[BenarNews] Authorities estimate 375 Indonesians, including 145 children, live in camps housing Islamic State fighters.
After the collapse of President Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Scourge of Qusayr... ’s regime in Syria, Indonesia should repatriate nearly 400 citizens linked to the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group, otherwise they could be exploited in global conflicts or fall back into militancy, analysts are warning.
One of them, Yanuardi Syukur of the University of Indonesia’s Center for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, sees opportunities to work with the new Syrian leadership.
Rebel forces captured Damascus on Dec. 8 and toppled the Assad regime, which was accused of human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... abuses including the use of 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... "The Indonesian government should proactively engage with this new government for repatriation," Yanuardi told BenarNews, highlighting the need to safeguard Indonesian citizens while ensuring they no longer pose a security threat because of holy warrior ideologies.
The Syrian conflict, which began in 2011 during the Arab Spring — a groundswell of anti-government uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East — has left a complex legacy including the plight of imported muscle and their families.
Following the defeat of Islamic State (IS) in 2019, many nations have faced the dilemma of repatriating and deradicalizing citizens or prosecuting them for terror-related crimes.
In Indonesia, the world’s largest Moslem-majority nation, the issue is particularly sensitive because of the country’s history of Islamist militancy and terrorist attacks.
The National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) estimates 375 people, including 145 children, are confined to the al-Hol and Roj camps in Syria. The people living at the camps are families of IS fighters. The al-Hol camp alone houses over 70,000 refugees, according to recent figures from the government and rights organizations.
Conditions in the camps are dire, with reports of exploitation, indoctrination and deteriorating living standards, analysts said.
After the fall of President Assad, a new political landscape is unfolding in Syria with Ahmed al-Sharaa (once known as Abu Muhammad al-Julani) emerging as a key figure in the transitional government. Analysts expect it to take a moderate approach compared to the radical factions under Assad.
Still, Yon Machmudi, a lecturer in Islamic studies at the University of Indonesia, warned that the former IS members including Indonesians could become mercenaries.
"They could move from place to place with no other option, surviving by becoming imported muscle," he told BenarNews.
SHIFT IN POLICY
BNPT is assessing which individuals are safe to repatriate, focusing on deradicalization and reintegration, said Tjandra Sulistiyono, the agency’s head of the general bureau.
"We are in the process of identifying and evaluating how many Indonesian citizens will be repatriated," Tjandra told BenarNews, adding that rehabilitation facilities have been established in Sentul, near Bogor.
In 2020, the government of then-President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo announced it would not repatriate citizens who had joined IS in Syria but would consider bringing back some of their children on an individual basis.
Repatriating former IS members is fraught with political and security risks, as demonstrated by past cases of returnees reverting to holy warrior behavior.
An Indonesian husband-and-wife suicide kaboom team killed 23 people attending Catholic Mass in Jolo, Philippines, in January 2019. At the time, Indonesian authorities said that the couple, Rullie Rian Zeke and Ulfah Handayani Saleh, had been rehabilitated through a government program after they unsuccessfully tried to join IS in Syria.
In 2022, BenarNews reported that over 2,150 Indonesians had traveled to Syria and Iraq to join IS between 2013 and 2017, based on figures from the BNPT.
Of those, more than 555 were deported before they entered Syria, 194 voluntarily returned home and 127 were confirmed dead. The BNPT classified the remaining 1,250 Indonesians as living in IS refugee camps, being detained in Kurdish prisons, missing or on the lam in Syria and Iraq.
Despite the risks, Haula Noor, a researcher in terrorism and family dynamics, said some action must be taken or those still in Syria could be exploited during the ongoing conflicts in Syria.
"This needs to be done. There’s a fear that if they stay too long, they could be exploited," she said.
Haula, who teaches at the International Islamic University of Indonesia, called for a phased process based on an assessment of radicalization levels.
"Returnees must be classified into those still loyal to IS and those who have renounced its ideology. Repatriation should start with individuals and families deemed low-risk," Haula said.
Legal obstacles complicate the process. Many Indonesians in the camps are children born to mixed-nationality couples and their legal status as citizens is unclear, analysts said.
Rakyan Adibrata, a researcher at the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, stressed the importance of prioritizing children.
"When they went to Syria, they had no choice but to go and did not have an option to argue against their parents," Rakyan told BenarNews.
[IsraelTimes] A senior source in Hamas tells the Qatari outlet al-Araby al-Jadeed that the framework of a ceasefire-hostage deal between Israel and the Palestinian terror group has been completed, with mediators now waiting for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approval before announcing the agreement.
The outlet also reports that under the deal, Israel would not fully withdraw from the Philadelphi Route along the Gaza-Egypt border until the last day of the agreement’s final phase, after gradually pulling out forces during the earlier two stages.
#4
I think if Hamas were stupid enough to do another 10/7, Ebbeting Jones8196, Israel would not temper its response — unlike this time, when PM Netanyahu let the Biden administration and the West persuade him to go slow, to pause, to target attacks in order to avoid harming civilians as much as possible. There’d be no phone calls and “knocking” to let the civilians know to get away from the target before smashing it.
What Gaza is getting is cold anger. Do it again and the anger would turn white hot. And if Egypt were to be so profoundly stupid as to rear up on its hind legs to join in the fun, it wouldn’t be tanks through the desert to the Suez Canal, but bombers over Cairo, and Egypt trading the Sinai for peace.
[IsraelTimes] The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claims to have arrested a cell of spies on suspicion of gathering intelligence on sensitive sites for one of the Persian Gulf countries, according to a statement cited by Iranian media.
Tehran regularly announces arrests of individuals suspected of serving as operatives collaborating with Israel, the US, and sometimes Gulf states including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but the veracity of such claims is unclear. A den of Spy Squirrels™?
[IsraelTimes] The Lebanese army says it is completing its deployment of troops to the western sector of southern Lebanon, following the withdrawal of Israeli forces.
In a post on X, the Lebanese Armed Forces says it is deploying to the border towns and villages of Naqoura, Aalma ash-Shaab, Dhayra, Aitaroun, Bint Jbeil, Tayr Harfa, Majdal Zoun, Salhani, and Qouzah.
The LAF says it is working to strengthen its positions in the area, in coordination with UNIFIL and a five-member committee supervising the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.
The LAF also warns locals to not approach the area until engineering units have scanned the towns and cleared them of unexploded ordnance and other debris.
The IDF is still deployed to some areas of southern Lebanon, and has until the end of the month to withdraw under the ceasefire agreement.
The death toll from the California wildfires has risen to 16, with more than 12,000 buildings destroyed.
Los Angeles Sheriff Robert Luna stated that at least 13 people are reported missing. Media reports indicate that wind direction in Los Angeles has shifted, pushing the fire… pic.twitter.com/rsU0mBdxT4
#4
In a weird sense ‘Climate Change’ did cause this. But not in the way Leftist think; it was caused by Leftist twisted Climate Change ideology leading to very poor decisions.
#7
Those areas will likely be labeled 'fire prone' and NOT be permitted for rebuild. They will be returned to nature.
"ONLY YOU" can prevent this from happening again. [sarc off]
Maui Fire Update One Year Later - Aug 2024: Lahaina Rebuild in FocusAccording to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1,399 homes need rebuilding. As the community pursues rebuilding efforts, county officials have only approved a fraction of the disaster recovery building permits submitted by homeowners or their representatives.
To illustrate the sluggishness of this process, it is worth noting that the first residential property is currently only in the rough-framing phase, which occurs during the early stages of reconstruction. However, there has been progress on other lots with laying utility lines and foundations. The premium on reconstruction labor in Hawaii when compared with the mainland U.S. is 40%.
#11
Some progress in containment of the Eaton fire. Yesterday was about 15%, today about 27%.
Still struggling to contain the Palisades fire, only 11% contained.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
01/12/2025 13:31
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#12
A lot of these 12,000 buildings destroyed are $1 million structures (by California standards) on $7 million lots; even if they are insured, only the structural losses will be covered, though most of the financial losses will be because the land cannot be rebuilt on. I suspect governments, at various levels, will pick up that loss by buying the land for parks or reserves or such at some large fraction of pre-fire 'value.'
[IsraelTimes] The IDF releases footage showing how Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank have used mosques to launch attacks on Israeli troops and carry out other terror activities.
“Time and time again, the IDF detects terror activity by terrorists at civilian infrastructures, including mosques, hospitals and clinics, and educational institutions,” the military says in a statement.
In a first example, the IDF says that during a raid in Jenin on November 19, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on troops from within a mosque in the city.
The following morning, the military says troops returned to the mosque to search it, where they found on its bottom floor a shooting range and training area, as well as firing positions and observation posts.
“Dozens of shell casings from the shooting that took place the night before were found near every window in the mosque,” the IDF says.
During the same operation in November, the IDF says a drone identified a large group of gunmen opening fire at troops from outside another mosque in Jenin.
In a separate raid in Tulkarem on December 25, the military says a drone spotted terror operatives hurling explosive devices at troops from the roof of a mosque in the city.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/12/2025 10:23
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#3
Muezzins and searchlights and flak
And the Kaaba all covered in black
And a thrill through the Reich:
Will the infidels strike
Muslims' missal and plan of attack?
...
As an Amsterdam man lights a match,
police and firetrucks respond with dispatch!
[IsraelTimes] The Hamas terror group issues a propaganda video after former hostage Sharon Cunio earlier this week published an Arabic video urging her husband David’s captors to send a video showing that he is still alive.
The Hamas video does not show signs of life of David Cunio, or any information regarding his current wellbeing.
Rather, the terror group shows an older clip with Sharon, David, and one of their children in Gaza in the early days of the war, along with text mocking her request.
Vile.
Israel says Hamas’s hostage videos are deplorable psychological warfare.
And so they are. Perhps they’ll change their tune after January 20th. If not, then they can enjoy their spite while turning into red smears in the rubble.
BREAKING: The Palestinian Authority has released an unprecedented statement condemning Hamas.
"We will not allow Hamas, which gambled with the Palestinian people for Iran’s benefit and caused the destruction of Gaza, to repeat its adventures in the West Bank." pic.twitter.com/6Scjki8qyp
[IsraelTimes] Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party issues a rare statement vowing not to “allow Hamas, which sacrificed the interests of the Palestinian people for Iran and caused destruction in the Gaza Strip, to replicate its actions in the West Bank.”
The statement comes as Fatah seeks to rally public opinion in support of its ongoing security operation in the Jenin refugee camp targeting Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other armed terror groups who have gradually gained prominence in the northern West Bank.
The statement notably calls out not just Hamas, but also Iran, which Fatah accuses of bankrolling the various armed groups throughout the West Bank, particularly the so-called Jenin Brigade.
Fatah tears into Hamas’s decision to launch a war against Israel with its October 7 onslaught, which Abbas’s party says has led to the death or injury of over 200,000 Palestinians and “catastrophic conditions” in the Gaza Strip.
“Hamas is now attempting to stir security chaos in the West Bank, thereby continuing its policy that brought disaster upon the Palestinian people,” Fatah says, appearing to again reject Hamas’s strategy of armed conflict with Israel.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/12/2025
2025-01-12 03:36 ||
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[11177 views]
Top|| File under: Palestinian Authority
[IsraelTimes] Special counsel Jack Smith has resigned from the US Justice Department after submitting his investigative report on President-elect Donald Trump, an expected move that comes amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead.
The department discloses Smith’s departure in a court filing, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions against Trump that were withdrawn following Trump’s White House win in November.
Smith’s departure is another marker of the collapse of the criminal cases against Trump, which could end without any legal consequences for the incoming president and sparked a backlash that helped fuel his political comeback.
Trump, who has frequently called Smith “deranged,” had said he would fire him immediately upon taking office on Jan. 20, and has suggested that he may pursue retribution against Smith and others who investigated him once he returns to office.
At issue now is the fate of a two-volume report that Smith and his team had prepared about their twin investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of his 2020 election and his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
The Justice Department had been expected to make the document public in the final days of the Biden administration, but the Trump-appointed judge who presided over the classified documents case granted a defense request to at least temporarily halt its release. Two of Trump’s co-defendants in that case, Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, had argued that the release of the report would be unfairly prejudicial, an argument that the Trump legal team joined in.
#4
^ Smith was illegally put in Special Prosecutor position, his political crap report should be buried and he should have to reimburse the taxpayers for all expenses paid
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/12/2025 11:23
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#5
What won't government hacks do to protect their magic paychecks?
Posted by: no mo uro ||
01/12/2025 13:15
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#6
^ ^ ^ ^
I'd be interested in reading the Fiction.
As it quotes backstabber & sources names, that need to be watched and or indited.
Plus, it lets the public see the steps the DC Swamp, Democrats, RINO's all took to commit treason, to protect their $$$$ making turf and power.
[IsraelTimes] The Yesha settlement council says it will send an official delegation to the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump in Washington next week after receiving an invitation, as it seeks to hit the ground running with the potentially settlement-friendly leader.
The umbrella group representing Israel’s more than 120 West Bank settlements makes the announcement on Facebook, where it also asks supporters to sign a Hebrew-language letter it says it intends to deliver to the administration thanking Trump for “redeeming” Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
According to Israel National News, the delegation will include Binyamin Regional Council head Israel Gantz, who heads Yesha; Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan, and Yesha foreign affairs chief Eliana Passentin, a native Californian, among others.
“The invitation we received from the government is an expression of the values Israel and the settlement movement share with the US as a light of Biblical values,” Gantz says in a statement carried by the outlet, which has close ties to the settler movement
Yesha has long administered its own foreign policy wing independent of the Israeli government, though they often work in concert. The group has close ties with likely incoming US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
In 2017, the group sent a lower-level delegation to Trump’s first inauguration, led by former Efrat mayor Oded Revivi, who was the group’s foreign envoy. At the time, he told the Associated Press that the group had been invited by a member of Trump’s “first circle” of advisers, but refused to name the person.
[IsraelTimes] Over 30 rockets fired from Strip at Israel in past month; military releases footage of drone strike on cell of terror operatives during operations in northern Gaza’s Jabalia
A rocket was fired from southern 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... toward the Kerem Shalom area on Saturday morning, which the Israel Defense Forces said was intercepted by air defenses.
Sirens had sounded in the border community of Kerem Shalom amid the attack. There were no reports of injuries or damage.
Over 30 rockets have been fired from Gaza at Israel in the past month, over a year after the start of the war in the Strip sparked by the Hamas ..always the voice of sweet reason... terror group’s devastating attack on October 7, 2023.
Meanwhile,
...back at the barn, Bossy's udder had begun to ache... the IDF released footage showing a dronezap on terror operatives during operations in northern Gaza’s Jabalia.
According to the military, troops of the Givati Brigade operating a drone spotted three button men approaching the forces and hiding in a building. In the clip published by the IDF, one of the button men can be seen in the building. All three operatives were killed in a dronezap and gunfire by the troops, according to the military.
The IDF said that when soldiers entered the building they found a tunnel shaft that had been used by the operatives.
The rocket fire and dronezap came at the end of a deadly week for Israeli troops fighting in Gaza.
On Wednesday, three soldiers were killed in northern Gaza. According to an initial IDF probe, the troops were hit by a large bomb that exploded against a tank during operations in Beit Hanoun. That incident came after three other troops were killed and several more maimed in separate incidents the previous two days, and brought Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in the Strip and in military operations along the border with the enclave to 398. The toll includes a police officer killed in a hostage rescue mission and a Defense Ministry civilian contractor.
Tit for tat violence with provocations from the Arab side going back years before the locals stopped leaving the response to Israeli police and IDF units. Because while the official response resulted in arrests and convictions, it did not stop the attacks.
[IsraelTimes] Several reported injured as Israelis accused of attacking West Bank villages near Nablus, Ramallah and Bethelehem amid spate of alleged revenge raids following terror attack
Paleostinian authorities said a man was shot in the foot and several others were maimed as settlers carried out attacks in three Paleostinian towns Saturday, the latest in a rash of alleged Dire Revenge actions following a terror attack last week.
The Israeli military confirmed that it had responded to violence in two of the incidents while declining to assign blame for what I described as a "disturbance" and "confrontation."
According to official Paleostinian Authority news agency Wafa, citing the mayor of Yatma, the man was shot by an Israeli soldier as Paleostinians from the village attempted to fend off an attack on homesteads by settlers.
Unverified footage posted to social media appeared to show settlers and Paleostinian youths throwing rocks at each other in Yatma.
The IDF also said that after receiving reports of "a violent mostly peaceful confrontation" in Yatma, "IDF and Border Police forces arrived at the village within minutes" and broke up the disturbance.
The military also said it was aware of the report that a Paleostinian was injured by gunfire at the scene, and said that "the details of the incident are under investigation."
Wafa also reported several injuries to Paleostinians during a clash with settlers and Paleostinian civilians in the town of Turmus Ayya, near Ramallah.
The military said that the clash in Turmus Ayya involved "mutual stone-throwing."
"IDF and Border Police forces arrived at the village within minutes of receiving the report, used crowd-dispersal measures, and dispersed the violent mostly peaceful disturbance," the IDF said.
On Saturday night, the local Fatah party chief for the village of Kisan reported that some 30 settlers attacked sheepherders near the village, burning tents and damaging equipment for livestock.
The attacks were the latest in a string of incidents that have seen settlers allegedly attack Paleostinians in Dire Revenge for a shooting last week in which Paleostinian bandidossnuffies opened fire on Israeli vehicles passing through the West Bank village of al-Funduq, killing two elderly women and an off-duty cop and maimed at least eight others.
Several Paleostinian villages throughout the West Bank have been attacked in recent days, including al-Funduq, Hajja, Turmusaya and Immatain, according to the Yesh Din organization, which tracks such incidents.
Overnight Thursday, settlers were reported to have raided the village of Khirbet Abu Falah northeast of Ramallah.
Footage showed a building used by farmers on the outskirts of the village going up in flames.
The words "Revenge" and "Funduq" were graffitied in Hebrew on the outer wall of the building with a Star of David, apparently referencing the area where the deadly shooting took place this week.
Other footage from recent attacks have shown cars allegedly doused by settlers going up in flames.
No arrests have been made in connection with any of the alleged settler attacks.
Settler violence against Paleostinians has soared since the October 7, 2023, Hamas ..always the voice of sweet reason... massacre, and security forces have been accused of turning a blind eye to the attacks.
Prosecution in such cases is exceedingly rare, leading several Western countries to begin sanctioning Israeli faceless myrmidons in the West Bank last year.
The Department for Internal Police Investigations (DIPI) announced late last month that it is investigating a police brass hat on the suspicion that he deliberately refused to investigate incidents of suspected Jewish nationalist attacks in the West Bank, ostensibly to advance his position in the police force.
Meanwhile,
...back at the abandoned silver mine, the water was up to Jack's neck and still rising. And then he smelled the smoke... High Court justices on Monday impatiently demanded answers for the police’s failure to curb settler violence in the southern West Bank.
Israel has long struggled to deal with settler violence successfully but observers say the problem has intensified since far-right politician Itamar Ben Gvir became minister in charge of the police two years ago.
Before entering politics, Ben Gvir dismissed settler violence and defended Israelis allegedly involved in such attacks.
Selfish, vicious idiots, willing to sacrifice the children of other parents to get theirs out, even though it’s clear that Hamas has continually refused to bargain in good faith, being convinced that 1) without Israeli human shields the IDF would go through them like [your favourite colourful metaphor here], and 2) Hamas has said bluntly they don’t know where all the hostages are held or whether the ones they gave to others to hold are still alive. Given these facts, railing at Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government just because you loathe his politics is actually counterproductive; doing so week after week after week, not just since Hamas burst out of the Gaza Strip on 10/7/2023 in the start of what they thought was to be the conquest of Israel, but whenever a conservative government was in power since 2001 or so, is just plain stupid.
[IsraelTimes] Activists accuse government of avoiding agreement after grim discovery of Youssef and Hamza Ziyadne; foreign envoys join ceasefire calls; protest clown briefly held in Jerusalem
Israelis rallied in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for a deal releasing hostages held 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... Saturday night, urging the government to push talks past the nearing finish line days after the army recovered the bodies of a father and son it said were taken alive on October 7, 2023, and killed while in captivity.
One person in Tel Aviv was detained while protesting the government, police said, and in Jerusalem the brief detention of a clown who has become a central figure in anti-government demonstrations sparked anger by crowds protesting outside the home of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Youssef and Hamza Ziyadne "survived the depths of hell and were murdered because you didn’t make the right decision in time," Shiri Albag said during a weekly rally at Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, addressing Netanyahu and and Defense Minister Israel Katz.
Her appearance came a week after Hamas ..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,... published a video of her daughter Liri Albag, a 19-year-old soldier who was among the 251 people kidnapped during the October 7 massacre.
Albag said the clip was a "living testament to [Netanyahu’s and Katz’s] ongoing failure."
"Look at her eyes," she said. "Eyes we know so well. Eyes that scream from inside: ’Get me out of hell. Don’t forget me.'"
In a sign that talks were advancing Saturday evening, Netanyahu’s office announced that he had decided to send a high-level delegation to 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... to join efforts to seal a hostage-ceasefire deal with the Hamas terror group.
The team departing Saturday night includes Mosssd ...... chief David Barnea, Shin Bet director Ronen Bar, IDF hostage point man Maj. Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon, and Netanyahu’s political adviser Ophir Falk.
The decision was made after Netanyahu held a situation assessment on the ongoing hostage talks with Katz, Israeli security chiefs, and officials from US President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. You're a lyin' dog-faced pony soldier... ’s outgoing administration and from US President-elect Donald Trump ...The cad! Twice caught beating wimmin!... ’s incoming administration.
Netanyahu met with Trump’s incoming US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff in Jerusalem earlier in the day, and Witkoff was set to return to Qatar to participate in the negotiations along with the senior Israeli delegation, a source familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel.
Trump has repeatedly threatened of "hell to pay" if a deal is not inked by the time he enters office on January 20, and his tough talk has been credited with helping nudge negotiations ahead.
Speaking to the crowd in English, outgoing US Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew said the US was pushing for the talks to succeed, noting that US citizens were among those held hostage.
"The United States demands the release of seven of our hostages, four of whom we know to be dead — now!" Lew declared, saying the last word in Hebrew to applause.
"There could a ceasefire tomorrow, and an end to the suffering of Gazooks, if Hamas releases the hostages," added Lew.
Other international envoys also spoke, with some using the platform to speak out on behalf of Gazooks suffering through a humanitarian crisis due to the war sparked by Hamas’s attack, in which some 1,200 people were killed.
"I know this is not a popular thing to say, but these tragedies are linked," German Ambassador Steffen Seibert said, calling in Hebrew for an end to the "indescribable suffering of hundreds of thousands of Gazooks," as well as the release of the hostages.
British Ambassador Simon Walters also spoke in Hebrew, drawing on his childhood in war-torn northern Ireland as an example of the sacrifices needed to make peace.
"Every step toward peace was very painful, but that is the only way," he said. "Hamas is fully responsible for these crimes, but practically, we know the only way to bring the hostages home is through negotiations."
At a presser ahead of the rally, relatives of hostages angrily accused the government of being unwilling to make the needed sacrifices for a deal. They spoke days after some 1,000 parents of soldiers fighting in Gaza sent a letter to Netanyahu accusing him of using their children as "cannon fodder."
"Instead of the hostages returning alive, we are receiving the captives in body bags. Only in Israel is total failure sold as ’a heroic operation,'" said Ayala Metzger the daughter-in-law of slain hostage Yoram Metzger. "We don’t want you to send more soldiers who lose their lives while extracting bodies. We don’t want more soldiers to fall in a pointless war."
At a nearby anti-government protest in Tel Aviv demonstrators railed against newly proposed changes to the judiciary, which legal scholar Barak Medina told the crowd would "destroy the judiciary as an independent branch of government."
The reforms unveiled by Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar Thursday appeared to represent a softened version of an overhaul previously pushed by the government which sparked massive nationwide protests in 2023. Critics said the new proposal, which gives opposition politicians a greater voice on choosing judges, still preserves moves that will increase political control over the judicial system while curbing its ability to act as a check on the government or Knesset.
Medina, a former Hebrew University rector now representing 112 hostage relatives in a petition to the High Court accusing the government of denying the captives’ basic rights by failing to secure their release, said politicians should focus on freeing the hostages and ending the war rather than overhauling the judiciary.
Demonstrators were joined by some families of hostages at an ensuing protest in front of IDF headquarters. Police said most demonstrators dispersed peacefully, but some remained to light a fire, fighting with officers.
"Officers were caught in festivities with protesters, who blocked the way and prevented the fire from being extinguished, shoved and refused to clear out," police said in a statement. "Subsequently, officers were forced to use force to put out the bonfire."
Authorities said one person as arrested for disturbing public order.
At Jerusalem’s Gay Paree Square, officers detained clown Hashoteret Az-Oolay, a mainstay of the city’s protest scene, outside the prime minister’s residence.
[IsraelTimes] Not On Our Dime pushes referendum that would require Pittsburgh to divest from Israel, companies related to Israel, which officials say could be deeply challenging for city
Activists wanting Pittsburgh to divest from Israel are determined to force their will on the city, despite losing one battle in court last year.
Not On Our Dime, a "volunteer-led campaign made up of a coalition of Pittsburghers," according to its website, is attempting to gather more than 12,500 signatures before February 18, hoping to force a referendum onto May’s primary ballot which would mandate changes to Pittsburgh’s Home Rule Charter. If successful, the referendum would compel the city to cease doing business with what it refers to as "governments engaged in morally reprehensible behavior — such as Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Paleostinian civilians 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... and apartheid policies in Occupied Paleostinian Territories."
It goes on to claim that Israel’s actions are in "stark misalignment with the values of Pittsburgh residents," demands the city cease engaging with "corporations and entities developing tools and technologies used in acts of state violence against civilians," and alleges that these tools could be used by the city against its residents.
The organization’s website lists Project for Responsive Democracy as its fiscal sponsor. Project for Responsive Democracy is a 501(c)(4) organization created in September 2024. It lists Adeline Lord as its founder.
Lord is a Democratic operative who previously served as a part-time aide in the District 5 office of City Councilmember Barb Warwick and as the vice chair of the city’s 15th ward, comprised of Hazelwood, Glen Hazel, Glenwood, Greenfield and a small portion of Squirrel Hill.
At its heart, Warwick said, the referendum is about trying to take action in a world where "our leaders seem unable or unwilling to put a stop to all this terrible suffering."
Still, she said, out of deference to her Jewish constituents, she won’t be signing the petition.
So thoughtful.
The referendum is being promoted online by the Pittsburgh Democratic Socialists of America.
Of course.
The referendum initiative is also endorsed and promoted by Pitt Divest from Apartheid, Students for Justice in Paleostine at the University of Pittsburgh and Jewish Voice for Peace Pittsburgh, organizations that support the BDS movement, have expressed support for last year’s encampments at Pitt and called for an unconditional ceasefire by Israel following Hamas ..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,... ’s terrorist attack on October 7, 2023.
Not On Our Dime’s attempts to have a similar referendum added to the November 2023 ballot were thwarted after its petition signatures were challenged in court by the city controller’s office and the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. The organization withdrew the initiative rather than face a judge’s decision over the matter.
Now the group is focused on training petitioners on the requirements of valid signatures and how to counter questions and challenges by citizens.
Julie Paris, StandWithUs’ Mid-Atlantic regional director, said she is concerned about the spread of misinformation by Not On Our Dime, including its claim that Israel is an apartheid state committing genocide and participating in ethnic cleansing. The referendum, she said, would potentially deprive Pittsburgh of global technology and innovation developed by Israel, including medical and scientific research. Divesting from Israel, Paris said, is nearly impossible and would inflict irreparable damage; she noted that Pennsylvania exported more than $263 million of manufacturing goods to Israel in the last year. Since 1996, the total has been $5.4 billion, making Israel Pennsylvania’s 31st leading trading partner.
StandWithUs, Paris said, is committed to working with partners like the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh to challenge the referendum.
Jeremy Kazzaz, executive director of the Beacon Coalition — a Pittsburgh-based advocacy and education group focused on combatting antisemitism in the American political landscape — said that the new divestment initiative goes beyond responding to Israel’s war with Hamas.
It’s "really leaning into the tropes of the boycott, divest and sanctions movement," he said, "making it clear that it has nothing to do with the current conflict."
The referendum, he said, would create additional duties for the city controller and other city offices.
"It’s unclear where the funding for that comes from," he said. "How much is this ultimately going to cost taxpayers and the city government if it were to be implemented and how far back will it set the city?"
The attempts to change the city’s Home Rule Charter, Kazzaz noted, are part of the same anti-Israel activism that has been occurring since October 7, 2023.
"I think some of these groups feel like they have the wind at their back because people show up at their events," he said. "I don’t think they really look electorally to understand the vast majority of people in this country want a functioning local government focused on local issues, a growing economy and safe communities."
Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, who did not contest the first referendum’s petition, said in a prepared statement that he received the text of the new referendum on Monday and is in the initial stages of reviewing it. The mayor said he knows there are concerns in the Jewish community and he will continue to hear those concerns. Gainey said his office could not comment on whether he would challenge the petition until he had a chance to review it but said if its language is similar to the previous proposal’s, he would have concerns "about the restrictions it would impose on the city’s ability to perform even the most basic functions since many of the companies we do business with are global companies that conduct business in Israel. Without question, we would have to take steps to protect against massive disruptions to core city services."
If he reviews long enough, perhaps the referendum will go away without him having to take polarizing action, sure to annoy someone.
Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor, who is challenging Gainey for mayor in the May primary, said in an email that he opposes the proposed referendum because it would "severely limit Pittsburgh from providing the best and most cost-effective services for your city."
"For example, last year, in response to a similar proposed referendum, the Pittsburgh Firefighters noted that the primary vendor for our fire safety equipment is a local company which would have been barred from doing business with the City. This referendum goes even further and, if passed, will cost Pittsburgh taxpayers, both in having to pay higher costs and limiting the available source of products," he said.
O’Connor criticized Gainey’s response to last year’s attempt to get the referendum on the ballot, accusing the mayor of failing "to take a strong stance."
City Controller Rachael Heisler, whose office successfully challenged the first referendum in court, said in an email that her office is committed to safeguarding the city’s financial health and "is continuing to assess the potential fiscal impact of this referendum."
"We welcome collaboration with City leaders to carefully evaluate the broad language used in the proposal and to ensure we collectively understand its scope and potential effects on Pittsburgh’s residents and operations. While we remain focused on assessing its implications, we acknowledge the complexity of the issue and are committed to transparency in addressing any concerns or unintended consequences it may present."
District 8 City Councilmember Erika Strassburger is also concerned about the referendum’s effect on the city’s ability to operate.
"It would eliminate the city’s ability to do business with several huge companies," she said, "particularly in the tech sector."
Strassburger is also concerned that the referendum might violate state or federal law. Since 2016, Pennsylvania has had a law on its books preventing the state from contracting with businesses or entities that participate in the BDS campaign against Israel. If the referendum succeeds, that law might prevent the state from doing business with Pittsburgh.
Jeff Finkelstein, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, said his organization will once again defeat the attempts to add a referendum to the ballot.
"Pittsburgh citizens don’t want their city entangled in unproductive efforts to discriminate against the citizens of Israel and their supporters," he said.
The referendum, Finkelstein continued, makes "outrageous and false claims of genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid." He urged city residents to reject the initiative and to continue to foster a community built on mutual respect, collaboration and shared prosperity.
The Chronicle reached out to Not On Our Dime for an interview. The organization replied that no one was available to speak with the Chronicle, but said in an email that Jewish Americans, including Jewish organizers and supporters of the campaign, "hold the Netanyahu regime’s endless war in contempt."
Other Jewish Americans, including those opposed to this campaign, admire Bibi immensely and are grateful he is there to hold the line until Israel wins all the battlefronts of the current war.
"We want our city to live up to basic moral standards, and that means not sending our tax dollars to fund war crimes," the email said. It did not mention the hostages still held in Gaza by Hamas forces of Evil or explain whose moral standard the group wants the city to live up to.
The Chronicle reached out to city councilmembers Bobby Wilson, Theresa Kail-Smith, Bob Charland, Anthony Coghill, R. Daniel Lavelle and Deb Gross but did not receive a response before going to press.
IRGC Chief Commander visited an underground missile base in Iran that was used in the confrontation with Israel back in October 2024. pic.twitter.com/8AaPEYlOm9
[IsraelTimes] Iranian state TV shows the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps touring an underground missile base used in an attack against Israel, hours after fighters marched through Tehran.
The footage of the missile base at an undisclosed location “in the mountains” and the parade by paramilitary Basij volunteers come after the weakening of Iran’s allies Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, during wars with Israel.
They also come days before US President-elect Donald Trump is due to take office. During his first term, he oversaw the killing of Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Iraq, and reinstated sanctions on Tehran after pulling out from a landmark nuclear deal.
State TV showed Guards chief Hossein Salami visiting the missile base, which the report says has “dozens” of different types of missiles and was used during Iran’s second ever direct attack on regional foe Israel late last year.
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... was holding air defense exercises Saturday, state media reported, as the country braced for more friction with Israel and the United States under incoming US president Donald Trump ...The Hero of Butler, Pennsylvania... The war games came a day after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps released footage of what it called an underground "missile city," claiming that weapon production had ramped up, contrary to Israeli claims.
Iranian leaders are thought to be readying for the possibility that Trump could empower Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Iran’s nuclear sites, while further tightening US sanctions on its oil industry through his "maximum pressure" policy.
"In these exercises,...defense systems will practice the fight against air, missile and electronic warfare threats in real battlefield conditions... to protect the country’s skies and sensitive and vital areas," Iranian state television ... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
said.
The drills were part of two-months-long exercises launched on January 4 which have already included war games in which the elite Revolutionary Guards defended key nuclear installations in Natanz against mock attacks by missiles and drones, state media said.
Iran’s military has said it was using new drones and missiles in the exercises.
On Friday, Iran released video showing IRGC Commander-in-Chief Major General Hossein Salami visiting an underground missile production facility with tunnels large enough to hold large trucks and multiple production areas.
"Maybe the enemy thought that our production power has stagnated," he said in the televised speech. "But the growth rate of our missile power" is rising.
State-linked media claimed that only 10 percent of the facility had been shown.
The structure in the video appeared to bear similarities to an underground missile production facility in Syria that Israel has alleged was built by Iran. Earlier this month, the Israel Defense Forces revealed that it had sent a team of commandos into the heavily fortified facility in September, who managed to lay explosives inside the plant built deep inside a mountain, largely destroying it.
The raid was one of several setbacks suffered by Iran in recent months, including Israel dismantling the leadership and arsenal of client terror group Hezbollah, an Israeli strike on Iranian air defense targets and the loss of ally Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Leveler of Latakia... in Syria.
While Iranian officials have downplayed Iran’s setbacks, an Iranian general, Behrouz Esbati, who was reportedly based in Syria, said in a speech circulated on social media that Iran had "badly lost" in Syria. Rooters could not verify the recording.
Trump in 2018 withdrew from a deal struck by his predecessor Barack Obama How much damage could he do in four years?... Eight, then... in 2015 in which Iran agreed to curb uranium enrichment, which can yield material for nuclear weapons, in return for the relaxation of US and UN economic sanctions.
[DW] The AfD is actively courting voters with an immigrant background while at the same time stirring up anti-immigrant sentiment. Why would any voters with an immigrant background support Germany's far-right party?
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) sets out its views on immigrants colonists clearly in its program: "The AfD views the ideology of multiculturalism as a serious threat to social peace and to the continued existence of the nation as a cultural entity."
And yet multiculturalism doesn't appear to be a serious threat to the AfD itself: In the past few months, more and more of the far-right's messaging has been aimed at voters from Germany's many immigrant communities — with some success.
Born in The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the occupiers of Greek Asia Minor... , 55-year-old Ismet Var has lived in Germany since his childhood, been a German citizen since 1994, and a supporter of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) since it was founded in 2013.
Var works as a delivery driver in the German capital, and his work was directly hit by the rise in fuel prices following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Now he can't understand why so much money is being "thrown away" on economic and military aid for Ukraine. His main concerns, he says, are that taxes are lowered and criminal immigrants colonists get deported.
The latter is already happening — latest statistics show that Chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left government increased deportations in the last year. "Now! Now they're deporting people!" says Var over a coffee in the international Kreuzberg district of Berlin. "But they didn't used to." He believes that it took the AfD's intervention in the German political scene for the government to act.
As an Alevite, he also feels that Germany has become too tolerant of what he calls "strict Moslems." "I've got nothing against them when they pray at home, but when they do propaganda, then I'm against them," he said.
Var experienced racism as a new arrival in Germany in the 1970s: He remembers a janitor in his building telling him that he and his family wouldn't be there if Hitler ...late Fuehrer of Germany, founder of the Third Reich, currently communing with his pals Himmler and Heydrich. He is reincarnated every few days, sometimes every few hour if it's an election year, as a politician somebody doesn't like... were still in power: "But it didn't bother me. I was little," he says.
REFUGEE CHILDREN FOR THE AFD
Anna Nguyen has also experienced plenty of racism in Germany. Born near Kassel in 1990 to Vietnamese refugees, she is now an AfD representative in the Hesse state parliament. But, she insists, it isn't Germans who are racist towards her — it is mainly people she thinks are Arabs.
"During COVID, it was always people with an immigrant background, presumably Arabs, who shouted 'corona, corona' after me and my Chinese friend," she said. "It's true that on the internet I get flooded with racist comments — but from the left, even though they call themselves anti-racists."
Nguyen insists that her party, meanwhile, is indifferent to race and is not strategically seeking out voters like her. "It's not about immigrant background," she says. "It's about the fact that all the sensible people in this country want to prevent this green ideological madness. It's about: Can I afford a good life? Is it safe? Do we have a safe electricity supply?"
TARGETING NEW VOTERS
Voters with an immigrant background are a demographic reality in Germany: Official statistics from 2023 show that some 12% of the German electorate have a non-German background — some 7.1 million people. As recently as 2016, some 40% of voters of migrant background voted for the center-left Social Democrats ...every time you hear the phrase white people, white supremacy,white anything but paint, you're listening to a Democrat. Ask him/her/it to reimagine something for you; they do that a lot, though not well. They can hear a dog whistle a mile or two away. They invented the spoils system and Tammany Hall, and inspired the addition of the word (Thomas) Nasty to the English language. They want to stop continental drift and repeal the law of unintended side effects... (SPD), and another 28% for the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). But those loyalties appear to have eroded.
According to the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM), which is releasing a study on voting habits among migrants colonists at the end of January, there is little difference between voting behavior with or without an immigration background. As late as the general election in 2017, 35% of German Turks voted for the SPD, while 0% voted for the AfD. Now, according DeZIM, immigrant voters don't vote for the AfD any more or less than non-migrant Germans do.
DeZIM's Jannes Jacobsen, who co-authored the upcoming report, said the AfD appears to be becoming more attractive for people from different backgrounds. He also pointed out that these voters are German citizens — and see themselves as German. "So it's maybe not such a big surprise that these people don't vote very differently to people who have no immigrant history," he told DW.
In 2023, Robert Lambrou, also an AfD state parliamentarian in Hesse, founded an organization named "With Migration Background for Germany" for immigrant AfD supporters. The organization's website says it has 137 members from over 30 countries, and that it is open to anyone "who professes their belief in German culture as the dominant culture and work for the continued existence of the nation as a cultural entity."
"My experience of the AfD is that it makes no difference whether one is of immigrant background or not," the 55-year-old Lambrou, whose father was Greek, told DW. "I don't see the party as xenophobic — we want a sensible migration policy."
But that is hard to square with statements like that of AfD Bundestag member René Springer, who, in the wake of revelations early last year that AfD politicians were part of a meeting planning mass "remigration" of immigrants colonists and non-white Germans, who wrote on X: "We will send foreigners back to their home countries. By the million. That isn't a secret plan. That is a promise."
Lambrou agreed that some statements are not helpful if they are not properly founded in facts or express important nuances. "When we notice statements by party members that we don't think are ok, then we try to seek out internal party dialogue," he said.
NO PROBLEM WITH RACISM?
Nevertheless, there do appear to be more and more pro-AfD TikTok videos made by non-white people in the past few months.
Özgur Özvatan, CEO of the political consultancy Transformakers, and author of an upcoming book on the political impact of Germans of immigration background, said that the AfD has been actively seeking out the attention of immigrant voters for at least the last year — particularly people with Russian and Ottoman Turkish roots — mainly because those communities are more likely to have voting rights. According to Germany's official statistics, there are over 2.9 million people of Ottoman Turkish background in Germany, of whom nearly 1.6 million have German citizenship. The post-Soviet diaspora, meanwhile, also runs into the millions, and includes several nationalities and ethnicities — including German. Many of these are also likely to feel attracted to the AfD's pro-Russia stance on the Ukraine war.
Özvatan argues that this all part of the AfD's larger strategy to expand its voter base. "Its potential voters in the non-immigrant landscape are of course finite," he said. "They might have a potential vote-share of around 20-25% there — but if they want to get towards 30-35%, then they need to expand their portfolio, and that will mean creating content and promise policies for immigrant communities."
"People who immigrated earlier are not automatically in favor of immigration," Özvatan told DW. "They can be immigrants colonists and hold anti-immigration positions."
Nguyen insists that immigrant voters aren't deterred by the racism and contradictions "because they know who is meant by that — that's the illegal immigrants colonists, especially those since 2015. It's those that are criminal — and people of immigration background suffer just as much from those as anyone."
Özvatan thinks many immigrant voters simply aren't aware of the racist statements, and even when they do hear overt racism, they quickly dismiss it as secondary to their main perception of the AfD — that they don't mean them. "The main feeling is, 'they are friendly towards us,'" he said, "And the AfD tries to engender that feeling."
#1
The AfD has morphed into a leftist nationalist corbynized party during the last 3-4 years.
In the own words of leading AfD politicians they are pro Erdogan, pro Qatar, pro Iran, anti Rushdie and by implication pro Sharia rules for non-Muslims in the West and specifically pro totalitarian Islamic influence on German politics (which is Erdogan's agenda.)
Also they are pro Russia and pro China.
Weidel's co-chair Chrupalla is opposed to any military reaction to 10/7 and expressed grief for all those killed on 10/7 implicitly including the Palestinian war criminals who were neutralized on that day.
This doesn't make the AfD worse than the mainstream 'democratic' parties but they're not better either.
Their only remaining redeeming quality is their opposition to the Green Great Leap Forward which will cause a depression if not an outright economic collapse.
The nationalist Alternative for Germany party has voted to replace its existing youth organization with one over which it would have more control. AfD leaders have faced problems with some of the group's past activities.
The party leadership of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) on Sunday voted to replace its "Young Alternative" (JA) group with a new one under greater party oversight.
The decision, ahead of the early February 23 parliamentary election, comes after Germany's domestic intelligence service classified the JA as a confirmed extremist movement.
What changes are planned?
The JA is relatively independent. Members of the association — with the exception of the board members — do not have to be in the AfD.
That would not be possible in the new organization, except for under-16s, who would not yet be able to join the AfD as members.
The board's proposal was approved after a lively debate at a two-day party conference in the eastern German town of Riesa, having achieved the two-thirds majority required for the rule change.
Board members have suggested the name "Patriotic Youth" for the organization.
A now-adopted change in the statutes stipulates that the youth organization's activities "must not contradict the order and principles of the party."
It says the AfD and its youth organization — for members up to the age of 36 — should "promote each other's activities to the best of their ability."
The party leadership has long been dissatisfied with the JA, saying its difficult-to-control activities could bring the entire party into disrepute.
Germany's BfV domestic intelligence services in 2023 said it had found indications that there was enough evidence that the JA had aspirations against the free democratic basic order for it to be treated as a confirmed right-wing extremist organization.
[Rudaw] Iraqi F-16 warplanes targeted an 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) hideout in Kirkuk province on Friday, killing six hard boyz including a big shot, the Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) announced.
The Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... destroyed the hideout in the Hamrin Mountains and thwarted an attempted attack on Iraqi forces, CTS said in a statement, adding that the dead included "the leader, the deputy of the so-called governor of Kirkuk."
The operation was conducted in coordination with the army’s Joint Operations Command.
"The successive operations of our heroes continue to eradicate the remnants of the ISIS terrorist gangs," CTS stated.
[IsraelTimes] The US Supreme Court is considering taking on a case filed by Jewish professors from New York City’s public university system against their union.
The case filed by six professors from the City University of New York (CUNY) — five of whom are Jewish — claims CUNY’s faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress, discriminates against Jewish and Zionist members.
The lawsuit was filed in the federal US Southern District Court of New York in 2022, and stems from a 2021 resolution by the union that condemned Israel and later calls by the union to consider boycotting Israel.
The plaintiffs said they were discriminated against following the resolution and were forced to resign from the union.
The essence of the lawsuit is a challenge to a New York State law that grants union leaders bargaining power for public sector employees, including employees who do not want to affiliate with the union. That law, known as the Taylor Law, violates the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights by allowing the union leaders to impose representation on the professors, the lawsuit argues. Under the state law, the Professional Staff Congress is the only faculty union with which CUNY engages in collective bargaining.
"New York’s Taylor Law prevents the Professors from dissociating themselves from PSC’s representation to protest its anti-Semitic conduct and other failings. The Professors are being compelled, against their will, to associate with an advocacy group they oppose," says a brief to the court filed last month.
The professors are represented by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and the Fairness Center.
"No public worker should be forced to associate with union officials who denigrate their culture and identity. But unfortunately, this is exactly what New York State’s Taylor Law and many similar laws around the country allow," Mark Mix, the president of the National Right to Work Foundation, said in a statement last month.
"The Supreme Court has expressed concerns with monopoly bargaining for decades, and it’s high time that the justices finally acknowledge the First Amendment protects babus government employees from being forced to accept ’representation’ they adamantly oppose."
The US district court dismissed the case in 2023, and an appeals court rejected it last year, prompting the plaintiffs to appeal to the Supreme Court.
A court listing for the case confirms justices are scheduled to confer on the case today, and the court is expected to announce its decision on whether to take the case on Monday.
[Garowe] Information Minister Mahmoud Aided Dirir of Somalia's 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... State disclosed that imported muscle associated with the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group have turned themselves and surrendered to local forces amid a major counterterrorism operation in the Bari region.
Dirir announced that plans are in motion to send these imported muscle back to their countries of origin, with assistance from international bodies such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Red Islamic Thingy. Details regarding the number of fighters, their origins, and the timeline for their repatriation were not specified.
However,
some men learn by reading. A few learn by observation. The rest have to pee on the electric fence for themselves... specifics such as the count of fighters, their nationalities, or the schedule for their return have not been revealed. Last month, at least 8 ISIS foreign bandidosLions of Islam 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... , Tunisia, Tanzania, Algeria, and other countries were killed in a foiled attack on a military base in the Dharjaale area within Puntland's Bari region.
"The ISIS foreigners have surrendered to Puntland forces, and we are coordinating their return home with the assistance of the IOM and the Red Islamic Thingy," Dirir added.
He underscored that legal proceedings would treat all individuals equally, irrespective of their nationality, should they be involved in any criminal acts. ISIS branch was established in Puntland by ex-Al-Shabaab ... al-Qaeda's tentacle in East Africa... leader, Abdulkadir Mumin in late 2015. The group competes against al-Shabaab over dominance in the region and for extortion from Bosaso businesses.
On the other hand, Puntland's information minister quashed speculation that these imported muscle would be barred from President Said Abdullahi Deni's amnesty initiative, affirming that the amnesty extends to them as well.
[ToloNews] The Islamic Emirate has condemned last night’s rocket attack by Pak forces on Sarkano District in Kunar Province ...one of the four N2KL provinces (Nangarhar, Nuristan, Kunar and Laghman). N2KL is the designation used by US and Coalition Forces for the rugged and very violent region opposite Pakistain's Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Northwest Frontier Province. Kunar is the center of the N2KL region. Its population is 95% Pashtun. It is adjacent to Bajaur Agency.. and has called for the cessation of such attacks by Pakistain.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesperson of the Islamic Emirate, told TOLOnews that such attacks by Pakistain on Afghanistan are not in the interest of either side and harm the relations between the two countries.
Mujahid stated: "In Kunar Province, rockets hit certain areas causing casualties. Livestock, in particular, have been killed. We condemn these rocket attacks by Pakistain and demand the cessation of such actions."
Pak forces targeted Sarkano District in Kunar with rocket attacks around 1:30 AM last night.
These rockets struck residential homes, resulting in the death of 10 livestock and forcing residents to leave their homes.
Meanwhile,
...back at the precinct house, Sergeant Maloney wasn't buying it. It was just too pat. The whole thing smelled phony, kind of like a dead mackeral but without the scales... some residents of Kunar Province say that such attacks by Pakistain cause severe problems for Afghan citizens.
They have urged the Islamic Emirate officials to prevent such attacks.
Mahzabullah Mahzab, a resident of Kunar, said: "Sometimes, the Pak government carries out attacks that victimize ordinary people."
Parwiz Ghorzang, another resident of Kunar, said: "Pakistain carried out an attack late at night, causing significant difficulties for the people. We urge the government to prevent such attacks."
This comes after Pakistain conducted Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s on parts of Barmal District in Paktika ...which coincidentally borders North Wazoo and Kurram Agency... Province on December 25, 2024, resulting in the deaths of over fifty local residents, including women and kiddies.
[KhaamaPress] German media reports have highlighted the continued deportation of Afghan migrants colonists from the country, with more than 1,300 Afghan asylum seekers being expelled in 2024 alone.
The Deutsche Welle (DW) news network reported on Wednesday, January 8, citing the German Ministry of the Interior, that a total of 1,361 Afghan refugees were deported from Germany in 2024 to Afghanistan or other countries.
The report further revealed that some Afghan migrants colonists were sent back to Afghanistan, while others were transferred to countries responsible for handling their asylum cases under the "Dublin Regulation."
The Dublin Regulation pertains to the management of asylum applications within European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... member states. It stipulates that asylum claims must be processed by the country deemed responsible according to the regulation’s rules.
Additionally, German media has reported a noticeable increase in the deportation of asylum seekers in 2024 compared to previous years. Findings from Germany’s Bild newspaper indicate that deportations have risen by approximately 20% compared to 2023.
The German federal government began focusing on Afghan deportations after several Afghan migrants colonists with Death Eater Islamist ideologies were involved in violent mostly peaceful incidents within the country. This has raised concerns over security and migration policies.
As a result, the humanitarian crisis surrounding Afghan refugees continues to deepen, with increasing deportations leaving many vulnerable individuals in a dire situation. The urgent need for international cooperation and solutions to address the plight of these refugees is becoming ever more apparent.
[KhaamaPress] On Wednesday, January 8, 124 refugees were arrested on the island of Karpathos, located in the eastern part of Greece. The Greek coast guard stated that 58 individuals were detained during an inspection near the island’s main port in the eastern Aegean Sea, while 66 others were apprehended in a remote area to the north of the island.
The coast guard reported that some of the detainees were found on land, while others were arrested from a speedboat without any identification markings.
Details about the identities of the detained refugees have not been disclosed. However, Turkey and Greece are key transit points for refugees and migrants from countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and Iraq on their way to Europe.
Greek authorities attribute the rise in illegal migration from Turkey to Greece, and then to other European countries, to the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.
Last year, Greece reported nearly a 50% increase in illegal migrant arrivals, with Syrians making up the largest group.
Titanium dioxide, the most widely used whitening pigment in the world, has been linked to adverse health effects, particularly genotoxicity and intestinal inflammation. It is applied as a food coloring and a whitening agent to chewing gum, cakes, candies, breads and ice cream.
Titanium dioxide is the most widely used whitening pigment in the world and has been linked to adverse health effects, particularly genotoxicity and intestinal inflammation.
It is applied as a food coloring and a whitening agent to a wide variety of foods, including chewing gum, cakes, candies, breads and ice cream.
Because of health risks, France banned titanium dioxide, or TiO2, as a food additive in 2020. Two years later the European Union (EU) also banned titanium dioxide as a food additive.
But in the U.S., titanium dioxide is found all over the grocery shelves.
Candy like Skittles, Starbursts and Jell-O, gum like Trident White peppermint gum and Mentos Freshmint Gum, cake products like Duncan Hines Creamy Vanilla Frosting and Nabisco Chips Ahoy! cookies are just a few of the myriad food items that contain the additive.
A significant body of research, mostly from rodent models and in vitro studies, has linked titanium dioxide with health risks related to the gut, including intestinal inflammation, alterations to the gut microbiota and more.
It is classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Group 2B, as possibly carcinogenic to humans.
As a food additive, titanium dioxide and its nanoparticles in particular have been associated with DNA damage and cell mutations, which in turn, have the potential to cause cancer. When used as a food coloring, it is known as E171.
#3
It is not the 147 cupcakes per day. It is the Red Dye #2 in the frosting and sprinkles, man! Studies have shown that drinking as little as 8 ounces (~250 ml) of that stuff will turn you orange.
#4
When I was doing toothpaste product development for the big consumer products cmpany, TiO2 was considered inert, harmless unless the dust as inhaled. But all dusts can be harmful when inhaled due to irritation independent of biochemical interactions. So we wore N95 dust masks when adding powdered ingredients in the lab or pilot plant, and were content.
What Possible Negative Impacts on Health Could Titanium Dioxide Have?
Principal exposure routes are skin contact, eye contact, and inhalation.
Inhalation: High quantities inhaled through the mouth or nose might irritate the throat and nose.
Skin Contact: Patients might have a little rash.
Eye Contact: As a foreign object, it could cause a little irritation. While debris is being rinsed from the eye by tears, there may be tears, blinking, and minor momentary pain.
Ingestion: This compound is not dangerous when consumed.
Long-Term (Chronic) Effects Exposure: The few available research do not allow for conclusions to be made.
Potential Carcinogen: Animal data suggest that it might cause cancer.
ARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer): Group 2B - possibly carcinogenic (cancer-causing) to humans. The ACGIH is the American Conference for Governmental Industrial Hygienists. A3- known to cause cancer in animals.
Teratogenicity or Embryotoxicity: No known effects on the developing fetus.
Reproductive Toxicity: There are no recognized risks to reproduction.
Mutagenicity: No evidence exists that this substance is mutagenic (ability to induce genetic mutation).
#5
Thanks TW - good info. Reminds me of the chrome-6 work my brother did.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
01/12/2025 13:17
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#6
You’re very welcome, Rex Mundi. I only worked there a few years, but found the experience very stimulating, and I’ve got to continue enjoying the connection as a corporate spouse.
Incidentally, Children’s Health Defense is Robert F. Kennedy Jr‘s outfit. Here’s hoping he concentrates on more important concerns.
#7
Almost anything, even water, can have "adverse health effects" if ingested in large enough quantity. As toxicologists say, the poison is in the dose.
#9
Sunblock is fine, Skidmark. It’s topical, and the titanium dioxide is mixed throughly into the cream. So nothing to breath in, and it is not absorbed. Now if you were to eat several tubes of the stuff — then the perfumes would probably make you vomit it all back out before any of the other ingredients caused problems. That’s how toothpaste flavours work to protect against children getting fluoride poisoning — it’s really quite a clever bit of formulation done across the industry.
#10
"And beware carbon black! Inky, right,
But supremotagenic! Too white!
An oily emulsion,"
She sneers with revulsion,
"Turns People of Color to bright!"
#12
I thought sunblock was so bad for the environment that some places don't want you in the water while enjoying your vacation and using sunblock. It's bad for the fishies, ya know.
#14
Because if the peasants are allowed sunblock they won’t get cancer at the same rate, leading to more of them living longer and using up resources intended for their overlords.
Or, more likely, the regulatory bureaucrat’s overweening caution, preferring to forbid any possibility of liability. America’s FDA has become more and more cautious over the years, to the point of absurdity, though to be fair, patients’ willingness to sue their doctors in the hope of a big payout has also done much to drive an attitude of refusing to take any risks.
[Breitbart] Perfect. Lt. Col Sausage first, then all his comrades
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/12/2025
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#1
Vindman claimed that due to his “refusal to remain silent as Trump engaged in criminal activity, undermined free and fair elections by pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden, to steal the 2020 election” and his “refusal to betray” his oath to the United States Constitution, he “was fired.”
[BBC] German authorities have said an oil tanker stuck in German waters belongs to Russia's "shadow fleet", which Berlin says is used to avoid sanctions.
Germany's maritime authorities (CCME) said on Friday that the Panamanian-flagged ship, known as Eventin, had lost power and steering, meaning tugboats were deployed to secure the vessel.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock blamed Moscow, accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of "circumventing" sanctions and threatening European security by "ruthlessly deploying a fleet of rusty tankers".
Russia, which previously declined to respond to accusations that it uses a shadow fleet, has not yet commented on this incident.
The US, UK and the EU have imposed sanctions on Russia's oil industry following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In its first report of the tanker drifting in German waters, the CCME said the vessel was 274m (898ft) long and 48m (157ft) wide, carrying about 99,000 tonnes of oil.
German maritime authorities said the oil tanker was drifting at a low speed in the coastal waters of the Baltic Sea, north of the German island of Rügen.
A four-person team of specialists was lowered onto the vessel by helicopter on Friday night to establish towing connections, which were secured. Three tugboats took control of the "stricken vessel" that is "unable to manoeuvre".
Maritime authorities said on Friday night that no oil leaks had been detected.
In its latest update on Saturday evening, German maritime authorities said the towing convoy around the tanker was headed to Sassnitz, a town on the island of Rügen, and would arrive early on Sunday.
Earlier, authorities said the convoy of tugboats working to rescue Eventin remained north of Rügen and was moving eastwards "slowly", at about 2.5 km per hour (1.5mph).
CCME said they had taken safety measures given the rough seas, as the area where the vessel is located was experiencing 2.5m-high (8ft) waves and strengthening wind gusts.
Havariekommando Tanker Eventin in the water off RugenHavariekommando
The oil tanker was drifting at a low speed in the coastal waters of the Baltic Sea
Although the vessel sports the Panamanian flag, German authorities have blamed Russia for the incident.
"Russia is endangering our European security not only with its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine, but also with severed cables, displaced border buoys, disinformation campaigns, GPS jammers and, as we have seen, dilapidated oil tankers," the German foreign minister said in a statement.
Last December, the European Union said it was working on measures including sanctions to target "Russia's shadow fleet, which threatens security and the environment, while funding Russia's war budget".
The European bloc's remarks came after undersea cables in the Baltic Sea were damaged by a suspected vessel, which the EU believes was part of Russia's shadow fleet.
The move was a further step taken by Western countries to hit the Kremlin's oil industry in response to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Since tougher embargo measures were put in place to halt Russia from exporting oil, Moscow is believed to be using ships with unclear ownership to transport goods - namely oil - across the globe.
As reported by the Atlantic Council, a US-based think tank, Russia is "instrumentalising the dark fleet, using it especially as a primary conveyor of oil exports".
The shadow fleet, or dark fleet, is the name given to ageing ships that sail "without the industry's standard Western insurance, have opaque ownership, frequently change their names and flag registrations, and generally operate outside maritime regulations", according to the Atlantic Council.
The latest incident in the Baltic Sea comes as Washington and London joined efforts to directly sanction energy companies Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegas.
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the move to weaken Russian oil companies would "drain Russia's war chest," adding that funds taken "from Putin's hands helps save Ukrainian lives".
But Gazprom Neft slammed the sanctions as "baseless" and "illegitimate", as reported by Russian state news agencies.
[BBC] Flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the South Korean passenger plane that crashed last month stopped recording four minutes before the disaster, the country's transport ministry has said.
The crash of the Jeju Air flight killed 179 people, making it the deadliest air accident on Korean soil. Two cabin crew members were the only survivors.
Investigators had hoped that data on the recorders would provide insights about the crucial moments before the tragedy.
The ministry said it would analyse what caused the "black boxes" to stop recording.
What we know about the South Korea plane crash
Why was there a wall near runway?
The recorders were originally examined in South Korea, the ministry said.
When the data was found to be missing, they were taken to the US and analysed by American safety regulators.
The plane was travelling from Bangkok on 29 December when it crash-landed at Muan International Airport and slid into a wall off the end of the runway, bursting into flames.
Sim Jai-dong, a former transport ministry accident investigator, told Reuters news agency that the loss of data from the crucial final minutes was surprising and suggested that all power, including back-up, could have been cut.
Many questions remain unanswered. Investigators have been looking at the role that a bird strike or weather conditions may have played.
They have also focused on why the Boeing 737-800 did not have its landing gear down when it hit the runway.
[Beitbart] France on Saturday handed over its second army base in Chad as part of an agreement with the country’s authorities to withdraw its military forces. The central African country in late November abruptly ended military cooperation with its former colonial ruler, and French troops began leaving the country in late December.
“Today… marks the handover of the Abeche base,” Defence Minister Issaka Malloua Djamouss said during an official ceremony. He called it a key step “leading to the final and total withdrawal of this army in our country”.
Around 100 troops left the Abeche base on Saturday, after equipment convoys departed Friday evening. The French army had around 1,000 personnel in Chad.
Djamouss added that the January 31 deadline for France to remove forces for good was “imperative”, “irreversible” and “non-negotiable”.
French soldiers and fighter aircraft have been stationed in Chad almost continuously since the country’s independence in 1960, helping to train the Chadian military. The planes also provided air support that proved crucial on several occasions in stopping rebels moving to seize power.
Mid-December, the jets were the first to go, followed by a contingent of 120 soldiers and the handover of the Faya base in northern Chad.
“Partnerships evolve but the friendship remains between our two nations, as does the solidarity between two sovereign nations that will continue to move forward side by side as they always have,” French embassy representative Fabien Talon said at the event.
French was once the language of diplomacy…
The central African country, one of the poorest in the world, was the last Sahel nation to host French troops. Paris at one point had deployed more than 5,000 soldiers as part of its anti-jihadist operation.
Chad had been a key link in France’s military presence in Africa and its last foothold in the wider Sahel region after the forced withdrawal of French troops from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger in the wake of military coups.
The military authorities in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have pivoted towards Russia in recent years. Chad’s leader General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno has also sought closer ties with Moscow in recent months, but talks to strengthen economic cooperation have yet to bear concrete results. "Now. Who is the highest bidder?"
Deby described the agreement as “completely obsolete” and no longer aligned with the “political and geostrategic realities of our time”.
His election in May brought an end to a three-year political transition triggered by his father’s death in clashes with rebels in 2021.
Longtime ruler Idriss Deby Itno had received support from the French army to quell rebel offensives in 2008 and 2019.
[Breitbart] There is no danger in exploring a purchase of the Panama Canal, Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD) said during an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday, discussing President-elect Donald Trump’s ideas and his status as the “quintessential deal maker.”
Johnson, who recently introduced the Panama Canal Repurchase Act, told Breitbart News Saturday that there is no harm in inquiring about such a purchase.
“I don’t know if this is a good idea, and I don’t know if we can get it done, but what’s the danger in exploring it?” he asked. “That’s what I just I don’t understand about the left. They have had this alarmism and this pearl-clutching.”
While he said some individuals on the left have been open to the idea, he said others assert that it would be dangerous — a critique that he says does not make sense.
“It is not dangerous to go ask somebody whether or not they’re interested in selling you something when that kind of negotiation goes on every single day,” he said, explaining when he was in business, he would prompt discussions even “when the other person said at the start of the negotiations they weren’t interested in a deal.”
“Sometimes something comes together after you start talking. Donald Trump is the quintessential deal maker,” he said. “Let’s give him a little bit of flexibility here to go see whether or not a deal could happen. And you’re right about Panama. They will decide this is in their best interest.”
“We saw traffic in the Suez Canal fall by 65 percent because of the uncertainty created by the intermittent Houthi attacks and with the China military increasingly wanting a larger presence in the canal. It may well be that Panama does not want to see that kind of drop off in traffic. That would have a devastating impact on their economy and on their budget,” he said.
Ultimately, Johnson said many Republicans are on board and “willing to give President Trump the flexibility he needs to evaluate this.”
[Breitbart] Former Breitbart News executive chairman Steve Bannon has declared war on Elon Musk, vowing to have the tech billionaire kicked out of the White House by the time Donald Trump is inaugurated.
“I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day,” Bannon told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera this week. “He will not have a blue pass to the White House, he will not have full access to the White House, he will be like any other person.”
“He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down,” Bannon added. “Before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it; I’m not prepared to tolerate it anymore.” Nobody cares, Steven. You bring nothing to the table
At the heart of the recent clash between Elon Musk and Steve Bannon is the immigration question, and specifically the H-1B visas for skilled immigrants working in “specialty occupations,” which Musk has said he supports. But for Bannon, the issue is emblematic of a bigger problem in Musk’s thinking.
“This thing of the H-1B visas, it’s about the entire immigration system is gamed by the tech overlords, they use it to their advantage, the people are furious,” Bannon said, noting that “76 percent of engineers working in Silicon Valley are non-Americans.”
“No blacks or Hispanics have any of these jobs or any access to these jobs,” Bannon said.
“Peter Thiel, David Sachs, Elon Musk, are all white South Africans,” Bannon observed. “He should go back to South Africa. Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?”
“We have been fighting this fight for ten years,” he declared. “We are going to expose the entire corruption of the American system, of how money controls everything and hopefully we’ll inspire you in Italy to wake up,” he told Corriere della Sera journalist Viviana Mazza.
Elon “just had a huge defeat here in America,” Bannon argued, on the question of H-1B visas and their importance to the economy of the United States.
“He went out of his way to mock our movement as racist and retards, and he lost,” Bannon said. “We blew him out of the water. He won’t fight. He’s got the maturity of a little boy.”
Musk has had “tremendous loss of credibility here in the United States, and quite frankly, the people around Trump are tired of it,” he said.
Bannon went on to accuse Musk of being self-serving, insisting that his “sole objective is to become a trillionaire.”
“He will do anything to make sure that any one of his companies is protected or has a better deal or he makes more money. His aggregation of wealth, and then — through wealth — power: that’s what he’s focused on,” Bannon said.
Bannon said that Musk’s economic support of President Trump has been a positive thing, adding that he should do the same for any of the different populist movements in Europe.
“What’s not positive,” he added, “is when all of a sudden he tries to put his half-baked ideas which are really about the implementation of techno-feudalism on a global scale. I don’t support that and we’ll fight it.”
#1
“Peter Thiel, David Sachs, Elon Musk, are all white South Africans,” Bannon observed. “He should go back to South Africa. Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?”
#3
Musk's mother was born in Canada, emigrated to South Africa and bore Elon. Elon got Canadian citizenship, via his mother's passport, then transferred to the Univ. of PA., earned US citizenship in 2002.
So he's not very South African, it seems to me. I do get Bannon's point, however.
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/12/2025 11:28
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#4
So we won't be looking for Bannon in the White House any time soon.
[10News] "Who ya gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?" He's flailing
CALIFORNIA (KGTV) — Gov. Gavin Newsom launched www.californiafirefacts.com on Saturday to address what he calls "mis- and dis-information" being spread online about the recent fires in Southern California.
It was inspired by allegedly false information being spread by Fox News, Donald Trump, and "Elon Musk’s platform," or X, formerly known as Twitter, according to a press release.
"There is an astonishing amount of mis- and dis-information being spread online - much of it by so-called leaders and partisan media outlets who seek to divide this country for their own political gain," said Governor Newsom in a statement. "It breaks my heart that families in Los Angeles don’t just have to worry about the fires but also this malicious disinformation as well."
The website is primarily dedicated to responding to posts on X that the Governor alleges are false, like a Fox News post saying, "Gov. Newsom cut fire budget by $100M months before lethal California fires."
"A ridiculous lie," Newsom called this in his own post. "We have doubled the size of our firefighting army, built the world’s largest aerial firefighting fleet, and increased the forest management ten-fold since taking office."
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/12/2025
05:09 ||
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#10
Whats the state law on shooting arsonists on sight? Asking for a fren
Prolly arrest and incarceration for up to 60 years due to current Cali firearm and/or DEI discrimination laws.
So one should consider the archery or crossbow option, much quieter. It is unlawful to use any bow or crossbow without a draw weight of at least 30 pounds for a bow or 125 pounds for a crossbow, however.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
01/12/2025 12:45
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#11
Mullah, as long as you can drag the body into the fire there won't be any useful evidence.
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Arnold Ruutel, the last communist leader of Soviet Estonia and the Baltic country’s second president after the restoration of independence, has died. He was 96.
The office of the President of Estonia, Alar Karis, announced on its website that Ruutel had died on Tuesday.
A trained agriculturalist, Ruutel was almost 50 when, in 1977, he began serving in high-ranking positions within the communist party of the Soviet republic of Estonia. In 1983, he was elected chairman of the republic’s supreme council, becoming the highest-ranking communist official in Estonia.
Soon, however, Ruutel was using his position to prepare for Estonia’s split from the Soviet Union, which had occupied the tiny European country on the Baltic Sea in 1940. In November 1988, Ruutel was a key figure in preparing a declaration of independence, with full sovereignty following three years later.
In the newly independent Estonia, which inherited a sizable ethnic Russian minority as part of its Soviet legacy, Ruutel advocated social democratic policies and support for farmers, and in 1994 he helped form the People’s Union, a left-leaning party that took part in several ruling coalitions.
Ruutel was elected president in 2001, succeeding the highly popular Lennart Meri and serving the next five years while shepherding the Baltic nation into NATO and the European Union in 2004. He sought reelection for a second five-year term but was defeated by Toomas Hendrik Ilves (aka The Penguin) in 2006.
Ruutel will be buried with full state honors, Estonian public broadcaster ERR reported on Wednesday. It did not give a date for the funeral.
#5
IRT Skidmark's comment, CalFire has been using convict labor deployed from special fire camps for decades. Inmates in the camps are eligible for reduced sentences depending on their behavior.
Ukrainian Forces Capture North Korean Soldiers on Kursk Front.
Kiev, January 11, 2025 - Ukrainian forces have captured two North Korean soldiers on the Kursk front, who are now in Kyiv receiving medical care and being questioned by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).… pic.twitter.com/ykoxBFyL13
Posted by: Fred ||
01/12/2025
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#1
The Republc of Tuva is in Russia. Is there another Tuva?
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/12/2025 9:09
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#4
^ Oh no! Anyways...
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/12/2025 9:39
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#5
These NKors also have to worry about what will happen to their families if they don't succeed or die for the 'Kim Dynasty'.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
01/12/2025 9:50
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#6
Give them a tour of Ohio including Cedar Point, Walmart and Golden Corral. See if they want to go back. No Browns games, though. We don’t want to get in trouble with Amnesty.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/12/2025 10:27
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Dear Loren Merchan, president of Authentic Campaigns — a company that's done political work for Democratic clients like President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
[NAHARNET] The weakening of Hezbollah in last year's war with Israel allowed Leb ...The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else?... 's long deadlocked parliament to reach consensus around a president who has the confidence of the international community.
Army chief Joseph Aoun, who was elected on Thursday ending a more than two-year vacancy, signaled a readjustment of Lebanon's foreign policy as the country works with international creditors to forge a way out of six years of deepening financial crisis.
Deadlock in parliament between pro- and anti-Hezbollah blocs had stalemated a dozen previous attempts to elect a president, leaving the country largely rudderless in its efforts to secure an emergency bailout.
But two months of full-fledged war with Israel last fall dealt heavy blows to the Iran-backed group, with its longtime leader Sayyed ...Arabic term meaning your/his lordship. Groveling in His Exalted Presence is encouraged... His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah ...The late, lamented satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb...> killed in a September Israeli Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... Hezbollah also lost a strategic ally last month when Islamist-led rebels ousted longtime Syrian ruler Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor. If he'd stuck with it he'd have had a good practice by now... Hezbollah's "political defeat follows its devastating military defeat," said Hilal Khashan, professor of political science at the American University of Beirut.
Lina Khatib, of Britannia's Chatham House think tank, said it was "the first time since the end of the Lebanese civil war (in 1990) that a Lebanese president is elected without prior approval by 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... and by the ousted Syrian regime."
"Hezbollah's acceptance of Aoun's election underlines that it no longer dictates the political agenda," she told AFP.
"The significant shift in the political status quo... is the direct result of the larger geopolitical changes in the Middle East in which Iran's influence in the region is ending."
- FOREIGN BACKING -
The United States, La Belle France, 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... , Saudi Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula, largely made up of sand and oil rigs. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual haj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Formerly dictatorial and steeped in Olde Tyme Religion, deferring to Salafist holy men on all issues, it has now done a 180 and is making a serious effort to modernize, so as not to be left in the sand by its Gulf Arab neighbors. The holy men have been shoved to the background and the nation is now still dictatorial but somewhat rational. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it's a start... and Egypt had all lobbied heavily for the election of Aoun to fill the presidential vacancy.
"The role of the quintet was decisive, particularly the last-minute support of Saudi Arabia," a French diplomatic source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The kingdom had appeared to lose interest in Lebanon in recent years as the influence of Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsor grew.
Aoun committed to "a policy of positive neutrality" and better relations with Arab countries in his inaugural speech.
He also pledged a state monopoly on bearing arms, signaling difficult discussions on disarming Hezbollah, which kept its weapons after the civil war ended in 1990 to fight Israel's occupation of the south, which largely ended with a 2000 withdrawal.
A source close to Hezbollah and its ally the Amal Movement of Parliament Speaker Nabih Knobby Berri
...perennial Speaker of the Lebanese parliament, head of the Amal Shiite party aligned with Hezbollah, a not very subtle sock puppet of the Medes and Persians... told AFP that the two parties only voted for Aoun after obtaining reassurances on the reinforcement of the ceasefire with Israel "and the name of the next army chief."
- 'RIGHT LEADER FOR THIS TIME' -
In the first round of voting on Thursday, Aoun failed to secure the required two-thirds majority, but after meeting with representatives of Hezbollah and Amal, he achieved that in the second round with 99 of the 128 votes cast.
Analysts say the army's central role in implementing the November 27 ceasefire was a key factor in Aoun's rise to the presidency.
U.S. President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. This Is A Man That Does Not Seem Demented... said on Thursday that Aoun was "the right leader for this time" and would provide "critical leadership" in overseeing the truce.
Under the terms of the ceasefire, the army is deploying in the south as Israeli troops withdraw.
Hezbollah is required to dismantle its remaining military infrastructure in the area and pull its forces back north of the Litani River, around 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border.
Khashan said it was now down to Aoun with his military background to persuade Hezbollah to lay down its remaining weapons.
"Only a president hailing from the army can disarm Hezbollah, especially after Israel destroyed more than 80 percent of its military hardware," he said.
At this stage, "Hezbollah has no option but to transform itself into a political party without a military component."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/12/2025
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[GEO.TV] Israeli forces carried out an operation to ''blow up a number of houses in the town of Aita al-Shaab'' in Lebanon's Bint Jbeil district, according to the country's state-run National News Agency (NNA).
That’s what happens when you let Hezbollah pay rent to store their missiles and munitions there for years, guys.
IDF says drone strike targeted 3 suspects in Lebanon near the border
[IsraelTimes] Earlier this evening, the IDF says it carried out a drone strike against three suspects who were spotted on the Lebanese side of Mount Dov, close to the Israeli border. The three were apparently killed in the strike. It is unclear if the suspects were armed, or what their intentions were.
IDF says drone strike ‘removed threat’ from Hezbollah operatives in southern Lebanon
[IsraelTimes] The IDF says it carried out a drone strike earlier today in southern Lebanon after spotting several Hezbollah operatives leaving a building known to be used by the terror group. The strike hit the operatives “to remove a threat,” the military says.
According to Lebanese media, the strike was carried out in the village of Kounine. Lebanon’s health ministry reports two wounded in the strike.
Worth noting, korrespondent.net has compiled its Invasion of Ukraine series into separate months, beginning May 9th, 2023. Linked in the title.
[Korrespondent] 19.56 Russian troops have killed at least 36 of their citizens in the Kursk region, inflicting constant attacks on the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This was reported by the press officer of the temporary military commandant's office in Russia, Alexey Dmitrashkovsky.
19.31 Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called Russian dictator Vladimir Putin a "fucking idiot" for his imperialist views, war against Ukraine and aggressive ambitions towards the Baltic states.
18.38 In Kiev, law enforcement officers detained a man who had previously tried to burn flags on Maidan Nezalezhnosti in memory of the fallen defenders. He turned out to be a 23-year-old local resident.
18.15 Another hit to one of Russia's largest oil refineries, Taneco, has been recorded in Tatarstan. This was reported by Andrey Kovalenko, head of the Center for Countering Disinformation (CCI) under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.
17.38 In Odessa Oblast, border guards from the Podolsk detachment stopped a car filled to capacity with men of draft age near the state border with Moldova. The driver and 10 passengers planned to escape to Transnistria, the State Border Service reported.
17.16 Russian aggressors have once again shelled populated areas of Donetsk Oblast. One person was killed and five others were wounded. The local OVA reported the details.
16.57 Since the beginning of the day, 121 combat clashes have occurred on the front. Almost half of them are in the Pokrovsk direction. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported the details in the operational formation as of 16:00.
16:00 Ukrainian military showed how they captured fighters from the DPRK in the Kursk region of the Russian Federation. One of them was captured by SSO, the other by paratroopers.
15.41 President Volodymyr Zelensky held a meeting of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's Headquarters dedicated to the procurement of drones for the current year. According to him, the common goal of arms manufacturers, officials and all involved is to make 2025 a record year for drones of all types.
14.57 The Security Service of Ukraine has revealed details of the interrogation of two DPRK soldiers captured by the Ukrainian Defense Forces. They are the first North Koreans to be captured.
14.29 President Volodymyr Zelensky reported that Ukrainian soldiers in the Kursk region captured two wounded soldiers from North Korea. The latter were taken to Kiev, where SBU investigators are now interviewing them.
13.55 The Third Separate Assault Brigade repelled attempts by Russian occupiers to break through to positions in the Kharkiv region. This was reported by the brigade's press service.
13.32 Ukraine is seeking to use the proceeds from frozen Russian assets to purchase air defense systems from Italy. This was reported by the press service of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.
12:33 The European Commission will begin consultations with EU member states on the 16th package of sanctions against Russia on Tuesday, January 14.
11:57 Martial law and general mobilization in Ukraine will be extended for another 90 days. The Verkhovna Rada will vote on the relevant projects from Sunday.
11.43 Russian air defense was unable to protect strategic facilities of the Russian Federation, except for the residence of the head of the Kremlin Vladimir Putin and Moscow. This was written by the head of the Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Andriy Kovalenko.
11.28 Ukrainian military are holding positions in Kurakhovo, Donetsk region. Russia has not captured the city completely. This was stated by Viktor Tregubov, spokesman for the Khortytsia operational-strategic group of forces.
10.27 Over the past 24 hours, January 10, Russians have carried out 213 attacks on the front in Ukraine. A third of them were in the Pokrovsk direction, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reports.
9.25 On the night of January 11, Russians attacked Ukraine with 74 drones in four directions. Air defense shot down 47 of them. This was reported by the Ukrainian Air Force.
8.57 The occupiers are setting up their strongholds in abandoned multi-story buildings in Crimea. This was reported by the Telegram channel of the ATESH partisan movement.
8.44 The Russian army lost 1,570 soldiers in the war against Ukraine over the past 24 hours from January 10 to 11. This is evidenced by the morning report of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
7.58 No negotiations between the Kremlin and Western countries after the end of the war in Ukraine on the terms of Russian dictator Putin can become a guarantee of sustainable peace. This is stated in a report by analysts of the Institute for the Study of War
[GEO.TV] According to Al Jazeera Arabic, a body has been recovered from the the town of Khuza'a, east of Khan Younis following Israel's attack.
The civil defence said that a number of bodies had disappeared as a result of melting due to the extensive amount of explosives fired by the occupation forces.
It’s that eeeeevil Jooooo-magic that makes Palestinian bodies disappear as if they’d never been.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/12/2025
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[11166 views]
Top|| File under: Hamas
[GEO.TV] Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 46,537 Palestinians and wounded 109,571 since October 7, 2023, the Palestinian enclave's health ministry said on Saturday.
The ministry said 32 Palestinians were killed over the past 48 hours.
[IsraelTimes] Troops fall in military’s renewed offensive in Beit Hanoun; initial IDF probe indicates gunmen set off explosive device and fired at soldiers
Four soldiers were killed and six were maimed during fighting in the northern Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Strip on Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces announced, bringing Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas ..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",... to 402.
The slain troops were named Sgt. Maj. (res.) Alexander Fedorenko, 37, from Bat Yam; Staff Sgt. Danila Diakov, 21, from Maale Adumim; Sgt. Yahav Maayan, 19, from Modiin; and Sgt. Eliav Astuker, 19, from Ashdod.
Among the six maimed troops, two were listed at death's door.
According to an initial IDF probe, the soldiers in northern Gaza’s Beit Hanoun were hit by an bomb set off by button men, who also shot up them.
The IDF has recently intensified its offensive against Hamas in the far north of the Gaza Strip, an operation that has been ongoing since last October. The offensive is now focusing on the Beit Hanoun area after raids in Jabalia and Beit Lahiya.
The ongoing operation has led to the deaths of 48 soldiers.
On Wednesday three soldiers were killed in northern Gaza. According to an initial IDF probe, the troops were hit by a large bomb that exploded against a tank during operations in Beit Hanoun. That incident came after three other troops were killed and several more maimed in separate incidents on the previous two days.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip now stands at 402.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu eulogized the soldiers on X, writing: "They fell protecting the homeland in battles in the northern Gaza Strip, in a war for our existence and security. Their heroism and bravery will be etched in our hearts forever."
HAMAS TERRORISTS KILLED IN SCHOOL
In Jabalia on Saturday, the IDF said it carried out a dronezap against a group of Hamas operatives using the Halawa School to plan and carry out attacks against troops in Gaza and against Israel.
Paleostinian media said the complex was serving as a shelter for displaced Gazooks, and the strike killed at least eight people, including two children, and maimed over 30 others.
The IDF said it took numerous steps to mitigate civilian harm in the strike, using a precision munition, aerial surveillance, and other intelligence.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Korrespondent] The Ukrainian Armed Forces are engaged in heavy fighting in the east and south of Ukraine.
Russian troops attacked in the areas of 11 settlements. Currently, 10 combat clashes are ongoing.
Since the beginning of the day, 121 combat clashes have occurred on the front. Almost half of them are in the Pokrovsk direction, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported in an operational report as of 16:00 on Saturday, January 11.
It was stated that Ukrainian troops are exhausting the enemy along the entire line of combat engagement and in the rear.
Thus, in the Kupyansk direction, the enemy tried to advance 13 times in the areas of Golubovka, Sinkovka, Stepnaya Novoselovka and Zagryzovoye. Nine battles are currently underway.
In the Liman direction, 16 combat clashes occurred near Zeleny Gai, Novoegorovka, Makeyevka, Terny, Zarechny, Grigoryevka and in the Serebryansky forest. Two combat clashes are still ongoing.
In the Kramatorsk direction, 13 Russian attacks were recorded in the areas of the settlements of Chasov Yar and Stupochki. Ten of them have already been repelled.
In the Toretsk direction, the invaders unsuccessfully attacked five times in the areas of Toretsk and Dilievka.
The enemy's highest activity remains in the Pokrovsky direction - 56 combat clashes of varying intensity. The enemy attacked in the areas of the settlements of Baranovka, Elizavetovka, Luch, Lisovka, Zelenoe, Novy Trud, Zverevoye, Novoandreyevka, Uspenovka, Slavyanka and Konstantinopolskoye. 46 enemy attacks have been repelled, another 10 combat clashes are ongoing.
In the Novopavlovsk direction, the enemy attacked five times near Novoselka and Bolshaya Novoselka.
There was one combat clash in the Dnieper direction. The enemy had no success.
In Kursk region, the Ukrainian Armed Forces repelled 12 enemy assaults, three of which are still ongoing.
Earlier it became known that the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade had broken up Russian columns in the Kharkov region. According to military estimates, on January 8 and 9, "almost a tank battle near Brody in 1941" actually took place. The occupiers lost 20 units of equipment.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces are actively destroying Russian aggressors.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces have repelled more than 50 Russian attacks in the areas of 11 populated areas. However, active clashes continue to this day.
The Russian army's losses in manpower in one day in the Pokrovsk direction alone amounted to 377 soldiers and seven units of equipment. This was reported by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in an operational report as of 22:00 on Saturday, January 11.
"According to preliminary estimates, today our soldiers eliminated 189 and wounded 188 occupiers. One tank, two armored personnel carriers, three vehicles and the antenna of a Russian UAV were destroyed. Two cars were also damaged," the statement said.
In total, 157 combat clashes have occurred on the front since the beginning of the current day, 63 of which were in the Pokrovsk direction. The greatest activity of Russian occupiers here remains in the areas of the settlements of Baranovka, Elizavetovka, Luch, Lisovka, Zelenoe, Novy Trud, Zverevoye, Novoandreyevka, Uspenovka, Slavyanka and Konstantinopolskoye. The Armed Forces of Ukraine repelled 52 attacks, another 11 combat clashes are still ongoing.
Also among the hottest areas today are Kramatorsk (22 armed clashes), Limanskoye (19), Kurskoye (17) and Kupyanskoye (16).
"Today, it is worth noting the soldiers of the 79th separate airborne assault Tavricheskaya brigade, the 100th separate mechanized brigade and the 24th separate mechanized brigade named after King Daniel, who are effectively destroying the enemy, inflicting significant losses in manpower," the General Staff added.
Let us recall that in the course of 24 hours on January 10, the Ukrainian Armed Forces "minus" about 1,600 Russians. The total losses of the aggressor country Russia exceeded 800 thousand people.
[MSN] Millions in Los Angeles County mistakenly received emergency alerts telling them to evacuate. It happened not just once, but twice, with the second incident on Friday.
The mistakes created panic across the region, but the county said they had quickly addressed it.
The county's director of emergency management said the cell phone alerts have already saved lives by getting people to evacuate. However, for about 10 million people, a couple of those alerts also created unnecessary chaos and some distrust of the alert system.
The City of Beverly Hills, in a post on X, reports an evacuation alert went out at 4 a.m. Friday, the county's Office of Emergency Management confirmed it was "another error."
The first error occurred Thursday when the office said millions of people received an alert on their phone by mistake. The alert told them to gather loved ones, pets and supplies, and evacuate. A message to disregard was sent 15 minutes later.
"I can't express enough how sorry I am for this experience," Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management Director Kevin McGowan said. "First of all, I want to clarify this is not human-driven. No one is sitting at a desk right now initiating emergency alerts."
McGowan said local authorities initiated the alert for the correct area. However, there was a system error that sent the emergency alert to the entire county. "We accidentally hit 'Reply All'. Our bad"
"We have every technical specialist working to resolve this issue and find out the root cause," McGowan said.
Here's how the wireless emergency alerts, or WEAS, are supposed to work: Authorized national, state, or local authorities send them through FEMA's warning system to a specific geographic zone affected by an emergency.
This means if someone is in that zone and has a WEA-capable phone, even if they are visiting from out of town, they are supposed to get the alert.
Overall, the technology has become more precise over the years.
When it launched in 2012, the FCC said alerts were sent countywide. By 2019, they had to be sent to zones "with no more than a 1/10th of a mile overshoot."
The geo-targeting of zones relies on new smartphone technology that improves every time most people upgrade their devices.
In 2023, about 83% of smartphones supported enhanced geotargeting, according to the FCC and CTIA, a U.S. wireless association.
"There is an extreme amount of frustration fear with regards to the erroneous messages," McGown said.
On Friday, McGowan said his top priority was to find out what caused the tech error, begging people in LA to still trust the system.
"I implore everyone to not disable the message on your phone," McGowan said. "This is extremely frustrating and painful and scary, but these alert tools have saved lives during this emergency. Not receiving an alert can be a consequence of life and death."
McGowan said the evacuation maps on alertla.org are accurate.
Most wireless carriers participate in the emergency alerts, but it is voluntary. Check with your carrier to be sure.
[HotAir] I, along with millions of other people, do not doubt that Minneapolis Policeman Derek Chauvin was railroaded during his trial over the death of Saint George Floyd ...The patron saint of Minneapolis... While I believe that the overwhelming evidence shows that Floyd died of a meth-induced heart attack and that he was innocent of the charges, I don't dispute that the jury had a right to find differently or that they may have reached that conclusion based on the evidence and arguments put before them.
The trial itself, on the other hand, was decided based on a pack of lies pushed by the prosecution. It's clear that high-level Minneapolis police officials committed perjury and got away with it.
I came to this conclusion after watching the much-criticized and "fact-checked" documentary The Fall of Minneapolis by Liz Collin (well worth the watch!). While critics claim that it was full of lies, those critics are as reliable as all fact checkers, meaning they are nothing but propagandists. The evidence is clear and in black and white, supported by other coppers.
There are many evidentiary issues with the case, but one of the most significant was Chauvin's claim that the restraint technique he used with George Floyd was trained as safe and effective by the MPD. MPD officials denied this, despite training manuals demonstrating it and MPD officers confirming it.
While most people think that Floyd was asphyxiated, the reality is that there is no evidence that this is true. Quite the opposite--Floyd COULD breathe and showed no signs of asphyxia; rather, he had fatal doses of methamphetamine and fentanyl in his bloodstream because he swallowed his drug stash to hide it from the police.
MPD Assistant Chief Katie Blackwell testified under oath that the restraint method used on George Floyd was never taught by the department, while dozens of officers have denied this, training manuals showed it, and now photographs of the training have been uncovered.
Blackwell is suing Liz Collins for defamation, but there is a problem.
In a court filing over a dozen officers have provided sworn statements that Blackwell lied during the trial, and her lies are pretty obvious.
Alpha News, a terrific independent news outlet here in Minnesota, has the receipts. Liz Collins is associated with Alpha News, so obviously they have a reason to defend her, but you can see the photos of MPD officers training the technique. The photos are pretty hard to dispute. And the sworn affidavits are quite compelling evidence that Blackwell simply lied to the court.
Fourteen current and former coppers with the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) have signed sworn declarations which say they believe MPD Assistant Chief Katie Blackwell perjured herself when testifying in former MPD officer Derek Chauvin’s murder trial.
Specifically, the group of former officers say they believe Blackwell perjured herself when she testified in court that the restraint method Chauvin used to subdue George Floyd in May 2020 was not a part of MPD officer training. In that trial, Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison.
However,
it's easy to be generous with someone else's money... many say the knee-on-neck restraint Chauvin employed was trained under the maximal-restraint technique (MRT), a restraint the MPD taught and allowed until 2023.
Those 14 statements were among dozens of declarations submitted by lawyers representing Alpha News in a defamation lawsuit brought by Blackwell last October against Alpha News, Alpha News news hound Liz Collin, producer J.C. Chaix, and a publishing company. In her lawsuit, Blackwell alleged that the Alpha News documentary film The Fall of Minneapolis and a book authored by Collin wrongly accused Blackwell of lying.
This week, lawyers for Alpha News filed a 113-page motion with 592 footnotes to have the case dismissed with prejudice.
A vast swathe of Minneapolis was burned down, including a police precinct (the first time in America). Crime skyrocketed, and the City Council had voted to "defund the police." Crowds of protesters gathered outside the court, shouting "No justice, no peace." And the city was on edge. The Attorney General's Office itself was prosecuting Chauvin, and of course, the governor--Tim Walz ...Kamala's smarmy-looking VP running mate, governor of Minnesota, who decided to retire rather than to deploy with his National Guard unit, then claimed to have been in Iraq and Afghanistan. One man's socialism is another man's neighborliness.... , of course--was clear that he was seeking "justice" for George Floyd.
Chauvin was an easy scapegoat. He was the officer who restrained Floyd, the video was seemingly damning, implying something that turned out to be false--that Floyd was asphyxiated--and the best way to protect the politicians and the city was throwing Chauvin to the wolves.
“Specifically, we were trained that when two officers were trying to handcuff a person that was resisting arrest, one officer should use his or her knee to employ a knee-to-neck/upper shoulder restraint to control the subject’s head, and the other knee should be used to control one of the subject’s arms during handcuffing.”
Describing how Blackwell said “that’s not what we train” when examining images of Chauvin restraining Floyd, Tidgwell wrote:
“If by ‘we’ Katie Blackwell referred to the MPD, then I believe that she perjured herself. Every MPD officer knows that restraint was trained, and every MPD officer knows it was trained as part of the MRT process. We were trained that ‘where the head goes, the body will follow.'”
The former patrol sergeant also mentioned that he and another member of MPD put together a “virtual museum” of the department. This museum chronicles over 100 years of department history with various photos and documents. In his declaration, Tidgwell produced a photo from the museum project which depicts Blackwell arresting a man in 2014.
“It appears that Katie Blackwell was employing the knee-to-neck/upper shoulder restraint that I described in this declaration in the picture I included in paragraph 5 above,” wrote Tidgwell.
As alluded to in that quote, Katie Blackwell, who testified that Minneapolis doesn't train the technique, had been photographed using it during a riot 6 years earlier when she was a patrol officer.
#1
If the witnesses lied, they need to be prosecuted for that crime. The prosecutors need to be prosecuted as well. Prosecution is about the truth not the conviction.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/12/2025 7:50
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[DW] The number of asylum applications submitted in Europe fell in 2024 compared to the previous year, according to the EU asylum agency. Germany once again accounted for the most applications submitted.
Asylum applications in the European Union, Norway and Switzerland decreased by around 12% in 2024, according to a report by European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA).
The Malta-based agency recorded just over 1 million initial applications last year in the 27 EU member nations, along with Norway and Switzerland, compared to 1.14 million in 2023, based on the report seen by German news agency DPA and newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
GERMANY REMAINS MOST POPULAR MIGRANT DESTINATION
The majority of applications covered by the report for last year were submitted in Germany, amounting to a total of 235,925 initial applications, according to EUAA data reported by the Welt am Sonntag.
However, Germany also saw a decrease of 30.2% in asylum applications compared to 2023, DPA cited the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) as saying.
According to the new EUAA figures, most people seeking asylum in the EU came from Syria (15%), Afghanistan (8.7%), Venezuela (7.3%) and Turkey (5.5%).
The BAMF said that most of the initial applications received in Germany were from people from Syria, Afghanistan and Turkey.
Spain, with 165,398 applicants, ranked second in the list of European countries with the most asylum applications, followed by France (158,512) and Italy (154,824).
In the same period, Hungary received only 29 new asylum applications in 2024. Budapest has come into repeated conflict with Brussels over its refusal to take in migrants.
Migration is also a key issue for voters going into the German election in February, with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) gaining ground with its anti-immigrant rhetoric.
[IsraelTimes] Home in city also daubed with antisemitic graffiti, police say they’re probing offensive comments on street poster; Australian PM: Graffiti ‘abhorrent and needs to stop immediately’
In the latest incident, police said they were notified of graffiti on the synagogue, in the inner suburb of Newtown, early Saturday. Vandals had spray painted red swastikas outside the entrance.
A house in Sydney’s east, a hub of the city’s Jewish community, was also daubed with antisemitic graffiti, police said, adding they are also probing offensive comments on a street poster in the suburb of Marrickville.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned the antisemitic graffiti, asserting that those responsible "should face the full force of the law."
Jewish leaders say prejudice against their community has reached unprecedented levels, with most incidents reported in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia’s largest cities, where 85 percent of the nation’s Jewish population live.
A report from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) found that Australian Jews experienced more than 2,000 anti-Jewish incidents over the past year, more than quadruple the number from the previous year.
A total of 2,062 incidents were recorded between October 2023 and September 2024, far more than the 495 incidents noted a year earlier. The total did not include antisemitic statements made on social media.
[X]
The NSW Police have now reported that arson was also attempted during the attack on the Newtown Synagogue.
The Counter Terrorism Command is investigating.
The Inner West stands in solidarity with the Jewish community and against the extremists carrying out these attacks. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/R5y4CIvGHq
[IsraelTimes] Punishment said to be harshest yet in connection to riot at Makhachkala Int’l Airport after the arrival of a plane carrying ‘unclean’ passengers from Tel Aviv, 3 weeks after Oct. 7
Russian prosecutors announced Friday that four people had been sentenced to a decade each in a penal colony for their part in an antisemitic riot at a Dagestan ...a formerly inoffensive Caucasus republic currently bedevilled by low-level Islamic insurgency, occasional outbreaks of separatism, ethnic tensions and terrorism, primarily due to its proximity to Chechnya. There are several dozen ethnic groups, most of which speak either Caucasian, Turkic, or Iranian languages. Largest among these ethnic groups are the Avar, Dargin, Kumyk, Lezgin, and Laks. While Russers form less than five percent of the population, Russian remains the primary official language and the lingua franca... airport on October 29, 2023.
Hebrew media said it was the harshest sentence yet in connection with the attack, which saw hundreds of anti-Israel protesters storm the Makhachkala International Airport after a plane arrived from Tel Aviv, in a spate of unrest over the war 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... , which had been sparked three weeks earlier when Hamas ..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,... attacked Israel.
Russian prosecutors said the three people who incited the violence on Instagram were still wanted by authorities.
Video footage from the riot showed the protesters, mostly young men, waving Paleostinian flags, breaking down glass doors and running through the airport shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest). The airport closed for a week after being stormed, but no passengers were hurt.
Regional prosecutors in Russia’s southwestern district of Stavropol said on Telegram that the region’s Georgievsk City Court had found Marat Rabadanov, Radzhab Radzhabov, Magomed Ramazanov and Zaurbeg Khalikov culpable in the violence "on the grounds of ethnic and religious hatred and enmity toward citizens of Israel."
The Kan public broadcaster said the sentence was the fourth, and the harshest, punishment meted out by the Stavropol court against members of the Dagestani mob in recent months.
The earliest convictions, in June, saw five men incarcerated Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please! for six to nine years each. Last month, another 10 people were sentenced to over eight years in prison, according to Russian media.
Kan said the trials have been moved from Dagestan to neighboring Stavropol due to concern that a Dagestani court would not hold a fair trial.
It was unclear if this meant that courts in Dagestan, a predominantly Moslem region, were thought to be overly or insufficiently stringent.
According to the Stavropol prosecutors, the Dagestani mob had disrupted the Makhachkala airport’s operations, caused 24 million rubles ($233,000) worth of property damage, and committed "unlawful acts against 30 representatives of the authorities," 23 of whom "suffered bodily injuries of varying severity."
The mob was incited by a Telegram channel urging Dagestanis "to organize and participate in mass riots" against Israeli citizens, according to a statement by Russia’s Investigative Committee, the country’s top prosecutorial body which is known by its Russian initials SRK.
The channel, which was later banned by Telegram, did not use the word "Jew," but referred to "unclean" passengers arriving on the plane from Tel Aviv.
SRK said the channel’s operators, whom the agency named as Ilya Ponomarev, Abakar Abakarov and Israil Akhmednabiyev, were still wanted by authorities, along with four other people who took part in the mob.
In all, SRK said it had completed preliminary investigations into 135 people involved in the attack and forwarded 28 criminal cases to the court. A total of 38 people have been found guilty in seven of the cases, the agency said.
Dagestan’s small, ancient Jewish community — known as Juhuri, which is also the name of their Hebrew- and Aramaic-inflected dialect — has been targeted by Islamist gunnies for years before October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led gunnies stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza and precipitating a worldwide surge in antisemitism.
In June, the community’s 110-year-old Derbent Synagogue was burnt down amid a large-scale Islamist attack on non-Moslems in the area.
A Bronx man arrested Saturday for allegedly stabbing a 14-year-old boy to death on Friday had an extensive history of mental health issues — something which led law enforcement to again demand change in the Big Apple.
Law enforcement sources said Mejia had been wanted for a Jan. 5 incident in Mott Haven, during which he reportedly attacked a 38-year-old man walking down the stairs leading to the 3rd Avenue-East 138th Street subway station. The victim suffered a gash to the left arm. EMS took the victim to a local hospital, where he received several stitches to close the wound.
Transit cops were able to recognize Mejia from surveillance footage and linked him to both attacks. Officers then tracked him down as he tried to enter his home in Mott Haven where police took him into custody and recovered a bloody knife.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch revealed Saturday that Mejia has an extensive rap sheet and a history of mental illness issues.
“Mr. Mejia is a career criminal with four prior unsealed arrests. The most recent one occurred on Nov. 27, 2024, when Mr. Mejia was arrested for stabbing another victim’s ring camera with a kitchen knife, and importantly, was released on his own recognizance the very next day,” Tisch said. “In 2019, Mr. Mejia was arrested for burglary and arson after lighting another victim’s residence on fire. And in 2017, he was found to be in possession of a 9 mm gun loaded with nine rounds, including one in the chamber.”
Tisch said she hopes this tragic incident will lead to more available resources to keep the mentally ill off the streets.
“A brutal, unprovoked killing of a 14-year-old child by a career criminal, a recidivist over and over again, with a history of mental health interactions with the NYPD,” the commissioner said. “How many times does the mayor have to keep talking about this before something changes? I’m hopeful something will change. Let this be the call to action.”
The incident occurred more than a week after Gov. Kathy Hochul announced her intention to seek state legislative approval to empower New York City and other localities to involuntarily hospitalize the severely mentally ill.
#5
We are to assume he is a US citizen based on the coverage. Maybe that’s not a pertinent topic that Americans would be interested in.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/12/2025 10:30
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#6
When a dog mauls and kills someone, are we really concerned about the mental state of the dog? We make sure the dog never does it again to protect others.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The strike on the American aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman, which was in the Red Sea, was carried out by Yemeni Houthis from the Ansar Allah movement. This was reported on January 11 by the representative of the armed forces formed by the Houthis, Yahya Saria, his statement was broadcast by the Al Masirah TV channel. They shoot off as claimed, but only rarely do their missiles/drones actually hit anything. That’s because the choice of whether to hit is Allah’s, and he clearly prefers the targets.
"Yemeni missile forces and unmanned systems forces carried out a joint military operation within 24 hours, attacking the American aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman and several warships in the northern part of the Red Sea using cruise missiles and drones," Saria said.
A representative of the movement indicated that after the Houthi attack, the aircraft carrier was forced to redeploy to the “extreme northern part of the Red Sea.”
Earlier, Regnum News Agency reported that on January 6, Yemeni Houthis announced an attack on the American aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman in the Red Sea. As the movement's representative Yahya Saria specified, the ship was attacked by drones and missiles. In addition, according to Saria, on the same evening, the Houthis carried out two more operations to strike using drones at a military facility in the Israeli port city of Jaffa, as well as at a "vital Israeli facility" in Ashkelon.
A day earlier, Saria said the Houthis had launched a rocket attack on the Orot Rabin power plant near the northern Israeli city of Haifa. The movement's military spokesman said the strike was in support of the Gaza Strip, adding that the Houthis' military capabilities were "constantly evolving."
On January 3, the Ansar Allah movement also reported a missile strike on a power plant. The attack targeted a facility east of the Israeli city of Tel Aviv. In addition, the Houthis reported using drones to strike a "military target" located in the said settlement.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[KavkazUzel] Circassian organizations and activists abroad welcomed the recognition of the Circassian genocide by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and expressed hope that this would lead to recognition of the genocide by other countries. The International Circassian Association considered this decision anti-Russian.
As the "Caucasian Knot" wrote, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on January 9 recognized the genocide of the Circassians during the Caucasian War and called on Russia to apologize for it. The Circassian Genocide took place during the reign of Tsar Aleksandr I and Tsar Nicolas I
The Caucasian War, which lasted from 1763 to 1864, brought the Adyghe people to the brink of extinction. After the war and the mass deportation of the Adyghe to the Ottoman Empire, only a little more than 50,000 people remained in their homeland. The Russian authorities have still not made a decision to recognize the genocide of the Circassians during the war, according to a report from the "Caucasian Knot."
The recognition of the Circassian genocide by Ukraine was commented on by the "Caucasian Knot" by the head of the Federation of Circassian Associations (Cherkesfed), which includes more than 20 Circassian primary organizations throughout Turkey, doctor of medicine Nusret Bash, the head of the "Free Circassia" movement Ibrahim Yaganov, historian, publicist and veteran of the Jordanian Air Force, ethnic Circassian Adel Bashkawi, Israeli political scientist, president of the Institute for Eastern Partnership, leader of the "Be'ad Artseynu" (For the Motherland) party, advisor to the inter-party group "Free Caucasus" in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Rabbi Avraham Shmulevich, deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Oleksiy Goncharenko and the author of the text of the draft recognition of the Circassian genocide, political scientist Pavlo Zhovnirenko.
Nusret Bash recalled that in the 30 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Circassians have appealed to many countries to recognize the genocide they experienced during the Caucasian War, but so far only Georgia has done so in 2011.
"The recognition of the genocide filled the Circassians with great joy and revived their hopes. As the Federation of Circassian Associations, we congratulate the Ukrainian parliament on this valuable and exemplary decision and express our gratitude to them," Nusret Bash told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.
Ibrahim Yaganov told the "Caucasian Knot" that the Circassians sought recognition specifically from the Ukrainian parliament, since Ukraine had been part of the USSR for a long time and its deputies could more quickly and better understand the situation of the Circassians.
"The recognition of the genocide by the Verkhovna Rada is a great event for the entire Circassian people and especially for the national movement. This gives us a chance to return to our historical homeland to revive and restore our ethnicity. Only in our historical homeland can we restore our language, culture and national identity," he told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.
As Ibrahim Yaganov noted, the Rada's decision is a very serious step towards the recognition of the genocide by the entire international community. "The text of the recognition of the genocide of the Circassian people states that Ukraine will appeal to other countries with a proposal to recognize the genocide. We will work with the Baltic countries, Finland and Poland, where we have a good chance that we will be heard, understood and the recognition of this genocide will be considered on a legislative basis," he said.
Adel Bashkaoui thanked Ukraine for the decision. He agreed that after the recognition of the genocide by Georgia and Ukraine, the Circassians will have the opportunity to work with other states, especially in the post-Soviet space, potentially ready to recognize the Circassian genocide. "The recognition of the genocide will be followed by the recognition of all the rights that accompany it. According to this right, the Circassians should be recognized as victims of genocide by Russia itself, which is bound by many international conventions. And Russia should apologize for what it did against our nation, and pay compensation to our people, and return them to their homeland, since the Circassians have the right to repatriation. And we have the right to self-determination," Bashkaoui told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.
According to Adel Bashkawi, the majority of Circassians living in Jordan have retained the Circassian language in communication, and all representatives of the diaspora continue to consider themselves Circassians, despite the fact that their families have lived outside their historical homeland for a century and a half.
"We have been in Jordan since the 19th century, we are full citizens here, but we are a minority here. We have three seats in parliament together with the Chechens, and we also have two seats in the upper house of parliament. Of course, this does not distance us from the citizens of Jordan, but people remember that they were once expelled from their homelands and resettled throughout the Ottoman Empire," Bashkawi added.
Avraam Shmulevich said that the first time the Circassians approached Ukraine on the issue of recognizing the genocide was back in 2014. "I first raised this issue in 2014, and then the previous composition of the Rada was ready to accept it in the first reading," he said. According to him, political events prevented this. "This issue was put on the agenda in the Rada several times, and now, finally, it was accepted," says Avraam Shmulevich.
According to Shmulevich, this is a very important recognition both for the Circassians and for all the peoples of the North Caucasus and the former Russian Empire, and the call for other countries to consider the issue of genocide is necessary for the rehabilitation of all peoples who suffered from imperialism and authoritarianism.
“The Circassians are in a unique position: most of them are outside their historical homeland, since Russia expelled them from the North Caucasus. And the current Russian authorities are trying to prevent them from returning to their historical homeland. Although we know that there is a campaign in Russia to return compatriots to their homeland, this only concerns Russians and does not concern the Circassians, who are not recognized as an indigenous people.
"The policy towards the Circassians has remained unchanged since the mid-19th century. Several principles have been developed. The first is the fragmentation of the Circassians. We know that the Russian authorities do not recognize the Circassians as a single people. For them, there are separate Kabardians, separate Adyghe, separate Circassians in Karachay-Cherkessia, and separate Shapsugs. That is, one people is artificially divided into four.
"The second is the cutting off of the Circassians from the sea. And the third is the destruction of Circassian culture, self-awareness and identity. All this is also happening today. These are the principles that were used by the tsarist generals, that were used by the Bolsheviks, and that are used today by the current Russian authorities,” Shmulevich said.
Adyghe (Circassians) is the common name of a single people in Russia and abroad, divided into Kabardians, Circassians and Adyghe. Self-designation is Adyghe (Adyghe). Adyghe live in the territory of six subjects: Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, Krasnodar Krai, North Ossetia, Stavropol Krai. In three of them, the Adyghe peoples are one of the "titular" nations: Circassians - in Karachay-Cherkessia, Adyghe - in Adygea, Kabardians - in Kabardino-Balkaria.
The International Circassian Association (ICA) has unequivocally condemned the recognition of the Circassian genocide and stated that it does not need this recognition.
"The other day we witnessed another attempt by Russia's ill-wishers to use the tragic pages of our history, taken out of context, to incite national feelings and use them for their own political selfish purposes. This is the adoption of a resolution by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on the recognition of the Circassian genocide based on an appeal by representatives of the Circassian community who are not associated with official Circassian organizations. However, the Adyghe (Circassian) people do not need such recognition from the illegitimate authorities of Ukraine. We strongly condemn the activities of our fellow tribesmen outside of Russia who are pursuing an anti-Russian policy. We consider the appeal to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and the adoption of the corresponding resolution to be provocative and harmful to the present and future of the Adyghe people," the association said in a statement.
A "Caucasian Knot" correspondent called the president of the International Circassian Association, Khauti Sokhrokov, and asked him to clarify this position. However, Khauti Sokhrokov, having heard the question, hung up. He also did not respond to written messages.
As Ibragim Yaganov stated, the International Circassian Association has not been a legitimate organization of Circassians since 2000. "In 2000, the President of Kabardino-Balkaria, Valery Kokov, did not allow the next congress of the ICA to be held, at which new authorities could have been elected. Then the police did not allow the candidate for the post of the ICA president, Zaur Naloyev, to enter, and those gathered in the hall declared Zaur Nakhushev the president. However, they did not have the authority, there was no seal of the organization, so the ICA has been acting illegally since then," says Yaganov.
According to the counterparty verification service List-org.com, the International Circassian Association was registered under the leadership of Yuri Kalmykov on September 25, 1991 in Maykop. It was headed by Yuri Kalmykov, and later by Boris Akbashev. This organization was liquidated by a court decision, as indicated on the website of the Adyghe Republican Register of Public Organizations, in 2010.
The organization headed by Khauti Sokhrokov was registered in 2001 in the city of Nalchik. That is, the organizations have different legal addresses and appeared with a difference of 10 years, the "Caucasian Knot" found out.
All speculations that Ukraine is allegedly trying to involve the Circassians in the war on its side do not stand up to criticism, said Oleksiy Goncharenko. "Ukraine called what Russia did to the Circassians in the 19th century evil. We cannot say what the consequences will be, but we have said our word, and this is already important," he told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.
The statement by activist Ibragim Yaganov about the formation of a Circassian battalion in Ukraine to participate in military operations against Russia has aroused interest among the Adyghe in Russia and abroad, but only as a political statement, and there will be few people willing to sign up as volunteers, Circassian activists interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" indicated in November 2022.
Pavlo Zhovnirenko noted that the decision-making process was delayed in part due to the low awareness of Ukrainian society about the Circassian problem, and not all deputies understood why it was necessary to vote for this bill.
“In three or four years, significantly more Ukrainians learned that there was a genocide of the Circassian people. I did not conduct research, but from personal acquaintances, from personal communication, I saw that no more than five percent knew about this genocide. And now, I’m afraid to be mistaken, but no less than 40 percent know. And I take everyone - even those who are not interested in politics at all. Thanks to the fact that Circassians on Facebook and other social networks constantly talked about their problems, about their history, Ukrainians learned about this,” he told a correspondent of the “Caucasian Knot”.
He believes that the most important thing today is for other countries to recognize the genocide. Zhovnirenko added that "free people cannot leave relatively free countries, for example, Turkey," if Circassian children do not feel like Circassians in Russia. "The entire system - schools, universities and the social environment - are aimed at assimilation," says Pavel Zhovnirenko.
Zhovnirenko called on Circassians to work on joint projects to revive their homeland today, since in his opinion, Circassians are more focused on the past than on the future. “The new generation is the most important thing,” he emphasized.
From my files, in honour of the Circassians:
CIRCASSIAN CHICKEN One of the nicest parts of trailing my husband halfway around the world was the friends we made while “over there.” I was given this recipe by a Turkish friend I met while on assignment in Germany. Now she lives in Michigan, and we are here in Cincinnati. We think of her fondly every time we eat her recipe.
One whole chicken, cut into pieces OR a roasted chicken from the grocery plus a quart of low-sodium chicken broth
salt and pepper, to taste
500 g (1 lb./16 oz.) shelled walnut meats
5-6 garlic cloves
250 g (8 oz) stale white bread
If starting with a raw chicken, simmer the cut-up chicken with salt and enough water to cover until meat is cooked through and a broth forms. When done remove chicken and, when cool enough to handle, pull meat off of bones in bite-size pieces. Set aside.
While chicken is cooking, place walnuts in a food processor and chop until nuts are finely ground and slightly oily. Add stale bread and garlic cloves, then chop some more until homogenous. Add enough chicken broth to form a liquid paste. Scoop into a large mixing bowl, then stir in the shredded chicken and salt and pepper to taste.
Serve garnished with chopped parsley and a shake of sweet paprika on top, and a good baguette cut in slices to spread it on.
Nb: This recipe makes enough for two parties. I keep the second serving and an extra baguette in the freezer against impulse invitations, or for individual servings line a muffin tin with plastic wrap and fill cups with dip, cover with another layer of plastic wrap and flash freeze. Roll up the whole thing and store in a freezer bag, taking out individual servings as wanted.
#4
I think most Westerners don't know much about that part of the world. One thing I know is that, historically, Russians have had a hell of a time with their southern neighbors and especially with the Turks and Tatars.
It's easy for Americans, and apparently Ukrainians, to use words like genocide while forgetting some of their own sins. Native Americans could probably tell you a lot more about that than I can.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/12/2025 19:29
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Islamists in France are vocal about conquering all of Europe:
"We are not here to kill people, but we are ready, because given how we are oppressed, we never know. Islam is everywhere now, it will conquer all of Europe.”
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/12/2025 10:31
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#4
The true nature of Islam always emerges when they gain sufficient power. Above all Islam is a world-view about conquest and control. "Dar al-Islam is an Arabic phrase that translates to "the house of Islam" or "the abode of Islam". It refers to the areas where Muslims are the majority and Islamic law is practiced. The term is used to distinguish Muslim spaces from non-Muslim spaces, which are known as Dar al-Harb, or "the abode of war". (Wiki cite)"
"Islam is not simply a belief about God. Islam is a word that means submission. Islam is a set of rules that define a social hierarchy in which Muslims submit to Allah, women submit to men and all non-Muslims submit to Islamic rule. "
[KRQE] HSI promises to find those responsible for ‘sophisticated’ tunnel
Special agents with Homeland Security Investigations, along with U.S. Border Patrol, uncovered what they are calling a “sophisticated cross-border tunnel” connecting El Paso to Ciudad Juarez on Friday, Jan. 10.
HSI El Paso says it is leading the investigation to prosecute those responsible behind the tunnel.
Border Patrol officials earlier called the tunnel an “historic” discovery.
HSI said that upon excavation of the “smuggling tunnel,” they determined that it extends under the U.S.-Mexico border into the Boone Street storm drain in South-Central El Paso and it is approximately 4 feet across and 6 feet in height.
HSI also said the tunnel is held up by wood beams and is equipped with electricity, a ventilation system and appears to have been constructed in the past year.
Border Patrol initially said their Confined Space Entry Team discovered the tunnel early Friday morning and that it crosses from Juarez into the El Paso storm drain system.
The tunnel includes lighting, a ventilation system and is braced with wood beams throughout, Border Patrol added.
HSI has been working closely with their counterparts in Juarez to make sure that the man-made tunnel from El Paso into Ciudad Juarez is secured.
“The uncovering of this tunnel showcases the success of our combined investigative efforts,” HSI El Paso Special Agent in Charge Jason T. Stevens said. “Transnational criminal organizations mistakenly think they can avoid detection by moving people and contraband underground. This recent discovery is a significant blow to their operations as it highlights our capability to disrupt their sophisticated smuggling networks.
“The discovery of this tunnel and the follow-up investigation highlight the strong collaboration and dedication of our valued law enforcement partners — I want to express my gratitude to the federal, state and local departments supporting this case for their unwavering commitment to enhancing public safety,” Stevens added.
As of Friday, no arrests have been made, HSI said.
#5
Nothing new. In 1994 our active-duty CA National Guard Counterdrug Task Force assisted the Customs and Border Patrol in the discovery, examination and closure of a drug tunnel from the Tiajuana Airport Complex to an American trucking company warehouse next to the Otay Mesa Truck Inspection location. It had an elevator lift, lights, ventilation and a railed push card to move the loads. The airport has a long history of repeated tunneling to the warehouses on the US side. More cent examples in the BBC article link below.
[KOMOnews] An Army Veteran sat in a small Joint Base Lewis McChord
… home to I Corps and 62nd Airlift Wing near Tacoma, Washington. It’s one of 12 joint bases created by the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission, combining Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base…
courtroom, voice wavering, to talk for the first time on the record about how he was sexually assaulted by his doctor.
The ranking officer, who served in Operation Enduring Freedom, told the court how he was seeking relief from back pain from Army Doctor Michael Stockin back in 2022. But instead, he said, the anesthesiologist at Madigan Army Medical Center directed him to “drop trou” and touched his genitals multiple times without gloves.
Stockin has admitted to the crime and 35 other assaults of soldiers that were done “with the intent to arouse and gratify the sexual desire” of the doctor under the guise of a medical purpose. It is believed to be the largest case of its kind in recent Army history.
On Friday, Jan. 10, Judge Col. Larry Babin formally accepted the terms of a plea deal, that called for Stockin to be discharged, stripped of any military benefits, and face a minimum of close to 10 years in prison. In exchange, Stockin pleaded guilty to 41 counts, or what are called “specifications” under military law, including 36 counts of abusive sexual contact and 5 counts of indecent viewing. Military prosecutors dropped another 11 counts during the proceedings.
The judge asked Stockin directly “Are you doing this because you are convinced you are guilty?”
#1
Seems unlikely that an assaulted would have developed a discipline of just fondling marble bags for his jollies. They will find more if they look to jug this guy and his helper for more years than 10.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/12/2025 8:15
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In the UK, after discovering that immigrants are r@ping underage girls, why would the Welsh Refugee Council use 12 yr old girls in ads meant to entice migrant men to come to Wales? The refugee council is a far left group. @elonmuskpic.twitter.com/rdtLS9Qr3k
JUST NOW🔥🔥🔥 Tens of thousands of people are protesting in Bucharest against the cancellation of presidential elections in December What you see in the video is the beginning of the march 3 hours ago As usual media is dead silent about this! We want our country back! pic.twitter.com/SE5xWNqjZ1
[NEWARAB] 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... has ordered schools and public buildings in a third of the country's provinces, including Tehran, to close on Saturday, as several power plants remain shut down by fuel shortages.
Despite Iran's huge oil and gas reserves, the country hit by years of international sanctions has been forced to ration electricity in recent months as sub-zero temperatures have prompted a surge in demand that its ageing power stations have been unable to meet.
The closures ordered on Friday include the capital Tehran as well as the Shia Moslem shrine city of Qom, Kurdistan in the west and Mazandaran and Ardabil on the Caspian coast.
The decision was taken "because of the cold and to manage electricity consumption," the official IRNA news agency said.
Iran already ordered similar closures late last year after rolling blackouts plunged homes and businesses into darkness in November.
Government offices in Tehran were closed for four straight days in December and school children ordered to stay home across more than half of the country.
The crisis in Iran comes as the country prepares for a second Trump presidency which could see the new economic sanctions and military pressure against the country over its nuclear programme, dubbed 'maximum pressure 2.0'.
Such a campaign has seen some speculate that the end of the Iran's Islamic Theocratic Republic is near, including former Secretary of State under Trump Mike Pompeo.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/12/2025
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[11159 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
[DHAKATRIBUNE] Members of the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) have detained 58 Rohingyas, including women, children, and elderly individuals, during an illegal entry attempt through the Buchitong border in Alikadam Upazila's Nayapara Union, Bandarban.
The operation was conducted by the Alikadam Battalion in the early hours of Saturday.
According to police and local sources, the detentions were made following a tip-off about Rohingyas fleeing Myanmar with assistance from several Bangladeshi nationals.
Acting on the information, BGB personnel launched a raid in the border area and held the group at around 4am.
They were intercepted while being transported on a truck, a private car, and several cycle of violences.
Besides, five people accused of facilitating the illegal crossing were also detained during the operation.
Legal proceedings against them are underway, and cases are being prepared at Alikadam Police Station.
The Rohingyas, meanwhile, are expected to be pushed back to Myanmar as part of the authorities' ongoing efforts to prevent illegal crossings.
Alikadam Police Station's officer-in-charge, Mirza Zahid Uddin, confirmed receiving information about the detainees but said that no case had yet been filed. ''Appropriate measures will be taken once the case is lodged,'' he added.
The attempted crossings come amidst a protracted conflict in Myanmar, where disputes between the government and rebel groups have intensified, forcing many Rohingyas to flee the region in search of safety.
Bangladeshi authorities have been vigilant in monitoring the border checking the influx of refugees and maintaining security.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/12/2025
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#4
I guess her Net worth of $2.5 billion, that she made over both Liberal & Conservative admins, proves pimping racism and discrimination in the US is $$$$$$$$$?
OR, is she just another aging camera seeking far left liberal celebrity running their mouth for attention?
Any bets she takes a 30-day vacation and returns bellowing Anti-MAGA to CYA her PR lie and return?
Linked article is available only through a VPN
[EngMilRu] The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue the special military operation.
In Kharkov direction, units of the Sever Group of Forces inflicted fire damage on units one mechanised brigade and one mechanised infantry brigade close to Volchansk and Liptsy (Kharkov region).
The AFU losses were up to 35 troops, two motor vehicles, and four artillery guns.
Units of the Zapad Group of Forces improved the tactical situation. Russian troops launched strikes at manpower and hardware of two mechanised brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, one territorial defence brigade, and one National Guard brigade close to Lozovaya, Zagoruykovka (Kharkov region), Ivanovka, and Torskoye (Donetsk People's Republic).
The AFU losses were more than 365 troops, three armoured fighting vehicles, three motor vehicles, six artillery guns, and one counter-battery radar station.
Two ammunition depots have been wiped out.
Units of the Yug Group of Forces took more advantageous lines and positions. Russian troops inflicted fire damage on two mechanised brigades, one airmobile brigade, and one air assault brigade near Konstantinovka, Nikolayevka, Serebryanka, and Predtechino (Donetsk People's Republic).
The AFU losses were up to 210 troops, two armoured fighting vehicles, two pickup trucks, one Grad MLRS combat vehicle, three artillery guns, and one electronic warfare station.
Two ammunition depots have been wiped out.
Units of the Tsentr Group of Forces liberated Shevchenko (Donetsk People's Republic).
Russian troops hit manpower and hardware of three mechanised brigades and one National Guard brigade close to Sribnoye, Alekseyevka, Grishino, and Belitskoye (Donetsk People's Republic).
The AFU losses were up to 535 troops, one German-made Leopard tank, four armoured fighting vehicles, including two U.S.-made M-113 armoured personnel carriers, three motor vehicles, and five artillery guns.
Units of the Vostok Group of Forces continued advancing to the depth of the AFU defences.
Russian troops inflicted fire damage on formations of one mechanised brigade, one tank brigade of the AFU, and one National Guard brigade near Velikaya Novosyolka, Burlatskoye, and Volnoye Pole (Donetsk People's Republic).
The AFU losses were up to 185 troops, one tank, two armoured fighting vehicles, seven motor vehicles, and four artillery guns.
One ammunition depot was wiped out.
Units of the Dnepr Group of Forces engaged manpower and hardware of two mechanised brigades and one infantry brigade close to Blakitnoye, Primorskoye, and Novoyakovlevka (Zaporozhye region).
The AFU losses were up to 70 troops, four motor vehicles, and five artillery guns.
Operational-Tactical Aviation, attack unmanned aerial vehicles, and Missile Troops and Artillery of the Russian Groups of Forces delivered strikes at infrastructure of military airfields, power objects ensuring operation of the Ukrainian defence industry as well as engaged clusters of manpower and military hardware in 146 areas.
Air defence facilities shot down five U.S.-made HIMARS MLRS projectiles and 181 fixed-wing U.S.-made UAVs.
In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, 652 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 40,077 unmanned aerial vehicles, 590 anti-aircraft missile systems, 20,480 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, 1,508 MLRS combat vehicles, 20,412 field artillery guns and mortars, and 30,156 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.
Units of the Sever Group of Forces engaged formations of one tank brigade, two mechanised brigades, two air assault brigades, and two territorial defence brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine close to Viktorovka, Kositsa, Kurilovka, Lebedevka, Malaya Loknya, Nikolayevka, Nikolayevo-Daryino, Novaya Sorochina, Pogrebki. Nine enemy counter-attacks were repelled.
Operational-Tactical and Army aviation, artillery inflicted losses on enemy manpower and hardware close to Bogdanovka, Bondarevka, Viktorovka, Goncharovka, Guyevo, Zaoleshinka, Kazachya Loknya, Kruglenkoye, Kubatkin, Lebedevka, Loknya, Martynovka, Makhnovka, Melovoy, Nikolayevo-Daryino, Nikolsky, Oleshnya, Rubanshchina, Sverdlikovo, Staraya Sorochina, Sudzha, Cherkasskoye Porechnoye, Yuzhny as well as Basovka, Belovody, Zhuravka, Obody, and Yunakovka in Sumy region.
During the day, the enemy losses were up to 240 troops, one infantry fighting vehicle, one armoured personnel carrier, two armoured fighting vehicles, five motor vehicles, one artillery gun, four mortars, one electronic warfare station.
Since the beginning of hostilities in Kursk region, the AFU losses amounted to more than 50,840 troops, 296 tanks, 224 infantry fighting vehicles, 161 armoured personnel carriers, 1,521 armoured fighting vehicles, 1,445 motor vehicles, 353 artillery guns, 44 MLRS launchers, including 13 of HIMARS and six of MLRS made by the USA, 16 anti-aircraft missile launchers, eight transport-loading vehicles, 91 EW stations, 13 counter-battery warfare radars, four air defence radars, 29 units of engineering and other materiel, including 15 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.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[NewsFront] 20:26 Battle of Pokrovsk: The "Brave" continue to burn enemy equipment and infantry en masse –VIDEO
Combat work of the "Center" group of troops on January 10 to destroy military equipment and personnel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces during active offensive operations on Pokrovsky
20:10 UAV crews of the Northern Fleet naval infantry of the Dnepr Forces Group detected and destroyed a mortar of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kakhovka direction in the Kherson region –Ministry of Defense
20:05 Storming of Kursk Pogrebki: 34th Motorized Rifle Brigade clears the village of occupiers –VIDEO
20:03 Russian Armed Forces advance near Vrem'yevka, Neskuchny, Novy Komar and Velikaya Novosyolka –MAP
19:33 The Russian Armed Forces have driven the enemy out of Novolizavetovka and are fighting for Yasenevoe –MAP
19:16 The Russian Armed Forces have completed the mop up of the village of Neskuchnoye in the Velikonovoselkovsky direction –MAP
19:08 Scouts of the Sever group destroyed another mortar crew of the Ukrainian Armed Forces using FPV drones in the Khar'kov region –VIDEO
19:00 The Russian Armed Forces have driven the enemy out of Solenoe and are advancing towards the settlement of Zverevo –MAP
18:56 Two soldiers of the 82nd Separate Airborne Assault Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Artem Golovko and Stanislav Karpunovsky, surrendered to servicemen of the Russian group of troops "North" near the settlement of Berdin in the Kursk region. They spoke about the conditions of detention in Russian captivity and addressed their relatives -Ministry of Defense.
18:33 The Russian Armed Forces have expanded the bridgehead near Dvurechnaya on the western bank of the Oskol River –MAP
18:03 UAV operators of the separate reconnaissance battalion of the 51st Guards Combined Arms Army of the "Southern" group of forces destroyed the position of a 120mm mortar of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the area of the settlement of Dzerzhinsk, DPR –Ministry of Defense.
18:00 16th Separate Guards Order of Zhukov Spetsnaz Brigade and 752nd Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment – liberated the settlement of Nadiya –MAP
17:47 A large batch of prisoners from Kurakhovo –VIDEO
17:31 The Russian Armed Forces are practically knocked out Armed Forces of Ukraine from a settlement in the Kursk region.
17:08 Servicemen of the 74th Separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade of the "Center" group of forces spoke about the liberation of the Shevchenko settlement of the DPR -Ministry of Defense
16:53 The Ukrainian Armed Forces launched a strike from a multiple rocket launcher on the village of Novye Yurkovichi in the Klimovsky district of the Bryansk region, - Governor Bogomaz.
16:09 Epic destruction of a Ukrainian tank –VIDEO
FPV operator GV "Sever" sent a kamikaze drone into the turret of a Ukrainian tank. As a result of the hit, the ammunition casing caught fire.
15:46 RF Armed Forces released the settlement of Neskuchnoye was liberated near Velikaya Novosyolka (South Donetsk direction).
15:31 Putin awarded the title Hero of Russia to corporal Andrei Grigoriev from Yakutia, who defeated a serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in hand-to-hand combat.
15:10 Around 12:00 Moscow time, air defense systems on duty destroyed a Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle over the territory of the Belgorod region –Ministry of Defense.
15:07 Military correspondent Kulko:
18+ Footage of our stormtroopers from the refractory plant in Chasov Yar –VIDEO
Currently, the Russian Armed Forces control approximately 20% of the plant's territory - this is the last serious defense node of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the city. Without it, the enemy garrison in Chasov Yar will break up into separate pockets of resistance.
14:37 The 14th Special Forces Brigade destroys enemy tanks, supporting the offensive at Velikaya Novosyolka –VIDEO
10:52 The Typhoon assault squad destroyed the enemy’s shelter –VIDEO
10:33 The situation in the Konstantinovsky direction MAP
10:02 Advance of the Russian Armed Forces in Chasov Yar –MAP
8:49 The Russian Armed Forces launched an attack on the Martynovka military airfield in the Nikolaev region of Ukraine, reported RIA Novosti in the pro-Russian resistance.
8:02 Advance of the RF Armed Forces in Dzerzhinsk (Toretsk) and installation of the banner – four companies, three rifle battalions, 109th Motorized Rifle Regiment –MAP
7:38 Over the course of the past night, air defense systems on duty intercepted and destroyed 85 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles –statement of Ministry of Defense.
Thirty-one UAVs were destroyed over the Black Sea, sixteen UAVs were shot down over the territories of the Voronezh Region and Krasnodar Krai, fourteen over the waters of the Sea of Azov, four over the territory of the Belgorod Region, two UAVs were intercepted over the territory of the Tambov Region, and one was shot down over the territories of the Republic of Crimea and the Kursk Region.
7:32 Changes on the map for the past 24 hours:
Advance in the area of the Seversky Donetsk-Donbass canal near Stupochki
Advbance in Toretsk
Russian Armed Forces entered the northern outskirts of Kositsa
Advance in the Ukrainka-Slavyanka area
Alexandria is liberated
Novovasilevka has been liberated
Russian Armed Forces storm Yasenevo
The Russian Armed Forces are advancing from Slavyanka towards the Yasenevo-Andereyevka highway
7:02 Changeson the map for 01/10/2025
Overall results:
+ 1.3 km²
– 0 km²
Total: 1.3 km²
6:31 Servicemen of the sniper units of the "North" group of troops covertly are being destroyed particularly important targets and enemy manpower, supporting the combat work of Russian assault, motorized rifle and tank units in the border area of the Kursk region.
Snipers work in pairs, covering each other. The servicemen pay special attention to camouflaging their position and shot. To do this, they use thermal imaging capes and closed-type muzzle brakes-compensators, which disperse the sound of the shot and dampen the flash. The shooters admit that the hardest part of the job is waiting, when the target has to wait for several hours or even days.
During the SVO, snipers have repeatedly proven their versatility: they can work as free hunters, scouts or spotters, and they are even capable of stopping the advance of enemy armored vehicles and manpower.
5:37 Ukrainian Armed Forces targets in Poltava region hit.
5:01 In the special operation zone, servicemen of the West military group are activelyapplyvarious reconnaissance and attack drones.
The crews of the Orlan-10 unmanned aerial vehicles conduct aerial reconnaissance, identify targets and adjust air strikes and artillery fire, and also record fire damage to enemy objects, manpower and equipment.
This time, reconnaissance drone operators spotted a camouflaged Italian-made Melara Mod 56 105mm howitzer.
Using the Lancet automatic target acquisition system, under the influence of electronic warfare, the Ukrainian Armed Forces' gun was hit. Zala UAV operators confirmed the destruction of the target.
3:50 Explosions thundered in Poltava and Kirovograd regions.
3:33 A strike was carried out on targets in Krivoy Rog.
2:52 Targets hit in Krivoy Rog.
2:51 Explosions thundered again in Zolotonosha, Cherkasy region.
2:28 Explosions rocked Kyiv, Geraniums hit targets in the city.
2:17 Targets in Bucha, Kyiv region, were hit.
2:15 Explosions thundered in Voznesensk, Nikolaev region.
2:13 Air raid siren has been declared in Kyiv and nine regions of Ukraine.
2:03 Targets in the suburbs of Khar'kov were hit.
2:00 Strikes were carried out on Ukrainian Armed Forces targets in the Pavlograd area of Dnipropetrovsk region.
1:49 Targets hit in Kremenchug, Poltava region.
1:42 New explosions thundered in Zolotonosha.
1:33 Russian Armed Forces hit targets in Zolotonosha, Cherkasy region.
1:10 UAVs struck targets in Novomoskovsk, Dnipropetrovsk region, and Reshetilovka, Poltava region.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Olga Kuznetsova
[REGNUM] Many of us literally grew up on stories that were actively generated by the generous land in the famous Hollywood Hills. And Hollywood has literally become a household name.
This was an informal name for both areas and a way of thinking, and it was used to characterize a person or a creative product. This word was used to denote a diagnosis, a sentence, and an unattainable peak.
And now this place, as if performing its swan song, plays a leading role in all social networks, millions of videos and thousands of newspaper headlines.
Forensic scientists and pathologists sometimes engage in purely professional conversations, arguing about which death is the most painful, and burning alive often occupies a leading position in the “ratings” of most specialists.
This time there is no reason to disagree with them: Hollywood is indeed burning, twisting and writhing in unimaginable convulsions, emitting black smoke from political deceptions, postponed premieres, ruin and the destroyed expectations of millions of people.
Oh my. She is definitely having fun over there.
CATEGORY "A" FIRE VICTIMS
The first news, which was eagerly absorbed by the public, illustrated a completely expected thesis: celebrities are also people and also do not like to lose what they have acquired.
Paris Hilton visited the ruins of her mansion, Bella Hadid posted clouds of smoke over the villa where she spent her childhood, Mel Gibson sat on Joe Rogan's podcast and didn't have time to see the fire in his own home.
And someone saw in person the sad actor Ben Affleck, rushing between two mansions - his own and his ex-wife's, gathering his children for evacuation.
The misadventures of the Category A fire victims forced the American public to remember those who document their lives even in the midst of a global catastrophe: the paparazzi.
They, by the way, without any particular embarrassment, are already acting as momentary stars themselves, answering questions from shocked people in the style of “Why don’t you leave here? You’ll die!”
Their answers are simple: work is work, there is no strategy, journalists do not specifically hunt for Afflecks and Gibsons, they only document the stories that catch their eye. Some even manage to compare themselves to war correspondents. There are, however, those who film the hottest events from afar and call their colleagues who climb into the thick of things “damn idiots.”
The "bloody idiots" are not stopped by anyone's condemnation, however. Photos of crying people against the backdrop of burnt luxury still sell well, as does the atmosphere of decline among those who were recently at the top of their game.
REAL VILLAINS
Where there is decay, death and destruction, its own "ecosystem" immediately appears, and in it - parasites. In addition to the usual scavengers - paparazzi and looters - American insurers also make their presence known. Against the backdrop of multi-billion dollar losses of their flock, they almost demonstratively washed their hands.
As potential loss figures began to emerge through the smoke, it quickly became clear that seven of the twelve largest insurers operating in California had already taken precautions for their own safety and had begun canceling policies on property owners in the state and had stopped issuing new ones.
This was done gradually, several months (or even years) before the Hollywood fire, but with a potential eye on such a turn of events. It turns out that California has always been considered a fire-hazardous zone, and in recent years the situation has become especially dire - fires have appeared even in places recognized as safe zones.
In response to the outrage, the insurers themselves cheerfully reported that they had simply reacted to changes in local laws that set a limit on the size of insurance premium payments and prevented them from earning money. Admittedly, this process did not begin yesterday and had been going on for several years, but some Californians had their insurance cancelled during the evacuation measures.
At some point, a version came to the fore that Hollywood was destroyed by fires of more than just natural origin. The Internet is full of messages and videos about unknown people deliberately setting fires and making the situation worse.
According to some experts, this could be beneficial to several categories of people.
Firstly, to insurance fraudsters who want to collect payments and get rid of old property that they are unable to maintain.
Secondly, to representatives of construction companies - because the fire frees up lands that were previously difficult to acquire legally. No more historic buildings and old houses on expensive plots of land.
Frankly, after studying the details, it really does begin to seem like there was an element of intent in the Hollywood fires.
THE COMPONENTS OF CHAOS
As it turns out, homeless people were caught in several Los Angeles neighborhoods pouring gasoline on the fire and fanning the flames even further. A huge number of fire hydrants were found to be broken, stolen, or turned into scrap metal.
The reservoir in the upscale Palisades neighborhood, which holds millions of gallons of water, was taken offline for routine maintenance just this month.
The Los Angeles Fire Department's budget was spent on building a transgender* cafeteria, donations to the gay men's choir and the University of Southern California's LGBT* organization.
The Los Angeles mayor, who cut the fire department's budget, left for the inauguration of the president of Ghana at the height of the fires and refused to apologize for her departure. Moreover, the lady actually suggested that the victims look for help "somewhere on the Internet," without giving a specific address.
The actions have prompted accusations of gross incompetence against both the city of Los Angeles and California Governor Gavin Newsom, with Elon Musk and Donald Trump, as always, at the forefront of the accusations.
NEWSOM DROUGHT
Trump directly blamed the governor for not signing a bill that would have allowed excess water from rain and melted snow to be redistributed to fire-prone regions. Instead of protecting Californians and one of America’s most beautiful states, Newsom prioritized mythical environmental protection, which ultimately proved fatal.
In this regard, according to Trump, Newsom should resign. It is also necessary to ensure the delivery of water from California's north to local farmers so that they can put out fires. This is currently impossible due to the peculiarities of California's environmental laws.
If such measures are not taken, Trump has threatened to block federal firefighting aid to the state once he takes office. Some say this is not the first time Trump has threatened to cut off federal aid to California, but the doubts about his next move are particularly unnerving in this case.
The governor responded by accusing the US president-elect of trying to politicize the process at a time when many people are suffering terrible hardships. Joe Biden, they say, is behaving completely differently, always ready to provide support and sympathy.
Shortly after Newsom's remarks, Biden handed the floor to Vice President Kamala Harris during a briefing on the fires, saying "Madam Vice President, burn it." Apparently, he decided to keep up his signature style until the end.
Weather forecasts for the Golden State are still grim, and there is still not enough water to fight the fires.
Only one thing is clear now - the era of militant minority rule in Hollywood has burned, not with a blue flame, but still with a flame. And it looks like they created this bright burning with their own hands, committing real political suicide. It is possible that over time these characters will try to return, but they will have to try much harder than before.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Mikhail Zakharov
[REGNUM] The first month of the year in our country is traditionally associated not only with holidays, but also with snow-covered trees, ice on rivers and cold streets. However, this January in many Russian regions instead of falling snowflakes there is drizzling rain, and the snow has almost melted. There are no traditional high snowdrifts and crackling Christmas frosts - winter is more like a protracted autumn or the beginning of spring.
In the capital of Russia, the air temperature remained above zero for almost the entire first ten days of January. On the 8th, the average daily air temperature in Moscow reached +3.2, making it the warmest day since 1948.
It was very warm from Kuban (in Armavir on January 8 the thermometer reached +15.4, breaking the 1963 record) to Yekaterinburg - the warmest January 9 since 1944 was recorded there (+1.3). In general, on January 8 the daily record for maximum temperature was broken in ten cities in Russia.
Due to the unusual warmth, flies and mosquitoes wake up, young grass turns green on the lawns - for a complete picture of spring, the only thing that is missing is the singing of swallows. In the Oryol region (in January!), the mushroom season has started: on social networks, citizens are happy to share photos of winter honey mushrooms.
So in many regions of Russia, winter is clearly in decline today. Leading specialist of the Phobos weather center Evgeny Tishkovets says that in the central part of the country, the weather is in a state of "meteorological spring", since the average daily temperature exceeds zero degrees.
“The year that has begun is striking with a heat anomaly in most of our country with a positive deviation of temperature from the climate norm, which reaches 4-9, and in some places 12 degrees,” Tishkovets notes on his channel.
EVEN THE PROS HAVE THEIR CONS
As the scientific director of the Hydrometeorological Center of Russia, Roman Vilfand explains, this time the reason for the abnormally warm winter in the European part of Russia, as well as in the Urals and in parts of Siberia, was the usually rare influx of warm air masses from the Atlantic and even from the northern regions of Africa.
However, experts say such weather fluctuations are becoming more frequent due to climate change, so it is likely that we will soon have to get used to new conditions.
“ Thanks to little El Niño ( an abnormal warming of ocean waters in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, which has a noticeable impact on the global climate. — Ed.) and the notorious global warming, ” notes meteorologist Tishkovets.
Many people are happy about the warm weather that has arrived: there is no need to wrap up in layers of winter clothing, and there is no risk of frostbite on the nose or ears in such weather.
But for some, the new weather conditions with frequent thaws, rain instead of snow and sudden temperature changes bring only disappointment - how can you enjoy the traditional winter mood? In addition, gray streets and overcast skies with the accompanying lack of sunlight can cause depression in people.
Utility workers have to switch between snow removal and ice preparation more often, and also fight rapidly growing icicles. Agricultural workers have to adapt the timing of field work to new weather conditions, and winter sports and recreation enthusiasts are finding it harder to plan their activities.
Warm winter brings changes not only to people, but also to nature. Plants that have already begun to grow may suffer from frosts or freezing rains. Wild animals that had previously hibernated also wake up in such weather. Having woken up, they will suffer from a lack of food and therefore may be aggressive.
JANUARY BREATH OF SPRING
This weekend, Moscow and central Russia as a whole will experience abnormal temperatures, writes leading specialist at Meteonovosti Tatyana Pozdnyakova. Frost will only arrive there at the beginning of next week — for now, heavy snow and cold are visiting Western Siberia, and severe frosts are only in the Far North and Yakutia.
But this cold snap will be wave-like and not very strong, believes the head of the Meteo forecasting center, Alexander Shuvalov. “Judging by the forecast materials, we will have to swing on waves of warming and cooling until the end of January,” he notes. “We should probably forget about 20-degree frosts.”
As the Meteovesti portal of the Phobos Weather Center reported, by the end of January, Atlantic weather processes will again prevail, so that it will be warm again in the center of the country.
Overall, it looks like this year's winter will not bring us any significant frosts, and the second half of the season will also be noticeably warmer than usual, meteorologists say.
“According to long-term forecasts, by the end of the season the average air temperature in Moscow will be 5 degrees warmer than normal, which puts an end to a real winter,” Yevgeny Tishkovets describes the weather forecast.
In March, spring will come earlier than usual, forecasters predict: in Moscow, there will still be frosts at night, but during the day the air will warm up to +5. In general, the first month of spring will be significantly warmer not only in the capital, but also in the northwest of the country, in Eastern Siberia, Transbaikalia, Amur Region and Primorye.
“The average monthly air temperature in March is predicted to be 4 degrees above normal, and April is expected to be 3 degrees warmer than long-term meteorological statistics, ” Tishkovets summarizes. “This indicates a high probability of an early onset of spring (that is, earlier than March 21, the climatic date for the average daily air temperature in Moscow to rise above zero) and the melting of snow cover by the beginning of April.”
Well deserved...
[Regnum] Corporal Andrei Grigoriev from Yakutia was awarded the title Hero of Russia for the victory he won in hand-to-hand combat with a Ukrainian soldier. The corresponding decree was signed on January 11 by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“For courage and heroism demonstrated in the performance of military duty, award the title of Hero of the Russian Federation to Corporal Andrei Nikolaevich Grigoriev,” the document says.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, Russian fighter Grigoriev, call sign Tuta, defeated a Ukrainian soldier in hand-to-hand combat in a special operation zone.
The fight was recorded on a camera attached to the Ukrainian''s helmet. The hand-to-hand combat began when the Ukrainian Armed Forces attempted to recapture the village of Trudovoye in the Donetsk People''s Republic from the stormtroopers of the 39th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade of the Russian Forces Group "Vostok".
Before his death, the Ukrainian called Grigoriev "the best fighter in the world." In this fight, Tuta himself received many serious wounds. The fighter survived and is currently undergoing treatment. On January 3, he said that when he got the video, he could not watch it to the end. Grigoriev said that before the fight, the Ukrainian killed his friend.
The head of Yakutia, Aisen Nikolaev, met with Grigoriev and gave him a Yakut knife as a keepsake. He thanked the fighter and added that the residents of the republic are proud of their fellow countryman.
Russian attack aircraft from Yakutia, Andrey Grigoriev, who won a hand-to-hand fight with a Ukrainian soldier,said that he was surprised by the quick awarding of the title Hero of Russia to him.
“I’m in shock… I didn’t expect such a quick decision,” RT quoted him as saying.
It is noted that Grigoriev learned this news from his brother, when he called him and asked to turn on the news on TV. The military man added that his entire family was very happy about this event.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] On the night of January 11, an earthquake with a magnitude of 3.5 occurred in Sochi. This was reported by the press service of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations for Krasnodar Krai.
It is noted that the epicenter of the tremors was located at a depth of 5 km.
"No appeals have been received from the population. Infrastructure and life support facilities are functioning normally," Rossiyskaya Gazeta quoted the press service as saying.
The department clarified that no one was killed or injured as a result of the seismic event.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, on January 7, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake occurred in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) in southwestern China, with its center located at a depth of 10 km. As a result, 126 people died and another 188 were injured.
China Central Television reported on January 8 that Chinese seismologists recorded 515 aftershocks in Tibet in 24 hours after the main destructive earthquake. The strongest tremor, with a magnitude of 4.4, occurred about 18 km from the epicenter of the main quake.
A new earthquake occurred in Sochi on the evening of January 11. This was reported by the head of the city's seismic service Elena Karpovich.
"At approximately 20:45 Moscow time, a small earthquake occurred in Sochi. The instruments have not yet processed the exact force of the tremor," Interfax quotes her as saying.
[JustTheNews] Tragic start to 2025 prompts worries about a new era of terrorism foretold in a 2023 Rand Corp. report to the Homeland Security Department.
Thank goodness the grownups are in charge again, unlike the Biden administration ignoring the obvious possibilities.
A year before twin New Year’s Day incidents in New Orleans and Las Vegas darkened the start of 2025, the Department of Homeland Security commissioned a study that warned America was facing a new era of terrorism and was ill-prepared to protect its citizens from that threat.
“Attacks on soft targets (STs) and crowded places (CPs) (ST-CPs) represent a significant challenge in the 2023 security environment,” Rand Corp’s Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center reported to the agency, urging a significant change in posture for a security apparatus that spent two decades hardening defenses against the sort of foreign-inspired and spectacular attacks that al-Qaeda pulled off on Sept. 11, 2001.
Rather than flying planes into hardened security targets of major institutions like the Pentagon or World Trade Center towers, a growing number of foreign-inspired or domestic-grown terrorists and mass shooters have deployed low level tactics – vehicles, improvised explosive devices and guns – on targets with less security but that still house large numbers of potential human victims, the report noted.
Drivers in Wisconsin in 2022 and Germany in 2024 plowed through Christmas Day gatherings with extreme lethal consequence. Shooters from Buffalo, N.Y.; to Charleston, S.C.; and Orlando, Fla.; to San Bernandino, Calif.; claimed numerous victims by focusing on stores, schools, and houses of worship with lower security postures. Plots to plant improvised explosive devices multiplied in the last decade too, a Just the News review of tens years of mass casualty incidents showed.
Meanwhile, such soft targets have been provided little training and security guidance, Rand warned.
“We found little specifically on how to secure open spaces and non-secured buildings that, almost by definition, do not have more-intensive security measures,” the report warned. “What little is present sometimes includes surveillance cameras and other sensors (for areas that have shot detection). The only reliable security measure present, however, is the bystanders themselves.”
You can read the full report here.
Rand’s report was as academic as it was prescient. On Wednesday, police said, an Army veteran apparently radicalized to support ISIS drove his vehicle bearing an ISIS flag into a crowded French Quarter in New Orleans, where scores were still celebrating New Year’s Eve, claiming 15 lives and injuring many more.
The driver, identified as 42-year-old Shamsud Din Jabbar of Texas, also came armed with guns to shoot officers and had explosives both inside his car and planted in the neighborhood he targeted.
FBI officials said it was a terror attack, and they believed others, still uncaptured, assisted it.
Meanwhile, another driver pulled up to the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas a few hours later on Wednesday morning and detonated a rented Tesla Cybertruck filled with fireworks and explosive materials, killing one and injuring seven.
FBI officials said they were trying to determine if it was a terrorist attack and whether it was related to New Orleans. Both drivers, authorities said, rented from the same rental company, heightening concerns.
Whatever the final outcome, the incidents reaffirmed that soft targets remain soft and easily accessed, creating potential catastrophic opportunities for bad actors when they are crowded like a hotel and public celebration area were on the New Year’s holiday.
The vulnerabilities coupled with four years of an insecure border under President Joe Biden and liberal defund the police movements in big cities have created a perfect storm, one key lawmaker told Just the News on Wednesday night.
"With the Democrats defund the police and open borders policy fiascos, it was always just a matter of time before America would experience these terrorist type of attacks,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee and soon to be chairman of the Senate’s most powerful investigative body.
Johnson’s home state experienced the Christmas parade massacre carried out by a lone driver in 2022 in Waukesha, Wis., and he has warned for years that America has too many soft targets for bad actors to strike.
“President Trump has some major Democrat-created messes to clean up,” he added.
The question of local police capabilities has already surfaced in the New Orleans tragedy, where officials admitted security barriers known as bollards that were intended to protect pedestrians from vehicles had been temporarily removed and were to be replaced because they malfunctioned at times before the attacker drove through Bourbon Street shortly after 3 a.m. Wednesday.
“Bollards were not up because they are near completion, with the expectation of being completed before the Super Bowl,” Mayor LaToya Cantrell admitted Wednesday afternoon.
The lack of barriers and the ease the driver found in driving into the French Quarter is particularly alarming for experts given that the city was hosting a major college championship football game, the Sugar Bowl, on Wednesday and the NFL's Super Bowl a month later.
"There's obviously a lot of blame to go around for this terrorist attack in New Orleans,” former CIA analyst and National Security Council chief of staff Fred Fleitz told Just the News. “Security barriers in the street that were put in place to prevent this type of attack were not activated. That is the fault of New Orleans police and officials. “
But Fleitz said the federal government and the Biden administration also deserved blame, focusing on issues like opening the borders to more illegal aliens, imposing ideologies like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion on security agencies, and equating political dissent with terrorism.
“The Biden administration has admitted at least 250 of the known migrants were on the U.S terrorist list. I believe a much larger number of terrorists entered the country as illegal migrants across the southern border since 2021,” he said.
“We also have a Homeland Security Department and an FBI that has lumped radical Islamist terrorists, a non-politically correct term government employees are forbidden to use, with peaceful protesters such as parents who attend PTA meetings, pro life protesters, and the January 6 protesters.
Fleitz said he is "very concerned that Biden's mismanagement of our homeland security agencies has seriously undermined their ability to defend the American people against real domestic security threats like radical Islamist terrorism."
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who was briefed on the New Orleans tragedy, suggested Americans will be more alarmed when all the details are eventually made public.
“Here’s what I want to ask from the federal government: Catch these people and then tell the American people the truth,” Kennedy said. “Now, I don’t want you to tell us yet anything is going to interfere with the investigation. And there are things that I’ve been told that I think are true that I’m not sharing with you today because it could interfere with their investigation.”
The platform is more than 10,000 square feet and traditionally holds more than 1,600 people for the Swearing-In Ceremonies, including: the President and Vice President and their families; the President-elect and Vice President-elect and their families; the Chief Justice and Associate Justices of the Supreme Court; former Presidents; the Diplomatic Corps; Cabinet Members and Nominees; Members of Congress; Governors; the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and other guests
#5
And the Biden response to the discovered vulnerabilities continues to be to ship more cash into the Ukrainian laundry mat.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/12/2025 8:20
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#6
We're all one big, soft target.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
01/12/2025 8:56
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#7
There's no genuine defense against terrorism because the purpose of the attack is not to destroy any target but the attack itself.
The only antidote strategies are preemption, neutralizing potential terrorists before an attack, and deterrence, a credible promise to retaliate and inflict unacceptable damage on the terrorists' assets.
#8
^ and call out the communities that support it. The same people who seek to shame whites about slavery and segregation that ended generations ago, have no problem shutting up when you know who perpetrates these attacks.
[IsraelTimes] US president says move ‘completely contrary to everything America’s about’; UN rights chief: Allowing hate speech to flourish online has ‘real-world consequences’.
Admittedly the entire West, including the US, had been orientalizing itself for several years, adopting the values and principles of polities like China, Russia and the Islamic states.
But that, hopefully, was an aberration and the Trump reelection signals a return to Western normalcy.
Free speech is an asset, not a luxury.
It is our superior error detection and error correction mechanism.
#5
That necklace charm he was wearing, is that a Chinese fashion? Seems I saw a pendent of that design with a Chinese blessing inscribed on it.
I mean, if so, fashion, whatever, lots of people with Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. fashion. It would just be a very strange thing to wear in what was a highly produced video.
And it was. Totally a Common Person theme with the background, and the (supposedly $900) watch.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The physical launch of the nuclear reactor was carried out in December 2024 on the nuclear heavy cruiser Admiral Nakhimov. This was reported on January 11 by a source in the military-industrial complex.
“In the third ten days of December 2024, a planned physical launch of the nuclear reactor was carried out on the cruiser Admiral Nakhimov without the ship going out to sea,” a competent source told TASS.
In addition, the demagnetization operation of the ship has been completed. At the same time, the physical start-up of the reactor, according to the source, does not mean the end of the repair and modernization of the ship, it is only evidence of the readiness of the nuclear installation to operate at full capacity.
It is noted that the factory sea trials of the cruiser were planned to begin in the summer of 2025, and then conduct state trials. According to another source, the transfer of the ship after completion of the relevant tests is planned for 2026.
The heavy nuclear missile cruiser Admiral Nakhimov is a Soviet and Russian cruiser of the 1144.2M Orlan project, previously known as Kalinin. It is a 1st rank ship. It has been undergoing repairs and modernization since 1999, but actual actions in these areas began only in 2013. As a result of the ship's modernization, it is planned to significantly increase its striking power. "Even moreso when it actually leaves drydock!"
Earlier, Regnum news agency reported that the physical launch of two reactors of the modernized heavy nuclear missile cruiser Admiral Nakhimov was planned for November 2023.
It was assumed that the cruiser Admiral Nakhimov, after repairs and modernization at the Sevmash shipyard, would begin sea trials by the end of 2023, and its upgrades were planned to be finally completed a year later. The modernization of the missile cruiser involves equipping it with modern, cutting-edge equipment. The ship will receive 80 UKSK 3S14 launchers, which can launch missiles such as Kalibr, Oniks, and Zircon, Fort-M and Pantsir-M air defense systems, as well as Paket-NK and Otvet anti-submarine systems, and other weapons.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] Iran has expressed its readiness to help Greenland, Canada, Mexico and Panama in the fight against US aggression.
Seriously??? Surely Iran is already feeling more than a tad overextended with all their failing and failed anti-Israel projects, without taking on new anti-America things.
“Just as we have always been ready to support other countries, Iran is ready to provide assistance to Canada, Mexico, Panama and Greenland in the fight against US aggression and terrorism,” a message appeared on January 8 on the Iranian Armed Forces account on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
As reported by the Regnum news agency, recently the elected US President Donald Trump has made a number of provocative statements about plans to annex new territories or geographical objects to the US. On December 3 last year, the American politician declared the "absolute necessity" for the US to take possession of the island of Greenland, which is part of Denmark. In response, the island's Prime Minister Mute Egede reminded that Greenland is not for sale and will not be sold.
Trump also suggested that Canada become the 51st state of the United States. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ultimately responded with a laconic "Hell no."
In late December, Trump announced plans to return the Panama Canal to the United States, which was given away last century, calling the fees charged for using the canal a "rip-off." Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino stressed that the Panama Canal fully belongs to his country based on a 1977 treaty and its return to the United States is not up for discussion.
In early January, the Republican said he intended to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum responded by suggesting the American continent be called the Gulf of Mexico, showing a 1607 map of North America that included that name.
The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, commenting on Trump's geopolitical statements, noted that the American politician has not yet officially taken office. According to her, it will be necessary to evaluate such statements only when Trump officially takes over as head of state.
That’s certainly one approach. It’ll leave you breathing American dust, but you do you,
Posted by: badanov ||
01/12/2025
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#2
Apparently 3 previous considerations to acquire Greenland. The first by Seward (following the Alaskan purchase), the second in the 1910's and the most recent in the 1950's. Used to fly to Sondestrom and Thule - not a very appealing locale for tourism.
[IsraelTimes] Palestine Solidarity Campaign rejects police request, as dozens of British lawmakers warn ‘that many Jewish families have been intimidated’ by the weekly marches
A planned pro-Paleostinian march in London is rebuffing police orders to move its starting point after complaints that it will disrupt a nearby synagogue’s Shabbat services.
The rally by the Paleostine Solidarity Campaign is due to begin at the headquarters of the BBC on Saturday, January 18, at noon, and then move toward Whitehall, the British government district. The gathering point is around the corner from the Central Synagogue, an Orthodox congregation founded more than 150 years ago.
Leading up to the march, dozens of British politicians, including Jewish officials, wrote a letter to police protesting the route of the rally and saying frequent pro-Paleostinian marches on Saturdays interfered with Jewish religious practice.
"Members of the congregation at Central and other London synagogues have suffered massive disruption to their Shabbat services from marches taking place on Saturdays for more than a year," the letter said, according to The Times. "The effect has been that many Jewish families have been intimidated by large protests and stayed away.״
Claudia Mendoza, who heads the Jewish Leadership Council, an umbrella group of British Jewish nonprofits, echoed that concern, saying that the group wasn’t calling for the protest to be banned, but "We just want it to start away from the synagogue."
On Thursday, nine days ahead of the march, London’s Metropolitan Police issued a statement saying it would use its powers to "prevent the Paleostine Solidarity Campaign forming up in the vicinity of a synagogue ahead of its planned protest." The statement said the decision had been made prior to the politicians’ letter.
Commander Adam Slonecki said in a statement that pro-Paleostinian demonstrations in the city often take place on Saturdays, and that "this has been a cause of increased concern for many Jewish Londoners who have altered their plans, avoided parts of central London and reduced attendance at religious services."
He added, "On Tuesday, I wrote to the PSC to inform them that we have reached the view that a protest forming up so close to a synagogue on a Saturday — the Jewish holy day — when congregants will be attending Shabbat services, risks causing serious disruption."
But the Paleostine Solidarity Campaign said in its own statement that it rejects the police order, and that it had agreed on the route with the police in November. The group said the synagogue itself was not on the route of the march and pointed to "thousands" of Jewish participants in its rallies as a sign that they aren’t antisemitic. It said discussions with the police remain ongoing.
"We have already announced our intention to assemble outside the BBC to protest against the pro-Israel bias of its coverage," the statement said, adding later, "We firmly reject any attempt to suppress our right to campaign for an end to Israel’s genocidal violence and decades long violations of the rights of the Paleostinian people."
The BBC has also drawn allegations of anti-Israel bias from Jewish groups. The Board of Deputies of British Jews, a leading group, met with BBC leadership in August to decry the "unacceptable state of affairs, both in terms of content and coverage."
[NEWARAB] Syria's Intelligence Directorate foiled an attack by the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group on the Sayeda Zeinab shrine in a Damascus suburb, a site of mass pilgrimage for Shias, state news agency Sana reported on Saturday.
It said members of the cell were arrested before they could detonate a kaboom inside the shrine.
The foiled attack will stoke fears that Islamic State is hoping to stage a comeback in Syria following the fall last month of President Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Lord of the Baath... Some Syrians and foreign powers have worried that the country's new leaders, who are from the Sunni Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else ...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State... (HTS) group that forced Assad out on 8 December, may impose strict Islamic governance on a country with numerous minority groups such as Druze, Kurds, Christians and Shias.
But the announcement by Syria's transitional government that it thwarted an attack targeting Shia Moslems comes amid reassurances it will protect religious minorities.
"The General Intelligence Directorate is utilizing all its resources to confront all attempts to target the Syrian people in all their diversity," an intelligence official told Sana.
Islamic State, the Sunni Moslem Death Eater group, has claimed previous attacks in and around the shrine, including last year and a bombing in 2017 that killed at least 40 people.
A selection of stories I happened across as I wandered the internet, this list is most certainly not anywhere close to complete.
Columbia University law professor retires as probe finds she discriminated against Israelis
Katherine Franke leaves school after investigation says she violated university discrimination policy when saying Israeli students harass Palestinians on campus. Franke is a longtime pro-Palestinian activist and supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel. She has described herself as an “activist academic” focused on issues including queer theory, gender justice, racial justice and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Protests surrounding the Israel-Hamas conflict plunged Columbia University into turmoil last year, culminating in an unsanctioned protest encampment on campus property, protesters’ forcible takeover of a campus building and dozens of arrests. Israeli and Jewish students have said the protests and rhetoric, including from faculty, created a hostile and unsafe environment for them on campus.
The university administration struggled to tamp down tensions and implemented some counter-measures, including a task force on antisemitism.
Protests have not been as disruptive this year, although student activists have escalated their rhetoric, including by issuing open calls for violence, which the university has condemned.
in Gaza, accusing it of intentionally destroying the Palestinian enclave’s education system amid the 15-month war against Hamas.The resolution, which was approved 428-88 at the AHA’s annual conference, said Israel’s campaign “has effectively obliterated Gaza’s education system.” It will now go to the AHA Council, which will need to decide whether to approve it, veto it or declare nonconcurrence.
Some of the AHA leadership expressed opposition to the resolution, including its president-elect Suzanne Marchand.
The professor, Imam Nader Taha, delivered a sermon at the Islamic Society of Akron and Kent (ISAK) on December 13, 2024, where he made inflammatory and antisemitic statements about Israel and Jewish people. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported on the remarks on January 2, 2025. During his sermon, Imam Taha referred to the October 7 attack—what he called the “Al-Aqsa Flood”—in which Hamas killed over 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped over 250 civilians. Taha praised the assault, calling it a “miracle” and a victory for Palestinians.
In response to the controversy, Kent State University issued a statement condemning Taha’s remarks. The statement also called for unity in the face of violence.
Despite widespread outrage over the remarks, Imam Taha remains employed at Kent State and is scheduled to teach four mathematics courses in Spring 2025: Pre-Algebra, Basic Algebra I, Basic Algebra II, and Modeling Algebra. A total of 31 students are enrolled in these classes, which begin on January 13.
Imam Taha remains an active religious leader at ISAK, where he delivers weekly sermons and leads prayers. ISAK confirmed in an interview that he continues to preach regularly, including sharing his views regarding Jewish people and the October 7 attack.
US settles with Johns Hopkins over rise in antisemitic, anti-Arab incidents
The US Education Department notes concerns about discrimination against people of Jewish and Arab ancestry at Johns Hopkins University and reaches a settlement with the institution to resolve the complaints. The university has agreed to review its anti-harassment policies and to provide training to staff and students on addressing discrimination and harassment based on ancestry and ethnicity, according to the settlement posted online by the Education Department.
Seen on Facebook on the Mothers Against College Antisemitism (M.A.C.A.) page:
ANTI-ZIONIST FACULTY BAROMETER - TOP 10 EXTREME SCHOOLS
New York University (NYU)
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Columbia University/Barnard College
University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC)
CUNY The Graduate Center
University of Washington
Georgetown University
University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)
University of California Irvine (UCI)
Rutgers University - New Brunswick The AZF Barometer ranks over 700 colleges and university from 0 (negligible) to 5 (extreme) using publicly available data on faculty academic boycotters, department anti-Zionist statements, FJP chapter presence, and FJP events or statements.
Consider just one fact: throughout the dozens of hours of recordings of these events, CAMERA could not find a single mention of the Israeli civilians, including children, taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists on October 7, 2023. Given that the plight of the hostages is the single most important factor preventing an end to the current war, it defies any reasonable, non-ideological explanation for that aspect of the conflict to be outright omitted from the conversations.
[IsraelTimes] A Pro-Paleostinian conference in Denmark cancels the participation of an anti-Israel group that works to file complaints against IDF soldiers for alleged war crimes.
In a post on X, the Hind Rajab Foundation
…the foundation is a project launched last October by the March 30 Movement, itself named in memory of the Palestinian general strike on that date in 1976 in the West Bank against the Israeli government, since referred to as Land Day. Both groups are lawfare boiler rooms generating endless laswsuits against Israelis and those who support Israel in Western Europe and elsewhere, and between times propagandizing against Israel using the currently fashionable far left shibboleths. March 30 appears to be the hobby of lawyer Haroon Raza, and appeared on the scene at the end of 2023, but at bottom it’s a Hezbollah front founded by Dyab Abou Jahjah (Dyab Abu Jahjah), a serial founder of Hezbollah fronts — his first, the Arab European League, was stirring up trouble between Moslem colonists and native Europeans since 2002……
says its representative was already in Copenhagen to attend the European Paleostinian Network Conference, where he was set to join a panel discussion.
"Mr. Haroon Raza traveled to Copenhagen to represent the HRF, but moments ago, the organization informed him that the Hind Rajab Foundation’s participation was canceled due to information disseminated in the Israeli press, falsely linking us to resistance movements in Leb ...The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. Only one of those statements is an exaggeration.... and Paleostine," the group writes.
There is no official statement from the conference organizers on the cancellation.
The organization, which proclaims in the post that its "sole mission remains the pursuit of justice and accountability for the victims and perpetrators of this ongoing genocide," is named after six-year-old Hind Rajab, who was killed in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... in January.
Her death was blamed on the IDF, but an initial probe conducted by the army said that there were no troops in the area at the time.
Hebrew media reported this week that Israeli authorities are aware of at least 12 such cases in which complaints have been filed abroad against IDF soldiers accusing them of war crimes in Gaza.
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.
[IsraelTimes] Special counsel 
..always the voice of sweet reason...
..always the voice of sweet reason...
......
[IsraelTimes] Not On Our Dime pushes referendum that would require Pittsburgh to divest from Israel, companies related to Israel, which officials say could be deeply challenging for city
..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for 
...late Fuehrer of Germany, founder of the Third Reich, currently communing with his pals Himmler and Heydrich. He is reincarnated every few days, sometimes every few hour if it's an election year, as a politician somebody doesn't like...
...
[IsraelTimes] The US Supreme Court is considering taking on a case filed by Jewish professors from New York City’s public university system against their union.
...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 
...
[KhaamaPress] German media reports have highlighted the continued deportation of Afghan 
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
[Breitbart] 
[BBC] German authorities have said an oil tanker stuck in German waters belongs to Russia's "
[10News] 
...Arabic term meaning 
[GEO.TV] Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 46,537 Palestinians and wounded 109,571 since October 7, 2023, the Palestinian enclave's health ministry said on Saturday.
...Kamala's smarmy-looking VP running mate, governor of Minnesota, who decided to retire rather than to deploy with his National Guard unit, then claimed to have been in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
Earlier, Regnum News Agency reported that on January 6, Yemeni Houthis announced an attack on the American aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman in the Red Sea. As the movement's representative Yahya Saria specified, the ship was attacked by drones and missiles. In addition, according to Saria, on the same evening, the Houthis carried out two more operations to strike using drones at a military facility in the Israeli port city of Jaffa, as well as at a "vital Israeli facility" in Ashkelon.
[KRQE] HSI promises to find those responsible for ‘sophisticated’ tunnel
...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 
...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...
...The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. Only one of those statements is an exaggeration....
