#3
Corsets were the rage then. The body conformed to area restrictions, and as I recall, there was less back trouble. Today, women snidely report that their spines were crushed. A ring or eyeglasses make the same indentations in different areas.
#4
Tight lacing to create a wasp waist was the mark of the fashionable leisure class female at the time. Working class women did not lace tightly, nor did the sporty female, as it definitely got in the way of aerobic exercise. Yes, corsets do support the back, and helped support the weight of fashionable gowns, but beyond shaping the torso they provided the bracing structure undergirding bosom support in the long centuries before the invention of the brassiere.
Posted by: Harry Glereth4013 ||
12/15/2024 14:32
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[IsraelTimes] Erin Molan does not share reasons for her dismissal or plans for the future but says she won’t stop defending Israel in its war against Hamas.
[IsraelTimes] The Hamas-run health ministry’s death toll for the Gaza war appears to include some 5,000 Palestinians who in fact died of natural causes, including cancer patients who later appeared on a list of those receiving continued medical care, according to a new report by a British think tank.
The Henry Jackson Society also found that most of the reported fatalities were men between the ages of 15-45, with many of their ages’ lowered by a year in an apparent effort to make it seem that more minors are being killed, the Telegraph said in a report on the research.
The think tank says the toll also includes Gazans killed by terrorists’ errant rocket or while food aid is being distributed, including in the latter case of a 17-year-old who was reportedly shot dead by Hamas last December while waiting to get food for his family.
[IsraelTimes] Sweden’s government says it is launching a project to chart the different types of racism in society and assess the level of Swedes’ intolerance towards minorities.
Presenting the government’s plan, Gender Equality Minister Paulina Brandberg says she wants to focus in particular on the scope of the phenomenon in schools.
“Racism and discrimination affect Afro-Swedish students at school… young Roma don’t dare speak out about their identity, and the (indigenous minority) Sami are victims of hate crimes,” the minister tells a press conference.
“Teachers say they hear students uttering verbal insults against people because of their skin color, their religion or their ethnic origin,” Health and Social Affairs Minister Jakob Forssmed says at the same press conference. “It’s deeply worrying.”
The government therefore plans to map the scope of racism in Sweden, focusing primarily on racism against Muslims, Jews, black people, Roma and Sami.
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, sparked by the terror group’s devastating October 7, 2023, attack, has also led to increased racism in Sweden, the ministers say.
“We see Jewish students whose lockers in school are marked with swastikas, we see young Muslims facing hatred and threats on social media,” Brandberg says.
According to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (BRA), 2,695 hate crimes were reported to police in 2022, of which 53 percent were of a racist or xenophobic nature.
The exact details are available for perusal at the link. We care about the externalities here.
[IsraelTimes] At weekly rally, hostage’s mom vows to be PM’s ‘worst nightmare’ if son not returned. As optimism rises on possibility of Gaza deal, report says Netanyahu most determined to reach agreement since November 2023 release, but gaps remain between sides
Thousands of protesters rallied in Tel Aviv and other locations Saturday night against the government and for a Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... hostage release deal, as several news reports cited progress toward a potential deal, and as a television network said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the most determined he had been in over a year to reach an agreement to free remaining captives.
They used to get 200,000-500,000. This is just the irreducible remnant, paid cadres and unpaid enthusiasts, for whom protesting is their weekly scheduled activity.
Some 2,000 people rallied outside the Israel Defense Forces headquarters on Tel Aviv’s Begin Road, as the Hostages and Missing Families Families Forum held its more staid weekly rally a block away at so-called Hostages Square. Both were preceded by an anti-government group rally at the Begin-Kaplan Junction, known by activists as Democracy Square.
The first phase of any deal would likely see the release of only some of the hostages — those defined as humanitarian cases including women, children, sick and older people — as Israel agrees to halt its campaign in Gaza for a limited time. Young men like Zangauker would only be up for release at a later stage, if the sides move toward a more permanent ceasefire.
Saturday’s Channel 12 report said a key dispute between sides in the negotiations was the number of hostages to be freed in a first phase, with Israel determined to release as many as possible.
The disagreement being that Hamas does not want to give up their hostage-human shields. Despite claims to the contrary, they have not yet revealed who among the hostages is living, and who has died or been killed. Possibly — given that at least some of the hostages were handed out like war booty to those not Hamas — they don’t actually know in many cases who is holding them and what their status is. When was the last time we heard about mothers and babies among the hostages?
Although Israel has reportedly agreed to a temporary withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border, Jerusalem did not confirm or deny the change in position to Channel 12. Netanyahu previously asserted troops must remain in the area to prevent Hamas ..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,... from smuggling in weapons to rearm, while Hamas has demanded a full withdrawal of Israeli soldiers from the Strip. Security officials have argued Israel could withdraw and retake the corridor at a later time if necessary.
Channel 12 also said mediators were pressing Israel to agree to an all-encompassing deal that would bring the war to an end, rather than a phased agreement.
Ahead of the Saturday night rallies, the brother of hostage Itzik Elgarat urged US President-elect Donald Trump ...So far he's been unkillable, and they've tried.... to press Netanyahu to agree to a deal.
"We believe in your strength to quickly bring about a deal. Don’t let up on Netanyahu, demand a comprehensive deal from him that will return everyone and end the war," Danny Elgarat said alongside other hostage families during their weekly press appearance outside the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv.
The US President-elect’s special envoy for hostage affairs Adam Boehler is set to visit Israel next week for the first time since he was chosen for the role, an Israeli official told the Axios news site Saturday.
Down the road, hundreds of people attended the Hostage Families Forum’s weekly rally at Hostages Square.
The Forum has said any deal needs to bring back all the hostages at once instead of a phased deal that only releases some.
Ahead of that protest, some 1,000 anti-government protesters crammed into the Begin-Kaplan Junction, also known as Democracy Square. Stages were set up there, with speakers perorating against the government in tandem, each with their own take on how it was threatening democracy.
On one stage, set up by a group registering volunteers to engage in non-violent mostly peaceful civil disobedience against the government, a speaker said those signing up would be instructed at a moment’s notice on a location where they were to sit and disrupt traffic, possibly for days on end. He estimated that would come if the government ousts Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara or Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar.
A growing number of coalition politicians and cabinet ministers have called for Baharav-Miara’s ouster due to frustration with her refusal to defend various controversial and unprecedented measures the government seeks to advance, but which she has determined would be against the law.
Netanyahu’s office denied reports last month that he was planning to fire the Shin Bet’s Bar.
Weekly protests also took place in Jerusalem, Haifa, Beersheba and other cities and intersections around the country.
Outside the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, Maayan Sherman, the mother of fallen IDF soldier Ron Sherman whose remains were recovered in January, called on President Isaac Herzog "to not stand on the side and act for the release of hostages now."
According to the Ynet news site, former retired IAF Brig. Gen. Amir Haskel and leading protest figure was arrested in Jerusalem. Police said they arrested a total of four people at the rally in Jerusalem, two for disrupting public order, and two others for trying to prevent police from carrying out one of the arrests.
The Ynet news site reported hundreds of anti-government protesters marching in support of the hostages and against government attempts to revive judicial overhaul legislation in Rehovot, while 1,000 protesters blocked the Karkur Junction in northern Israel.
Meanwhile,
...back at the fist fight, Jake ducked another roundhouse, then parried with his left, then with his right, finally with his chin... Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi discussed the efforts to reach a deal with visiting US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and US Middle East envoy Brett McGurk, his office said Saturday. This comes a day after Sullivan told Channel 12 news that regional developments, including the shock collapse of the Assad regime, the ceasefire with Hezbollah in Leb ...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... and Israel’s killing of Hamas leaders, presented an opportunity for a deal to free the 100 captives held in Gaza.
[IsraelTimes] Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi discusses efforts to reach a hostage-ceasefire deal in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, Sissi’s office says.
The officials who met Sissi in Cairo include US national security adviser Jake Sullivan and US Middle East envoy Brett McGurk, it says.
The statement comes as Hezbollah-affiliated newspaper Al-Akhbar quotes an unnamed Egyptian official as saying that Israel has objected to some of the names of Palestinian security prisoners requests for release in exchange for hostages kidnapped on October 7, 2023, including popular Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti.
Barghouti is serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison for his part in planning three terror attacks that killed five Israelis during the Second Intifada.
“Israel has a vision of alternative lists of Palestinian prisoners, including people who were recently arrested, which could delay the drafting of the agreement,” the Egyptian source is quoted as saying.
The source adds that Israel has requested that some of the Palestinian security prisoners be sent abroad instead of to the West Bank or Gaza, “which may be accepted by the mediators as a compromise to end this new obstacle.”
[IsraelTimes] In interview with The Guardian, HTS’s Abu Hassan al-Hamwi says group unified factions, overhauled military forces and developed modern doctrine when planning devastating offensive
The Syrian rebels that toppled Bashir al-Assad’s dictatorial regime began planning their shock offensive a year ago, according to the head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else ...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State... ’s military wing, Abu Hassan al-Hamwi.
In an interview with The Guardian, al-Hamwi said that HTS, the Islamist group that led the rebel overthrow of Assad, had been developing a disciplined military doctrine for the past five years and had been communicating with other rebel groups to coordinate their assault on Assad’s forces.
"After the last campaign [August 2019], during which we lost significant territory, all revolutionary factions realized the critical danger — the fundamental problem was the absence of unified leadership and control over battle," he said, adding that,"We studied the enemy thoroughly, analyzing their tactics, both day and night, and used these insights to develop our own forces."
According to al-Hamwi, HTS had contacted other rebel groups last year to for a unified rebel "war room," and began planning their assault.
Al-Hamwi said that the group knew that Aleppo had to be the first domino to fall in order to topple Assad, so his forces concentrated resources and planning on taking over Syria’s second largest city.
"We had a conviction, supported by historical precedent, that ’Damascus cannot fall until Aleppo falls.’ The strength of the Syrian revolution was concentrated in the north, and we believed that once Aleppo was liberated, we could move southward toward Damascus," al-Hamwi said.
The group also set out to fundamentally change their military forces, overhauling their doctrine from jihadist krazed killer group to a disciplined modern fighting force.
Al-Hamwi told The Guardian that HTS created a new drone unit in 2019 to combat Assad’s superior weaponry, recruiting engineers and scientists to produce drones locally.
"We unified their knowledge and set clear objectives: we needed reconnaissance drones, attack drones and suicide drones, with a focus on range and endurance," he said.
This drone program developed a new style of attack drone called the Shahin, or falcon, which deployed deadly effectiveness in their lightning offensive, disabling much of the Syrian army’s mobile artillery systems, allowing HTS forces to advance into regime strongholds.
The rebel assault accomplished in two weeks what 13 years of brutal civil war could not, succeeding in taking down Assad and freeing Syria from over five decades of Assad family rule.
HTS, which is rooted in al-Qaeda’s Syria branch but in recent years sought to moderate its image, has pledged to form a transitional government that respects all of Syria’s ethnic groups and political factions, and that his group will hand over control to a civilian regime in March 2025.
While al-Hamwi, gave the credit for the success of the offensive to planning, analysts have said that much of their gains were made possible by the severely weakened state of the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, which had sent forces to prop up Assad in the past.
This time, Hezbollah was in disarray. Many of its brass hats, including longtime leader His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah ...The late, lamented satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb...> , were killed in Israeli Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s. And months of Israeli strikes destroyed much of its military infrastructure. With Syria’s key international allies, Russia and Iran, on the sidelines, Hezbollah withdrew, and Assad was ousted quickly.
Keeping busy among themselves instead of going after Israel. I can only imagine how frustrated the Mad Mullahs must be, over in Iran. Their Axis of Evil just hasn’t worked out even a little bit. And after it all looked so beautifully threatening before Hamas ruined everything by bursting out prematurely on 10/7/2023. Clearly Allah doesn’t love any of them best anymore.
[IsraelTimes] Amid larger crackdown against terror groups in West Bank, PA general says his forces ‘thwarted a disaster’ by stopping car bombing aimed at Palestinian civilians and PA forces
Paleostinian Authority security forces killed a commander of the Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... terror group’s Jenin Brigade early Saturday morning, sparking festivities in the West Bank city, Paleostinian media reported.
Gunshots and explosions could be heard in the city and PA forces set up checkpoints around the city, that has been a hotebed for terror groups in recent years.
The Paleostinian Islamic Jihad commander was named in the reports as Yazid Jaysa, who is said to have been wanted by both the PA and Israel. There was no immediate confirmation from Islamic Jihad.
The operation was part of a larger PA crack down against terror groups in Jenin, which the PA says is to restore security and stability to the area and comes as Ramallah appears to be trying to signal that it could play a significant role in managing a post-war Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Strip.
Brigadier General Anwar Rajab of the PA’s security forces confirmed the reports, and told the official Paleostinian news agency Wafa that his forces "thwarted a disaster in Jenin camp, by containing a booby-trapped vehicle prepared by outlaws."
Rajab said that the vehicle "was supposed to be detonated among citizens and security personnel, as part of a cowardly criminal act that reflects an ISIS approach alien to our Paleostinian values and morals and contradicts the course of our national struggle."
Rajab added that a previous boom-mobile had detonated in recent days injuring a number of civilians and members of the security services.
Hamas ..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,... condemned the PA for the Jenin operation and its allied group Islamic Jihad called for a day of protests.
On Monday, during another PA operation in Jenin, Paleostinian security forces killed a 19-year-old Paleostinian man named Rahbi Shalabi. The PA initially blamed his death on "lawbreakers," but said on Thursday that after an investigation into his death, the PA "bears full responsibility" for the incident.
Last week, gunnies seized two official PA vehicles and paraded through the Jenin refugee camp waving flags of the Islamic Jihad group, which is allied with Hamas. There were then shootouts in the area.
The festivities between local terror operatives and PA forces have added to the already soaring violence in the West Bank, with Israeli military raids and settler attacks increasing since the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre in southern Israel triggered the ongoing war.
Since then, Israeli troops have arrested some 5,250 wanted Paleostinians across the West Bank, including more than 2,050 affiliated with Hamas.
According to the PA health ministry, more than 716 West Bank Paleostinians have been killed in that time. The IDF says the vast majority of them were button men killed in exchanges of fire, rioters who clashed with troops, or forces of Evil carrying out attacks.
During the same period, 42 people, including Israeli security personnel, have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Another six members of the security forces were killed in festivities with terror operatives in the West Bank.
[IsraelTimes] No immediate confirmation from Israel, which is trying to stop Assad’s strategic weapons from falling into hostile hands; Syria protests to UN against IDF presence in buffer zone
Israel launched a series of strikes early Saturday targeting military sites in Damascus and its countryside, including rocket depots buried deep under a mountain, a Syrian war monitor said, in the latest such raids since rebels brought down Bashir al-Assad almost a week ago.
Earlier in the week Israel launched a major operation to destroy the Syrian military’s strategic military capabilities, including chemical weapons
...have not been used since WWI except for in Iraq, by the late, unlamented Saddam Hussein and in Syria, but really, honest, not by the Syrian government. And in Germany in WWII, but that was against civilians. Lots of them, just one of many reasons Hitler's also late and unlamented... , missiles, air defenses, air force and navy, in a bid to prevent them from falling into the hands of hostile elements.
The early Saturday strikes appeared to be aimed at completing the effort.
There was no immediate comment from the IDF, though earlier in the week it said it had so far destroyed some 80% of Syrian capabilities and would continue to act.
"Israeli strikes destroyed a scientific institute" and other related military facilities in Barzeh, in northern Damascus, and targeted a "military airport" in the capital’s countryside, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.
Strikes also targeted "Scud ballistic missile warehouses" and launchers in the Qalamun area, as well as "rockets, depots and tunnels under the mountain," according to the Britannia-based Observatory, which has a network of sources inside Syria.
The Observatory said several rounds of strikes targeted "military sites of the former regime forces, as part of destroying what is left of the future Syrian army’s capabilities."
SOHR, run by a single person, has regularly been accused by Syrian war analysts of false reporting and inflating casualty numbers as well as inventing them wholesale.
Israeli Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s on Friday targeted "a missile base at the top of Damascus’s Mount Qasioun," the group said, as well as an airport in southern Sweida province and "defense and research labs in Masyaf," in Hama province.
Israel feared that following the collapse of the Assad regime, the former Syrian army’s weapons could fall into the hands of hostile forces in the country, as well as the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel said its airstrikes would carry on for days, but told the UN Security Council that it was not intervening in Syria’s conflict. It said it had taken "limited and temporary measures" solely to protect its security.
Meanwhile,
...back at the wrecked scow, a single surviver held tightly to the smashed prow... Syria’s representative at the UN called on the Security Council to take action to compel Israel to immediately stop its attacks on Syrian territory and withdraw from the buffer zone.
In identical letters to the council and Guterres obtained Friday by The News Agency that Dare Not be Named, Syria’s UN Ambassador Koussay Aldahhak said he was acting "on instructions from my government" in making the demands.
It appeared to be the first letter to the UN from Syria’s new interim government. However,
those who apply themselves too closely to little things often become incapable of great things... Aldahhak represented Assad and the letters were filed with the symbol of the former regime. The letters were dated December 9, days after rebels ousted president Assad and ended his family’s more than 50-year authoritarian rule of Syria.
"At a time when the Syrian Arab Republic is witnessing a new phase in its history in which its people aspire to establish a state of freedom, equality and the rule of law and to achieve their hopes for prosperity and stability, the Israeli occupation army has penetrated additional areas of Syrian territory in Mount Hermon and Quneitra Governorate," ambassador Aldahhak wrote.
Israel controls and annexed the Golan Heights that it captured from Syria during the 1967 Six Day War. The Disengagement Agreement of 1974 between Israel and Syria established a demilitarized buffer zone between the two countries, monitored by a UN peacekeeping force known as UNDOF.
In a letter to the Security Council circulated Friday which was also written on December 9, Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon said his country had taken "limited and temporary measures," deploying troops temporarily in the separation area "to prevent gangs from threatening Israeli territory."
[IsraelTimes] Israel has launched more than 60 strikes on Syrian territory in few hours, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims.
Israel fired 61 missiles at Syrian military sites in less than five hours Saturday evening, it reports, maintaining a campaign which started after rebel forces toppled president Bashar al-Assad nearly a week ago.
Jerusalem says the campaign is needed to prevent the Assad regime’s extensive military arsenal from falling to jihadist rulers who could use them against Israel or to arm Hezbollah in Lebanon.
SOHR, run by a single person, has regularly been accused by Syrian war analysts of false reporting and inflating casualty numbers as well as inventing them wholesale.
An incomplete list of things I came across while looking for other things. Two weeks worth, because I was distracted by the HTS blitzkrieg conquest of Syria, now apparently settling down to the usual Middle Eastern caliphate.
UCLA student files petition against Cultural Affairs Commissioner who allegedly warned against hiring 'zionists'
A student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has filed a petition against a student government official for discrimination against Jews in hiring.
'PSA ... lots of zionists are applying — please do your research when you look at applicants and I will also share a doc of no hire list during retreat,' the petition alleges that the official wrote.
New ADL study exposes SYSTEMIC job discrimination against Jewish applicants, students
The study found that on average, Israeli-Americans must complete 39 percent more job applications than Western Europeans in order to receive an equal number of responses.
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt stated that ‘this is groundbreaking evidence of serious antisemitic discrimination in the labor market.’
Menachem Rosensaft, a pro-Israel law professor at Cornell University, condemned the school’s course on Gaza for its “inflamingly biased pseudo-scholarship” in an op-ed Wednesday.
The op-ed follows similar criticism from the university president, who faced backlash from a faculty committee accusing him of violating academic freedom in response.
“My principal objection to this course is not that it has a decidedly and unabashedly pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel bent,” Rosensaft wrote in The Cornell Daily Sun.
“What I find most problematic and unacceptable about it is that it is firmly rooted in shoddy, selectively and inflamingly biased pseudo-scholarship,” he wrote.
Rosensaft stated that when he first learned of Professor Eric Cheyfitz’s course, titled “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance,” he told Interim President Mike Kotlikoff that it would “promote and inflame political divisiveness at Cornell and encourage antisemitic manifestations against Israeli and Jewish students.”
Cornell University’s Jewish interim president is facing growing blowback from higher education groups over emails published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last month, in which he raised objections to an upcoming class on Gaza.
Michael Kotlikoff’s remarks, which JTA reported on November 11, were a violation of academic freedom, say representatives of the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association. The episode is the latest instance of campus scrutiny over Israel shifting from protests to the classroom, more than a year removed from the October 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught that launched the war in Gaza.
In the email, Kotlikoff expressed his objections to a new course entitled “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance,” scheduled to be taught next term by Jewish professor Eric Cheyfitz, a pro-Palestinian activist who teaches in the school’s American Indian and Indigenous Studies program. Writing to a different Jewish professor, Kotlikoff said he was “extremely disappointed” with “the course’s apparent lack of openness and objectivity,” and promised to work with other departments to offer alternative courses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The email, which Kotlikoff says was never meant to be publicized, has prompted anger over the past week as the story gained traction in the Cornell Daily Sun, the student newspaper.
While the Ivy League institution denounced the publication, the hate-fueled group Students for Justice in Palestine openly handed out its inaugural edition of “The Columbia Intifada.”
The group printed 1,000 copies of the rag, which contains about a half-dozen articles with titles including “Zionist Peace Means Palestinian Blood,” “The Myth of the Two-State Solution” and a handy “Guide to Wheatpasting” — a method of vandalizing public surfaces with propaganda fliers or other messaging.
Allowing such a publication to take root on campus is “outrageous,” said New York Congressman Mike Lawler, who represents voters in Rockland, Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess counties.
“If Columbia cannot protect Jewish students on their campus, they should lose federal funding and have their tax-exempt status revoked,” the rep wrote in a post on X.
“And for those students here on a visa engaged in an “intifada” against American students of the Jewish faith? Deport them,” he raged.
Columbia itself denounced the newspaper’s publication, including its unauthorized association with the school by name. The university suspended the group last November for repeatedly violating school policies, including with its “threatening rhetoric and intimidation.”
“Using the Columbia name for a publication that glorifies violence and makes individuals in our community feel targeted in any way is a breach of our values,” a school representative said in a statement to The Post on Friday.
Columbia’s anti-Israel student alliance booted from Instagram
[IsraelTimes] Columbia University Apartheid Divest removed from social media platform after post calling Barnard College trustees ‘enemies,’ ‘murderers,’ and ‘violently genocidal zionists’
“Academic freedom and free speech are not the exact same thing.…Academic freedom is about classroom teaching and research. You can’t propagandize in class, or you shouldn’t. There’s a power imbalance.”
“Protest is constant at Columbia, but the level of protest we were seeing last year was by far the highest I’ve ever seen in my 21 years at Columbia. Most of the causes that sweep through the university are on the left, and this one is too. But in most cases, these stakeholder groups that I mentioned are pretty much on the same side of the issue — everybody’s against climate change or supported the post-George Floyd wave and things like that. In the case of [the Israel-Palestinian conflict], significant stakeholders or subgroups within the stakeholder groups 100% passionately disagree about the question at hand. That’s uncharacteristic of most of these university protest waves.”
“This is the third time that I — and now my family — have been the target of these [Ku Klux] Klan-like tactics,” Acker writes on Facebook.
Acker has become a primary target of pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel student activists at the University of Michigan who have sought unsuccessfully to convince their school to cut all ties with Israel. Earlier this year, Acker’s law firm was targeted by anti-Israel vandals. Police have yet to make an arrest in that case.
Jewish Columbia student Jonathan Lederer, 22, says he and his twin brother went to the anti-Israel protest on 116th and Broadway on Monday to document the event and “show our voice.” They stayed across the street from the anti-Israel demonstrators and were wearing Israeli flags and kippahs.
A group of around five protesters wearing keffiyehs harassed the pair, calling them “Nazis” and saying “You like killing babies,” says Lederer, a junior studying computer science. One of the demonstrators tore a flag from Lederer’s hands. Lederer sought to retrieve the flag, at which point one of the protesters punched Lederer in the right side of his face, causing pain but no significant injuries.
The NYPD tells The Times of Israel that the police’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the incident and releases a photo of the suspect.
Lederer caught the incident on video, although his camera was pointed away from the assailant when he threw the punch. The attacker was wearing a mask at the time, but had exposed his face earlier in the event.
It’s unclear if the alleged assailant was a student. The demonstration was organized by student organizations and led by Within Our Lifetime, a hardline activist group in the city that has worked with Columbia student protesters. Posts announcing the protest included violent imagery and prompted school officials to tighten security at Barnard, Columbia’s women’s college.
Lederer says university officials including a top dean have reached out to him, but calls on the school to take more action against the student groups. Lederer says he was also assaulted at a protest on campus in April.
Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of dozens of student groups, was suspended after posting plans for a protest targeting university trustees that included an image of a figure holding a Molotov cocktail.
That protest targeted Barnard College, the women’s college associated with Columbia. Barnard condemned “inflammatory posts with violent imagery” and stepped up security measures on campus in response.
Meta, Instagram’s parent company, did not respond to a request for comment on the suspension at the time.
Instagram is the student group’s main platform for organizing and advertising its events. The account has more than 47,000 followers.
A Columbia spokeswoman told the Free Beacon that "promoting violence" is "antithetical to our values."
"As we have said repeatedly, promoting violence or those who support violence and harm is antithetical to our values. We remain committed to our core mission of teaching, creating and advancing knowledge," the spokeswoman said.
When George Mason University suspended the campus Students for Justice in Palestine group, and subsequently assisted in a police raid of its leaders’ home, it violated students’ free speech rights and targeted them for “activism,” according to supporters.
But in reality, it appears to have stemmed from concerns about items at the home of two sister leaders of the group.
Jena and Noor Chanaa had their family home raided by the FBI following allegations they were responsible for pro-Palestinian vandalism on campus in late August. Both sisters have been given four-year suspensions from campus. (The featured image is not necessarily one of the two students but is from the GMU Coalition for Palestine Instagram page).
The Washington Free Beacon reported more on the November raid on Monday. The Free Beacon reported, based on a review of documents and interviews, that the police “found firearms—modern weapons, not antiques—as well as scores of ammunition and foreign passports.”
It reported further:
They also found pro-terror materials, including Hamas and Hezbollah flags and signs that read “death to America” and “death to Jews,” according to court documents and sources familiar.
Police seized the weapons under Virginia’s red flag law, arguing that Mohammad Chanaa, the students’ brother and a George Mason alumnus, was “linked to destruction of property in connection with a large group of people with like-minded rhetoric” and posed a danger to others given his possession of “terroristic” materials.
[IsraelTimes] In first comment on Jewish state since fall of Assad regime, Sharaa says Syria will seek stability after long civil war, hints at ‘diplomatic solutions’ to avert regional escalation
The leader of the Syrian Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else ...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State... (HTS) who spearheaded the overthrow of the Bashir al-Assad regime, spoke Saturday about Israel for the first time since taking over the country in an interview with the Syrian TV news channel.
Ahmad al-Sharaa, who is better known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Julani, said that Israel has "no more excuses" to carry out Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s in Syria, and that recent IDF attacks on Syrian soil have crossed red lines and threaten an unjustified escalation in the region.
Earlier in the week, Israel launched a major operation to destroy the Syrian military’s strategic military capabilities, including chemical weapons
...have not been used since WWI except for in Iraq, by the late, unlamented Saddam Hussein and in Syria, but really, honest, not by the Syrian government. And in Germany in WWII, but that was against civilians. Lots of them, just one of many reasons Hitler's also late and unlamented... sites, missiles, air defenses, air force and navy targets, in a bid to prevent them from falling into the hands of hostile elements.
In a move that has drawn some international condemnation, Israel also entered a United Nations ...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense... -patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights just hours after the rebels, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, took Damascus. Israel has said it will not become involved in the conflict in Syria and that its seizure of the buffer zone established in 1974 was a defensive move and a temporary one until it can guarantee security along the frontier.
The rebel leader called on the international community to assume its responsibility to avoid an escalation and guarantee the respect of Syrian illusory sovereignty. Without directly mentioning Israel, he further spoke of "diplomatic solutions" as the only way to ensure security and stability and as a preferable option to "ill-considered military adventures."
In a video message to the new regime taking shape in Syria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that the IDF bombed military strategic capabilities left by the Syrian military of the ousted Assad regime "so that they won’t fall into the hands of the jihadists."
He added that Israel was ready to establish relations with the new rulers but won’t hesitate to attack if they threaten the Jewish state or allow Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... to reestablish itself in Syria.
The Assad regime was an ally of the Islamic Theocratic Republic, and a part of the latter’s so-called Axis of Resistance® against Israel.
"We have no intention of interfering in the internal affairs of Syria," the premier said, "but we certainly do intend to do what is necessary to ensure our security."
In his interview on Saturday, the new leader in Damascus appeared to indirectly respond to Israeli concerns and provide reassurance. Sharaa said that Syria is exhausted by years of civil war and that at this stage it will not be dragged into conflicts that may lead to further destruction, with reconstruction and stability the main priorities.
The rebel commander added that the Iranian entrenchment in Syria had posed a great danger to Syria itself, to neighboring countries and the Gulf, and said: "We were able to end the Iranian presence in Syria, but we are not enemies of the Iranian people."
Over the course of a wide-ranging interview, Sharaa mentioned some of the issues that his new government will soon need to address in managing post-war Syria. He stressed the importance of abandoning the "revolutionary mentality" that propelled the rebels, and the need to establish modern institutions, guarantee the rule of law and respect the rights of all Syrians.
Sharaa delivered a scathing critique of the corrupt Assad regime, saying that it managed Syria like a "farm," extracting and appropriating its resources to enrich itself. He added that in the upcoming period, documents will be published to prove the extent of the regime’s "enormous theft."
He highlighted that the lightning victory of the rebels over the regime, toppled in just 11 days, proved the effectiveness of their planning and training. The rebels "took control of large cities without anyone being displaced," he said. However,
facts are stubborn; statistics are more pliable... he did not conceal the fact that relations between the various rebel groups have been marked by internal conflicts, factionalism and foreign meddling.
He also mentioned the limited Russian air campaign against the rebels in the days prior to Assad’s overthrow and said it raised fears of a repeat of the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... scenario. With regard to future relations with Moscow, he said that the regime change offers an opportunity to re-evaluate ties in a way that serves common interests.
The previous regime came into power in 1970, when Bashar’s father Hafez al-Assad seized power in a bloodless coup. Bashir al-Assad had been president since his father’s death in 2000.
Israel and Syria do not have diplomatic relations and have formally been in a perpetual state of war since Israel declared independence in 1948.
Syria was one of a number of Arab countries that attacked the newly born Jewish state, and despite an armistice agreement signed in 1949 that demarcated a border between the two countries, Syria has never formally recognized Israel’s existence.
Syria also attacked during the 1967 Six Day War, before the IDF pounded Syrian forces and seized the Golan Heights, which Israel later annexed unilaterally. Syria attacked again in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War and was pushed back after a major advance into the Golan, after which the 1974 disengagement agreement was signed between the states, marking the demilitarized zones on the Israel-Syrian border.
[IsraelTimes] Moscow says it will maintain presence at two main Syrian bases; attitude of new regime toward Russian presence is still unclear
Russia is pulling back its military from the front lines in northern Syria and from posts in the Alawite Mountains but is not leaving its two main bases in the country after the fall of President Bashir al-Assad, four Syrian officials told Rooters.
The ousting of Assad, who along with his late father, former President Hafez al-Assad, had forged a close alliance with Moscow, has thrown the future of Russia’s bases — the Hmeimim airbase in Latakia and the Tartus naval facility — into question.
Satellite footage from Friday showed what appeared to be at least two Antonov AN-124s, among the world’s largest cargo planes, at the Hmeimim base with their nose cones open, apparently preparing to load up.
At least one cargo plane flew out on Saturday for Libya, a Syrian security official stationed outside the facility said.
Syrian military and security sources in contact with the Russians told Rooters that Moscow was pulling back its forces from the front lines and withdrawing some heavy equipment and senior Syrian officers.
But the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation, said Russia was not pulling out of its two main bases and currently had no intention of doing so.
Some equipment is being shipped back to Moscow, as are senior officers from Assad’s military, but the aim at this stage is to regroup and redeploy as dictated by developments on the ground, a senior Syrian army officer in touch with the Russian military told Rooters.
A senior rebel official close to the new interim administration told Rooters the issue of the Russian military presence in Syria and past agreements between the Assad government and Moscow were not under discussion.
"It is a matter for future talks, and the Syrian people will have the final say," the official said, adding that Moscow had set up communication channels.
"Our forces are also now in close vicinity of the Russian bases in Latakia," he added without elaborating.
The Kremlin has said Russia is in discussions with the new rulers of Syria over the bases. Russia’s defense ministry did not respond to a request for comment on Rooters reporting.
A Russian source who spoke on condition of anonymity said discussions with the new rulers of Syria were ongoing and Russia was not withdrawing from its bases.
Rooters was unable to immediately ascertain how Syrian rebel leader Ahmad al-Sharaa — better known as Abu Mohammed al-Julani — saw the long-term future of the Russian bases.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances... , whose 2015 intervention in the Syrian civil war helped prop up Assad when the West was calling for him to be toppled, granted Assad asylum in Russia after Moscow helped him flee on Sunday.
Moscow has backed Syria since early in the Cold War and recognized its independence in 1944 as Damascus sought to throw off French colonial rule. The West long regarded Syria as a Soviet satellite.
The bases in Syria are an integral part of Russia’s global military presence: the Tartus naval base is Russia’s only Mediterranean repair and resupply hub, with Hmeimim a major staging post for military and mercenary activity in Africa.
Russia also has eavesdropping posts in Syria, which were run alongside Syrian signals stations, according to Syrian military and Western intelligence sources.
The Tartus facility dates from 1971, and after Russia intervened in the civil war to help Assad, Moscow was in 2017 granted a free-of-charge 49-year lease.
Yoruk Isik, a geopolitical analyst based in Istanbul who runs the Bosphorus Observer, said that Russia was probably sending cargo planes out of Syria via the Caucasus and then on to the Al Khadim airbase in Libya.
On the highway linking the Hmeimim air base to the base in Tartus, a Russian convoy of infantry fighting vehicles and logistics vehicles could be seen driving toward the air base, a Rooters journalist said.
The convoy had stopped due to a malfunction in one of its vehicles, with soldiers standing by the vehicles and working to repair the issue.
"Whether it’s Russian, Iranian or the previous government who was oppressing us and denying us our rights... we don’t want any intervention from Russia, Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... or any other foreign intervention," Ali Halloum, who is from Latakia and lives in Jablah, told Rooters.
At Hmeimim, Rooters saw Russian soldiers walking around the base as normal and jets in the hangars.
Satellite imagery taken on December 9 by Planet Labs showed at least three vessels in Russia’s Mediterranean fleet — two guided missile frigates and an oiler — moored around 13 kilometers (8 miles) northwest of Tartus.
[Brookings Inst. from 2001] ....But Clinton’s truly remarkable achievement was in creating a consensus against himself with his pardon of Marc Rich, popularly known as the "fugitive financier," and otherwise known as large-scale tax cheat and buster of sanctions. On this one, I’d wager all the money Rich owes the government that Clinton’s friends are even more outraged than his enemies.
Take Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat and House Judiciary Committee member who was one of Clinton’s most forceful and articulate defenders during the impeachment mess. "I was very angry about it," Frank says of the Rich pardon. "It was a real betrayal by Bill Clinton of all who had been strongly supportive of him to do something this unjustified. It was contemptuous."
Then there’s Sen. Paul Wellstone, a Minnesota Democrat who is one of the most liberal members of Congress. "It puts back into sharp focus all the questions about values and ethics in relation to the Clinton administration," he said. "I think it was a mistake. I don’t know why he did this. People in the country need to be given more encouragement about public affairs, not more reasons to be cynical."
Fresh off his battle against John Ashcroft’s nomination for attorney general, Sen. Pat Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democratic member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, was no less angry. "It was a terrible pardon," he said. "It was inexcusable. It was outrageous...Here was a man who was involved in a huge swindle and has shown absolutely no remorse." Usually, Leahy added, pardons go to those who have paid at least some penalty for their crime. Rich’s penalty? He’s been living "a life of luxury" in exile in Switzerland and Spain.
I noticed on The Washington Post’s op-ed page that one of the original prosecutors in the Rich case was Martin Auerbach, now a lawyer in private practice. Having met Auerbach in college more than three decades ago, I rather doubted he had become a right-wing conspiracist. So I called him, too.
"I voted for Clinton three times," said Auerbach, who lives in Brooklyn and was referring to his presidential votes in 1992 and 1996, and his ballot for Hillary Clinton in last year’s Senate contest. "I’ve defended Clinton for years. I always felt that the rules had changed around him. But this creates a whole different question in my mind."
The problem with Rich is that "he thumbed his nose at the law every single time the country responded to a crisis," whether the matter was the energy crisis or the hostage crisis in Iran. "You may think tax rates are too high," Auerbach said. "But to unilaterally evade taxes on $ 100 million is not the way to go."
Auerbach, still a political progressive, offers what should be a very troubling observation for liberals. "Think of all the kids who hot-wire cars and go to jail. They don’t get to choose between going behind bars or spending a rather comfortable exile." And he adds: "I sure would like an explanation from the former president: What was he thinking?"
It’s possible for Clinton’s defenders to argue that the president’s enemies made a bigger deal out of some of the post-presidential controversies than they would have for any other former president. The gifts were excessive, so unnecessary and, well, so uncool, not to mention a way around the gift rules that now cover the junior senator from New York. But other presidents have taken gifts too. And office space in Manhattan is, by definition, expensive. These mistakes were easily undone.
But the Rich pardon cannot be undone. In defending himself last Friday, the former president offered these wise words. "You never get in trouble for saying no," he said. Yes, and sometimes "no" is exactly the right thing to say.
[FreeBeacon] Biden administration officials have claimed credit this week for the ongoing collapse of the Iranian axis, seeking to recast their role in a series of Israeli victories that they worked to thwart.
Hours after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria on Sunday, President Joe Biden touted "the unflagging support of the United States" for Israel’s war against "Iran and its proxies," Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Biden noted that Israel had weakened the coalition of tyrants and terrorists in the region to a point where it became "impossible ... for them to prop up the Assad regime."
"Our approach has shifted the balance of power in the Middle East," the president boasted in remarks at the White House. "Through this combination of support for our partners, sanctions [on the Assad regime], and diplomacy and targeted military force when necessary, we now see new opportunities opening up for the people of Syria and for the entire region."
The Biden administration has overseen crucial U.S. military and diplomatic support for Israel during the past 14 months of the war. But from the outset, Biden and his aides have also pressed Israel to reach accommodation with its enemies—criticizing, threatening, and punishing the U.S. ally in the name of regional deescalation. By early this year, before Israel had militarily defeated Hamas or seriously retaliated against Hezbollah or Iran, Biden was already publicly calling for an end to the fighting.
"Biden tried to prevent us from winning this war in every way he could," Gadi Taub, a historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a cohost of the Israel Update podcast told the Washington Free Beacon. "Now that we’re winning in defiance of him, he’s pretending that he was with us all along."
On Oct. 9, 2023, two days after Hamas started the war with a surprise invasion of southern Israel, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged leaders of the devastated region to "stand firm because we are going to change the Middle East." The following week, Biden flew to Tel Aviv and—even as he embraced Netanyahu and affirmed U.S. support for Israel—sought to contain Israel’s military response.
"President Biden and his top aides have been urging Israeli leaders against carrying out any major strike against Hezbollah, the powerful militia in Lebanon, that could draw it into the Israel-Hamas war, American and Israeli officials say," the New York Times reported at the time. "U.S. officials believe Israel would struggle in a two-front war and that such a conflict could draw in both the United States and Iran, the militia’s main supporter."
According to the Times, the Biden administration aimed to preempt "an Israeli overreaction to Hezbollah rocket attacks," which forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents from the north of the country, and "harsh Israeli tactics in an expected ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza that would compel Hezbollah to enter the war" in solidarity with the Palestinian terrorist group.
"The response in the Gaza Strip has been over the top"
Netanyahu recalled in an address to the Knesset last month that the Biden administration had been against every major Israeli military advance in Gaza, starting with troops going into the strip at the end of last October.
"The United States had reservations, and proposed that we not enter with ground forces. It took issue with the entry into Gaza City and into Khan Younis, and first and foremost it was strongly opposed to the entry into Rafah," Netanyahu said, naming Gazan cities that saw decisive Israeli battles with Hamas.
In December 2023, less than seven weeks into the war, the Biden administration demanded that Israel wind down major military operations in Gaza. Speaking at the White House in February, Biden called for a permanent "pause" in the war, saying "the conduct of the response ... in the Gaza Strip has been over the top."
In May, as Israeli troops carried out initial raids in Rafah, Hamas’s main hub for smuggling weapons and other supplies into Gaza, Biden declared a partial weapons embargo on Israel meant to halt the operation. "There are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying, and it's gotta stop," he said in an interview with CNN.
Later that month, Biden presented a proposal for a "permanent end to hostilities "and regional peace deal. He said his administration had for "the past several months" been "relentlessly focused" on bringing a "durable end to the war."
In September, shortly after the conclusion of the Rafah campaign, the Israeli military assessed that Hamas had been militarily defeated in Gaza.
"I am comfortable with them stopping"
Meanwhile, the Biden administration stepped up efforts to head off Israel’s counteroffensive against Hezbollah.
Asked by a reporter in late September if he was aware of and comfortable with Israel’s plans for a ground incursion into Lebanon, Biden replied, "I am more aware than you might know, and I am comfortable with them stopping. We should have a ceasefire now."
In October, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the Biden administration opposed Israel’s intensified airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in Beirut, which had recently killed Hezbollah’s top leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
"There are specific strikes that it would be appropriate for Israel to carry out," Miller told reporters, "But when it comes to the scope and nature of the bombing campaign that we saw in Beirut for the past few weeks, it's something that we made clear to the government of Israel we had concerns with and we were opposed to."
Last month, according to Hebrew media reports, slowdowns in U.S. weapons deliveries hampered Israel’s war effort in Lebanon and Gaza. Current and former Israeli officials confirmed the reports to the Free Beacon.
Israel nonetheless wiped out most of Hezbollah’s formidable weapons arsenal, terrorist infrastructure, and leadership before agreeing to a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in Lebanon late last month.
"Take the win"
Iran directly entered the war for the first time in April, launching more than 300 missiles and drones at the Israel. Biden emphasized that Israel had intercepted nearly all the incoming projectiles with the help of a U.S.-led regional coalition, and urged Netanyahu not to respond.
"Take the win," Biden reportedly advised.
Iran attacked again in October, firing more than 180 missiles at the Jewish state. Biden this time acknowledged Israel’s "right to respond." But he said "they should respond proportionally" and avoid hitting Iranian nuclear facilities. A week later, a U.S. intelligence leak exposed potential Israeli plans for retaliation.
After a mostly symbolic response to the first Iranian attack, Israel hit back in October with a wave of airstrikes that crippled Iran’s missile production and air defenses, as well as a secret nuclear weapons research facility.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/15/2024
08:50 ||
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John Ferguson, the CEOof Saxon Aerospace, a manufacturer of manned drones, gives his assessment of all the mysterious drones plaguing New Jersey and other places in America right now. pic.twitter.com/vx299AimAj
"You can read more about NORAD’s admission that its radars were not properly configured to spot and track non-traditional aircraft following the Chinese balloon incident"
#4
It suddenly struck me that a part of the paranoia behind the administration hiding the search for some WMD threat instead of enlisting the public's help might be the revelation of how this threat might have been brought across our porous borders!
December's rash of mysterious drone flights over Langley Air Force Base has changed how the U.S. plans to defend against such threats domestically. Are we designing a system to keep the pigs (agents of accountability) out, or keep the pigs in? You have noticed the absence of DoD activity ?
[War Zone] Snippet: Despite all the evidence that we have brought up over the years that points to foreign actors using drones to collect intelligence about U.S. military tactics, techniques, and procedures, Guillot insisted he does not know of any “organized or unorganized foreign nexus.”
So whom does that leave ?
Are they training for some upcoming event ?
#1
Fully armed interstate highway closure variant. Reliance upon local law enforcement or the military is totally unncessary. Trained operators are standing by.
Unoccupied aerial vehicles, better known as drones, have rapidly advanced from a quirky, high-flying novelty to a versatile workhorse.
They are tools for search and rescue, traffic monitoring, weather monitoring, and perhaps even package hauling.
One day, they may work with humans to augment the task of conducting surveys to detect low levels of radiation—information that could contribute to the decommissioning of sites no longer needed for nuclear-related energy production or research.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) researchers found that drones have potential to conduct decommissioning radiological surveys, but further research is needed before the devices are approved for decommissioning purposes. The PNNL researchers detailed their findings for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the recently released proof-of-concept report, “Drones for Decommissioning.”
“Drones would be particularly useful in areas that are unsafe for humans to access due to things like terrain that’s difficult to walk on,” said Amoret Bunn, an environmental engineer at PNNL and a study author. “Drones could also survey vertical surfaces that humans can't get to like the outside of a tall building.”
says Julius Malema, the leader of the far left “Economic Freedom Fighters”.
The South African extremist also claimed 'violence' will be needed to topple 'white supremacy' in South Africa and calls for land expropriation. pic.twitter.com/RkQ4xmOxf9
#2
Now, priority political refugee status for White South African farmers would seem to be great idea for the new Rubio State Department. Brave people who are facing racism and actual ethnic cleansing threats. And amazingly, they bring English, knowledge, skills and abilities, and are culturally compatible with Western Culture.
[NAHARNET] A severely hobbled Hezbollah was in no position to help defend former Syrian President Bashir al-Assad, a longtime ally, from the lightning-fast insurgency that toppled him. With Assad gone, the Death Eater group based in Leb ...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... is even weaker.
Hezbollah was dealt a major blow during 14 months of war with Israel. The toppling of Assad, who had strong ties to Iran, has now crippled its ability to bounce back by cutting off a vital weapons-smuggling route through Syria.
Hezbollah officials are deeply concerned but defiant.
"What is happening in Syria is a major, dangerous and new change, and to know why this happened needs evaluation," Hassan Fadlallah, a Lebanese politician who represents Hezbollah's political wing, said during a speech at a funeral for bully boyz killed by Israel. "Whatever is happening in Syria, despite its dangers, will not weaken us."
Analysts say the diminishment of Hezbollah will have big consequences for Lebanon, where for decades it has been a major political player — and for Iran, which has relied on the group as one of several proxy forces projecting power across the Middle East. It is also a game-changer for Israel, whose nemesis on its northern border is now at its most vulnerable point in decades.
TIES TO SYRIA INFLUENCED THE RISE AND FALL OF HEZBOLLAH'S POWER
The Assad dynasty, which ruled Syria for half a century with an iron fist, played a crucial role in empowering Hezbollah, which was founded in the early 1980s by Iranian advisers who came through Syria. In addition to being a conduit for Iranian weapons, Syria also was a place where Hezbollah trained fighters and manufactured its own weapons.
As Hezbollah grew more powerful, it became a force Assad could rely on for protection in times of crisis. Hezbollah sent thousands of fighters to bolster Assad's forces when a civil war broke out in 2011.
As bandidos krazed killers swept across Syria in early December and took the city of Homs — a stone's throw from a Syrian border town where Hezbollah had a presence — many expected the bully boyz to put up a fierce fight. After all, they did just that in 2013, preventing Assad's opponents from advancing into Damascus.
This time, Hezbollah was in disarray. Many of its brass hats, including longtime leader Sayyed ...Arabic term meaning your/his lordship. Groveling in His Exalted Presence is encouraged... His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah ...The late, lamented satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb...> , were killed in Israeli Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s. And months of Israeli bombardment destroyed much of its military infrastructure. With Syria's key international allies, Russia and Iran, on the sidelines, Hezbollah withdrew, and Assad was ousted quickly.
"The fall of the regime marks the end of Iran's arms in Syria and Lebanon," said Lt. Col. Fares al-Bayoush, a Syrian army defector who fought in the civil war against Assad's forces and Hezbollah until 2017, when he moved to The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire... .
LEBANON BEGINS TO GRAPPLE WITH HEZBOLLAH'S 'NEW REALITY'
In Lebanon, the sapping of Hezbollah's strength has given the army the opportunity to reassert control it had ceded, especially along its southern border. A U.S.-brokered ceasefire between the Death Eater group and Israel states that Hezbollah should have no armed presence along that border and it has led to growing calls within Lebanon for the group's disarmament.
"To Hezbollah, it's game over," Samir Geagea ....Geagea was imprisoned by the Syrians and their puppets for 11 years in a dungeon in the third basement level of the Lebanese Ministry of Defense. He was released after the Cedar Revolution in 2005.... , who leads the Christian Lebanese Forces A Christian political party founded by Bashir Gemayel, who was then bumped off when he was elected president of Leb... Party, said in a statement on Sunday, hours after bandidos krazed killers took Damascus. "Sit with the Lebanese military to end your status as an gang, and transform yourselves into a political party."
But Hezbollah's longtime sway in the political arena in Lebanon also faces a major challenge.
Many in Lebanon are angry with the group. Critics say Hezbollah violated its promise to use its weapons only to defend Lebanon when it began firing rockets into Israel last year, the day after Hamas ..the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®,... attacked Israel.
Nearly than 4,000 people were killed in Lebanon during the war with Israel, according to the country's health ministry. Entire towns and villages where Hezbollah members and supporters lived have been flattened. More than 1 million people have been displaced, and the country's economy — which was in bad shape before the war — is in a deep hole.
"With the (Syrian) regime gone, Hezbollah in Lebanon faces an entirely new reality," said Firas Maksad, of the Middle East Institute.
Maksad said many Lebanese leaders have yet to grasp the magnitude of the change that has taken place. Even some onetime allies of Hezbollah in parliament have begun distancing themselves from the group.
Jebran Bassil, a politician who represents the Free Patriotic Movement Despite its name a Christian party allied with Hizbullah, neither free nor particularly patriotic... , Lebanon's other major Christian party, said Hezbollah's loss of a weapons pipeline from Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... could help Lebanon extract itself from regional conflict.
"Hezbollah should focus on internal affairs and not the wider region," Bassil, a former ally of Hezbollah, said.
It may have no choice but to narrow its ambitions. With the fall of Assad, Iran has lost control of a corridor of land that stretched through Iraq and Syria all the way to the Mediterranean, and which gave it an unimpeded route to supply Hezbollah.
"They can maybe fly in some things and smuggle some things, but that's not gonna be on the same scale, not even close," said Aron Lund, a Syria expert with Century International, a New York-based think tank.
For Israel, breaking Iran's regional network has been a major goal, though it is wary over Islamic bully boyz among the bandidos krazed killers who toppled Assad. Israel on Sunday moved troops into a demilitarized buffer zone with Syria by the Israel-held Golan Heights in what it called a temporary security measure.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Assad's fall a "historic day," saying it was "the direct result of our forceful action against Hezbollah and Iran, Assad's main supporters."
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2024
02:41 ||
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#1
Every Arab country needs long, bloody, and - most important - destructive civil war.
#2
the fate of Hezbollah is tied to whether it can keeping bullying and extorting money from the Shai civilian population
I think Hezbollah will be stymied for a time on this. But they may regain the initiative if Lebanon doesn't firm up real national control. I wouldn't give good odds on that.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
12/15/2024 13:08
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[NAHARNET] Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem ... the Grand Vizier of the Hezbullies... said on Saturday that Syria's new rulers, who ousted the Lebanese gang's ally Bashir al-Assad, should not recognize neighboring Israel or establish ties with it.
"We hope that this new party in power will see Israel as an enemy and not normalize relations with it," Qassem said in a televised speech, his first public remarks since Islamist-led rebels toppled Assad following an offensive launched on November 27, the same day that a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2024
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#1
"We hope that this new party in power will see Israel as an enemy and not normalize relations with it," Qassem said in a televised speech,
"...Following which he shouted, "Curly-toed slippers, don't fail me NOW!", and headed for the deepest hole he could find."
[Daily Mail, where America get its news] A US army installation in Georgia was placed into lockdown early on Saturday morning due to an active shooter incident that saw one killed.
Fort Eisenhower,
…per NN2N1 below: formerly known as Fort Gordon…
in Augusta, posted on its official media pages saying they were initiating lockdown procedures immediately.
They urged anyone in danger 'to take appropriate action', before later confirming that one person in on-post housing was killed.
According to the facility information surrounding the victim would be released after next-of-kin were notified.
They said they managed to apprehend the shooter and that the incident appeared to be isolated.
WRDW reported that a firetruck and an emergency medical vehicle were seen heading toward one of the gates of the facility.
The base is the current home of the US Army Signal Cops, Cyber Command and the Cyber Center of Excellence.
Almost an hour after the original warning was issued, they announced that the 'dangerous event had passed' and gave an all clear.
In a statement, they said: 'Fort Eisenhower is actively supporting the victim's family and assistance will be available to anyone impacted by this tragedy.
'The safety of our residents and personnel remains our primary concern.'
[ENGLISH.ALMANAR.COM.LB] Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has warned that Syria is facing a ''difficult test'' from terrorist groups and foreign aggression, but says free elections can help the country overcome its challenges.
In an opinion piece published in the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, Araghchi highlighted the threats posed by terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and ISIS, as well as the ''aggressions and military interventions'' of Israel and the United States.
''Today, Syria faces a difficult test. The threat posed by the movements of terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and Daesh has heightened regional concerns, raising fears that the terrorists may turn Syria into their safe haven,'' Araghchi wrote.
The Iranian minister also condemned the ''barbaric crimes'' and ''encroachment'' of the Israeli regime on Syrian territory, saying the actions were aimed at ''the destruction of Syria's social foundations, scientific assets, economic infrastructure, and defensive capabilities.''
Araghchi was critical of regional countries that have expressed ''regret and concern'' over the situation, calling their words ''the most meaningless'' in the face of ongoing atrocities.
To address the crisis, Araghchi proposed ''free elections'' as a solution, stating that ''the way out of the current impasse and to keep the flag of independence aloft and uphold the pride and dignity of the Syrian nation is to preserve cohesion and foster a spirit of coexistence among the people through free elections.''
The Iranian foreign minister emphasized that ''respect for the people's votes is realized through free and fair elections that reflect the will of the Syrian nation and lead to the formation of a political system representing all segments of society.''
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2024
01:25 ||
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[ENGLISH.ALMANAR.COM.LB] The Israeli enemy kept up its attacks on Leb ...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... in new violations of the ceasefire that followed 66-day epic fighting against the Zionist entity. Saturday's attacks saw a dronezap as well as detonation of houses in a southern border town.
Al-Manar correspondent reported that a Lebanese citizen was martyred in an Israeli dronezap that targeted his car on al-Khardali road near the river of al-Khardali.
The strike took place at the main road that links the southern cities of Nabatiyeh and Marjeyoun and is used by Lebanese civilians,'' al-Manar's Ali Shoeib reported in a video that showed behind him the targeted vehicle bursting into flames.
Meanwhile in the border town of Kfar Kila, the National News Agency (NNA) correspondent said: ''The enemy continues its shelling, booby-trapping and bombing operations, and carried out a bombing a short while ago in the town of Kfar Kila, where a violent mostly peaceful explosion was heard and columns of smoke rose densely.''
Explosions and gunfire were also heard in Mais al-Jabal border town, our correspondent reported.
On the other hand, contact was lost with the Lebanese citizen Abdo Abdel Al in the southern border town of al-Majidiya, with Lebanese media reporting he was kidnapped by Israeli occupation forces.
''This afternoon, a pickup truck carrying three people crossed the barbed wire fence towards the al-Majidiya plain and took Abdo Abdel Aal to the occupied Paleostinian territories,'' NNA reported.
Elsewhere in Beirut and its suburb, the NNA reported further breach by the Israeli enemy reconnaissance aircraft which were spotted flying over the capital and its southern suburb, Dahiyeh, over low altitude.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2024
01:24 ||
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[ENGLISH.ALMANAR.COM.LB] Hezbollah Secretary General, Sheikh Naeem Qassem, affirmed that supporting Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... is both a noble and essential duty, not only for the group but for the entire Arab and Moslem world, stressing that when others failed to fulfill their responsibilities, the Zionists escalated their aggression, emboldening their tyranny.
In a televised speech via al-Manar, Sheikh Qassem noted that Hezbollah had expected an Israeli attack on Leb ...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... , though the timing was unknown. He emphasized that the aggression, which began before Operation al-Aqsa Flood and continued afterward, was unrelated to Gaza's support. The Israeli attack, he explained, was part of their expansionist agenda, aiming to eliminate any resistance that stands in the way of their regional ambitions.
''During this war, the Israeli occupation forces claimed the lives of key Hezbollah leaders, including the late martyr Sayyed ...Arabic term meaning your/his lordship. Groveling in His Exalted Presence is encouraged... Hasan Nasrallah, along with several other commanders and fighters. They also breached communication networks and detonated pagers and telecom lines, at a great cost in terms of lives and suffering. However,
the man who has no enemies isn't anybody and has never done anything... despite these operations, the enemy failed to achieve its objectives, instead resorting to barbaric attacks on civilians, villages, homes, and innocent children and women,'' Sheikh Naim explained.
Sheikh Qassem emphasized that the Israeli enemy's crimes were aimed at breaking the resistance, but despite immense sacrifices, they failed.
''Israeli crimes are not achievements; Hezbollah's resistance successfully thwarted the enemy's efforts to destroy and crush it,'' he asserted.
He highlighted that the enemy had repeatedly stated its intent to eliminate Hezbollah, but the resistance fighters halted their advances.
''Hezbollah's missiles struck deep into Israeli territory, inflicting significant damage and displacing nearly 200,000 settlers. The resistance killed hundreds of Israeli soldiers, maimed many more, and caused extensive economic and social damage across the occupied territories,'' his eminence explained.
Sheikh Qassem praised the resilience of the people who made tremendous sacrifices to protect the resistance, referring to them as ''brave heroes'' who viewed resistance as their sole and vital option in this struggle.
''Thank God, we achieved a true divine victory in this confrontation. The Israeli enemy recognized that its path to defeating Hezbollah's resistance is blocked, prompting it to seek a ceasefire agreement.''
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2024
01:22 ||
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[GEO.TV] The Israeli army has given an illegal ultimatum to Paleostinians in southeastern Jabalia in northern besieged Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... to flee areas in preparation for another assault.
Army's spokesperson Avichay Adraee said the ultimatum is for an attack planned by Israel against what he said is an area where rockets were fired from toward Israel, reported TRT World.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2024
01:18 ||
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[GEO.TV] Just a day after Israel killed dozens of Paleostinians in strikes on Nuseirat camp, several others were killed in Israel's continued offensive in the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Strip.
Dawn raids on Saturday killed four members of the Saadallah family in their home in Jabalia, two people in a school northeast of Gaza City and one person sheltering in a tent south of Khan Younis, Paleostinian news agency Wafa said.
Four members of the Saadallah family were killed in their home in Jabalia in dawn raids, according to Paleostinian news agency Wafa.
Two individuals were killed at a school northeast of Gaza City, and another person lost his life as he was sheltering in a tent south of Khan Younis, said the news agency.
Later that day, an Israeli strike on al-Majida Wasila School in the northern al-Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza City resulted in seven deaths, according to Wafa. Additionally, a drone attack at Jalaa Junction northwest of Gaza City killed one woman and injured several others. Another civilian was killed in an Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... west of al-Nuseirat camp.
Moreover, five citizens were maimed in a drone attack on the al-Mawasi area west of Rafah city.
[IsraelTimes] Rocket launchers were placed 50 meters from aid sites, army says; terror cell targeted at former Gaza City school, with Palestinian medics reporting 7 dead
Rockets fired by Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... murderous Moslems at southern Israel Friday night were launched from locations near humanitarian aid warehouses, the Israel Defense Forces said Saturday.
According to the IDF, the launchers used to fire the two projectiles toward Ashkelon were positioned some 50 meters from depots used by international aid organizations operating in Gaza.
The military said air defenses intercepted the two projectiles, which triggered sirens in Ashkelon and surrounding towns near the Gaza border. There were no reports of injuries or damage in the attack.
Paleostinian Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... took responsibility for the rocket fire, which has become a relative rarity after 14 months of war, sparked by the devastating Hamas ..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",... -led invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel’s aerial and ground operations have greatly depleted the arsenals of Hamas and other Gaza-based terror factions.
Overnight, Israeli fighter jets launched Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s in the area, targeting weapons depots and terror operatives, the military said.
A video released by the IDF on December 14, 2024, shows airstrikes on terror operatives in Gaza near a rocket launching site used in an attack a day prior.
The IDF issued evacuation warnings to civilians in the area before launching the strikes south of Jabalia, in the Strip’s north.
Also on Saturday, the IDF said that it carried out a dronezap against a cell of terror operatives while they were preparing to carry out an attack against troops in Gaza and Israel "in the immediate timeframe."
The military said the operatives were targeted while they were gathered at a former school in Gaza City. It added that it took steps to mitigate harm to civilians in the strike at the Yaffa boys school, which was being used to shelter displaced Paleostinians.
Emergency services in Gaza reported that at least seven were killed and 12 maimed as a result of the airstrike. The dead include a woman and her baby, according to medics.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2024
01:16 ||
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[GEO.TV] Paleostinians have been returning to the Yarmouk refugee camp outside Damascus, according to Al Jazeera.
Built as a refugee camp for Paleostinians in 1957, Yarmouk grew into a bustling suburb of some 1.2 million people including 160,000 Paleostinians, according to the UN agency for Paleostinian refugees, UNRWA before Syria's war.
Those numbers have dwindled to just 8,160 Paleostinian refugees, as the al-Assad regime heavily bombarded the suburb after rebel fighters were based there.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2024
01:15 ||
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[GEO.TV] At least five migrants colonists drowned after their wooden boat capsized off Greece's southern island of Gavdos, the coastguard said on Saturday, and witnesses said many were still missing as search operations continued.
So far 39 men — most of them from Pakistain — have been rescued by cargo vessels sailing in the area. They have been transferred to the island of Crete, the coastguard said, adding that the number of those missing had not yet been confirmed.
Coastguard boats, merchant vessels, an Italian frigate and naval aircraft have been searching the area since Greek authorities were alerted about the incident on Friday night.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2024
01:14 ||
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[NEWSBUSTERS.ORG] The re-election of Donald Trump ...The cad! Twice caught beating wimmin!... has created overwhelming angst among the press. With Trump, they have been like the opposite of the Humpty Dumpty rhyme. The media are all the king's horses and all the king's men -- and they couldn't tear Humpty Dumpty apart. All of their screeching about his menace only makes him successful.
Longtime CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl engaged in conversation at the 92nd Street Y in New York City with columnist Peggy Noonan, and they both agreed the legacy media are "fraying" — for 20 years, Noonan insisted.
"I'm extremely worried about the press," Stahl said, as she dragged out her usual story about Trump and press criticism. ''I once asked Donald Trump why do you keep pounding on the press? This was right after he won, in 2016....It's kinda boring, you say the same thing over and over, and you won! It's time to drop it!''
This is a bizarre demand, since no one in the press announced, ''well, Trump won, so it's kind of boring to keep criticizing him, saying the same thing over and over.''
Stahl said she asked why he would do it, and Trump replied: ''I do it, and I repeat it, because the more I do that, the less people are going to believe you when you say negative things about me—.And it's happened!'' The media's public trust ratings are the worst they've ever been in the television era.
This alleged Trump comment did not air on CBS, although Stahl drags out the anecdote like it's nefarious. It's the exact opposite of the Stahl shtick -- if I attack Trump, and I repeat it, it means the more I do it, the less people are going to believe Trump when he attacks the press. But he's won that battle.
''I despair, seriously. I worry greatly,'' Stahl said. ''We're at a point where if the President of the United States is going to say 'Legacy media is dead'—It is, kind of, sort of hobbling right now. And I don't know how it recovers. I'm very dark about it."
Noonan made the mistake of associating an unpopular press with the end of freedom of the press, which is not the same thing. The First Amendment doesn't automatically grant sainthood to the press. You're allowed to think the press has performed terribly without ending the First Amendment. That's freedom of speech.
Noonan didn't push back on Stahl. She could ask if CBS and 60 Minutes ever did anything wrong that undermined trust in the media. Dan Fake but Accurate Rather ...the man who put the BS in CBS News. In 2004 he put on a news story that highlighted dissatisfaction with Lt. George W. Bush in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war. This was almost casually--but gleefully--debunked by the Blogosphere at large. Rather's face was rubbed in journalistic mud, four of his staff were fired, and within a short time his 43-year (about the same length as Muammar Qadaffy's) career had settled to the bottom, from whence he periodically emits a bubble, which proves he's not dead yet... offered the nation phony documents about George W. Bush on 60 Minutes II.
Lesley Stahl is infamous among Republicans for lecturing Trump in 2020 that you could not report on the Hunter Biden laptop because it could not be verified. CBS news hound Catherine Herridge verified the laptop in 2022, and she's no longer at CBS.
While Stahl was very rough with Trump, Scott Pelley's interviews with President Biden sounded promotional. In October of 2023, Pelley sympathetically asked, ''Mr. President, given these two wars and the dysfunction in Congress, are you sure that you want to run again?'' (Imagine all the Biden babble that was edited out.)
In October, CBS Face the Nation viewers saw a typical word-salad answer from Kamala Harris launched her campaign on the “RuPaul’s Drag Race” , but on the 60 Minutes primetime special a day later, CBS edited in a much shorter and more coherent soundbite.
When news hounds start whining about their unpopularity, questioners should press them to explore what they may have done to deserve unpopularity. Conversations like these leave the impression that these egotistical journalists are incapable of introspection.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2024
01:08 ||
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[NBCNEWS] Pressure from President-elect Donald Trump ...Never got invited to a P.Diddy party... was a major factor in Hamas ..always the voice of sweet reason... relenting on two key issues during cease-fire and hostage-release talks with Israel, a senior administration official told NBC News on Friday.
New hope for an agreement had senior Biden administration officials fanning out across the Middle East this week with the goal of closing on a critical pact by the end of 2024.
According to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media, Hamas has now agreed to Israeli forces staying in the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Strip temporarily after fighting ends and to provide a complete list of hostages, including Americans, who will be released. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on the concessions Hamas was prepared to make.
''There is a confidence we have not seen since May when the president [Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. Old, boring, a plagiarist, fond of hair sniffing and grabbing the protruding parts of women, and not whatcha call brilliant.... ] presented his proposal,'' the Biden administration official told NBC News, acknowledging that Trump's warning that he wants to see a deal before he takes office was ''a big factor'' in recent concessions.
Not everybody shared this optimism.
''We are not there yet,'' another U.S. official warned.
Negotiators were ''closer'' but ''we've been close before so I'm very cautious.''
The Oval Office has only one occupant at a time and Trump won't take over until Jan. 20, but Biden has appeared deferential to letting his successor get involved in negotiations and has not pushed back on his efforts to be engaged in talks.
Basem Naim, a member of Hamas' political wing, told NBC News that he was not aware that the group had recently made concessions during negotiations.
This month, Trump wrote on Truth Social: ''Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violent mostly peacefully, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire world, in the Middle East — but it's all talk, and no action!''
''If the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against humanity,'' he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2024
01:02 ||
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[POWERLINEBLOG] The entire country met Minnesota's own Tampon Tim Walz ...Kamala's smarmy-looking running mate, governor of Minnesota, who decided to retired rather than to deploy with his National Guard unit, then claimed to have been in Iraq and Afghanistan. One man's socialism is another man's neighborliness.... this past August when Kamala Harris former senatrix from California, 2020 Dem presidential hopeful and ultimately Joe Biden's intended successor selected him as her running mate. The more the country saw him, the less it liked him. Walz thrilled Democrats ...every time you hear the phrase white people, white supremacy,white anything but paint, you're listening to a Democrat. Ask him/her/it to reimagine something for you; they do that a lot, though not well. They can hear a dog whistle a mile or two away. They invented the spoils system and Tammany Hall, and inspired the addition of the word (Thomas) Nasty to the English language. They want to stop continental drift and repeal the law of unintended side effects... in convention assembled when he called Trump running mate J.D. Vance ''weird.'' That proved a poor choice of words on Walz's part. The more the country saw Walz, the weirder it thought he was. He made a poor vice presidential candidate.
Taking the path of least resistance under fire, he declared himself ''a knucklehead.'' He is worse than that, but it was a revealing concession. In the glare of the national spotlight Walz was exposed as a compulsive liar.
Among other things, in the 2023 ''let's go crazy'' legislative session, Walz had supported and signed the Minnesota Democrats' mandate of tampons in all school restrooms (grades 4-12). The Star Tribune all but celebrated the bill and its manifold good works while it worked its way through the legislature.
State representative Sandra Feist was an ardent proponent and sponsor of the bill in the legislature. In a January 2023 column published by the Star Tribune when the bill had just been introduced, Feist specified the law's application to ''all menstruators.''
In an August 2023 summary of school legislation, the Star Tribune drily recorded (link in original): ''The sweeping education bill Walz signed later in the spring also included a provision that requires schools to stock bathrooms with free menstrual products.'' The text of the law is posted here.
Once Harris made Walz a national candidate, however, the Star Tribune undertook to obfuscate and deny the purport of the law. I took a look at the Star Tribune's attempted obfuscation once Walz became a candidate for national office in ''Of Tim and the tampons.''
The dishonesty of the Star Tribune in general and editorial board member Jill Burcum in particular continues to rankle. Having all but celebrated the bill before and through its enactment into law, the Star Tribune sought to shield Walz from his own folly once he joined Harris on the Democrats' ticket.
Crooked Hillary Clinton ...former first lady, former secretary of state, former presidential candidate, Conqueror of Benghazi, Heroine of Tuzla, formerly described by her supporters as the smartest woman in the world, usually described by the rest of us as The Thing That Wouldn't Go Away. Politix is not one of her talents, but it's something she keeps trying to do... chose not to follow the Star Tribune's defensive line. She got on the bandwagon. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Tim Walz.
Well, that's all ancient history. Minnesota Democrats usually lag their exemplars on the East and West Coasts. However,
it was a brave man who first ate an oyster... not entirely so in this case. Minnesota helped lead the way for the New York Times
...which still proudly claims Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... . Joe Simonson reports:
The New York Times added menstrual products to its Manhattan office's men's bathrooms over the summer, according to internal communications obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The paper's decision was announced by the vice president for global real estate and facilities, Victor Liu, in a company-wide Slack message. From July 26 to July 29, Liu said, the company would begin ''adding menstrual products and sanitary baskets'' to the office's men's restrooms ''to support transgender and non-binary colleagues.'' The company also announced that it was ''removing gendered imagery and adding language that colleagues are welcome to use the restroom in which they feel most comfortable.''
The Star Tribune never misses an opportunity to highlight the local angle on a national story or show Minnesota leading the way toward the precipice. However,
it was a brave man who first ate an oyster... I seriously doubt that the Star Tribune will report this development or claim any credit for Minnesota Democrats setting the example for the New York Times. Yet it does make me wonder if the Star Tribune's practice leads or lags the Times.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2024
00:58 ||
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Tucker shreds Walz mercilessly.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/15/2024 14:07
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[PJMEDIA] For years, Democrats ...every time you hear the phrase white people, white supremacy,white anything but paint, you're listening to a Democrat. Ask him/her/it to reimagine something for you; they do that a lot, though not well. They can hear a dog whistle a mile or two away. They invented the spoils system and Tammany Hall, and inspired the addition of the word (Thomas) Nasty to the English language. They want to stop continental drift and repeal the law of unintended side effects... have made a spectacle of their disdain for President Trump at every opportunity, so it should come as no surprise that once again, Democrats are planning to boycott his inauguration. The same thing happened in 2017, when they skipped Trump's inauguration because they claimed he'd stolen the election with the help of Russia. Now, after Trump won a landslide electoral college victory as well as the national popular vote, Democrats are once again coming up with excuses to skip the event.
According to a report from Axios, more than a dozen congressional Democrats have announced that they're going to skip the event, citing reasons ranging from ''safety concerns'' to personal principles—which is hilarious coming from any Democrat. This shameful display of partisanship not only highlights the left's inability to respect democratic processes, but also exposes its penchant for theatrics over governance.
Many Democrats justified their boycott by invoking the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, despite the fact that Trump had nothing to do with it and had called on his supporters to protest peacefully. Representative Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the J6 committee, referenced Trump's ''rhetoric'' against him as his rationale.
Whatever, he won't be missed.
Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) claimed her decision stemmed from ''concerns'' about her ''safety'' as a Latina—weird she didn't use Latinx—citing Trump supporters' presence at the event. Gimme a break.
This fearmongering doesn't just insult millions of peaceful Trump voters; it reinforces the Democratic strategy of smearing political opponents as inherently racist.
Rep. Ilhan Omar ...Somali-American Dem representative from Minnesota. She was apparently married to her brother and may be her own grandmaw on her mother's side. She is a member of The Squad, and would like to make the country look a lot more like Mogadishu... (D-Minn.) conveniently chose Martin Luther King Jr. Day events as her reason to avoid the inauguration. Something tells me that if Kamala Harris who got her start in politix between former Oakland mayor Willie Brown's' knees had won (God forbid), Omar would have found the time to attend the inauguration.
Again, she won't be missed. Frankly, I'd rather she and her brother not attend.
According to Axios's count, of the Democrats they contacted who responded, 13 are boycotting the 2025 inauguration, 20 are undecided, and 44 are attending. At least 55 Democrats boycotted Trump's 2017 inauguration.
You're probably thinking that after Democrats made such a big deal about the peaceful transfer of power, respecting democracy, and all that stuff, they should be making a point to attend the inauguration. Some actually are. According to Axios, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), sees attending as a chance to restore faith in institutions. But it's clear the party's loudest voices have no interest in reconciliation or unity, only in deepening divides. When figures such as Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) claim they're skipping due to ''lingering trauma'' from Jan. 6, it's hard not to see this as yet another excuse to perpetuate the left's victimhood narrative.
The bottom line here is that any Democrat's decision to boycott Trump's inauguration isn't about principles—it's about partisan pettiness. Their obsession with vilifying Trump has blinded them to the importance of setting an example for the country. Americans expect their leaders to rise above partisanship, not wallow in it.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2024
00:56 ||
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#1
I expect most of our leaders to sink into the Blob even further than they already are.
[NYPOST] President-elect Donald Trump ...His ancestors didn't own any slaves... promised to expel migrants colonists to their country of origin by military force — and refused to ''do business'' with those countries if they refuse to take them in.
''I'll get them into every country, or we won't do business with those countries,'' Trump, 78, said in a lengthy interview with Time magazine published Thursday after being honored as the outlet's 2024 ''Person of the Year.''
''I want them out, and the countries have got to take them back, and if they don't take them back, we won't do business with those countries, and we will tariff those countries very substantially,'' he added.
President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a Time magazine Person of the
''When they send products in, they will have substantial tariffs, and it's going to make it very hard for them to do business with us.''
Border security and illegal immigration will be a top priority for the incoming president, as Trump has already promised with the help of his ''border czar'' Tom Homan to undertake the largest deportation operation in US history.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2024
00:55 ||
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#1
With the fact I support Trump a vast majority of the time aside.
But we also need to remember, Trump is business savvy, and usually tosses out the demands which far exceed his real goals, thus allowing negotiation to what he actually wants.
But I am sure many can also understand why many countries do not want their Criminal Gangs, Perverts and etc back, that came here for easier targets, returned.
There is also a bigger picture to think about.
The USA can't grow enough to feed itself and some of the business conducted with these South Of The Border nations is critical (Food, OIL, NAFTA stuff) to the USA economy. Want to give up that cup of coffee or chocolate?
PLUS!
Given the Smartphone Generation's lack of and no desire to engage in Manual Labor skills.
Why not, let those NON-Citizens doing the jobs no US Citizens wants to do, stay on a 1-year Worker Visa. Renewable as long they have a clean record and support themselves.
Like it was before.
I am all for jailing, then returning those caught committing crimes to their country.
But not before they serve their mandatory time in a US Prison. Note: They'd make good Roadside Cleanup chain-gangs.
ALSO, WE NEED TO:
* Eliminate the Instant Birthright of citizenship to those here ILLEGALLY.
* Cut off of Federal $$$$$$ to any state refusing to assist in identifying or harboring Illegals.
* Require a mandatory 5-year sentence if & when caught re-entering the USA again, after deportation.
* Address charging offending nations, the costs involved of dealing with their massive dump of criminals and mouths to feed, on the US Taxpayers.
[NYPOST] President-elect Donald Trump ...The cad! Twice caught beating wimmin!... tapped his former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell to lead the presidential envoy for special missions, he announced on Truth Social Saturday night.
Trump said Grenell, an outspoken champion of the 45th president's America First credo, will focus on some of the ''hottest spots'' around the world, including North Korea ...hereditary Communist monarchy distinguished by its truculence and periodic acts of violence. Distinguishing features include Songun (Army First) policy, which involves feeding the army before anyone but the Dear Leadership, and Juche, which is Kim Jong Il's personal interpretation of Marxism-Leninism, which he told everybody was brilliant. In 1950 the industrialized North invaded agrarian South Korea. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force opposing the invasion, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel. Seventy years later the economic results are in and it doesn't look good for Juche... and Venezuela
...a country in Central America that sits on an enormous pool of oil. Formerly the most prospereous country in the region, it became infested with Commies sniffing almost unlimited wealth. It turned out the wealth wasn't unlimited, the economy collapsed under the clownish Hugo Chavez, the murder rate exceeded places like Honduras and El Salvador. A significant proportion of the populace refugeed to Colombia and points south... ''In my First Term, Ric was the United States Ambassador to Germany, Acting Director of National Intelligence, and Presidential Envoy for Kosovo-Serbia Negotiations,'' Trump wrote.
''Previously, he spent eight years inside the United Nations ...an idea whose time has gone... Security Council, working with North Korea, and developments in numerous other Countries. Ric has a B.A. from Evangel College and an M.P.A from Harvard. Ric will continue to fight for Peace through Strength, and always put AMERICA FIRS ...the Internal Revenue Service; that office of the United States government that collects taxes and persecutes the regime's political enemies... T.''
Grenell, 58, became the first openly gay man to serve in a cabinet-level position when Trump appointed him acting director of national intelligence in February 2020. The appointment came after he resigned from his Berlin-based role and as a special envoy for peace talks between Serbia and Kosovo.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2024
00:38 ||
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#1
Grenell is loyal to Trump and is automatically confirmed by the Senate based on identity politics. He will end up in the cabinet over the four year term.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/15/2024 14:24
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[NYPOST] A Washington, D.C.-area restaurant server has been fired after she spoke out about possibly refusing service to incoming Trump administration officials.
''I personally would refuse to serve any person in office who I know of as being a sex trafficker or trying to deport millions of people,'' Suzannah Van Rooy, a server at Beuchert's Saloon on Capitol Hill, told the Washingtonian this week. ''It's not, 'Oh, we hate Republicans.' It's that this person has moral convictions that are strongly opposed to mine, and I don't feel comfortable serving them.''
Her remarks were part of a report about whether there would be local ''resistance'' to certain Trump figures when they were in public settings again after several high-profile incidents during his first term. They included then-aide Sarah Huckabee Sanders being ejected from a restaurant in Lexington, Va., and protesters swarming then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at a D.C. Mexican establishment.
''People were a lot more motivated the first time around to do those kinds of shows of passion. This time around, there is kind of a sense of defeat and acceptance,'' Van Rooy said, according to the Washingtonian. ''But I hope that people still do stand up to this administration and tell them their thoughts on their misbehavior.''
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2024
00:37 ||
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#1
I hope she enjoys the unemployment lines and food banks.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
12/15/2024 11:29
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#2
She’s probably been hired at a new place already. She’ll just sabotage orders quietly.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/15/2024 14:29
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#3
Promulgating her new restaurant is an option.
Posted by: Jack Salami ||
12/15/2024 18:03
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[NYPOST] '''This is the way the world ends,'' T.S. Eliot famously wrote.
''Not with a bang but a whimper.''
He might have been talking about Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. Former Senator-for-Life from Delaware, an example of the kind of top-notch Washington intellect to be found in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body.... 's presidency.
As he prepares to slink out the door, Biden's final days in the Oval Office offer a perfect metaphor for everything that was wrong with his tenure.
He pardoned his convicted-criminal son after vowing not to and his mass commutations included one for a judge convicted of taking kickbacks to send juveniles to for-profit detention facilities.
The judge was in Scranton, Pa., meaning Biden even betrayed distraught parents in his hometown.
Joe Biden's predictable pardon of Hunter didn't threaten his reputation — it cemented an already corrupt legacy
How's that for a legacy?
His most recent dereliction fits another pattern.
Just as he paid no attention to raging inflation, the open border and the decline of America's global standing, Biden has gone missing as swarms of drones spark fears among millions of Americans on the East Coast.
Biden has said nothing, Vice President Kamala Harris launched her campaign on the “RuPaul’s Drag Race” has disappeared since losing the election and the White House offers only bland assurances that there's nothing to worry about.
But asked who is behind the noisy, bright and large drone presence expanding night after night, the administration says it doesn't know.
In other words, we don't know and we don't really care, but trust us anyway.
Sorry, it's too late in the game for that, especially when drones forced the White Plains airport to close runways Friday night.
Even the usually somnolent Gov. Hochul stirred to demand answers.
CONTRAST OF LEADERSHIP
Only a fool would deny that something unprecedented is happening, and it's doubly worrisome when the blanket assurances come from Alejandro Mayorkas, head of Homeland Security.
Recall it was Mayorkas who insisted repeatedly, under oath, that ''the border is secure'' even as more than 10 million unvetted migrants colonists poured across.
So when he says ''don't worry,'' we should worry.
The incident also illustrates why there is so much excitement about Donald Trump ...They hit him with slander, they impeached him twice. Nancy Pelosi tore up his State of the Union address on national TV. They stole an election and put his adherents in jail. They vilified him. They couldn't crucify him, so they shot him. Still, they can't keep him down... 's return.
Politics is ultimately about contrasts, and there is an extraordinarily stark contrast between the current and next president.
It goes far beyond the usual changing of the guard.
Although Biden is just four years older than Trump, it feels as if the torch is being passed to a new generation.
And that joy has switched sides.
ACTION AT 'MAGA LARGO'
That's certainly the vibe at Mar-a-Lago, or, as reader John Peter Zavez calls it, MAGA Largo.
With a steady stream of well-wishers, tech moguls, captains of industry, donors and media arriving daily, the historic estate is living up to its designation as the Winter White House.
The impression of a president ready to hit the ground running is underscored by Trump's business-like approach to shaping his administration.
His lightning-speed rollout of his Cabinet and other top picks is supplanting the usual thumb-sucking post-mortems about the campaign.
There's little point in dwelling on the past when the future is taking shape so quickly.
The announcement by FBI chief Christopher Wray that he will resign reflects the momentum.
He could have fought to finish his 10-year term, but it would have been futile.
And for what purpose?
Wray was a deeply flawed leader of the troubled FBI, but he at least got the point — there's a new sheriff in Washington.
Trump, with a landslide win in the Electoral College and victory in the popular vote, expressed the futility of looking backwards.
In an interview with Time magazine for its issue naming him Person of the Year, he was asked what he thought were Harris' worst mistakes.
Without hesitation, he answered: ''Taking the assignment. Number one, because you have to know what you're good at.''
Next question!
His answer could be applied to the entire Democratic Party.
It proved to be terrible at governing, with the so-called moderates signing on to the most radical agenda in US history.
The tail wagged the dog right out of power.
HERE THEY GO AGAIN
And here they go again.
Many congressional Dems are saying they will boycott Trump's inauguration.
That's a repeat of 2017, when more than 50 of them failed to show up for the transfer of power.
Some even made threats to impeach him, a promise they kept when they won the House majority two years later.
Axios reports that 13 Dems have pledged to stay away this time, and 20 others are undecided.
My hope is that sanity will prevail and the movement will fizzle.
Again, what's the argument for staying away?
The public spoke with a clear voice, so those who boycott are proving they haven't learned their lesson and are giving voters another reason to consign the party to a long sentence on the sidelines.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2024
00:35 ||
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#5
Chris Rock on SNL:“I gotta hand it to Joe. He don’t move as fast as he used to, he don’t talk as fast as he used to,” Rock laughed. “But that middle finger still works.”
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The Turkish Armed Forces will begin shooting down Israeli Air Force planes if they help the Syrian Kurds with missile strikes. This is reported by the Yeni Şafak publication.
An interesting thought. Shooting at is easy. Hitting the designated target takes different skills, and IAF F-16s and F-35s streaking overhead are nothing like fleeing Syrian Arab Army or charging SDF technical Toyotas.
“If Israel decides to take such actions, our air defense systems and fighters are ready to destroy them,” the publication says.
S-300s and S-400s? Perhaps Turkish soldiers wield those better than Syrian soldiers do, so in theory that could work against Israeli warplanes. But if the Turkish army spokesman is talking about aerial dogfights, that’s an entirely different question.
According to the publication's sources, the Kurds asked the IDF to help them confront the pro-Turkish forces, after which Turkey made it clear to Israel that it "will not tolerate such interference."
Has Israel ever got involved militarily with the Kurds? I don’t recall such a thing, though that might just be my porous memory.
The publication claims that orders to destroy the planes had already been given to the General Staff of the Turkish army.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, on December 13, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at a meeting with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who arrived in Ankara, said that Turkey supports the preservation of Syria's territorial integrity.
…except those strips of Syria that Turkey has already taken over, displacing the native Kurds in order to disable them and also provide housing for Turkey’s refugee and Turkic dependents.
Erdogan added that Turkey will defend its national interests if there is a threat from the Syrian opposition. In addition, he promised to take measures against all terrorist organizations.
…except for the terrorist orgs on the payroll of Turkey’s so-called Syrian National Army, anyway.
Deputy Head of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev noted on December 12 that he doubts the possibility of preserving the unity of Syria after the departure of the administration of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He also recalled that Russia had seriously helped the republic's authorities for a long time, as it understood the negative consequences of its collapse. The Deputy Chairman of the Security Council named mistakes in governing the country as the reason for the fall of the government.
Russia has been helping the Syrian government fight terrorist organizations for many years. Moscow has pledged to help as long as the Syrian army continues to fight. Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed out back in 2015 that Russians would not be “greater Syrians than the Syrians themselves” in resolving the internal issues of this republic.
Posted by: badanov ||
12/15/2024
00:00 ||
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Bet they didn't change the plates on their rental.
[FoxNews] Two Americans from California are dead after being found shot in a pickup truck in Mexico, officials said.
Authorities located Gloria Ambriz, 50, and Rafael Cardona, 53, while responding to a report of a shooting in Angamacutiro in the western state of Michoacán on Wednesday night, according to Fox News affiliate, KTTV, citing the state attorney general's office.
The couple, who were on vacation visiting family, was traveling in a black 2016 Ford Platinum pickup truck when gunmen opened fire near an intersection.
Ambriz was pronounced dead on the scene, while Cardona succumbed to his injuries shortly after being transported to a hospital in Puruándiro, officials said.
Michoacán is listed as a "do not travel" spot in Mexico, according to the U.S. State Department.
Investigators have recovered ballistic evidence from the scene, which is being analyzed as part of the ongoing investigation.
The attorney general's office has assembled a team of prosecutors, police, and forensic experts to determine the motive and identify those responsible for the killings.
The unexpected deaths of the two Californian visitors add to safety concerns in Mexico.
Michoacán is listed as a "do not travel" spot in Mexico, according to the U.S. State Department.
#4
Or American citizens of Mexican descent who went back to visit family around the holidays and were in the wrong place at the wrong time/mistaken for someone else.
On the other side in the middle of a war. They’ve been protesting one thing or another, paid and trained by Progressive billionaires — and the US State Department, when a Democrat is in the White House — since the turn of the millennium. Thank goodness the opposition is finally repudiating this selfish temper tantrum.
[IsraelTimes] Lador argues refusal is ‘legitimate tool’ against attempts to turn Israel into a ‘dictatorship’; president, PM, lawmakers decry rhetoric
Dictatorship. If it were one, Mr. Lador would be cowering quietly in a corner of a prison like Syria’s Sedaynah, losing his ability to speak and think, instead of freely pontificating in a public conference full of noisily small-minded idiots.
Former state attorney Moshe Lador encouraged Israeli Air Force pilots on Saturday to stop volunteering for reserve duty if the government revives its highly contentious judicial overhaul, as Justice Minister Yariv Levin has declared he wishes to do.
Speaking at a current affairs event in Beersheba on Saturday, Lador said that refusing to volunteer for service was a "legitimate tool" to stop the government from turning Israel "from a democracy into a dictatorship."
"Pilots who have completed their compulsory service and now serve on a voluntary basis are not only allowed, but in my opinion, are obligated to say, ’If that’s the country you’re striving for, and are going to create through force and bullying, and are going to be the dictators of, I won’t enter the cockpit and fly this plane because I don’t have to,'" he said.
He added that he didn’t see such a refusal to serve "as political interference at all," but as a legitimate method of stalling an "entirely wrong" process.
Lador was a vocal opponent of the radical reform agenda that sought to shift power away from the courts and attorney general and dilute the judiciary’s role as a check on government power. Levin’s planned overhaul led to massive social and political turmoil, with mass protests held across the country for much of 2023, until war erupted in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... with the October 7 massacre.
At the height of the 2023 protests, hundreds of reservists signed declarations that they would no longer show up for volunteer reserve duty in protest of the government advancing its plans to curtail the judiciary.
Most of them caved following the 10/7 Hamas massacre, realizing there’s no time for Labour Socialist temper tantrums when the country’s existence is at stake. Four of the rest are now up on charges for peeling off from an anti-Netanyahu protest to apply their military skills shooting rockets at Bibi’s private home in the middle of the night. They could have done much worse than just put out an eye with those things, and they had the skills to know it. Condemnations from across the political spectrum follow:
Lador’s comments sparked angry condemnations from both the coalition and the opposition, as well as from IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, who said that the IDF "must remain outside any political controversy," especially during the current fraught period for Israeli national security.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, said Lador’s words deserved condemnation "from all ends of the political spectrum." Advocating for refusal during wartime "crosses a red line that endangers democracy and undermines our future," Netanyahu asserted. He called on Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to "take immediate action against this dangerous phenomenon," indicating he sought legal action against Lador.
Interior Minister Moshe Arbel also called to probe Lador. Communications Minister Shlomo Khari, for his part, asserted that Lador "wants to bring another October 7 upon us" and suggested he should be arrested and questioned to set an example.
Defense Minister Israel Katz argued that Lador’s rhetoric "harms the security of the state" and that refusal to serve "cannot be accepted under any circumstances."
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, formerly a harsh critic of the government’s handling of the war and of the judicial overhaul agenda, decried Lador’s comments, calling them "irresponsible" and deserving of "unequivocal condemnation."
"Saying such things would have been reckless even before October 7," he wrote on X, panning Lador for being "willing to gamble on the very existence of the state."
Across the aisle, former IDF chief of staff and ex-defense minister Benny Gantz, who now heads the opposition’s National Unity party, argued that threatening refusal "takes us back to October 6" and that such behavior ought to remain "out of bounds."
Former prime minister Naftali Bennett also weighed in, saying that "refusal in IDF service is never legitimate."
President Isaac Herzog also issued a sharp rebuke, and warned that while democracy protects the right to protest and free speech, calling for refusal to serve "is out of bounds."
"Anyone who says otherwise harms the security of the State of Israel," he said, appealing to stay away from "the divisive ...politicians call things divisive when when the other side sez something they don't like. Their own statements are never divisive, they're principled... and dangerous discourse that preceded October 7."
In recent weeks, as Levin has called for a revival of the contentious legislation frozen by the protests and the war against Hamas ..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,... , Herzog has expressed deep concern over a number of bills that he said would "touch [Israel’s] democratic foundations."
He had previously described Levin’s plans as a danger to Israeli democracy.
The issue of the planned reforms flared up again on Thursday when the High Court of Justice ordered Levin to hold a vote in the Judicial Selection Committee to appoint a new president of the Supreme Court, which he has been refusing to do for over a year due to his desire to appoint a conservative to the position — a move for which he lacks the votes.
Legislation involving changes to the makeup of the committee, which would have given the government deciding power on the panel, was perhaps the most radical and controversial part of Levin’s overhaul agenda, which even he later conceded would have undermined the separation of powers.
Levin reacted furiously to the court’s order on Thursday, accusing the justices of Israel’s top court of turning themselves into "dictatorial rulers" who "trample on the choice of the people." He said it was now critical to decide "once and for all" whether or not to restrain the judiciary.
[IsraelTimes] Once loyal to the regime, Syrian Christians have ostensibly joined the national celebration after the ouster of Bashar al-Assad. But can they trust the new Islamist rulers’ pledges?
The lightning power grab by the Sunni jihadi group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else ...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State... (HTS) in Syria has raised concerns about the fate of the Christian minority in the country.
Numbering 1.5 million before the outbreak of the civil war in 2011, Christians made up about 10 percent of the Syrian population. Within the span of a decade, their numbers dwindled dramatically, and in 2022, there were only 300,000 left, or about 2% of the current population of Syria, according to a report by the US-based NGO "Aid to Church in Need."
Traditionally wealthier and more educated than the average Syrian population, Christians emigrated en masse to escape persecution by ISIS, but also to flee Syria’s spiraling economic situation.
The new HTS leaders have repeatedly reassured Syrians and the international community that it will protect all minorities — which also include Shiites, Alawites, Druze, Kurds and others — and the new Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir has urged millions of Syrian refugees abroad to return home, vowing "the rights of all people and all sects in Syria" will be guaranteed.
However,
a clean conscience makes a soft pillow... it remains to be seen whether the country will once again become a tolerant, pluralistic place as its new leaders claim. Concern for the fate of Syria’s millennia-long Christian presence has been recently expressed by the Washington DC-based NGO In Defense of Christians.
In a statement issued after the rebels’ capture of Aleppo two weeks ago, IDC quoted sources in Aleppo saying that Christians were "living in fear" and had been the "target of widespread crime and vandalism."
However,
a clean conscience makes a soft pillow... Christian residents of Aleppo were recently interviewed by the Center for Peace Communications, a New York nonprofit, on the occasion of the Festival of Saint Barbara, a celebration observed by Middle East Christians. They said that they were afraid for the first two or three days after the HTS takeover, but now feel they do not have any reason to be concerned, and churches are operating normally.
During the 13 years of the civil war, Christians largely remained loyal to the Assad regime, which portrayed itself as a secular defender of religious minorities. Christians didn’t actively take action to support the regime, such as organizing armed militias to defend it, said Syrian analyst Hazem Alghabra, a former Senior Advisor to the US Department of State who runs a Washington DC-based Middle East security consultancy.
"For the most part, [Christians] were afraid. They were concerned about the Islamist elements of the Syrian uprising — and that is hard to ignore. But also, they repeated the regime messaging that anybody who stood up against the regime was an Islamist terrorist," Damascus-born Alghabra told The Times of Israel. He noted that describing them as regime supporters today, after the ousting of Bashir al-Assad, would "amount to an insult."
REBELS RETURN CONFISCATED CHRISTIAN PROPERTY
Like most other Syrians, Christians appeared elated at the fall of the brutal dictatorship. Bahjat Karakach, a Franciscan friar who serves as Aleppo’s Latin-rite parish priest, told Vatican News this week that Christians had been "completely exhausted by living under the regime" due to the economic hardships.
The holy man also noted that over the past years, rebels had shown increased tolerance to Christians, and returned confiscated property. In the Idlib area, controlled by HTS for the past decade, Christians had reportedly been allowed to continue practicing their faith.
Archbishop Hanna Jallouf, Apostolic Vicar of Aleppo, told Vatican News that he had met with HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, who had given him "assurances that Christians and their possessions will not be touched, and that [the murderous Moslems] will meet all our legitimate requests."
However,
a clean conscience makes a soft pillow... in 2015, al-Sharaa, back then known only by his nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Julani, said in a prescient interview with Al Jazeera that once the group took control of all of Syria, it would impose shari’a law over the country.
Christians, as "people of the book," would enjoy a privileged status and be allowed to practice their faith, the jihadi leader said, but per Islamic law, they would be obligated to pay the per capita jizya tax — even though HTS at the time was not imposing it in the areas it controlled.
At the time, al-Julani said that a different fate awaited other religious minorities in Syria, such as Alawites and Druze, whose doctrines originated from Islam centuries ago but then departed from Moslem Orthodoxy. Those two groups would have to "correct their doctrinal mistakes and embrace Islam," Julani said.
In 2013, two years prior to the interview, the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch that al-Julani led at the time, kidnapped 13 nuns amid fighting with regime forces. They were freed three months later after Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... agreed to pay the kidnappers $16 million.
Today, al-Julani appears to eschew those fundamentalist positions. He renounced ties to al-Qaeda in 2016 and now depicts himself as a champion of pluralism and tolerance.
In recent days, the insurgency leader dropped his nom de guerre and began referring to him by his real name, Ahmad al-Sharaa. He shed his garb as a hardline Islamist guerrilla and put on suits for press interviews, talking of building state institutions and decentralizing power to reflect Syria’s diversity.
SALVATION IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER?
The transitional government appointed on Tuesday only includes members from the HTS administration of Idlib, known as the "Salvation Government," and no representatives from secular rebel factions or religious groups other than Sunni Moslems.
"The concerns are not exclusive to Christians. They are also shared by the average moderate Sunni population," Alghabra told The Times of Israel. "If we end up with a Taliban ...Arabic for students... -style governance in Syria, then Christians will be targeted first, but down the line, moderate Sunnis will be targeted as well."
HTS’s experience ruling the Idlib area over the past years could provide an indicator for its future behavior governing the country.
Aaron Zelin, Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said in a recent interview with La Belle France 24 that HTS’s rule in Idlib was "an authoritarian governance model, not quite as bad as the totalitarianism of the Assad regime. It wasn’t a liberal democracy by any stretch of the imagination." But the Islamist group had apparently abandoned any aspirations for "global jihad," Zelin noted.
In a recent article, Zelin said that Christians in those areas were treated as second-class citizens, as they were not represented in the local government, the General Shura Council, and their interests were dealt with by a "Directorate of Minority Affairs."
La Belle France24 journalist Wassim Nasr visited Idlib in 2023 and reported that the few hundred Christians who remained in the region were allowed to hold masses, but not to display crosses or ring church bells.
Syrian analyst Alghabra remained optimistic that once HTS becomes the internationally recognized government of Syria, it will have to make compromises and show more openness.
"In Idlib, HTS did not have to deal with the concerns of the international community," Alghabra said. "It will need technical support, aid, fuel, a lot of things. So the international community’s approach will need to be transactional. HTS will have to allow every religious group to practice unobstructedly in order to get outside help."
[X]
Red Flag -- New #Syria ruler Ahmed Sharaa signals to a woman to cover her hair. If the revolution was not about liberty, it was not worth all the sacrifice. pic.twitter.com/rGUSV6wJRX
Not that Turkey’s President Erdogan cares if a bunch of Arabs and Kurds and other riffraff are killed by a the water surge, should the dam break.
[Rudaw] The manager of a Euphrates River dam that has come under days of attacks in northern Syria has warned that millions of people will be impacted should the structure fail.
"There was a blackout at Tishreen Dam. The dam is out of service now. Cables fell and the gates were closed, leading to the closure of the dam. The staff tried to use the generators but soon they ran out of diesel. Water is flowing into the dam now," Ali Demir told Rudaw English on Thursday.
Tishreen Dam sits on the Euphrates River in northern Syria, upstream from scores of towns and villages as well as urban centres like Raqqa. It provides electricity to much of northeast Syria (Rojava).
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), with the help of American troops, took control of the dam from 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) in 2015.
It has recently come under attack by the Ankara-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), who are part of a broader coalition of militia groups who joined forces against the now-collapsed regime of Bahsar al-Assad.
The dam is now out of service and Demir warned that they may not be able to hold back a rush of water that would pose a threat to the people living downstream, which includes neighboring Iraq.
Tishreen holds two million cubic meters of water. Roughly 90 kilometers downstream is Tabqa Dam.
If Tishreen bursts, "this water will then reach Tabqa, which already has 14 million cubic meters of water... I do not think Tabqa Dam will be able to hold this water, so it could cause a disaster in Iraq... The dam is in terrible condition. The impact will not be limited to structural damage, but could cause great damage in Iraq," said Demir.
The Rojava Information Center said on Thursday that the attacks have damaged turbines and caused leakages, adding that "Maintenance teams are currently unable to enter the dam to reconnect cables and operate the dewatering pumps needed to prevent flooding and equipment damage."
An informed source from Iraq’s Haditha Dam, which is the first facility holding Euphrates water once it enters the country, told Rudaw English on the condition of anonymity on Friday that there will be no danger to Iraq even if Tishreen Dam collapses.
"Tabqa Dam is also capable of withholding the water that comes from Tishreen Dam," the source said. "There is no problem at all."
However,
a person who gets all wrapped up in himself makes a mighty small package... the NES Forum, a non-governmental organization operating in Kurdish-held areas of Syria, on Tuesday made an urgent call to "all parties to the conflict to immediately cease hostile exchanges in the vicinity of the critical Tishreen Dam in Northeast Syria."
"Damages sustained to the infrastructure itself could lead to the loss of lives and livelihoods of up to one million people in the downstream subdistricts should the dam collapse," it added.
According to the forum, the immediate risks include "flooding, loss of life, damage to agricultural lands as well as properties, including downstream Tabqa dam."
Even if the dam holds, its power generation is offline.
Yasumasa Kimura, United Nations ...boodling on the grand scale... Children’s Fund representative to Syria, told CNN ...formerly the Cable News Network, now who know what it might stand for... on Friday that the lack of electricity for a nearby water treatment facility could cause a "complete water cut" to more than three million people in Aleppo - the most populated province in the country.
ONGOING CLASHES
SNA attacks on Tishreen Dam intensified after the Lions of Islam took control of nearby Manbij city from the SDF a few days ago.
Demir has been warning against a potential threat to the region for days.
"We do not know how to prevent the flow of water into the dam. Five staff members have been stuck there for a week, without access to food or water. They are terrified and in a terrible condition," he said, adding that they are doing their best to prevent a "disaster."
He shared with Rudaw English voice recordings of the staff desperately pleading for help.
The SDF said in a statement on Friday that its forces had been resisting SNA attacks for three days at the dam, but that The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the occupiers of Greek Asia Minor... has provided the Lions of Islam with aerial support.
"Despite the heavy air cover aimed at hindering our resistance, our fighters employed modern warfare tactics, ambushed the remnants of the mercenaries, and inflicted heavy losses on them, including the deaths of many of their leaders and the destruction of their tanks and vehicles," the Kurdish-led force said.
The SDF said that they have so far repelled all SNA attacks, however, Ottoman Turkish state media claimed that their militia allies had control of the dam on Friday. The Rojava Information Centre said there were no festivities on Friday.
Demir told Rudaw English late on Friday that the dam remains under the control of the SDF. He said the dam is nearly at capacity and they are trying to use pumps to prevent it overflowing.
Linked article is available only through a VPN.
[EngMilRu] It should be noted that the Russian Ministry of Defense in the last few weeks or so has stopped identifying Ukrainian units by number and type in its operational reports, instead using just the type of unit.
In Kharkov direction, the Sever Group of Forces hit formations of two territorial defence brigades and one border detachment of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine near Aleksandrovka and Volchansk (Kharkov region).
The AFU losses amounted to up to 60 troops, two armoured personnel carriers, three motor vehicles, and two 122mm D-30 howitzers.
The Zapad Group of Forces improved the tactical situation. Strikes were delivered at manpower and hardware of three mechanised brigades, one airborne brigade, and one jaeger brigade near Lozovaya, Zagryzovo (Kharkov region), Nadiya (Lugansk People's Republic), Olivovsky Yar, and Serebryansky forestry. Two AFU counter-attacks were repelled.
The AFU losses amounted to up to 540 troops, two armoured personnel carriers, four pickup trucks, a UK-made 155mm Braveheart self-propelled artillery system, a UK-made 155mm FH-70 howitzer, a U.S.-made 155mm M-198 howitzer, U.S.-made 155mm M-777 howitzer, a U.S.-made 105mm M-119 gun, six 122mm D-30 howitzers, an Italian-made 105mm Melara Mod 56 howitzer. Two Zakhist-AF and Anklav electronic warfare stations were eliminated.
The Yug Group of Forces took more advantageous lines. Russian units hit formations of two AFU mechanised brigades, one motorised infantry brigade, one marine brigade, and one territorial defence brigade close to Kurakhovo, Novoyelizavetovka, Ostrovskoye, and Dalneye (Donetsk People's Republic). Two counter-attacks of AFU units were repelled.
The AFU losses amounted to up to 225 troops, two armoured fighting vehicles, and a 122mm D-30 howitzer.
The Tsentr Group of Forces improved the tactical situation. Russian units engaged manpower and materiel of two mechanised brigades, one jaeger brigade, one motorised infantry brigade, one assault brigade of the AFU, one naval infantry brigade, and two national guard brigades close to Dzerzhinsk, Dimitrov, Shevchenko, Novopustynka, Starye Terny, Novaya Poltavka, and Shcherbinovka (Donetsk People's Republic). Four counter-attacks launched by AFU assault detachments were repelled.
The enemy lost up to 365 troops, an armoured fighting vehicle, three motor vehicles, a 152mm D-20 gun, three 152mm Msta-B howitzers, and three 122mm D-30 howitzers.
The Vostok Group of Forces continued advancing to the depth of the AFU defences. Strikes were delivered on formations of two mechanised brigades of the AFU and one territorial defence brigade close to Vremevka and Sukhiye Yaly (Donetsk People's Republic). One counter-attack launched by an AFU assault detachment was repelled.
The AFU losses amounted to up to 150 troops, two armoured fighting vehicles, three motor vehicles, a Polish-made 155mm Krab self-propelled artillery system, a 152mm 2S3 Akatsiya self-propelled artillery system, and a 122mm D-30 howitzer.
The Dnepr Group of Forces engaged manpower and hardware of two territorial defence brigades close to Antonovka (Kherson region) and Malaya Tokmachka (Zaporozhye region).
The AFU losses amounted to up to 35 troops and three motor vehicles.
Operational-Tactical Aviation, attack unmanned aerial vehicles, Missile Troops and Artillery of the Russian Groups of Forces have engaged three depots of unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as hit clusters of enemy manpower and military hardware in 153 areas during the day.
Air defence units shot down six U.S.-made HIMARS MLRS projectiles and 60 fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles.
In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, 649 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 37,693 unmanned aerial vehicles, 586 anti-aircraft missile systems, 19,784 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, 1,500 MLRS combat vehicles, 19,574 field artillery guns and mortars, and 29,206 units of support military vehicles have been neutralised.
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue the operation to neutralise an enemy group, which broke into the territory of Kursk region.
During offensive actions, units of the Sever Group of Forces inflicted fire damage on formations of three mechanised brigades, one heavy mechanised brigade, two tank brigades, two air assault brigades, one naval infantry brigade, and two territorial defence brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near Viktorovka, Guyevo, Kurilovka, Lebedevka, Leonidovo, Malaya Loknya, Martynovka, Nikolayevo-Daryino, Nikolsky, Russkoye Porechnoye, and Sverdlikovo.
Operational-Tactical and Army aviation and artillery inflicted fire damage on AFU manpower and hardware close to Aleksandriya, Gogolevka, Kruglenkoye, Mirny as well as Basovka, Belovody, Veselovka, Zhuravka, Ivolzhanskoye, Malaya Rybitsa, Miropolye, Sennoye, and Yunakovka in Sumy region.
Over the past 24 hours, the enemy losses amounted to more than 200 troops, a tank, a U.S.-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, an armoured fighting vehicle, seven motor vehicles, two artillery guns, a mortar, and an electronic warfare station. Three AFU servicemen surrendered.
Since the beginning of hostilities in Kursk region, the AFU losses amounted to more than 40,460 troops, 240 tanks, 178 infantry fighting vehicles, 125 armoured personnel carriers, 1,253 armoured fighting vehicles, 1,131 motor vehicles, 311 artillery guns, 40 MLRS launchers, including 11 of HIMARS and six of MLRS made by the USA, 13 anti-aircraft missile launchers, seven transport-loading vehicles, 74 EW stations, 13 counter-battery warfare radars, four air defence radars, 27 units of engineering and other materiel, including 13 counterobstacle vehicles, one UR-77 mine clearing vehicle, six armoured recovery vehicles, and one command post vehicle.
The operation to neutralise the AFU units is in progress.
by Artemy Sharapov
After the immediate collapse of the Syrian Arab Republic, ruled by the Assad dynasty, the country, which was stitched together in the 20th century from a multitude of ethnic, clan-territorial and religious “patches”, began to fall into the past. And not only into the pre-Assad past, but also into the era before the Turkish invasion of the 16th century.
Before the Ottomans brought their Levantine vilayets (provinces) into submission with an iron fist, this part of the eastern Mediterranean and northern Mesopotamia was the scene of a war of all against all. And interesting ghosts have begun to emerge from that past.
Many observers have noticed that when the so-called "independent" Syrian militants now threaten war against their "colleagues" who are directly supported by Turkey, they use the word "Mongol", which is offensive to any Arab, meaning "irreconcilable enemy" and "stranger". The phrase from the press release of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham* militants during the capture of Aleppo, when the victors immediately began civil strife, looked completely unexpected: "You are an army of Tatars and Mongols, we will not spare any of you."
For a person even well acquainted with the history of the Middle Ages, the invasion of the Tatar-Mongols is associated first of all with the Battle of Kalka and the enslavement of Russia, with the devastation of Central Asia by the hordes of Genghis Khan, at most - with the Battle of Liegnitz, when the Polish knights, Templars and Hospitallers stopped the rush of the noyons - the "generals" of the Great Khan "to the last sea". But the Middle East?
However, it is here that the "almkol" - the Mongols - left perhaps a greater and more tenacious memory than in Russia and the Eurasian steppe. To understand many of the events currently taking place in the disintegrated Syria, we should recall the events of 800 years ago.
Yellow Crusade to the West
By the end of 1224 AD, or 621 AH according to the Islamic calendar, the Mongols had completed their conquest of Central Asia. Having caused terrible devastation and destroyed dozens of cities, many of which were never rebuilt, Genghis Khan created a new ulus on the captured lands and returned to the steppes. Genghis's successors temporarily halted their expansion to the west, concentrating on the final subjugation of Rus', the countries of Southeast Asia, and the Indian kingdoms.
In 1253, a kurultai was held at the headquarters of the Great Khan, where the grandson and successor of the great Genghis Khan, Mongke, gave orders to his younger brother Hulagu : to prepare a campaign to Persia and further - to Jerusalem itself. Hulagu was given a large-scale task: to subjugate the Arab states and all the territories lying between Persia and the Mediterranean Sea to the Horde. But it is interesting that part of the Mongolian army also had religious motives for the campaign to the West.
By the middle of the 13th century, most Mongols still retained their ancestors' faith in the Eternal Sky - Tengri and the spirits subordinate to him and, despite all their religious tolerance, were distrustful of the preaching of Islam among their own. However, part of the horde had professed Nestorian Christianity since ancient times.
The teaching itself, named after its founder, Archbishop Nestorius of Constantinople, was banned in Byzantium by the Second Ecumenical Council back in 431. However, followers of Nestorianism settled outside the empire - in the Middle East, Armenia, Iran, and reached modern China and Mongolia. One of the main companions of Genghis Khan, Wang Khan, the leader of the Kerait tribe, belonged to the Nestorian faith. In subsequent years, the Nestorians played an important role in the politics of the Horde.
This is most likely where the legend that has long been current in Europe comes from, that in the east, beyond the lands of the “wicked Hagarenes” – Muslims, there is a Christian kingdom of the sovereign-presbyter John, who is ready to come to the aid of his brothers in Christ.
Although Hulagu, who was entrusted with leading the campaign to the Middle East, was not a Christian, his wife, Van Khan's granddaughter Dokuz Khatun, and many of his confidants adhered to this religion. The future ruler of the empire patronized the Nestorians and made rich donations to churches and monasteries. The Christian part of the horde was in favor of going to the Holy Land and, no more and no less, liberating the Holy Sepulcher from the hands of the Arabs. When speaking about the Mongol conquest of the Middle East, a number of historians often use the term "Yellow Crusade".
Hulagu and Dokuz Khatun. Manuscript of Jami at-tawarikh, 14th century
The legend of Prester John probably had a direct reason. According to a number of sources, before the start of the campaign, the Mongols entered into an agreement with the King of France Louis IX, who was preparing the Seventh Crusade at that time to recapture Jerusalem. The rulers of Georgia and Armenia and representatives of other Christian communities also joined Hulagu's army. A huge army of several tens of thousands of people set out from Mongolia to the west, but it only reached the borders of Persia in 1256.
It is also interesting that the campaign that destroyed Persia and the Middle East began… partly at the request of Middle Eastern rulers. And also partly for religious reasons.
Assassins Creed
The Baghdad Caliphs, the rulers of the Abbasid dynasty, traditionally considered Persia and Central Asia to be part of the great Caliphate. But by the 12th–13th centuries, the Abbasid Empire, a state of scholars and artists, celebrated in the tales of the Thousand and One Nights, was in decline. Present-day Syria, Iraq, the lands of the Kurds and Turks were a conglomerate of warring emirates that had yet to dislodge the “Franks” — the Crusaders — who held Palestine.
And in the east, in Iran, a new threat was brewing. Here, a new radical Shiite movement was gaining popularity: the Ismaili Nizari. Back in 1090, the sheikh of one of the Nizari sects, Hasan ibn Sabbah, with a group of fanatically devoted followers, captured the mountain fortress of Alamut in northern Iran.
It is believed that Ibn Sabbah, nicknamed the Old Man of the Mountain, reinforced his sermons by distributing a narcotic potion based on hashish to his students, making them more suggestible. This is where the name "hashishins" - hashish smokers - came from. This word entered European culture in a slightly altered form - "assassins". The order of assassins from the Alamut castle is still remembered today - it is enough to recall the popular series of games Assassin's Creed - "Assassin's Creed". And for a political murder or terrorist act in English there is still a learned word - assassination.
The credo of the followers of the Mountain Elder consisted of renouncing their personality for the sake of a higher goal, unquestioning obedience to the sheikh - and, as a consequence, a willingness to participate in “targeted liquidations” of those whom the Elder called the enemy of the teaching.
The heirs of Ibn Sabbah who ruled in Alamut captured another dozen fortresses in today's Iran, Iraq and Syria, mostly in hard-to-reach mountain valleys. The network of fortified castles became a stronghold of the sect. And the feuding Middle Eastern rulers did not skimp on offerings to the rulers of Alamut in order to eliminate their competitors - who could always be visited by a ruthless fanatical "liquidator". Thus the shadow of the "elders of the mountain" covered the entire Middle East.
The Assassins, who had settled in the mountains around the modern Iranian city of Qazvin, were harassing the new Persian subjects of the Horde with their raids. And then the ruler of Qazvin turned to Khan Mongke with a request to send troops to protect against - as they would say today - terrorist threats.
Baghdad was told not to joke about war
By the time of the Yellow Crusade, the golden age of the Assassins had long since passed. The Mongols were not particularly intimidated by the sinister reputation of the sect, they guarded their commanders zealously, and they did not stand on ceremony with the mountain fortresses of the Assassins - they consistently and effectively razed them to the ground. The sinister castle of Alamut was no exception, of which only the foundation remained, excavated by archaeologists.
The road to Baghdad was open to Hulagu. And – as with the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and their attempts to “enter” Syria in the 2010s – the fight against terrorism was just a cover for plans to establish dominance in the Middle East.
Moreover, the chaos that reigned there made the task easier. The Arab caliphs submitted to the power of the Turkish Seljuks and Egyptian Mamelukes, but for now they retained the nominal title of leaders of the Muslim world. The capital of the caliphate, Baghdad, remained the center of sciences and arts. The Abbasids still, albeit nominally, claimed supreme power in a huge region from Tibet to Spain. Which categorically did not suit the Mongols, who believed that the only source of power was the Great Khan.
Having finished destroying Alamut, Hulagu founded a new ulus on the captured lands, after which he addressed a message to the Caliph of Baghdad, al-Mustazim, demanding that he recognize the authority of the Horde. According to legend, the commander of the faithful responded arrogantly to the message of the Mongols, believing that hordes of infidel nomads from somewhere on the edge of the world could not give orders to the descendant of the Prophet. Of course, this was a fatal mistake.
From conquered Persia, the Mongol army moved south and reached Baghdad in 1258. Hulagu decided to split the army and sent some warriors across the Tigris River to besiege Baghdad from both sides at the same time. The Caliph's troops managed to inflict several defeats on the army that had crossed, but then the Mongols used a military trick: they lured the enemy into a narrow valley, after which they opened one of the dams on the Tigris. The Arab army was washed away by the raging stream of water and destroyed. Baghdad was left without protection.
Chinese technology decided the fate of the caliphate
By the end of January 1258, Chinese military advisers and "technical specialists" in Hulagu's army had completed the construction of siege engines, after which the Mongols launched an assault. Gradually, the conquerors managed to capture several city towers, after which the caliph decided to surrender the city. The capitulation, however, did not save the Abbasid capital.
On Hulagu's orders, the city was subjected to brutal devastation. Arab and Persian historians testify to hundreds of thousands killed and enslaved. The Mongols burned famous libraries and educational institutions, so that the Tigris River was "black with washed-off ink and red with the blood of murdered scholars." Palaces and mosques were razed to the ground, city fortifications were razed, and the surviving inhabitants were enslaved. However, the greatest damage was done to the region's economy.
The Fall of Baghdad. Illustration to Rashid ad-Din's Jami' at-tawarikh
The Mongols swept across Mesopotamia, destroying the unique canal system that had been built over thousands of years. The territory of modern Iraq was turned into a desert unsuitable for agriculture. The conquest of Baghdad ended the imperial Arab state.
But despite the successes achieved, the main goal of the Yellow Crusade was never achieved.
Having destroyed Baghdad and rolled through Mesopotamia, burning everything in its path, Hulagu's horde reached the northern borders of modern Israel. Here the Mongols learned of the collapse of the Seventh Crusade and the capture of the French King Louis. Without the help of Western allies, the march on Jerusalem could have turned into a disaster for the Mongol army, which had already broken away far from its "rear". As a result, the conquerors returned to the conquered Persian lands, where one of the uluses of the Great Horde existed for a long time under the rule of Hulagu's descendants.
Elder Hasan and his disciples
For the Arab world, this campaign of the Turco-Mongol army had almost the same consequences as the invasion of Batu for Rus'. Since then, the "army of the Tatars and Mongols" has become a synonym for barbarism.
The Arabs who survived the invasion were subjugated by the Turks, once again reverting to the tribal system. Therefore, when the Arabs call someone a Mongol, they are talking about an eternal enemy with whom it is impossible to negotiate - only to fight.
With Syria's current collapse into archaism, this attitude towards armed "political opponents" will only increase.
And the war zone that the former Syrian Arab Republic has become, alas, could become a breeding ground for terrorism, a phenomenon that appeared in the East long before the Muslim Brotherhood* and, even more so, Al-Qaeda*. Osama bin Laden or the ISIS* “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi were merely good students of Hassan ibn Sabbah.
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin.
This film is a mix of testimonials in Russian and English for Russel Bentley, an American fugitive drug runner from Minnesota, who insinuated himself in the pro Russian militia in Donbass region.
On a technical note, rutube.ru has really improved to the point it is possible to embed its videos.
[ColonelCassad] A documentary about American volunteer Russell Bentley (call sign "Texas"), who in 2014 came from the USA to Donbass, where he stayed, linking his fate with the DPR. The film was shot by people who personally knew Russell.
In 2024, "Texas" was killed by a group of people from the 5th Brigade, who are now on trial in Donetsk.
[PJMedia] Diversity is our strength and all that, but what the multicultural ethos has really done to the United States and the countries of Western Europa ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... is fill them with large numbers of people who hold radically different values from those that the native population generally holds. If this isn’t a recipe for conflict, what is? A Moslemholy man in Kansas City recently illustrated one potential source of that conflict, unintentionally supplying a warning about the dangers of mass migration without assimilation.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported that in a recent Friday sermon he preached at the Kansas City Islamic Center, the imam Muhammad Tarife told the congregants: "My dear respected brothers, know that you were created in this world in a nation that should be a leading nation. Allah says in the Qur’an: ’You are a nation that was brought to people. You are the best nation. Why? Because you call for that which is good. You encourage others to do good.’"
Tarife was referring to this Qur’an passage: "You are the best of people that has been raised up for mankind. You command what is right and forbid what is wrong, and you believe in Allah." (Qur’an 3:110) While the Qur’an calls Moslems "the best of people," it calls non-Moslems "the most vile of created beings" (98:6). Also, Moslems are "the best of people" because they "command what is right and forbid what is wrong." This is the basis for the widespread assumption among many Moslemmigrants colonists in the West that they need have no respect for the laws of the vile unbelievers, and need adhere only to the law of Allah. This does not exactly make for mutual respect and peaceful coexistence, as the skyrocketing crime rates in Europe attest.
After this succinct statement of non-assimilation, Tarife continued: "Oh, Allah, annihilate the criminal Zionists — those of whom are Zionists and those who are not. Oh, Allah, count them, kill them one by one, and do not spare a single one of them, for they are no match for You. Oh, Allah, allow us torment them with our own hands, humiliate them, grant us victory over them, and heal the hearts of the believers."
As if that weren’t bad enough in itself, Tarife also prays: "Oh, Allah, annihilate the criminal Zionists — those of whom are Zionists and those who are not." This apparently means that he wants Allah to annihilate the leftist Jews who are not Zionists along with the Zionists.
Tarife’s prayer that Allah would kill the Zionists one by one is all too common. In late November, a Moslem entered a Montreal Jewish business and screamed "We’re gonna kill you one by one." Just weeks ago, the Paleostinian Authority Supreme Shari’ah Court Director Alaa Dweikat prayed: "Strike the aggressive Zionists. O Allah, kill them one by one and count them one by one, and do not leave [even] one."
In August 2024 came this report: ’Paleostinian’ jihadis heed Sharia judge’s call regarding the Jews, to ’kill them one by one.’ In Louisiana in June 2024, a holy man prayed: "Oh Allah, annihilate the Jews and the Chris...Oh Allah, count them, kill them one by one." In Vienna in February 2024, a Moslemholy man prayed for the Jews, "O Allah, kill them all and leave none of them alive." In Montreal in late October 2023, a Moslemholy man called on Allah to "kill the enemies of the people of Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... and to spare none of them."
This is not a newly minted prayer fad. In Berlin in July 2014, a holy man prayed: "Oh Allah, destroy the Zionist Jews...Count them and kill them to the very last one...Make them suffer terribly." A Quebec imam prayed in 2014: "O Allah, destroy the accursed Jews...O Allah, kill them one by one." And in Australia in July 2013: "Oh Allah, count the Buddhists and the Hindus one by one. Oh Allah, count them and kill them to the very last one."
Examples of this kind could be multiplied endlessly. What other religion has common and frequently repeated prayers calling upon the deity to kill the perceived enemies of the faithful, one by one?
Even worse, the Qur’an tells Moslems: "Fight them, and Allah will punish them by your hands, and he will lay them low and give you victory over them, and he will heal the hearts of people who are believers. And he will remove the anger of their hearts." (9:14-15). If Allah punishes the unbelievers by the hands of the believers, Tarife’s prayer that Allah would kill the Zionists could conceivably be understood as a direct call to violence.
Will authorities in Kansas City treat it as such? Of course not. That would be "Islamophobic." We can only hope that no one in Tarife’s congregation will decide to "remove the anger" from his heart by allowing Allah to use him to punish his enemies.
[FoxNews] ABC News will pay $15 million as a charitable contribution to a Trump presidential foundation and museum
ABC News and its top anchor George Stephanopoulos have reached a settlement with Donald Trump in his defamation suit, which will result in the news network paying the president-elect $15 million.
The settlement was publicly filed on Saturday, revealing that the two parties have come to an agreement and avoided a costly trial. According to the settlement, ABC News will pay $15 million as a charitable contribution to a "Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for Plaintiff, as Presidents of the United States of America have established in the past." Additionally, the network will pay $1 million in Trump's attorney fees.
So in the end all President Trump was out of pocket was time? Sweet!
Stephanopoulos and ABC News also had to issue statements of "regret" as an editor's note at the bottom of a March 10, 2024, online article, about comments made earlier this year that prompted Trump to file the defamation lawsuit. The note reads, "ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements regarding President Donald J. Trump made during an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 2024."
ABC News said the network was "pleased" to have concluded the case.
I’ll bet.
"We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing," an ABC News spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
Trump filed a defamation suit against Stephanopoulos after he asserted that Trump was found "liable for rape" in a civil case during a contentious interview with Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., last March.
After playing a clip of Mace discussing being a victim of rape, Stephanopoulos asked her, "How do you square your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony we just saw?"
"You've endorsed Donald Trump for president. Judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape," Stephanopoulos said, alluding to the legal victory by Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll.
Stephanopoulos repeated that claim ten times during his spat with Mace, despite the fact that a jury actually determined Trump was liable for "sexual abuse," which has a distinct definition under New York law.
After the federal jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse, but not rape, Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in a later ruling that just because Carroll failed to prove rape "within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’"
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/15/2024
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Plus, there are numerous reports Trump plans to donate the $15M Award to Charities.
REPORT: Female inmates forced to share shower with biological male at Shakopee women’s prison
"He is fully a man, and still has a man’s body part attached to him. He acts like a man, sounds like a man, behaves like a man," one woman told Reduxx. pic.twitter.com/V0vhq0z5pU
[IsraelTimes] The ancient artifact, which dates to the 9th century BCE, is on view through January 5
Last year, New York City’s Jewish Museum imported a new director from the Israel Museum. Now, it’s brought the oldest archaeological evidence of the existence of King David from the Jerusalem museum, too.
The Tel Dan Stele, a stone fragment long held exclusively by the Israel Museum, is on view at the Jewish Museum on the Upper East Side until January 5.
A 12-by-13-inch chunk of basalt, the Tel Dan Stele is a 9th-century BCE stone document acknowledging the military victories of a person whom scholars believe to be King Hazael of Aram, an area in contemporary Syria that includes what is today Damascus. One of those victories was over a descendant of David, the king of ancient Israel.
When it was discovered in northern Israel in 1993, the Tel Dan Stele became the earliest evidence beyond the Bible that King David was a real figure.
"There is no archaeological evidence surviving from the First Temple," said James Snyder, who took the helm of the Jewish Museum a year ago. "There is from the Second Temple, and that’s at the Israel Museum. From the First Temple, what therefore becomes important are these references to this archaeological evidence of the time of the First Temple, and of evidence that reinforces biblical history."
The First Temple, believed to have been built by David’s son King Solomon in the 10th century BCE, was destroyed during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in 586 BCE.
"What makes the Tel Dan Stele so important is that it’s the oldest archaeological evidence of the existence of the House of David, which is the sort of touchstone or fountainhead for the unfolding thereafter of Judaism, Christianity and then Islam," Snyder added.
In fact, it’s so old that the Aramaic used in the stele was still being written in the Phoenician alphabet — a language that predates Aramaic.
The ancient inscription refers to the "House of David," in translation saying, "[I killed Jeho]ram son of [Ahab] king of Israel, and [I] killed [Ahaz]iahu son of [Jehoram kin]g of the House of David."
Before coming to the Jewish Museum, the stele was on display for nearly two months at a biblical archaeology museum in Oklahoma. It was previously displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, just blocks from the Jewish Museum, a decade ago. (A replica is also on display at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC.)
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the Temple Mount Sifting Project (which began about 20 years ago continues to this day) has resulted in many artifacts from the 1st Temple period (in contradiction to the article). The artifacts are all fairly small including seal impressions, stone weights, pieces of jugs and bowls, etc.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
12/15/2024 0:26
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The new leadership of Syria needs to carefully analyze the current situation in the country before making political decisions. This was stated on December 14 by the leader of the armed Syrian opposition Ahmed al-Sharaa (known by the nickname Abu Muhammad al-Julani ).
In an interview with SyriaTV, he noted that at the moment, Syria needs to move from "revolutionary actions" to state building, so the country needs to create state and legal institutions. In addition, the leader of the armed Syrian opposition called for guarantees of rights and justice for all citizens of Syria. At the same time, he stated that the Syrian Defense Ministry is going to disband all groups operating in the country.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, on December 14, al-Sharaa stated that the new authorities of the republic are giving Russia the opportunity to reconsider relations with the Syrian people. He added that Damascus does not intend to enter into conflict with Israel.
On December 8, Bashar al-Assad resigned as president of Syria amid an offensive by the armed opposition. He and his family arrived in Russia, where they were granted asylum.
On December 11, the press secretary of the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov, called for proceeding from the realities that have developed in Syria. He emphasized that Russia at one time helped the republic cope with terrorists and move towards stabilizing the situation. After that, the Syrian authorities under Assad's leadership were themselves engaged in developing the country.
The leader of the armed Syrian opposition, Ahmed al-Sharaa (known by the nickname Abu Mohammed al-Julani), said on December 14 that he was ready to run for president if asked.
"I will run for president of the Syrian Republic if citizens or people around me ask me to," he told Al Araby TV.
Al-Sharaa also promised to disband all armed groups in the country. He said that there would be no weapons in Syria that would remain outside state control.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, earlier on December 14, al-Sharaa stated that the new authorities of the republic are giving Russia the opportunity to reconsider relations with the Syrian people. He added that Damascus does not intend to enter into conflict with Israel.
On December 8, Bashar al-Assad resigned as president of Syria amid an offensive by the armed opposition. He and his family arrived in Russia, where they were granted asylum.
On December 11, the press secretary of the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov, called for proceeding from the realities that have developed in Syria. He emphasized that Russia at one time helped the republic cope with terrorists and move towards stabilizing the situation. After that, the Syrian authorities under Assad's leadership were themselves engaged in developing the country.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Olesya Orlenko
[REGNUM] On December 13, French President Emmanuel Macron appointed a new prime minister, his fourth this year. After much hesitation, he chose centrist François Bayrou. While the new head of government considers candidates for ministerial posts, the French are discussing how long he will hold on to the job.
François Bayrou began his political career in the early 1980s. During this time, he served as a member of parliament, a member of the European Parliament, and as Minister of Education under Presidents François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac.
He also ran for president in 2002, 2007 and 2012. In 2007, he and his party, the Democratic Movement (MoDem), created specifically for the elections, even took third place in terms of the number of votes received – 18.57%, which, however, did not allow him to advance to the second round.
In 2017, he entered into an alliance with Emmanuel Macron, supporting his candidacy for the French presidency. Since then, Bayrou has been considered a loyal ally of the head of state. His name was mentioned among potential candidates for the post of prime minister after the resignation of Michel Barnier. However, Macron apparently made his choice at the very last minute. And he made it largely after Bayrou’s insistent requests.
This version explains the nervousness that the new prime minister clearly felt when he delivered his speech during the ceremony of handing over power from his predecessor. In his hands he held a sheet of paper with handwritten outlines of his speech, obviously hastily written. He did not thank the president for the trust he had shown. Instead, he spoke a lot about the difficulties associated with the post he was now taking on. And they were all serious.
The first problem is related to the state budget. The fact that this document was not adopted this year will lead to additional expenses starting from January 1, 2025. As a result, whatever the budget proposed by the new government, it will be physically impossible to fit the savings proposed by Michel Barnier into it.
Consequently, the national debt will only increase, which will have a detrimental effect on both the domestic economy and France's position in the European Union. It is not for nothing that the American rating agency Moody's, a few hours before the announcement of the new prime minister, lowered France's credit rating and expressed doubts about the country's ability to quickly improve the state of public finances.
Also important is the question of whether Bayrou will be able to secure a parliamentary majority and avoid another vote of no confidence. This is what France Insoumise
….a leftwing French political party launched in 2016 by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, then a Member of the European Parliament and former co-president of the Left Party...
of the left-wing NUPES coalition is insisting on, assuring that many other members of this group are ready to support such a proposal.
Indeed, the majority of the left shares the view that Macron has once again failed to learn from his mistakes and continues to act as before, blind to the obstacles that arise. However, for now, the leaders of the Communists, Greens and Socialists have
…all idiots by definition…
said that they will refrain from trying to immediately dismiss Bayrou. Although the latter have said that they will refuse ministerial posts in the new government if they are offered them.
The right has also adopted a wait-and-see attitude. The so-called independence that Bayrou has always tried to demonstrate is mistrusted by them. In particular, they voice concerns that the new head of government will be too favorable to the left. After all, in 2012 he called on his supporters to vote for François Hollande in the second round.
The position of the right will largely depend on the first steps of the new prime minister. An important moment will be the choice of the Minister of the Interior: the "Republicans" are very much counting on Bayrou leaving their party member Bruno Retaillo in this position.
Unfortunately for Bayrou, he has neither a wide circle of political supporters nor the goodwill of the press. His performance as a politician is rated average.
Since 2020, he has headed the High Commissioner for Planning, an advisory agency that is supposed to work on optimizing the activities of public services in certain areas. Many officials consider the existence of this agency useless and pointless, because the recommendations coming from it are extremely rare and superficial.
Moreover, the prime minister is under threat of trial. François Bayrou was tried on exactly the same charge as the head of the National Rally parliamentary faction, Marine Le Pen: creating fictitious positions in the European Parliament, the funding of which was used as salaries for members of their parties. Such employees, who appear on the payroll but do not exist in reality, have been called "snowdrops" since Soviet times.
In connection with this process, Bayrou even had to leave the post of Minister of Justice, to which he was appointed after Macron’s election in 2017, where he held it for about two months.
The court found that there was no evidence against Bayrou, but some members of his MoDem party were convicted. For example, Jean-Luc Benamiat received a 30,000 euro fine, a 12-month suspended sentence and a three-year ban on running.
By the way, Le Pen faces five years in prison, three of which are suspended, a ban on being a candidate in elections for five years and a fine of 300 thousand euros. But the justice system continues to remind that it is not sure of Bayrou's innocence, and a new trial may begin in the near future.
The job of Prime Minister of France looks particularly unattractive these days. The consequences of any decision will be negative, and attempts to rely on different political forces will cause discontent among their opponents.
At the same time, budget expenditures on social security will inevitably be reduced, causing popular discontent. This is confirmed by the recent speech of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. He complained that Europe spends too much on pensions and health care, at a time when it is necessary to switch to “wartime thinking” and increase funding for the Alliance from 2% to 4% of GDP.
So only skillful political maneuvering can save François Bayrou from resignation.
Except that it sounds like he is neither skillful nor clever. Eventually it will comedown to the candidates on the right.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] A hunter fell victim to a bear due to problems with his gun in a forest in the Kirovsky District of Primorsky Krai. This was reported on December 14 by the regional forestry ministry in its Telegram channel.
It is specified that the incident occurred on December 13. A man with all the necessary hunting permits found a bear's den and fired a shot. The animal jumped out, but the man was unable to fire a second shot because the gun jammed. The bear inflicted fatal injuries on the hunter and disappeared into the forest. The man died.
According to preliminary data, the bear did not receive gunshot wounds. Hunting inspectors, together with the Kirov public organization of hunters and fishermen, are tracking the bear with specially trained dogs. If the predator has headed towards populated areas and the road, it will most likely be eliminated. If the bear has gone deep into the taiga, it does not pose a threat to residents. Hunters and people in nearby villages have been informed of the situation and have been given safety recommendations.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] Four people, including law enforcement officers, were killed in a shooting in the suburbs of Dunkirk, France. This was reported by the BFMTV channel.
"Four people were killed in a shooting in Longs-Plage, near Dunkirk, on Saturday, December 14," the TV channel reported.
According to preliminary information, two security agents and two migrants were killed in the shooting in different places. It is noted that a man who confessed to these murders surrendered to the police. In addition, the man confessed to another murder in the commune of Vormue.
Law enforcement agencies are currently conducting an investigation.
Not sure why Regnum conflated that report of a jihadi attack in France with this one in Israel, but anyway:
As reported by the Regnum news agency, on December 12, a 12-year-old child and three adults were injured in a terrorist attack with shooting at a passenger bus near Jerusalem. It was specified that the terrorist opened fire on a passenger bus on Highway 60 near Beit Jala. Medics and paramedics are working at the scene of the attack, the victims are being sent to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital
On October 6, a man attacked people in the Israeli city of Be'er Sheva in several places - near the central bus station and in a cafe. He shot at passers-by and stabbed them. As a result, nine people were injured. In addition, a 25-year-old woman died as a result of the shooting.
MSN’s report from Sky News adds context fortheFrench attack:Not sure why Regnum conflated that report of a jihadi attack in France with this one in Israel, but anyway
Shocked and bruised, a survivor of a shooting at a migrant camp near Dunkirk on Saturday has told Sky News how he saw his friends murdered by "the angel of death".
Two migrants and two security guards were shot dead by a 22-year-old French gunman at a migrant camp in Loon-Plage, with one other victim targeted in a nearby town, according to local media.
The two migrants had just returned from the coast after being rescued in the middle of the English Channel after a failed attempt to reach Britain.
Matin, a 25-year-old Kurdish migrant, said that "a guy came with a shotgun and showered us with bullets". Shotgun bullets? Tell us more!
When we asked if anything had provoked the attack, he said he did not know any reason. "The gunman came and, all of sudden, drew a shotgun.
"Initially, we thought he would fire in the air and then he loaded the gun and aimed at us. We saw Azrael [the Islamic Angel of Death].
"We saw death with our own eyes. It was God's will that we survived. In one day, we saw death twice."
The two men, named Hamid and Hadi, were walking along with their two friends, Rashad and Matin. All four, aged around 25, were Kurds who had spent around a month living in camps near the northern French coast.
Sky News spoke to Matin by telephone after he gave evidence to the French police, describing a green car used by the killer, who he described as a white French man wearing glasses.
"He fired around 15 bullets; Hamid was hit in the head and Hadi was also hit. Rashad was shot at twice, but he wasn't hit. We managed to hide."
Matin said the four men had previously spent eight hours at sea trying to get to Britain on a dinghy that was palpably unsuitable. The boat set off with 85 people on board before, he said, the police took 50 people off.
"We reached international waters," said Matin, "then our dinghy fell apart and we almost drowned. After five minutes in the water, thank God the police reached us - we had no life jackets.
"They pulled us out of the water, we were soaking wet. We got back to the land and went to collect clothes [from a charity] as our clothes were wet. We were dying of cold.
"We were close to the camp when this man turns up and gets out of the car. He fired at us. Me and Rashad were not hit. Hamid was hit in the head and Hadi in his stomach.
"I have to talk to their families, but I don't know what to say. Hamid had sold his house to get to Europe. Me, I feel hollow inside now.
"I have seen death twice in a day and it's too much. I don't know what to do."
Text taken from the Telegram channel of S. Shilov SYRIAN "BLACK GOLD"
Before the war, Syria was an insignificant oil exporter – production was only 0.5% of the world total. This gave the budget 25-30% of income. And it was not a very rich country.
However, before the war, it covered all its consumption and exported "black gold". The production record was about 600,000 barrels per day, but the figure has been steadily falling over the years. In 2010 – 383,000.
Many associate support for the protests in 2011 with a severe drought and problems in the economy. However, even without the drought and then the war, sooner or later, without investment in production, the budget would have lost significant export income.
Today, oil exports are out of the question – if you add up all the oil produced, including in the Kurdish territories, you get a maximum of about 116 thousand barrels per day.
In the current deplorable situation - with a destroyed industry, the "old" Syria of Assad consumes about 140,000 barrels per day. Oil consumption in the pre-war and calm 2010 was about 290,000 per day (a drop of more than two times).
Of these current 140,000 consumed, about 60,000 (over 40%) were imported by Iran by sea on credit, 16 thousand were produced by the Assad government (11.4% - a pittance!). Another 20,000 were given to him by the Kurds under the agreement - from sources I read that the volume was 30% of what was produced in the Kurdish territories. But no one in Damascus could check the volumes. Or did not really want to... You understand - in these matters people have many temptations.
The rest of the deficit of 44,000 (approximately 30%) the government sought on the black market... from the same Kurds. And here there were even more temptations to buy at one price and sell at another.
The government needed money for oil supplies from Iran and the Kurds. Given the temptations of the clans, for the population all this resulted in a constant depreciation of the national currency against the dollar, to hyperinflation. This is in addition to the unofficial levies on businesses and the population by the Syrian 4th Division and the like. And other problems in the economy.
But let's get back to the Kurds. There was a figure that production on their territory was 100,000. The fields themselves had previously been barbarically exploited by ISIS and many wells were essentially finished. But 100 thousand is the most optimistic figure. In 2020, the Minister of Oil and Mineral Resources of Syria described the situation as follows:
“Oil production in Syria reached 89,000 barrels per day. Of these, about 80,000 were stolen. That is, almost all the oil produced in the east of the country is stolen.”
And it is stolen by the Americans, sold through their company Delta Crescent under black schemes to the same Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan.
One of the beneficiaries of Delta Crescent is an ardent Russophobe and extremist - Republican Lindsey Graham.
He recently threatened sanctions against Turkey - what a coincidence - if pro-Turkish groups attack Kurdish territories. The senator's hat flares so brightly (like a gas torch) when he worries about the Kurds.
Now there is an attempt to agree between the Kurds and the new Syrian authorities - how the oil will be divided. This issue knocked out the previous government.
Meetings are underway between the Turks and the Americans. For the United States, in addition to business, oil is a lever of pressure on HTS and the new Syria. They will try to hold on to or bargain something from the Turks.
But in all cases, the oil produced inside Syria will not be enough under the current status quo. There are no reserves - and soon there will be problems with fuel. Because Iran has stopped supplying its 60,000 barrels per day.
They will have to import. Most likely, the new authorities will turn to Qatar for help.
Perhaps, for now they will supply it free of charge - the treasury of the new Syria is empty and there is nothing to pay with. Exports have also collapsed during the years of sanctions, like everything else.
So the mythical wealth of Syria in the form of oil is a fairy tale. Yes, this income is a profitable business for clans. But this is more a story about the redistribution by shadow players from the States, Damascus, Iraq, Turkey, "Syrian Kurdistan", etc.
Syria does not yet have any export potential in terms of oil. I read that Western companies will come and invest - but so far it is a theory. As well as statements about the Qatar pipeline. But oil will be needed now.
S. Shilov
Posted by: badanov ||
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Just Saying!🤔😎Breaking: DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is reportedly considering stepping down, seeking guarantees of immunity from any potential investigations when a future Trump administration takes office. I say Oh HELL NO! Trump needs to burn his ass for the bullshit he… pic.twitter.com/12x8kXqGVa
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2024
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#1
Immunity from what? I always thought he was doing everything on the up and up, so why should he need "immunity"? I guess I missed something along the way.
#2
A few months ago the House impeached him but the Senate blocked further proceedings. IMNSHO the new Congress should prioritize his actual impeachment and removal from office. This could happened in just a few days. However I doubt Congress will bother with that.
[ArsTechnica] Earlier this year, officials at US Space Command released a list of priorities and needs, and among the routine recitation of things like cyber defense, communications, and surveillance was a relatively new term: "integrated space fires."
This is a new phrase in the esoteric terminology the military uses to describe its activities. Essentially, "fires" are offensive or defensive actions against an adversary. The Army defines fires as "the use of weapon systems to create specific lethal and nonlethal effects on a target."
The inclusion of this term in a Space Command planning document was another signal that Pentagon leaders, long hesitant to even mention the possibility of putting offensive weapons in space for fear of stirring up a cosmic arms race, see the taboo of talking about space warfare as a thing of the past.
"While we've held it close to the vest before, some of that was just kind of hand-wringing," said Gen. Chance Saltzman, the top general in the Space Force, who also serves on the joint chiefs of staff. "It wasn't really something we needed to protect."
One reason for the change in how the military talks about warfare in space is that the nation's top two strategic adversaries—China and Russia—are already testing capabilities that could destroy or disable a US military satellite.
The Space Force was established nearly five years ago, in December 2019, to protect US interests in space. Satellites provide the military with intelligence data, navigation, communications, and support missile defense, and in the next few years, they will become even more crucial for weapons targeting and battle management.
This week, Saltzman laid out the military's view of offensive weapons in space in perhaps the plainest language yet.
“Space is a war-fighting domain," Saltzman said at the Space Force Association's Spacepower Conference in Orlando, Florida. "Ten years ago, I couldn’t say that. That’s the starting point. Think about that. In 2014, we had senior leaders start to talk about space and war in the same sentence. They got kind of berated by the senior leadership. So this is still a relatively new condition when we’re talking about war-fighting in space. I don't think we should underestimate the power of that."
AN ALERT POSTURE
Gen. Stephen Whiting, the four-star chief of US Space Command, identified "integrated space fires"—again, these are actual offensive or defensive attacks against an enemy vehicle—as his organization's most pressing need. These could be based in any domain—land, air, sea, or space—and aimed against targets within and above the atmosphere.
So what would these weapons look like? They might be electronic or cyber in nature, allowing US forces to hack a satellite or its ground-based support network. Russia has already done this, when hackers launched a cyberattack on a commercial European satellite communications network in 2022, the same day the country began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Then there's directed energy, which would use a laser beam to blind or dazzle satellite sensors in orbit. Directed energy weapons could be based on the ground or in space. There's another option that would involve one satellite sidling up next to an adversary's and using a claw or robotic arm to capture it and take control.
Finally, there are the kinds of space weapons that can blow a satellite out of the sky. These antisatellite weapons (ASATs) are perhaps the most low-tech solution—the United States, China, Russia, and India have openly demonstrated them—but they come with dangerous side effects.
For example, a Chinese ASAT missile test in 2007 destroyed one of the country's own satellites, creating more than 3,000 trackable debris objects in low-Earth orbit, the largest cloud of space debris in history. The United States performed a similar ASAT missile test against a satellite in 1985.
Destructive ASATs, like directed energy weapons, can be based on the ground or in space. In 2021, Russia launched a ground-based direct-ascent ASAT missile to take out one of its own satellites. The year before, Space Command reported Russia tested a space-based ASAT weapons system in which a Russian military satellite released a projectile moving fast enough to destroy another satellite if it made an impact.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[NewsFront] 21:10 Crews of T-80BV tanks of the "Southern" group of forces destroyed a stronghold of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in one of the areas of the special operation. 20:50 A Ukrainian UAV attacked a school bus in the Zaporizhia region; there were no children in the cabin, and there are no reports of casualties, the local administration reported.
19:08 Russian fighters have made significant progress in the Khar'kov region. As a result of the assault, half of the settlement of Lozovaya came under the control of the Russian Army.
19:00 FPV drone operators of the "East" group of forces daily strike against fortified structures, military equipment and enemy manpower in one of the areas of the special operation.
18:54 Explosions in Sumy district. Before that, there were reports of rockets in that direction.
18:41 The Russian Armed Forces are liberating the Kursk Region. Russian troops have entered the settlement of Russkoye Porechnoye, an assault is underway.
18:14 Enemy reports: “A potentially dangerous situation has developed for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Vrem'yevsk direction near Velyka Novosyolka.
On this section of the front, the Russian Armed Forces have advanced from the south to the highway that leads to the city from the Zaporizhia region - there are more than one and a half kilometers left to this road. Russian troops have even less time left to reach the highway that leads to the city from the north. Moreover, cutting both roads will mean the operational encirclement of Velyka Novosyolka."
17:57 The 152mm Giatsint-B crew destroyed a Ukrainian Armed Forces gun in the border area of the Kursk region –video.
17:40 Footage with the Russian tricolor from Elizavetovka.
The settlement is located in the same “pocket” south of Kurakhovo, which the Russian Armed Forces recently eliminated.
17:16 A crew of unmanned aerial vehicles from the Northern Fleet Marine Corps discovered and destroyed 122mm self-propelled gun "Acacia" 2S3 of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the right bank of the Dnieper in the Kherson region.
17:14 Operators of attack drones of the North group of forces destroyed Ukrainian Armed Forces manpower in a wooded area in the Khar'kov region.
Objective control means recorded hits on Ukrainian servicemen in real time.
16:10 Helicopter Ka-52m struck a Ukrainian stronghold in the border area of the Kursk region, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported.
16:05 Russian flag on the Kurakhovo administration –video.
15:58 Explosions thundered in the suburbs of Odessa, as well as in the Dnipropetrovsk and Kirovograd regions, Ukrainian media report. Air raid sirens are currently sounding in these regions.
15:45 Russian troops have occupied the city council building in the western part of the city of Kurakhovo in the DPR and raised a trilocol on it, Rogov reported.
15:31 Disruption of the rotation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces by forces of the 39th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 68th Army Corps in the area of the settlement of Konstantinopolskoye –video.
15:20 The situation south of Pokrovsk from "Frontovaya Ptichka":
Since early morning, Russian attack aircraft have advanced close to the settlements of Solenoe and Peschanoye. In the coming hours, the attack aircraft will begin to liberate them.
In addition, Russian Armed Forces soldiers are using heavy armored vehicles, including T-90M and T-72B3 tanks, to destroy enemy positions in the area of Novoolenovka and Dachenskoye.
The advance of the Russian Armed Forces is significant. The enemy does not have time to "dig in".
15:05 Footage of the assault actions of reconnaissance paratroopers from Ulan-Ude –video.
14:52 In the Khar'kov region, servicemen of the special forces unit of the North group of troops with the help of UAVs discovered a pickup truck with Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters heading to positions for rotation.
The detected target was quickly destroyed by the FPV strike drone crew.
14:02 Destruction of a M-113 APC and enemy vehicle.
Kamikaze drone operators of the 103rd Motorized Rifle Regiment, 150th Motorized Rifle Division, 8th Guards Army of the Russian Armed Forces have discovered and successfully destroyed an armored personnel carrier of Ukrainian militants along with its personnel.
An armored personnel vehicle, which the Ukrainian militants used for rotation, was also disabled. These actions significantly weakened the enemy and increased the effectiveness of Russian troops in the region.
13:55 UAV operators of the Southern Group of Forces discovered and struck personnel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, who were hiding in one of the dilapidated buildings of the private sector, and a strong point located in the adjacent forest belt. Pinpoint strikes on identified targets were carried out using FPV drones.
13:34 Between 11:30 and 12:40 Moscow time, an attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack using an aircraft-type UAV against targets on the territory of the Russian Federation was thwarted.
Air defense systems on duty destroyed five Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles over the territory of the Belgorod region and one over the territory of the Kursk region.
13:20 A Ukrainian Armed Forces plane was shot down by Russian air defense forces north of Kherson, reported the press secretary of the Kherson region governor Vasilenko.
13:16 The losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk direction in one day amounted to more than 200 soldiers, a tank and a Bradley infantry vehicle were destroyed, three Ukrainian soldiers surrendered, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.
13:05 UAV crews of the Southern group of troops are destroying fortifications and enemy manpower in the Kurakhovsky direction.
13:02 Enemy reports: “The Russian Armed Forces have driven out units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces from the western one-story buildings in Toretsk and, moving along the highway to Druzhkovka, have approached the spoil heap of small mine No. 10.”
12:53 Missiles hit targets in Pavlograd (Dnipropetrovsk region).
12:50 Russian naval infantry personnel captured a Ukrainian attack aircraft soldier who was mobilized despite a severe mental disorder, the Telegram channel “War Correspondents of the Russian Spring” reported.
49-year-old Dmitry has been ill since childhood. He has been diagnosed with a third-degree mental disorder. He speaks very poorly, thinks for a long time, and before saying something, he turns the thought over in his head, whispers it to himself, and then repeats it. It seems that he is talking to himself.
12:32 The Russian Armed Forces have destroyed three Ukrainian drone depots, as well as concentrations of enemy manpower and military equipment in 153 districts. The strikes were carried out by operational-tactical aviation, UAVs, missile forces and artillery, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.
Air defense systems shot down six US-made HIMARS rockets and 60 aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles.
12:30 Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 1,375 soldiers in a day, the Russian Defense Ministry reported. Units of the West and Center groups improved their tactical position, South took up more advantageous positions, and the East group of troops continued to advance into the depths of the enemy's defense.
12:28 In the Pokrovsk area, a Lancet strike liquidated Chief of Intelligence of the 25th Airborne Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Major Nikolai Dupeshko.
He participated in a program to retrain Ukrainian officers according to US Armed Forces standards, after which he was appointed to a high command position.
12:04 152mm howitzer "Giatsint-B" crew of the Crimean airborne artillerymen destroyed a Ukrainian Armed Forces weapon in the border area of Kursk Oblast.
11:34 Nine year old boy died after the Ukrainian Armed Forces struck a residential building near Belgorod with drones. The boy's mother and seven-month-old child, who were in the house at the time of the attack, were also wounded. They were taken to the hospital.
11:27 Between 10:20 and 10:40 Moscow time, an attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack using an aircraft-type UAV against targets on the territory of the Russian Federation was thwarted.
Two Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles were destroyed by air defense systems on duty over the territories of the Belgorod and Kursk regions.
11:22 As a result of artillery attack by Ukrainian Armed Forces terrorists in the center of Gorlovka, three civilians were wounded, the city mayor Ivan Prikhodko reports.
11:15 Enemy reports: “In the Kurakhovo direction, the Russian Armed Forces took control of the village of Annovka in the center of the “pocket” to the south of Kurakhovo and now control the entire territory of this “pocket”, which was previously held in the operational encirclement of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The Russian Armed Forces entered the village without any resistance, our main forces, which were able, withdrew from Annovka. There is no one else in the village except Russian servicemen, the loss of Annovka by Ukrainian forces will increase the pressure on Uspenovka, from which the Ukrainian Armed Forces will also have to withdraw."
11:05 Russian Armed Forces are advancing in the Kurakhovsky direction.
War correspondent Timofey Ermakov reported on the entry of Russian units into the village of Slavyanka after the liberation of the settlement of Zarya.
11:01 Group of Ukrainian Armed Forces military gave up due to artillery attack from his own side. This was reported by captured Ukrainian soldier Sergey Keshchuk.
10:54 Between 09:10 and 09:40 Moscow time, an attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack using an aircraft-type UAV against targets on the territory of the Russian Federation was thwarted.
Five Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles were destroyed over the territory of the Belgorod region by air defense systems on duty.
10:50 On the Rubtsovsk direction stopped a counterattack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces two kilometers west of Makeyevka. A total of 14 militants of the Kyiv territorial defense and an M-113 armored personnel carrier were destroyed.
10:28 Entry of Russian military personnel into the settlement of Annovka (Kurakhovskoye direction).
On frames: An assault group of the Russian Armed Forces takes up positions in the residential area of the village.
10:15 The Russian Armed Forces have resumed their offensive on Bolshaya Novosyolka.
Yuriy Podolyaka reported that in the area west of the Mokrye Yaly River, Russian troops advanced more than two km, approaching the Gulyaipole-Bolshaya Novosyolka highway.
This has created a critical situation for the Ukrainian Armed Forces garrison in Storozhev, which will likely be abandoned in the coming days.
10:04 Ukrainian Armed Forces UAVs are attacking the Belgorod region; five drones have been shot down in the last hour.
09:59 Ukrainian FPV drone attacked an apartment building in Shebekino.
09:50 Investigators of the Investigative Committee of Russia recorded another round of artillery attack of the territory of the DPR, carried out by armed formations of Ukraine.
Residential areas of the Central City and Nikitovsky districts of Gorlovka, as well as the Kievsky district of Donetsk, were subjected to shelling, with Ukrainian militants using 155mm caliber artillery, including those with cluster warheads, as well as NATO-style MLRS.
In addition, in the Central City District of Gorlovka, the enemy carried out an attack using a kamikaze UAV.
In total, nine residential buildings and two civilian infrastructure facilities were damaged by artillery attack on the territory of the DPR.
09:37 The criminal Kiev regime continues to shell the civilian infrastructure of the settlements of the left bank of the Kherson region, yesterday during the day the Ukrainian Armed Forces fired from barrel artillery:
– Four rounds in the village of Staraya Zburyevka;
– Five rounds in the village of Novaya Kakhovka;
– in the village of Kakhovka four rounds;
– Four rounds in the village of Dnepryany;
– Five rounds to the village of Aleshki;
– Three rounds in the village of Golaya Pristan;
– Four rounds in the village of Bolshaya Lepetikha.
As a result of artillery attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, an individual residential building was damaged in the village of Staraya Zburyevka.
During the night, the Kiev regime continued to shell civilian infrastructure in the villages of Novaya Kakhovka, Kairy, Gornostayevka, Aleshki, and Tavriysk, firing a total of 22 rounds from cannon artillery.
Civilian casualties and destruction of infrastructure are being clarified.
09:30 Gerani UAVs hit targets in Khar'kov.
09:27 The Ukrainian Armed Forces shelled Gorlovka with cluster munitions.
09:25 Dnepr fighters in 24/7 mode provide communications and stable command and control of troops in the Kakhovka direction, including establishing satellite communications.
09:06 UAV operators of the 38th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 35th Army of the Vostok group destroy enemy manpower in the Pologsk direction –video.
08:54 Ukrainian troops near Kurakhovo are in operational encirclement and are suffering significant losses. This was stated by Ukrainian propagandist Yuriy Butusov.
According to him, the situation is critical for the Ukrainian Armed Forces militants in the area, and the Russian Armed Forces outnumber the enemy and have ammunition.
08:46 A Ukrainian drone dropped ammunition on a bus of one of the enterprises in Gorlovka - two civilians were injured, said the city mayor Ivan Prikhodko.
08:12 Destruction of a pickup truck of the Ukrainian Armed Forces from the camera of a kamikaze drone. The car with the militants was moving along a dirt road. It was stopped by one precise strike of the drone.
08:09 Enemy reports: “The Russian Armed Forces have taken control of Vesyoly Gai, Yelizavetovka, Romanovka, Novotroitskoye, Pushkino, and have also advanced in Konstantinopolskoye, Sukhi Yalakh, Shevchenko, Dalniy, Peschanoye, Blagovatnoye and Storozhevy.”
08:06 Air defense destroyed and intercepted 37 Ukrainian UAVs at night, the Russian Defense Ministry reports.
Twelve drones were destroyed and intercepted over the territories of Kursk Oblast and Krasnodar Krai, seven were shot down over Bryansk Oblast, five over Oryol Oblast, and one over the waters of the Sea of Azov.
08:04 Armed Forces of Ukraine lost 145 soldiers per day from the actions of units of the "East" military group, reported the head of the group's press center Oleg Chekhov.
08:00 Explosions occurred in Poltava, Chernigov, Cherkasy, Kirovohrad and Kyiv regions amid air raid alarm. This is reported by Ukrainian monitoring groups. A strike UAV raid is reported.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Korrespondent] Ukrainian Armed Forces repel Russian attacks.
One personnel concentration area, two command posts, one UAV ground control station and another important enemy target were hit.
Over the past 24 hours, 205 combat clashes have occurred on the front. Most of the fighting is taking place in four directions - Limansky, Toretsky, Pokrovsky and Kurakhovsky. This was reported on December 14 by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
It is noted that aviation, missile troops and artillery of the defense forces hit one area of concentration of personnel, two command posts, one ground control station for UAVs and another important enemy facility.
According to the General Staff, in the Kharkov direction the enemy once stormed the area of the settlement of Volchansk.
The defense forces repelled the enemy's assault actions near Kolesnikovka, Boguslavka, Zagryzovoye and Lozovaya in the Kupyansk direction , where ten attacks by the occupiers took place in one day.
Over the past 24 hours, the enemy attacked 24 times in the Liman direction .
Our defenders repelled one enemy assault in the Belogorovka area in the Seversky direction.
In the Kramatorsk direction, the occupiers attacked six times in the areas of Chasovy Yar and Stupochki.
The enemy carried out ten attacks in the Toretsk direction in the areas of the settlements of Toretsk, Krymskoe and Dilievka. The enemy directed most of the attacks at Toretsk.
In the Pokrovsky direction, the defenders stopped 62 offensive actions of the aggressor towards the settlements of Mirolyubovka, Lisovka, Luch, Dachenskoye, Shevchenko, Novy Trud, Zelenoe, Peschanoye and Pushkino.
The defense forces repelled 27 enemy attacks in the Kurakhovsky direction .
In the areas of the settlements of Trudovoe, Vesely Gai, Konstantinopolskoye, Sukhie Yali, Blagovatnoye, Storozhovo, Neskuchnoye in the Vremovsky direction , the enemy carried out 35 assaults on the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
In the Gulyai-Polye and Orekhovo directions, the enemy has not carried out any active operations over the past 24 hours.
In the Dnieper direction, our troops repelled four enemy attacks; the enemy had no success.
No signs of the formation of enemy offensive groups were detected in the Volyn and Polesie directions .
Over the past 24 hours, 22 armed clashes occurred in the Kursk direction , the enemy carried out 13 air strikes with 19 guided bombs and carried out 399 artillery attacks.
Let us recall that the Ukrainian Armed Forces destroyed 1,040 Russian occupiers in one day . The total combat losses of the Russian Federation from 24.02.22 to 14.12.24 were approximately 761,160 people.
Our news hounds, historians? Stars
Who drink freely in Kremlin and bars!
Then, at office: "I'm back.
Fourth dimension attack!"
[humans wave from all Great Russian Wars]
#3
And soon with AI we overtake America and China's 5D 5E capability and-- [holopathic simulated universe explodes from memory hole beneath Stalsk-13 last Tuesday]
Excerpted from a 48 minute interview. Full video at the link.
[IsraelTimes] If ‘you walk away from once in a lifetime peace opportunities, you can’t complain 25 years later when the doors aren’t all still open,’ says former US president
Former US president Bill Clinton ...former Democratic president of the U.S. Bill was the second U.S. president to be impeached, the first to deny that oral sex was sex, the first to have difficulty with the definition of the word is... on Wednesday said young people in America today "can’t believe" that late Paleostinian leader Yasser Arafat walked away from a Paleostinian state during peace negotiations with Israel under his mediation as president.
Clinton added, in reference to the failed Camp David talks of 2000, that having turned down a "once in a lifetime" peace opportunity, "you can’t complain 25 years later when the doors weren’t all still open, and all the possibilities weren’t still there."
"I think what’s happened there in the last twenty-five years is one of the great tragedies of the twenty-first century," Clinton told New York Times
...which still proudly claims Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin, in an interview for the newspaper’s DealBook Summit, promoting his new book, "Citizen: My Life After The White House."
The Times posted a video of the interview to its New York Times Events+ YouTube channel; the video was removed on Thursday, but re-uploaded shortly thereafter.
"All [young people in America] know that a lot more Paleostinians have been killed than Israelis. And I tell them what Arafat walked away from, and they, like, can’t believe it," said the former commander-in-chief.
Arafat "walked away from a Paleostinian state, with a capital in East Jerusalem, 96% of the West Bank, 4% of Israel to make up for the 4% [of the West Bank to be annexed for Israeli settlements]," Clinton elaborated, repeating an account of the Oslo peace negotiations, to which the ex-president has returned repeatedly in recent interviews and remarks.
The talks, which aimed to resolve Israel’s conflict with the Paleostinians through a negotiated two-state solution, fell apart just six weeks before Clinton’s second term ended.
"I go through all the stuff that was in the deal, and they, like — it’s not on their radar screen, they can’t even imagine that happened," Clinton went on, describing his conversations with young Americans upset over the corpse count in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... in the latest war.
The former US president also noted the sacrifice made by Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by a Jewish krazed killer in Israel over his support for the grinding of the peace processor.
"I tell them, you know, the first and most famous victim of an attempt to get the Paleostinians a state was prime minister Rabin, whom I think I loved as much as I ever loved another man," Clinton said, repeating a phrase he has often used to describe his relationship with the late Israeli leader.
"You walk away from these once in a lifetime peace opportunities, and you can’t complain twenty-five years later when the doors weren’t all still open, and all the possibilities weren’t still there. You can’t do it," Clinton said.
In addition to his remarks about the grinding of the peace processor, Clinton also commented on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political survival, noting that he had remained in office "farther than I thought he would."
Clinton said that the Hamas ..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,... terror group’s October 7, 2023 attack — in which some 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians, and 251 people taken hostage, starting the ongoing war — worked to Netanyahu’s political benefit, focusing attention away from domestic controversies.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2024
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#1
I lived in Raleigh during this farce. If some of the students' parents hadn't been rich enough to afford good attorneys, the lacrosse team would have ended up in jail.The local DA, Mike Nifong, was aggressively pushing the case, in order to cater to the black population. He eventually was disbarred for misconduct.
Worth noting, korrespondent.net has compiled its Invasion of Ukraine series into separate months, beginning May 9th, 2023. Linked in the title.
[Korrespondent] 21.31 Police and SBU officers detained a suspect in the terrorist attack near the administrative building in the central district of the city in Dnepr. He turned out to be a 37-year-old local resident.
20.41 Russia has begun using North Korean soldiers in assault operations in the Kursk region, and they have already suffered their first losses. This was reported by the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine
20:27 German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said it would be a mistake if the weapons provided to Ukraine were used for strikes deep into Russia or if such weapons were given to Ukraine at all. In his opinion, it is necessary "at any cost" to prevent a conflict between Russia and NATO.
19.42 Russia has already used the full range of its weapons against Ukraine, but the threat of strikes remains, said Andriy Chernyak, a representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
16:58 The Russian army has begun using soldiers from North Korea in assaults. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced this in his video address.
16.31 Today in Dnepr, December 14, an explosion was heard. Probably a car was blown up. Later, local publics wrote that a car was blown up. Police and medics are working at the scene.
15.25 Explosions in Odessa were heard on Saturday, December 14. The military warned of a ballistic threat. A photo of a column of smoke rising above the horizon was also published on social media.
13:37 In the city of Krymsk in Krasnodar Krai, an enemy Su-30 fighter jet burned at an airfield. This was reported on December 14 by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. The Main Intelligence Directorate added that on December 13, a devastating fire in Krasnodar also disabled three Russian railway locomotives.
13.18 In the Kiev region, as a result of falling debris from downed Russian drones, an administrative building of an enterprise, two warehouses and a car were damaged. The fire that broke out was extinguished. This was reported by the head of the Kiev regional state administration Ruslan Kravchenko.
11.57 In occupied Crimea, partisans have reconnoitered a Russian radar base. This was reported on December 14 by the ATESH partisan movement. It is noted that during reconnaissance of the western coast of Crimea, a radar base was recorded in the village of Uyutnoye near Yevpatoria. The military unit houses the 5N84A and Oborona-14 radars, which monitor the airspace and transmit data to command posts for prompt response to threats. According to ATESH, this base plays an important role in controlling the airspace over the Black Sea and coordinating the military operations of the occupiers.
11.24 Ukrainian Defense Forces attacked an oil depot in the Russian city of Orel on the night of December 14. This was reported by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Ukrainian military personnel attacked the Steel Horse linear production control station (LPDS). As a result of the attack, a powerful fire started. The Steel Horse linear production control station is part of the Russian military-industrial complex, which supplies petroleum products to the Russian army.
10:51 Over the past 24 hours, 205 combat clashes have occurred on the front. Most of the fighting is taking place in four directions - Limansky, Toretsky, Pokrovsky and Kurakhovsky. This was reported by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on December 14. It is noted that aviation, missile troops and artillery of the defense forces hit one area of personnel concentration, two command posts, one ground control station for UAVs and another important enemy facility.
10.27 The DPRK military, fighting as part of the Russian army, will presumably begin to storm the positions of Ukrainian fighters in the Kursk region in the near future. Preparations for this are already underway. This was reported by the Main Intelligence Directorate.
9.52 Russian troops launched 132 drones at Ukraine. Air defense shot down more than half of them, and more than 70 drones did not reach their targets. This was reported on December 14 by the Ukrainian Air Force.
9.24 In the Dnipropetrovsk region, air defense forces were operating at night and in the morning of December 14. In the Samarovsky district, three houses, a store and a power line were damaged. This was reported by the head of the Dnipropetrovsk OVA Sergey Lysak.
9:03 Air defense forces in the Cherkasy region destroyed 25 Russian Shahed drones at night. This was reported by the head of the regional military administration Igor Taburets. According to him, the attack by Russian drones began on the evening of December 13 and lasted for about ten hours. The debris damaged a power line, there were no casualties.
8.41 The Defense Forces neutralized about 10 Russian drones that were threatening Kiev at night. This was reported by the Kiev City Military Administration.
7.50 The Ukrainian Armed Forces destroyed 1,040 Russian occupiers in one day. The total combat losses of the Russian Federation from 24.02.22 to 14.12.24 were approximately 761,160 people. This was reported by the General Staff.
05.58 Russian occupiers captured five settlements in Donetsk Oblast at once and advanced near seven more settlements, DeepState reports. The largest number of enemy captures and advances occurred in the area of the so-called Uspenovsky pocket, which Ukrainian Armed Forces units entered in the Kurakhovsky direction.
03.00 Brigadier General Alexander Lutsenko was dismissed from his post as commander of the operational-tactical group Donetsk, a number of media outlets reported. The reason was the rapid advance of enemy troops in the Pokrovsk direction. His place was taken by Brigadier General Alexander Tarnavsky, who previously commanded the Tavria group.
00.15 Drones attack oil depot in Russian Orel. Social media publishes footage of the hit and massive fire.
[RT] Russia’s communications regulator Roskomnadzor (RKN) has blocked access to the popular instant messaging service Viber, citing multiple failures to remove criminal content.
The app has 17 million unique daily users in Russia, according to tech news website Telecom Daily.
In its statement on Friday, RKN said access to Viber “has been restricted” due to violations of national laws aimed at preventing the use of online messengers to engage in “terrorist and extremist” crimes, drug dealing, and the dissemination of “unlawful information.”
Anton Nemkin, a member of the State Duma who sits on the parliamentary information policy and communications committee, told TASS news agency that Viber’s owners have failed to pay 1.8 million rubles ($17,230) in fines and “continue to ignore Russian laws.” He added that Viber “does not delete illegal information,” including information related to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Another one? How is it that Syria was poor, with all the drug profits?
[Regnum] A large laboratory for the production of the drug Captagon and huge stockpiles of the produced prohibited substance were discovered in the Syrian city of Douma, which is located in the northeastern suburbs of Damascus. This was reported on December 13 by the American newspaper The New York Times.
"Syrian rebels said on Friday they had discovered huge stockpiles of an illegal amphetamine called Captagon in a warehouse in Damascus," the publication said.
It is specified that thousands of drug tablets with a logo in the form of a double crescent or the inscription Lexus were found in the laboratory. According to the author of the publication, representatives of the Syrian opposition who discovered the laboratory burned some of the produced tablets and threw the rest into the sewer.
Captagon is also called the "poor man's cocaine" or the "jihad drug."
As reported by the Regnum news agency, on December 6, the actress of Russian TV series and model from Russian rap artists' videos was detained along with an accomplice with a hundred packages of narcotic substances. She hid the packages of the substance in a large bra.
On December 2, the Moscow Regional Court sentenced Stanislav Moiseyev, the founder of the online drug-selling platform Hydra, to life imprisonment and a fine of 4 million rubles. His 15 accomplices were also sentenced to imprisonment for terms ranging from eight to 23 years and fined a total of 16 million rubles.
[NYTimes] In the days since the abrupt and unexpected obliteration of Iran as a dominant presence in Syria, the government has faced a fierce public backlash over the billions of dollars spent and the Iranian blood shed to back the Assad regime.
The criticism has come from unexpected corners, including conservatives, and is flowing freely on television channels and talk shows, and in social media posts and virtual town halls attended by thousands of Iranians. It also appears on the front pages of newspapers every day.
One former lawmaker, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, said in a social media post that Iranians should rejoice at the fall of Iran's longstanding ally, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. "No one will be able to waste Iran's dollars for maintaining a spider web any more," he said.
Why? Because they are subjects, not citizens, and all that they think is theirs actually belongs to the Ummah as represented by the Mad Mullah government. To protest that is to protest how Allah decreed the world to work — are you prepared to argue with Allah, O heretic?
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
12/15/2024
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#1
Well, actually it didn't all, but it was easier to tell you that while it was being stolen.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
12/15/2024 9:11
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BREAKING NEWS:Hamas leader has just died after being hit by an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza. Rest In Pieces, Emad Ali Abd al-Rahman al-Jaro. pic.twitter.com/BPj7H2zyIv
[IsraelTimes] Army airs video showing Hamas abusing inmates at Gaza City prison, compares treatment to that by Syria’s Assad regime; rocket fired from central Gaza lands in open area in south
An Israeli Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... in the Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in the central Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Strip on Saturday killed the mayor of Deir al-Balah, who is accused of being a member of the military wing of the Hamas ..a regional Iranian catspaw,... terror group.
In a joint statement following the strike, the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet said that Diab Emad Ali Abd al-Rahman al-Jaro had "actively participated in the operations of Hamas’s government in the Deir al-Balah area, maintained continuous contact with officials in Hamas’s military wing, and provided them with combat assistance against IDF troops."
In his role, he was the mayor of Deir al-Balah, the head of the Hamas-run Emergency Committee in central Gaza, and was responsible for Hamas’s political activity in the area, as well as for various government offices, the military said.
Al-Jaro was targeted while at the Deir al-Balah municipality building, located within the humanitarian zone. The IDF said that the building was being used by Hamas operatives to plan and carry out attacks against troops in Gaza and against Israel.
The IDF said it had taken steps to mitigate harm to civilians in the strike, including using precision munitions and aerial surveillance. Paleostinian media reported at least 11 dead in the strike.
"Hamas continues to abuse civilian and humanitarian infrastructure for its terrorist activities, in violation of international law," the military said.
Some 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are estimated to be living in the enclave’s humanitarian zone, according to a July assessment by the IDF. The zone is located in the al-Mawasi area on the southern Strip’s coast, the western neighborhoods of Khan Younis and the central Deir al-Balah. Its size has changed multiple times amid evolving IDF operations against Hamas, but as of late August, it was just over 46 square kilometers (17.7 square miles), or nearly 13 percent of the total size of the Gaza Strip.
Also on Saturday, the IDF said that it carried out a dronezap against a cell of terror operatives while they were preparing to carry out an attack against troops in Gaza and Israel "in the immediate timeframe."
The military said the operatives were targeted while they were gathered at a former school in Gaza City. It added that it took steps to mitigate harm to civilians in the strike at the Yaffa boys school, which was being used to shelter displaced Paleostinians. Emergency services in Gaza reported that at least seven were killed, including a woman and her baby, and 12 were maimed as a result of the airstrike.
Rocket sirens were activated inside Israel, meanwhile, after a rocket launched from the central Gaza Strip struck an open area in the south of the country. Sirens sounded in the border communities of Nirim and Ein Hashlosha amid the attack, which did not result in any injuries. The rocket fire was the second such incident in two days, after the Paleostinian Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... terror group fired two projectiles toward Ashkelon on Friday.
FOOTAGE SHOWS HAMAS TORTURE OF PALESTINIAN PRISONERS
On Saturday evening, the IDF released new security camera footage that it said was recovered at a Hamas prison in Gaza City’s upscale Rimal neighborhood, in which members of the Paleostinian terror group’s internal security forces can be seen abusing prisoners.
In the video, the Hamas operatives can be seen escorting a blindfolded prisoner on his knees into the facility, before throwing him down a set of stairs and violent mostly peacefully beating him.
The clip separately shows a prisoner lying on the ground in a small cell not much larger than his body. The military said that he was being held in a suffocating room while in solitary confinement.
Comparing Hamas’s treatment of prisoners to the actions of the regime of toppled Syrian president Bashir al-Assad, the military said in a statement that Hamas "attempts to distance itself from the Assad regime and the atrocities exposed in Syrian prisons, but the footage and previous revelations about Hamas’s torture investigations leave no room for doubt — Hamas is equally ruthless."
"The cruelty of Hamas prison guards exposed in this footage can no longer be hidden or denied. These harrowing videos are a stark reminder of the merciless abuse, oppression, and human rights ...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless... violations inflicted on Gaza’s residents by the Hamas regime."
The IDF has previously published CCTV footage that it says depicts the torture of Paleostinian civilians at the hands of Hamas operatives, and in 2022, both the UN Watch Lobby and Human Rights Watch found that human rights activists, women, LGBTQ people and political opponents in Gaza and the West Bank were regularly subject to brutal punishment.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 386. The toll includes a police officer killed in a hostage rescue mission and a Defense Ministry civilian contractor.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 44,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November and another 1,000 bully boyz inside Israel on October 7, 2023, or in the following few days.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[RealClearInvestigations] Even as President-elect Donald Trump promised on Sunday to act “very quickly” on pardons for many of the protesters involved in the events of January 6, the Biden administration’s Justice Department is continuing to arrest and try people for actions that occurred almost four years ago while opposing motions to delay trials because of the need for “the prompt and efficient administration of justice.”
If the defeat of Kamala Harris constituted at least a partial repudiation of the lawfare against Trump and his supporters, the message appears to be lost on top brass at the DOJ. Prosecutors are pushing ahead with what they consider the department’s crowning achievement: the so-called “Capitol Siege” investigation into the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
In what Attorney General Merrick Garland describes as the biggest criminal investigation in Department of Justice history, more than 1,560 people have been charged for federal crimes never before used against political protesters, including under a post-Enron obstruction statute overturned by the Supreme Court in June. At least 1,000 of these defendants have been convicted – either at trial or by accepting plea offers – with some 650 defendants ordered to serve time in a federal prison. Sentences range from a few days in jail to up to 22 years as the DOJ seeks “terror enhancements” to tack on additional time.
Activity in the J6 investigation accelerated the month before the election. At least 16 individuals were arrested; home security camera footage obtained by RCI shows the heavily-armed pre-dawn FBI raid of a subject in California on October 17.
Shortly after the election, DOJ officials instructed attorneys working on J6 cases to carry on regardless of the pending change in leadership. “[Federal] prosecutors in the Justice Department’s Capitol Siege Section received guidance this week about how to proceed in pending Jan. 6 cases … including a directive to oppose any Jan. 6 defendant’s requests for delays,” Ryan J. Reilly of NBC News reported on Nov. 9. “Prosecutors are instructed to argue that there is a societal interest in the quick administration of justice and these cases should be handled in the normal order.”
At the same time, the Biden Justice Department is continuing to apprehend protesters. On Dec. 4, for example, the DOJ announced the arrest of a 44-year-old Alabama man, Robert James Bonham, charging him with a range of crimes, including “assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers and obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder.”
If Trump shuts down the department’s “Capitol Siege” section, as he is expected to do, Bonham will never go to trial. But this does not appear to concern Matthew Graves, U. S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Appointed by President Biden in November 2021, Graves has presided over the sprawling J6 investigation and now continues to advance related cases.
His office has opposed the J6 defendants’ requests to halt proceedings until after Trump is sworn in next month. Judges began receiving a slew of defense motions starting the day after the election asking to postpone trials and hearings, but Graves said there is “public interest in the prompt and efficient administration of justice” as a reason to continue business as usual.
Federal judges in Washington agree with the DOJ’s approach. According to an analysis by RCI, 44 pardon-related motions including requests to delay trials and sentencings have been filed since November 6. Of those, judges, with the exception of Judge Rudolph Contreras, have denied each one. Several more are pending awaiting the court's decision.
Details of the denials by each judge can be seen at the link:
Judge Dabney Friedrich denied a motion to delay a J6 jury trial for Mitchell Bosch.
Three J6 jury trials are set to begin this week. For the trial of one of those defendants, a man charged with civil disorder and four misdemeanors, Judge Amy Berman Jackson recently entered an order allowing prosecutors to describe January 6 to jurors as an "attack on the Capitol," "attack on Congress," and a "riot.”
The day after the election, an attorney representing Christopher Carnell, who was convicted of nonviolent misdemeanors following a bench trial in February 2024, asked the judge in his case to delay a scheduled hearing based on the possibility of a pardon. But Beryl Howell, the former chief judge of the court, immediately rejected her request.
Her colleagues on the D.C. federal bench, citing either a public interest in continuing court proceedings or making separation of powers arguments, followed her lead with recent rulings:
Judge Reggie Walton
Judge Amit Mehta
Judge Paul Friedman
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly
Chief Judge James Boasberg
Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, is the most outspoken judge when it comes to any downplaying of what happened on Jan. 6. In an April 2024 Wall Street Journal profile, the 80-year-old jurist was described as “a leading voice pushing back against attempts by Republican politicians to play down the Jan. 6 attack.”
And at least one D.C. judge is taking direct aim at Trump for even considering pardons. Trump-appointee Carl Nichols, who presided over Steve Bannon’s contempt case and sentenced the longtime Trump adviser to four months in a federal penitentiary, went so far as to say in a recent court hearing that it would be “beyond frustrating and disappointing” for the incoming president to issue “blanket pardons … or anything close.”
But it’s not just existing cases that are being fast-tracked before the transfer of power. Graves has announced the arrest of at least 10 Jan. 6 protesters since Election Day; last week, Graves charged at least three individuals for their participation in the Capitol protest.
There is no indication the DOJ will halt the pursuit of J6ers even as the pardon of Hunter Biden raises concerns over the practice of presidential pardons. Shortly after Joe Biden pardoned his son, Trump posted a message on Truth Social referring to the J6ers in what some consider a sign he is considering a similarly broad pardon. “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Trump wrote.
In apparent response, the New York Times editorial board criticized the Hunter Biden pardon not on its merits but because it makes it easier for “ Trump [to] pardon the perpetrators of the violent Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.”
[Politico] Some defendants claim that Trump can issue “pardons of innocence,” but federal prosecutors told a judge that pardons would not wipe away their guilt.
The Justice Department sent a message Wednesday to Jan. 6 defendants: Accepting a pardon from Donald Trump is “a confession of guilt” for your crimes.
Ditto for Hunter Biden and the large number of others President Biden has been pardoning recently — and still to come — right? Good to know.
“[A] pardon at some unspecified date in the future ... would not unring the bell of conviction,” federal prosecutors argued in a Jan. 6 case before U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols. “In fact, quite the opposite. The defendant would first have to accept the pardon, which necessitates a confession of guilt.”
The pronouncement is the latest attempt by the Justice Department to salvage the legacy of its Jan. 6 investigation, which leaders say is the most sweeping criminal probe in American history. Trump has pledged to unravel that probe with the stroke of his pen by granting clemency to many of the nearly 1,600 people who have been charged for their roles in the attack on the Capitol four years ago.
The legal significance of presidential pardons, and whether they imply guilt, has been debated in courts for decades.
Makes sense. The Justice Department has been full of really bad advice for its targets, as has the FBI, et al. Which is why we’re told to never, ever say anything to them without a good lawyer present, even when their agents assure you that you aren't a target, but merely helping them with their inquiries.
The Supreme Court has opined that pardons often carry an “imputation of guilt” even if the consequences for that guilt are erased. And the Justice Department has previously concluded that even if pardons eliminate criminal consequences, those convicted of crimes can still face punishment in other forums, like professional ethics boards.
“A pardon … does not erase the conviction as a historical fact or justify the fiction that the pardoned individual did not engage in criminal conduct,” the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel wrote in a 2006 opinion.
But Jan. 6 defendants have increasingly been seeking “pardons of innocence,” claiming Trump has the authority to grant them clemency without forcing an admission of guilt. Those who haven’t been convicted are hoping Trump’s Justice Department simply drops their charges, obviating the need for a pardon altogether.
The Justice Department’s comments on the effect of Jan. 6 pardons came in a court filing in the case of Dova Winegeart, who is seeking to delay her imminent jail term in anticipation of a possible pardon from Trump. Nichols, a Trump appointee, convicted Winegeart for damaging government property after a brief bench trial in October and acquitted her of several misdemeanor counts. On Monday, he sentenced her to four months in prison but agreed to hear arguments on whether the sentence should be delayed to await a potential pardon.
Winegeart is one of many Jan. 6 defendants who have been seeking to delay their sentences or pause their cases in light of Trump’s electoral victory and the potential for him to issue mass pardons when he returns to office.
Prosecutors sharply opposed Winegeart’s request and warned of far-reaching consequences to criminal justice if she is granted a delay based on speculation about a future pardon.
“The criminal justice system cannot operate on such uncertainty. Indeed, it is neither the court’s role or function to speculate about any president’s pardon decisions, nor is it appropriate for the Court to halt the normal functioning of criminal procedure based solely on that speculation,” the prosecutors wrote.
“If a future Executive cannot, today, grant a pardon, this Court cannot expand the temporal grace that Executive may or may not extend in the future to … affect the present,” the DOJ attorneys added.
Sure the court can. Courts do all sorts of things that prosecutors dislike.
#1
Don't worry DOJ, when you get prosecuted for your malicious prosecution, deprivation of rights under the color of law, torture and other crimes against the J6 people, there won't be any pardons, just lengthy jail terms and executions for the sh*tstain that murdered Ashli.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
12/15/2024 9:17
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#4
Personally I believe there should be a separate class of Law and punishment for the abuse of public office. A public servant is just that and the time is ripe for a swift, sustained, and very harsh reminder.
[Twitchy] ProPublica really hoped to prove Pete Hegseth lied about acceptance to West Point. They were full steam ahead with the story until Hegseth's team went ahead and outed the scheme to the public. Today, we learned how the plot unfolded.
"One hour deadline" by the way means they had already written the story they were gonna publish. ProPublica should be lucky Pete had his acceptance letter otherwise they would've taken one the fattest L's in journalism history.
#2
Hegseth probably had it accessible from the vetting process. They should have let them hang themselves.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/15/2024 14:49
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#3
Hegseth should have kept that info to himself. Then when ProPublic went public with its BS story, just hit them with the evidence and a multi-million dollar lawsuit. No warning letters, just the lawsuit.
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.
...
..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for 
[Brookings Inst. from 2001] ....But Clinton’s truly remarkable achievement was in creating a consensus against himself with his pardon of Marc Rich, popularly known as the "fugitive financier," and otherwise known as large-scale tax cheat and buster of sanctions. On this one, I’d wager all the money Rich owes the government that Clinton’s friends are even more outraged than his enemies.
...Arabic term meaning 
...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
[ENGLISH.ALMANAR.COM.LB] Hezbollah Secretary General, Sheikh Naeem Qassem, affirmed that supporting 
...
..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...
launched her campaign on the “RuPaul’s Drag Race”
..always the voice of sweet reason...
...Kamala's smarmy-looking running mate, governor of Minnesota, who decided to retired rather than to deploy with his National Guard unit, then claimed to have been in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
...every time you hear the phrase 
...His ancestors didn't own any slaves...
...46th president of the U.S. Former Senator-for-Life from Delaware, an example of the kind of top-notch Washington intellect to be found in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body....
..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
[FoxNews] ABC News will pay $15 million as a charitable contribution to a Trump presidential foundation and museum
..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
