#7
A man of singular focus, that technochitlin. The lady is clad in nought but top hat, black pumps, and lace tap shorts, but what does he see? “Gams!” ;-)
[ShabelleMedia] The corpse count from the intense festivities between Puntland ...a region in northeastern Somalia, centered on Garowe in the Nugaal province. Its leaders declared the territory an autonomous state in 1998. Puntland and the equally autonomous Somaliland seem to have avoided the clan rivalries and warlordism that have typified the rest of Somalia, which puts both places high on the list for Islamic subversion... security forces and ISIS murderous Moslems in Somalia’s Bari region has tragically escalated, with the latest reports confirming 18 Puntland soldiers killed following Tuesday’s violent mostly peaceful confrontation.
The assault, initiated by ISIS murderous Moslems with boom-mobiles targeting Puntland defenses in Dharjale, escalated into a vicious battle that included close combat engagements.
Updated figures released Thursday morning show that the number of maimed Puntland soldiers has now increased to 30, with some still at death's door. Puntland officials have also confirmed that eight ISIS fighters, including foreign combatants, were killed during the skirmish.
In response to the attack, Puntland has launched a counter-offensive to clear out remaining ISIS elements in the region, with local sources indicating that several suspected ISIS hideouts were raided overnight, leading to the arrest of several individuals believed to be associated with the group.
The situation in the area has stabilized, allowing for continued medical treatment of the casualties in hospitals in Bosaso. Puntland President Said Abdullahi Deni has visited the medical facilities multiple times, expressing solidarity with the maimed and vowing to strengthen security measures to prevent future attacks.
International aid organizations have begun to offer support, providing medical supplies and personnel to assist in the treatment of the injured. Meanwhile,
...back at the shootout, Butch clutched at his other shoulder...... the Puntland administration is calling for increased support from the federal government of Somalia to address the growing threat of ISIS in the region.
In a pre-dawn assault on a regional army base in Somalia’s Bari region, foreign ISIS fighters met their end, according to Puntland’s Information Minister Mohamud Aided Dirir.
The regional state minister confirmed that the attack, which targeted a military installation in the Dharjaale area near Bosaso town, resulted in the deaths of several militants, including Moroccans, Syrians, and Ethiopians.
The incident underscores the ongoing threat posed by ISIS in Somalia, where the group has been attempting to establish a presence amidst local and international efforts to curb its influence. Puntland, known for its relative stability compared to other parts of Somalia, has seen an uptick in such attacks, with ISIS-Somalia focusing on revenue generation and extortion to fund its operations.
Details from local sources indicate that the militants launched their attack in the early hours, with gunfire and explosions reported around the military base. The swift response from Puntland’s security forces led to a confrontation where the foreign fighters were ultimately neutralized.
Security analysts have long pointed out the complex dynamics of terrorism in Somalia, with ISIS-Somalia clashing not only with local and international forces but also with al-Shabaab, another major militant group in the region. This attack adds to the narrative of an evolving security landscape where foreign fighters play a significant role in sustaining the insurgency.
The Islamic State militants (ISIS) have admitted to conducting attacks at a military base attached to the Puntland Regional Forces, leading to heavy clashes that left the group on the losing end based on the initial reports from Puntland officials.
Throughthe Telegram Channel, the ISIS group took responsibility for the attack at a base located in the eastern parts of the Puntland region. The group lost over 10 fighters, including foreigners whose bodies were displayed by the regional security team.
In its statement, Islamic State said the attack was conducted by 12 militants and two booby-trapped vehicles, adding that it killed around 22 military personnel from the Puntland forces and injured dozens of others, Reuters reports.
Despite the claims, Puntland regional forces have not issued a rejoinder. However, after the attack, the regional forces displayed bodies of badly mutilated bodies purportedly of the IS militants, attached to the Somalia wing.
Captain Yusuf Mohamed, an officer in Puntland's counter-terrorism forces, told Reuters on Tuesday that nine suicide bombers had been killed and several soldiers had been injured, near the town of Dharjaale in the Bari region.
IS-Somalia's influence is growing in the Bari region and the group poses serious security challenges in Puntland, according to a report by the US State Department. The Department warned that if action is not taken, the group could destabilize the federal state of Puntland.
According to reports, the group’s financial fortunes had also increased, making it difficult for security teams in Puntland to handle them. Its leader Abdulqadir Mumin was named as the most dangerous person and designated by the Treasury Department of the United States.
Puntland is activating security operations in the Bari region to counter the growing influence of the militants, with another team targeting Galkayo where Al-Shabaab militants are also making inroads. The al-Shabaab controls most parts of southern regions.
[IsraelTimes] An alleged Israeli strike has killed at least eight Palestinian men in the central Gaza Strip, according to officials in the Hamas-run territory.
The dead are members of local committees that help secure aid convoys, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which received the bodies. An Associated Press reporter at the hospital confirms the toll.
#2
"Hey! What are you mooks doing?"
"We're securing the aid convoy."
"So what's in the boxes?"
"That's stuff that fell off the trucks we were securing".
[Rudaw] Hay’at 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) forces were denied access to Syria’s southern Suwayda province after local Druze militias demanded they turn back, local media reported on Wednesday.
"A military convoy of dozens of vehicles belonging to Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham and its general security service entered Suwayda Governorate," local media outlet Suwayda 24 reported on Tuesday, adding that local forces "demanded that the convoy returns to Damascus."
Suwayda is controlled by the the Druze Rijal al-Karama (Men of Dignity) militia which was established during the Syrian conflict to protect the minority group from the threat posed by 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) Death Eaters and the former Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Lord of the Baath... regime’s affiliated forces.
The report added that "the factions asked the military convoy to return to Damascus and not to enter the province secretly," emphasizing that there is regular communication with Suwayda and Damascus security authorities.
"We will not hand over our weapons until the state, constitution, and government are formed and the decentralized system is the most appropriate system for Syria," Hikmat Salman al-Hijri, the spiritual leader of the Druze, told Rudaw.
He stressed that laying down arms depends on guaranteeing their constitutional rights.
Fearing an uncertain future, many Druze residents of Suwayda near the Israeli border have called for annexation of their region to Israel. The Druze are a non-Islamic religious minority estimated at one million, with nearly 150,000 of them living in Israel as citizens.
"We cooperate with the new Syrian administration with all sincerity," the Doha-based al-Jazeera channel reported Hijri as saying, adding that the incident "was due to lack of prior coordination."
Protests over poor living conditions have regularly taken place in the Druze-majority Suwayda since August 2023, driven by a surge in prices after the former Assad regime decided to end fuel subsidies. The demonstrators then called for the overthrow of Assad’s government.
After the HTS-led coalition overthrew the Assad regime, they formed a transitional government headed by Ahmad al-Sharaa (Abu Mohammed al-Jolani) who has repeatedly stated that the rights of all components will be protected under the new government.
"Decentralization, today, has become a legitimate demand for the people of Suwayda, after decades of excluding the people of this region from influential political and economic roles in the Syrian state," Syrian journalist Nawras Aziz told Rudaw.
He said that the people of Suwayda are willing to disarm given the formation of a "legitimate government and new civil law."
The new Syrian Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra, a top HTS commander, has expressed that they do not wish to have federalism in the country or to have any area outside the government’s authority.
On Monday, a delegation from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which control northeast Syria (Rojava) held their first meeting with the country's de facto leader Sharaa in Damascus, discussing the future of Kurdish-held areas.
SDF chief Mazloum Abdi told Asharq al-Awsat in a recent interview that they are willing to merge the SDF into the new Syrian army if both sides agree on a "suitable formula through negotiations."
[Rudaw] The people of the southern Druze-majority Suwayda province will demand federalism in the face of aggression and for allowing Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) fighters to enter, a Druze commander said on Wednesday, after HTS-linked fighters were denied access to the province.
A military convoy of HTS-linked fighters was forced to turn back to Damascus by local Druze militias on Wednesday and denied access to Suwayda province, with the militias citing a lack of prior coordination and demanding decentralized governance.
“If we are subjected to any aggression or anything that is imposed on us as a province, we will demand federalism,” Sheikh Bahaa al-Jamal, commander of the Druze operations in Suwayda, told Rudaw’s Dilbixwin Dara.
“We found that the time was inappropriate, and people were busy with New Year celebrations. They entered by trickery and in a malicious way without informing anyone and we reject this matter,” he said about their decision to turn back the HTS-linked fighters.
But the new Syrian Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra, a top HTS commander, has expressed that they do not wish to have federalism in the country or to have any area outside the control of Damascus.
[IsraelTimes] Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics says population has fallen by 160,000, with over 100,000 leaving enclave; Israel says data is ‘fabricated, inflated, and manipulated’
The population 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... has fallen 6 percent since the war with Israel began nearly 15 months ago as about 100,000 Paleostinians left the enclave, while more than 55,000 are presumed dead, according to the Paleostinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), citing Hamas ..always the voice of sweet reason... figures.
Around 45,500 Paleostinians, more than half of them women and kiddies, have been killed since the war began and another 11,000 are missing, the bureau said, citing numbers from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
The Hamas figures cannot be verified and do not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November, 2024, and another 1,000 bandidosholy warriors inside Israel on October 7.
According to the PCBS, the population of Gaza has declined by about 160,000 during the course of the war to 2.1 million, with more than a million or 47% of the total under the age of 18. The numbers appear to assume that all of those considered missing amid the mass displacement inside the Strip are actually dead.
Six percent of the prewar population figure cited by PCBS would indicate a decline of approximately 126,000 people. The discrepancy in the figures could be due to the number of births in the Strip throughout the war, which was not provided in the data.
The figures cited by the PCBS also did not cite any natural deaths occurring over the past 15 months. According to PCBS data from earlier years, approximately 6,800 people died in Gaza in 2021, and approximately 5,500 people died in the Strip in 2020.
PCBS reported that in 2021, around 58,000 babies were born in Gaza, and the figure for 2020 was approximately 55,000. The data presented by the body this week claimed that there were approximately 60,000 pregnant women currently in the Strip, which would mean an increase in births despite the overall decline in population and ongoing grueling war.
The PCBS said some 22% of Gaza’s population currently faces catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity, according to the criteria of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a global monitor.
Included in that 22% are some 3,500 children at risk of death due to malnutrition and lack of food, the bureau said.
It added that Israel has "raged a brutal aggression against Gaza targeting all kinds of life there; humans, buildings and vital infrastructure... entire families were erased from the civil register. There are catastrophic human and material losses."
Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the PCBS data was "fabricated, inflated, and manipulated in order to vilify Israel."
Israel has repeatedly rejected accusations of targeting civilians, saying it abides by international law and has a right to defend itself after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Some 83% of Gaza’s population are residing in the Israeli-designated "humanitarian zone," according to IDF assessments in July.
The zone is located in the al-Mawasi area on the southern Strip’s coast, western neighborhoods of Khan Younis, and central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah. The size of the zone has changed multiple times, amid evolving IDF operations against the Hamas terror group.
Or DNA from the gut of an ear mite. Not to go all LDS, but... given one side's commitment to kinship, bloody shirts, milking bennies, and fudging numbers, and the other side's commitment to human rights, accurate history, and various technologies of government omniscience... isn't there an opportunity for longterm bad faith cooperation here? Half-seriously? [ghost of Porky Pal: "Not by the heir of my djinny djinn djinn!"]
[IsraelTimes] Palestinian attacker accelerated vehicle toward troops operating in Dayr Qadis, subsequently tried to flee, but soldiers opened fire and struck him; wounded Israeli treated at scene
An IDF soldier was slightly wounded in a car-ramming attack near the central West Bank town of Dayr Qadis Wednesday evening, the military said.
According to the IDF, the Palestinian assailant accelerated his vehicle toward troops operating in the town. The IDF said that as he tried to flee, the soldiers opened fire and struck the suspect.
One servicewoman was lightly injured in the incident, and she was treated at the scene, the army said, while not elaborating on when exactly she was struck. The soldier did not require hospitalization, though.
The assailant was listed in serious condition, according to first responders.
[Rudaw] The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Thursday claimed to have repelled several attacks near Manbij and Tishreen Dam by Syrian National Army (SNA) turbans, alleging the presence of Chechen, Turkestani, and Uzbek nationals among the attackers.
"With the participation of hundreds of mercenaries, including members of the so-called ’Guardians of Religion organization’ from Uzbek, Turkestani, and Chechen nationalities, the Ottoman Turkish occupation and its mercenaries launched violent mostly peaceful attacks" read a statement from the SDF.
The al-Qaeda-aligned Hurras al-Din (Guardians of Religion) group broke away from Hay’at 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 2018. Since then, the two groups have competed for influence and territory, with HTS periodically arresting Hurras al-Din members, particularly in 2020, and engaging in conflicts with the group. There have been attempts to reconcile their differences.
The US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees American troops in the Middle East, has repeatedly reported conducting strikes against Hurras al-Din members and leaders, viewing the group as a threat to its allies and American presence in the region.
In 2023, the US designated Sami Mahmud Mohammed al Uraydi, a leader of the Hurras al-Din, as "a Specially Designated Global Terrorist," offering a reward of up to five million dollars for information on his identification or location.
The SDF has been the main ally of the US-led global coalition against ISIS on the ground.
The SDF statement added that they countered the attacks, destroying six armored vehicles as well as killing and wounding "dozens of mercenaries."
Last month, the United States brokered a ceasefire between the SDF and The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...a NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... member, but not the most reliable... , though Ankara denied having agreed to the arrangement.
However,
some men learn by reading. A few learn by observation. The rest have to pee on the electric fence for themselves... there have been reports of continued festivities between the SDF and the SNA which has recently launched expanded attacks on the SDF, particularly near the strategic Tishreen Dam on the Euphrates River.
The Pentagon emphasized on Monday that the ceasefire is "still holding."
[IsraelTimes] A Pennsylvania man who previously served in the US Army has been indicted by a grand jury on charges of attempting to support Lebanon’s Hezbollah and of making false statements to the FBI, the US Justice Department says.
Jack Danaher Molloy, 24, is a dual citizen of the US and Ireland and traveled to Lebanon and Syria in 2024 to attempt to join Hezbollah, which is designated by the US as a foreign terrorist organization, the Justice Department says in a statement.
The department says Molloy returned to the US in late 2024 and continued making attempts to join Hezbollah. He had also promoted hatred and violence against Jews, the Justice Department says, adding he was formerly enlisted as an active-duty soldier in the US Army from mid-March to late April in 2019.
That long? Golly.
Barely into boot camp
The Justice Department says Molloy lied to the FBI about his intentions to join Hezbollah when questioned upon his return to the United States in late 2024. It says he was arrested on December 6 in Chicago.
If convicted, Molloy faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for a material support charge. For false statement charges, he faces a maximum penalty of eight years in prison, a $250,000 fine, or both. A representative of Molloy cannot immediately be contacted.
[Rudaw] At least 21,000 people bit the dust in Syria in 2024, with more than 18,000 being civilians, including children and women, a war monitor reported on Wednesday, and 3,000 non-non-combatants were killed.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britannia-based war monitor, documented the death of 21,402 people in 2024. The monitor verified the death of over 14,000 people under torture in prisons of the former regime of Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Lord of the Baath... through official documents found in those prisons following the fall of the regime, according to a blurb by the monitor.
The monitor added that "18,223 people [civilians], including 337 children under the age of 18, and 240 women over the age of 18," were killed.
Out of the high number of civilian casualties, 14,625 were killed by torture in prisons under the previous regime. The rest were victims caught between the crossfire, bombardment, and festivities between different forces.
As the regime collapsed, chilling stories about inmates of the Sednaya prison on the outskirts of Damascus began to emerge. These stories provide a disturbing look into how the Assad family brutally treated prisoners during their decades-long rule.
The monitor also recorded the deaths of 3,179 non-civilians. Most of them were members of the former regime forces. The rest were fighters from different military factions including Islamist and rebel factions, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and affiliates, Iran-backed militias, 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), Russian soldiers, and others.
Hay’at 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) spearheaded a coalition of rebel groups in a major offensive against the Syrian army in late November, capturing major cities, including the capital Damascus, as Bashir al-Assad fled the country to Russia, ending over five decades of Baathist rule.
Rebel groups in Syria, under the supervision of HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa (Abu Mohammed al-Jolani), have agreed to dissolve and merge into the country’s defense ministry, the new administration announced last week.
Thousands of former Syrian soldiers have surrendered to HTS under a national reconciliation process aimed at reintegrating Assad's former forces into the new administration.
[IsraelTimes] Eighth such attack in some two weeks sends millions to bomb shelters around 4:30 a.m.; fragment hits Modiin; Yemen drone also intercepted
Sirens were activated across central Israel and in Jerusalem around 4:30 a.m. Friday after a ballistic missile was launched at the country from Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of... , the Israel Defense Forces said.
The military said it successfully shot down the projectile, but a fragment following the interception impacted near the central city of Modiin.
Footage posted to social media showed a projectile falling from the sky before a kaboom was seen near the city.
The military was investigating the incident. In the past, partially intercepted missiles launched at Israel have at times crashed with their warhead intact, and caused extensive damage.
Another fragment reportedly fell in the settlement of Har Gilo, near Jerusalem.
Slight damage was caused by the falling debris.
No physical injuries were reported as a direct result of the attack. However,
a hangover is the wrath of grapes... medics treated more than nine people who suffered from acute anxiety and 12 who were hurt while seeking shelter, the Magen David Adom ambulance service said.
Later on Friday morning, a drone launched at Israel from Yemen was successfully intercepted by the Israeli Air Force, the military said. According to the IDF, the drone was shot down outside Israel’s borders, and therefore no sirens sounded.
The attack came amid a wave of similar launches in recent weeks by the Iran's Houthi sock puppets ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The legitimate Yemeni government has accused the them of having ties to the Iranian government. Honest they did. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews They like shooting off... ummm... missiles that they would have us believe they make at home in their basements. On the plus side, they did murder Ali Abdullah Saleh, which was the only way the country was ever going to be rid of him... s in Yemen, a rebel group that is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and Jews.
The Houthis have launched more than 200 missiles and 170 drones at Israel in the past year, according to the Israel Defense Forces. The vast majority did not reach Israel or were intercepted by the military or Israel’s allies in the region.
The Houthis have vowed to keep up the attacks until the end of the war 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 that began on October 7, 2023, when Paleostinian terror group Hamas ..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,... led a devastating attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage to Gaza.
Recently the Houthis have repeatedly fired missiles at central Israel in the middle of the night. The latest was the eighth such launch over the past two weeks.
Since December, the group has fired 12 ballistic missiles and at least 10 drones at Israel.
The group did not immediately claim Friday’s attacks but is believed by Israel to have been behind them.
Alongside the attacks on Israel, the Iran-backed group has carried out repeated missile and drone attacks on some 100 merchant vessels attempting to traverse the Red Sea, forcing many carriers to avoid the key waterway and hamstringing global shipping. The Houthis initially said they would attack Israel-linked ships but few of the vessels targeted had ties to Israel.
[IsraelTimes] Ramallah says Qatari-backed network, which lionized armed groups in northern West Bank, is inciting and misinforming public; move described as temporary, but no end-date given
The Paleostinian Authority on Wednesday ordered the temporary suspension of Al Jazeera broadcasts across the West Bank against the backdrop of the 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... i-based network’s critical coverage of Ramallah’s recent crackdown on terror groups in the territory.
"This decision comes in response to Al Jazeera’s insistence on broadcasting inciting content and reports characterized by misinformation, incitement, sedition and interference in Paleostinian internal affairs," the official PA news agency Wafa said.
In late December, Al Jazeera condemned what it said was an "incitement campaign" by PA President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ...aka Abu Mazen, a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial. While no Yasser Arafat, he has his own brand of evil, just a little more lowercase....> ’s Fatah party against the network in some areas of West Bank.
"This campaign follows the network’s coverage of festivities between Paleostinian security forces and resistance fighters in Jenin," Al Jazeera said in a statement at the time, lionizing the anti-PA fighters, many of whom affiliated with the Hamas ..a regional Iranian catspaw,... and 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.
"During its coverage of the tragic events in Jenin, Al Jazeera ensured the presence of all voices, including those of the resistance fighters and the spokesperson for the Paleostinian security forces," the network claimed.
The security forces of the PA, which exercises limited control over the West Bank, have been engaged in deadly festivities with terror elements since early December, triggered by the arrests of several fighters.
They are fighting members of the Jenin Battalion, most of whom are affiliated with either PIJ or Hamas, whose October 7 onslaught on Israel triggered the ongoing 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... war.
The violence in Jenin refugee camp, a stronghold of terror groups in the northern West Bank and a frequent target of Israeli military raids, has killed 11 people including PA security personnel and civilians.
Detailing the decision, the PA’s Wafa news site said, "The [PA’s] specialized ministerial committee, comprising the ministries of culture, interior and communications, has decided to suspend broadcasts and freeze all activities of Al Jazeera satellite channel and its office in Paleostine."
"The decision also includes temporarily freezing the work of all journalists, employees, crews and affiliated channels until their legal status is rectified due to Al Jazeera’s violations of the laws and regulations in force in Paleostine," the report said.
Al Jazeera denounced Wednesday’s decision as "an attempt to discourage it from reporting spiraling events in the occupied territories."
The decision was not expected to be implemented in Hamas-run Gaza where the Paleostinian Authority does not exercise power.
Fatah said in its own statement accused the broadcaster of sowing division in "our Arab homeland in general and in Paleostine in particular." The party encouraged Paleostinians not to cooperate with the network.
An Al Jazeera employee contacted by AFP confirmed that the network’s office in Ramallah had received a suspension order on Wednesday.
Later on Wednesday, the channel aired images of what appeared to be PA security officers entering the network’s office in Ramallah and handing over the suspension orders.
Hamas condemned the decision to ban the network.
"This decision aligns with a series of recent arbitrary actions taken by the Authority to curtail public rights and freedoms and to reinforce its security grip on the Paleostinian people," the terror group said in a statement.
"We call on the Paleostinian Authority to immediately reverse this decision ... It is crucial to ensure the continuation of media coverage that exposes the occupation and supports the steadfastness of our people."
The Wednesday decision comes more than three months after Israeli forces raided the network’s office in Ramallah.
The network is already banned from broadcasting from Israel amid a long-running feud with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which has only worsened during the ongoing war in Gaza. Israeli officials have long complained about Al Jazeera’s coverage, which they say is heavily influenced by Hamas and endangers IDF troops in Gaza.
[IsraelTimes] An Israeli resident of the central city of Petah Tikva has been indicted at the Central District Court for carrying out missions on behalf of Iran that harmed national security, prosecutors say.
Days after the Shin Bet and police revealed the arrest of Alexander Granovsky, 29, he is charged with being in contact with a foreign agent, handing information to the enemy, and additional vandalism and arson offenses. Prosecutors ask the court to extend his remand until the end of proceedings in the case.
According to the indictment, Granovsky has been in continuous contact with an Iranian agent since November, receiving thousands of dollars and carrying out “a series of severe acts, including filming security facilities, spray-painting political messages, torching cars and additional acts.”
It says that in December, Granovsky was asked to purchase weapons and filmed the neighborhood where former defense minister Benny Gantz lives, as well as power plants in Hadera and Tel Aviv, sending the Iranian agent the footage.
He was also allegedly asked to buy and then destroy army uniform, and to find people with criminal pasts to carry out “acts of violence.” He sent contact details for two such people. The indictment says he also agreed to make Molotov cocktails but failed due to language barriers.
Granovsky was allegedly aware he was cooperating with a hostile element, and even brought up more potential tasks and demanded that the agent give him more — and bigger — missions.
There has been a series of plots involving civilians apparently recruited by Iran that security agencies say have been foiled in recent months.
[IsraelTimes] The IDF confirms that fighter jets carried out an airstrike in southern Lebanon a short while ago, saying it targeted medium-range rocket launchers at a Hezbollah position.
Another rocket launcher next to the Hezbollah site in the Iqlim al-Tuffah area, in the Nabatieh District, was also struck, the military adds.
The IDF says that as part of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon, Israeli authorities sent a request to the Lebanese army to neutralize the launchers “that posed a threat to the Israeli home front” and troops.
“The launchers were struck only after the request was not handled by the Lebanese army,” the IDF says.
The IDF is still deployed to southern Lebanon under the ceasefire agreement, and it has until late January to withdraw, in accordance with the deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces to the area.
[IsraelTimes] Source tells US news site that presentation by Jake Sullivan was part of ‘prudent scenario planning,’ in case Tehran attempts dash for bomb before Trump takes office
“The president took the information like a trooper. He was very lifelike,” the unnamed, anonymous source added.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan recently presented US President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. The man who made Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter look competent, if only by comparison.... with options for potential American strikes on Iranian nuclear sites if Tehran decides to move toward a nuclear weapon before the inauguration of 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... later this month, according to a report on Thursday.
The presentation was made in a secret briefing several weeks ago, the Axios news site reported, citing three officials.
One of the officials said the meeting was not sparked by new intelligence and that Biden did not make a final decision.
The source said the meeting was part of "prudent scenario planning."
Another source said Biden was focused on the question of whether 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... had taken nuclear steps that create an urgent situation that would justify such a dramatic military strike a few weeks before a new president takes office.
The news site highlighted comments Sullivan made at a conference last month on Iran’s nuclear program, in which he noted the "strategic blows" the Islamic Theocratic Republic has suffered with the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, Israeli attacks on its soil and the battering of Leb ...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel... ’s Hezbollah and Hamas ..always the voice of sweet reason... 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... "You can look at the public statements of Iranian officials, which have changed in the last few months as they have been dealt these strategic blows, to raise the question: Do we have to change our doctrine at some point? The fact that that’s coming out publicly is something that has to be looked at extremely carefully," he said at the time.
The Axios report came weeks before Trump’s return to the White House, where during his first term in office he waged a "maximum pressure" campaign on Iran that included the withdrawal of the US from Iran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six major powers and reimposed harsh sanctions on Tehran. Iran, in turn, violated the pact’s nuclear limits, with moves such as rebuilding stockpiles of enriched uranium, refining it to higher fissile purity and installing advanced centrifuges to speed up output.
Indirect talks between Biden’s administration and Tehran to try to revive the pact have failed, but Trump said during his election campaign in September: "We have to make a deal because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal."
On Wednesday, the semi-official ISNA news agency cited Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi as saying that the next round of nuclear talks between Iran and three European countries will take place on January 13 in Geneva.
Iran held talks about its disputed nuclear program in November 2024 with Britannia, La Belle France and Germany.
Those discussions, the first since the US election, came after Tehran was angered by a European-backed resolution that accused Iran of poor cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog.
Tehran reacted to the resolution by informing the IAEA watchdog that it plans to install more uranium-enriching centrifuges at its enrichment plants.
UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi told Rooters in December that Iran is "dramatically" accelerating its enrichment of uranium to up to 60 percent purity, closer to the roughly 90% level that is weapons-grade. While Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ...the very aged actual dictator of Iran, successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini...> ostensibly opposes the manufacturing of a nuclear weapon, Iran is enriching uranium at levels that are only relevant for the assembly of such bombs. The Islamic Theocratic Republic is dedicated to the destruction of Israel, with Jerusalem vowing not to allow the regime to build a bomb.
Biden/Obama/demostate continues the exorbitant march of building barriers to a successful Trump transition.
"Ecological succession is the process by which the mix of species and habitat in an area changes over time. Gradually, these communities replace one another until a “climax community”—like a mature forest—is reached, or until a disturbance, like a fire, occurs."
[IsraelTimes] IDF confirms strike on aide Hussam Shahwan, accusing him of terrorizing Gazans and planning attacks on Israel; rocket fired at Israeli border town after Katz vows to step up strikes
An Israeli airstrike on a central Gaza tent camp killed Hamas’s chief of police in the enclave along with his deputy and several others, including children, the Hamas terror group said Thursday.
Police chief Mahmoud Salah and his deputy Hussam Shahwan were killed in a strike in the al-Mawasi area, inside the IDF-designated humanitarian zone west of Khan Younis, Hamas said. Medics said 11 people were killed in the strike.
The Israeli military confirmed killing Shahwan, accusing him of “hiding under the protection of the civilian population in the humanitarian zone in Khan Younis.” It did not mention Salah.
The Israel Defense Forces identified Shahwan as having served as Hamas’s head of internal security, and said he was responsible for “severely violating the human rights” of Gazan civilians, including “violent interrogations,” as well as taking part in planning attacks against Israeli troops.
The IDF said it took steps ahead of the strike to reduce the harm to civilians, accusing Hamas of “cruelly exploiting civilian shelters, civilian buildings and the civilian population as human shields.”
In a statement, the Hamas-run Interior Ministry condemned the killing of the two police officers, saying “they were performing their humanitarian and national duty in serving our people.”
“By committing the assassination, the occupation continues to spread chaos in the Strip and deepen the human suffering of citizens,” the ministry said, adding that “the police force is a civil protection force that works to provide services to citizens.” The ministry said Salah spent 30 years in the police and was appointed its chief six years ago.
Medics in the Hamas-ruled enclave claimed that 11 people were killed in the strike, including women and children, and that 15 others were wounded.
“Eleven people were martyred, including three children and two women, and 15 were injured after the occupation aircraft bombed a tent housing displaced people in the Al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Younis city in the southern Gaza Strip,” Gaza’s civil defense agency said in a statement.
Also on Thursday, the IDF said that the Israeli Air Force had struck a command center run by Hamas operatives inside the Khan Younis municipality building, within the boundaries of the humanitarian zone.
Medics told Reuters that six people were killed in the strike.
The IDF said that the command center was used to “plan and execute acts of terrorism against IDF forces and the State of Israel.”
It said that many steps were taken before the strike to mitigate harm to civilians including using precise munitions, aerial observations and other intelligence gathering.
“The Hamas terror group systematically violates international law, while viciously using the cover of civilian shelters, civilian buildings and the civilian population as a human shield while carrying out terror activities,” the IDF said.
Defense Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday threatened Hamas with intensified attacks if it “does not soon allow the release of the Israeli hostages from Gaza… and continues to fire at Israeli communities.”
The threat came after Hamas stepped up rocket fire at Israel from Gaza over the past week, following months with only sporadic missile fire from the Strip. At noon on Thursday, Hamas fired a rocket at Kibbutz Holit near the border, which the IDF said was intercepted.
At the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Day, Hamas fired rockets at the southern city of Netivot. On Saturday afternoon, Hamas fired two long-range rockets toward Jerusalem, after having not fired at the capital in over a year. The terror group has also targeted border towns near Gaza several times in recent days.
[IsraelTimes] Six people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike at the Hamas-run Interior Ministry headquarters in Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip, medics tell Reuters.
[IsraelTimes] Resident of area tells AFP that the intensive strikes, the latest since Assad’s fall, ‘turned the night into day’
Syrian media reported an Israeli Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... near Aleppo late Thursday, the latest such attack since the overthrow of longtime strongman Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Oppressor of the Syrians and the Lebs... last month.
According to the Sham FM radio station, the strikes hit a defense facility and a scientific research center near the city of al-Safirah, close to Aleppo.
It was not clear whether the strikes caused any casualties.
A resident of the al-Safirah area told AFP on condition of anonymity: "They hit defense factories, five strikes... The strikes were very strong. It made the ground shake, doors and windows opened — the strongest strikes I ever heard... It turned the night into day."
There was no immediate comment from the IDF.
Since Islamist-led rebels ousted Assad in early December, Israel has conducted hundreds of strikes on Syrian military assets, saying they are aimed at preventing military weapons from falling into hostile hands. Targets have included 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 and air force and navy targets.
According to the Sham FM radio station, the strikes hit a defense facility and a scientific research center near the city of al-Safirah, close to Aleppo.
Once again the subject bursts into public view, as it has done several times over the past two generations. Will Elon Musk finally be able to shame England into fixing the underlying acquiescence, or will a few be tried and jailed while the authorities carry on protecting the rapists as usual?
[IsraelTimes] Elon Musk calls for the release from prison of Tommy Robinson, one of Britain’s best known far-right agitators, in the US tech billionaire’s latest UK intervention.
In a flurry of messages on his X platform, Musk also renewed his criticism of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, highlighting that his time as chief state prosecutor in England and Wales coincided with the emergence of a child grooming scandal.
It comes after Musk, the world’s richest man and key ally of US President-elect Donald Trump, faced recent criticism over his support for Germany’s far-right AfD party.
Concerns have also emerged in Britain over claims that Musk is set to donate tens of millions of pounds to the upstart hard-right, anti-immigrant Reform UK party, led by Nigel Farage.
[X]
Why is Tommy Robinson in a solitary confinement prison for telling the truth?
He should be freed and those who covered up this travesty should take his place in that cell. https://t.co/Dn48JLoJgR
The transcript from the Oxford grooming gang trial reads like something out of an insane right-wing fever dream. The worst part is, it was a choice. It didn't have to happen. The immigration policies of the past few decades have invited entirely avoidable horrors into our homes.
These appalling rape gang cases of girls as young as 11 shame our country. Not only do the perpetrators need to be punished. So do the authorities who turned a blind eye in the name of not inflaming "racial tensions". https://t.co/D0xG4BaoV3
[Spiegel] EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has cancelled trips due to pneumonia.
"The president has cancelled her external appointments for the first two weeks of January," a Commission spokesman said when asked by the dpa news agency. She is struggling with severe pneumonia. The Polish Press Agency (PAP) also reports on von der Leyen's illness.
VON DER LEYEN MISSES POLAND'S TRIP
According to the information, the cancelled dates include a trip to Gdansk on the occasion of the beginning of the Polish EU Council Presidency. It is to be made up for at a later date. "The president is doing her official business from Hanover," the spokesman continued. "If all goes well, the president will be completely healed by the middle of the month." Then she will work again from her office in the Brussels Commission Building.
Poland has for the 1. January officially took over the EU Council Presidency. A ceremony will take place on Friday. Von der Leyen, since the 1. December 2019 at the head of the EU Commission, will not participate. Previously, it had already become known that Poland had unloaded the Hungarian ambassador because of tensions over a case of political asylum.
#1
Yep:
UPDATE: 2:38 p.m.: Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) switched their votes to Johnson on the first vote, giving him the majority and the House Speaker's gavel.
ooohhhh goodie. Good news is he owes Trump for it. We'll see if he honors the debt or stays an asshat.
#4
Apparently the NY Judge Merchan is going to sentence Trump on the 10th, and I suspect attempt to jail him. Either a massive act of arrogance and insult, or a ploy to create some form of reprieve by Biden or NY Governor.
#6
Claim now is "Judge Juan M. Merchan, who presided over Trump’s trial, signaled in a written decision that he'd sentence the former and future president to what's known as an unconditional discharge, in which a case is closed without jail time, a fine or probation. Trump can appear virtually for sentencing, if he chooses.
Merchan wrote that he sought to balance competing interests: Trump’s ability to govern “unencumbered” by the case, the U.S. Supreme Court's July ruling on presidential immunity, the public’s expectation “that all are equal and no one is above the Iaw,” and the importance of respecting a jury verdict."
#7
Trump couldn't appeal his verdict/sentence until actually sentenced IIUC.
Merchan should be slammed, drummed out, and his DNC Daughter's campaign co. made toxic
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/03/2025 18:28
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#8
From NoMo's link above Trump can appear virtually for sentencing, if he chooses
Suppose honorable Judge runs a fake punt and sentences Trump to jail. If Trump refuses to turn himself in, it becomes a matter for law enforcement and the honorable Judge has both followed the law and washed his hands of the case.
The idea of Trump running the country from jail like some Mexican drug lord sounds like something the Babylon Bee would write, so it will probably happen.
Acting Presidential for 2 more weeks.
[Newsweek] President Joe Biden is expected to visit New Orleans next week after the horrific New Year's attack on Bourbon Street revelers.
The White House said Friday that Biden and first lady Jill Biden will go to New Orleans on Monday to "grieve with the families and community members impacted by the tragic attack."
On Thursday, Biden said he had ordered an "accelerated" investigation into the attack and praised the resilience of the people of New Orleans.
"New Orleans is a place like no other," he said. "Its history, its culture and above all its people. So I know while this person committed a terrible assault on the city, the spirit of our New Orleans will never, never, never be defeated. It always will shine forth."
He actually said all that? With his own mouth? Unprompted? Sure he did.
DETAILS ABOUT THE NEW ORLEANS ATTACK
At around 4:15 a.m. local time on Wednesday, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old U.S. Army veteran from Texas, allegedly rammed a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year's revelers on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter in what is being investigated as an act of terrorism.
The truck eventually stopped, and Jabbar allegedly opened fire on responding police officers, injuring two before being killed in a shootout with law enforcement.
An ISIS flag, weapons and multiple IED bombs were found in the suspect's rented truck. Federal officials are investigating Jabbar's potential associations with terror organizations.
The FBI currently believes Jabbar acted alone in the attack.
Posted by: Skidmark ||
01/03/2025
12:32 ||
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Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
[War Zone] The Israeli Ministry of Defense has released details — and imagery — of a dramatic commando raid into Syria, which targeted an underground missile production facility, back in September. The raid, codenamed Operation Many Ways, was deemed an outstanding success, with the facility destroyed and none of the 120 Israeli special forces troops involved being injured. Until now, however, very few details of how the raid took place had emerged.
The raid was carried out on Sept. 8 by members of the Israeli Air Force (IAF), specifically its elite Shaldag unit and Unit 669. Shaldag is a clandestine outfit that specializes in long-range penetration operations, including commando-style raids. Unit 669 is tasked primarily with combat search and rescue (CSAR), a key requirement of missions carried out in or close to hostile territory.
The target of Operation Many Ways was, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) say, an Iranian-run missile manufacturing site, codenamed Deep Layer by the Israeli military — part of the Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) network.
What the Israeli Ministry of Defense described as “precision-guided missiles” and long-range rockets were planned to be made at the facility and then supplied to Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as to the Assad regime in Syria. In terms of Iranian support for Hezbollah, Deep Layer was Iran’s “flagship project,” according to the IDF.
Operation Many Ways took place when Syria was still ruled by Bashar al-Assad and before Israel launched its campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
After the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, it seems that Israel has decided that it
Long section with all the details can be read at the link, adorned by lots of photos. Interesting stuff.
can publicize details of the commando raid. This will also serve as a warning of potential further operations directed against Iran and its proxies in the region. The fact that the operation demonstrated Israeli willingness and capacity to launch such raids against deeply buried and highly defended bunkers sent a signal to Iran, which is a key takeaway we highlighted when the first mention of the special operations raid emerged. While executing a similar operation against an underground target in Iran would be far more complex and risky, this has always been a real possibility and Israel has proven itself more than capable of operating within Iran’s borders.
More recently, Netanyahu spoke of a changing order in the region, with two of Iran’s key proxies there, Hamas and Hezbollah, deeply degraded and the Assad regime eliminated, stating:
“After Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis are almost the last remaining arm of Iran’s axis of evil. The Houthis are learning, and will learn the hard way, that those who strike Israel will pay a very heavy price for it.”
While disclosing details of Operation Many Ways, the IDF said it will “continue to act strategically and professionally with various methods and tactics to remove threats directed at the citizens of Israel.” This clearly includes special operations raids against very hardened underground facilities well beyond Israel’s borders.
[DW] What a shit show
Thousands of the president's supporters, some of them waving South Korean and American flags, have gathered to block police from arresting him.
The impeached South Korean conservative president, Yoon Suk Yeol, is defying an arrest warrant as his supporters stand between the police and his presidential compound in Seoul.
Yoon is accused of abusing his power when he sent shockwaves through the country on December 3 by declaring martial law. The Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials was granted an arrest warrant for Yoon by a Seoul court on Tuesday. The president was impeached last month after he declared martial law and dispatched the military to the National Assembly as lawmakers gathered to undo the martial law decree.
Thousands of Yoon’s supporters, some of them waving South Korean and American flags, have gathered near his residence this week where they voiced support for Yoon and blocked police from arresting the impeached president. Officers arrested some of the supporters who lay down on the road in front of Yoon’s residence.
[Powerline] The city of Minneapolis is in a rush to finalize a consent decree with the Biden Department of Justice. According to the Star Tribune, the terms of the consent decree mandate "sweeping police reforms."
Why the rush? Because city authorities fear they may not be able to turn authority over the department to the incoming Trump administration. They want to sell out the police department while they can. It may be too late after January 20.
The consent decree would subject the Minneapolis Police Department to continuing federal oversight. The Star Tribune does not quote a single source or authority explaining why such a consent decree is preferable to the status quo, which includes the department’s agreement to a settlement with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights.
Most cities do not seek to give up authority over their own police departments. As the Star Tribune story observes: "Minneapolis [would] become the first city in the nation with its police department governed by both state and federal mandates." It is another opportunity for Minneapolis to achieve a dubious distinction.
Posted by: Frank G ||
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Finger in the wind, they can feel the change and want to get ahead of Jan 20th
[JTN] Citibank, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs have all announced they are terminating their membership with the Net-Zero Banking Alliance.
Less totalitarianism is always good.
The new year is starting off with more bad news for environment, social and governance (ESG) investing.
Citigroup and Bank of America announced Tuesday that they were leaving the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, Reuters reported.
Then on Thursday, Morgan Stanley announced it too was terminating its membership with the group, according to Bloomberg.
Morgan Stanley and Citigroup each said they remain committed to progress in achieving net-zero emissions. Last month, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs withdrew from the alliance.
The exodus comes two years after 19 state attorneys general, lead by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, launched an investigation into these firms, for alleged deceptive trade practices connected to ESG. It was the third such investigation Paxton initiated, The Center Square reported.
The NZBA, according to its website, is a bank-led and United Nations-convened organization coordinating their lending, investment and capital markets activities to be in line with net-zero emissions by 2050.
[DM] A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled that US regulators overstepped their authority by reinstating "net neutrality" rules governing internet service providers, dealing a blow to the Biden administration.
In a published opinion, the appellate court in the state of Ohio said an order last year by the Federal Communications Commission "resurrected the FCC's heavy-handed regulatory regime."
The battle over how much control US regulators should have over service providers has been going on for years. Under President Joe Biden, the FCC expanded its oversight.
"This order -- issued during the Biden administration -- undoes the order issued during the first Trump administration, which undid the order issued during the Obama administration, which undid orders issued during the Bush and Clinton administrations," the court said in its opinion.
Net neutrality advocates argue that internet service is a vital utility in modern life and that companies providing it should be regulated to stop abuses such as giving speed advantages to those who pay more.
Net Neutrality rules prohibit internet service providers from blocking, slowing down, or charging extra for the internet content and applications their broadband customers choose, according to internet rights group Free Press.
Internet service giants have fought against being regulated, arguing they should be left to run their businesses as they see fit.
The court sided with internet service providers, saying the FCC lacks statutory authority "to impose its desired net-neutrality policies."
Matt Wood, Vice President of Policy at Free Press denounced Thursday's decision, saying it will let the FCC under the Trump administration to "abdicate its responsibility to protect internet users against unscrupulous business practices."
"It's rich to think of Donald Trump and Elon Musk's hand-picked FCC chairman characterizing light-touch broadband rules as heavy-handed regulation, while scheming to force carriage of viewpoints favorable to Trump on the nation's broadcast airwaves and social media sites."
[ZeroHedge] Prominent figures in Germany’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) — expected to become the country’s largest party after next month’s elections — have confirmed a policy proposal to deport asylum seekers once they have been convicted of two crimes. However, the rival Alternative for Germany (AfD) has already slammed the proposal as a weak proposal that will do little to stem the crime crisis involving foreigners.
Unfortunately true. Let’s see if the CDU will voluntarily move toward zero tolerance and quick response before they election in February.
The move is designed to signal a tougher stance on migration policy, with CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann telling WELT TV the country needed to act decisively against criminal offenders with residence permits, advocating changes to Germany’s Residence Act to ensure that committing a crime results in automatic expulsion after a second offense.
“We need to end the cycle of repeat offenders,” Linnemann declared, referencing recent attacks, including the Christmas market massacre last month in Magdeburg, which reignited calls for stricter measures.
Crimes such as theft, assault, drug offenses, and fare evasion on public transport would all count as intentional acts warranting deportation, he added.
Linnemann clarified that these measures would apply to individuals with valid residence permits, not those already obligated to leave the country.
The CDU’s proposed migration overhaul extends beyond criminal deportation. Union Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz echoed Linnemann’s stance, advocating deportation to unstable countries like Syria and Afghanistan. While acknowledging Syria’s instability, Merz argued that exceptions should not shield criminals, including members of the Assad regime or its militias, from being turned back at Germany’s borders.
“We cannot allow Germany to become a safe haven for those who committed atrocities elsewhere,” Merz said, emphasizing the importance of screening migrants at the border. He also criticized the current strain on Germany’s infrastructure, citing overwhelmed municipalities and calling for a separation between labor migration and asylum migration.
The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), however, criticized the CDU’s proposals as political posturing. AfD Chancellor candidate Alice Weidel accused Merz of failing to act despite a potential majority in the Bundestag, highlighting the Union’s refusal to collaborate with the AfD despite its gaining popularity and growing electoral success at the state level and expected gains in February’s federal election.
[JustTheNews] "Our bomb squad cleared the car and declared that it is safe. The driver is being arrested for reckless driving. Please continue to avoid the area, while our investigators continue their work," they added.
U.S. Capitol Police on Thursday confirmed the arrest of one individual for reckless driving after responding to a suspicious vehicle that was driving on the sidewalk.
"Before 10 a.m., our officers spotted a car that had been driving along the sidewalk, near Peace Circle, and into the grassy area near Third Street, NW, & Constitution Avenue. Officers took the man into custody," the Capitol Police posted.
"Our bomb squad cleared the car and declared that it is safe. The driver is being arrested for reckless driving. Please continue to avoid the area, while our investigators continue their work," they added.
The arrest comes amid heightened security tensions as the nation reveals from a terrorist attack in New Orleans and a suspected second attack in Las Vegas on New Year's Day.
[Breitbart] On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Your World,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas responded to questions on how we can ensure ISIS won’t exploit the border by stating that “individuals who pose a threat to public safety or our national security are prioritized for immigration detention and removal from the United States.” And that policy changes have been made to reduce traffic at the southern border.
After listing figures about potential terrorists at the border, host Sandra Smith asked, [relevant exchange begins around 2:30] “How can we be sure that ISIS won’t find a safe harbor here?”
Mayorkas answered, “It is our highest responsibility to ensure the safety and security of the American people. And in the service of that responsibility, we screen and vet individuals, and individuals who pose a threat to public safety or our national security are prioritized for immigration detention and removal from the United States. And looking at the matter before us, the tragedy in New Orleans yesterday, we are dealing with a United States citizen born in the state of Texas who was radicalized to violence by a foreign terrorist ideology. But, let me be clear, whatever the nature of the threat, those who pose a threat to the American people are our highest priority for law enforcement action as our laws provide and we enforce and execute those laws every single day. And so many people in our department do so at risk to their own well-being and safety.”
Smith responded, “There are going to be many who are going to hear you say that and wonder why more hasn’t been done to stop people from illegally coming into the country, Mr. Secretary. I looked back at March 12. And I was reminded when Christopher Wray, heading up the FBI, said that the terror level in this country has reached a whole new level, worried about those here who will inspire acts like, by the way, the one that just happened in New Orleans. He said the terror level threat is higher than before October 7. So, one might wonder why there hasn’t been a change in policy that has led to that.”
Mayorkas responded, “Well, there has been a change in policy. Quite frankly, the number of individuals encountered at our southern border on a daily basis now is lower than it was in 2019, the last year before the pandemic, number one. Number two, Director Wray was speaking of the fact that we have a diverse set of challenges that our country is facing. And I have spoken publicly about this as well. We have the persistent threat of foreign terrorism that really gave rise to the Department of Homeland Security in the first instance after the tragic events of 9/11. We have the individuals already resident in the United States radicalized to violence by a foreign terrorist ideology, or, over the last eight years, what we have seen, anti-government sentiment, false narratives spread online, personal grievances. And the third major threat vector is adverse nation-states such as the People’s Republic of China, Russia, and Iran that we counter every single day.”
#2
The new Congress taking office today still has time to impeach Mayorkas. While they're at it, they can also impeach / remove Biden and Harris. However, I anticipate the same old, same old Congressional shenanigans and self-serving activities.
[Breitbart] Illegal aliens, tourists, and foreign visa workers delivered nearly 400,000 children across the United States in 2024 — exceeding the population of New Orleans, Louisiana.
The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that almost 400,000 “anchor babies,” the term used to describe the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens and other foreign nationals with no ties to the country, are delivered across all 50 states each year.
Anchor babies are rewarded with birthright American citizenship despite their parents having no legitimate ties to the U.S., many having only recently arrived. Years later, when the child is considered an adult, they can sponsor their parents and foreign relatives for green cards — anchoring their family in the U.S. for generations.
In 2024, close to 300,000 anchor babies are estimated to have been delivered to illegal alien parents. In addition, about 72,000 anchor babies were estimated to have been delivered to foreign tourists, foreign visa workers, and foreign students.
President-Elect Donald Trump has promised to end birthright citizenship in his second term. Recent polling finds that a plurality of Americans, including 48 percent of whites and 42 percent of Hispanics, support Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship.
“On day one of my new term in office, I will sign an executive order making clear to federal agencies that under the correct interpretation of the law going forward the future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic U.S. citizenship,” Trump said in 2023.
The U.S. Supreme Court has never explicitly ruled that the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens must be granted birthright citizenship, and many legal scholars dispute the idea.
Many leading conservative scholars argue the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment does not provide mandatory birthright citizenship to the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens or noncitizens, because these children are not subject to United States jurisdiction as that language was understood when the 14th Amendment was ratified.
The United States and Canada are among only a handful of developed nations, mostly in North and South America, that have a birthright citizenship policy for anyone, regardless of immigration status, born within its physical borders.
Australia, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, New Zealand, and Spain, among other countries, reserve birthright citizenship for children born to at least one citizen parent.
#3
If you believe in strict construction and original intent, then the birth issue was about former Confederate states seeking to classify former slaves as foreigners. That period of time has past and the intent achieved.
[Idaho Statesman] Police halted train activity for hours after footprints in the snow led officers to an explosive device on a train car on New Year’s Day. The Payette Police Department said it received a report "regarding a suspicious subject" who was seen "attempting to light something on fire" near a parked railroad car in the 600 Block of North 8th Street in Payette.
Officers arriving at the scene just before 6 p.m. found fresh footprints leading to a train car that had a "suspected undetonated improvised explosive device," also known as an IED, a Payette Police Department news release said.
Payette Police Chief Gary Marshall told the Idaho Statesman that the explosive was a "pipe bomb-style device" made out of polyvinyl chloride plastic, and it was found on a step connected to the outside of the train car. Further footprints led to a camp trailer parked near a residence in the 600 block, according to police. Officers apprehended Brent Sharrai, 40, of Payette, after a short foot pursuit, police said.
Law enforcement from additional agencies arrived at the scene to help handle the explosive, including the Nampa Police Department and one FBI agent.
"The Nampa Bomb Squad utilized their specialized robot to remove the IED from the train car and later detonated the device to render it safe," the Payette Police Department said.
Police said they notified Union Pacific Railroad, which put all trains scheduled to travel through the site on standby for five hours.
Sharrai was initially booked into the Payette County Jail on outstanding warrants for recent misdemeanors, according to court records. Police said they obtained a warrant to search the trailer where he was staying and found "items similar to the device found on the train car," as well as controlled substances and drug paraphernalia.
Sharrai was later charged with felony possession of a destructive device, felony possession of a controlled substance, as well as misdemeanors for drug paraphernalia and resisting arrest. Payette police said further federal charges of possession and manufacturing of a destructive device are pending while the FBI completes its investigation.
"According to (Sharrai), he was just trying to make a loud explosion or loud boom," Marshall said. "He said he did not have any intentions of damaging property or harming anyone."
Marshall said the FBI got involved "based on the state of the nation" and recent acts of terrorism in other parts of the country, including the New Orleans attack on Wednesday that involved a person driving through a crowd after planting explosives in the area.
"Something like this comes up, and there’s concern that it’s something similar," Marshall said. The police chief said that at this time, law enforcement does not believe Sharrai was working with others. "There was nothing discovered or disclosed by the suspect in this case that would tie him to any kind of terrorist organization," Marshall said.
Court records in Idaho and Oregon show that Sharrai has a lengthy criminal history. In 2018, he was sentenced to 21 months in prison for stabbing his brother-in-law with a box cutter during a family feud in Ontario.
Sharrai is lodged in the Payette County Jail and was scheduled to appear for an arraignment in court Thursday afternoon, but he refused to appear.
Judge Robert L. Jackson asked if there was a reason the defendant was refusing to appear.
A Payette County Sheriff’s Deputy responded, “He said he was mad — that’s all he would tell me.”
Jackson said Sharrai would remain in custody until he decides to comply and the arraignment would be rescheduled for another day.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/03/2025
01:50 ||
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#1
A pipe bomb made of PVC. Okie-dokie. That's not a bomb, it's a Wiley Coyote firecracker.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/03/2025 8:39
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#2
May be PVC but still dangerous and an act of terrorism none the less. The Treasure Valley is home to good old-fashioned Patriots who don't "cotton" to these things as they say.
#3
I think, based on the second link, this can safely be moved to Lurid Crimes on Page 3: Non-WoT. What the idiot did is indeed dangerous, but it appears to be thoughtless stupidity rather than malicious intent to change the world.
#4
Both the first assumption that it’s another terror attack and the police response bringing in the FBI show clearly how on edge the country is as we head toward the White House handover.
[FoxNews] The suspect left two bombs near the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee offices on the eve of the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol
The FBI on Thursday released a new video allegedly showing the Jan. 5, 2021 suspect who planted pipe bombs outside the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee offices in Washington, D.C.
Why? And why now, just before Trump nominee Kash Patel takes over?
Along with the video, the FBI also revealed that the suspect is believed to be about 5-foot, 7-inches tall in an effort to elicit new tips from the public ahead of the fourth anniversary of the crime.
The FBI noted that a $500,000 reward is still available for tips that lead to an arrest.
The attempted attack occurred on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, but there is no clear link between the two events.
"Without being able to confirm the suspect’s identity, it is very hard to definitively establish motive," David Sundberg, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office, told The Associated Press. "Therefore, it would be difficult for us to state that there is a link, although we can’t state there is not one."
Investigators aren’t even sure if the suspect is a man or a woman.
The suspect was wearing a grey hoodie, face mask, black gloves and Nike Air Max Speed Turf shoes, the FBI said, adding that fewer than 25,000 pairs of the shoes were sold between August 2018 and the time of the attack.
"Based on attire, those are probably the most remarkable or distinctive feature when it comes to clothing the suspect wore," Sundberg said. "We're hoping that somebody might recognize that."
The FBI has assessed over 600 tips, reviewed about 39,000 video files and conducted more than 1,000 interviews over the past four years.
The new video shows the suspect placing the first bomb near a bench outside the Democratic National Committee building just before 8 p.m.
The suspect then placed the second bomb in an alley behind the Republican National Committee building at around 8:16 p.m. and was last seen in surveillance footage two minutes later walking past a row of D.C. houses wearing a backpack that investigators believe they used to transport the pipe bombs.
"We still believe there is someone out there who has information they may not have realized was significant until now," the narrator of the FBI video said. "We’re asking you to come forward and share that information with the FBI."
No one was hurt in the attempted attack and the bombs were rendered safe, but the FBI said it could have been deadly.
Both Vice President Kamala Harris and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were near the DNC office before the first bomb was found on the afternoon of Jan. 6 and deactivated.
#6
Someone once showed a picture of the pipe bomb compared to a picture of an FBI dummy training pipe bomb mock-up. They exactly matched. It shows just how good the FBI modelers are where they can predict how future pipe bombs might look. That is a very high level of professionalism.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/03/2025 12:01
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#7
The FBI says only 25000 pairs of those shoes were purchased but no mention how many pairs of those Nike’s were stolen.
[THEPOSTMILLENNIAL] On Thursday, charges against an English teacher in Vancouver, Washington for alleged sexual misconduct with a student were dropped, due to the expiration of the statute of limitations despite allegations of a pattern of sexual acts with minors that goes back over a decade. In addition to charges being dropped, orders prohibiting contact with minors were also rescinded.
According to court documents, Hudson’s Bay High School teacher Shadbreon Gatson, 43, was arrested on Dec. 20 and charged with sexual misconduct with a minor. Investigators said the girl was a 16-year-old student when the alleged misconduct took place.
KOIN 6 reported that on Monday, during Gatson's first court appearance, Clark County prosecutors said, "The allegations go back to 2013, but we’re also aware of more recent allegations involving another student that happened in 2024. That will be considered in charging in relationship with this case. He also received letters of directions pertaining to interactions with females as early as 2009."
Prosecutors said that, in 2017, Gaston was reprimanded for allegedly "failing to maintain a boundary" with two other female students.
Vancouver Public Schools claim Gaston was placed on leave on Nov. 8, when the district first learned of inappropriate behavior, but the arrest resulted from a Dec. 2 report filed by the former student.
In 2013, a custodian walked in on Gatson allegedly engaging in sex acts with a 16-year-old student in the school’s band room. The incident was reported to school officials, but both the teacher and student denied it.
Officers interviewed Gatson's alleged victim, who said she came forward now due to the ongoing trauma the alleged incidents have caused her as well as the suspicion that the teacher may have other victims. Additionally, she claimed she originally denied the allegations. No, no! Certainly not! because Gatson told her to. However,
alcohol has never solved anybody's problems. But then, neither has milk... Gatson did receive a disciplinary letter in his file.
The relationship allegedly began after Gatson gave the victim detention and "sexual acts happened at both home and the school," according to court documents.
KATU reported that Gatson had similar allegations in his school disciplinary record, going back as early as 2009. Additionally, there may be another allegation involving a student in 2024 which police are investigating.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/03/2025
00:00 ||
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#1
I don't know where PM came up with charges being dropped. I clicked through all the links and found this,
#2
^ Seems to be multiple girls. Older charges may have been dropped while newer ones (within statute of limitations) pursued
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/03/2025 2:32
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#3
Back in April 2019 Washington State passed a law eliminating any statute of limitations for most sex crimes against minors.
Then on March 26th, 2024 Washington State House Bill 1618 was passed and became law effective date 6/6/2024, allowing longer periods of prosecution for other sex crimes.
Either way, there was NO reason for any toss out or prosecution delay.
BUT!
Isn't it strange the Washington State School Systems, then allows Mentally Ill Transvestites to dress up, teach classes and use Girl Locker rooms and restrooms?
Text taken from the Telegram Channel of voin_dv
[ColonelCassad] The video was filmed last fall by an enemy helmet camera during the Ukrainian Armed Forces' attempt to recapture Trudovoye from the assault troops of the 39th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade of the Vostok Group of Forces.
The video is strictly 18+
In the video, a Ukrainian soldier controls the entrance to the yard, then retreats before a Ukrainian FPV drone strikes the suspected position of the Russian soldier.
After the strike, the Ukrainian soldier returns, enters the yard, and a super-close range shooting battle ensues, which turns into hand-to-hand combat.
The following footage is very violent, and is best avoided by the sensitive and faint-hearted.
The dialogue between the two opponents after the deadly fight is over deserves special attention.
Yes, their words show more respect for each other as opponents than the herd of bloodthirsty scum on both sides, calling from the couch to wage war to the last Russian/Ukrainian and to launch nuclear strikes on Moscow/Kiev.
These warriors, like those in the video, have the right to say such things, but not the bloodthirsty clowns sitting in the deep rear, who have never risked their lives in an attempt to take someone else's, and who watch the war as a kind of fan on the couch.
At the moment our hero is in Russia for treatment!
More from X:
The fact that this war has went from the trenches, to FPV drones, and then back to CQB with nothing but knifes is honestly terrifying, in this day and age where weapon systems are top of the line and body armour capabilities, all rendered useless when the enemy is in melee range. https://t.co/FLfVEFDUTl
Even more from X. The photo is presumed to be the Russian involved in the fight. He is a Yakut indian:
Here’s the video but it’s very sad. Both soldiers fought with honor and even complemented each other on being the better soldier. The Russian asked if he can check up on him within a half hour but he said no and wanted to rest in peace. pic.twitter.com/NGeJKJKTTT
[FoxNews] 'No one who perpetuated, concealed or ignored this grotesque scandal should ever live it down,' New York Post editors said
Journalists who helped the White House cover up President Biden's mental decline should be held responsible for misleading the public, The New York Post demanded in a scathing new editorial.
"Dem-friendly journalists saw the same evidence as the rest of us that Biden was compromised, and instead of being skeptical, asking questions and putting the White House’s feet to the fire — doing their jobs — they joined the crusade to gaslight America," the Post's editorial board wrote Wednesday.
As Biden prepares to leave office, the media is facing renewed scrutiny over how it covered one of the biggest stories of the year — concerns that Biden was unfit for office.
Throughout the 2024 presidential race, many media pundits and commentators ran to Biden’s defense when there was speculation about his mental acuity, including after Special Counsel Robert Hur's report about him being well-meaning but forgetful, viral videos of him looking confused and a Wall Street Journal report about his faltering behind-the-scenes demeanor.
Despite polls showing the majority of Americans felt Biden was too old to serve a second term, many journalists treated questions about Biden's health like a right-wing conspiracy.
"The entire idea that Biden was anything but healthy — virile, even — was treated as a right-wing, tin-foil-hat talking point," the Post wrote.
These concerns came to a tipping point after Biden's faltering June debate performance, after which he was pressured to drop out of the race.
"And at every turn, spineless, in-the-tank journos obediently did Team Biden’s propagandistic dirty work — right up until the debate, when Biden’s senility became too unmistakable to continue denying," the Post's editorial continued.
"Now they’re acting bashful, but it’s far too late to salvage their shredded credibility," the Post wrote, referring to a recent Semafor report where several liberal journalists admitted that their defense of Biden was their worst take of 2024.
"I come out of 2024 with a lot of contempt for the president and for the people around him — who have essentially been engaged in elder abuse — and also with a fair amount of embarrassment that I didn’t see through their deception earlier," journalist Josh Barro told Semafor.
"Like many others, I was completely, utterly, totally, embarrassingly wrong, about Biden’s lack of mental competence," former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan also confessed to the outlet.
The revelations come at a time when trust in the media is at a historic low, according to Gallup polling.
Would the NY Post happen to mean all those former White House & Federal Agency Press Staff turned MSM Journalists, over the last 30 years, to steer the Liberal Socialist Democrat (LSD) agenda and propaganda?
#2
Word leaked out about his diagnosis in the 2018 time frame. Everybody knew. The media was onboard, staff was onboard, and all the politicians knew. They are all coming up with their BS rationalizations for cover. The guy was possibly coherent for four hour stretches every couple of days. He was being juiced up with a witch’s brew to get him through mandatory public appearances. Foriegn leaders were ushering him around like he was a flaked out grandpa. His senility was comedic fodder on Middle Eastern late night television. The media that was enabling this charade ought to be ignored and lampooned.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/03/2025 8:17
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The suspect in the explosion of the Tesla Cybertruck in Las Vegas, 37-year-old Matthew Leavelsberger, was a member of the US Army Special Forces. He was deployed to Afghanistan twice, and also served in Ukraine, Tajikistan, Georgia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, The Guardian wrote.
Leavelsberger served in the U.S. Army from 2006 to 2011. He then transferred to the Army National Guard and then to the Army Reserve. Leavelsberger returned to the Army in 2012 and was still an active duty soldier at the time of his death, U.S. Special Operations Command confirmed.
The suspect in the Tesla Cybertruck bombing served in the Green Berets, a highly trained special forces unit that fights terrorism overseas and trains U.S. partners.
In turn, Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill reported that Matthew Leavelsberger served in the 10th Special Forces Group and trained Ukrainian military personnel in Germany.
As reported by IA Regnum, on January 1, a Tesla Cybertruck pickup truck exploded near the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas . As a result, the driver of the car died, and seven people were injured. Police found gasoline canisters and pyrotechnics in the pickup .
Law enforcement officers identified the suspect in the explosion as 37-year-old Matthew Leavelsberger. He was wearing clothes with Nazi pro-Ukrainian symbols - a black T-shirt with the slogan "Glory to Ukraine" (included in the list of Nazi ones by the Russian Ministry of Justice and banned).
I owe Vincenzo/Aca Joe an apology. He said so yesterday, and I was rude about it. I’m sorry, Vincenzo/Aca Joe. You were right. I should have politely asked for a link to support your claim, as is our practice here.
Matthew Leavelsberger committed suicide before the explosion. He was in his car. One of the guns was found at his feet.
More from regnum.ru Cybertruck bombing suspect wore clothes with pro-Ukrainian symbols
The suspect in the explosion of the Tesla Cybertruck in Las Vegas, former US military serviceman Matthew Leavelsberger, wore clothes with Nazi pro-Ukrainian symbols. This was reported on Thursday, January 2, by RIA Novosti, citing photographs previously published by the suspect on social networks.
In one of the personal images of 37-year-old Liewelsberger with his wife Sarah, published on the social network Facebook (an organization whose activities are banned in the Russian Federation; it belongs to the Meta company, which is recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation), the suspect is wearing a black T-shirt with the slogan “Glory to Ukraine” (included in the list of Nazi ones by the Russian Ministry of Justice and banned).
On January 1, a Tesla Cybertruck pickup truck exploded near the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, one of whose owners is US President-elect Donald Trump . As a result, the driver of the vehicle was killed and seven people were injured. Police found gasoline canisters and pyrotechnics in the pickup .
American media, citing sources in the intelligence services, reported that Livelsberger rented an electric pickup truck in Colorado through one of the popular apps. FBI agents arrived at the suspect's presumed residence.
As reported by Regnum news agency, Tesla founder Elon Musk previously stated that the Cybertruck explosion could be a terrorist attack related to a car hitting people in New Orleans.
While law enforcement announced a day later that they had found no "definitive link" between the two events, that still left plenty of questions surrounding what exactly happened in Las Vegas. Did the man in the truck really kill himself? Why did a member of the special forces do such a bad job of creating a bomb that would cause real damage? What would make someone who seemed to have a happy family life suddenly suicidal? Was there an emotional trigger?
We may now have an answer to all those questions. According to the New York Post, Matthew Livelsberger's wife had left him the day after Christmas over charges of infidelity. That was when he started his road trip in the rented Cybertruck to Las Vegas.
The wife of the Army soldier who blew up a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas Wednesday broke up with him six days before he killed himself inside the vehicle, according to law enforcement sources.
Matthew Livelsberger, 37, left his Colorado Springs home the day after Christmas following an argument with his wife over apparent infidelity, two sources familiar with the investigation told The Post.
His wife — who had a baby daughter with Livelsberger — reportedly told him that she knew he had been cheating, the sources said.
That puts a bit of a different spin on his family life. Before this report, all we had were smiling pictures of him and his wife, with the reasonable assumption being they were still together. But if she left him over infidelity, that would go a long way in providing a reason for him to be suicidal.
It would also explain why someone with Livelsberger's expertise on weapons and explosives would stuff some fireworks and gas canisters in the back of a steel-bodied truck and call it a day. If you assume he was trying to kill other people, that seems like a pretty big mistake. If you make the counter-assumption that he wasn't trying to kill other people, though, then it all starts to make a lot more sense. Authorities are even looking into the idea that he chose a Cybertruck specifically because it would limit any collateral damage.
Further, Livelsberger's uncle claims that despite his wife's reported anti-Trump feelings, Livelsberger himself was very supportive of the incoming president.
The soldier had been deployed to Afghanistan in 2017 and 2018 and was known for his patriotism, his uncle Dean Livelsberger, an Air Force vet himself, told The Independent.
“He loved Trump, and he was always a very, very patriotic soldier, a patriotic American,” the uncle insisted.
A sad reason, but so much better than the other possibilities
suggested. Moving this to Page 3: Non-WoT and Short Attention Span — Lurid Crime Tales seems disrespectful of the couple’s pain.
Everybody's got a painful story to tell if you dig into it deep enough. I've learned that from my patients and then from decades of genealogy research (if you don't find someone hanging from your family tree, you just haven't investigated enough).
Sometimes we onlookers have to laugh to keep from crying.
#3
A couple of points in the Leavelsberger saga need explication / resolution:
(1) Finding a GSW and a recently fired weapon next a dead partly cremated body do not prove suicide.
(2) Tesla's (last I heard) can drive themselves.
#4
If you assume that part of suicide is to get attention, you rent a Cybertruck and immolate your dead body in front of a Trump establishment on New Years.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/03/2025 12:11
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John Sopko will produce his final report on the war in Afghanistan later this year
It will show how generals and diplomats were rewarded for reporting success
U.S. failure in Afghanistan was driven by a system that rewarded generals, diplomats, contractors, and policymakers who reported successes on the ground rather than the grim reality of a bloody insurgency, according to the watchdog who spent 12 years observing the war unravel.
The result, said one U.S. military adviser, was that the system 'became a self-licking ice cream cone' as more money was committed to justify the billions already spent.
John Sopko, the U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, will deliver his final report later this year.
It will reveal that experts and government officials now believe that decisions made as far back as 2002 meant the war was doomed to fail.
And it will highlight how American ignorance of Afghan culture, the impact of local corruption, plus weak cooperation between U.S. agencies all contributed to a war effort that left the country back in Taliban hands at a cost of more than 2,400 American lives and $2 trillion.
Yet, writes Sopko in a New York Times opinion piece published Thursday, you wouldn't know it from the optimistic reports coming from the officers and officials in charge at the time.
'But a perverse incentive drove our system,' he writes.
'To win promotions and bigger salaries, military and civilian leaders felt they had to sell their tours of duty, deployments, programs and projects as successes — even when they were not.
'Leaders tended to report and highlight favorable information while obscuring that which pointed to failure. After all, failures do not lead to an ambassadorship or an elevation to general.'
The U.S. war in Afghanistan ended with humiliation in August 2021.
Taliban fighters had made rapid advances ever since President Joe Biden announced he was bringing home American troops in April of that year, and they quickly swept into the capital Kabul dashing Washington's hopes that the Afghan government could survive without foreign forces.
Thousands of Afghans and foreign civilians flocked to the capital's airport seeking safe passage as U.S. diplomats hurriedly abandoned their embassy.
Tragedy struck when a suicide bomber killed 13 American personnel amid the chaos at the airport.
The confused exit cast a black cloud over Biden's first year in office, undermining his reputation as a foreign policy expert and a safe pair of hands after Donald Trump's first term.
Those final weeks showed the futility of U.S. claims that things were moving in the right direction, says Sopko.
'The sudden collapse of the Afghan government and rise of the Taliban showed that the United States could not buy favorable Afghan perceptions of the country’s corrupt leaders and government, or of America's intentions,' he writes.
'Yet over two decades — and even as Afghan provinces fell like dominoes in the summer of 2021 — I do not recall any senior official telling Congress or the American people that failure was a real possibility.'
Instead, he pointed to occasions when official spokesmen offered misleading information. He cited the Pentagon official who said just before the collapse that the Kabul government had more than 300,000 soldiers and police officers, despite evidence of thousands of 'ghost' personnel who existed only on paper so that bosses could collect extra salaries.
'Important information for measuring the success of initiatives was — at times deliberately — hidden from Congress and the American public, including USAID-funded assessments that concluded Afghan ministries were incapable of managing direct U.S. financial assistance,' he writes.
'Despite vigorous efforts by the U.S. bureaucracy to stop us, my office made such material public.'
He describes how one general said his biggest problem was how to spend the remaining $1 billion from his annual budget in a little over a month, amid a culture that measured spending as the best metric of success.
'Another official we spoke to said he refused to cancel a multimillion-dollar building project that field commanders did not want, because the funding had to be spent,' writes Sopko. 'The building was never used.'
Meanwhile, the spending continues. Sopko said much was routed that United Nations agencies that lacked transparency and proper oversight.
And last year, his office reported that since the withdrawal, U.S.-funded partners paid at least $10.9 million in taxes and fees to Taliban authorities.
#2
Here’s an idea. Let’s not fund the Taliban anymore. No more weekly cash deliveries. Let’s start there.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/03/2025 7:30
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#3
The real process of the USA's role in the Afghan debacle amounts to Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/03/2025 12:39
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#5
The whole HR of the military is counter productive. It operated in a peacetime mode substituting peacetime practices in lieu of actual warfare in the selection and promotion process. We've been at war pretty much since 9/11 and there was no adjustment in the process. War is not fair or equitable, neither should the promotion and selection process to wage it.
Posted by: Bangkok Billy ||
01/03/2025 19:10
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#7
"What if nobody went... over thar?"
"Inefficient to travel so far
When," lament our elite,
"Those we want to defeat
Are right here."
"Public transit to war!"
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Korrespondent] There have already been 72 clashes on the front.
Border settlements continue to suffer from shelling from the territory of the Russian Federation, including Bachevsk and Porozok in the Sumy region; Timofeevka in the Kharkiv region.
Russian invaders continue to storm the positions of Ukrainian defenders. In total, 72 combat clashes have occurred since the beginning of the day. This was stated in the General Staff report on Thursday, January 2.
Border settlements continue to suffer from shelling from the territory of the Russian Federation, including Bachevsk and Porozok in the Sumy region; Timofeevka in the Kharkov region. The invaders carried out air strikes with UABs on the districts of Taratutino and Pokrovka in the Sumy region.
Today, Ukrainian soldiers repelled two attacks in the Vovchansk area in the Kharkov direction.
In the Kupyansk direction, the enemy carried out three assault actions near Zapadnoye, Dvuhrechnaya and Kruglyakovka. One combat clash ended, two more are ongoing. Peschanoye and Ivanovka received air strikes with UABs.
In the Liman direction, the invading army attacked ten times near Nadezhda, Makeyevka, Terny, Grigoryevka and in the Serebryansky forest. Seven enemy attacks were repelled, three combat clashes continue.
In the Seversky direction, enemy aircraft struck Dronovka, Pazeno and Seversky, using four UABs.
In the Kramatorsk direction, Ukrainian defenders are repelling attempts by the occupiers to advance forward in the area of Chasovy Yar and in the direction of Stupochki.
In the Toretsk direction, the enemy attacked four times near the settlements of Toretsk and Shcherbinovka. Two battles ended without success for the occupiers, two more are ongoing. Konstantinovka suffered strikes with three guided air bombs.
In the Pokrovsk direction, since the beginning of the day, the occupiers have made 20 attempts to push our defenders from their positions in the areas of the settlements of Mirolyubovka, Lisovka, Novy Trud, Peschanoye, Shevchenko, Uspenovka, Solenoye and Novovasilovka. The defense forces are holding back the enemy's onslaught and have repelled 18 attacks, two clashes are still ongoing. Yablonovka suffered an air strike.
Today, in the Kurakhovsky direction, the enemy attacked 13 times near Kurakhovo and Shevchenko. 11 battles have been completed, two more are still ongoing.
In the Vremivsky direction, the occupiers unsuccessfully attacked our troops' positions near Yantarny and in the direction of Constantinople and Novosyolka 13 times. The enemy launched air strikes in the areas of Ulakly, Andreyevka and Novopol, dropping four UABs and using unguided air missiles.
In the Orekhov direction, the enemy continues to shell the positions of our troops and civilian infrastructure; the enemy launched airstrikes with unguided missiles at Malye Shcherbaki and Pyatikhatki.
In the Dnieper direction, Russian invaders twice unsuccessfully stormed the positions of our defenders. The situation is under control.
In the Kursk region, Ukrainian defenders repelled one attack by the invaders, and two more clashes are ongoing. The Russians also carried out five air strikes on Russian territory, dropping five UABs.
At the same time, in other areas of the front the situation did not undergo any significant changes.
Recall that intense urban fighting continues in Toretsk, Donetsk Oblast. Russians are trying to break through the village of Shcherbinovka and seize a fireproof plant.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin:
[ColonelCassad] 1. During the terrorist attack in New Orleans, 15 people were killed, more than 60 were injured, the terrorist himself was killed and, as it turned out, he was associated with ISIS. The attack was recognized as a terrorist attack.
Four people were arrested in connection with the terrorist attack. The terrorist attack was supposed to be larger-scale and accompanied by bomb explosions. The terrorist attack in New Orleans was carried out by a US Army veteran, who allegedly (according to Biden and the FBI) was inspired by ISIS.
Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, retired as an IT/HR (25B/42A) Staff Sergeant after serving in the Army and Army reserves (2007-2020 or 2006-2019). He was either Moslem from childhood on or a recent convert — his brother and the current husband of his second ex-wife disagree — but he’d definitely gone off the deep end by 2022, when wife #2 divorced him. During the videos he made while driving the rented EV truck to New Orleans he talked about ISIS and massacring his family .
2. As a result of the terrorist attack at Trump Tower in Las Vegas, one person was killed and 8 were injured.
A Tesla car parked near Trump Tower was blown up. The deceased was also associated with US security agencies.
MSgt Matthew Leavelsberger, 37, a Green Beret currently on leave from the 10th Special Forces Group. His wife did not know he’d left Germany. See more here.
Elon Musk said that these were not fireworks, but a bomb.
A little earlier, it emerged that the terrorist attack at Trump Tower in Las Vegas and the terrorist attack in New Orleans are connected.
That was the concern yesterday. But now the FBI believes they are not connected. It turns out the MSgt is connected to Ukraine.
As part of the assumptions, I would not be surprised if these terrorist attacks in turn are connected with the assassination attempts on Trump, where a character connected to the American military also surfaced. Well, ISIS may act as an ordinary legend to divert suspicion from the real inspirers.
Sometimes, when one is far away, one better sees the big picture. Other times it’s just that one misses some key points and misinterprets others. And it is always a risk that one’s perfectly good information when writing will be superceded by subsequent events after publication. But it’s lovely that the good colonel is paying attention, as we do to his side of the world.
Authorities now say Jabbar was the sole attacker and was inspired by ISIS.
Jabbar was seen on surveillance video placing two blue coolers containing improvised explosive devices on Bourbon Street hours before the incident, authorities said.
The Sugar Bowl game between Notre Dame and Georgia that was rescheduled following the Bourbon Street attack kicked off at 3 p.m., just hours after officials reopened the famed street in the French Quarter.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar appeared to post three religious recordings to a SoundCloud account less than a year ago, one of which likened music to "Satan's voice."
FBI officials say they don't believe there is a connection between the Bourbon Street attack and a Cybertruck explosion outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas the same day.
Though both Jabbar and Matthew Livelsberger served on Fort Bragg Army base in North Carolina, their assignments did not overlap.
Law enforcement agents have recovered three phones and two laptops belonging to Shamsud-Din Jabbar from an Airbnb on Mandeville Street, which was set on fire after Jabbar left to carry out the attack.
Via Hot Air, Jabbar struggled to adjust to civilian life after moving from Regular Army to the Army Reserve, which got worse after he separated from his second wife, and:
This is awful. An email just went out from a mosque in Houston urging people to not talk to the feds or the press, and contact CAIR. pic.twitter.com/dYPGCTNIcY
It looks like the house was left unguarded and unlocked after a violent entry by the FBI raid team. The article reflects on the NY Post’s report of what they found there, with tweeted video of their reporter’s walkthrough.
The press was at his Houston home hours before the FBI, who arrived, kicked out the media, and cordoned off the area. They did take items for their investigation, but many were commenting that it’s a bit shocking they’re allowing the press to enter this crime scene so soon. Also, they left a lot of materials behind. The publication already had a good preliminary story about Jabbar, including his financial hardships, which resulted from two divorces.
Jabbar’s north Houston home was filled with chemical residue and chemical bottles, while an inventory of items seized by the FBI — left behind by investigators who raided his house on Wednesday — included a long list of compounds used in bomb-making.
His Quran was propped atop a bookshelf, a centerpiece in his living room, and open to a passage reading, “they fight in Allah’s cause, and slay and are slain; a promise binding…”
Numerous books about Islam were also on the shelf and around the squalid home, while a prayer rug was rolled up nearby.
FBI officials on Thursday said Jabbar posted five disturbing videos on Facebook on his drive from Houston to New Orleans just hours before he unleashed carnage on Bourbon Street, leaving 14 innocent pedestrians dead.
In the first disturbing video — posted at 1:29 a.m. — the US Army veteran said he had initially planned on murdering his family and friends, but changed his mind over concerns the resulting media coverage wouldn’t focus on the “war between the believers and disbelievers,” FBI counterterrorism official Chris Raia said.
In other videos, he said he had joined ISIS “before this summer” and showed off his last will and testament.
The IT whiz was on a legitimate career path until apparently falling on hard times both personally and financially.
He contended with two failed marriages and faced mounting debt before he murdered 14 innocent pedestrians and injured dozens more with an explosive-laden Ford F-150 truck bearing the black flag of the jihadist group.
…from 2019 to 2021 he worked at EY — also a Big 4 firm — as a cloud consulting manager before landing a gig at yet another top consultancy, Deloitte, where he earned a salary of $125,000.
His first wife — from whom he separated in 2012 — got custody of the couple’s children, while he was ordered to pay child support.
He remarried in 2017, but three years later his second marriage hit the skids, his ex was granted a restraining order which prohibited Jabbar from sending her obscene or threatening messages, threatening “bodily injury” to her or the couple’s child, the outlet reported.
Lots of items in this home left behind by federal investigators that should currently be in an FBI analysis lab or evidence room. Absolutely bizarre. https://t.co/9AOCBrL9eU
NEW: New Orleans Police Superintendent says she had no clue that New Orleans had sidewalk barriers to defend against terror attacks, which are now being used today.
What a total embarrassment.
Reporters seemed shocked when Anne Kirkpatrick bizarrely admitted that she was… pic.twitter.com/5prEdJyuj8
#11
New Orleans Police Superintendent says she had no clue that New Orleans had sidewalk barriers to defend against terror attacks Fixed it for you all.
"However, the barrier situated at the intersection of Canal and Bourbon streets was not upright on New Year's Eve, meaning vehicles could drive over the flattened barricade and onto Bourbon Street from Canal Street."
#13
"I didn't know Granny Clampett was still alive and NOLA Chief of Police"
Granny Clampett wasn't known for her tolerance of nonsense. The frames on her glasses were not purple and she did not extol the virtues of DEI. Now, Miss Jane was another story.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/03/2025 12:48
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#14
Don't the 5 Stars on each shoulder of her jacket look sharp?
What the hell are we doing to ourselves as a society that *this* worn-out school marm passes as a "Police Superintendent"?
Posted by: Fred ||
01/03/2025
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[11151 views]
Top|| File under: Moslem Colonists
#1
US Army veteran accused of trying to join Hezbollah Indictment says Jack Danaher Molloy, a dual US-Irish citizen and US Army veteran, traveled to Lebanon in August with the intention of joining Hezbollah, which has been designated as a terrorist organization in the United States.
#6
"On its way out the door, the Biden administration unveiled its National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate in December. The Strategy, which denied Islamic terrorism and claimed Muslims were the victims of irrational hate, was not only a giveaway to Islamist groups, but it marked yet another failure by the administration to lay out a counter-terror strategy."
There is a Large Police Presence currently responding to an "active shooter Situation" at the Acadiana Mall, with reports indicating an armed Suspect with an AK-47
👉I would take the specific gun mentioned with a grain of salt for now… It’s still… pic.twitter.com/Frpyjo0in6
… 👉I would take the specific gun mentioned with a grain of salt for now… It’s still early.
• No known injuries or if 100% confirmed one suspect
• Lafayette Police posted this
The Lafayette Police Department responded to the Acadiana Mall 5725 Johnston Street for reports of an individual inside the mall, possibly armed. The Mall has since been evacuated while law enforcement continues an interior sweep of the building. No shots have been fired and there are no injuries at this time. This is a developing situation and updates will be provided accordingly.
Pray that no one is hurt…
Feels like they want us in a constant state of panic.
Heavy police presence at Acadiana Mall as authorities respond to reports of a possible armed individual inside.
LAFAYETTE PARISH — UPDATE: After a thorough security sweep of the Acadiana Mall, Lafayette Police have confirmed that no gunman was found inside the building.
The Acadiana Mall has been shut down as law enforcement responds to reports of a potential threat involving a person possibly armed with a gun.
Lafayette Police posted this statement: The Lafayette Police Department responded to the Acadiana Mall 5725 Johnston Street for reports of an individual inside the mall, possibly armed. The Mall has since been evacuated while law enforcement continues an interior sweep of the building. No shots have been fired and there are no injuries at this time. This is a developing situation and updates will be provided accordingly.
Everyone is on edge as we approach the White House handover in seventeen days.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/03/2025
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#1
We may see a return of the Islamist shark bumps that we saw on planes in the early 2000’s
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/03/2025 8:20
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UPDATE, 1/2/25, 10:38 p.m.: A former security guard at the Acadiana Mall was arrested after the mall was evacuated and searched by multiple police agencies Thursday evening following reports of a person with a firearm.
In a news release, Lafayette Police announced the arrest of 38-year-old Gregory Steven. He faces charges of trespassing and terrorizing. He was also arrested on an active warrant for possession of a stolen firearm.
Police said Steven was terminated from his job in early December and banned from the mall property.
Lafayette Police determined the loud noises that mall employees and shoppers heard was likely the roll-down security doors being closed.
“During the mall’s evacuation, several businesses began closing their roll-down security doors, creating loud slamming sounds throughout the building, in addition to people yelling and fleeing the area,” police said in the news release.
Police said Steven was inside the mall Thursday when he was allegedly acting erratically
Police said Steven was found and taken into custody at a residence in the 100 block of Pleasant View Drive in Lafayette.
Police said in the news release that “no suspects armed with a weapon were found on the property” and that while information circulated online about possible gunshots being heard inside the mall, “officers have no information confirming that shots were fired during the incident.”
JUST IN: Off-duty ATF agent paralyzed after being shot in the neck trying to stop a fight while leaving a bowling alley with his family 'WE DON'T GIVE A F-CK ABOUT YOUR KIDS'
18-year-old Christopher Smith was arrested seven hours after the shooting and faces charges of attempted… pic.twitter.com/55HrHuYHEA
[IsraelNationalNews] Europe and America gave many terrorists everything: educational and job opportunities, entertainment and sexual freedom, salaries and social assistance and religious freedom. The terrorists below have never seen a day of poverty in their lives.
With Westerners excusing terrorism, who needs Islamists?
July 14, 2016, Nice. During the fireworks festival, an Islamic terrorist kills 87 people, adults and children, under a truck that claimed to be carrying ice cream to the celebration of the French Revolution.
Four days later, the famous philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, disciple and friend of Jacques Derrida, publishes an article in Libération entitled "A truck launched". Despite having gone almost unnoticed, the article has lost none of its interest:
"A truck launched to run over children - among others - gives an unbearable image of nihilism. Nihilism itself names an end: that of our history and our civilization (...) It is not enough to declare war on it. We must attack ourselves, climb aboard and dismantle the mad trucks of our supposed progress, our fantasies of domination and our commercial obesity".
Clear? Terrorists and Westerners are the same, for our little masters of thought.
The terrorist who killed 15 people with a pickup truck in New Orleans on New Year’s Day (what better way to start the year than with another Islamic massacre?) was named Shamsud-Din Jabbar.
The Wall Street Journal has a pretty good portrait: a native Texan, an Army veteran (he also served in Afghanistan), a state university graduate, and a father of three, he had worked his way up the corporate ladder. Jabbar was an attentive neighbor who regularly asked a retiree if she needed anything and had given her a vacuum cleaner, washer, and dryer when he moved in. A model citizen. The New York Times reveals that he had converted to Islam.
This time, no taqiya, like there was in the case of the attacker who drove the car into the Christmas market in Magdeburg (by the way, the security of the German market was contracted to a company called "Mecca Security" !! some stories are so absurd that they can’t be invented).
But according to the official media, a "vehicle" killed 15 people in New Orleans.
Worse than the media is the legion of Western idiots who say that Islamic terrorism is a consequence of capitalism, colonialism, Israel, white and Jewish supremacy, in short, it is our fault, the West.
The Islamic terrorist who killed the British MP David Amess in the church is the son of a former advisor to the prime minister of Somalia.
Poverty and deprivation are not, as the fatuous John Kerry said, "the main cause of terrorism." Islam is.
Syed Rizwan Farook, a thirty-year-old Muslim of Pakistani origin, and his Saudi wife Tashfeen Malik, unloaded their semi-automatic rifles on the employees of a center for the disabled in California, killing 14 people during a Christmas party, the favorite season for massacres. Farook was an American citizen and worked as an inspector at the county health department. He earned seventy thousand dollars a year.
A graduate in engineering, his father a public works employee, his sister an elementary school teacher, Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez killed four marines in a recruitment center in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Michael Adebowale, the terrorist who slaughtered British soldier Lee Regby in the heart of London, had a bright future ahead of him. At school, his teachers had chosen him as a "model student".
Take Aafia Siddiqui, one of Al Qaeda’s Amazons, she is a neurologist who graduated from MIT and was sentenced to 86 years in prison.
And don't forget the psychiatrist who, shouting "Allahu Akbar", massacred his comrades at Fort Hood. Thirteen dead. Dr. Nidal Hassan.
The son of a wealthy banker who studied at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, University College London (in terms of academic results, it is the fourth university in the world) and lived in the chic heart of the English capital - that was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the attacker of the Christmas flight Amsterdam-Detroit. He lived on the fifth floor of a building on Mansfield Street. Neoclassical columns, an Art Nouveau door with a large basket of wrought iron roses, a few blocks from Oxford Street, where an apartment costs around two million euro.
And there is Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, one of the terrorists who killed Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal journalist beheaded because he was Jewish. Sheikh is the son of a wealthy carpet merchant and had graduated from the London School of Economics.
Aqsa Mahmood, one of the most high-profile women in ISIS, lived in Pollokshields, one of the rich neighborhoods of Glasgow. Her father is the first Pakistani cricketer in Scotland. All their children went to private school.
Omar Khan Sharif, who blew himself up in a Tel Aviv cafe, attended one of the UK’s most elite schools, Foremarke Hall in Repton, founded in 1557 and whose alumni included writers such as Roald Dahl, Christopher Isherwood and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Ramsey.
Yet, from the intellectual left to Pope Francis, it is repeated that these Islamic fanatics are being recruited from among the world’s oppressed, from those who, in the words of Karl Marx, have "only their chains to lose." No, my friends, they are religious fanatics intent on overthrowing the Western society that spawned them.
Faisal Shahzad, the terrorist behind the failed Times Square attack, had a $273,000 house and a father who is a high-ranking officer in the Pakistani army. And what about Abdelkarim Mejjati, the mastermind behind the Madrid massacres, who grew up in the exclusive Gauthier neighborhood of Casablanca to a very rich father and a mother who ran a chain of beauty salons?
Europe and America gave these terrorists everything: educational and job opportunities, entertainment and sexual freedom, salaries and social assistance and religious freedom. These terrorists have never seen a day of poverty in their lives.
The Paris terrorists rejected liberté, egalité and fraternité; the British jihadists rejected the sweet British multicultural lullabies; the Islamist who killed Theo van Gogh repudiated Dutch relativism and Palestinian Arab terrorists want to cleanse the earth of the Jewish presence.
But for those who think that the West deserves it in part and are now in the top echelons of politics, the media, and universities, it is much easier and more seductive to embrace the common belief that we are the guilty ones. Self-hatred, oikophobia, will end up killing us.
With Westerners like that, who needs Islamic terrorism?
Linked article is available only through a VPN
[EngMilRu] The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue the special military operation.
In Kharkov direction, the Sever Group of Forces inflicted losses on formations of a motorised infantry brigade of the AFU and two territorial defence brigades near Liptsy, Sosnovka, Pokalyanoye, and Vilcha (Kharkov region).
The AFU losses amounted to up to 40 troops, one motor vehicle, and three 122mm D-30 howitzers.
The Zapad Group of Forces delivered strikes on manpower and hardware of two mechanised brigades of the AFU, three territorial defence brigades, and one National Guard brigade close to Dvurechnaya, Zeleny Gai (Kharkov region), Terny, and Torskoye (Donetsk People's Republic). Six counter-attacks of AFU assault groups were repelled.
The AFU losses amounted to more than 460 troops, three infantry fighting vehicles, four pick-up trucks, a 122mm D-30 howitzer, one Polish-made 155mm Krab and one Bogdana self-propelled artillery systems. One Bukovel-AD electronic warfare station and one ammunition depot were destroyed.
The Yug Group of Forces continued to advance into the depths of the enemy's defence and routed the units of two mechanised brigades, one motorised infantry brigade, and one airmobile brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near Dalneye, Chasov Yar, Seversk, and Kurakhovo (Donetsk People's Republic). Four counter-attacks launched by the enemy's assault detachments were repelled.
The AFU sustained losses of up to 210 troops, one Turkish-made Kirpi armoured fighting vehicle, one pick-up truck, one 122mm D-30 howitzer, and one U.S.-made 105mm M-119 gun. One electronic warfare station was eliminated.
The Tsentr Group of Forces improved the tactical situation and launched strikes on manpower and hardware of two mechanised brigades of the AFU and two National Guard brigades close to Shcherbinovka, Dzerzhinsk, Zverevo, Andreyevka, Sribnoye, Tarasovka, Shevchenko, and Vozdvizhenka (Donetsk People's Republic). Thirteen counter-attacks launched by the AFU were repelled.
The enemy lost up to 240 troops, one infantry fighting vehicles, two U.S.-made M113 armoured personnel carriers, one Turkish-made Kirpi and one Kozak AFVs, one motor vehicle, two 152mm D-20 guns and one 122mm D-30 howitzer.
The Vostok Group of Forces took more advantageous lines and defeated the units of two mechanised brigades of the AFU and two territorial defence brigades close to Konstantinopol, Velikaya Novoselka, Vremevka, and Volnoye Pole (Donetsk People's Republic). One counter-attack launched by an AFU assault detachment was repelled.
The AFU losses amounted to over 160 troops, four motor vehicles, one HMMWV armoured fighting vehicle and one 155mm Paladin self-propelled artillery system manufactured in the USA, one 152mm D-20 gun, and one 122mm D-30 howitzer.
The Dnepr Group of Forces hit manpower and hardware of one mechanised brigade and two territorial defence brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine close to Novokamenka (Dnepropetrovsk region), Stepnoye, Antonovka (Kherson region) and Kherson.
The AFU lost up to 90 troops and three motor vehicles. Three electronic warfare stations and one ammunition depot were eliminated.
Operational-Tactical Aviation, unmanned aerial vehicles, and Missile Troops and Artillery of the Russian Groups of Forces struck power objects ensuring operation of Ukrainian defence industry enterprises, infrastructure of military airfields, as well as engaged manpower and hardware clusters of the enemy in 146 areas.
Russian air defence systems shot down one Su-27 aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force, six U.S.-made HIMARS MLRS projectiles, and 97 fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles.
In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, 651 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 39,144 unmanned aerial vehicles, 590 anti-aircraft missile systems, 20,137 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, 1,504 MLRS combat vehicles, 20,134 field artillery guns and mortars, and 29,701 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.
In the course of offensive operations, units of the Sever Group of Forces inflicted losses on formations of one heavy mechanised brigade, seven mechanised brigades, three air assault brigades, one naval infantry brigade, two territorial defence brigades of the AFU near Goncharovka, Daryino, Zamostye, Kurilovka, Leonidovo, Loknya, Malaya Loknya, Maryevka, Makhnovka, Nizhny Klin, Nikolayevo-Daryino, Novaya Sorochina, Pogrebki, Staraya Sorochina, and Sudzha.
Operational-Tactical and Army aviation and artillery inflicted losses on AFU manpower and hardware near Aleksandriya, Veselovka, Guyevo, Zaoleshenka, Lebedevka, Mirny, Mikhaylovka, Nikolsky, Russkoye Porechnoye, Sverdlikovo, as well as Belovody, Vodolagi, Zhuravka, and Pavlovka in Sumy region.
Over the past 24 hours, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have sustained losses of more than 580 troops, one tank, one armoured personnel carrier, nine armoured fighting vehicles, two artillery guns, one anti-aircraft gun, and 36 motor vehicles.
Since the beginning of hostilities in Kursk region, the AFU losses amounted to more than 47,040 troops, 263 tanks, 204 infantry fighting vehicles, 144 armoured personnel carriers, 1,390 armoured fighting vehicles, 1,316 motor vehicles, 339 artillery guns, 42 MLRS launchers, including 11 of HIMARS and six of MLRS made by the USA, 14 anti-aircraft missile launchers, seven transport-loading vehicles, 83 EW stations, 13 counter-battery warfare radars, four air defence radars, 28 units of engineering and other materiel, including 13 counterobstacle vehicles, one UR-77 mine clearing vehicle, seven armoured recovery vehicles, and one command post vehicle.
The operation to neutralise the AFU units is in progress.
[THEPOSTMILLENNIAL] Two high-ranking members of the January 6 committee have been awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. I'm not working for you. Don't be such a horse's ass.... . The award is the second-highest civilian medal that can be awarded after the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Among the group of 20 recipients were former Rep Liz Cheney ...dynastic pseudo-Republican politician from Wyoming, daughter of Richard Cheney. She was a part of the farcicle January 6th bipartisan committee, which resulted in over 1200 political prisoners being tossed into an American gulag. Cheney was roundly trounced in the next election, but that didn't let the prisoners out, did it? She will kept her pension.... , who served as Vice Chair of the J6 committee, and Bennie Thompson, the committee's chair. The White House said that the award is presented to "citizens of the United States of America who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens."
"President Biden believes these Americans are bonded by their common decency and commitment to serving others. The country is better because of their dedication and sacrifice," the White House added. The ceremony is set to take place on Thursday evening.
The White House wrote in regard to Cheney, "Throughout two decades in public service, including as a Congresswoman for Wyoming and Vice Chair of the Committee on the January 6 attack, Liz Cheney has raised her voice—and reached across the aisle—to defend our Nation and the ideals we stand for: Freedom. Dignity. And decency. Her integrity and intrepidness remind us all what is possible if we work together."
On Thompson, the White House wrote, "Born and raised in a segregated Mississippi, as a college student inspired by the Civil Rights movement, Bennie Thompson volunteered on campaigns and registered southern Black voters. That call to serve eventually led him to Congress, where he chaired the House January 6th Committee—at the forefront of defending the rule of law with unwavering integrity and a steadfast commitment to truth."
This comes after Cheney's name was reportedly under consideration by the Biden White House for a preemptive pardon. Thompson said he would accept a preemptive pardon from Biden if offered. Biden's senior aides are also reportedly concerned about officials who could face inquiries or even indictments under Trump's second term with Kash Patel being nominated to lead the FBI during his administration.
Cheney has also come under fire after a report from Rep. Barry Loudermilk and the House Administration's Subcommittee on Oversight recommended that Cheney be investigated for possible criminal activity during her time on the committee, being accused of colluding with witness Cassidy Hutchinson.
[DNYUZ] San Francisco Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie promised a worried resident that he would clean up the streets ahead of his tenure, after a mayoral election centered around the city’s homelessness, crime and drug overdose problems.
“Clean up the streets and the homeless, please,” a woman told Lurie during a walking tour of the city, according to the Wall Street Journal. Lurie responded, “We’re going to.”
Lurie, a first-time candidate, Levi Strauss heir and founder of an anti-poverty nonprofit, said on the campaign trail that “it is time to end the perception that lawlessness is an acceptable part of life in San Francisco.” Lurie beat incumbent Mayor London Breed in November.
“We are the greatest city in the world when we are at our best,” Lurie said on the walk, according to the WSJ. “If I had to place my bet on a city that is going to come back stronger and better than ever, it is our city.”
The mayor-elect said he wanted to run for mayor because he had a hard time explaining San Francisco’s decline to his children, according to the WSJ.
“I just couldn’t stand by… This is our city. I love it with all my being,” he said.
Lurie plans to declare a state of emergency over the fentanyl crisis, replenish San Francisco’s police force, and get his employees at City Hall to return to in-person work full-time, according to the WSJ.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was named as the chair of Lurie’s transition team, and Lurie named Ned Segal, the former Chief Financial Officer of Twitter, to a newly created post, the chief of housing and economic development.
After Lurie’s 10-point victory over Breed, he told CNN that he wanted to get back to common-sense policies.
“I am a lifelong Democrat, but we don‘t think of ourselves as progressives or moderates or conservatives here in San Francisco,” Lurie said. “We just want to get back to common sense. We have to deliver the basics, and that‘s my plan. That‘s the mandate that I was elected to fulfill.”
“We have to make sure that we have a fully staffed police department. We have to get our behavioral health and drug crisis under control in our city,” he added. “We need to make sure our small businesses can thrive. Our big businesses need to be coming back to San Francisco. We need to be open for business again. I don‘t believe that that‘s a rightward swing. That‘s a common sense approach.
[Rumble] BLUF: Digging into OnlyFans stats. The speaker claims 10% of women aged 18-24 are producing content for OnlyFans (1.2 million producers), versus 82 million paid American male subscribers — half of the 162 million American men.
#3
More like Bob is using 20 aliases because he has a problem.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/03/2025 12:15
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#4
"Big Liquor sez 'Candy is dandy!'
And rich, handsome men are all randy
For gals who eat junk
And have more in the trunk!"
[and Big Candy gives news hound a hambone]
[THEPOSTMILLENNIAL] Starbucks is permanently closing a store in a prime Seattle location after claiming the closure earlier this year was only temporary. The location was always packed with customers, especially tourists. On Tuesday, the coffee giant told KOMO News it had shuttered the store on the corner of 1st and Pike, across from the iconic Pike Place Market.
A company spokesperson said in a statement, ''As a standard course of business, we regularly evaluate our store portfolio to determine how we can best meet our community and customers' needs and ensure partners are supported in crafting beverages in a warm and welcoming environment. We look forward to continuing to serve the community and visitors at our other nearby locations, including the original store at 1912 Pike Place and 1st and University.''
According to the outlet, the building's leasing agent Adam Hasson confirmed that Starbucks signed an early termination agreement this month on the location.
Safety concerns in the Emerald City and other Democrat-controlled municipalities were previously cited as reasons for closures when former Starbucks CEO and founder Howard Schultz told employees in 2022 that the coffee giant would be shuttering locations due to safety concerns. At the time, 5 other Seattle locations were closed down, and Schultz blamed elected leaders of the Democrat cities where the stores were closing.
"At the local state and federal level, these governments... and leaders, mayors and governors and city councils have advocated their responsibility in fighting crime & addressing mental illness," he said.
Starbucks employees in Seattle previously told The Post Millennial that they regularly dealt with people "doing drugs in bathrooms" of stores and regularly had to clean up drug paraphernalia and needle debris. They also said homeless people "wander in off the streets and harass employees and customers."
In 2020, the location was a target of protestors during the civil unrest that rocked the Emerald City in the wake of the death of Saint George Floyd ...The patron saint of Minneapolis... . Since the riots, Seattle has seen a massive surge in crime since the city council voted to defund the police in 2020.
[X] Was it the KGB (or whatever they call themselves now) or Sunni terrorists of one or another flavour attempting the kill in solidarity?
🇷🇺🇸🇾 Assassination attempt on Bashar al-Assad in Moscow!
Assad was hospitalized after an attempt to poison him. It was revealed that his blood contained traces of poison, but his condition is reported to be stable. pic.twitter.com/yrBMqTUUfn
Posted by: Fred ||
01/03/2025
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[11153 views]
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#1
Vlad: "Try the sushi"
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/03/2025 1:04
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#2
Russia looms vast, an expanse that dwarfs understanding. To dismiss this truth is to dwell in ignorance. A man grapples with his fate—his beloved wife battles the cruel shadows of cancer, while he himself is ensnared in the sinister grip of poison.
This is not merely a tale; it is a narrative crafted in the twilight before the al-Assad dynasty metamorphoses, shedding its skin to emerge anew in another guise. Indeed, Russia is an immense land, a canvas upon which the grand and tragic stories of human existence unfold.
#2 was ACA JOE? Unpossible! The post is reasonably literate, kind of makes sense, and contains absolutely no mention the Juice whatsoever. I'd bet a donut on ChatGPT.
As for Assad, more likely the Ukrainians or the wife. What would the Russians get out of it?
#13
Vast nations, no, oceans of space
Over which, with a slow-moti9n grace,
["O infinite riddle...
though frighteningly little!"]
Float tardigrades. Great Russian race.
Goes without saying that I love (most) Russians and wish them well. And that it takes at least two to have a race, let alone a demolition derby.
[THEPOSTMILLENNIAL] The Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General released a report on Monday revealing that three senior DOJ officials allegedly leaked information to the media in an attempt to damage Donald Trump ...Oh, noze! Not him!... before the 2024 presidential election. The three senior DOJ officials are under investigation for potential Hatch Act violations. Official DOJ policy prohibits its employees from disclosing information about ongoing matters.
At least one of the bigwigs used official DOJ social media accounts to repost links to the articles after leaking the information to select news hounds.
The summary of the investigation stated: "The Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) initiated an investigation after receiving allegations that actions by a litigating division were politically motivated and violated DOJ policies regarding disclosing information about ongoing matters."
"The OIG investigation found that three then Senior DOJ Officials violated DOJ's Confidentiality and Media Contacts Policy by leaking to select news hounds, days before an election, non-public DOJ investigative information regarding ongoing DOJ investigative matters, resulting in the publication of two news articles that included the non-public DOJ investigative information. The OIG investigation also found that one of these three then Senior DOJ Officials violated the Confidentiality and Media Contacts Policy and DOJ's Social Media Policy by reposting through a DOJ social media account links to the news articles," the report continued.
The report concluded, "The OIG also provided its report to the US Office of Special Counsel, which has exclusive jurisdiction to investigate alleged Hatch Act violations, for its consideration of whether the conduct of these officials violated the Hatch Act."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/03/2025
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#1
Question: If the Dept of Justice is in charge of enforcing Justice, and has staff doing politically ILLEGAL stunts like this.
Who takes those DOJ staff to court, and prosecutes them to the fullest extent of the law?
How do we, the actual American Citizen Voters, get justice?
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[NewsFront] 17:33 Calculation of Russian paratroopers' UAVs destroyed three Ukrainian Armed Forces tanks in the border areas of the Kursk region. 17:29 After the missile strike by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the Kursk village of Ivanovskoye, a minor rupture of one section of the gas pipe occurred, the acting governor clarified.
16:01 Air defense systems destroyed two Ukrainian UAVs over the Kursk and Belgorod regions, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.
15:59 Artillery attack from the Ukrainian Armed Forces was recorded in the direction of: 14:00 – Dyleevka settlement – Gorlovka settlement (Nikitovsky district): two 152mm shells.
14:30 Ukrainian losses in the Kursk direction in one day amounted to more than 580 soldiers, a tank, an armored personnel carrier, nine armored vehicles, two artillery pieces, and an anti-aircraft gun were destroyed, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.
13:40 Operators of attack drones of the 9th Motorized Rifle Brigade of the 51st Guards Army of the Russian Armed Force sfinished off American-made M-113 armored personnel carrier of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
12:25 New briefing from the Russian Ministry of Defense:
– The losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces from the actions of the “North” and “Dnepr” groups in one day amounted to 130 soldiers.
– The losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in one day in the zone of the “East” group amounted to more than 160 soldiers.
– The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 240 soldiers in the “Center” group zone in one day.
– The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 210 soldiers in one day in the “South” grouping zone.
– Russian air defense forces shot down six HIMARS projectiles and 97 Ukrainian drones in one day.
12:17 Unmanned aerial vehicle crews of the Marines of the North Forces Group reveal targets, adjust air strikes and artillery fire in the border area of the Kursk region.
11:53 Air defense systems shot down a Su-27 aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force and six HIMARS multiple launch rockets, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.
10:17 Army aviation crew on a Ka-52M helicopter as part of a mixed tactical group inflicted an air strike with missiles on personnel and a stronghold of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the border area of the Kursk region.
10:15 Over the night, air defense destroyed 13 Ukrainian drones: one each over the territory of the Voronezh and Kaluga regions, three over the Belgorod region, four each over the Bryansk and Kursk regions, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.
10:03 Russian FPV drone calculations destroyed two vehicles with Ukrainian Armed Forces servicemen in the Khar'kov region.
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.
...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...
..always the voice of sweet reason...
...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...
..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
..a regional Iranian catspaw,...
[Powerline] The city of Minneapolis is in a rush to finalize a consent decree with the Biden Department of Justice. According to the Star Tribune, the terms of the consent decree mandate "sweeping police reforms."
...dynastic pseudo-Republican politician from Wyoming, daughter of Richard Cheney. She was a part of the farcicle January 6th 
...The patron saint of Minneapolis...
...Oh, noze! Not him!...
