a number of ISIS arms caches throughout the towns of al-Hasrat, As-Siyal and al-Jalaa (located north of Abu Kamal city) in Deir Ezzor province.
Among the expected array of machine guns, shoulder-fire rocket launchers and small arms ammunition that was found was also a couple of unexpected weapon systems ‐ these being two air-to-air missiles (shown above).
The missiles are of the now obsolete Soviet-made K-13 (code-named by NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... as AA-2 Atoll) design which itself is reportedly a reserve copy of the original US-built AIM-9 Sidewinder models.
In the picture, the missile on the right (with the red tip) is a heat-seeking model whilst the missile on the left is a a radar-guided model.
Furthermore, given the larger rear fins the on left missile, it appears that it is perhaps of the K-13M variant (a modernized version of the K-13 with increased maneuverability).
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2018
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#1
...Not IMPOSSIBLE that they could jerry-rig a ground launcher for these things, but I wouldn't want to bet my life on the idea working.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/27/2018 12:15
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#2
Not IMPOSSIBLE that they could jerry-rig a ground launcher for these things,
That'd be a fun weekend project. "Here, hold my soldering iron."
[ALMASDARNEWS] Among the many high-end formations deployed by the Syrian Arab Army and allied paramilitary groups in the province of Deir Ezzor to defend recently retaken cities, towns and villages along the western bank of the Euphrates River from ISIS is a powerful Syrian Hezbollah force with countless years of experience on the battlefield.
Yesterday it was confirmed that the Syrian Hezbollah paramilitary group known as the al-Rida Force is currently deployed along the western Euphrates shore south of Deir Ezzor city.
In its most recent assignment, the battle group has been tasked with carrying out defensive operations ‐ namely, detecting and neutralizing ISIS infiltration attempts in the southwestern countryside of Deir Ezzor province.
The paramilitary formation is made up of native Syrian Hezbollah fighters who are mostly from the province of Homs. Throughout the Syrian conflict they have been trained and advised by the (original) Lebanese arm of Hezbollah.
Just yesterday, the al-Rida Force ‐ in conjunction with army units ‐ rolled back a multi-pronged ISIS offensive against a number of towns along the western Euphrates shore.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2018
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Top|| File under: Govt of Iran Proxies
#1
Is it possible to have more than two scorpions in a bottle?
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
01/27/2018 5:53
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[Reuters] Illegal shipments of the powerful and addictive opioid fentanyl are pouring into the United States by mail from China and the U.S. Postal Service must step up the use of high-tech detection methods to fight the problem, according to a congressional report unveiled on Wednesday...Investigators said the Chinese sellers were eager to ship the fentanyl using Express Mail Service, which operates worldwide through each country's postal operations, including the U.S. Postal Service.
Surcharges are applied, the investigators said, for customers demanding shipment through private delivery services, such as FedEx, DHL and United Parcel Service, because of the greater likelihood the goods would be seized. With "top men" like these, who needs enemies?
[ALMASDARNEWS] A ceasefire between Faylaq al-Rahman and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in the eastern suburbs of Damascus was announced tonight after lengthy negotiations.
The ceasefire will include the entire East Ghouta region and some areas just outside the capital, a source told al-Masdar News.
According to the source in Damascus, the ceasefire is open-ended and will not include the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham terrorist group.
The ceasefire is effective at midnight.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2018
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Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
[AA.TR] Israel on Friday agreed to sell 30 used F-16 fighter jets to Croatia for $500 million.
According to a statement from Israel’s Prime Ministers’ Office, the agreement was advanced when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Croatian counterpart Andrej Plenkovic met earlier in the day at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland ...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell... The deal also requires Washington’s approval, however, as the planes are produced in the U.S.
The two leaders also agreed to expand cooperation in many areas, including the economy, agriculture and tourism, the statement said.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2018
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#1
Croatia has $500 million. How on Earth? Figure the IAF will train the guys.
What's it cost to keep the F16 running?
What's the need? Who's the potential enemy?
The Balkans, where they produce more history than they can consume locally.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
01/27/2018 6:01
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#2
The cost is about what their existing Russian-made MiG-21 warplanes cost.
[Aeon]. In the popular imagination, the history of sex is a straightforward one. For centuries, the people of the Christian West lived in a state of sexual repression, straitjacketed by an overwhelming fear of sin, combined with a complete lack of knowledge about their own bodies. Those who fell short of the high moral standards that church, state and society demanded of them faced ostracism and punishment. Then in the mid-20th century things changed forever when, in Philip Larkin’s oft-quoted words, ‘Sexual intercourse began in 1963 … between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles’ first LP.’
In reality, the history of human sexuality is far more interesting and wild. Many prevailing presumptions about the sex lives of our medieval ancestors are rooted in the erroneous belief that they lived in an unsophisticated age of religious fanaticism and medical ignorance. While Christian ideals indeed influenced medieval attitudes to sex, they were rather more complex than contemporary prejudices suggest. Christian beliefs interacted with medieval medical theories to help shape some surprising and sophisticated ideas about sex, and a wide variety of different sexual practices, long before the sexual revolution.
The case of the French cleric Arnaud de Verniolle illustrates the sophistication of medieval sexuality. One day in the early 14th century, when Arnaud was a student, he had sex with a prostitute. Several years later, he confessed this lapse to the Inquisition, explaining that:
At the time they were burning the lepers, I was living in Toulouse; one day I did it with a prostitute. And after I had perpetrated this sin my face began to swell. I was terrified and thought I had caught leprosy; I thereupon swore that in future I would never sleep with a woman again.
Arnaud’s tale is not unusual. Many medieval men found themselves with undesirable symptoms after a brothel visit, and attributed their plight to their sexual behaviour. Among the various medical miracles attributed to St Thomas Becket, for example, was the cure of Odo de Beaumont, who became leprous immediately after a late-12th-century visit to a prostitute. Much has been made of the medieval tendency to interpret disease as a product of sexual sin. Too much. In fact, the medieval tendency to see disease as sexual sin was not solely based on moral judgments – there were also strong medical elements. Much more at the link
#1
"Leave a tip" meant something different in those days
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/27/2018 8:53
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#2
A lot of our views of history have been colored in by the English Victorians who wrote the histories that were used to teach with in the opening of the last century.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/27/2018 14:31
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[ALMASDARNEWS] The so-called Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) launched a big offensive in the eastern countryside of the Deir Ezzor Governorate this week, targeting the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) positions west of Albukamal city.
ISIS began the offensive on Thursday by storming several areas under the Syrian Army’s control in western Albukamal; this resulted in a series of intense battles that lasted for more than 24 hours.
However, Switzerland makes more than cheese... despite the intensity of the Islamic State’s attack, the Syrian Arab Army was able to beat back all the terrorist group’s attempts to infiltrate their positions in the western countryside of Albukamal.
According to a military source in Deir Ezzor, the Islamic State suffered more than 25 casualties as a result this offensive, with their remaining gunnies fleeing across the Euphrates River.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2018
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[ALMASDARNEWS] The Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units (YPG) have imposed full control over the strategic mountaintop of Jabal Barsaya, today, after a fierce battle with the Ottoman Turkish-backed rebels.
The battle for Jabal Barsaya began three days ago, when the Ottoman Turkish-backed rebels attempted to capture this mountaintop in the northeastern part of the Afrin Canton.
While they were able to seize several hilltops and trenches, the Ottoman Turkish-backed rebels were never able to fully take control of Jabal Barsaya, as the YPG forces continued to hold their ground.
Jabal Barsaya is the highest point in the Afrin Canton; if captured by the Ottoman Turkish-backed rebels, they would immediately have fire control over many towns south of the mountaintop.
[AlAhram] The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... 's health minister said on Friday that 14 Ottoman Turkish soldiers and Free Syrian Army ... the more palatable version of the Syrian insurgency, heavily influenced by the Moslem Brüderbund... (FSA) rebels were killed and another 130 people were maimed following Turkey's incursion into Syria's Afrin region.
Speaking to news hounds after visiting maimed soldiers in hospitals, Ahmet Demircan said three Ottoman Turkish soldiers and 11 fighters from Turkey-backed FSA factions have been killed so far in festivities in northern Syria.
He said 130 people had been brought to Ottoman Turkish hospitals and that 82 of them had been released after receiving treatment. None of the maimed were at death's door, he said, adding that additional medical personnel were sent to the area.
On Saturday, Turkey launched an offensive against the Kurdish YPG militia, which it views as a security threat, in Syria's Afrin, opening a new front in the multi-sided Syrian civil war and further straining ties with its NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and structure.... ally Washington.
Dozens of combatants and more than two dozen civilians have been killed so far in the offensive, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britannia-based war monitor, has said.
The Ottoman Turkish military said in a statement on Friday it had killed at least 343 forces of Evil in northernSyria since the operation started.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) however, a YPG-dominated umbrella group backed by the United States in the fight against Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... , has previously said that Turkey was exaggerating the number of the dead.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2018
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[NYPost] The Hawaii state employee who mistakenly sent an alert warning of a ballistic missile attack earlier this month is refusing to cooperate with federal and state investigators, officials said Thursday.
The head of the Federal Communications Commission Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau told a US Senate hearing the FCC was pleased with the cooperation it’s received so far from Hawaii Emergency Management Agency leadership.
But Lisa Fowlkes said the commission was disappointed that the agency employee who transmitted the false alert was refusing to cooperate.
"We hope that person will reconsider," she told Senate commerce committee members. Sounds to me like "the agency employee"'s Shop Steward is involved.
Hawaii Emergency Management Agency spokesman Richard Rapoza said his agency has encouraged all employees to cooperate with all investigations. But he said this employee also has refused to cooperate with the agency’s internal investigations.
Rapoza said he couldn’t speak to why the employee wasn’t cooperating with federal investigators.
"With regard to our internal investigations, he has taken the position that he provided a written statement shortly after the incident, and doesn’t need to speak to investigators because he has nothing to add," Rapoza said in an email.
The agency has not identified the employee. He continues to work at the agency though has been reassigned to a section where he doesn’t have access to the warning system.
An FCC spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a question about what reason the employee has given for not cooperating with its probe. Maybe the FBI can help? Oh, right - this has no Pro-Trumpian hallmarks.
The alert sent to cellphones, TV and radio stations in Hawaii on Jan. 13 caused widespread panic and confusion. The problem was compounded by the lengthy amount of time ‐ 38 minutes ‐ it took the emergency management agency to send a corrected alert.
Sen. Brian Schatz told the committee he was introducing legislation that would make it clear that the authority to issue missile alerts rests with the U.S. departments of defense and homeland security, not with state and local governments.
"It is increasingly clear to me that if we get all 50 states and all the territories and 3,007 counties across the country participating in this program, the likelihood of another mistaken missile alert as a result of human or bureaucratic error is not zero," Schatz said. Schatz is a level-9 Bureaucratese warrior.
Posted by: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy ||
01/27/2018
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#1
Do a Mueller on him, charge him with obstruction of a federal investigation.
[All Africa] The president had found a cure for AIDS. That was the news that reached Ousman Sowe, the head of a Gambia ... The Gambia is actually surrounded by 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... n AIDS support network, one day in 2007. He was overjoyed.
"We all went with the hope that we were going to take a drop of some wonderful medication and be cured," Sowe, 64, a tall man with greying hair, told the Thomson Rooters Foundation in an office outside Gambia's rundown seaside capital.
But he was not allowed to go home after showing up at the state house that day. Gambia's ex-president Yahya Jammeh forced him to drink herbal concoctions morning and night for seven months until he was declared cured - but in reality, near death.
Jammeh, whose 22-year rule over the tiny West African country was marked by accusations of human rights ...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions... abuses, fled into exile last year after losing an election.
Now survivors of Jammeh's bogus AIDS treatment are doing what once seemed impossible - speaking out about their suffering and pursuing justice against the man who endangered their lives.
An estimated 9,000 Gambians, most with HIV, passed through Jammeh's treatment programmes and were forced to give up conventional medicine in favour of his homemade cures, said AIDS-Free World, a U.S.-based charity working with survivors.
The fake AIDS treatment not only had grave health consequences for the patients, some of whom died, but hindered real HIV/AIDS prevention efforts in the country, UNAIDS said.
"There was sort of a blackout of information on HIV, because everything was related to the president's treatment," said the U.N. agency's country director Sirra Ndow.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2018
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[AA.TR] There is a "high possibility" North Korea will mobilize large numbers of troops and most of its weapons in a show of force early next month, according to South Korea. Oh, noze! Not a parade!
South Korea's Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon told a forum in Seoul on Friday that the expected Feb. 8 parade at an airfield in Pyongyang could be "intimidating".
"The public and the international community probably have grave concerns, but the government's efforts to make the PyeongChang Games a 'Peace Olympics' and the North's participation in the Games [could also mitigate such concerns]," Cho was quoted as saying by Yonhap News Agency.
The South is monitoring developments as the Koreas are forming a unified Olympic team for the first time after breakthrough cooperation talks this month.
But the North looks set to mark the 70th founding anniversary of its military on the eve of the PyeongChang Olympics, which is being held in the southern portion of the divided peninsula.
Pyongyang has been demanding that South Korea cancel planned joint military drills with the United States this spring ‐ the allies already agreed to delay the exercises until after the Paralympics in March.
The prospect of provocative military parades and drills will dampen hopes that the Winter Games could bring about a lasting improvement in inter-Korean ties, as Cho admitted "it is a realistic guess that a vicious circle of repeated provocations and sanctions could come back soon".
Many onlookers view the North's recent reconciliatory stance, ie agreeing to hold cooperation talks, with suspicion given that the reclusive state refuses to stop developing nuclear weapons despite global punitive measures.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2018
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#1
Interesting date - one day before the Winter Olympic games in nearby PyeongChang, a scant 50 miles from the North Korean border. They won't be a target at all, yewbetcha!
#2
And they bitch about people who build along the Mississippi River. They say the odds are lousy in playing Lotto, but someone always wins. They say the odds of a Super Big One(tm) are small,.......
#5
Depending on the type of fault/action, multiple small quakes are a good thing - relieving plate edge stress to avoid locking up with a BIG one eventually happening
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/27/2018 9:23
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#6
Huh? What? Yaaawwwwn. 2.5, 4.0 and 5.8...the only one of any significance is the 5.8 and even it wouldn't have done much damage. Lemme go back to sleep now.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/27/2018 12:58
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#7
I'm waiting for someone to blame this on global warming climate change and/or Trump.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/27/2018 13:56
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#8
Naw Rambler, tectonics is about slow buildup of force. We're still in Bush quakes for a couple of years...
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/27/2018 14:26
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Rude assumptions. Given that her husband is a billionaire, if she’d wanted a gold toilet at the White House, he’d have ordered one from Tiffany.
[DailyCaller] First Lady Melania Trump’s request to borrow a Vincent Van Gogh painting from the Guggenheim Museum was refused, but a curator did offer another work of art: A functional 18-karat gold toilet.
The curator at the Guggenheim responded to Trump’s request by offering to loan the White House a working toilet made of gold called "America," according to The Washington Post.
The gold commode was available "should the President and First Lady have any interest in installing it in the White House," curator Nancy Spector wrote in an email response to the White House, obtained by The Post.
According to the email, Trump had requested Van Gogh’s "Landscape with Snow," but that work was "prohibited from travel except for the rarest of occasions," Spector wrote. "We are sorry not to be able to accommodate your original request," Spector said, "but remain hopeful that this special offer may be of interest."
She included an illustration of the toilet, designed by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. Cattelan "would like to offer it to the White House for a long-term loan," Spector, a vocal critic of President Donald Trump, said in the email.
The Guggenheim had displayed "America" for some time, allowing tens of thousands of visitors to use the gilded toilet,
President Trump has remarked upon his germ fetish in the past, and they were going to give him a public toilet? How gauche.
but the museum offered to transport it to the White House along with instructions for how to use it.
Lift lid.
Sit on seat. Or lift seat and stand facing device, if male.
Do what must be done, applying skills learnt as a toddler.
The toilet paper thing. One assumes the plumbing can handle it, so the residue needn’t be dropped into a dedicated trash can. (Ick.)
Stand up, step back, close lid, flush.
Hand washing is assumed, but is not a necessary step in the operation of this particular type of toilet.
The museum had installed the toilet "for all to use in the privacy of one of the Guggenheim’s single-stall, gender-neutral bathrooms, Spector wrote in a blog post in 2017.
The piece resonated in the Trump era, as Trump had become "synonymous with golden toilets," Spector wrote in the museum’s blog.
Oh dear. Mr. Spector should have checked Snopes’ debunking of that Occupy Democrats meme back in 2016.
"It is, of course, extremely valuable and somewhat fragile, but we would provide all the instructions for its installation and care," Spector wrote to the White House.
Cattelan told The Post that the offer was "a very delicate subject." When a reporter asked why he offered the toilet to the Trumps, Cattelan said: "What’s the point of our life? Everything seems absurd until we die and then it makes sense." Guggenheim Director: Richard Armstrong
To schedule a Guggenheim tour, call 212-423-3500
Posted by: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy ||
01/27/2018
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#1
Incredibly bad manners. I wonder if the Gugg just *bleep*ed itself on donations.
#3
Yes, a #2 audit at a minimum. If it is listed, removal from the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) listing might also be in order. I'm sure there are other discreet measures.
#5
No doubt the blatant insult went over well in Ms Spector’s insular little world, and will no doubt garner the Guggenheim some donations. But had she wanted the president to accept it, she would have been better off offering a silver toilet instead, as silver has anti-infective properties. There was a write-up in Scientific American on the subject some years ago.
[Daily Caller] Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton allegedly retained a top adviser on her 2008 presidential campaign even after she learned that he was accused of sexual harassment.
Four sources told The New York Times that Burns Strider, who served as Clinton’s faith adviser, was accused of repeatedly sexually harassing a young staffer.
Clinton’s campaign manager at the time, Patti Solis Doyle, requested that Clinton fire Strider, but instead Clinton insisted that he he undergo counseling and lose several weeks of pay. The young woman was reassigned and forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
The 30-year-old woman accused Strider of rubbing her shoulders in an inappropriate manner, kissing her on the forehead and sending her suggestive emails.
Strider sent Clinton emails with scripture readings every morning for months on the campaign.
Strider went on to lead Correct the Record, an independent group that supported Clinton’s 2016 campaign. He was fired from that group after several months, which three sources partially attributed to his harassment of a young female aide.
Strider did not return the Time’s request for comment.
The law firm that represented Clinton’s campaign in 2008 released the following statement:
"To ensure a safe working environment, the campaign had a process to address complaints of misconduct or harassment," Utrecht, Kleinfeld, Fiori, Partners stated. "When matters arose, they were reviewed in accordance with these policies, and appropriate action was taken. This complaint was no exception." Contrition is for little people. I take it then husband Bill was not the only 'Harasser' ?
Posted by: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy ||
01/27/2018
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#1
Whatever happened to beating the shit out of people who pulled this crap?
#NotMeToo - I was hitchhiking in the hometown of Manchester NH and was picked up by someone who I sort of recognized. We smoked a joint, had a beer, and he showed me a Playboy or something like that. I was aware something might be going on, then a minute or two later, he puts his hand on my knee. I then put my hand... on my six-inch Buck knife. CLIIICK! It was modified with a brazed-on small metal bead so it almost acted like a switchblade with the quick release. I said 'bring me home, and that'll be the end of it.' And he did just that.
I tell my older brother about it the next day. 'You got picked up by Handy Andy!' I'll go talk to him (most likely it was another threat). I never bothered to follow up in it.
[ALMASDARNEWS] The Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) is on the verge of entering the southern Damascus town of Yalda after their latest advance inside the key city of Hajar al-Aswad.
ISIS scored a big advance on Friday, when their forces managed to breakthrough Jaish al-Islam ...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In Sptember 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powereful... ’s last line of defense along al-Zein Street in the Taqadam District of Hajar al-Aswad.
As a result of this advance, the Islamic State now controls almost all of Hajar al-Aswad, including the entire Taqadam District that is located at the western axis of rebel-held Yalda.
Making matters worse for the Salafist tough guys, ISIS has recently advanced inside the Yarmouk Camp, forcing Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham , Jaish al-Islam, and the Free Syrian Army ... the more palatable version of the Syrian insurgency, heavily influenced by the Moslem Brüderbund... (FSA) to retreat to the northern part of the district.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2018
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[DAWN] The Trump administration on Thursday designated as global holy warriors six individuals accused of supporting the Taliban ...Arabic for students... and Haqqani network in Afghanistan. The administration stressed their links to Pakistain.
Among them are senior members of the former Taliban government in Afghanistan, including former central bank governor Abdul Samad Sani. The six individuals, said to have been part of Taliban leadership bodies in Pakistain, are alleged to have provided financing and weapons for bully boyz involved in attacks on US-led coalition forces.
President Trump’s policy, unveiled last summer, is intended to turn around the 17-year war in Afghanistan by boosting the US military’s help to Afghan government forces and by pressuring Pakistain to cooperate.
"The Pakistain government must work with us to deny the Taliban and the Haqqani network sanctuary and to aggressively target terrorist fundraising," Mr. Mandelker, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement.
The blacklisted individuals include: Abdul Qadeer Basir Abdul Baseer, said to have led the finance commission of the Taliban leadership Shura in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. . He is alleged to have provided tens of thousands of dollars for Taliban attacks in Afghanistan’s Kunar province ... which is right down the road from Chitral. Kunar is Haqqani country..... last fall.
One notable name on the list is that of Hafiz Mohammed Popalzai, said to have served for several years on the Taliban finance commission and been in charge of the group’s finances for southern and western Afghanistan. He is alleged to have passed on 10 million euros paid to the Taliban for the release of hostages in mid-2011 to the finance commission’s leader in Quetta.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2018
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#1
Just eliminate the middleman and put ISI on the list.
[Breitbart] The Pentagon was forced last year to rescind interim security clearances granted under the Obama administration to at least 165 contractors linked to various crimes, including felony convictions for pedophilia and foreign government affiliations, revealed a report issued by the Director of the Defense Security Service (DSS).
According to the report, DOD contractors preserved their ability to access sensitive government information despite prior criminal records and other illicit past activity that the Pentagon’s vetting process failed to detect.
"Of those 165 cases, 151 people had pre-existing issues that they did not disclose and were not discovered during initial checks; the issues were not identified until the investigation was completed [in 2017]," noted the report, adding, "The interim decisions analyzed ... actually occurred before 2017 and were subject to a final decision by the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals (DOHA) in 2017."
In other words, the Pentagon subjected the contractors to the first round of vetting under former President Barack Obama and the Trump administration discovered their deception last year.
#2
Hat tip to OMB. "Failing to disclose" clearly indicates deception. I wonder how many had been "previously denied a security clearance" or "had their clearances revoked"... and failed to check that box as well.
You signed the form attesting to it's accuracy. Don't bit*h and whine.
#1
"Too coincidental to be a coincidence."
~ Yogi Berra
@HousatonicITS
21h21 hours ago
More
(22) #AboutStrzok : So here is the question - Did the Jesuit priest #JamesStrzok (uncle of #PeterStrzok) "discover" #BarackObama in 1988 ? There is only circumstantial evidence, but there are enough clues to warrant asking the question.
@HousatonicITS
20h20 hours ago
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(23) #AboutStrzok : Think! Years later, #PeterStrzok II , nephew of #JamesStrzok , rockets right up to the top of the #FBI , and becomes the top "get it done" guy for Obama and Hillary Clinton to destroy evidence and impact investigations ... And #McCabe and #Strzok are best buds
@HousatonicITS
20h20 hours ago
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(24) #AboutStrzok : And General #JamesCartwright , who is essentially a brother-in-law through marriage to #JamesStrzok , becomes Obama's favorite and most trusted person who he worked with - Obama truly likes Cartwright .
It would be a meaningless gesture if it passed, but it wouldn’t pass even if the Republican leadership in both houses were to put it up for a vote. This is just the opposition acknowledging that impeachment is only a pretty dream, but unable to give up hope that magically Mr. Trump will be driven from the presidency.
[FreeBeacon] The push to impeach President Donald Trump now has some competition from a campaign with unknown financial backers that wants to censure the president instead.
On Wednesday, a group that opposes Trump took out a full-page advertisement in the major news section of the New York Times to publicize a petition listing 34 actions by the president that they believe warrant censure by Congress.
The 34 points range from the firing of former FBI Director James Comey to "encouraging police discrimination," and even "publishing false and inflammatory right-wing British videos"‐a reference to the president retweeting videos on Twitter.
"While some of Trump's actions may be sufficient to support his impeachment, we believe that at a minimum they require his immediate censure by Congress," the group wrote.
Censure is a formal process by which both houses of Congress vote to formally condemn an individual for conduct construed to be unbecoming. Censure is not the same as impeachment, which occurs when legislative bodies vote to bring direct charges of misconduct against an individual. Neither impeachment nor censure results in the immediate removal from office, though individuals who are impeached are eligible to be removed upon conviction of the crimes they are charged with. Individuals who are censured by Congress are not eligible to be removed from office.
The organization behind the petition is shrouded in mystery. The campaign's website does not list an address, information about the group's leadership, or the financiers who paid for the New York Times ad. It is also unclear why the ad was taken out on Wednesday, almost six months after the petition first appeared in August 2017.
The New York Times would not disclose who placed the ad or the exact price that was paid, but, according to the paper's advertising office, a one-day, full page, black and white display in the major news section would run upwards of $83,000. It is likely the money used to pay for the advertisement came from a private source, as the group's website is not set up to accept donations.
According to the American Prospect and HuffPost, the campaign seems to be the "brainchild" of Jules Bernstein, a Washington, D.C.-based labor lawyer. Bernstein has previously served in high-level positions with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Laborers International Union of North America. He was also on the executive committee of the Democratic Socialists of America in the 1980s.
During the 2016 election cycle, Bernstein & Lipsett, the self-described "mom and pop" labor law firm that Bernstein runs with his wife, donated over $100,000 to various Democratic candidates and organizations affiliated with the Democratic Party.
"[The petition] is a simple and easy way for people to be heard and fight back," Bernstein told HuffPost in August. "It would serve to combat Trump's normalization, let Congress know how people feel, and remind the press and public of all the terrible things he's done."
Bernstein was also the first person to post the petition on change.org, where it has lived for the past six months, accumulating more than 58,000 signatures.
Last August, Bernstein, along with Michael Cooper, former president of the New York City Bar Association, wrote an editorial for a local newspaper in Martha's Vineyard, where Bernstein has a second home, in which they argued the merits of censuring Trump.
"Some have said that censure is merely a ’slap on the wrist,' and that impeachment is the only appropriate remedy for the wrongdoing of President Trump," they wrote. "To this we respond that while there may be several additional remedies, at the moment petitioning for censure provides an immediate, constitutionally protected means of public condemnation and reproach of President Trump."
Neither Bernstein nor Cooper responded to interview requests for this story. Continues.
[ALMASDARNEWS] Syria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations ...an organization which on balance has done more bad than good, with the good not done well and the bad done thoroughly... and head of the Syrian government delegation to the intra-Syrian talks Bashar al-Jaafari has accused the United States of supporting Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (a terrorist organization outlawed in Russia).
"How can a country like the United States, which has given birth to Islamic State, which has been supporting and defending Islamic State, which continues to fight for Islamic State, a country, which has been violating Syria’s illusory sovereignty by its military presence in our country and negating international laws and conventions, how can a country, which has the blood of the Syrian people on its hands, speak about a political solution and Syria’s future?," he said on Friday after a two-day meeting on Syria at the United Nations office in Vienna.
He voiced criticism of each of the five nations (the United States, the United Kingdom, La Belle France, 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 Jordan), which had come out with an unofficial document on Syrian settlement at a meeting in Washington on January 12.
According to al-Jafaari, the UK and La Belle France are following the United States "like a blind man following another blind man." Jordan, in his words, has opened its borders to snuffies to become "a place for seven training camps for terrorists." As for Saudi Arabia, he called it ironically "a pinnacle of democracy and a beacon of freedom in the East."
Neither of these five has the right to dictate its will to the Syrian people, he stressed.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2018
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#1
"Having the right", I assume means appealing to some standard of "righteousness"? I sincerely doubt if that has any relevance morally , and certainly NOT in a political sense. Neither side certainly cares a fig for righteousness and by whose standard may I ask is such a quality to be assessed or judged? The assertion is meaningless and hot air, and sure to be ignored as a waste of attention or air. It WILL be ignored. Syria HAS no sovereignty and it is a matter of National INTERESTS which define the problem.
I suggest that all concerned Deal in reality and forget "rights".
The blood of the Syrian people ? Give me a break. NO body cares. The Syrian people can have a grenade for Breakfast and Poison Gas for Lunch and the whole world will yawn.
Syria is a hole and the people of Syria are down in that hole sucking dirt and the whole world will sell them their breakfast AND their Lunch. And then the whole world will use the hole for a toilet. That is the TRUTH.
And the UN will waste its time sitting and talking and none of the participants in the hole can realistically OR will listen or notice.
The Moslem HOLE is the realty and reality is a Hole in Syria. Moslems are largely killing Moslems and Moslems are supply-ing the meat and the bullets. Islam is like that.
National Interests IS the game. and any illusory "rights" are written on your upturned arse. The Koran is a napkin for Dinner. Bon appetit'
Syria is a doomed hole. A Moslem hole full of Moslems. It will go one and on and on and on some more. Years and years....am I lying' to 'ya?
[ALMASDARNEWS] A Ottoman Turkish security convoy entered the Idlib Governorate, Friday, to monitor the ongoing battle in the southeastern part of the province, a military source told al-Masdar News this evening.
According to the source, at least a half dozen Ottoman Turkish military vehicles made their way towards the Abu Dhuhour front, where they monitored the battle between the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and jihadist rebels of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham for several hours.
The source added that the purpose of monitoring the battle was for the Ottoman Turkish military to get a sense of what is going on at this front before they agree to any ceasefire at the upcoming Sochi peace conference.
As soon as the Ottoman Turkish convoy reached the Abu Dhuhour area, the Russian and Syrian air forces temporarily halted their Arclight airstrikes, possibly indicating that both Damascus and Moscow had prior knowledge of Ankara’s actions.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2018
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[DailyWire] A Chicago man accused of sexually assaulting two six-year-olds and an eight-year-old on repeated occasions, told police officers that he's really "a 9-year-old trapped in an adult's body," prosecutors revealed on Wednesday. A nine-year-old what?
Thirty-eight-year-old Joseph Roman is charged with repeated predatory criminal sexual assault. The numerous attacks began in 2015 and continued until earlier this month.
Roman has reportedly confessed to some of the attacks to authorities. His victims were the daughters of his friends.
According to The Chicago Tribune, "Prosecutors said the attacks began when the family of one of the girls moved into Roman’s home for 10 weeks. Roman is accused of regularly assaulting her between August 2015 and December 2017 while the other family members were sleeping. The girl was 6 when the assaults began."
The other victims were similarly preyed upon.
The eight-year-old was assaulted while her family stayed with Roman for 10 weeks, starting in October of 2016. According to prosecutors, the girl's mother worked a shift at night and Roman would take care of the children. During one of the attacks, two of the victim's younger siblings were watching a movie on a cellphone in the same room, say prosecutors.
The victim was allegedly continuously attacked, even after the family moved out.
The other six-year-old victim was allegedly assaulted while she slept in his home for one year, from January of 2017 to the present month.
"The girl's family, and the family of one of the other victims, confronted Roman after an attack Jan. 6," reports the Tribune.
The "trans-age" male was charged with a Class X felony and taken into custody on Monday, where he made a video confession of his crimes. Roman was ordered to be held without bail during Wednesday's hearing.
Posted by: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy ||
01/27/2018
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#1
Beat the adult body until the 8 years old driven out.
[FoxNews] Baboons running wild around Paris sounds like it could be a good idea for plot of the next "Jumanji" movie, but it's actually happening.
The Paris Zoological Park said visitors have been evacauted from the popular attraction after members of its baboon population escaped from their enclosure.
Initially, approximately 50 baboons were reported to have escaped, according to The Guardian. They were congregating around the centerpiece of the zoo, known as the Grand Rocher, or "Big Rock." It's unclear whether the baboons were marking their territory or were simply checking out the rest of their digs.
Recent reports have said that all but four of the baboons have been captured.
Zoo spokesman Jerome Munier said all four have been located in a closed area. Zoo employees plan to use sedative arrows to capture them and put them back with the rest of the group of 50 baboons.
Extreme Tech savvy mobile folks:
It looks like Chinese handset manufacturers are putting spyware (teddymobile) on Android products to glean bank account numbers, titles, and a lot of other private information:
[Twitter] The @OnePlus #clipboard app contains a strange file called badword.txt 🤔
In these words, we can find: Chairman, Vice President, Deputy Director, Associate Professor, Deputy Heads, General, Private Message, shipping, Address, email, ...
https://pastebin.com/kfvJWKJB
With the lost FBI text messages we see the FBI using Android. One hopes they were smart enough to WIPE the whole phone before using and put a clean version of Android approved by the FBI on the phone. Sadly I can't credit them with showing that much caution. The person who pointed this out to me used to be head of 1/2 of the Android product line at a major manufacturer so it was serious enough for him to warn his friends.
#1
With modern pretend-open-source software, it basically amounts to: only the hardware manufacturers are allowed to make money, software writers aren't, and Americans aren't allowed to make any hardware. But no, you can't see what's in the binary blobs that come with the software, and you can't put a generic version of linux or android on the phone either.
[AA.TR] At least 28 people, including two Malian soldiers, were killed and several others injured in two separate attacks in Central Mali on Thursday, according to Malian media Friday.
In the first incident, 26 people, including women and kiddies were killed when a vehicle stepped over a landmine in the central part of the country.
The vehicle had left Burkina Faso ...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other... and struck a landmine about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from Boni city in Mali.
No group grabbed credit for the attack.
Separately, in Youwarou, also in Central Mali's Mopti region, Malian armed forces killed seven terrorists, according to a statement from the military.
Two Malian soldiers were also killed in the operation, the statement added.
In 2012, a Tuareg rebellion opened the door for al-Qaeda-linked murderous Moslems to take over the northern half of the country. They were mostly expelled by a French-led operation launched a year later but swathes of the country remain subject to regular attacks that have spread southwards.
In 2015, a peace deal was signed between the government and some bully boy groups.
Political and community disputes continue to fuel tensions in Mali, thus undermining the implementation of the peace agreement.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2018
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in North Africa
[RADIOSHABELLE] Human rights organization in Mombasa has called for the withdrawal of Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) from Somalia.
Haki Afrika’s Program officer Francis Auma said the continued stay of the KDF soldiers in neighboring Somalia is hurting Kenyans.
Speaking on Thursday in Mombasa, Mr. Auma said following the increased attacks in the Coast region, the troops should be withdrawn from the war-torn country to protect Kenyans.
Mr. Auma said the national government should enhance security in the country especially in areas prone to terror attacks and to guard the border.
He said the soldiers have failed to deal with al-Shabaab ... Somalia's version of the Taliban, functioning as an arm of al-Qaeda... bandidosbully boyz who are now carrying attacks in the country, particularly in Lamu County.
The rights group wants the national parliament to pass a legislation that will allow the Kenya Defense Forces to withdraw troops from Somalia.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2018
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Top|| File under: al-Shabaab (AQ)
- Lisa Page, who exchanged anti-Trump text messages with Peter Strzok, her FBI agent lover, was seen for the first time since the affair was exposed
- Strzok was dismissed from Robert Mueller's Russia probe over the conversation and was relocated within the FBI over the summer, it was reported Saturday
- Page, a lawyer, was also involved in Mueller's investigation but left the probe before the messages were discovered
- Page, 38, is married to non-profit executive Joseph Burrow who was seen wearing his wedding ring on Wednesday morning
- Strzok was a part of former FBI Director James Comey's Hillary Clinton email probe, and changed the wording in Comey's assessment from 'grossly negligent to 'extremely careless'
- Strzok was also involved in questioning Michael Flynn before he was prosecuted for lying to the Bureau
- The DOJ said they would be handing over the messages to Congress. It is currently going through more than 10,000 messages between the couple that span months
#2
Page, 38, is married to non-profit executive Joseph Burrow
I'm sure this has nothing to do with her anti-Trump stance!
I had a temp job in a Cambridge non-profit back in the early '90's. I remember a combination of 'these people are fucking strange' and 'these people are raging assholes'. I guess it didn't help that I accidentally shut off a server, then a second later heard this loud scram two floors above me. Sorry about that!
This was also the same time period when Nixon died (April 1994). Even stranger than that was incessant talk about parties throughout Cambridge 'celebrating' his death. I guess you could say that was one of the moments the proverbial scales fell off my eyes concerning what a bunch of ghouls these lefties really are.
#5
I guess you could say that was one of the moments the proverbial scales fell off my eyes concerning what a bunch of ghouls these lefties really are. Posted by Raj
I was indoctrinated from birth. My late father would become apoplectic at the mention of FDR.
#7
Strzok is also married. The Georgetown University graduate is married to fellow alum Melissa Hodgman, who was promoted to Associate Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division by Obama in late 2016.The promotion came after the FBI found emails pertaining to the Hillary Clinton email server scandal on her aide Huma Abedin's husband s laptop.
After news broke of her husband's alleged bias in Mueller's investigation, Hodgman scrubbed all evidence of her supporting Hillary Clinton from her social media, according to Gateway Pundit.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/27/2018 7:40
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#8
She does not appear to be exactly basking in the glory of being a "power player..."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/27/2018 9:11
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#9
10,000 texts?? WTF do you say in 10k texts??? Maybe adolescents can be excused in this quantity, but so called adults?
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/27/2018 12:52
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#10
She's a DC eight or a crack whore three.
Posted by: Regular joe ||
01/27/2018 17:36
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[ALMASDARNEWS] The Islamist operations room in Harasta announced tonight that they will not adhere to the recently implemented ceasefire in the East Ghouta.
According to myrmidon groups, they are not committed to the ceasefire and will continue their field operations around the strategic vehicle management base in the Harasta suburb.
The operation will likely be led by Harakat Ahrar al-Sham ...a Syria jihadi group made up of Islamists and salafists, not that there's that much difference, formed into a brigade. They make up the main element of the Islamic Front but they don't profess adoration of al-Qaeda and they've been fighting (mainly for survival) against the Islamic State. Their leadership was wiped out at a single blow by a suicide kaboom at a crowded basement meeting in September, 2014... and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham , which are the two factions that led the last assault on the vehicle management base.
Despite the refusal by the Islamist groups, the Syrian Army and Faylaq al-Rahman will continue to adhere to the ceasefire in the East Ghouta.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2018
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Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
[DAWN] The Punjab 1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots.... government has decided to empower the Muttahida Ulema Board to help the government amend the curriculum.
Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan told a meeting of the board here on Thursday that the government would amend the relevant law(s) to formally empower the holy mans board helping the education authorities in preparing school curriculum.
The education secretary has also been asked to get clearance from the board in case of adding or deleting any text regarding Islamic injunctions, he said.
The minister also directed the secretary to consult the holy mans before induction of reading material in text books regarding creating awareness among the children about their physical safety. The board meeting had been convened to reset the requirements of education of children in the light of Koran and Sunnah, a blurb said.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2018
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[DAWN] After having failed to reach a consensus, the Senate Standing Committee on Law and Justice referred on Thursday a proposed amendment to the Pakistain Penal Code (PPC) to provide for public hanging of criminals abducting children for murder to the Council of Islamic Ideology for its view.
The committee, headed by Senator Javed Abbasi of the ruling PML-N, also decided to hear representatives of provincial jail administrations at the next meeting before reaching a decision.
Former interior minister Senator Rehman Malik Pak politician, Interior Minister under the Gilani government. Malik is a former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) intelligence officer who rose to head the FIA during Benazir Bhutto's second tenure. Malik was tossed from his FIA job in 1998 after documenting the breath-taking corruption of the Sharif family. By unhappy coincidence Nawaz Sharif became PM at just that moment and Malik moved to London one step ahead of the button men. He had to give up the interior ministry job because he held dual Brit citizenship. of the PPP had proposed the amendment to Section 364-A of the PPC, saying that the small amendment would send a strong message and help prevent to a large extent Zainab-like incidents in the country. He also said that this was the pressing demand of the people of Pakistain.
The idea was opposed by some members of the committee who said the amendment would not be appropriate as objections were already being raised over the death penalty in Pakistain.
Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani had referred the proposed bill to the house committee on law and directed the committees on interior and human rights One man's rights are another man's existential threat. to give their input on the matter.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2018
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[Gateway Pundit] December 21st is a day that will live in infamy.
Remember that date. The world changed on December 21st and no one noticed. That will soon change.
The great conservative talk host Michael Savage was the first to define liberalism as a "mental illness." But it turns out liberals back then were relatively sane compared to today. Today’s liberals are frothing at the mouth, spitting, howling at the moon and threatening publicly to assassinate President Trump.
One protestor at the Los Angeles women’s march this past weekend carried a sign that said, "Kill Donald Trump, Kill Mike Pence. It’s guillotine time, bitches." When asked by a reporter what she wanted in their place, she replied she wanted a "communist utopia."
Isn’t liberalism sweet?
The timing for this liberal meltdown is perfect. Because liberals are so busy frothing at the mouth, they don’t even notice President Trump is:
A) Erasing Obama like he never existed. Hour by hour, day by day, Trump is erasing everything Obama ever did. TPP. The Paris Climate Accord. Dozens of massive EPA dictates. Coal mining bans. DACA. Obama’s taxes. The Obamacare mandate. More regulations killed in one year than by any president in history. Refugee admissions down 70%. And just announced days ago, the United States will not be re-certifying the Iran Treaty. All gone. In one year. As if Obama never existed.
B) But that is only Part I of Trump’s greatest hits. Part II is the humdinger. Trump promised to "drain the swamp." The mainstream media clearly doesn’t understand what just happened.
Trump just declared war on the Deep State, DC Swamp, Hillary and Obama. Trump signed a new Executive Order on December 21st that got zero publicity. It happens to be the most important Executive Order in the history of America. Signed just in time right before the release of the House Intel Memo. Any particular Foundation in the cross hairs ?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Townhall] Well, when you’re backed into a corner, there really is nowhere to go. That’s where the Democrats are on this tax bill. Even after they shut down the government over illegal aliens, companies continued to signal their intention to dole out bonuses to their workers. In all, over 250 companies have given out bonuses, with over three million workers benefitting from the GOP tax plan. Bonuses have ranged from $1,000 to $3,000 depending on the company. The tax plan has become more popular. So, what to do now? Well, just marginalize $1,000+ bonuses as "crumbs."
[The National Interest] On November 8, 1950, a flight of four straight-winged jets swooped down on an airfield at Sinuiju, North Korea‐on the Korean side of the border with China. The F-80 Shooting Stars raked the airfield with their six nose-mounted .50 caliber machine guns as black bursts of antiaircraft fire tore the sky around them.
[American Thinker] In any criminal investigation where the suspect is not immediately known, the first question usually asked is who would have the most to gain? As we follow the bread crumbs of the text messages of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and await release of the House Intelligence Committee’s memo regarding the collusion between the DNC, the Hillary Clinton campaign, the DOJ, and FBI to interfere with the 2016, ensure the election of Hillary, and the defeat or impeachment of Donald Trump, the answer to that question is clear -- one Barack Hussein Obama.
[Buzz via Right Scoop] This will definitely be a popcorn event. Crazy Maxine Waters is going to give a response to Trump’s State of the Union speech.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Eleven people were killed and injured as two 
Diyala (IraqiNews.com) A paramilitary personnel was 
[IsraelTimes] The assault, which intended to use Kalashnikov rifles and bombs in multiple crowded spaces, was foiled by the arrest of a Moroccan member of the cell
either Ernst Stavro Blofeld or Auric Goldfinger come true...
...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell...
[All Africa] The president had found a cure for AIDS. That was the news that reached Ousman Sowe, the head of a 
North Korea
[Daily Caller] Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton allegedly retained a top adviser on her 2008 presidential campaign even after she learned that he was accused of sexual harassment.
...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In Sptember 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powereful...
...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire.
[FoxNews] Baboons running wild around Paris sounds like it could be a good idea for plot of the next "Jumanji" movie, but it's actually happening.
Somalia's version of the Taliban, functioning as an arm of al-Qaeda...
