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Area: WoT Operations    WoT Background    Non-WoT        Politix   
Thirty killed in alleged Boko Haram attack on Nigeria boarding school
Today's Headlines
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Page 1: WoT Operations
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Page 6: Politix
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-Land of the Free
Hinkle: Commit any felonies lately?
As Bart Hinkle at the Richmond Times-Dispatch explains, it's easier than you think.

For our recent commenter Lex: try to square that circle when you talk about how much more 'free' we are...
Tale end of a longer article. We were discussing this yesterday. I'll be discussing it until approximately Doomsday.
[TIMESDISPATCH] As The Wall Street Journal has reported, lawmakers in Washington have greatly eroded the notion of mens rea -- the principle that you need criminal intent in order to commit a crime. Thanks to a proliferating number of obscure offenses, Americans now resemble the condemned souls in Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" -- spared from perdition only by the temporary forbearance of those who sit in judgment.

"What once might have been considered simply a mistake," The Journal explains, is now "punishable by jail time." And as 20-year-old Elizabeth Daly has now learned, you can go to jail even when the person making the mistake wasn't you.
Posted by: Fred & Steve White || 07/06/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || [336065 views] Top|| File under:

#1  lawmakers in Washington have greatly eroded the notion of mens rea -- the principle that you need criminal intent in order to commit a crime.

If more evidence is required, please turn on the tellie and watch the on-going Zimmerman trial.
Posted by: Besoeker || 07/06/2013 2:02 Comments || Top||

#2  Not if you are on TV.
Posted by: swksvolFF || 07/06/2013 11:18 Comments || Top||


Africa North
Israel's reviled strategic wisdom
h/t Gates of Vienna
...The American foreign policy establishment's rush to romanticize as the Arab Spring the political instability that engulfed the Arab world following the self-immolation of a Tunisian peddler in December 2010 was perhaps the greatest demonstration ever given of the members of that establishment's utter cluelessness about the nature of Arab politics and society.

...Given Egypt's dire economic plight, it is impossible to see how any government will be able to deliver on any promises - large or small - that its politicians will make during electoral campaigns.

And so government after government will share the fates of Mubarak and Morsi.

...And this is not the case only in Egypt. It is the case in every Arab state that is now or will soon be suffering from instability that has caused coups, Islamic takeovers, civil wars, mass protests and political insecurity in country after country. Not all of them are broke. But then again, none of them have the same strong sense of national identity that Egyptians share.

...In 2011, the military acted to force Mubarak from power only after Obama called for it to do so. This week, the military overthrew Morsi and began rounding up his supporters in defiance of the White House.

Secretary of State John Kerry was the personification of the incredible shrinkage of America this week as he maintained his obsessive focus on getting Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians.

In a Middle East engulfed by civil war, revolution and chronic instability, Israel is the only country at peace. The image of Kerry extolling his success in "narrowing the gaps" between Israel and the Palestinians before he boarded his airplane at Ben-Gurion Airport, as millions assembled to bring down the government of Egypt, is the image of a small, irrelevant America.

Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 07/06/2013 15:14 || Comments || Link || [336067 views] Top|| File under:


India-Pakistan
Karachi central prison: A tinderbox of expanding militant networks
[Dawn] KARACHI: Even with increased outreach of hard boy networks from within Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
's central prison, most search operations carried out inside the jail are done without scanners or metal detectors, the stated reason for which is primarily financial constraints and a "lack of response from the concerned department".

This also explains the planning of the attack on Sindh High Court's Justice Maqbool Baqar from inside Karachi Central Jail and the subsequent recovery of a number of cell phones and other devices in the June 29 search operation led by Sindh Rangers.

The operation established that the attack on Justice Baqar was indeed planned from inside the central prison and further revealed that security checks inside prison cells have largely remained lax.

The central jail houses over 4,800 prisoners and the figure includes 200 key members from hard boy organizations, such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ...
, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain and Jundallah which seem to be expanding their networks inside the prison.

Militant networks mushroom, collaborate

Speaking to Dawn.com regarding locked away
Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up!
members of hard boy organizations, former Special Investigation Unit (SIU) chief, SP Khurram Waris, said the most dangerous among these were the ones associated with LJ and TTP. He said the two groups joined forces and have been operating in collaboration since the past one year in order to target high profile figures from different professions.

Some of these prisoners include Mohammad Ajmal alias Akram Lahori, Mufti Shahid and LJ's ameer in Pakistain, Attaur Rahman Bukhari -- all languishing in jail after being awarded death sentences.

Waris said he had no doubt that the recent attack on Justice Baqar was planned from inside Karachi's central prison.

"These people have a full-fledged network running from inside prisons; right from visitors bringing in 'messages' that can't be discussed on cell phones to finalising finances for attacks through cell phones that are somehow brought in. The foundations of most attacks are laid inside prison cells," Waris told Dawn.com.

Cell phones and 'more'

Such adept planning and organization as was seen in the attack on Justice Baqar does not seem to have been done via cell phones alone. Security officials from within the central prison have said that material seized during the June 29 operation included not only mobile phones but also laptops and internet devices.

However,
a person who gets all wrapped up in himself makes a mighty small package...
IG Prisons Nusrat Mangan continues to maintain his earlier statement that about six cell phones were seized during the "routine search operation" conducted by the paramilitary force.

Neither Mangan nor the Rangers front man therefore confirmed that a number of laptops and internet devices were also seized from the barracks of a few prisoners.

"The media reported a few things out of context which was not the case," Rangers front man Major Sibtain told Dawn.com.
Posted by: Fred || 07/06/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || [336062 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan


Government
O-Care Implementation - Never Mind
Opponents' anger was registered emphatically in congressional elections 15 months later, which is one reason why implementation of the act's most onerous provisions was delayed until 2014, after the 2012 presidential election.
I never would have imagined!
The act PPACA remains unpopular, and there are congressional elections in years divisible by two -- not even the Obama administration can ignore that constitutional fact -- so last Tuesday, the administration said this about the act's mandate that in 2014, large employers provide expensive health-care coverage for their workers or pay a substantial penalty: Never mind.

Although the Constitution has no Article VIII, the administration acts as though there is one that reads: "Notwithstanding all that stuff in other articles about how laws are made, if a president finds a law politically inconvenient, he can simply post on the White House Web site a notice saying: Never mind."

Never mind that the law stipulates 2014 as the year when employers with 50 full-time workers are mandated to offer them health-care coverage or pay fines. Instead, 2015 will be the year. Unless Democrats see a presidential election coming.
But after 2016, he won't be able to postpone it anymore. That'd be up to Mooshell.
This lesson in the Obama administration's approach to the rule of law is pertinent to the immigration bill, which at last count had 222 instances of a discretionary "may" and 153 of "waive." Such language means that were the Senate bill to become law, the executive branch would be able to do pretty much as it pleases, even to the point of saying about almost anything: Never mind.
Posted by: Bobby || 07/06/2013 13:05 || Comments || Link || [336078 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Y'know, if someone were to file a suit to force the law to be implemented...
Posted by: Pappy || 07/06/2013 15:28 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
35[untagged]
6Arab Spring
5Boko Haram
3TTP
3Salafists
2al-Qaeda in Pakistan
1Govt of Pakistan
1Hamas
1Hezbollah
1Commies
1al-Qaeda in Iraq
1Taliban
1Thai Insurgency
1Muslim Brotherhood

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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.
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Two weeks of WOT
Sat 2013-07-06
  Thirty killed in alleged Boko Haram attack on Nigeria boarding school
Fri 2013-07-05
  Morsi Loyalists Clash With Soldiers in Cairo Protests
Thu 2013-07-04
  Big party in Tahrir Square!
Wed 2013-07-03
  Egypt army dumps Morsi
Tue 2013-07-02
  Guards of senior Muslim Brotherhood figure arrested in Egypt
Mon 2013-07-01
  Egyptian military gives 48 hour ultimatum to Brotherhood, political forces
Sun 2013-06-30
  Boomers kill 43 in Pakland on Sunday
Sat 2013-06-29
  Muslim Brotherhood, FJP offices attacked throughout Egypt
Fri 2013-06-28
  Dagestani lawmaker arrested for ties to Islamist insurgents
Thu 2013-06-27
  Top Somali militant leader flees former Shebab comrades
Wed 2013-06-26
  FBI pulls ‘Faces of Global TerrorismÂ’ ads after Muslims get offended
Tue 2013-06-25
  Taliban attack Afghan presidential palace
Mon 2013-06-24
  Pak Talibs kill 10 foreign tourists in Diamer
Sun 2013-06-23
  Dutch Say Time of 'Ever Closer' Union in Europe is Over
Sat 2013-06-22
  Britain OKs Treaty Clearing Way to Deport Abu Qatada to Jordan

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