Interesting set of facts and allegations concerning a Female Russian Operative who initially entered this country under the cover of an F-1 Student Visaa few years back , working in conjunction with what appears to be one or more Russian GRU Operatives operating out of the Wash DC Russian Embassy. I don't see Robert Mueller's, Comey, or Strzok's signatures/fingerprints anywhere in this criminal complaint. He must be slipping !
[CBS] Special counsel Robert Mueller's team has asked Judge T.S. Ellis in Virginia to grant immunity to and protect the identities of five individuals who are set to testify against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Mueller's team says that identifying the individuals would result in "risk of their undue harassment." The filing also notes that there's a concern that the witnesses' "invocation of their privilege against self-incrimination and the court's subsequent grant of immunity could lead to reputation harm for the witnesses."
Prosecutors for the special counsel note that the five individuals in question are "third parties who have not been charged in this matter, and who have not been identified publicly with the case."
According to the memo, the motions say that the five people "will not testify or provide other information on the basis of their privilege against self-incrimination, and that the government is requesting that the Court compel them to testify at the upcoming trial."
Manafort was most recently moved to an Alexandria, Virginia jail pending his trial, after previously being detained at a facility in Northern Neck, Virginia where he said in taped conversations that he was being treated like a "VIP" and has access to all the paperwork he needs to prepare his defense.
His trial in the Eastern District of Virginia is set to begin a week from tomorrow, July 25th.
#2
On what charge is he held?
On what warrant?
What FISA Warrant request for a Counter Intelligence probe?
How does this turn into a Felony investigation? At what POINT?
You have gone fishing and you are horrible lawman and a worse human. And if I did Chamber on this, I would release Manafort of the basis that you deprived a Man of His Liberty without these 5 witnesses.
Raid a Family Home at 4 AM, and make a search and seizure on a CI Investigation sounds to me like Mueller is really up the river with no paddle and needs to consult a lawyer of his own.
You have NO POINT OF Evidence or scope and your FISA Warrant means nothing in THIS Court you dumb asshole.
One more abuse of power is all I ask for Mueller because I go after YOU next.
#9
No further investigative information on the DNC Awan tech issue, the Debbie Wasserman Schultz laptop, or the 30,000 missing Clinton emails can be released. All of this data is now part of an ongoing indictment involving 12 Russian hackers. An indictment that will likely span years, possibly decades before final resolution.
#13
If Mueller's case depends on secret witnesses, it's hard to see how he actually tries this case. I'd look for a chickenshit plea deal on the eve of trial.
Which for some reason reminds me of the old Arkansas lawyer who was so good that he got a charge of "sodomy" reduced to "following too close."
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07/18/2018 11:31 Comments ||
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#15
Right, JohnQC, the main purpose for this immunity is to shield these five from liability for their own crimes of colluding to subvert a presidential election.
MENASHA, Wis. (WFRV) - A 37-year-old woman suffered injuries to her face after falling in between a gap on the Racine Street Bridge while on her bike, according to Menasha Police.
Police say around 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday, the woman rode her bike into the opening between the bridge approach area, and the bridge span. The span was in the up position at the time.
According to witnesses. passerbys were able to assist the woman from the gap, along with her bike. The woman was transported to Thedacare Regional Medical Center - Neenah, where she was treated for facial injuries.
Police tell us alcohol is believed to have been a factor. The incident is still under investigation.
[TheGuardian] In the eyes of its members, there is no more important cultural institution in the world than the Swedish Academy. The members, who call themselves The Eighteen (always in capitals), are elected for life by their peers, and meet for a ritual dinner every Thursday evening at a restaurant they own in the heart of the old town in Stockholm. And once a year, at a ceremony brilliant with jewels and formality, the permanent secretary of the academy hands out the Nobel prize in literature and all the world applauds. So much elites congratulating other elites it makes me want to vomit.
But this year there will be no prize and no ceremony. In November 2017, it was revealed in the Swedish press that the husband of one of the academy members had been accused of serial sexual abuse, in assaults alleged to have taken place over more than 20 years. Jean-Claude Arnault, a French photographer and cultural entrepreneur, is married to the poet and academician Katarina Frostenson. In addition to assault accusations against him, the pair are accused of misusing academy funding. Arnault has denied all accusations, and Frostenson has refused to comment. So, so satisfying to see these pricks taken down a notch.
The academy is paralysed by the scandal, which was followed by a slew of resignations and expulsions. Six of The Eighteen have withdrawn from any part in its deliberations; another two were compelled to do so. The statutes say that 12 members must be present to elect any new ones, so with only 10, no important decisions can be taken and no new members elected. The vacuum has been filled with invective.
One hopes the invective was extraordinarily inventive in a thoroughly literary/poetic style...
"It was a loud and stormy discussion..."
Click through to revel in the joy of red on red.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
07/18/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
I want to know who is in charge of colors.
Red used to mean Commies; now it means republicans...except when it doesn't.
Blue used to be republicans but now it means democrats...except when it's war games when it means the good guys.
#2
They switched the coloring for parties in the 60s because the Legacy Infotainment Enterprises feared Americans would make the connection of communist with the Democratic Party. Of course, now that they've actually declared themselves communists, they can always switch it back.
The ninth? Really?
[Reason] Today the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a federal district count injunction against a California law to confiscate firearms magazines that hold over 10 rounds. The Ninth Circuit's 2-1 opinion is here, and the dissent is here. My analysis of the 2017 district court opinion is here.
Background: In 2016, California voters enacted an initiative that, among other things, dispossessed magazine owners of their property. Possession of firearms magazines over 10 rounds was forbidden. Current owners of magazines required to turm them over to the government, or to a gun store, or destroy the magazines, or move them out of state. The ban was to take effect on July 1, 2017.
In late June 2017, Federal District Judge Roger Benitez (S.D. Calif.) issued a preliminary injunction against the confiscation. He found that the plaintiffs had established a liklihood that they would succeed on the Second Amendment and Fifth Amendment claims (the latter involving taking of property without just compensation). The case is Duncan v. Becerra, since Xavier Becerra is Attorney General of California. The case is being litigated by Michel Associates, the leading firearms law firm in California.
Continued on Page 49
[DAWN] Saudia Arabia says it has executed five men, including two Saudis, convicted for the robbery and murder of a Pak warehouse guard in the western city of Jeddah.
The Interior Ministry said the five men, two Saudis and three Chad nationals, stabbed and beat the guard and stole his cellphone as part of a robbery of the warehouse.
It is not clear when they committed the crime and how they were executed Tuesday, but Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... usually carries out death sentences with public beheadings by sword or firing squad.
The country has executed 64 people so far in 2018. In 2017, 122 people were executed and 144 people were executed in 2016.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/18/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
including two Saudis
Goodness. The times, they are a-changing. In the old days, the dead Pakistani would have been found guilty instead, because had he not been in the country, the Saudis would not have been able to rob and kill him.
[DAWN] Jamaat-e-Islami ...The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an independent branch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores... (JI) emir and central leader of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal Sirajul Haq ...current head of the Pak Jamaat-e-Islami. Siraj was born in 1962 and entered politics shortly after that... has said that people have been sending candidates of Pakistain Peoples Party to assemblies for several years and in return the party has given nothing to its poor and hapless supporters but poverty, hunger and unemployment.
Therefore, casting votes for PPP once again after such dismal performance was tantamount to feeding milk to a snake, said the JI emir at a big public meeting at Tikundi Bagh in Jacobabad on Monday. It was largely attended by workers of JI and Jamaat Ulema-e-Islam ...the political wing of the Pak Taliban... -Fazl (JUI-F).
Mr Haq said the PPP leaders regarded their voters as slaves but the slave had now awakened and he had started voicing frustration over police and government officials.
He said that it was impossible for a poor man to get something done in government offices without paying bribe and having recommendation of an influential person. He urged people to help MMA candidates Dr A.G. Ansari (NA-196), Haji Deedar Lashari (PS-1 Jacobabad) and Syed Shah Mohammad Shah (PS-2 Thull) to win election to end PPP’s "atrocities".
JI leaders Dr Mairajul Huda Siddiqi, Mumtaz Sahito, JUI-F’s Dr A.G. Ansari, Haji Deedar Lashari and others also spoke at the gathering.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/18/2018 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Tuesday put off appeals by Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf, then by the courts... , Maryam Nawaz and Capt Mohammad Safdar against their conviction in the Avenfiled reference until after the elections.
The court was hearing seven separate appeals filed by the three convicts' lawyers ─ against the conviction, suspension of their sentences, and transfer of the pending two references against Sharif family members. Three appeals were filed on behalf of Nawaz, and two each on behalf of Maryam and Safdar.
The IHC bench, comprising Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani ... four star general, Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani was the former Director General of ISI... and Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb, observed that since the high court administration had not notified the division bench for next week, the appeals against the convictions of Nawaz, Maryam and retired Capt Safdar were adjourned until the last week of July.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/18/2018 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] Indian police said Tuesday that 17 men have been tossed in the slammer Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! for allegedly raping an 11-year-old girl over several weeks, in the country's latest horrific sexual assault case.
The girl, who has a hearing disability, was allegedly sexually assaulted inside a largely unoccupied apartment block in the southern city of Chennai.
Among those arrested were the 300-flat building's security guards, plumber and elevator operator, state police said.
The 66-year-old lift operator was the first to attack the girl after she returned from school and was cycling around the complex, police said.
He allegedly invited other men who filmed each other raping the child. As the ordeal progressed she was sedated with injections and drug-laced soft drinks, reports said.
"This is the initial stage of investigation and we have to go in-depth to ascertain the details," a local police official told AFP.
According to local reports, the accused took the girl to various places in the complex including the basement, terrace, gym and public restrooms to rape her.
The incident came to light after the girl told her family who then lodged a police complaint. She is now receiving medical attention.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/18/2018 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] Police in Sialkot and Daska registered cases against at least 198 PML-N workers on Tuesday after they took out a rally to welcome convicted former premier Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf, then by the courts... and his daughter Maryam Nawaz upon their return from London on July 13.
Sialkot Saddar police booked 175 PML-N workers under Sections 188, 290 and 291 of the Pakistain Penal Code (PPC) on the basis of a report filed by Sub-Inspector Maqsood Ahmed.
Meanwhile, ...back at the the conspirators' cleverly concealed hideout the long-awaited message arrived. They quickly got to work with their decoder rings... the Daska Saddar police registered cases against 23 PML-N workers, including Rana Raza, Hashim Butt, and Naeem Butt, the PML-N general secretary in Daska. These men have also been booked for taking out a rally on the Daska-Sialkot Road.
Police said that the booked PML-N workers indulged in hate speech against law enforcement agencies when they were halted by them in a bid to maintain the law and order situation there.
No arrests have been made with respect to either of these FIRs, but an investigation into the matter is underway.
The Rangpura police separately started the paperwork but haven't done much else against five suspects, including two local Pakistain Tehrik-e-Insaf ...a political party in Pakistan. PTI was founded by former Pakistani cricket captain and philanthropist Imran Khan. The party's slogan is Justice, Humanity and Self Esteem, each of which is open to widely divergent interpretations.... (PTI) leaders Mehar Kashif and Sheikh Kamran for the use of fireworks at Sialkot's Jinnah Stadium upon the arrival of PTI Chairman Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who is the lightweight's lightweight... , who was there to address a public meeting on the night of July 15.
A case was registered under Sections 188, 285 and 286 of the PPC on the report of Assistant Sub Inspector Sarwar Ali Mudassar. Police said that the display of fireworks was in violation of the official ban imposed by the Punjab 1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots.... government. The case is being investigated.
Separately, a Lahore sessions court asked police to submit a report on August 7 regarding their lack of response to a request for the registration of a case against PML-N Chairman Shahbaz Sharif ...Pak dynastic politician, brother of PM Nawaz Sharif, chief minister of Punjab... and other leaders. According to the applicant, he tried to register a case against Sharif and other PML-n leaders for their remarks against the caretaker setup.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[Al Jazeera] India's highest court has asked the government to enact a new law to deal with an increase in mob violence and lynchings that have reportedly killed more than two dozen of people in the country this year.
The Supreme Court in the capital, New Delhi, on Tuesday, recommended that Parliament create a new penal provision to punish the offenders and stem the mob-related violence.
"Horrendous acts of mobocracy cannot be allowed to become a new norm," a three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, said. "It has to be curbed with an iron hand."
"No citizen can take law into his hands or become a law onto himself," the court ruled.
The top court was hearing a number of petitions seeking direction on checking mob violence by Hindu cow-protection vigilantes targeting Moslems over suspicions of beef consumption and cattle slaughter.
So far this year, there have been 13 incidents of mob lynchings, resulting in the deaths of 27 people, according to the Times of India, often in isolated areas where outsiders have been accused of child kidnapping and other crimes following fake rumours spread via WhatsApp, a messaging application.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/18/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
Maybe if you gave them swift and sure justice, these things might be abated.
[Guardian] Australian scientists have developed the world’s first blood test to detect melanoma in its early stages.
Early trials of the test involving 209 people showed it was capable of picking up early stage melanoma in 81.5% of cases.
The next step for the scientists from Edith Cowan University is to carry out clinical trials to validate their findings, with hopes the test could be commercially available in about three to five years.
Professor Mel Ziman, head of the Melanoma Research Group at the university, said the test has the potential to save thousands of lives.
It can help deliver a more accurate diagnosis of early-stage melanoma, which can be tricky to detect with the human eye, particularly if small.
The test could also benefit people living in rural areas where it’s hard to get to a dermatologist.
h/t Instapundit
[NYTimes] The urge to pull down statues extends well beyond the public squares of nations in turmoil. Lately it has been stirring the air in some corners of science, particularly psychology.
In recent months, researchers and some journalists have strung cables around the necks of at least three monuments of the modern psychological canon:
The famous Stanford Prison Experiment, which found that people playacting as guards quickly exhibited uncharacteristic cruelty.
The landmark marshmallow test, which found that young children who could delay gratification showed greater educational achievement years later than those who could not.
And the lesser known but influential concept of ego depletion ‐ the idea that willpower is like a muscle that can be built up but also tires.
The assaults on these studies aren’t all new. Each is a story in its own right, involving debates over methodology and statistical bias that have surfaced before in some form.
But since 2011, the psychology field has been giving itself an intensive background check, redoing more than 100 well-known studies. Often the original results cannot be reproduced, and the entire contentious process has been colored, inevitably, by generational change and charges of patriarchy. And if it cannot be reproduced, it's not science
...When Dr. Nosek published his first major replication paper in 2015, finding that about 60 percent of prominent studies did not pan out on a second try, it was a gift to skeptics eager to dismiss the entire field (and maybe all of social science) as a joke, a congregation of poorly anchored findings that shift in the wind, like nutrition advice. If it was only psychology, I could live with it
#3
Since the soft sciences such as sociology, poly sci, psychology, and all the new race and gender studies have been politicized, they are all suspect.
Because most studies in psychology are qualitative not quantitative it is difficult to replicate a study in which 800 people were interviewed and the results tabulated and then analyzed. Unless you interview the same people in the same demographic etc., you might find it difficult to replicate.
Especially if the study is phenomenological.
h/t Instapundit
An art gallery in Portland, Oregon, removed a window drawing that depicts President Donald Trump being beheaded ISIS style.
The founder of One Grand Gallery in the Northwest city told KPTV-TV that he took down the controversial drawing after threats from Trump supporters and a request from his landlord.
The gallery founder asked to remain anonymous for fear that someone would try to harm him.
The horrific image shows a man whose face is concealed holding Trump’s head with one hand.
#4
About those other countries... Ed Driscoll told the full story about that quote about fascism descending on America, and it's fascinating:
[Guenter] Grass plays a small role in Tom Wolfe's 1976 essay, "The Intelligent Coed’s Guide To America," reprinted in his 1982 anthology The Purple Decades, available on the Kindle and an essential introduction to both Wolfe's early nonfiction, and life in America in the crazed '60s and '70s, which today often reads stranger than fiction. Wolfe uses a statement from Grass as a springboard for the saying he helped enter into widespread distribution: "The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe." The two men shared the stage at a ruckus 1965 panel at Princeton University, dominated both on the panel and in the audience by paranoid lefties convinced that fellow Democrat Lyndon Johnson was the new fascistic boogieman*, including Allen Ginsberg and Merry Prankster Paul Krassner, about whom Wolfe notes:
The next thing I knew, the discussion was onto the subject of fascism in America. Everybody was talking about police repression and the anxiety and paranoia as good folks waited for the knock on the door and the descent of the knout on the nape of the neck. I couldn't make any sense out of it. I had just made a tour of the country to write a series called “The New Life Out There” for New York magazine. This was the mid-1960’s. The post-World War II boom had by now pumped money into every level of the population on a scale unparalleled in any nation in history. Not only that, the folks were running wilder and freer than any people in history. For that matter, Krassner himself, in one of the strokes of exuberance for which he was well known, was soon to publish a slight hoax: an account of how Lyndon Johnson was so overjoyed about becoming President that he had buggered a wound in the neck of John F. Kennedy on Air Force One as Kennedy’s body was being flown back from Dallas. Krassner presented this as a suppressed chapter from William Manchester’s book Death of a President. Johnson, of course, was still President when it came out. Yet the merciless gestapo dragnet missed Krassner, who cleverly hid out onstage at Princeton on Saturday nights.
Suddenly I heard myself blurting out over my microphone: “My God, what are you talking about? We’re in the middle of a … Happiness Explosion!”
That merely sounded idiotic. The kid up in the balcony did the crying baby. The kid down below did the raccoon … Krakatoa, East of Java … I disappeared in a tidal wave of rude sounds … Back to the goon squads, search-and-seize and roust-a-daddy …
Support came from a quarter I hadn’t counted on. It was Grass, speaking in English.
“For the past hour I have my eyes fixed on the doors here,” he said. “You talk about fascism and police repression. In Germany when I was a student, they come through those doors long ago. Here they must be very slow.”
Grass was enjoying himself for the first time all evening. He was not simply saying, “You really don’t have so much to worry about.” He was indulging his sense of the absurd. He was saying: “You American intellectuals—you want so desperately to feel besieged and persecuted!”
He sounded like Jean-François Revel, a French socialist writer who talks about one of the great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.
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.
[CBS] Special counsel Robert Mueller's team has asked Judge T.S. Ellis in Virginia to grant immunity to and protect the identities of five individuals who are set to testify against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. 
No further investigative information on the DNC Awan tech issue, the Debbie Wasserman Schultz laptop, or the 30,000 missing Clinton emails can be released. All of this data is now part of an ongoing indictment involving 12 Russian hackers. An indictment that will likely span years, possibly decades before final resolution. 
MENASHA, Wis. (WFRV) - A 37-year-old woman suffered injuries to her face after falling in between a gap on the Racine Street Bridge while on her bike, according to Menasha Police.
One must wonder. 
...current head of the Pak Jamaat-e-Islami. Siraj was born in 1962 and entered politics shortly after that...
... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf, then by the courts...
...Pak dynastic politician, brother of PM Nawaz Sharif, chief minister of Punjab...
