[Epoch Times] What a difference two years—and $5.7 trillion in federal money—makes in fostering dramatic reversals of fortune for state and local budget managers.
In spring 2020, governments were confronted with cascading costs in managing the public health response to the COVID-19 outbreak, spiking unemployment, and steep revenue declines resulting from business disruption and restrictions.
Two years later, lawmakers are awash in federal funding after Congress approved five COVID-19 assistance packages, pumping at least $5.7 trillion into the economy, including $900 billion to state and local governments.
The Washington-based Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that as much as $800 billion of that $5.7 trillion remains uncommitted across a spectrum of federal, state, local, and public-private agencies, and in statehouses, county seats, and city halls.
The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that government revenues in the third quarter of 2021 were 23 percent above pre-pandemic levels "thanks to massive federal transfer payments from COVID relief legislation."
Other factors that boosted government revenues cited in a Jan. 28 Associated Press analysis include inflation ignited by stimulus-check spending that leavened sales tax collections, a spike in capital gains tax revenues generated by a strong stock market, federal padding of state unemployment relief, and a pandemic-induced increase in home-based employment.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/04/2022
12:59 ||
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#1
Nah, governments are never 'flushed' with cash. They always spend more than they can get their hands on.
#3
Yes. And never forget what they do with a one-time influx of cash: hire more people, creating permanent wage and benefit expenses. Which must continue to be paid when the windfall is blown away.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/04/2022 14:15
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#4
For housing, food, guaranteed income, job training and business acquisition for illegals.
[Times of Israel, via Michael Yon] Israel scientists say they have gathered the most convincing evidence to date that increased vitamin D levels can help COVID-19 patients reduce the risk of serious illness or death.
Researchers from Bar Ilan University and the Galilee Medical Center say that the vitamin has such a strong impact on disease severity that they can predict how people would fare if infected based on nothing more than their ages and vitamin D levels.
Lacking vitamin D significantly increases danger levels, they concluded in newly peer-reviewed research published Thursday in the journal PLOS One.
The study is based on research conducted during Israel’s first two waves of the virus, before vaccines were widely available, and doctors emphasized that vitamin supplements were not a substitute for vaccines, but rather a way to keep immunity levels from falling.
Vitamin D deficiency is endemic across the Middle East, including in Israel, where nearly four in five people are low on the vitamin, according to one study from 2011. By taking supplements before infection, though, the researchers in the new Israeli study found that patients could avoid the worst effects of the disease.
#4
Yes. The actual sunlight has psychological as well as biological benefits. Whether that's a factor in strengthening the immune system or otherwise improving the body's ability to fight infection we will probably never know, as there's no way to monetize it.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/04/2022 14:18
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#5
wonder how many lives would have been saved if, in say June 2000, Fauci would have said, 'Yes. It makes sense to increase your Vitamin D intake, at least to recommended levels.'
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
02/04/2022 16:12
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#6
^ tens of thousands in this country. At least a million around the world
Multiply the above had the FD@-CDC-WH0 Disinformation Complex recommended HCQ and ivermectin as treatments instead of spreading lies and forcing all of us into their more harm-than-good experimental gene therapies.
Criminal. They have destroyed public confidence in not just public health authorities but pharm@cy and medic!ne itself.
I still cannot believe the sheer insanity of all that has been done to us these last 2 years by these madmen.
Staggering incompetence and stupidity -- and in Fauxi's case, psychopathic cruelty
Now Dr. Malone, Dr. Risch of Yale and Dr. Peter McCullough are threatening litigation against the lies, BS, fabrications and outright slander from idiot Pravda-Media know-nothings.
From Malone's letter to the DM:
"According to overwhelming data from dozens of studies and real-world use, attested to by world-leading, Nobel Prize-winning scientists and physicians, the widespread deployment of two inexpensive and extraordinarily safe medicines, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, in combination with other readily-accessible drugs, would have reduced U.S. COVID hospitalizations by 87.6% (https://www.ijirms.in/index.php/ijirms/article/view/1100) mortality by 74.9% (same reference ).
"Among these world-leading scientists are Drs. Peter McCullough, Pierre Kory, Robert Malone and Harvey Risch, all of whom are widely-published, widely-respected, highly-credentialed experts in their fields, and all of whom have agreed to serve as experts in this litigation. We have also retained Dr. Joel Hay, an expert in health economics specializing in the pharmaceutical industry, to calculate the damages incurred by the State of Florida and other States as a result of the failure to prescribe these medicines.
"Every one of these scientific experts will testify and confirm that millions of hospitalizations and roughly 75%, or 450,000, of the estimated 600,000 COVID deaths, would have been averted if hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin had been widely deployed to combat the pandemic.
"Deploying these safe and effective drugs would, however, have thwarted the rollout of COVID vaccines. As a matter of express statutory law under 21 U.S.C. § 360bbb-3(c)(3), COVID vaccines could not have received Emergency Use Authorizations, which they needed in order to be administered to the public, if there existed any “adequate, approved, and available alternative” for “preventing or treating” COVID.
"As a result, parties with vested interests in the vaccines, which have already garnered billions of dollars in federal funding and generated tens of billions of dollars in personal wealth for vaccine investors, waged a systematic, deceptive, fraudulent, yet highly effective campaign to discredit hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as COVID treatments and to prevent them from being widely used to combat the pandemic."
An astute commenter on Malone's substack notes:
"What's so ironic about all of the outcries [ against Drs. Malone, McCullough, Risch, Kulldorff, Gupta, Bhattacharya, Ioannides et al. ] by scientifically illiterate reporters, musicians, blue tribe warriors, etc, is that all of these people have been digesting and regurgitating nothing but misinformation and disinformation promulgated by captured regulatory agencies like the CDC, NIH, and FDA (here in the US). None of these reporters, musicians, warriors, etc are the slightest bit scientifically literate enough to be able to distinguish between what's misinfo, disinfo or genuine questioning."
#8
Depending on how many actual "from" COVID deaths occurred, the number of lives saved had HCQ and ivermectin been applied routinely -- as they were in Uttar Pradesh province in India -- is AT LEAST 150,000 in this country and up to 450,000.
#9
God, Darwin, Buddha, whomever determined you would be sabertooth tiger Pooh at age 50, hence losing the ability to make vitamin D. So please take 2-5k D3 daily
[EpochTimes] "We’re trying to give everyone their voice back and open this Internet back up. And that’s why I left Congress—because it really was the most important issue at the highest level that has to be solved, for good governance to come back to this country."
Many Americans were surprised when Devin Nunes announced he was resigning from Congress to become CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group. Now, he tells me why.
And two years after he and House Intelligence Committee staff published the watershed Nunes memo exposing FBI surveillance abuses, he shares his thoughts on recent developments in the Durham probe. 37:31 video at link
[Epoch Times] A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) document explaining why the agency approved Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine was removed from the agency’s website overnight.
The Summary Basis for Regulatory Action offered more details about how regulators reached the approval decision, and included references to an unpublished analysis that found the rates of post-vaccination heart inflammation were higher than any U.S. agency had found before.
After The Epoch Times reviewed the document and sent questions about it to FDA spokespersons, it disappeared from the agency’s website.
"We are aware of the issue and hope to have the document reposted as soon as possible," a spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email on Feb. 3.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/04/2022
11:45 ||
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[Epoch Times] A fundraising campaign for truckers in the Freedom Convoy 2022 has been Frozen by GoFundMe after it raised over CA$10 million (US$7.96 million.)
"This fundraiser is currently paused and under review to ensure it complies with our terms of service and applicable laws and regulations," reads a message placed at the top of the fundraising page.
The review by GoFundMe appears to be focused on several areas: the identity of the fundraisers, use of the raised funds, and if the fundraising "reflects or promotes behavior in support of violence."
The only Branch COVIDians still thrashing and denying the obvious are Fauxi, Muppet-Brandon and Muppeteer Ron Klain and assorted shitheads like Jolson Trudeau, Governors Whitless and Brylcream and a few million Karens.
A classified 2016 state department email written by former US diplomat George Kent was published this week
In the email, Kent warned that Hunter Biden’s Ukraine dealings 'undercut the anti-corruption message the VP and we were advancing' in the country
The email was kept from public view for five years
It was obtained by Just the News and published this week
The email was published one day after the New York Times sued the state department for allegedly withholding emails involving Hunter Biden that were sent or received by officials at the US Embassy in Romania
Republicans are threatening to make Hunter Biden testify before Congress if they take back the House of Representatives in the midterm elections
His business in Ukraine played a central role in former President Donald Trump's first impeachment in 2019
Hunter Biden has also created an ethics headache for the Biden White House when he joined the art world last year, selling paintings for $500,000
Remarkably, [Judge] Abram's husband was a federal prosecutor in Robert Mueller's Russia investigation and part of the team that seized passports and restricted travel for high-profile defendants like Paul Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates.
[Hunter Biden's convicted business partner Devon] Archer did not face the same restrictions. As he awaited trial since summer 2016 and since his conviction in summer 2018, Archer has been allowed to travel freely across the globe.
Archer's travel log, enumerated in the court documents, reads like the travels of an American secretary of state:Russia, Mexico, China, Spain, Italy, the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan and Ukraine, the money laundering capital of Latvia, Hong Kong, London, Singapore and the French Antilles, to name a few.
Most remarkably, Judge Abrams granted the travel permission over the objections of federal prosecutors who protested allowing a convicted felon who fleeced an Indian tribe to globetrot for five years as he awaited trial and then sentencing.
[IsraelTimes] ‘Aduk’ group, masquerading as a nationalist and ultra-Orthodox news outlet, redistributed extremist and anti-Muslim material to encourage attacks on Arab Israelis, BBC says.
I seem to recall Iran did something aimed at Trump voters before the last election.
[IsraelTimes] Executive committee position left vacant by former chief negotiator Erekat will likely be taken by Hussein al-Sheikh, seen as possible successor to long-ruling PA president, 86.
The Paleostine Liberation Organization is scheduled to convene in Ramallah on Sunday in a meeting some see as providing a boost to a possible successor to long-ruling Paleostinian Authority President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ...aka Abu Mazen, a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial. While no Yasser Arafat, he has his own brand of evil, just a little more lowercase.... "There is a dead end in the political process with Israel, a difficult position vis-à-vis the Arab world — the Paleostinian leadership will meet to decide its approach in light of these circumstances," said senior Paleostinian official Tawfiq al-Tirawi, who is set to attend Sunday’s gathering.
Continued on Page 49
[IsraelTimes] Prosecutors say suspect was persuaded to drive two button men near Homesh outpost, where they killed Yehuda Dimentman in December
Military prosecutors on Thursday filed an indictment against a Paleostinian minor accused in the killing of yeshiva student Yehuda Dimentman last year.
According to the Shin Bet security agency, a cell belonging to the Paleostinian Islamic Jihad
Continued on Page 49
[IsraelTimes] Officials tell WSJ Iranians have accelerated nuclear program well beyond point keeping them 12 months from a bomb, as original deal envisioned.
#1
I've got a great idea: why not just lift the sanctions on their nuke program? I was gonna put a /sarc tag on that, but The Junta already done the deed, so...
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
02/04/2022 19:20
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Shafaq News / The Iraqi army announced that 30 terrorists were killed in the last ten days, during the operations it launched following the 11-martyrs massacre that ISIS carries out earlier this month.
The Assistant Chief of Staff of the Army for Operations Affairs, Lieutenant-General Qais Khalaf Rahima, indicated that the operations are still ongoing.
The Iraqi army pledged to avenge the death of 11 soldiers who were killed in an ISIS attack in Diyala governorate, on January 21.
Posted by: badanov ||
02/04/2022
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[FoxNews] Biden family worried Hunter’s relationship with Beau’s widow, escorts would spoil Joe Biden’s presidency run.
While Joe Biden was wrapping up his final year as Vice President, his son Hunter Biden was cooking crack and shooting porn ahead of the family’s most lucrative deal.
In part three of the Fox Nation special answering "Who is Hunter Biden?," Judge Jeanine Pirro examined how Hunter’s alleged sex and drug addictions and messy romantic relationships caused a PR storm for the Biden family ahead of a multimillion-dollar Chinese dealing and Joe’s eventual run for president.
"The question for Hunter Biden, who relied on leveraging his father's positions, was how would he fund his family obligations, high-flying lifestyle, and relentless addiction?" Pirro posed in the third episode.
"He spent extravagantly on strip clubs, adult video sites and prostitutes," she continued. "Like a low-rent porn star, he frequently filmed his wild sex life and uploaded the footage to his Pornhub account."
In October 2016, Hunter resolved to fly to Arizona for rehab. But after missing four flights, he decided to drive — though he almost didn’t live to tell about it.
"I nodded off behind the wheel," Hunter wrote in his memoir. "Waking up an instant later, I found myself in mid-air, the car having jumped a soft curve on the passing lane and soaring at 80 miles an hour into a cloudless blue sky, heading into the gulch that divided I-10."
Rattled by the event, Hunter summoned his brother Beau’s widow, Hallie, for comfort. He tried keeping their intimate relationship out of the tabloids, but the New York Post ran the story about the "Biden Family Affair." Their romance reportedly consisted of taking drugs, filming themselves having sex, and posting the videos to Hunter’s online porn account.
"Hunter would film their sex sessions and upload them to amateur porn sites, such as Pornhub, and give them titles such as ‘Lonely Widow,’" Fox News contributor and New York Post columnist Miranda Devine said in the episode. "There was a lot of love and, I guess, passion, and lust there, as well, that they talked about - but it really was disastrous for everybody involved."
In time, the relationship grew ugly – as the episode explores, Hallie insisted on therapy, and Hunter wrote that she told him Beau didn't think highly of him and laughed behind his back. And while his private life was running wild, Hunter’s bank account was running low.
According to contents on Hunter’s infamous laptop, he and his father were developing an ownership stake in a Chinese entity called CEFC. Under the deal, Hunter would get $850,000, but that was not enough. Eventually, for introductions alone, the Chinese would pay him $10 million per year for a minimum of three years and a three-carat diamond ring to boot.
But when the FBI charged a senior official at CEFC for bribery in late 2017, Hunter’s payday vanished, and his personal life would get further complicated.
The episode reveals that Hunter, while living with Hallie, started a sexual relationship with her sister and also became involved with a stripper named "Dallas," with whom he fathered a child in August 2018.
During a bender at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, Hunter learned how to cook crack himself and topped his $65,000 credit limit, apparently paying for an escort with his father’s card.
"Hunter is this barely functional human who's got this roaring crack addiction and roaring sex addiction," Judge Jeanine said. "It's just a very bizarre scenario, considering that you have to juxtapose that against the really high-level dangerous business that he was involved in."
Posted by: Skidmark ||
02/04/2022
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#1
If only we had a "media"...
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/04/2022 0:06
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#2
My prediction is the worthless little piece of kak will OD on drugs soon. He appears to be following a fairly predictable track.
#4
...Sadly, it's only a 'media nightmare' if the media is looking into it and following it.
Which, it ain't.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
02/04/2022 6:10
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#5
They have the money for AIDS drugs, personally hoping for an OD.
Posted by: Chris ||
02/04/2022 8:58
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#6
I can see it now in the BB.
Nov. 2024 (BB/AP) Hunter Biden and Former Congresswomen AOC announce they will do a Showtime NC-17 movie together. Daddy Joe to have a non-speaking role as the neighborhood babysitter. Former Congresswoman Pelosi's role will be the Mgr./owner of the Local high end liquor store.☺
"So what’s the real reason? I have my suspicions. Namely, I suspect that when you are dealing with someone in steep mental decline, not having hundreds of people clapping and groaning can only make things easier. Given Joe Biden’s penchant for melting down while speaking publicly, whatever help Pelosi can give him will surely be well-received.
"Yet, even if we assume this is just about COVID-19, what kind of message does it send to the world that the President of the United States is so weak and feeble that he can’t be in a massive room with more than 25 people?
"Does anyone think Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin are looking at this spectacle of absurdity and thinking anything other than they can take advantage of the situation?"
[FoxNews] Vice President Kamala Harris continues to lose staff with the departure of yet another high-ranking member of her team.
Kate Childs Graham, Harris' chief speechwriter, is leaving the vice president's office at the end of the month, sources told Fox News.
A White House official told Fox News, "Kate is leaving the office, but not the family. The vice president is grateful for her service to the administration."
Harris’ communications director Ashley Etienne resigned in November to "pursue other opportunities." That came after reports of exasperation between Harris’ office and Biden’s amid lagging approval ratings for Harris.
Shortly after Etienne’s departure, Symone Sanders announced she would be departing at the end of the year. Harris’ office said Sanders, a senior adviser and her chief spokesperson, "will be missed."
In January, Vincent Evans, who served as the vice president's deputy director of public engagement and intergovernmental affairs for nearly a year, left to become the executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus.
In a press conference on the eve of the anniversary of his inauguration, President Biden said unambiguously that Harris would be his running mate for re-election in 2024.
"She is going to be my running mate – number one. And number two, I did put her in charge. I think she’s doing a good job," Biden said.
[Breitbart via Rantingly] The newest reparations-style plan from President Joe Biden ditches cash payouts to border crossers subjected to former President Trump’s "Zero Tolerance Policy" and, instead, provides them with amnesty to permanently resettle in the United States.
Last year, Biden’s Departments of Justice (DOJ), Homeland Security (DHS), and Health and Human Services (HHS) were in settlement talks with border crossers represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who claim they have suffered trauma as a result of the Trump-era policy.
For months, reports circulated that Biden was considering giving payouts of $450,000 to every border crosser involved in the case — costing about $1 billion in American taxpayer money and more than was given to the American victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
As Breitbart News reported in December 2021, Biden dropped the payout plan following intense backlash from the American public. Some polls showed that 63 percent of Americans, including 64 percent of swing voters, were opposed to the plan.
Now, Biden and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas are urging Congress to authorize a new payoff plan: Amnesty for every border crosser subjected to Trump’s Zero Tolerance Policy. Mayorkas told NBC News:
We are advocating to Congress that they provide these individuals with legal status — that requires a statutory change. The White House is 100 percent supportive of it, as am I, and we continue to advocate vigorously for it.
Amnesty for the border crossers would be far more lucrative than the previously-circulated $450,000 payouts as it would allow them to secure green cards, and eventually, naturalized American citizenship that they could then use to bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S. through the process known as "chain migration."
#4
Gov. Brylcreem in CA is now pushing reparations.
For slavery. In CALIFORNIA.
Where 99% of the extant population has zero connection to antebellum America and 99.9999% of the extant population has zero connection -- slave, slaveowner or trader or otherwise -- to antebellum American slavery.
These people are beyond corrupt. As disgusting as they are clownish.
Some Muslim parents on Thursday stormed Oyun Baptist High School, Ijagbo, in the Oyun Local Government Area of Kwara State to protest against the rejection of their wards in the school.
However, the protest which started as a peaceful one, took a violent turn when an unidentified man rushed to the school to inform other protesters of a machete cut.
This triggered an angry reaction from the protesting Muslim parents as they looked around for various weapons to defend themselves. However, police officers swiftly dispatched them.
NAN reports that the police fired warning shots into the air and also used teargas to dispatch the protesters in order to control the situation as unidentified persons from inside the Oyun Baptist High School, were seen throwing missiles at those outside the premises.
Meanwhile, several persons have sustained varying degrees of injury.
For instance, a man in his early 20s was seen being rushed to a nearby hospital for reportedly being shot at.
Normalcy was however restored by a combined team of police and Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC).
The Public Relations Officer of the Kwara Police Command, Ajayi Okasanmi, said security personnel had been deployed to the scene to restore peace.
Okasanmi said normalcy has returned to the school and that security operatives would remain there until the area was safe for the residents.
The controversies surrounding the use of Hijab in schools have rocked Kwara State, particularly in schools which have identified as missionary schools.
On January 25, the government restated its policy and directed management of schools in the state to allow the use of Hijab by willing Muslims without forcing it on anyone or turning them back for using it.
Some Muslim parents and their wards were seen on some major streets of Ilorin on Wednesday protesting against the management of Oyun Baptist High School for turning back some students for wearing Hijab.
A government delegation, led by the Commissioner for Education, Hajia Sa’adatu Kawu, had twice visited the school to resolve the matter.
Another delegation led by the Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Mohammed Saifudeen, also visited the town for the same reason on Thursday.
#2
Let the hijab clad girls in. Their parents are recognizing that the Christian affiliated schools are better than the Moslem affiliated ones. Wouldn't hurt for them to learn the 10 Commandments.
The Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) has uncovered 96 financiers of terrorism, especially those backing Boko Haram and the Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP).
The Nigerian government also said NFIU has unmasked 424 associates/supporters of the financiers, about 123 companies and 33 bureaux de change linked with terrorism.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed disclosed this at a briefing to share information on the anti-corruption fight of President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday.
He added that the agency has identified 26 suspected bandits/kidnappers and seven co-conspirators.
According to Mohammed, 45 of the suspects will soon face trial.
He said, “For its part, the analysis by the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), in 2020-2021, revealed 96 financiers of terrorism in Nigeria, 424 associates/supporters of the financiers, involvement of about 123 companies and 33 bureaux de change, in addition to identifying 26 suspected bandits/kidnappers and seven co-conspirators.
“The analysis has resulted in the arrest of 45 suspects who will soon face prosecution and seizure of assets. Also, from its analysis of tax evasion and tax avoidance linked to corruption, NFIU has identified N3,909,707,678,112.43 in VAT and N3,737,918,335,785.82 in Withholding Tax due to the Government.
“NFIU has also sent 1,165 intelligence reports on cases of corruption, money laundering and other serious offences to 27 domestic agencies for investigation, prosecution and asset recovery.
“On terrorism financing, NFIU had intelligence exchanges on Boko Haram, ISWAP, banditry, kidnapping and others with 19 countries. During the same period, 2020-2021, the organisation returned fraudulently-obtained funds totalling US$103,722,102.83, 3,000 Pound Sterling; 7,695 Singapore Dollar and 1,091 Euros to 11 countries of victims who came into the country.”
Mohammed added that the President Buhari’s Whistle-Blower policy has led to the recovery of N700 billion.
In April, 2021, SaharaReporters reported how over 400 persons were arrested by security agencies during a nationwide crackdown on some suspected collaborators/financiers of terrorists.
They were reportedly arrested in an operation being coordinated by the NFIU, Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), and in collaboration with the Department of State Services (DSS), and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The operation was said to have been approved by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2020.
They were reportedly being kept in military and DSS facilities in Abuja and other places.
Confirming the report a few days later, Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), said the Nigerian government embarked on “a wider and far-reaching investigations” into terrorism financing after the conviction of Boko Haram financiers in the United Arab Emirates.
ROE changing?
[FoxNews] Border Patrol agents patrolling the Rio Grande Valley Sector were fired upon from across the Mexican border on Wednesday, multiple law enforcement sources told Fox News.
The Special Operations Group, part of Border Patrol Tactical Operations (BORTAC), were shot at from beyond the border, and then returned fire – nobody on either side was hit.
In a statement to Fox News, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confirmed that agents responded to a report of suspected migrants near Fronton. The statement also confirmed that the incident is being reviewed by both the FBI and CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility.
Fox is told that the Mexican military had engaged with cartel members in a shootout on the Mexican side, at which point a man fled and tried to cross into the U.S. via a nearby river. When a BORTAC agent jumped into the water to rescue him, the agent was fired upon.
It occurred in the same area where Texas National Guard members were shot at from Mexico just last month. The suspected shooters were believed to be gunmen from a drug cartel, but it was not clear. No National Guard members were hurt.
It is also where Fox News personally witnessed tracer fire from a cartel machine gun coming into U.S. territory.
That area in Roma is viewed as cartel land and is where the Gulf cartel and Cartel Del Noreste fight for control of the city in Mexico across from Roma – Ciudad Miguel Aleman.
Heavily armed groups are becoming a more common sight along the Texas-Mexico border, authorities said. Last month, Texas Department of Public Safety officials told Fox News that suspected cartel members involved in human smuggling were wearing tactical gear and armed with AK-47s while taunting National Guard soldiers across the Rio Grande.
Mexican cartels have been known to commit acts of violence on migrants traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border, but it is rare for them to confront American law enforcement or military troops.
There were more than 178.840 migrant encounters in December, and Republican lawmakers have warned that the continuing crisis at the southern border is only serving to encourage cartels and criminal organizations that facilitate much of the human smuggling, trafficking and the drug trade at the border.
#4
There was a time, in the distant past of the 1950s I believe, when entering the sovereign territory of the United States illegally was a felony, and failure to stop when confronted by a Border Patrol agent could be grounds for the use of deadly force.
Fast forward to the late 80s, and it had changed to essentially make enforcement a form of tackle football. We have been overrun by millions of people, many nice enough, but most of whom essentially want to enjoy the better life America provided by just sneaking their way in. Far too often bringing ignorance, crime, poverty, disease and frankly a demand for services and welfare from our collective wallets. Not content to dishonestly share in the gift of our national prosperity, created by the genius of our founders, they send billions of dollars back to their native states to support families ther, removing that commerce from our own economy. Called remittances, along with the drug trade, it is the largest sector of the Mexican economy for example. There was a time when our prosperity was so great and our treasures so vast this was tolerable. That time has long passed!
It now an epidemic you see everywhere, but especially in the hospital emergency rooms and in the shifted cost of indigent healthcare as a form of hidden tax, making healthcare enormously expensive. I remember reading how a General Motors Senior Executive one described GM as a Healthcare Network that made automobiles.
The breaking point has been reached and the policies of this administration represent criminal malfeasance at the highest levels. This must stop...
#5
The law is still on the books. It's one thing to ignore the law, it's another to aid and abet those breaking the law. That is obstruction of justice. I look forward to the tribunals.
[FoxNews] President Biden, during an event at the New York Police Department on Thursday, said "the answer is not to defund the police," but instead, to provide the tools and funding for law enforcement officials to be "partners" and "protectors" in the community.
The president and Attorney General Merrick Garland met with New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul at the NYPD headquarters Thursday to discuss ways federal, state and local law enforcement officials can work together to quickly take shooters off the streets and combat gun violence.
"Every time you pin that shield on, walk out the door, you’re worried about getting a phone call – too many have gotten the phone call lately," Biden said. "Every day in this country, 316 people are shot, 106 killed, there have been six NYPD victims of gun violence so far just this year."
The president’s trip to New York City on Thursday after thousands of uniformed police officers from across the nation traveled to Manhattan to pay their respects to fallen NYPD Detectives Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora, who were shot and killed while responding to a domestic violence call last month.
"The answer is not to abandon our streets. That’s not the answer," Biden continued. "The answer is to come together, police and communities building trust and making us all safer."
He added: "The answer is not to defund the police. It is to give you the tools, the training, the funding to be partners, to be protectors."
Biden doubled down on that point, noting that they are "not about defunding."
"We’re about funding and providing the additional services you need beyond someone with a gun strapped to their shoulder," Biden said. "We need more social workers, mental health workers. We need more people who, when you’re called on these scenes and someone is about to jump off a roof, it’s not just someone standing with a weapon – it is someone who also knows how to talk to people, talk them down."
Biden said that government officials "can't expect" police officers "to do every single solitary thing."
The Biden administration on Thursday morning rolled out a strategy to stop the flow of guns, bolster law enforcement and increase funding for community policing, which Biden elaborated on during remarks at the NYPD HQ.
Senior administration officials said the strategy builds on steps the president announced in June 2021, which were intended to stem the flow of firearms used to commit violence; support local law enforcement with federal tools and resources to address violent crime; invest in evidence-based community violence interventions, expanded summer programming, employment opportunities and other services and support for teenagers and young adults; and provide help for formerly incarcerated individuals to "successfully reenter their communities."
Heartbroken officers escort heroic NYPD cop murdered in line of duty by criminalVideo
As part of the strategy, the Justice Department announced a new directive to every U.S. attorney’s office nationwide to "increase resources dedicated to district-specific violent crime strategies."
A senior administration official said the Justice Department will work with state and local law enforcement to address the "most significant drivers of violence in each district," including to "get repeat gun violence offenders off our streets."
The Justice Department is also expected to "crack down on the "Iron Pipeline," a reference to the illegal flow of guns sold in the south and transported up the East Coast and found at crime scenes in cities from Baltimore to New York City.
The DOJ will also launch a "National Ghost Gun Enforcement Initiative," which officials say will "train a national cadre of prosecutors and disseminate investigation and prosecution tools to help bring cases against those who use ghost guns to commit crimes."
The Biden administration last year first took aim at "ghost guns" and modified firearms, which are homemade firearms without serial numbers that make it difficult for law enforcement to determine where, by whom, or when they were manufactured and to whom they were sold.
"The president is committed to serving as a strong partner for communities on the front lines of the fight against crime," the White House said, noting that the American Rescue Plan provides "historic levels of funding" for cities and states so that they can "put more cops on the beat and invest in community-based violence prevention and intervention programs."
Meanwhile, on Thursday, Biden also called on Congress to reach a bipartisan agreement on the FY22 appropriations budget, which includes half a billion dollars in new funding for "proven strategies" officials say they "know will reduce gun crime."
The proposal includes a $300 million increase to expand accountable community policing through the COPS Hiring Program and $200 million for evidence-based community violence interventions.
The raid occurred at the Royal Oak, Michigan, house owned for the past several years by Vance Callender, HSI special agent in charge at the agency’s Detroit office.
Callender was appointed the top HSI agent in Michigan and Ohio in January 2020.
The neighbor who witnessed the raid said there were “about 15 plainclothes officers” who conducted the operation, and that they were not wearing any identifiable logo that would reveal their affiliation.
[AmericanThinker] Facebook earnings came in below expectations for the fourth quarter, and the company said numerous challenges are ahead in the first quarter.
Inflation, supply chain disruptions at advertisers and users shifting to products that "monetize at lower rates" are among the key issues the company faces.
Revenue in the first quarter will be between $27 billion and $29 billion, while analysts were looking for that number to top $30 billion.
Facebook shares tumbled more than 20% in extended trading on Wednesday after the company reported disappointing earnings, gave weak guidance and said user growth has stagnated.
For the schadenfreude-minded, it's expected to take the largest one-day loss in all U.S. corporate history, with some $200 billion likely to be wiped off the company's valuation in the course of trading today.
Heckuva job, Markie.
And yes, the key data point is that they are losing people:
Daily Active Users (DAUs): 1.93 billion vs 1.95 billion expected by analysts, according to StreetAccount
Monthly Active Users (MAUs): 2.91 billion vs 2.95 billion expected by analysts, according to StreetAccount
That's more than a million users, which marks the first time the company's user base has ever contracted. Like California, more people are leaving than coming. No new people, no new earnings growth.
Facebook's pals in Big Tech are going down, too. Seems no one is all-powerful anymore.
The company, and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, blamed everyone but themselves for the company's bad news. Zuckerberg said it was the allure of TikTok, the Chinese spyware company that serves as a forum for lunatic left-wingery, and its apparently addictive quality to teenagers.
Other Facebook execs blamed those bastards at Apple, who instituted a revised iOS privacy policy that prevents Facebook from harvesting users' data without their express consent. Some analysts blamed the astroturf "whistleblower" featured on 60 Minutes and in testimony to Congress that Facebook knew that its Instagram app was bad for teenagers' self-esteem, which was old news when it came out. All of this could be at least partially true.
Other reasons might carry some water, too — that the company has grown as big as it can grow globally; that the users want something new, meaning Facebook is becoming the new MySpace; and that Facebook has built two huge new headquarters of "perfection," which, according to Parkinson's Law of Buildings, is a sign of an entity in decline.
The elephant in the room of these analyses, though, is the same one that's driving people out of California: that customers are disgusted with Facebook's politicized behavior.
Get woke, go broke. It applies even to the big boys.
In Facebook's case, that behavior has taken on approximately three pernicious forms.
One, the data-harvesting, and data-mining on users, in order to "nudge" and influence them. Plenty of people don't like that even for commercial purposes, but the fact that Facebook moved in a political direction is especially obnoxious.
Facebook has hired lots of Democrat party operatives, presumably to lobby Washington, but just as likely to manipulate Facebook's users into voting "Democrat" through the miracle of algorithms. Facebook, see, knows you better than you know yourself, based on all its data-harvesting. That doesn't sit well with many users, and as word gets out about it, some users are packing up. Read more at the link:
#1
Um, a mite bit of an overreaction.... they still have 1.93 billion users*. Despite the hoopla about Snap or TikTok, those moronic timewasters aren't going to come close to displacing FB for another decade.
* Quiz: which two rackets businesses refer to their customers as "sets"? A: illicit drug dealing and Silicon Valley social media
#3
Could be that people are starting, just starting, to realise that they are being manipulated. FB often injects items you don't like in your feed to trigger an emotional response and spend longer time viewing ads - as well as feed more information to the FB algorithms. This is on top of censoring what appears in your 'feed' to only favour what they would like.
[Breitbart] Leftist Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has followed in his father Pierre’s footsteps both in assuming the high office and using it to further the interests of the Chinese Communist Party, Peter Schweizer writes in his bestseller Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win.
The book, which documents the cozy financial and political relations between the Chinese government and some of the most powerful people in the West, revealed decades of both ideological and financial ties between Beijing and the Trudeaus, beginning with the elder Trudeau visiting China in 1960 and meeting Mao Zedong, among other communist leaders.
Rather than being appalled by the Great Leap Forward, which was ongoing at the time, Trudeau and travel pal Jacques Hébert left the country enamored by communism enough to write a propaganda book titled Two Innocents in Red China.
The Great Leap Forward killed as many as 45 million people and has been described by the Washington Post as “the biggest mass murder in the history of the world.” Yet it remained conspicuously absent in the narrative of Two Innocents. The book describes Mao as a “superb strategist” and proclaims, “it is these red-scarfed kids who in twenty years will be the New Men of a country which at that time will have a billion inhabitants.”
In an interesting coincidence, the elder Trudeau’s ideological fealty to communism, Red-Handed details, was also significantly profitable. Trudeau had benefitted from the support of businessman Paul Desmarais, the head of the company called the Power Corporation that specialized in building business ties to China.
“In 1978, the Power Corporation formed the Canada-China Business Council with Prime Minister Trudeau’s support,” Schweizer writes, noting that the Canada-China Business Council was a key tool for Beijing to foster ties to powerful Canadian politicians to the benefit of the Communist Party.
“Trudeau and Desmarais guided Canada’s relationship with Beijing, with Trudeau as prime minister pushing closer relations with the regime while Desmarais cashed in on significant deals with Beijing’s elite,” Schweizer writes. “When Trudeau retired from politics, he went to work at Power Corporation, further nurturing those deals and becoming wealthy in the process.”
[FoxNews] South Dakota Republicans blocked a pro-life proposal from Gov. Kristi Noem that would ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected and was modeled after Texas’ law that allows private citizens to sue.
Republican lawmakers in the state said the bill could "jeopardize" their chances of ultimately getting abortions outlawed in the conservative state.
Pro-life Republican House Speaker Spencer Gosch said the bill language proposed by the governor could interfere with a Planned Parenthood legal battle connected to a decade-old law forcing women to go to crisis pregnancy centers before getting an abortion. The law was halted years ago and Noem has vowed to take it to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Shafaq News / On Thursday, the security forces foiled an attack targeting the Global Coalition in southern Iraq.
A security source told Shafaq News Agency that the Iraqi forces had found an explosive device on the highway west of the city of Nasiriyah that was prepared to target the Global Coalition convoys.
No causality was reported.
Earlier, the Iraqi authorities issued warnings of repeated targeting of foreign forces and diplomatic missions in the country.
On January 5, the Iraqi parliament voted by the majority to end the foreign military presence on the country's territory, following the killing of the Iranian Quds Force commander, Qassem Soleimani, and the deputy head Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi, Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, in an American airstrike near Baghdad International Airport.
Washington accuses armed Iraqi factions linked to Iran of being behind the attacks.
[Breitbart] The Democrats’ bill to help the U.S. compete against China’s fast-growing manufacturing and technology sectors actually allows China to compete against America, GOP leader Kevin McCarthy said Wednesday.
McCarthy used his floor speech during the debate to spotlight visa provisions in the bill that would encourage U.S. companies and universities to hire and train Chinese graduates instead of American graduates:
They call it the American Competes Act. But make no mistake. It’s a bill that concedes to China. The American Concedes Act is Democrats desperate answer to their string of self-created crisis. While it contains some provisions supported by Republicans. Speaker Pelosi is holding these good ideas hostage by using this 3,000 page bill as a vehicle for the party’s far left agenda. Almost every page of Democrats concede Act has a provision that helps China but hurts America.
Now here are just a few excerpts. On page 1,689, it provides a new unlimited green card program for the Chinese Communist Party to exploit.
The green card language was touted by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Ca), whose district includes part of Silicon Vallery.
Advocates say it allows the "best and brightest" foreign graduates to get green cards, jobs, and then citizenship if they work to get a science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) PhD. in American or foreign universities. But the fine print of the bill shows it would give green cards to a wide variety of ordinary foreign graduates, including chemists, doctors, engineers, statisticians, accountants, tax experts, software developers, and computer security experts.
The bill’s language sets no limits on the number of foreign migrants who can get green cards and then U.S. jobs and careers, nor does it set any minimum standards for the skills of those migrants.
[Breitbart] Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer appeared on The Dan Bongino Show where he discussed how the Biden family corruption goes beyond mere crony capitalism and may actually be a "Chinese intelligence operation."
Discussing his New York Times #1 best-selling book, Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, Schweizer profiled how the Biden-China connection puts the future of American national security at risk.
"What we found is that in every single deal they got, there was a businessman who made it happen, who, as the kids would say, ’made it rain,'" Schweizer said. "Every single one of those businessmen has links to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence, meaning the vice-minister for state security, the family of the former minister of state security."
"The story of the Bidens and their Chinese deals is no longer just a story of corruption and cronyism, it is a story of a Chinese intelligence operation, and we have got to get to the bottom of if the Bidens are compromised and how badly are they compromised," Schweizer continued.
[BenarNews] Security forces have killed two Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really 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 western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... -linked turban suspects and captured two others during a clash in the southern Philippines, the military said Thursday.
The shootout broke out when government troops ran into a unit of the Daulah Islamiyah-Maute Group (DI-MG)
...that branch of ISIS in the Philippines founded by two brothers of the Maute family who helped lead the siege of Marawi City in 2017 under Abu Sayyaf/ISIS-Philippines head Isnilon Hapilon. All three were killed there, but their followers carried on under the Maute name...
while on patrol Wednesday in Lumbac, a village in the town of Balabagan in Lanao del Sur province, the military’s Western Mindanao Command (WestMinCom) said.
"Based on the reports from the ground, Marine troops were conducting focused military operations when they chanced upon the group of Polo Alim, a Daulah Islamiyah-Maute Group member," said Lt. Gen. Alfredo Rosario Jr., the commander of WestMinCom.
"A firefight ensued after which [the] enemy withdrew, leaving behind the dead body of one of their slain comrades," he said, adding that Alim escaped but two others were caught.
The military identified the slain fighter as Saipoden Bangka Ayok and the two captured suspects as Datu Saida Abikan and Alimusa Ayon Bagol.
Alim is believed to be a commander of the DI-Maute Group, which in 2017 made up the majority of the Filipino Lions of Islam who took over the southern city of Marawi during a five-month siege.
Maj. Gen. Juvymax Uy, commander of the Joint Task Force Central and 6th Division, confirmed that another DI-MG member was killed during the clash.
"The fleeing enemies brought along with them the remains of the other slain comrade," Uy said in a statement.
Four marines were maimed and brought to a hospital for treatment, he said. They are believed to be in a stable condition, he added.
Police operatives and marines who conducted a clearing operation said they recovered assorted weapons left behind by the turbans, including high-powered rifles and a grenade launcher. They also seized "war materials" from a shallow bunker where the button men were believed to have holed up, the military said.
Meanwhile, ...back at the buffalo wallow, Standing Buffalo drew a bead on his old enemy and squeezed the trigger... military intelligence officials earlier told BenarNews that a few IS Lions of Islam who had beat feet from troops in Marawi in 2017 were in the process of rebuilding their ranks.
However, denial ain't just a river in Egypt... recent military victories in the field have disrupted their command structure, with the overall leader of Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan’s group under assault farther south on Jolo Island, officials added.
Sawadjaan himself may have been killed in a clash in 2020, but the military could not confirm his death because no body was found. Philippine officials accuse him of orchestrating a suicide kaboom of a Catholic church in Jolo in 2019 that left 23 dead, including an Indonesian couple who were the bombers.
The following year, his nephew, Mundi Sawadjaan, criminal masterminded another bombing on Jolo that left 14 dead.
[Rudaw] Ottoman Turkish drones targeted a vehicle transporting members of the Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) in the Syrian border village of Kharza, al-Darbasiyah, on Thursday. One woman was killed and the others, including the driver, are at death's door according to a rights monitor. The injured were reportedly transferred to a hospital in Qamishli.
Shortly before the attack on the vehicles, reports had emerged stating that a kaboom struck a Ottoman Turkish vehicle on the Ottoman Turkish side of the border, opposite al-Darbasiyah. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), ambulances were seen rushing towards the site of the earth-shattering kaboom, indicating that casualties may have been inflicted.
The latest developments come after Tuesday’s intense Ottoman Turkish aerial bombardment targeting the PKK and YPG in both Iraq and Syria.
[GasPricesAAA] Uncertainty over Russia’s intentions toward Ukraine is contributing to higher crude oil prices, which are closing in on $90 per barrel. Russia is a member of OPEC+, and any sanctions based on their actions toward Ukraine may cause it to withhold crude oil from the global market. Higher oil prices will lead to higher pump prices for drivers. The national average for a gallon of gas has risen to $3.36, three cents more than a week ago.
---------------- up about 5 cents/gal since the report above; also up about $1/gal from last year at this time; currently WTI is well above $90/barrel; not directly related but there was a build up in inventory in January in durables (bad for next month's employment)
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
02/04/2022
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#1
As annoying as it is, I'm not in the mood to get laid off again. And yes Skid, I'm a rig guy. Been MWD, Mudlogger, and now I do automation software. Out here on a rig in West Virigina atm.
#7
BLS report out just now. +467k non farm payroll (that's right an increase - once again the ADP and BLS numbers don't agree well). Unemployment stays at 4.0; average workweek down a bit. In all not too bad.
However, with the inventory build up in January, I fear February's numbers (tb released 4 March) will not be pretty.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
02/04/2022 8:46
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#8
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Crude Oil per Barrel prices over the last 22 years.
In Jan. 2000 it was $45.66 a barrel and adjusted for inflation that would be $73.93.
The highest on record price for a barrel of Crude Oil Barrel since the year 2000, happened in June 2008 when it peaked at $178.36 a barrel.
Note: Yep! it happened under the Obama Admin, which is strongly rumored to be now steering this Admin/Junta.
Yesterday we floated the idea that the NYT’s lawsuit to get access docs related to Baidan Crime Family dealings in Romania (which isn’t news) might be a step toward pressuring Zhou to quit. Obviously that would be contingent on finding a plausible replacement, and that’s a huge problem given the massive unpopularity of the 2nd and 3rd in line.
Just to add a bit of fuel to this speculation …
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to conceal Zhou’s mental decline from the public—anyone who’s anyone in DC is fully aware of this. Yesterday Thomas Lifson posted a video clip of Zhou that was really stunning: If you wanted proof Biden isn't in charge of his own administration, here it is... What the video clip shows is Zhou opening up for questions—and his handlers simply override him and shut the event down, while he sits there grinning like a goof:
#1
MayZhou you Roundeyes live in interesting times
Interesting to see more and more defenestrations of the most fervent Pravda apologists for Fauxi and the official lies about lockdowns-masks-Pfizer's fail-"ivermectin doesn't work" etc.
- Zucker at CNN pushed out suddenly
- Whoopi Gold-grabber out
- Rachel Maddow stepping back
... all in one week. For no real reason that ever bothered the mandarins. What can be happening now inside the Forbidden City?
Toward the end of the meeting, in which prominent CNN journalists went hard at CNN's Kilar over Zucker’s resignation, special correspondent Jamie Gangel spoke up.
“The first calls I got this morning were from four members of the January 6 committee,who felt devastated for our democracy, because Jeff was not going to be around to make sure that CNN is able to do its job,” she said (later clarifying to colleagues that she meant to say four congresspeople, including one member of the committee).”
A Deputy Commander of the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF), Mallam Ibrahim Maliya Saidu has died after his patrol vehicle rammed onto a planted Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) while on duty along Biu -Mandaragirau- Damboa -Maiduguri Road axis of Borno State.
The deceased was said to have been very supportive in the fight against Boko Haram/ISWAP.
The incident took place between Biu- Mandaragirau communities on Wednesday afternoon. It occurred about 40km from Biu council area also caused various degrees of injury to other occupants of the patrol vehicle.
The road had remained closed for motorists and passengers for many years due to activities of insurgency, even though there are some villages still occupied by the civilian populace, especially within the Biu local government area of the state.
The Deputy Governor of the state, who hails from Biu, Umar Usman Kadafur, in an interview, described the death of Maliya Saidu as a great loss in the fight against Boko Haram.
He praised the deceased for his dedication and commitment towards restoring peace in the state.
Since the death of JAS leader, Abubakar Shekau, ISWAP has been consolidating its grip in locations around Lake Chad.
In 2021, it appointed Wali Sani Shuwaram, a 45-year-old as the new leader (Wali) of ISWAP in Lake Chad.
The terror group has caused over 100,000 deaths and displaced millions of people mainly in Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe states.
BLUF: The charity front of the al-Qaeda-linked Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia (MMI), AKA the Indonesian Mujahidin Council, for sending lotsa money to Al Nusra.
[BenarNews] The United States announced Thursday that it was sanctioning an Indonesian charity under an executive order on terrorism financing for allegedly providing funds to Lions of Islam in Syria under the "guise of humanitarian aid."
The U.S. government took the action against World Human Care, an NGO, on the same day President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. I'm not working for you. Don't be such a horse's ass. Don't say he didn't warn us... announced that the top leader of the Islamic State
Continued on Page 49
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – On Thursday, the Turkish forces and the Turkish-backed opposition factions bombed the village of Qaramel in Shahba area in the northern countryside of Aleppo, northern Syria.
An elementary school in the village was hit with eight rocket-propelled grenades by Turkey, causing significant material damage.
Thousands of families, who displaced from the city of Afrin and its environs following the Turkish invasion in 2018, have been living in Shahba areas.
For two consecutive days, the Turkish army has been continuing to bombard villages in Shahba area with rocket-propelled grenades. The villages of Qaramel, Ghurata, Umm Hosh, Harbel, Smouqa, Sad Shahba, Hassya, Sheikh Issa, Tel Rifaat and Neirabiyah, located on the contact lines with Turkey, have been hit with artillery and Grad rockets by Turkish forces.
Rest is expenses, VAT, Green Taxes, and a wholesale costs from 35% to 49% of the bill, +%14, VAT 5%, Green 10%, which makes the Covid procedures plus gov add-ons about 29% of the bill.
Government investigates crises; Government finds there needs to be more government.
A Nigerian soldier was killed on Wednesday after being forced into a burning military vehicle in the southeastern part of the country, an official told Peoples Gazette.
The soldier, whose identity has been withheld to give military authorities enough time to convey the news to his loved ones, was on a patrol with his colleagues in Edema, Ebonyi, when they were ambushed by yet-unidentified gunmen.
A military source said the assailants then set the soldiers’ patrol truck alight and pushed the slain officer into the raging inferno. Charred remains of his body and the vehicle were shared amongst service members on Thursday afternoon.
Two other soldiers who took part in the patrol were still missing in action as of Thursday afternoon, the source said under anonymity because the military was still evaluating the situation.
Nigerian troops have faced pushback from residents in Ebonyi and other states across the South-East after repeated attacks on the civilian population in the region. The military said the campaign was aimed at rooting out those responsible for violent attacks believed to have stemmed from the ongoing separatist agitation.
The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has repeatedly denied ties to the attacks, but federal authorities said its members were linked to the violence and arrested.
The group’s leader Nnamdi Kanu was abducted by Nigerian authorities from Kenya in June 2021 and has remained in the custody of the Nigerian government in Abuja.
Bandits on Thursday morning stormed Daddara village in the Jibia Local Government Area of Katsina State where they killed six people, including the village head.
The assailants also abducted five other residents, Daily Trust reports.
Katsina and other North-West states are being terrorised by bandits and other criminals.
Similarly, in August 2021, some bandits attacked villages in Musawa and Matazu local government areas of Katsina State, killing a village head and some others, while several houses were burnt.
They stole hundreds of animals and burnt down some houses, and then proceeded to Dugul village where they killed the village head, Mallam Rabiu and four others.
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – The killed ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi aka “Hajji Abdullah” was heavily involved in the slave trade of Yezidi women from Iraq, the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) said in a statement on Thursday.
In an investigation that has been conducted sin 2015, the CIJA said their “investigations on the ground in Syria and Iraq showed his potential criminal responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and other offenses such as human trafficking.”
Today, the US President, Joe Biden, announced the killing of Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi, the leader of ISIS in Idlib, northwest Syria.
The CIJA reported that Abdullah served as ISIS’s senior judge and Sharia law official in Iraq from 2014, exercising religious authority over all ISIS activity across that country.
“Hajji Abdullah had enormous power to persecute and punish ISIS enemies as far back as 2014. Not only was he one of the key architects of the Islamic State slave trade in Yezidi women and children, he personally enslaved and raped captive women,” said Nerma Jelacic, Deputy Director of CIJA.
The CIJA statement added that Hajji Abdullah was responsible for all Yezidi prisoners held in Iraq after they had been captured during ISIS Sinjar military operation in August 2014.
“He oversaw the distribution of Yezidi women, together with young children, to ISIS members as sabaya (female spoils of war).”
It pointed out that he was also responsible for the massacre of hundreds of Yezidi men and boys.
The Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) is a non-profit, non-governmental organization dedicated to furthering criminal justice efforts through investigations, in order to prevent the loss and destruction of vital evidence for the purpose of supporting prosecutorial efforts to end impunity, whether at the domestic or international level.
[Rudaw] Iraqi intelligence provided the US with "accurate" information in the overnight operation against ISIS leader in Syria, leading to his location and death, military spokesperson for Iraqi prime minister claimed late Thursday.
The US operation killed the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really 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 western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... (ISIS) leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi in Idlib, northwest Syria. The US has not acknowledged the role of any force or government in the operation but has said the country will continue working with the Kurdish forces in Syria as well as Iraqi army and Peshmerga in the fight against ISIS.
"The operation ... was carried out after the Iraqi National Intelligence Service provided the global coalition with accurate information which led to his location and killing," Yehia Rasool, military spokesperson for Iraqi PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who is also the commander-in-chief of armed forces, said in a tweet.
The killing of the high-ranking ISIS leader took place on a property in Atmeh, north of Idlib and just east of the border with The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the occupiers of Greek Asia Minor... The death of Qurayshi comes three years after US special forces killed former ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a similar-style attack in 2019 in the same area.
[IsraelTimes] Jerusalem, which was familiar with al-Qurayshi because he once held ‘Israel file’ in IS, was reportedly notified in advance of raid to take him out, helped track his location
Israel reportedly provided intelligence used in the US operation to kill Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi in northern Syria early Thursday.
Channel 13 news quoted foreign sources who claimed Israel assisted in the intelligence tracking of al-Qurayshi, utilizing sources inside Syria who helped create an intelligence window that allowed the US to act.
“Without the information on his location, there is obviously no possibility for such an operation to take place,” one source told Channel 13.
The Kan public broadcaster reported that the US notified Israel of the operation ahead of time, likely because of Jerusalem’s familiarity with al-Qurayshi, who held the “Israel file” in IS before taking over as the terror group’s leader in October 2019, when his predecessor was killed in a similar US raid.
Israel has not been a spectator in the global fight against IS. Former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot told the Maariv daily earlier this month that Israeli forces have killed hundreds of the group’s operatives throughout the Middle East.
Oh? Somehow I don’t recall seeing reports on this before.
The predawn raid in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province targeted al-Qurayshi, who took over as head of the group on October 31, 2019, just days after his predecessor Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died during a US raid in the same area. Biden said al-Qurayshi died, as al-Baghdadi did, by exploding a bomb that killed himself and members of his family, including women and children, as US forces approached.
US special forces landed in helicopters and assaulted a house in a rebel-held corner of Syria, clashing for two hours with gunmen, witnesses said. Residents described continuous gunfire and explosions that jolted the town of Atmeh near the Turkish border, an area dotted with camps for internally displaced people from Syria’s civil war.
First responders reported that 13 people had been killed, including six children and four women. The Pentagon said no American soldiers were injured in the operation.
Biden, along with Vice President Kamala Harris and senior national security aides, monitored a live feed of the operation from the White House Situation Room, according to an official.
Golly — just like President Obama and his crew, back in the day.
The operation marked a military success for the United States at an important time after setbacks elsewhere — including the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal — have led allies and opponents to conclude US power globally was weakening.
The house, surrounded by olive trees in fields outside Atmeh, was left with its top floor shattered and blood spattered inside.
President Biden, Vice President Harris and members of the President’s national security team observe the counterterrorism operation responsible for removing from the battlefield Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi — the leader of ISIS. pic.twitter.com/uhK75WeUme
[IsraelTimes] After US raid kills terror chief, one of world’s most wanted men, nearby residents say he lived modestly and pretended to be a taxi driver.
When the landing began, residents thought US forces were targeting an Al-Qaeda leader. US special forces have carried out several operations against high-value jihadist targets in the Idlib area in recent months. The area, the last enclave to actively oppose the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is home to more than three million people and is dominated by jihadists.
Abu Ali, a displaced Syrian who lives nearby who declined to give his full name for security reasons, said the US blasted messages to reassure residents. He heard American forces say, “Don’t worry. We’re just coming to this house… to rid you of the terrorists.”
Atme residents were shocked to hear that their neighbor in the modest two-story house surrounded by olive trees was in fact the leader of Islamic State. One of the world’s most wanted men, he was living there with his family and his sister.
Even his landlord, Mohamed al-Sheikh, was perplexed by the news. He thought he had leased the house to a cab driver. Al-Sheikh said Qurayshi had rented the house about a year ago. He lived on the ground floor with his wife and three children. His sister and her daughter lived on the first floor.
AFP correspondents shot photographs of the house that show a simple room with little more than foam mattresses, blankets, colorful clothes and children’s toys.
“This man lived here for 11 months. I did not notice anything strange about him,” Al-Sheikh said. “He would pay me rent and leave.”
One of the last times he saw his tenant, Al-Sheikh said he was picking olives near the house. Qurayshi brought him a cup of coffee and sat down for a chat. He seemed like an “easygoing, gentle and cheerful person” Al-Sheikh said. He always wore the same clothes, he said — a pair of trousers, a shirt, a vest and a headscarf.
Qurayshi’s moniker was “The Destroyer” and he had a reputation for brutality. He played a major role in the 2014 jihadist campaign to kill and enslave the Yazidis in Iraq. His cool demeanor and even temper shielded him from any suspicion.
#1
Some bad actors storing assets for future usage perhaps?
Keeping the large and heavy pieces well away from prying eyes. The canals don't have a strong current so these would pretty much stay where placed. The barrels would be much easier to keep hidden.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
02/04/2022 8:15
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#2
I would think a Barrett lower would not work well after being submerged in water, mud and sand. There are much better ways to hide/store underground.
#3
At least one article I read said they were wrapped in plastic. If the magnet got them, it couldn't have been very many layers.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/04/2022 9:36
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#4
This article said they were shrink-wrapped, which implies a certain amount of planning and investment. I don’t have shrink wrap equipment, not even for my kitchen.
#5
Cache for future sniper ops?, Hopefully the divers will see what else is down there if so, and perhaps forensics can help determine why the spot fit the needs of the logistics/support team prepping the AO.
#8
Wonder if the serial numbers were etched off. At least that would help indicate whether a Gun Rights individual had a change of heart or the ditching of evidence from a commission of a crime.
[Washington Examiner] During his campaign for president, Joe Biden criticized President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and promised to reverse it.
Whereas Trump embraced a policy of "maximum pressure" to compel Iran to cease terrorism, covert nuclear and ballistic missile work, and other rogue behavior, Biden and Rob Malley, his special envoy for Iran, took the opposite approach. They sought to entice Iran with incentives such as sanctions relief, unfreezing assets, and the liquidation of restricted-use escrow accounts.
The scale of the financial relief offered to Iran is now mind-boggling.
In May 2021, Malley was offering Iran relief equivalent to $7 billion, nearly equal to the budget of Iran’s entire conventional military for 2022. As Iranian negotiators stonewalled — they have not sat down with Malley or his team but instead insist on talking through intermediaries — Malley’s team upped the ante. Today, the Biden administration appears poised to provide Tehran with $12 billion, equivalent to a quarter of Iran’s total budget at the real exchange rate. This does not include, of course, the windfall Tehran seeks to gain from increased oil sales already augmented by lack of sanctions enforcement. This fund does not include off-budget spending, such as the oil revenue directly allocated to the Revolutionary Guards or the additional billions that Iran’s national oil company allocates for national stabilization and development but in actuality flows into Revolutionary Guards’ coffers.
Should Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei accept Malley’s offer, the regime will receive an infusion of over $20 billion over the following year, essentially doubling the Revolutionary Guard’s budget. To put that conservative estimate in perspective, a suicide belt costs just $1,500, and the bombing of the Hebrew University cafeteria that killed five Americans cost only $50,000.
Nor does the money now offered to Iran account for the billion-dollar ransoms that the Iranians expect for hostage releases. After all, ever since Jimmy Carter’s administration acquiesced to release Iranian funds in exchange for hostages and Ronald Reagan traded arms for hostages, the Iranian regime simply seizes new hostages to use as chits in their negotiations.
And even if President Biden somehow refuses to pay ransoms, all those other countries, like France and Germany, will.
[Fox News] A recently published email from U.S. State Department officials in Kyiv said Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine "undercut" American efforts to fight corruption within the country.
The email, obtained by Just the News, dates from Nov. 22, 2016, when former U.S. embassy official George Kent raised concern over Hunter Biden’s Ukraine dealings. Kent remarked on the "saga" surrounding a case again former Ukrainian natural resources minister and Burisma Holdings founder Mykola Zlochevsky. Joe Biden was still vice president at the time Kent sent the email, but Donald Trump had won the presidential election.
Kent later appeared before the House Intelligence Committee to testify during the impeachment inquiry against former President Donald Trump, during which he noted he had raised his concerns about the association between Hunter Biden and Burisma.
Kent said in his email that the "real issue" was that someone in Washington needed to engage then-Vice President Biden and say his son’s presence on the board "undercut the anti-corruption message the VP and we were advancing in Ukraine."
Kent states that he understood Sally Painter to be working on due diligence on the issue to make the case to Hunter, but that he never heard back from her. Painter serves as the Chief Operating Officer of Washington, D.C. consultancy firm Blue Star Strategy.
The recipients of the email included Jorgan K. Andrews, then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, and then-U.S. Ambassador to Kyiv Marie Yovanovitch, who classified the email.
#1
Lord what a shitshow... so one of our diplomats who tried to nail OrangeMan for corruption actually knew that Biden was running a crime ring with his depraved idiot son.
And pray tell, why does the task of calling out this whore have to fall to a "someone in Washington" to "engage then-Vice President Biden"?
Kent states that he understood Sally Painter to be working on due diligence on the issue to make the case to Hunter, but that he never heard back from her. Painter serves as the Chief Operating Officer of Washington, D.C. consultancy firm Blue Star Strategy.
Who the fvck is "Sally Painter"? A "consultant," eh? Oh wait: she's that little Clintonite squirrel who made a whore's living selling her NATO membership lobbying efforts to tiny ex-Warsaw Pact country oligarchs.
A shitty little DC lobbyist.
That's who our Ambassador turns to when he needs to speak truth to his bosses? Our Ambassador can't talk to Obama?
Total shitshow. But wait -- like all slapstick comedies, the lads keep comin'... Ambassador Doormat engages not just a no-name little lobbyist but also -- get this -- the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.
Engaging his department's top Narc. To investigate the VP's and now President's crack addict son.
These are the ludicrous shitheads who are driving this nation's insane Ukraine policy. For SHAME.
#3
Kent states that he understood Sally Painter to be working on due diligence on the issue to make the case to Hunter, but that he never heard back from her. Painter serves as the Chief Operating Officer of Washington, D.C. consultancy firm Blue Star Strategy.
Blue Star Strategy sells high level access to Hillary Clinton and would have formed the core of the 2017 Hillary Clinton presidential staff. That Sally Painter went from State Dept to COO of Blue Star Strategy tells you everything you need to know.
Russia, already Beijing's No. 3 gas supplier, has been strengthening ties with China, the world's biggest energy consumer, reducing its dependence on its traditional European energy customers.
#8
Kent states that he understood Sally Painter to be working ondue diligence on the issue
"Due diligence"?
That's investment banker speak for basic financial analysis for a deal. Does the article's author mean s.t. like an actual investigation of criminal acts? Why would Hillary's / Eastern European Bandits' lobbyist be asked to do that?
to make the case to Hunter, but that he never heard back from her.
Why "to Hunter"? WTF?
You mean she was supposed to smoke crack with him and review his deals?
What's the little cvnt supposed to say -- "Sir, if you look carefully at the line items in Slide #7, you'll see that these payments might better have been wired securely from Burisma's Cyprus accounts to a Liechtenstein-based entity..."?
#11
Putin hails $117.5 bln of China deals as Russia squares off with West Russia is Europe's biggest provider of natural gas, and Western countries are worried that already strained supplies could be interrupted in the event of a conflict. However, the new deal with Beijing would not let Moscow divert gas otherwise bound for Europe, as it involves gas from the Pacific island of Sakhalin, not connected to Russia's European pipeline network.
Nothing to do w/ Ukraine tensions. Nor does the deal affect Europe.
IDLIB, Syria (North Press) – The de-escalation zone in northwest Syria witnessed on Thursday mutual shelling between Turkish-backed armed opposition factions and the Syrian government forces.
The opposition factions’ sites in the villages and towns of Kansafra, Fatterah and Kafr Oweid in Zawiya Mountain, south of Idlib, were bombed with heavy artillery by the government forces, military sources of the Syrian opposition told North Press.
The opposition factions’ sites in the villages, al-Enkawi and Khirbet al-Naqus in the Ghab Plain, west of Hama, and Tedil and Kafr Ta’al, west of Aleppo, were also bombed by the government forces, the source added.
Meanwhile, a source of the National Front for Liberation told North Press that al-Fateh al-Mubin Operations Room announced bombing the government forces’ sites in the Regiment 46, Urum al-Kubra and Quptan al-Jabal west of Aleppo with mortars and artillery shells.
Other sites of the government forces in the village of Jobas, east of Idlib, were also bombed by the opposition factions with heavy artillery.
This morning, Russian warplanes launched several air raids on the opposition factions’ sites near the village of Kafr Shalaya in Zawiya Mountain.
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.
[Epoch Times] What a difference two years—and $5.7 trillion in federal money—makes in fostering dramatic reversals of fortune for state and local budget managers.
[Epoch Times] A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) document explaining why the agency approved Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine was removed from the agency’s website overnight.
[Epoch Times] A fundraising campaign for 
...aka Abu Mazen, a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial. While no Yasser Arafat, he has his own brand of evil, just a little more lowercase....
[FoxNews] Biden family worried Hunter’s relationship with Beau’s widow, escorts would spoil Joe Biden’s presidency run.
[FoxNews] Vice President Kamala Harris continues to lose staff with the departure of yet another high-ranking member of her team.
[FoxNews] President Biden, during an event at the New York Police Department on Thursday, said "the answer is not to defund the police," but instead, to provide the tools and funding for law enforcement officials to be "partners" and "protectors" in the community.
[AmericanThinker] Facebook earnings came in below expectations for the fourth quarter, and the company said numerous challenges are ahead in the first quarter.
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling 
...46th president of the U.S. 
...the occupiers of Greek Asia Minor...
[Washington Examiner] During his campaign for president, Joe Biden criticized President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and promised to reverse it.
[Fox News] A recently published email from U.S. State Department officials in Kyiv said Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine "undercut" American efforts to fight corruption within the country. 
